And in the end....


"... the love you take - is equal to the love you make."

The single greatest ending to an album ever methinks, and the only way the greatest band ever could go out ('Her Majesty' doesn't count).

That's me at the end of a long, amazing road, only two more shows to go and my time as a student at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire) is over.  It has undoubtably been the best year of my life and I am sure that the friends, and arch-enemies (only joking), that I have met this year shall remain for many years to come.

So what to do now that it's all over?  Weeeellllll, I have been very fortunate in that the Conservatoire have asked me back to teach their second year students about theatre in education and have also offered me a bit of directing work on their production of Twelfth Night - which is nice.

I also have a meeting with the National Theatre of Scotland in a few days, they have said that they will be taking me on as a freelancer on one of their upcoming projects.  I've no idea exactly what I'll be doing yet but the opportunity to work with such a great company would never have been available to me a year ago, due to the course I apparently, "came on to their radar" and they contacted me wanting to meet up - canna beat that for a bit of luck!  I just hope all the dates match up and I can work for both the RCS and the NTS as they are great institutions and both offering great opportunities.

The thing that is taking over most of my time just now is a new musical I am writing - currently called 'Towards the Moon'.   I've just finished draft one and am pretty happy with it.  One of my fellow directing students, Emily, is now in charge of discussing it with me and getting me to do more drafts and improve it.  I have been provisionally offered a development week at the Conservatoire to work with the piece alongside their musical theatre masters students - this can then lead to many different opportunities but just now it's all about the hard work.  The 2% inspiration bit has been and now it's the 98% perspiration of making demos, writing sheet music and getting a script that works.



It's also the Largs Youth Theatre's 10th anniversary coming up, this is a group I started with my friend Marianne all those moons ago and it has grown arms and legs since then.  They are currently working towards a production of Annie and then we have some really exciting ideas about what to do next year, I've already started a play based on Greek theatre and the ideas are coming together nicely, hope to make something EPIC.

I've also just been working on a new comedy for a wee theatre group - Pint Size Productions - in Largs.  They take over one of the local pubs and turn it into a theatre - so far the productions have been really well supported and I'm really enjoying writing a ridiculous play for them about small town, West of Scotland life - I know a thing or two about it....

And there is also great news about the 3 musicians who I played with under the name One Man Town - when I left to go to Uni they set up Brown Bear and the Bandits and are getting on really well now, doing all the stuff and playing all the gigs that I didn't have the heart for anymore and it's great to see that they are starting to get exciting support slots and gaining recognition on the scene.  Hopefully something will come of it, I don't envy them one bit - I think I've seen enough smelly clubs in Manchester to do me in this life...!

Right... got a couple of essays to write, final piece of academia... hopefully ever.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Amazing Stuff man. Also, I will be an archnemesis an day. Mwa. ha. ha.
15 September 2011 at 06:51

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