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Post by kathryn on Apr 25, 2020 10:08:48 GMT
My god! Weeks without ice cream! 😱 How have you managed?!
That reminds me - ate the last of mine (dairy-free) last night, must add it to the shopping list. Discovered the other week that my local corner shop has a Roar brand of vegan ice cream that has hemp seeds in it - chocolate brownie flavour, proper tasty, can’t get it in Sainsbury’s.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 23, 2020 22:22:40 GMT
On my morning walk in the park today I saw 3 ducklings swimming with their mama on the pond.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 21, 2020 13:56:54 GMT
It's not the familiarity of the face, it's the affection the audience holds them in.
I was totally unmoved by Glenn Close in Sunset Boulevard at ENO. I left after about 5 minutes of the standing ovation she got - it probably went on for another 5 minutes after that! Her fans were having some kind of spiritual experience seeing her perform. I had a similar experience with Glenda Jackson's Lear - absent that connection to her as a performer I found it totally flat, but you'd never know it from the way others responded.
An audience connection with a particular performer enhances the material being performed, even if they are past their prime. That's why people still turn out for performers who they loved in their youth even though they can't possibly perform on the same level any more. In music, the nostalgia circuit relies on it.
Theatre geeks will always turn out to see Judi Dench and Ian Mckellan, or Maggie Smith. They could be reading the phone book and we'd go, because it's experiencing that affectionate connection that is rewarding.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 13, 2020 19:51:15 GMT
It's one of those noises that isn't intrinsically annoying but becomes infuriating because I don't know what it is and start worrying that it might be something important that I have to deal with. Oh I know what you mean. I’m having a version of that right now. I got myself one of those robot hoovers last week. You charge it up overnight, press a button and off it goes, trundling around all the flat space it can reach until it runs out of battery, in a seemingly random pattern. And then it returns itself to the charging station. Lovely. So I set it off this morning and let it do its thing in the living room, hallway and my bedroom while I showered, got dressed, made breakfast, etc. It had re-docked itself in the living room to charge by the time I noticed a smear of liquid on top of it. Not much - just a drip’s worth. Which means there must be a leak somewhere in the living room, hallway or bedroom. A drip, coming from something that the little hoover passed under. Can I find the damn drip? No, I cannot. *sigh*
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Post by kathryn on Apr 12, 2020 10:49:35 GMT
I have a trip to New York booked for late September (and then on to Canada) and if the situation is improved enough to allow travel and the theatres are open I’ll definitely be going.
And I’ll be back in the theatre in London too. Streaming/NT Live is just not the same.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 7, 2020 19:27:32 GMT
Farewell TheatreMonkey!!
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Post by kathryn on Apr 4, 2020 21:17:54 GMT
I spent a couple of hours tidying up my front yard this afternoon. It was rather lovely to see the older folks living in the old alms houses across the road having a socially-distanced gossip from their respective front gardens.
Not so lovely to see my downstairs neighbour heading out the house to buy cough syrup for his wife. I heard her coughing this week, and chatting (through the window) to her this afternoon she admitted to having been ill and just starting to feel a bit better. I am sure he should be self-isolating still. If he’d asked I’d have gone to the shop for them to get whatever they need.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 3, 2020 21:17:10 GMT
Have we seen "Christine" in anything else? Or do we reckon part of her contract was to never take another acting part ever again to keep the mystery alive? Did the "candelight dinner" suggestion happen at every performance? Her name’s Polly Conway. She was in Doctors once but I don’t think I’ve seen her in any other stage productions. According to her Twitter she runs her own shop now, so I don’t think she is acting much any more.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 3, 2020 21:15:46 GMT
Sorry to ruin it but every bit of "audience interaction" was staged - I saw it twice and it was exactly the same each time! I think the idea was that by offering a sandwich the audience member undermined the fact that Francis was starving and desperate for food. It even got to the point we’re actual audience members offered sandwiches. When I saw it at the Aldwych and a second guy shouted he had one Corden said “you’ve seen the show before haven’t you”. He did the routine, took the sandwiches, chucked it off stage and Oliver appeared briefly munching on a sandwich And when the fake audience member offered his sandwich corden said “oh not again” and repeated the routine And I think when he said later on we’re over the running time he gave the real audience member the glare A lady walked to the front of the stage and handed offered Corden a cheese sandwich when I saw it at the NT. It was early in the run and may have been the first time it happened - Corden spent a good five minutes improvising with her, it was hilarious, but stopped the play dead - in the end he had to call for someone in the wings to come on in order to get it back on track. It was glorious.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 2, 2020 21:14:41 GMT
Ah, what tremendous fun that was. Takes me back to watching it in the actual audience at the Littelton.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 31, 2020 11:01:10 GMT
I belatedly realised that it was Taron Egerton who played the young swimmer lad in Last of the Hausmans. His first job out of drama school. My theatre buddy and I have started going to some RADA productions, so hopefully in years to come we can play this game a lot! Wow, I remember the play, particularly because when he came out in his trunks my mate next to me gasped very loudly and we were in the front row so it was very obvious but I had no idea that was Taron Egerton until now! Yes, he was rather tasty! In hindsight there was an obvious Welsh influence on his ‘Cornish’ accent.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 31, 2020 9:57:10 GMT
I belatedly realised that it was Taron Egerton who played the young swimmer lad in Last of the Hausmans. His first job out of drama school.
My theatre buddy and I have started going to some RADA productions, so hopefully in years to come we can play this game a lot!
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Post by kathryn on Mar 29, 2020 11:18:09 GMT
Now I just need to get my 20 year old desk chair adjusting properly again (the mechanism seems to have seized up) and I’ll hopefully be able to work from home for however long this lasts without needing a physiotherapist at the end of it! Generally, the first step is to squirt in some WD40. You can even buy it in pound shops now. Yup, got some of that. Going to take it apart and liberally apply to all the moving parts I can find.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 29, 2020 10:31:15 GMT
I feel for you, Matthew! I am also finding it weird that the room I should be relaxing in is now where I need to work. I’m eating lunch squeezed into my tiny kitchen just to get away from the computer for a while. At work I would normally go out at lunchtime for a walk and to buy something to eat, and sit in the kitchen to eat and chat with colleagues. Even though I’ve been putting my computer away in the other room each day it still feels like I’m not quite getting away from it.
I’ve been having a daily walk but after 2 weeks I’m actually starting to get fed up of seafront, and as everyone else appears to be heading there too keeping the proper social distance is quite hard. It’s just not natural to allow 2 metres of space - the runners in particular will go straight through the middle of 2 people who are carefully passing at the extreme sides of the pavement.
I don’t have a car, so I’d need to use public transport to go anywhere else for exercise. I don’t at all blame the people who are hopping in their cars for a drive to somewhere remote.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 29, 2020 9:44:07 GMT
Well I feel I passed through a rite of passage yesterday - I successfully assembled a bit of flat pack furniture all in my own. An adjustable sit-stand desk on casters. I even lugged the box up the stairs myself, since obviously the delivery man deposited it at the door, rang the bell and then retreated to the end of the path.
Usually if something needs putting together my Dad insists on coming round and doing it for me! I’m sure in part just because it makes him feel useful.
After I had assembled it I had to partially dissemble it again to get it where it needs to go, but never mind, I got there in the end.
Now I just need to get my 20 year old desk chair adjusting properly again (the mechanism seems to have seized up) and I’ll hopefully be able to work from home for however long this lasts without needing a physiotherapist at the end of it!
Is anyone else finding a little bit weird to be seeing all this stuff about how people are spending their time during lockdown, as if everyone is just sitting around watching TV? I’m not only doing my full time job, I’m also doing my own facilities and IT support! And I don’t have kids, so I have it easy.
I’ve not even watched any of the live-streamed theatre yet.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 27, 2020 14:06:34 GMT
A ham roll with spinach and cucumber, an apple, and a bakewell tart.
And I made banana pancakes for breakfast.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 27, 2020 14:04:07 GMT
Twitter has its bad points, it's true - but how else would we get to see things like this?!
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Post by kathryn on Mar 26, 2020 17:44:53 GMT
Do you mean kbps or Mbps? K is back to 2000s dial-up speed, M is broadband fast and low 30s is pretty good. No, honestly, it was kbps, as I've seen the M-version when the signal has been better. However, that was on the work-supplied laptop at about 6 am today - which you wouldn't think would be a busy time - whereas later, on my own laptop, I got 12 mbps, which is pretty good for our ghastly ISP. So I'll have to wait and see what happens if/when it comes to WFH, but at present we still need to cover the office on a rota basis. Does your work laptop connect via a VPN? If so there might be a problem with it your IT team needs to fix.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 26, 2020 17:42:03 GMT
Putting the . before the handle ensures your followers will see it. People do it because they know they will get a faster response if the company wants to avoid the bad publicity of a service failure going viral.
It does often work. If a company is doing a really bad job their social media team will be getting lots of complaints so will prioritise the really visible ones. I would reserve it for when attempts to fix things more quietly have already failed though.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 26, 2020 13:24:23 GMT
I enjoy Twitter as a source of information, jokes and random conversation. My twitter account is anon, so I feel reasonably safe in engaging randoms - and am utterly ruthless with muting and blocking. I don’t do obligation follow-backs. I follow institutions, companies, people, special-topic accounts (I’m enjoying one about women artists at the moment) celebs, etc.
I will look at hashtags and search things I’m interested in and jump in to conversations.
I also enjoy noticing the patterns - trending topics are often generated by a relatively small number of people who have coordinated a campaign, and certain times of day when Twitter is quiet you only need a few thousand tweets using a keyword for it to trend. Bot networks are kind of fascinating - I do not know why someone has set up a bot to tweet that Eminem performed with Elton John at the 2001 Grammys, but it’s there, because the exact same tweet about it appears regularly from a variety of different accounts as if they were real people. It’ll probably still be doing it when we’re all long gone, and will be interpreted as a form of ritual by future techno-archaeologists.....
But the really important thing with Twitter is to turn it off when it’s annoying you!
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Post by kathryn on Mar 25, 2020 17:01:43 GMT
I wouldn't ban Twitter. What I would ban is news outlets reporting 'someone said something on twitter' as if it was real news. Including if that someone is Donald Trump.
I reckon if the official news outlet payed less attention to social media it would pretty swiftly go back to being funny cat videos and people posting about what they had for breakfast. It's a minority of the population who actually use Twitter, the reason why it has so much influence is because that minority includes everyone who works in the mainstream media.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 24, 2020 21:50:33 GMT
. But god does my neck ache. Got the laptop on my kitchen table and attached a keyboard and mouse as I had minutes to type and I can't be doing with those laptop keyboards. Chair is wrong height and having to lean forward as the screen is small has given me a right pain in the neck and shoulders. Such fun! It’s really important that you get a comfortable set-up if working from home for any length of time - or you’ll end up with a bad back! If you have a separate mouse and keyboard, one thing you can do is elevate the laptop so the screen is eye level, to help stop you hunching forward to read it. A pile of books or boxes will do nicely. Make sure you do get up for a screen break and to stretch regularly - most home chairs just are not designed to be sat in for 8 hours a day. If you have a chest of drawers or a shelf at the right height for it, try standing up to work for a while instead. I got my home office all set up and then discovered the WiFi signal just isn’t strong enough in there, so I’m at the living room table for a while until Virgin send me WiFi boosters. My back is not too happy about it, despite my best efforts. If I can’t get it working properly I might have to rearrange the furniture entirely so I can put my desk and proper desk chair in the living room.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 21, 2020 20:17:40 GMT
Gah. I have utterly failed today.
Discovered a mouse had been coming in to my kitchen. There’s a hole around the pipe from the washing machine into the wall, which must be where the bugger is getting in.
Thought, fine, I’ll get some of that expanding foam and fill around the hole.
My kitchen is teeny tiny and the washing machine sits under the worktop with just enough space to get into the cupboard under the sink opposite. There used to be a cupboard built in right next to it, which made getting it in and out an absolute nightmare, but I dismantled that and got one of this little trolleys with a cutlery drawer and veg basket to go under the worktop instead, to make access better. I also got fresh new vinyl put down in the kitchen.
So I thought it was fine, I’d just be able to pull the trolley out, pivot the washing machine around and out a bit, and get to the hole to fill it in.
Only the vinyl was not actually stuck down at the back wall under the worktop, so pivoting and pulling the washing machine has pulled it all up and rucked it up in folds around the back foot of the machine. And I can’t lift or tip the machine enough to pull it out again because of the lack of space. And in trying to rock and twist and move it enough to get it the foot loose I’ve managed to tear a big rip in the vinyl at the front of the machine - where it is visible.
After two and a half hours I gave up and called my Dad. Just because arrrgh! And now he is insisting on coming round tomorrow to help sort it out, with Mum - they are in their 60s so not technically the highest risk group, but there goes social distancing out the window.
Gaaaah.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 14, 2020 17:04:42 GMT
I don’t ever remember this musical going for an overtly Comedic or farcical tone?! There’s a bit that is definitely referencing the Keystone Cops! Ok, technically that would be slapstick rather than farce.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 13, 2020 23:39:11 GMT
Enjoyed this tonight. I saw it from the Donmar, but from an extreme side seat so missed most of the projections - they do work superbly from the front.
I am not quite sure that it manages the balance between noir and comedy - certain bits did get some laughs, but it rarely feels like you should be laughing. Maybe it’s the effect of the lighting - which is absolutely gorgeous, and works incredibly well to delineate the characters and the story of the film script from the real people. But it’s really evoking Noir, which is antithetical to a light comedic or farcical tone.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 13, 2020 8:45:28 GMT
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Post by kathryn on Mar 12, 2020 8:37:16 GMT
The argument is that trans women are - literally - women. Because they identify as women they are the same as someone born female.
Therefore a trans woman can play a female character.
But, someone born female cannot play a trans woman. Obviously, they cannot understand the experience of being trans.
Neither can someone born with male biology who does not identify as a trans woman.
At the heart of this debate I feel like there’s a real philosophical question about what ‘acting’ is. Is it merely pretending to be someone well enough to convince an audience who are suspending their disbelief - ignoring their knowledge that the actor is performing a part, and not really the person depicted? (In fact the ‘person’ depicted isn’t real either, but a character constructed by a writer and director.)
Or is it meant to be a channeling of an authentically true essence? So that it can only be expressed by someone who really is at least close to that person in certain respects. The internal belief of the person playing the part being the barometer of their success, with the audience’s reaction coming from the acknowledgement of that closeness to the essential authenticity. So that the audience is not knowingly suspending disbelief so much as being convinced there is no disbelief to suspend?
And this is all particularly fraught for trans people, because what ‘trans women are women’ means is: there is no disbelief to suspend. Having a non-trans actor successfully portraying a trans character refutes that notion because the audience are suspending their disbelief as part of the process.
‘Trans women are women’ is difficult for those of us who know that we are actually suspending our disbelief in real life. Because if encounter someone who is trans and don’t realise it, if we literally think they are a woman who was born biologically female, then there was no disbelief to suspend after all.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 11, 2020 16:26:55 GMT
It is very easy to bash the press. But they got this story from somewhere. And, if we are to believe what has been mentioned elsewhere, if the story originated from a disgruntled ex who also happened to work on This Morning, then it would have made it's way into the open at some point. . Hmm. The suggestion from Byline is that Dan Wootton picked up the story when he was at ITV studios doing spots for Lorraine, rather than a disgruntled ex actively approaching the newspaper with it. I don’t know exactly where the ‘disgruntled ex was going to sell his story to the tabloids’ story came from - and if it was sourced or merely speculation. It is of course possible that both are partly true - that DW found out about said ex when he was working at ITV studios, either through a direct meeting or workplace gossip, and he was merely a convenient conduit for a story that would have surfaced anyway. But certainly it seems likely that the story as presented to us by Phil and The Sun was motivated by the threat of a much-less-flattering story about his private life being imminent.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 11, 2020 15:11:16 GMT
I get very confused by all this, because at the same time as being told that a trans woman is ‘not a man in a dress’ we are also told that self ID means that literally anyone can be trans, regardless of how masculine or feminine they look or whether they decide to have medical interventions, that it is defined by self ID. In which case, why couldn’t a cis actor play someone who is self-identifying as trans? That’s surely no different than any other type of self-identification an actor portrays. If I recall the film correctly, the main character is biologically male, and expresses their trans identity via clothes and make-up. They don’t have access to hormones or surgery. The trans actor who turned down a role was cast as a biological woman - so would not have been suitable to play the lead, who is biologically male. How many self-identified trans women musical theatre actors who have had no medical interventions - and so will read to an audience as biologically male - and have the acting experience necessary to play a lead role in a high-quality production are out there? Its because saying a trans person is 'just a bloke in a dress' is a derogatory term by transphobes.
There is a network of trans actors out there. I don't really buy the ' He was the only one who could play the role' as a reason to be honest. I think for some roles, you have to be careful with casting and I think in this case, they haven't.
Anyway, its mainly other trans people attacking the casting choice really, which makes me think that they did mess up
It is so very easy to get described as transphobic when you engage in discussion on this topic - even you are sincerely just trying to figure out what the state of play is at this point in time, because it shifts so quickly - that not using any term or asking any question that someone accused of transphobia has used is kind of impossible. As for you not buying ‘he was the only one who could play the role’ - well, it comes down to trust, doesn’t it, since neither of s was actually involved in the casting process. The people involved in the production have made efforts to demonstrate that they cast the production in good faith, to the best of their ability, with the most appropriate actors they could find. I tend to believe them - in part because I like to think the best of people, and in part because I do think we are talking about casting someone who is a minority of a minority of a minority and that has got to mean that there simply aren’t that many suitable candidates around.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 11, 2020 13:00:56 GMT
That is what effectively happened with Rub & Tug, the film Scarlett Johanssen was going to be in, that she pulled out of because of the outcry over her casting.
No-one has heard anything about it since.
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