Liberal Democrats

All the political savvy of a twelve year old child.

A really stupid and wilfully self-destructive twelve year old child.

The liberal democrats sole real purpose as a party, being the third of three and utterly hamstrung by the monstrously backwards electoral system in the UK, was to introduce electoral reform.

This was their only hope.

Their only chance of becoming a powerful force and being given a chance to actually represent the views of the people who voted for them was Proportional Representation.

The Great Deficit Swindle

We are being robbed, impoverished, and subjugated in a way that will have destructive consequences for generations.

Public wealth is being sold off and public services are being destroyed to finance repayment of a deficit in the public accounts that was created by lending vast sums of money to privately owned companies which had been mismanaged to the point of collapse.

Pilot at Warwick Arts Centre

I am performing some new work in progress material from the final part of my trilogy: Who Knows Where.

CLICK HERE TO BOOK ONLINE: http://bit.ly/g1M6Bi

The ever-exciting PILOT lands for the first time at Warwick Arts Centre with China Plate taking the reins as Co-Pilots for an event that is fast becoming a West Midlands institution.

Tuesday 25th January
7.45pm
Warwick Arts Centre
Tickets £5 (£4 concessions) on the door.
Box Office: 024 7652 4524

PILOT nights are a motley assortment of new, untested shorts from some of the UK’s most innovative theatre companies. Each last between 10 and 20 minutes and together present a glorious mix of comic, touching and peculiar performance. The bar is open all night local band Abie’s Miracle Tonic will be playing in the interval.

China Plate will be taking down the tree, putting out the empty bottles and promising to take more exercise as they squeeze themselves into the cockpit to steer PILOT into the New Year. All your festive excesses will be forgiven as we look towards brave new beginnings with a sense of hope.

Join us for another night of brand new work and as always – join us in the bar afterwards and meet the artists.

The first line up of 2011 will be:
Who Knows Where by Ed Rapley
Mess by Caroline Horton
I Promise To Swim The Channel (or the story of how I might) by Francesca Millican Slater
AND HELL FOLLOWED WITH THEM by Drunken Chorus
Karinthy: There Is No Art Without Science by Millions and Pliers
Post Present Future by Cross Collaborations
With music from Abie’s Miracle Tonic

At the Ecole Philippe Gaulier part Cinq

A world surrounded by art and artists, beauty and work towards beauty, hope and meaning strived for and given.

Perhaps Greek Tragedy has not so much to do with Greek Tragedy. Perhaps it has more to do with being beautiful. It is a reason to be better than you are. To play for the gods. To be better than you thought was possible.

How can a human being be beautiful? You can start by enjoying yourself, standing tall, being still, having an open body, speaking with a good voice, wearing a good costume.

At the Ecole Philippe Gaulier Part Quatre

What a pair of weeks this has been: a state visit from the King of Sweden, my first encounter with Neutral Mask, a monopoly marathon, a brace of true successes and a wealth of flops...

At The Ecole Philippe Gaulier part Quatre

Le Jeu finished today, the first module has given me a more concrete understanding of why a performer works or flops on stage.

A while back James from actionhero was talking about the role of charisma in performance: some people have good ideas, but they lack the charisma to make them work, while others can get away with lesser material because they are charming. His question, as i remember it, was: is it just about charisma on stage?

At the Ecole Philippe Gaulier part Trois

The week of the clown-car body, or how i feel apart physically.

Monday: i leap for joy and dislocate my left shoulder again. The first time i did it crashing my bike, the second time i was body boarding and could have drowned, now it pops out with almost no force. I feel tearing, immense pain and then it is already popped back into place. This means the end of hand-stands and back-flips. I am close to tears with disappointment and frustration at several points in the following days. I contemplate surgery when i get back to the UK if i can't strengthen the muscles enough to hold it in place.

The sprained left ankle twinges, a mysterious pain envelopes my right foot, my right hip tweaks and now groan incessantly, my lower back aches. I am a wreck.

I am happy because I am understanding more, and putting my basic understanding into practice and even coaxing a "Not bad." from M. Gaulier on the occasion of attempting "To be or not to be..." as an actor of 50 years ago. Although as i sit down he points out that i did it how they do it now, rather than 50 years ago. Oh well, perhaps if the solo stuff doesn't work out i can audition for the RSC.

This week he drops diamonds at some point in every class. Beautiful insights into acting: having fun to imitate someone, suddenly the vast ghost is a child's game played beautifully; the need to kill the shitty little character (if you have one) which holds you back on stage; your pleasure on stage gives life to your character; subtle is better; a chorus must be a prime number: indivisible except by itself and 1; the difference between actors and clowns. But saying all this is just information and until i have tried it on stage i know i won't understand it.

There was a fun party, with 60 people squeezed into two small rooms.

Greatest of all is that Charles and i have found a place to live: on the Ile-St_Denis just north of Paris, in a warehouse/workshop/house with a space for theatre (and parties), beautiful house-mates and two cats.

Now the only challenge is living on £36 a week. On ahead, on a head.

At The Ecole Philippe Gaulier Part Deux

Ouch. This was the week of learning by failing; of getting on stage and being boring; of frustration with myself; and of finally getting a better idea of what I should have know from the start.

Namely that before I get on stage I must want to be there, must have inspiration, a desire to share something, because it is these things which give me pleasure on stage. Then the stage is my kingdom and I am a fish in water, just as I should be. With that pleasure I exist more fully on stage. Existing more fully on stage I become infinitely more watch-able.

Well these are the things which motivate me in my own work, and contribute to my charm on stage, because I really do want to be there, for the audience, to give them something which lingers and inspires, which “opens the palace of ghosts” and makes people dream.

Of course turning this quality on for a specific performance or game in a workshop is difficult. There are mechanical methods: kisses, dancing, water on the hair. But it is the job of the actor to have this pleasure as his motivation constantly, to walk on stage with his own palace of ghosts open and dreaming, to be engaged imaginatively, passionately with the task at hand.

At The Ecole Philippe Gaulier

It the first day of my second week in Paris.

So far it has been amazing:

on the first day my friend Deborah had arranged for us to go to the dinner party which has been hosted by Jim Haynes every week for the last 30 years (www.jim-haynes.com);

staying in Emma's truck near Châteaux Vincennes, enjoying the Parc Floral;

the huge collection of students of Le Jeu on the first day;

the magic timing and playful, ruthless insults of M. Gaulier;

the sight of Roberta being transformed by a kiss and become approximately 3000% more watch-able;

the kindness of Jean, who seeing me fix my puncture returned and actually gave me a bike pump;

"Pleasure is the key to the palace of ghosts in the head;

Catarina being universally wonderful: sharing her garret with me and Charles, and giving us each morning & evening a roller-coaster ride in her mini across paris and perhaps shedding some light on the mentality of the Portuguese driver;

Having it stupid in the basement of a Squat party, dancing more than the sum total of every other person in the room (Parisians stand by the speaker and chat rather than dance.);

Finding Guerissol and then helping make a beautiful cave-woman costume for Catarina;

Food, food, food;

1 euro wine: undrinkable;

2 euro wine: drinkable;

4 euro wine: better than any wine for sale in the UK;

realising that you must risk everything before you can approach good;

and now on with the second week.

Ubuntu 10.10 on Acer 5536

Rejoice, for finally, I have the answer!

The answer for which I have searched the entire internet from top to bottom. The answer which eluded me for so long. Praise be, I have found it at last.

But before the answer: the question!

Dear Lord, how can I get the bloody sound card on my Acer 5536 to work fully under ubuntu? The stupid thing is broken and does not let me record sound, the microphones do not work and, if they do, cut out at will when I actually try to use them. Please grant my wish to be able to speak with the King of Sweden over Skype!

After the question: the answer!

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

and add these lines at the end

# Código para que funcione el micrófono:
options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
# u1Nb.Z0J4Co96n9E (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=auto
options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1

Notice the Spanish there? It is because i cobbled the solution together from posts at http://ubuntuperonista.blogspo... a blog where Juan Peron the dead Argentinian General gives ideological advice about ubuntu. It was by combining the advice in these two posts: 1 & 2 that i came to the truth and can now finally after nearly 2 years use both the external and internal microphones of my Acer 5536!

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