The Gwent Festival.....Winners again, but not Godfather Death this time....Twas the Biscuits (and the Spoon) what won it!!

Today, I woke up with a very strange feeling, which I have not experienced before over the years that I have been competing in Theatre festivals.  BLT have won plenty of things over the years and we have also had our fair share of losing too.  Both have their own, separate emotional responses.  Today I am experiencing both!

To explain.  Godfather Death performed last night and did really well in the adjudications, with only one minor costuming point raised.  The night before, Biscuits - the other play entered by BLT and featuring Vic Mills in the leading role had an amazing night, with a completely faultless adjudication and the audience loving it.  I am the director of this show....I am chuffed for the cast, crew and for me!  When it came to the awards, BLT walked away with virtually everything that we were eligible for - Vic Mills won best actor, Gwen Livingstone the Adjudicator's award, I won best director and we picked up the Gwent Festival title too for Biscuits.  To have been playing one of the lead characters in GD and that to have lost - even though it was losing to ourselves, is a weird feeling.  I am both elated and slightly deflated.  I know that the same would be said if the decision had gone the other way.   I do know that these feelings are very temporary and totally illogical - we won!!  Team BLT won and it was in a play that I directed!   Having said all that - there was only 1 mark between our two plays, so perhaps we will both get to the final in a few weeks time?  Let's hope so.

Strange feeling for me or not, it takes nothing away from the amazing efforts of my fellow actors, crew, technical directors, foh teams and everyone associated with these two, very different productions. They have worked extremely hard - and sometimes our patrons and followers (and perhaps some of our competitors) don't realise the effort it takes to rehearse both these shows and be involved in running the theatre and take part in the full length play too.  Amazing stamina and fortitude by everyone involved - I salute you all.

 We entered competition in 2004 with GD and since then have competed in every Wales Final.  I have been fortunate enough to be involved in every one of those productions - in some shape or other.  Since 2004 we have had 11 plays in Wales Finals, with 6 plays in the past 3 years.  If we were to get both into this year's final, that would be an amazing achievement.  We shall see - the results of the top 6 plays in Wales will be announced at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven, next week - Saturday 5th May....so we will know all then. I shall be attending with with both a BLT and a DAW hat on.  Busy times for BLT with a Canada trip and potential Wales final and then there is Dad's Army!

Well done again to everyone at BLT.  Please keep your fingers crossed for us, next weekend!

Cheers

Neil

First appearance in a Festival

Ok well here goes. This is my first attempt at 'blogging'.
I read for Godfather Death a little while ago at Blackwood Little Theatre. It was with delight that I had the news that Vic Mills decided to place his faith in me and cast me in this one act.
Although I have trodden the boards for more years than I care to remember (36 years to be precise my first years up in North Wales with Caernarfon Rep and then with Theatr Fach in Llangefni) this will be my first foray into competition. My daughter Fay has beaten me to this 2 years in a row. Pity she will not be here to see her 'old man' and pass on her experience (she is on holiday cruising around the Med lucky thing)!!
I have found the rehearsals to be quite intense and enjoyable as every move is thought through to ensure that the production flows from beginning to end. This, I realise, is to ensure that every precious minute is used to its full capacity for the short time that the play is running. It has brought new challenges to me as I found that I had to think carefully about the character I am playing. Even the dialogue throughout the play has been looked at ensuring we are phrasing and placing the right emphasis on what we say.
Last night we managed to run the play twice over. This has helped all of us cement everything we have rehearsed which resulted in a happy director (well that’s what he said last night) having said this there are still one or two areas that we are refining to make sure we get the most out of everything.
Next time I tread the boards will be at dress rehearsal. I am looking forward to seeing it all come together.
It will be new experience for me to have someone adjudicate a production I appear in. I look forward to hearing what is said about our work (I hope culminating in getting through to the Welsh finals). I know that it will be a nerve racking experience for me but in a sadistic way I am looking forward to it.
As mentioned in other blogs if you have a chance please come along. Your support would be appreciated both by us at Blackwood Little Theatre and by the Festival organisers ensuring that local amateur theatre is supported.

Cheers

Jerry

Godfather Death Tech Rehearsal

My first encounter with Godfather Death was back in 2004 (I was 16 at the time !) - It was one of my first plays with Blackwood Little Theatre and certainly my first experience of a One Act Play. 

If I am totally honest I don’t remember a lot about the Lighting of this play the first time around, I obviously didn’t care much for drawing rig plans and keeping records of what I was doing in my younger days.  I do remember the play at the Congress Theatre, Cwmbran and having to light the large rotating moon using a follow spot as there were no other spare lanterns, it wasn’t ideal but we had to work with what we had - at the start of the play the follow spot swung around the Theatre a few times trying to find it’s intended target !

The Lighting design this time around is fairly simple and a lot of the play happens in an intentional shadow, there is a lot of blue at low level with just a touch of front light to create a facial shadow. I have experimented with a number of different tones of blue throughout the rig which seems to be effective, especially at the beginning of the play. I have chosen color from the LEE Filters 700 series and specifically a shade of blue which is designed to be at it’s best at low light levels designed by David Hersey the Lighting Designer from Les Miserables, Evita and Cats in the West End !

The challenge with this play from a lighting point of view is to compliment what is happening on stage and create specific moods in a quite sympathetic way, but the action all happens quickly therefore not a lot of time to build cues and states.

Yesterday was Technical Rehearsal and as the play is part of a One Act Festival there are strict rules as to what can and can’t be done technically - the biggest challenge is the one hour time limit to plot cues and rehearse all things technical. Our Tech hour flew by but luckily it all went well and Vic, myself and the cast used every second of the hour to get all our cues in the desk and walked through.

All we can do now is look forward to next weekend when we can see if it all works !

Aneurin - Technical Director BLT

Lines, its all about lines....and set, and movement, and well - stuff!!

One week to go and life is complicated. Work can get in the way of theatre - well, in my world it can.  Rehearsals this week have been a bit mad.  Having done about 1000 miles for work this week and been at the theatre for 4 nights, I am bushed!  Tomorrow are tech rehearsals for both the BLT plays as well as the ones for the Dolman and Ad Hoc.  Today is about lines though.  I have been pretty good on all of these - but its  just the last couple of pages....have done an hour or so this morning and will do some more tomorrow morning too.  Line rehearsal with Jerry tomorrow and Sarah too.

A full rehearsal schedule for the week and I need to cast Dads Army soon too -  this weekend....so, I will be sorting that this afternoon and tomorrow.  Life is hectic and work is more so.  Looking forward to a break in a few weeks in Canada.

Short and brief notes today.  Perhaps some of my fellow cast members will say a few words on here!!??

Oh and the set has changed colour - big style....Black is out.  Thanks Pete!!  Part of my costume arrived today.....very hairy!

Will update nearer to the Gwent Festival.   Biscuits is first though - making great progress on that with some very funny moments.  They are doing really well - and Gwen is a scream!   Make sure people come please - its awful playing to only a small audience.  Please come along....its 2 tickets for just £7.....bargain!  Book tickets here on www.ticketsource.co.uk/blt

Cheers

Neil

Godfather Death - a developing tale...

Godfather Death was very much conceived as a particular style of multiple-playing theatre. The concept was of simple story telling in a folk style. The original two productions of 2004, both featured a cast of three, with one actor playing about eight roles, including both genders and a wide range of ages and accents. The challenge now,is to take a script written with this style of theatre in mind and bring it to the stage successfully, but very differently, when it is performed in a far more conventional style. Our production of 2012 still has some multiple playing, and we have introduced a more complex set with playing across levels and platforms and we have introduced live music, the musicians themselves being drawn into the story as performers too. The challenge as a writer and director was to adapt the play for the 6 actors available to travel to Canada for the Liverpool International Theatre Festival. Our focus is on a kind of Brechtian storytelling this time around, with players gathered in a stage circle around a storyteller who appears, with the magic of children's theatre, at he heart of the circle to enchant the wide- eyed with his/her tale. And it is a tale of enchantment, if we get it right. Things are progressing quite well, though a very hectic schedule at the the are, with two productions in preparation at the moment, make for challenges! Finessing and refining are still required. A meeting over lighting with Nye tomorrow is very important, as lighting will be at the heart of making this simple tale magical and touching. The play is comic fast paced story-telling for the first half, then shifts into something more touching, gentler and wistful as it drifts towards its denouement. A tough week of rehearsals to go. Must get the music tighter and the choreography very polished in its fluidity - if you can polish a fluid! Vic Mills. Writer and Director.

And so the Journey begins....Again!!

It was in November 2003 that I first read Godfather Death.  Vic Mills had sent me a copy of his new one act play, in order that we might enter it into competition in 2004.  I was amazed and enchanted by the story, based on a Grimm's fairytale of the same name.  A casting reading was arranged and, it was decided that we would have two casts - one for competition and the other to share the performances at BLT in April 2004.  I was cast alongside Jim Halsey and Frances Jarman - in the non competition cast.  Dave Livingstone and Vic Mills were in the other cast - along with Frances.  It was a great time and a challenge, as I recall to rehearse two casts - but it was a really positive developmental tool for us as actors, and for Vic as a writer.  I was playing the characters of Duncan and his son Manny - in this twisted and dark tail (Dave Livingstone also played this role in the alternate cast). Jim played every other part (there were lots of them) - apart from Grace, who was played by the lovely Frances.  To cut a long story short, the other cast won the Gwent Festival and then went on to our first Wales final - somewhere we have since taken over 10 plays to, every year since.  GD was put to bed after the Wales Final and Vic moved on to bigger and greater successes.  So in 2011 we needed a play to take to Canada and to enter into the 2012 Gwent Festival - and Vic came up with the wonderful idea of re inventing GD...with a bigger cast, a different set and a different artistic feel to it completely.

As someone who has more or less given up performance, it is a bit strange to be back on stage and performing a role I first did over 8 years ago.   The Irish lilt has been worked on - basing all the character of Manny on Greg from Holby City....am a method actor, you see!   The lines have come flooding back (ish) and hopefully the Gwent Festival will be a success for us - I am also directing another play, by Graham J Evans - Biscuits....in which the writer and director of GD  (VR Mills) is playing one of the lead characters.....which has made rehearsals a bit of a challenge for the pair of us!  Biscuits is great fun and is completely different to GD - it does have an equally talented and dedicated cast though.  Competing against yourself is a bit of a weird thing to do - but something I have become used to, over the years.

Here is a photo of me with Shelley - who is playing the man eating Janey and the sweet character of Grace.

Canada beckons in a few weeks  and a competition against both local NS groups and also 9 other international companies - from Iran, South Africa, Spain, USA and a few others to boot!   We are all very much looking forward to it - though with a massive sense of sadness that our director, writer, guitarist and Devil - will not be making the trip this time.  However, there are 7 of us going - including Jerry Grummitt and Sarah Jones, who are on their first international theatre trip.  For me, going to the LITF is like going home.  I may live in Aberdare, but I have more close friends in Liverpool NS than in my adopted place of abode!  All my mates are in Blackwood or Abertillery or Porthcawl! Travelling is always part of my theatrical journey - as I trek to BLT 4 times a week - a 40 mile round trip.  Anyway - I digress!  My wife Peta and I have so many friends in Canada we are able to call on them for some help in our preparations - including building our large set.  Blair Raddall is a star for helping us!  We are all looking forward to seeing the likes of Blair and Deborah, Rob and Sonya, Mr Ball, Greg, Erica, Gerri, Margo, Susan (desserts at Lanes) Grant and Sarah, Rick, Richard, Libby, Susannah, Cole, Paige, Mike and Heather, Brent and Ellen, Victoria, Beth, Leslie, Valerie and probably a whole of other people that I have missed from this list (my apologies for my fuddled brain).  We arrive on the Weds and will have 5 full days in Liverpool!   The picture below is taken from Lane's - and overlooks the Mersey River!

This will be the first of many blog posts - I hope from all the cast and writer and even our shy, retiring and often out of the limelight, technical director!!  More to come on our final preparations for the Gwent Festival and our ambitious plans for Canada - including a live webcast of our performance for the folks back home!

Catch you all later.....Neil Maidman