1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 28, 2017 14:43:29 GMT
I didn't get an email from them but the offer was there when I logged in.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 28, 2017 9:58:38 GMT
I use queer. Queer has been widely used by the LGBT community for as long as I've been alive. I completely understand people used to hearing it as a slur finding it offensive, but some LGBT and especially LGBT youth have never known it as a slur. (I also stopped because you're not allowed to be a feminist and not hate Israel now, apparently, but that's another can of worms) Yes, I agree with this. The "social justice" movement is problematic in all kinds of ways, and can be very discriminatory. At the moment there are white supremacists groups actively targeting social justice youth intentionally to spread anti-Semitic propaganda, which is horrifying. Recently a Muslim Indian teenage girl became a white supremacist poster child which is a sentence I can't believe I've just written. On a broader note: racial politics are so contentious. Sometimes watching the news feels like you're living on a knife edge. Perhaps it would be more conducive to calm debate not to bring in black people or the N word unnecessarily.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 28, 2017 9:25:47 GMT
I think you mean Ms Roarke.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 26, 2017 12:29:23 GMT
Honourable mention here to RADA tutors for putting me off Hamlet for nearly a decade (Hiddles want to have a word?) and to The Wooster Group for having the honour of the first play I fell asleep in (also Hamlet) which I feel was a cardinal theatrical sin, but it was hella hot in there, and we'd got the 6am Eurostar and their version is about 45 minutes longer than the average Hamlet....zzzzz I wish I'd fallen asleep during Troilus and Cressida...
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 25, 2017 20:52:19 GMT
I don't know if it's their bandwidth or my connection but I can't watch anything on their site; video buffers every thirty seconds. It's like trying to watch a video on a Backstreet Boys fansite on Geocities circa 1998!
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 24, 2017 10:08:41 GMT
GCSE: Taming of the Shrew (loved it then, like it now). A Level: King Lear as part of comparative lit with Thousand Acres (I like Lear fine but I've seen approx 5000 productions of it and I never need to see another. See also: Midsummer Night's Dream).
I didn't really study much Shakespeare in school, though I was reading the plays and seeing productions outside of school from a young age. I used to love Macbeth and 12th Night, and hate the "boring" histories. Now my favourite play is Richard II.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 24, 2017 10:02:44 GMT
I'm sort of boycotting since the writer's a complete a-hole, but the production images are making me slightly regret it.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 17, 2017 16:41:43 GMT
Bloody useful to anyone planning an ACE application though, ahem. *fires up the ol' CTRL C*
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 16, 2017 13:28:20 GMT
Ah no, not encore screenings. The internet has some questionable nooks and crannies! Would you like to drop some hints, for the uninitiated? There does appear to be a bit of a thriving black market.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 11, 2017 14:45:07 GMT
It's a shame, because the NT Studio is doing great work and writers are falling over themselves to be there. At any time the Studio has something like 60+ plays in development. The problem is so few of them make it to one of the main spaces, and almost everyone wants to be in the Dorfman.
The Olivier and to a lesser extent the Lyttleton are fiendish spaces to write for, and one major problem is the lack of training and development opportunities for emerging or early-mid career writers to write for such large spaces. Emerging writers are under pressure to write to the two-person studio model. And yet the industry expects them to be able to make the leap from writing for the Dorfman or Court Upstairs, to writing for the Olivier, by themselves. Most writers struggle do it because all of the training and development has been within the black box hegemony, and when they're given the chance and fail, they fail so publicly and are criticised so harshly it puts others off. So we've ended up with two of the main auditoriums in London actively scaring off writers, which means they end up being programmed with an endless cycle of classics and revivals.
The tide is starting to turn. There is more of a push to encourage emerging writers to write big. But things won't change until there is more investment and more willingness to take risks.
On the other hand the NT are planning a big push to tour more and do more with regional partners and hopefully open up the NT to regional talent.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 10, 2017 11:55:26 GMT
The "brief history of Mumsnet slang" should have been first on the chopping block.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 10, 2017 11:33:33 GMT
I saw it in previews so I don't know if it changed, but I got the impression only a short amount of time had passed. {Spoiler - click to view} Jenny is pregnant but not yet really showing, and she refers to having had scans and that the pills and booze she consumed in Geneva have not damaged the baby. So if she was pregnant in Geneva and is still not showing, I don't think it can be more than a few months later.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 9, 2017 11:41:37 GMT
I didn't get it either.
Ah well, I'll console myself by re-watching Coriolanus.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 8, 2017 22:31:28 GMT
I could... I mean... who could tell under the fur Some of us fur-possessing creatures still appreciating the value of fine tailoring...
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 8, 2017 14:24:09 GMT
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 8, 2017 14:23:16 GMT
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 7, 2017 10:26:27 GMT
I saw Simon Russell Beale do a bit of Falstaff on stage and he was so wonderful. Wish I could have seen Roger Allam!
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 6, 2017 18:28:26 GMT
Dont say i didnt warn you. Rover would have been a better bet for a transfer imo. Ha, I saw The Rover, The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Seven Acts of Mercy in the Swan and, for different reasons, none of them was to my taste. I thought that The Rover was treated far too light-heartedly as a charming romp and it paled in comparison with Ned Bennett's production of a new play based on The Rover which was totally in-yer-face and exuberant with the sexual humiliations, attempted rapes, lusts, etc., etc.. 100% agree. Tonally it was all over the place. I saw Vice Versa the other week which was another patented RSC historical romp. Fun and impeccably well done, but the script was like someone had chucked the entire Carry On canon into a random word generator.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 6, 2017 18:25:03 GMT
An African setting in a Stratford production can only be generic. There's no point setting it in the Congo or Zimbabwe or wherever because few would have enough familiarity with the specific context. Also, respectfully, this is nonsense. They wouldn't dare do, for e.g., a generic Chinese setting. They could quite easily have committed to the African idea, done some research and replaced the usual RSC generalities with some detailed cultural ideas. And got rid of the Jamaican gravedigger! From what I know of the production that's what they attempted to do. I've heard a bit of why they decided to set it in West Africa, and some of the research and cultural specificities that were involved. It's a shame if it came across as generically African. A flaw in execution, not intent. Admittedly I'm biased but I enjoyed it more than the Almeida Hamlet. The Almeida one was more intellectually rigorous and dazzling and certainly trendier, but I found it facile in places. RSC, regardless of the setting, fairly traditional.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 5, 2017 14:21:40 GMT
You mean Andrew Scott, though actually I'd be MUCH more interested in Adam Scott's Hamlet than Branagh directing another snoozefest. Hamlet starts playing Cones of Elsinore, gets distracted, loses interest in vengeance. Wacky hijinks ensue.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 3, 2017 23:40:22 GMT
I used to live on the same road in West London as David Tennant + family. He doesn't seem to have any problem buggering off to the US for six months for screen jobs (they have nannies, so I guess his wife is fine alone), but SuA might be a bit too close to get away with that. Or not pay enough, more's the point. Bertie Carvel lived on a boat too when he was doing Matilda. Presumably not the same boat, but you never know.. If they had a London base they could originate some productions in London to run for a whole season then transfer for a short season in Stratford, treat it like a tour. Even when they were at the Barbican for 12 months a year, and then 6 months, they never really did that though. They actually rehearse some of their productions in Clapham as far as I know, used to anyway, to reflect the fact the actors and directors live in London. There is an account somewhere of an ill Robert Stephens after a Friday Stratford performance of King Lear queuing for the bus to Coventry to get the last train back to London for the weekend. At the same time the directorate (Noble?) were in the habit of flying first class to USA to arrange transfers. Back in the dark ages before the M40 extension and Chiltern trains. I was on a bus back to Cov with Robert Stephens after a performance of Julius Caesar! You then connected with train to Euston, seems mad now but if you didnt have a car that was the only way from London!! And now we think we're hard done by if we get stuck with one of the blue Chiltern trains instead of the far superior black ones. The first time I ever had a meeting with the RSC I had to get up at about 5am to catch the train, then discovered all the people I was there to meet had travelled up on the same train. Then we all promptly went back to London again. Oh well, nice to have a little jaunt.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 3, 2017 23:22:59 GMT
I've been seeing so much, 'We don't need another Hamlet! Andrew Scott's is definitive!' the last few days... Is anything ever definitive? Especially with some of the 'classic' roles. I've seen productions of plays I love but over time I forget bits and when someone comes along that I like I've off to see it again. Plus with the many sides/parts of Hamet can any one actor play them all, don't you pick what you did a bit like Cleopatra? It makes me very sad that no one wants to give their definitive Pericles.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Aug 3, 2017 12:11:29 GMT
Norris wore some kind of disco wig to introduce the Queer Season Wig Off reading. Looked damn self-conscious, but it's endearing that he did it.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 30, 2017 22:11:05 GMT
Meanwhile Simon Godwin is lurking, Nomi Malone-style, at the top of the big NT staircase. Think he'd need to self-identify as a woman to get the gig. I reckon Simon's ambitious enough for that, and as anyone who saw the 1991 BBC series "Five Children and It" can attest, he certainly has the acting chops.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 30, 2017 14:22:30 GMT
Meanwhile Simon Godwin is lurking, Nomi Malone-style, at the top of the big NT staircase.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 30, 2017 13:52:32 GMT
I'm impressed Oxford Playhouse let you book disabled tickets online. (My personal pet peeve. Why do so many theatres insist disabled people have to jump through extra hoops to book?)
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 29, 2017 17:06:12 GMT
What on God's sweet green earth is a "Watch Me Wednesday"?
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 28, 2017 20:06:11 GMT
The Olivias are going to be on Woman's Hour tomorrow - no, today, for it is now Friday! Glad they pointed out the line nicked from Father Ted. (Insert laughing emoji here.)
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 27, 2017 12:29:48 GMT
Science-wise I had more of a problem with the idea that {Spoiler - click to view} scientists will one day "punch through" to a parallel universe and somehow create a new solar system and a new earth that exactly matches our own, but sped up so billions of years pass in minutes. And then presumably stops so we can hop go the Stargate and live on this new virgin earth without the sun going supernova a week later? It's quite a beautiful idea in its own way but the IVF metaphor was pushed home a bit hard.
I read Asimov's 'The Gods Themselves' which handles this stuff so well, and handles the science elements so well and in so much depth you practically need a Physics degree to understand it. The metaphorical science of Mosquitoes suffers by comparison.
|
|
1,093 posts
|
Post by samuelwhiskers on Jul 27, 2017 10:55:23 GMT
And that's just for the "reviews for pay" riots!
|
|