Today I went online to buy the second volume of Dave Sim's epic Cerebus the Aardvark graphic novel sequence. No, seriously, it's very clever satire and won shedloads of prizes. Really. Anyway, I treated myself with some Amazon vouchers to Vol I the other week and, having been paid again, and having just finished the first book, thought I would buy Vol II, High Society. This is the one, of all the eighteen-odd volumes, that is consistently voted the best (at #70 in the Top 100 graphic novels of all time list, apparently).
Humming a merry "shopping for something I really like, not just milk and coffee and boring crap like that" tune (everyone has one; yes, even you), off I pop to Amazon, only to discover that since I bought Vol I, Dave Sim has launched a Kickstarter campaign to release a fully digital version of Vol II complete with animations and loads of other bonus material, and interest in the book has spiked massively. Hence, all I can find in an affordable range are Used copies rated as "Good" or "Very Good" - which is book-trade speak for, respectively, "Dropped Down the Toilet" and "Used as a Coaster".
A new copy or a used copy in Mint condition would set me back upwards of £40, which is outside what I can pay right now...
So, disheartened, I thought I would leave it a little while and see what turns up. Disappointed though, as when I bought Vol I, Vol II was going for a much more reasonable £25-odd. I did um and aw about buying Vol II as all the reviews say it's the best one - and actually a better jumping-off point for new readers - but I thought, in my anal control freak way, no, buy Vol I and get into it from the very beginning. *Cue Homer Simpson D'OH! echoing around Springfield as the camera pans up and away*
I could buy the digital version but I don't want to. I like books on shelves, I like books in my hands. I read comics on Comixology via mobile but it's not the right reading experience. Comics shouldn't be read frame by frame, they should be read as pages....what can I tell you, I like books as objects. I'm old-fashioned that way.
Aye, well. Thinking of Kickstarter reminded me that my friend Jason has set up a Kickstarter of his own for AXIS Arts, his new theatre group in London, so I went and funded his project instead. Funding him gave me a nice warm glow which has buffered me against the dark cloud of Cerebus denial I just experienced, so it was all a bit, y'know, karmic. 'N' stuff.
You can feel that warm glow too - it runs out in about two weeks though, so anyone who reads this please go here and donate.
Who am I kidding? Sorry, Jase, ain't no traffic from my site. But the thought was there...

Author: Gareth Richards

So, in the last month I have finished the 8pp programmes for Arena's Playhouse Creatures and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and the 12pp one for Regent Rep's Dad's Army. Plus, done some makeweight promo posters for The Weir and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) for Arena and An Inspector Calls for Regent Rep. And finalised a teaser for the Scottish Play which I will be directing next year (uploaded on the site for any regular visitors out there...no? Aye, well, Just for my benefit then).

Phew! Feels odd to have no live imminent project to do - especially as for one of the programmes, which shall remain nameless *coughDad'sArmycough*, I had to pretty much write everyone's biogs for them...

However, I am now concentrating on two things - one, Jekyll and Hyde, which opens this weekend. Seems a bit sudden! But I am sure we will be fine, the principals are all fab and I am merely a bit part, token avuncular Scottish victim.

The other thing is prepping for the Scottish Play, so I am busy doing cuts and planning staging and stuff, which is great. If what I want to achieve for the set comes off, it will be awesome - but need to work out a venue yet, which may have a small say in the matter!

Author: Gareth Richards

So, I entered a competition to design an e-book cover for an online publishing house, Not So Noble Books - the title in question being Marketing is Violence: A User Guide by Marianna Cage.

I didn't win (boo) but I am very proud to say that I received two honourable mentions in dispatches - which isn't too shabby for a self-taught amateur designer!

The comments were that my design was "novel" (judge and artist Jasper Joffe) and "a cutting conception" that "would make any best-selling crime fiction author very proud" (judge and artist Patrick Hughes). 

Shame not to win, but great to get good feedback!

My design is here for you to see and to praise/mock as you see fit.

Check out the competition - the judges' comments, shortlisted designs, the overall winner of course and all the entries (including mine) here.
There is talk of their producing an illustrated version which will feature all the designs submitted - we'll just have to wait and see!

Author: Gareth Richards

Ah, January. The time when people take a good hard look at themselves in the mirror and decide to change something, make something better, become a better version of themselves, quit this, start that, lose or earn X more pounds... instal and reboot, and hey presto, Me 2.0.

I've never been terribly good at the new year resolution thing. I tend to look at myself in the mirror and before I do anything else get pushed along exciting new avenues of thought like, has anyone ever seen a head on a spot form? Before their eyes I mean, as they watch? You look in the mirror and there's nothing there, yet half an hour later there's a spot. It must surface at some specific point in time, but when, and why has no-one ever observed it happen? Has a scientist somewhere studied this phenomenon? And if so, did they experiment on themselves, or did they turn all Burke and Hare and kidnap pizza-loving teenagers to fuel their research?

By this point most people have worked out their resolution, chiselled it into a handy piece of masonry tablet and got on with upgrading themselves, while I avoid the issue.This year, though, will see my fortieth birthday, which focusses things somewhat - probably the reason why this year of all years I have thought about making some changes. 

Among others, the Sky show really brought the whole acting/amateur theatre and my capabilities therein thing into focus, so once Jekyll and Hyde is done I shall be hanging up my thespian shoes, for a while at least. A year I would say, anyway, as a start - most likely a lot longer. I am supposed to be directing Macbeth for production early 2014 so will need to start that process towards Autumn this year, so I have an excuse as such to avoid board-treading (assuming I can find a full cast, of course!). Once that's done, more than likely I will also vow never to direct again, either! Watch this space...

I will continue with the graphic design though, if a demand for my services remains. And if not, I will design stuff for my own sake, and put it up here for General and Mrs Public to look at when they get lost trying to find a rare, antique gravy boat! :-)
 

So now you know. We made it to the final and we lost. Fair play to Crossmichael, who thoroughly deserved the prize and the experience at the West End and who are lovely folk, to boot.
However, there was something in the last episode that left a bad taste, something that amounts to, at best, sloppy journalism and, at worst, a lie knowingly told.
It may not seem much to you, but...
1. The King and I was a production by another local amateur company called Theatre 2000. Nothing to do with Regent Rep. RR member Tracey was a cast member in it, but that was all. It was in no way connected to Regent Rep. Yes, it was performed at the Regent Centre, but as per my last post, Regent Rep and the Regent Centre ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
2. I mention this because the fact that The King and I had gone to the expense of hiring a full orchestra, lavish costumes, and had (gasp) a musical director/conductor was used by the narration to perpetuate the myth that we are the "best resourced company in the contest" and to illustrate their argument that Regent Rep were the "haves" while Crossmichael were the "have nots". As such, and as the Nation's Best Am Dram crew knew fine well that The King and I was nothing to do with Regent Rep, this is a cynical misrepresentation (oh,okay, a lie): the type of thing which I feared might happen in the editing suite but up until now had pleasantly surprised me by its absence. Very disappointed. 
 3. On another note, Regent Rep did not already have an accordionist on their books, as was claimed ("Oh yeah, we're so well resourced that we have experts in every type of obscure musical instrument. We have scores of them, any instrument you can imagine - we've even got a Mongolian testicle-harpist on our books if you want one. No? Suit yourself. We keep them all frozen in Carbonite in our secret underground lair because we're richer than the Empire"). Ahem. I digress. Anyway, on behalf of the lady in question, it should be known that she had never played an accordion before and was handed a second-hand one and given four weeks to learn how to play it.

Author: Gareth Richards

One thing that the Nation's Best Am Dram editing has annoyed me with is the constant references to Regent Rep being "the best resourced group in the competition". Just not true.
We hire a rehearsal room. Most groups do. Whether it is a room in the theatre (the studio) or at a local school, we hire the space. And in fact, often times when we are booked in at the theatre, because we are "in-house", we are bumped from the studio due to another group who want it, and are made to rehearse in the nursery room downstairs which is tiny, low-ceilinged and crammed with stuff, leaving an effective acting area of ten feet wide, eight feet deep and about eight feet tall.
We don't have racks of old costumes we can revisit, reuse or amend: we hire our costumes as we need them, as most groups do.
We build our own sets using the volunteered skills and time of members and associates of the group.
We source our own props, just like every group does.
There is no distinction made on the show between the theatre (which sells around 90,000 tickets a year across all productions, professional and amateur, cinema and stage), and the theatre company (which performs two productions a year, usually selling 200-250 seats on the best nights and around 100-150 on a decent one - in an auditorium holding 450 - which is the main reason Regent Rep are forced to do Allo Allo and Dad's Army just to get bums on seats, rather than the literary fare we were created on - the likes of Jamaica Inn, The Crucible, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Cold Comfort Farm, Pride and Prejudice).
Any money we make in profit is taken by the theatre to fund the theatre. Not the theatre company. For the next production we start the whole process again, and if we fail to generate enough income for the theatre, we face the very real threat of being shut down.
There are companies featured in the competition who have, or had at the time of filming and for a long time prior, their own theatre which doubles as the rehearsal space, with offices, meeting rooms, and rooms and rooms of props and set, and wardrobes crammed full of costumes that they own.
We would love to be able to rehearse in the performance space, to have a back catalogue of set and costumes, and the space to build new set indoors and under cover - but we don't. So how can we can be "the best resourced group in the competition"?
NBAD is on the whole doing a great service for amateur theatre, but there is a degree of viewer manipulation in evidence (obviously, it is a TV show). So, for the record: Regent Rep are based at the Regent Centre, but it is not the Regent Centre. The show is guilty of a wilful confusion of the two identities. You might very well think that this is in order to generate in the viewers' minds a sense of a well-known Biblical battle between opposing heightist camps, but I'm afraid I couldn't possibly comment...

Author: Gareth Richards

Prompted by feedback on social media I thought I would put some thoughts down here on responses to the show that I have seen so far. I didn't post this on the relevant sites as it's all a bit long, and my random mental blurtings won't mean much anyway but for my own sake...

There were some things that I found not great about the whole process, and other things that I found to be amazingly rewarding.

From the point of view of the finished programme, which is really the point of the whole discussion; in fairness I think the producers have, pretty much, made an affectionate look rather than an exploitative one, for which we should all be grateful – it could very easily have gone the other way and ended up damaging every amateur company by tarring them all with some sort of horrible Acorn Antiques-handled brush. So in that sense I think that the producers have shown (so far at least) a sense of responsibility to the wider fraternity, and that they haven’t approached the subject with a hatchet job in mind, which is a huge relief. 
 
As regards the choice of finalists (the final 20 or final 8): you know what, there very probably was an element of “what will make good TV” in their selection. Why this should be a surprise to anyone, it being a TV show and all, I don’t really know. That said, within the constraints of a TV  show, with all that that might imply, there does seem to be a genuine regard for the companies and the efforts taken by their members – whether or not one agrees with their inclusion as a finalist; whether or not one feels that “we wouldn’t have done it like that” or “we would have done it better”. For a TV show to take amateur theatre seriously on its own merits and not take the piss out of the whole edifice…that’s kind of the most important thing, really, isn’t it?
 
Because, as for it not being representative of the entire phalanx of amateur theatre companies across the country…well, of course it’s not. The Amateur Stage moderator is right, the choice of plays performed all comes down to staging productions that are out of copyright – with most copyright fees for broadcast media being charged by the number of “eyeballs”, you can see that it would instantly get very expensive indeed to have performed anything that wasn’t out of copyright (especially showing the programme on a more mainstream channel like Sky One with around 10m weekly viewers – even little old Sky Arts 1 has a reach of around 750,000 a week), and musicals (by far the most popular of all amateur productions) are in themselves very expensive to begin with. Thus I think choosing to do only plays was the wisest, most manageable route for the production company.
 
As for the title. Well, I for one hate it - see my post elsewhere here about this. It was originally called Stagestruck, but was changed to Nation’s Best Am Dram – almost certainly for reasons of copyright again. I don’t like it, as apart from calling it “am dram” which I dislike anyway, if you were to win Britain’s Got Talent you would be crowned “Winner”, not “Most Talented Brit”. So it is a wee bit divisive, but then it is a competition, I suppose. We’re stuck with it now, regardless.
 
Some are complaining that it’s on Sky and not everyone gets Sky. True enough. But at least someone decided to make it, and that it was Sky Arts, who more than any other channel have a remit to support the arts, and not deride them. God alone knows what would have happened had ITV got a hold of it.
 
For those complaining they were unable to take part due to other commitments, it’s a shame that this is the case, but like any audition for any part anywhere, it does come down to (a) a willingness to enter (and I appreciate that a fear of the programme being exploitative may, reasonably, have hedged people’s bets in the first place and put them off – we certainly thought hard about it), and (b) an ability to make the deadline and/or commit to the schedule. Of course there are groups for whom the timing would have proven impossible to apply for the show, or for whom, had they been selected, would have meant massive clashes with a planned production. It is the nature of the beast that amateur theatre companies are busy a lot of the time. That said, I know of one of the companies in the programme who finished a run of a show the night before then had to travel half the country to perform for the TV programme the very next morning – but they were, luckily, willing and able to manage that juggling act - and the juggling of rehearsals for both too. 
 
Hopefully the programme will show the public that, as Madeline from Crossmichael says on Facebook, there is a huge cross section of people from all walks of life involved in amateur theatre, and that for the vast majority of them, they take it seriously and are passionate about it. Quality varies from company to company, of course, but whatever you think of the finalists individually, none of them are actually bad, nor – most importantly - are they edited in such a way to be portrayed as the sort of company for whose members a production is primarily a way of getting a twice-weekly fix of custard creams and gossip with a chance to dress up at the end…which is a common misconception. 
 
It won’t remove the stigma attached to the term “am dram” but if it shows amateurs in a positive light and maybe makes people think about seeing their local group as a consequence, it can only be a good thing. Even if I personally end up looking like a knob*.

* please no please no please God no

Author: Gareth Richards

As ever with amateur theatre (sorry, I am not going to cave and call it "am dram"), there is always such a huge crash after a show. You spend three months, a quarter of a year, with a group of people two to three times a week, and then after just three nights, pouf, it's gone. In the old days we used to perform Wed/Thu/Fri/Sat and then more often than not one matinee at least, so you got a good four to five performances and by the end of the week you felt like you had had a proper run. But nowadays financial necessity and reality, especially for a play as opposed to a musical or a kids' show means that most of our shows last for just the three nights.

The post-show crash was always true, even way back when you had five shows to do, but somehow the ability to equate each performance with a neatly-drawn third of the rehearsal time makes it seem worse. I don't know why that is, maybe a similar psychological phenomenon to the whole £9.99 "it's less than a tenner" thing, only in reverse. Kind of. 

It's funny how just one extra night on a run can make such a difference. I suppose it's the theatrical equivalent of Mr Creosote's "waffer-thin mint".

Anyway, compare the current post-show crash with the one time when we did a show for a very extended run. When Arena performed Oh! What a Lovely War, we did four nights plus a matinee at the Regent Centre in the Autumn, then another night at The Mowlem in Swanage, then we toured extracts here there and everywhere as we raised funds to take it to Colorado, where we performed for another three (or was it four?) nights the following August, so we were rehearsing the show for the best part of a full year, and did three separate productions, as such. When that was over it was very sad, the way a "wrap party" that movie actors talk about feels, I guess, but it also felt like we had done it justice and it was time to move on. Usually, the post-show feeling is one of "I want more". Which probably accounts for why people keep doing show after show after show, I suppose! 

So, Jerusalem is now over. A great play, but it - predictably, I guess - split the people I spoke to about it. One the one hand were those in the "fantastic play" camp, and on the other hand those in the "didn't like the play, but appreciated the work" camp. Including the reviewer - his review is here (even though he incorrectly confuses Wesley and Davey...hmm...reviewers do get given a complimentary copy of the programme for reference, you know...).
Either way, it was a great show and I love the play, and getting the chance to play Ginger was amazing, alongside a very talented crowd of people, notably our Rooster, Justin.

Jerusalem is on next week at the Regent Centre!  Such a great play - although rehearsals have not been without the odd bit of drama - not from me, I hasten to add (it's amazing though, how far a tin bath can travel)!

Looking forward to releasing my inner repressed DJ as Ginger, and not a little nervous in anticipation, but excited at the same time. Parp.

Opening night (14th) is also the first night of the Sky Arts NBAD programme, so obviously I will miss it "live" and have to catch up later. As everyone from Regent Rep will be at the theatre on the Thursday rehearsing Dad's Army (that's their next show, in February next year), I'm sure they will want to engage in conversation - but I will need to focus on the job in hand and rein in the embarassment/fury/angst until the pub afterwards, when I am sure we will have a good old natter - although I kinda hope the place will be full of happy theatregoing strangers wishing us all huge congratulations and free beer in thanks for our performance (this actually happened once. In 1996, after Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, of all shows. I got bought a half).

In reality, of course, our path to the pub will most likely be blocked by all the not-so-happy theatregoers who left at the interval to go home and stock up on tar and feathers. Christchurch is kind of a genteel place, you see, and Jerusalem contains more choice swear words than Ozzy Ozbourne burning himself on a hot iron... We will just have to wait and see...