I can't believe how long it's been since I posted!  Christ am I ever rubbish.

Okay.  So.  Let's see.

The Accidental Festival -- really good, we put on 20 shows, 2 roundtable discussions, 2 sets of play readings, 6 play readings of translated works from Eastern Europe, 1 photo exhibition, and 1 installation in the car park.  I produced and performed in a piece of new writing called Journalist and Hope by Sarah O'Hanlon.  The team was people I know from across the courses and a damn fine team it was, and we got a girl from the BRIT School for Performing Arts to play the other character.  It was a part of the triple bill on Friday 18 May, the day that the head of undergraduate studies, the head of the Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre (CETT), and the acrting principal were there.  We were on with a company from the MA programme and a professional company.  All of the important people said that ours was the best of the three shows.  The acting principal even sent an email to the group, congratulating us on the festival and mentioning Journalist and Hope specifically as the piece she most enjoyed. 

I then took a job stage managing a piece called Future Me about paedophilia.  It was also a piece of new writing which was very well received.  We got great reviews from the Guardian and Time Out gave us critic's choice.  I also learned how to operate sound and lights simultaneously -- I did this by sprouting extra arms.  I had to hand the show over to another Stage Manager in the last week because I was off again -- this time to Buxton.

I went to Buxton to work at Underground Venues again (I think I mentioned this last year).  This year I was in as the Front of House manager.  It was a bit of a challenging year.  Over the time I was there I worked 12 hour days 7 days a week with only one morning and 4 blocks of 3 hours to put on Journalist and Hope.  I worked a total of 234 hours, averaging almost 80 hours a week.  For FREE.  This is not an experience that I will be repeating any time soon, particularly as one of the guys that ran the venue insisted on having a drama with his ex and current (actually now also ex) girlfriends that interfered with the work and annoyed the shit out of everyone concerned.  The only saving graces were Miss Charlie Heyday, a saint among technical managers, Ben, from the year below me on my course, and Doug, my lighting op.  And Lucy and the former work experience girls.  Actually there were a lot of good people there but the people running the show were useless. 

Journalist and Hope was an interesting experience, being performed on the 8th, 13th, 20th and 21st of July.  My lighting designer, Jack (bless!) was the most wonderful person, putting together cue sheets and plots and gelling requirements in time for the show.  My sound designer, Tom... well, we didn't have the right stuff on the first performance.  Thankfully by the next one the following week, it was there, and I was sitting behind the box office, scribbling awat at a prompt copy for the ops mere hours before we went up.  The rest of the run was relatively uneventful, and we got some great reviews.  The space was at the top of a hill (Buxton's in the Peak District), and one reviewer said "well acted, well directed, and well worth the short walk up the hill."

As a matter of fact, the only huge difference was that I was no longer able to smoke onstage.  You see, the smoking ban came into effect on the 1st of July this year and, as the Journalist in the play is a chainsmoking alcoholic, and as the first line in the text is "Damn, damn, damn have you got a cigarette?" it was a bit of a panner in the works not to be able to smoke.  But you see, there is a loophole for when smoking is integral to the artistic merit of a piece.  So I though, great, that's fine.  WRONG.  The space we were using was in a school, therefore not technically a bona fide theatre and therefore owned by Derbyshire County Council who said "smoking in a school?  Absolutely not."  Screwed.  So I had to pantomime chainsmoking.  PANTOMIME.  But apparently it wan't that big of a deal.

I was unable to go to the festival awards ceremony, but I wish I could have gone because Journalist and Hope won Best New Writing of the Buxton Festival Fringe and I got nominated for Best Actor (they don't differentiate between actor/actress, it's all very PC).  So that was good.

During all this time I was staying with friends or accomodation that was provided for me because my lease had gone up on the 15th of June and Matt put all of my stuff in storage in East Finchley.  See, we were meant to get a flat together but the one we put a deposit on was let privately by the landlord without telling the estate agents.  Grr.  So I was off again, this time to stay with Matt at the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, where last year he played Orlando in It Like You As and Tybalt/Paris in Romeo and Juliet.  This year he played Hortensio in Taming of the Shrew and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  This will also be the last year that Matt does long days for very little pay.  It went really well, especially Puck, as he's a magician, he put in little magical things here and there which really added to the whole fairy bit.  And he got two appearances on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire to promote the show and do a bit of magic, so that was good.

I stayed in Cambridge for a couple of weeks and then came back down to London to househunt.  Now, househunting in London is much more of a trick than in the MN burbs, as all flats are owned privately and then let through agencies or by their landlords through a great little publication called Loot.  Matt had been working the agencies so I'd been doing the Loot, which is an exhaustive process as you have to call as many different people as there are flats and about half of them are either miniscule or shite.  Same goes for agents but at least they always have pictures. 

I was staying with a friend of mine called Kelly from Future Me and I got the Loot the morning after I arrived.  She lives in Kentish Town and apparently newsagents in Kentish Town hate the Loot, so I took a nice little walk over the canal into Camden Town.  Then I realised it was a Tuesday.  Loots only come out on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday so I'd bought an old Loot.  What the hell, I thought.  Maybe I'll get lucky. 

I called about 12 places that day and saw 3 flats.  One of the private landlords had said I could call him later that evening.  The first flat I saw was nowhere near big enough for my piano.  The second was nice but right next to a mainline rail station (i.e. trains all day except between 1am and 5am).  The third was a hole.  So I called the landlord who'd said to call later, and I met him at East Finchley Tube at 8pm.  And at about 8:10 I found my flat.

It's a 2 bed for £220 a week, a bit steep for us but unbelievably cheap for what it is.  And so my piano and Matt's study have a bedroom to themselves (where I am typing this right now) and we have the big one, and a big living room/dining room and a kitchen with many more work surface than you usually see in England.  And it's in a purpose-built block rather than a Victorian conversion so we can't hear everything that out neighbors do which is a bonus.  So we moved in (well, I moved in early) on the 15th and it's been lovely.  We still need a few things but we're skint at the moment. 

Then I had a meeting last Monday with CETT (remeber from the first paragraph?) and I'm working with them on a project this year and... NEXT year as well!  I don't have to leave hallelujah!  So I'm here at least until the end of 2009.  Probably longer, because I might to an MPhil (Masters of Philosophy, the English precursor to the PhD) for FREE with Central next year while working for CETT.

So I've typed a lot now and I want to stop.  Sigh.  I think that's all the good stuff anyway.

Cheers m'dears!

And the theatre gods spake unto the people, saying 'Thou shalt have so many theatrically related things to do that thou shalt neglect thy friends and thy Xanga site into Oblivion.' And it was so.

I have, since I got back to London:

- Moved

- Performed in a friend's show

- Spent a week in Paris

- Done a photography project about character development through imagery

- Written a ten minute play about a woman who drowned in the wreck of the Stella

- Stage managed a show that may be going on tour

- Set up my wireless internet and home phone at the new house

- Found out that Synchronicity (the performance I did at the Institute for Contemporary Arts last June) might be going to a scenography festival in Prague courtesy of Central (this is a HUGE deal as loads of people who matter in the theatre world will be there and if we do well we will be known)

- Not slept a whole lot

So I will write a full update ASAP but forgive me as I must edit my play.

Kisses!  (PS hi Eryn have Kyle rub the belly for me please and send me photos!)