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The past 7 weeks since I returned from the Fringe have been very strange; busy, but not busy. I've been preoccupied with booking gigs, keen on getting the show back in front of an audience again...but not really doing any actual work on the show. Today, I opened my prop and costume suitcase for the first time since I packed it all away in August, I made some costume repairs, and glued the brain prop back together. This sounds very dull, but it was quite a big step for me. I've been conducting further research into Walter Freeman (the man who popularised the transorbital lobotomy), and raking the show for problems and missed opportunities, and it's led me to a few conclusions;
* There are several moments between speech and music that could link more fluidly. Two come to mind in particular - the moment between 'The One that Got Away' and the third Walter Freeman section. and the moment between the ice-pick lobotomy and the 'Tit-Tape and a Tiara' poem.
* It's clear I need more explanation of the links I'm making between show-business and apocalyse, Tom Waits and Walter Freeman - the bit where I explain 'I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy' feels clunky, and the line after that feels hugely self-indulgent. It was meant to be a call-back to an earlier part where I've quoted JD Salinger's short story about PTSD, but I don't think the link is very clear.
*I've been watching this, I'd love to try something similar, but maybe in two chunks to try and cover the clunky links I'm not happy with....
* There are several moments between speech and music that could link more fluidly. Two come to mind in particular - the moment between 'The One that Got Away' and the third Walter Freeman section. and the moment between the ice-pick lobotomy and the 'Tit-Tape and a Tiara' poem.
* It's clear I need more explanation of the links I'm making between show-business and apocalyse, Tom Waits and Walter Freeman - the bit where I explain 'I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy' feels clunky, and the line after that feels hugely self-indulgent. It was meant to be a call-back to an earlier part where I've quoted JD Salinger's short story about PTSD, but I don't think the link is very clear.
*I've been watching this, I'd love to try something similar, but maybe in two chunks to try and cover the clunky links I'm not happy with....
* As I began writing the show last October, that's where the story begins in my opening poem 'In October everything turned on a dime'. As we are now in the following October, and I've got performance dates booked into May, I'm going to keep needing to add a line to that introduction with every month that passes. I can only hope there enough words left to rhyme with dime. - the first full show is in December, I'll need to write four more lines by then, and it could get very repetitive!
* The show very much adapted to its surroundings at the Fringe, and the shoddiness of the venue and the lack of a tech ended up working in its favour in my opinion. I'm wary of letting the show get too slick and polished, which sounds strange, but a new friend said to me after I'd finished my first Edinburgh show 'Try not to let it get too perfect.' So far I've worked without an outside eye, developing the show with the audience either in the moment, or through the comments of friends afterwards. Very soon I'm going to need an outside eye, and as I don't have access to free rehearsal space, this is going to be difficult.
* I've had a few ideas for developing the role of the band, as they only appear once, and then after a short gag with the puppets (this was developed on the spot with a very receptive audience early on in the run) they don't get involved again until right near the end. One idea could involve some audience participation and another music track, but I think I'll need to try it on a test audience first.
* A few people have suggested that projection would work well in the show. I didn't have those facilities in Edinburgh, but other venues might have a projector, and the original ensemble Tom Waits piece that I devised at LISPA (detailed on January 2016 blog posts) used film projection from a side project that I did alongside the actual devised piece. I've made a very simple powerpoint to illustrate the opening Walter Freeman section, that I will try when I perform an excerpt from the show at Barelesque in November.
I've been fascinated with the extra research I've been doing over this time, I've been reading 'The Lobotomist' by Jack El-hai, and 'Girls Who Wore Black' edited by Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M.Grace. I went back to Berlin for a short visit two weeks ago, and saw a Hieronymous Bosch animated exhibition. I've been listening to a history of medicine podcast called 'Sawbones', and I'm still listening to Waits...
And now I need to open the script again.
* The show very much adapted to its surroundings at the Fringe, and the shoddiness of the venue and the lack of a tech ended up working in its favour in my opinion. I'm wary of letting the show get too slick and polished, which sounds strange, but a new friend said to me after I'd finished my first Edinburgh show 'Try not to let it get too perfect.' So far I've worked without an outside eye, developing the show with the audience either in the moment, or through the comments of friends afterwards. Very soon I'm going to need an outside eye, and as I don't have access to free rehearsal space, this is going to be difficult.
* I've had a few ideas for developing the role of the band, as they only appear once, and then after a short gag with the puppets (this was developed on the spot with a very receptive audience early on in the run) they don't get involved again until right near the end. One idea could involve some audience participation and another music track, but I think I'll need to try it on a test audience first.
* A few people have suggested that projection would work well in the show. I didn't have those facilities in Edinburgh, but other venues might have a projector, and the original ensemble Tom Waits piece that I devised at LISPA (detailed on January 2016 blog posts) used film projection from a side project that I did alongside the actual devised piece. I've made a very simple powerpoint to illustrate the opening Walter Freeman section, that I will try when I perform an excerpt from the show at Barelesque in November.
I've been fascinated with the extra research I've been doing over this time, I've been reading 'The Lobotomist' by Jack El-hai, and 'Girls Who Wore Black' edited by Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M.Grace. I went back to Berlin for a short visit two weeks ago, and saw a Hieronymous Bosch animated exhibition. I've been listening to a history of medicine podcast called 'Sawbones', and I'm still listening to Waits...
And now I need to open the script again.
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