Malformed Hillbillies and You: A Poorly Scraped Together Post By Mr Benjamin Allan

That date is a LIE. Well, not really, but in part. Not in this next part however, where we travel back in time to what I was writing on that actual date...

Well here I seem to be with a few spare hours, and everyone else has buggered off. I'm not sure where, and I can't really go out to have a look, because for some reason unknown to medical science unknown to medical science, but known to me - it's his newly acquired love for PS2 soccer), Dave has my house key. So it's time for a spot of blogging, I believe. Might have to play with one of these shiny new templates they have here at 'New and Improved'(TM) Blogger as well. (LIES and more LIES! For now, at any rate.)

So, for an unemployed bum I've been pretty damned busy lately. The play has been taking up considerable amounts of time, as plays do. The proceeding week was full of rehearsals from which no-one emerged until about 3 in the morning, our director and our lead were just about having nervous breakdowns, the tech people were yelling at each other, etc. I was not worried. I am always surprised, in fact, when people are worried. In my (limited) experience of being in plays, this is how they go. Always. But then everything turns out OK, because there is possibly no truer expression than 'it'll be all right on the night'. Sure enough, it was. An hour before opening no-one could find our media imaging guy, we weren't sure if the projections were ready to work and they hadn't done a cue-to-cue run of the tech stuff, but it all fell into place by the time the curtain came up. As it does.

It's easy for me to have this attitude because I'm an 'actor' I suppose, and there's not much we can do about the technical stuff, aside from occasionally show up early or stay late and help with set building or painting or whatever. But shows always seem to be full of people like my cousin Calum and this time around Nic as well, who get roped in at the last minute with this sort of a sales pitch:

Desperate show people: Wanna be in our show at the last minute?
Insane potential tech crew people: Sure, what do you need?
Desperate show people: Well, we need to in fact first extend your waking hours considerably, and then use every one of those waking hours having you perform a series of tiring and very stressful tasks which for a time will come to constitute your very life. As recompense, you get to be generally underappreciated. Oh, but you'll be a part of the magic of theatre.
Insane potential tech crew people: Cool, sign me up.

With enough of these people involved, it seems you can achieve vast amounts of work in a short time, which is what generally seems to happen. So I was not worried. The whole strange 'coming together thing' that happens during shows was brilliantly and amusingly summed up in Shakespeare in Love by this conversation with Geoffery Rush's character:

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?
Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
Hugh Fennyman: How?
Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

So the show opened on Thursday, and it was pretty good. Naturally, the cast decided to do what one does when the show opens and goes pretty well, and that is of course to go to Scott's old house and get drunk. Scott's old house, as it turns out, is being flatted in by three members of our cast. So after a bit of larrikinism at Bentley's, we all went there with beer in tow, and it started to get quite messy, and highly amusing. Another rule of shows is this: there is absolutely no doubt that people get involved with them in order to score. And score each other the cast members inevitably do. I guess it is something to do with all that energy flying around, the fact that everyone bonds over the 2 months of rehearsals (something that tech people miss out on, really), you've got a bunch of attractive people (and me) hanging out with each other, and then there's the buzz of being on stage, and then these factors meet their good friend ALCOHOL. Lots and lots of ALCOHOL. What do I mean by this? I mean there's really no party like a cast party. Mad mad mad. I suggest you all try one sometime. Anyway, what started as a few celebratory drinks led to high level shennanigans and me arriving home at Mum and Dad's at about 6:10am on Friday morning. Then there was a hangover, although it had pretty much dispersed by 2. So, to quote a certain 21st speech then, 'that was a good night'. For some reason (maybe the hangover that many were still feeling the effects of on Friday night) there was no repeat effort by the cast on Friday evening after the show, so duly Nic and I went to get some dinner with Dan and Lisa, and then went to Troy with Tim. The movie seems to be getting somewhat of a critical hammering, with a couple of people really taking offence at it. I'm not entirely sure why. I thought it was bloody good. This is possibly because I'm a sucker for a well choreographed swordfight, of which there were two or three (Achilles storming single handedly up the beach was neat, and the duel between him and Hector was VERY cool.) The changes to the story didn't largely bother me (although I thought it was slightly annoying they felt in a Hollywoodesque way that they had to kill Agamemnon at the end) and the lack of the physical presence of the Gods was OK. As Scott Koorey was saying at the theatre before we went, how could you sort of portray them in a cool way anyway? (I keep thinking back to 'Alas Smith and Jones' where they had this running series of skits that was the life of the Greek gods as a daytime soap opera, with Mel Smith (funny fat bastard) as Zeus, lounging around eating grapes amongst Corinthian columns with a smoke machine trying to make it look like Mount Olympus. Ah, very funny.) I'm sure it could 't have been done in some fashion, but much easier to leave them out, and they obviously wanted to focus on the human characters anyway.

Right, so that was written what, about 10 days ago? Anyway, we went through the run, and a lot of you came to see it, and many other unknown to me people came, and we got a good review, so that was good. Also, something else was maybe good. Possibly. Updates on that mysterious hinting as they may or may not occur.

The final cast party last Saturday night ended up with about 8-10 of us who were still left being thrown out of the flat where it was being held at about 11am Sunday morning, on the 4th or 5th attempt of the people that lived there. Ha! Flashbacks to Wellington. In an aside, how about those young people of today - no staying power. At times during the whole rehearsal / show process, the cast of the show made me feel old, but I was somewhat reassured by the fact that I could out-party most of them. Dude! I am like, such the hardcore part-ay legend. These youngsters, they lack the experience, you see. No intestinal fortitude. Back in my day...actually, back in my (equivalent) day I was yet to even start drinking, so perhaps people who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones. Or something.

And really, I just logged on to get this malformed inbred murderous hillbilly (sorry, such watched Wrong Turn tonight with Josh - bad, bad, BAD, despite the presence of Eliza Dushku) of an entry actually posted onto the net so we can all move onto better and bigger and less chronometrically misshaped things with the next one, so I will shoot it dead here. But much like Macarthur, I shall return. Only not to the Philippines. Because I would have to go there at least once to start with before I could return, you see.

Can everyone tell it's 4:51am? Well it is. So there.
Right, back in a bit with something less sucky.