Life Update

The purpose of this page is twofold. Firstly, it is intended to keep any interested parties updated on my really rather mundane life. Secondly, I am intending to collect the various entries together into a kind of sporadic journal for me to look back on in later years (though admittedly I am unlikely to update it consistently enough for it to warrant the rather grandiose title of a journal). It is largely intended to document career matters, but as the present entry about Marilyn Manson's excellent performance at Reading 2001 will attest, it's not all work, work, work...

Ever eager to try new directions, I have also been working on a film script recently. The idea centres around a rock star, who sings about killing people, then goes slightly insane and starts living out the violence in his songs. What I really want to explore is the way in which a person's image can take over from the reality. The main character gradually changes from what he is naturally into an extreme version of the persona he adopts on stage and the image that is pressed upon him by the media. He writes songs about killing, and as sanity slips away from him, he gradually becomes convinced that that is what he is really about. I am currently at a slight impasse on this one, however, so I may well put it on the backburner for a while and come back to it later. This usually does the trick for writer's block.

Moving onto my forays into the acting profession. As I have already mentioned elsewhere on this website, things have been quiet on this front recently. Mainly because of my need to keep that good old money machine rolling. Having said that, I am hoping that sometime in the near future I will be financially secure enough to accept offers of the kind of low-paid employment that will help me start building my way up towards a reasonable theatrical career. When this happens, I have any number of ideas that I would like to experiment with.

At the forefront of these is my wish to start my own theatre company & go touring around the country. We are going to specialise in adapting classic horror fiction to the stage (possibly starting with Le Fanu's Carmilla or Lewis' The Monk). This idea came to me when I was watching the Northern Ballet Theatre's production of Dracula (see the Miscellaneous area of this site) . Given the general turn out for ballets, I was amazed at the number of people who came to see this particular show, and perhaps more importantly, the diversity of the crowd. There's no doubt about it, horror sells.

On the subject of the Northern Ballet Theatre, I thought I might just say a few words about their recent production of Jekyll & Hyde. As always, it was visually stunning, with sets reminiscent of the film Metropolis and a variety of sumptuous costumes. Especially good was the use of fetish garments to evoke the nightmare world of Mr. Hyde. The one thing I wasn't particularly keen on was the way in which long film clips were played onto a big screen at various points during the show. These were no doubt intended to portray the world of dream and there is no doubt that they succeeded, but in my opinion they were just too damn long. Mind you, as this is my only criticism, you should not be put off from seeing the production if you get the chance. Not quite as good as Dracula, but still adequate proof that the Northern Ballet Theatre lead the way in this field.

Just to show the wideness of my palette, I want to whisk you away from the world of ballet now and turn to Reading 2001. The highlight of my trip to this particular festival was undoubtedly Marilyn Manson. As anyone with any taste would expect, Manson rocked the house. It wasn't just about the music, mind you. The whole performance was like nothing I had ever seen before. Whether he was strutting across the stage on a pair of stilts or regaling the crowd from a satanic pulpit, he was the epitome of the gothic showman. My own personal favourite effect came about halfway through the set, when Manson stalked out onto the stage in a flowing black dress & positioned himself in the centre. Then before our very eyes, he began to grow taller. As he was growing, the dress was getting longer, so you couldn't tell how this impressive piece of stagecraft was achieved. By the time he was finished, he was towering at least 20 feet above the stage. Apart from being visually stunning, this had the added effect of ensuring that even those people way back from the stage could see him clearly. I took some photos of the set & if they come out all right will post them in the pictures section of this site.

I think that now would be a good time to draw to a close, as I have said pretty much everything I wanted to. So, until I have the time and the inclination to make another entry, I will bid you farewell.