In the audience

It's been so long since I've actually seen a show... Tonight some of my classmates and myself went to see "4.48 Psychosis" by Sarah Kane (note: theatre people--read this author, she's pretty major here in the UK) and it was so great! To see everyone, I mean. (Even if Brian did accuse me of being covered in dream-dust when I said I wanted to build a model of the HMS Victory and sail around the world.) The show was okay. 4.48 is sort of a cross between a suicide note and a prose poem, with no characters indicated, so the first trick is, how do you stage it? Tonight the director had chosen to have eight women sharing the text, sometimes speaking together, sometimes presenting monologues. But it felt very much like a one-trick pony, like I was being talked to constantly. (I will say, the eye contact alone was worth five stars) If I was going to stage the show, I would have less people and more movement. But that's just me. It was great to see all my classmates again, especially since I've been spending most of my time in my room working and I'm desperate to talk to other people! I have a full time job now: looking for a full time job. Sarah Kane could live on her writing, but that's because she rocks. The rest of us have to play office monkey for a few more years yet.

I went and saw my tutor today, and I have to echo Sam that I was disappointed with the feeback he gave me. Much good stuff, but he kept dancing delicately around the hard questions. "I don't want to say you must do this or you must do that, or why have you done this..." so I was left wishing he would just say, "you know what your problem is?" Because, really, let me know if my intention isn't getting across. I won't fight back. But I will revise...and I hate to revise...eargh. I suspect he was fearing for my delicate mental state, thinking that to say "you suck, out of my office" might send me into an ever-deepening spiral of despair, but really, right now, I could just use a good swift kick in the pen. (John, if you're reading this, hardcore feedback does not send me into an ever deepening spiral of despair. Smells do.) I have been inspired to change things and move things around and *shudder* revise, so I shouldn't complain too much. Maybe it was seeing a show for the first time in six weeks. Who knows?

Oh, and the cereal companies here hate me. They are TAUNTING me by putting packets of seeds into their boxes, so now I have some Antirrhinum seeds here, TAUNTING me, saying "ahahaha! you have no garden! we mock you!" I might have to clandestinely sprinkle them over the tulip beds later tonight...