Well, it’s been a month since my last post, and I’ve been so busy preparing for PULSE and doing publicity for Edinburgh Fringe that I’ve limited my online output to Twitter-sized chunks. Now I’m all packed and ready to go to Ipswich for my show tonight I think I can afford a little time to update you.
What have I been up to? Well, this morning I had a 9am interview with Ipswich Community Radio; last night I was talking to myself (script reading, mainly); yesterday I was painting a very badly-made clay shell prop and doing a technical run through; a few days back I was making said clay shell, and received some stunning resin crystals through the post which I had commissioned my sister to make (she’s a prop-maker by trade, and knows more about that sort of thing than I do, obviously); at the weekend I was re-writing parts of my script having found it would take about 40 minutes, not 30; on Friday I made a recording of all the sounds in the performance, and finished building the wooden stave; on Thursday night I had a rehearsal in front of a few friends; and earlier in the month I made the start of the wooden musical stave with metal rods, and fashioned a turnip out of Sculpey.
The show-and-tell night last Thursday was incredibly useful, and I highly recommend it to anyone doing a performance: simply having to deliver lines rather than reading them to yourself does change the timings a bit, and also helps pin down bits which could be cut. I had too much scientific detail in there: I’d done all this research, but it doesn’t really need to be in the script. The funny thing about this performance is that I’m not an actor, and so having a script at all is a bit new to me, and the way I deliver things is going to sound informal and anecdotal anyway. I think it just helps having the material writen down so I can talk around it without going off on too much of a tangent.
Anyway, I’ve attached two photos, one of the resin crystals which represents “Note 8: Quartz”, and one of the objects I am using to make that particular sound.
If you’re near Ipswich tonight, please come to the show: I’m having a post-show talk and any feedback will be much appreciated. It’s at 8.20pm at New Wolsey Theatre, for a mere £5.
