Lost Love, Fun Friends

Tonight was one of the best nights I've had. Fantastic.

Arvin masterminded an evening of short performances, a mixture of songs, monologues, scenes and poetry. It was a brilliant and creative evening, the energy was crackling and some ripper performances.

I was so nervous about tonight as the scripts I had written were the first for an adults only audience. My previous scripts were all for children and families. Plus there is a lot of people who I hold in high esteem and who were also excellent performers.

Danielle did an amazing job bringing my script "Between the Lines" to life. She made the emotions real. Her performance made Tanya cry! She really elevated what I had envisioned for the script and I owe her for that. Can't believe we haven't acted together since we were 18 years old. Wow.

Wendy picked up my script like a pro and ran with it. She was so cool, knew exactly what beats I wanted, I knew that she'd be a rock solid comic actress and I am glad I worked with her (finally!) onstage. She just got it and that's a blessing for a writer.

I could gush on about the performances tonight but I'm afraid of leaving something out... Arvin's "debut" of his original work and rocking the house, Wendy's rendition of "Oops I did it again" with appropriate background music, Horace and Kath blowing the roof with their singing, Madeliene's night cap poem, Kat Cooper's intense and ultimately romantic monologue, Tina's still and powerful monologue, Adam's sweaty, rambling "it's funny, right" monologue, Tanya and Karen's native cantonese... the list goes on.

Moments of uproarious laughter and pin drop silence.

Claire, Alistair, Lucy, Molly, Resham, Fok n Mogg, Chris C, David Swanston, Mike Brooks (!) all in attendance... I wished the rest of our town's theatre community was there just to partake in such a wonderful evening of entertainment and performance.

I would not have done this tonight and had the rush of excitement leading up to it without Tanya. Her energy and drive to get her performance ready made me jump up my game and I'm so happy to share the stage with her. I love my wife.

Plus she and Karen were the only ones who had the foresight to video tonight's performance (by videoing, we mean getting Adrian (SM extraordinaire) to film it.)

One additional PS: Elissa's film camps shot my script and have screened it! I cannot wait to see what they have done to my script!!!

Ideas for future productions

Ideas for future productions/themed nights like the LOST LOVE theme rattle in my head.

PUT DOWN THE DUCKY

MY PROFESSION

LOST IN TRANSLATION

SUCCESS AND FAILURE

BEAUTY

Goodbye Kim Hyun Hee

I saw a screening of a short film I was involved in. Back then it was still untitled - it was the "North Korean Spy Project". My sister and I were involved and I was blown away by the film. Blown away because it was so much better than I expected.

The short film "Goodbye Kim Hyun Hee" is a coming of age story about this HK Teenager who fantasies about the North Korean spy Kim Hyun Hee. She was responsible for blowing up a South Korean commercail flight, killing over 100 people. She was a mysterious and glamourous figure in history, as she was a beauty and indoctrinated into believing the North Korean cause was just. The HK Teenager is infatuated with this figure and neglects his own girlfriend. He realizes that his obsession is merely fantasy and he is not in touch with reality.

I made it sound way too complicated. It's just a good coming of age story - funny and light with a good narrative.

The other short films that we saw were just slow, pretensious and crap. I am so relieved that the one I was involved in was actually funny and good.

Jenny was great in it, all the actors were well cast. You can see the different film styles the director was going for and it was actually entertaining.

Between this and Cabot Lane, wow, I just realized I'm involved in stuff! Creative, fun stuff outside of my job of directing and writing my own plays.

How the hell did I get here?

Man In Black

We performed Cabot Lane earlier tonight. We were all nervous - and we contemplated having a shot of tequila each before going onstage.

Misha, Wendy, Han and Kyla had nothing to worry about - I heard them from backstage and they sounded great. Me on the other hand... I felt off onstage. I was caught between not knowing my lines perfectly and reading - which is awkward. Tsk, tsk. I should have gone full throttle with the line learning (I only had 4 pages) but... sigh.

I ended the play on a strange note: "see your thoughts and hear your visions" as opposed to "hear your thoughts and see your visions."

I think that might have changed the meaning of the play a little.

We all ended up having a shot of tequila each afterwards which we needed.

The space was nice and there were alot of great people there from the theatre community to support us and just be fab theatre people. Arvin, Molly, Daniel, Kat, Adam etc. It was a good crowd and Le Rideau is a great space. Overall the experience was good, I just wished I hit a home run instead of a wobbly run to second base.

In the end though, Tanya told me the play wasn't about me (oh yeah...) it's about the play and I think it was well served by Tina and the cast.

Cabot Lane

I'm involved in a playreading performance of Cabot Lane - a new play by Kyla Seals. It's going to be on next Friday and I found out today I will be working with Miss Mischa (this time in a speaking part!!!)

It was great to be able to work with adults and as an actor after nearly working year long with children at Faust. I need to switch gears every now and again for my sanity. The director Tina was intense and passionate about the play which was great. Let's see how this turns out!

Facebook

So I've now joined Facebook and it was amazing. In one morning I got into contact with people I haven't seen since high school. Jeez, it's amazing how fast people just got connected to each other!

Mates from Shatin College, Royal Holloway, The University of Hong Kong, former colleauges at Faust...man.

I've had my doubts about Facebook, thinking it was a MySpace rip off but it's actually very userfriendly and the main point of it is to connect with people, real people as opposed to "AzzKicker2134" or "lonelygirl15" or something silly like that. I see people's real names and that is refreshing.

A Long Day

I spend all day at the theatre supervising 6 shows performed by Kindergarten children. On a Sunday. My eyes are drooping and my mouth is drooling on the keyboard and I so desperately want sleep.

Performnaces went well and it was much smoother and faster than last year.The kids were cute and several times I was reminded of why I work in drama education: that the children are actually learning something, learning self - confidence and performance skills and the ability to at least be still for 15 minutes.

Spiderman 3

Spiderman 3 was much better than I was expecting but still lacked something. Funny, since most of the reviews I've read said there was too much going on and was overstuffed.

My wife Tanya said that it felt like a mini-series trying to be a movie, lots of up and down action and it kept going on. I can see her point but...

I loved moments in the film. I loved that Peter Parker is dorky, even when he was evil he was dorky. I laughed when Butler Exposition gives away an important piece of information and then disappears. I loved the strong continuity. I loved John Jonah Jameson. I LOVED Sandman. I loved how they used Gwen Stacy (modeling a Photochopier! HA!)

The thing of the movie is, its cornball comicbook Spiderman with a glossy CGI look. All the girls screaming, Spidey with the American flag waving in the background, all that clapping for the hero... it's all just window dressing but it maintains the spirit of that gosh wow, cheesy feel of reading an old comicbook.

HOWEVER... one thing that they dropped the ball on was the soap opera part. There was something a bit TOO cliche about the whole MaryJane and Peter romance - the whole phone thing as a motif... jeez, that was just frickin' annoying. And that makes me sad because I loved the romance in parts 1 and 2, especially 2.

Another was Venom. Too little use of him - he's got potential to be a fantastic character in the future and he was just... underused. Nuff said.

I think some new blood needs to be injected into the Spiderman series. Sam Raimi's been doing an excellent job but it's starting to feel a little bit (a little bit) stale.

It was a dark and stormy night...

My son woke my wife up at 5 in the morning and I tried to get up but was instructed by my wife to go back to sleep "You're sick". I duly complied.

It's now an hour later and he's in his cage (Playpen! Playpen!) and I'm looking outside, not to a nice, sunny Sunday morning but a dark, cloudy miserable Sunday morning.

I've had the flu for a week and a cough for 2 weeks. Nearly everybody in my family's had it and I'm STILL not over it. I think it might have something to do with the fact that in the next 36 hours we will launch our festival of theatre performances by children.

I'm actually pretty excited by this year's work but boy am I more than a little bit exhausted. Yesterday I went to assist a group leader who kindly set up an extra rehearsal so that the kids have time to rehearse a bit more. I had my own group that morning, bringing them costumes and swords to use and dragging that all over Hong Kong was not alot of fun, especially in this weather.

I'm probably moaning more than usual in this blog. Why not see my face? and my son Sam's? They tell the whole story...

Handcrafted

One thing I love about Michel Gondry's films is the handcrafted look of his films and work. So many details are just so deliciously imperfect that it's just kitsch and lovely and fragile.

I've been avoiding thinking about my website for weeks. Tanya has purchased and made a bare bones website for me, waiting for me to put my input in it. It doesn't even have any of my stuff on there at the moments, just links that lead to deadends.

Well, I've made some images tonight. I illustrated them rather than use photoshop or use a font from word. The letters are imperfect, the lines aren't straight. Handwritten and handcrafted.

Hopefully by the end of the week I can have something resembling a website.

Cramp

A few days ago I finally got the guts to call Fluid Friction to ask if they got my CV. They told me it was "on file." and that they would contact me back should something come up. I hire people too and having your CV "on file" means crap. Calling me back from a supposed future where I would work with them as a comic book writer.

I just watched Science of Sleep, expecting to be disappointed by it but Michel Gondry just made a good film, not an incomprehensible mess like some of the reviews I'ved read. It's beautiful and full of yearning and confusion and mess, just like real like but all through that wonderful whacked out vision of his of cardboard cities, giant hands doing minute task, time machines that go forward or backward by one second and a horse in a horse suit. It's beautiful.

My dad is an ass. He wants to bill me for my childhood effectively. He's stuck in a situation of his own making and right now I reserve the right to hate him. For now.

Work is piling up. Mountains of emails, some great and some just complaining and complaining and complaining.

BIts of paper, floating emails with requests after requests after requests.

I want to scream.

Getting a job in comics

A few weeks ago some friends showed me something I thought I would never see in Hong Kong: A recruitment ad for a Comic Book Writer. In English. Comicbook writing not necessary, just creativity.

I thought some divine providence has sent me this ad. I mean, this was a job I was dreaming of doing since I started collected XMEN comics back in the days when they made some sense and continuity (when they were actually MONTHLY. I'm looking at you Joss Whedon.)

I'm not giving up my day job... I love working at Faust but this was something I HAD to apply for, just for my own sanity. My idae was that maybe I could do some project based work - I doubt very much it would be a regular comics gig.

Well, one application form and a month later, I have not heard anything from this company. Its actually really frustrating because I don't even know if they received my application. I'm going to have to call them and get verbal confirmation that I'm not what they want.

The ad is kind of what made me want to create this blog. I love comics, I love writing and the art form and telling stories. I already work in a job that provides me with alot of creativity and I would not give that up easily but I need to know if I had a chance at making a comicbook, a published comic book.

Not going to wait any longer now. I'm going to use this blog to record my experiences in writing, hopefully share some comic strips and maybe, just maybe get some feedback and interest.