My New Bohemian Pad

So in case you didn't guess (or are Ravi) I went for Option B and last night finally moved in properly. I lugged a ridiculous amount of stuff from London and my back did not thank me for it. However once I got here it was wonderful - I've completely failed to unpack anything except the bed clothes and a toothbrush!

I arrived late on Sunday and pestered the lovely Craig until he told me how to make the internet work, how to walk to the BBC offices and lent me a dust cloth since the landlord had not unexpectedly failed to clean the room. He also gave me chocolate which contributed significantly to the happiness.

This morning I woke up, discovered that we have a cat (It's very beautiful. I like cats. Just not in a look-at-this-cute-youtube-clip-of-a-kitten-!-! way), checked out the kitchen facilities and set off for work! This mostly involves walking right through Moss Side but, er, don't tell Angie. ¬_¬

This house is amazing. It's got wooden floors, except for on the stairs where the worn edges of the carpet are covered over with gaffa tape, the hall is impractically thin but adorned with various bits of art, postcards and letters, the desk lamp in my room is broken and the bedroom lamp is hanging by the wires from the wall, the curtains are thin so I've hung a spare duvet I found across them, the blind for the skylight above the bed is sellotaped to the wall, there're no drawers in my room, I'm sleeping under the eaves with an old TV and there's a note written directly onto the wall in the kitchen that says "Select object. Look for use for object. If no use can be found, object is art."

In short, I love this house!

Please choose one of the following options...

Option A

So my room hunt started with a house in Rusholme. Except it turned out not to really be in Rusholme but in Moss Side. Not knowing much about Manchester, I asked various people for advice. The general reply? 'Stay out of Moss Side, you will die'. So off I went to see the room in Moss Side (hey, it was cheap!) with a rather nervous Pete (my dad's helpful friend) in tow. My first thought was that Angie would not approve of the road I had to go down as it was next to a park and looked like it would probably be dark and scary. What Angie would think is playing a large part in my room-hunting.

The house was narrow and dingy. The smaller single bedroom turned out to be larger than my London room and (again similar to my London room) filled with such a large bed that half of the room was inaccessible. The guy who was living there already said it wasn't a very bad area and that he'd never had any trouble. Then again he was big and bald and tough looking. :S

Option B

The second house wass 15 minutes away just outside of the official boundary of 'Moss Side'. Despite Sarah Ryan's sister's description of Rusholme ("Rusholme is curry mile...so it's generally student halls or cheap quite run down terraces. Lots of muggings etc. It's prob not horrific but i wouldn't pick it unless i was skint") it looked really nice. Plus curry, that's good right? And I am totally skint. So er, yeah, lovely tree lined road and it was all looking suburban and nice.

I was shown around the house by current flatmate Abby. The first room I passed in the narrow hall had a bunk bed in it. Awesome. Well, not so much a bed that was a bunk but a bed that was on a raised platform filling half the room with a desk underneath. It turns out the landlord is some crazy DIY guy who occasionally knocks down walls unexpectedly and things like that. I'm assuming this is why all the bedrooms are split level with a smaller lower desk area and a higher platform with a mattress, accessible by some steep steps. The sleeping area in the room I was viewing was right up under the eaves with a little sky light directly above and a broken TV in the corner. It's basically like a crazy tree house bedroom.

Downstairs was a little kitchen-dining space and a dark sitting room with an extra mattress in. Dave (the guy with the bunkbed) is apparently an artist so there are various pictures around. Final flatmate Craig turned up smoking a cigarette (Angie would disapprove!) and advised on the easiest ways to get anywhere, the consensus being biking or walking are both quicker than buses! So to summarise, it was crazy, filled with bohemians, super cheap and within walking distance of work.

Option C

We wandered through Manchester for half an hour looking for the third place, a double bedroom in a studenty house in Fallowfield. The girls living there were very friendly and looking for someone to fill the place of a student who had gone home for the summer. They had two adorable young cats and it was a spacious and clean house on three levels, the sort that would make a good family home. Angie would approve! It was miles cheaper than London but still out of my price range.




I know I shoulda looked at more than three places, but I was kinda in love already. Guess which one I took? :)

Onwards and Northwards

The North, Day 1.

Explorers log, Northern outpost. Yesterday I ventured beyond the known bounds of civilisation into a land known only as 'The North'. I boarded a train at Euston station and a few minutes' travel later it was grey and raining. Just as reports had suggested, the North is a cold cold place.

My destination was Manchester, my mission to find somewhere to live before starting a new job in two days time. My main objectives were to find somewhere in Manchester that I could live without getting mugged and to subsequently learn to live without Angie's amazing cooking. Also, if I got mugged, Angie would be really cross and also Phil would force me to stay in London forever after.

Fortunately it turns out Manchester is made of lollipops and rainbows. I was met at the station by my dad's friend Pete with whom I am staying for the week. He handed me a bus pass for the week, showed me how to get the bus from my new office back to his sister's house where I have a lovely bed in the spare room and his sister Pat cooked us dinner!

Not only that but he even took me all around Manchester (mostly by foot, partly by bus) to view various rooms that I'd found on spareroom.co.uk. We also managed not to get mugged which was a total bonus.

In the next post, look forward to the excitement of reading about the three fantabulous properties I viewed yesterday!

Over and out.

Exhaustion and Elation

I can't believe it's over.

Now what?!?

These pictures are gorgeous though...

I'll just gaze at them for a while...

My cast are so pretty!

Shiny shiny goodness :D

One month to go...

So everything has settled down. We've lost several cast members (some minions and also sadly some quite good people who I couldn't give good enough parts to) but have been left with a good number of lovely 'tekkors' whose job it is to wander round the set building things of which they do a pretty convincing job. We've rehearsed most of the first act and some of the second and have had our first production meeting!

Having two directors is proving invaluable in rehearsals, especially when I occasionally turn up having not been home the previous night. Ahem. I have learnt my lesson and will endavour to be on top form for all future rehearsals! Nigel is providing some great improv games and scenarios, helping the actors really work out what their characters are beyond just the written lines. I'm busy being picky about lines and blocking and the cast are busy being generally awesome. I'm looking forward to getting everyone off book though and so have set a deadline for line-learning of a week today!

Adam, the producer, organised the first production meeting and seems to have found almost all the actual minions and heads-of-department needed to actually run the show. Christine is doing costumes which is lovely, Simon got roped back in to do publicity as well as act and die horribly on stage, and apparently there are several freshers who we're keen to get involved as well. We need to draw as many new people as we can into our DramSoc web of doom! Come to the dark side, we've got cookies, etc.

On your right you will see a preliminary set design Henry has just sent me and which I hope he won't mind me posting here. Ah well, he'll probably never find out. ¬_¬ It's all very pretty anyway. Apart from it will also have set dressing. And stairs I hope, otherwise that could be tricky. And it won't be green and brick coloured. But apart from that - ooh look isn't it pretty! :) Am very excited. Not as excited as Henry though, he's going a bit crazy trying to work out how much crazy stuff he can fit into the set. Is quite alarming! I shall have to meet up with him soon and find out more of his crazy crazy plans...

An infinite number of minions...

So that's it - finally I have cast it. In the end we had 38 people come to auditions! Even with the four who subsequently dropped out it will be the biggest cast DramSoc has had in years. What do I do with them all?!

It was quite frustrating not to have enough speaking parts to go round - there was a lot of potential there and some people who could do very well but I just wasn't able to give them a big enough part. Still, most of them seem happy to be involved anyway. Now I just have to make sure I keep them entertained! The biggest challenge will be the first rehearsal on Sunday for which I've called everyone though a few people can't make it. I'm planning on lots of ice-breaker and acting games to ease us into the process and get to know each other before starting some basic blocking for scenes. Though since most of the 'extras' will be improvising there won't necessarily be a lot of blocking. Hmm. I'll think of something! :S

Very impressed with all the talent though and really excited about working with people. The guy cast as the villain was deliciously evil and there are several incredibly talented new faces - as well as a few familiar ones. The next challenge will be working out a rehearsal schedule that everyone can actually make it to. :S

The script is pretty much almost entirely finalised mostly. There are a couple of good lines I haven't been able to fit in, and a few major plot/character failings that are impossible to fix, but I'm quite pleased with it. I've got it down to fifty-six pages too which I'm really hoping isn't too long. Tomorrow will be the end of the road for script re-drafts as I have to print out thirty-four copies ready for the cast read-through! Fortunately I've had lots and lots of help, comments and suggestions. :)

Have also been messing around with a black/white theme for the posters but I'm not convinced it's really what we're after. What do you think?

Auditions

I'm actually in a play myself this week but I had to take a couple of hours out to some auditions for The Dark Side. There will be more auditions at the weekend but we thought we'd grab the people who turned up to the acting workshop - and there were actually quite a few. As the workshop finished at about 4pm we started off with about ten people and realised we didn't really have enough scripts to go round! As we got to five o'clock and had gotten through barely half of them, more and more people started arriving. There's wasn't a sign on the door, so people kept wandering in, and when they did, there weren't enough scripts for them and I had to jump up and explain the process in the middle of an audition. Co-director Nigel kept running outside to get copies of the relevant bits of scripts so he could read in for the other characters in the scene. It was chaos.

At this point the almighty Tosin turned up and proceeded to save the day. I have never been to an audition which needed a bouncer before, but Tosin fit the bill perfectly. He also managed to photocopy enough scripts for everyone and even did some crafty flyering for 'The Ugly One' as well! Both myself and my poor producer got a bit of an earful along the lines of 'this what you should have done! Why does no-one listen to me?!' :)

In the end there were twenty-four of them. Twenty-four! We were there till 7pm, bar a short but vital loo break. It's only the first audition and there are more than enough people to fill the parts already! It was also great to see so many new faces, and in particular so many very impressive new faces! We got a couple of people (villains in particular for some reason) who seemed perfect for a particular part - and many who I'm going to have trouble finding good enough roles for.

After the auditions I spend the rest of the evening in a combined tech/plot (or 'plotech' ¬_¬) for The Ugly One which opens tonight and is very awesome. Luke, Phil, Tosin and I spent most of it singing quite loudly, and when Henry and John Winters turned up they were told that the sex scene wasn't even in the play it was just Phil and I having fun. Hmmm. Managed to get the 12.36am bus home, so now am rather sleepy!

Oh, and I almost forgot - Chads (our props guy) auditioned too! He read the role of Josh - the props guy in the play, leading to the following status:

Chads Chadwick Is a techie acting as an actor by auditioning for a part playing a techie in a play he will be teching. This may be confusing.