new recruits to Hamlet's Elsinore @bubble_squeek @Starandshadow Hamlet

Alongside working over the last few days, I've also been helping out with the Bubbleandsqueek Hamlet production at Star and Shadow.

It rocked.

But more of that later, as they say.

Right now, its fun to show a few of the new inductees to the Court of Elsinore, which was a facet of the production. The woodland grove entrance to the steampunk attic cafe gave people a chance to adapt to the ways of steam before entering the theatre clasping their personal cups of poison. Along the way was a chance to try out the red attic throne of Denmark, and many of the audience were only to happy to try out running the Kingdom. As you'll see, some were quite vociferous in their feelings that something was rotten in the State of Denmark. And there's more pix below - click the to view slide show...

in which I meet a self satisfied door with a Windows memory error

Every so often another example of something from Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" happens to me in real life. Today it was the self satisfied doors to the building's elevators.

There's been that creeping elegance amongst lift designers to try to improve on the basic design. Remember that thing where you press a button, wait a few moments for a lift to arrive, step inside and select a floor?

Too easy.

After installing the helpful voices to call out floor numbers, the next thing has been the removal of the interior buttonage.

We've all experienced these newer designs, where there's a flat panel display outside the elevators.

You press a touch screen to select a floor (or maybe twice if you have -er - hot hands)

The display tells you the next available lift (which in one building I visit is sometimes hidden around a corner)

The lift arrives and you are whisked to the floor on a stopping service with a group of other people. No more ability to see a lift fill up and then select an adjacent empty one to speed past the 'slow service'. Greater chances to see optimally stuffed elevators arrive bursting with people who have experienced a slow ride down 12 or 20 floors.

Today the lift was displaying a message above the door where it usually has the floor number.

It said "Windows Error - out of virtual memory"

We looked glumly at one another as we entered and gritted our teeth for the thought that there wouldn't be another lift along until this one had cleared but this one may now be suffering from unpredictable routing.

Actually, it was fine and we got to the tenth floor successfully.

But as we exited, we noticed the touch screen panel was now filling with white courier ten font writing on a black background and an error message repeating many times, in German. Something about 'eine Fehler'

Bing bong - came the announcement.

"We are sorry to have to report that the lifts at the Southern end of the building are out of action"

An hour later...Bing Bong - another announcement: "We are sorry to have to report that all of the lifts in the building are out of action - please notify security if you need help to leave the building."

I walked down the stairs at the end of the day. I thought I heard the lifts giggling.

“Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.”

As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sigh-like quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!” it said.

Behind the steampunk scenes at Hamlet

Today's little video clip is from a few members of the cast and production for Shakespeare's Hamlet which is being given the 1910 Steampunk treatment. The clips give brief insights into how some of the gang got involved.

I don't have any editing software with me at the moment because I am still on the road, so these are disorganised raw clips uploaded to Youtube.

It's interesting how the cast and crew got together, from a variety of castingcall.com, Facebook, twitter and similar sources.

I know I have a more clips too, but the rest of them are on a Compact Flash card 300 miles away.

Except this test of Hamlet's scene with Gertude after Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius and then sees the Ghost again.

get thee to a nunnery

There's quite some logistics to moving Ophelia to the right spot. It's one of the delicate plot points in Shakespeare's great tragedy, Hamlet.

After Ophelia's father Polonius is mistakenly killed by the mad Prince of Denmark, there's the scene where Ophelia is told to go to a nunnery. Unfortunately, after a period of her own strange behaviour she is found drowned.

It's ruled as an accident, but the gravediggers have another opinion. Of course, it means carrying Ophelia's body in and then lowering it to the right spot. This takes quite some practice and the little clip shows one of the early takes from Saturday's blocking out of the action.

The second little clip is a trial blocking of Prince Hamlet talking to the Ghost of dead King Hamlet.

The whole production will be given the Steampunk treatment by Thursday and I'll be able to edit some footage instead of just uploading raw cuts from a Macbook. ...And I can't resist one of the test runs of the scene where Hamlet and Laertes argue and which leads to the duel where Claudius plots Hamlet's demise (it all kicks off around 2:05)

Hamlet preparations

Friday evening was a six hour drive to Newcastle, to the rehearsals for Hamlet. This is a Bubble & Squeek re-imagining of Shakespeare’s brutal tragedy, with the added whirr of a steampunk interpretation.

The show is being presented in a multi media format with theatre, music and video showing the madness of Hamlet's world. The Star and Shadow cinema is being turned into the court of Elsinore conjuring dreamlike and nightmareish landscapes.

My initial role was to move some extremely heavy 5 foot high bass bins and sofas before settling down for some filming.

THE STAR & SHADOW, NEWCASTLE
17 & 18 November, 7.30pm
Matinee: 18 November, 1.30pm
BOOK TICKETS HERE (but hurry - its almost sold out)

sky drops

I was working out that without counting blogging or email, I've probably written over 10,000 words this week.

Unfortunately, only about 1,700 of them are linked to NaNoWriMo. And by my calculations I just don't have the time to catch up.

Originally, I was going to pass on this year's attempt anyway, because I have a couple of other screeds of unfinished writing. I then drifted into a couple of chapters, but pragmatically I realise I have too much else on at the moment.

On the positive side, my travels are giving me some interesting additional locations to plunder.

screaming and going faster

It's been a hectic week again. I'm mainly by the seaside at the moment and my hotel room overlooks the twists and turns of a funfair.

The view changes constantly too, with sunshine, rain and mist in equal measures.

It's a bit like this week's work, where the plans on Monday are quite different from those by Wednesday.

Sometimes it's a case of scream if you want to go faster.

someone will be banged to rights

I don't usually write about annoying personal things and it does take a bit to rile me.

But how about having your debit card cloned?

Maybe being contacted about it a few hours before starting a business trip?

Someone has been trying to buy things from BT with one of my cards. I gather they try a small purchase first and if it works they buy something bigger. Of course, we'll leave the card running so that the perpetrators get found out and suitably admonished (guv).

Meantime, I have to reset all kinds of things because its one of my main cards. Grr.

That was the same day that someone in a Jeep Cherokee backed into my unattended car. I wasn't there at the time but heard one of those announcements 'Is anyone the owner of a ....?'

Kudos to the three witnesses and the excellent description of the car, the driver, the passenger and the number plate as they drove away without admitting they had done anything wrong.

Processes are in place for both situations.

funny how the distance learns to grow

Saturday night and I'm at a going-away party for a friend.

He's off to Beijing on Sunday to work. It's not that long since I was with a different friend who had a similar plan. Not to Beijing, but instead to Shanghai - hardly in the same vicinity but only 4 hours on the bullet train.

In amongst the drinking and music, the inevitable questions were asked around how/what/why? and some of the people there were expecting detailed explanations. I didn't go along that route and am much more able to settle for the 'It is what it is' type of explanation.

For the moment I'll have to make do with Chinatown in Soho, but it's got me thinking about a visit.

hold your breath till the sun goes down

I was in the supermarket when I spotted the latest edition of Uncut magazine. It's not something I'd normally buy, but the cover with its Tom Waits' Jukebox drew me towards it. Usually it carries quite a few retro articles about (e.g.) how Deep Purple wrote their 1970 hit single "Black Night" (they jammed it as a b-side) or what Bob Dylan was doing in 1976 (Rolling Thunder).

It reminds me of that recently launched magazine that carries slightly old news. There was a copy in a hotel where I stayed recently, and although it was all elaborately printed and typeset, I couldn't really be bothered to read news from the last three months, ending in August.

But I'll make an exception with the Tom Waits article, which was a longish and recent interview as well as the song selections, which feature sufficient bar-rooms, brawls and gasoline references to keep me engaged. I know I reference Mr Waits here from time to time, and to be honest I don't really know how many of his albums I have, except that its quite a lot, including some on vinyl but usually repeated as CDs.

Aside from the lyrics and interesting music, there's often a reason to get the physical packaging with his albums too. Who can forget the cover of Real Gone, with its handy match striker surface? or the little book included with Orphans, Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards? I personally think he missed a trick by not including any glitter or confetti with Glitter and Doom, but the second CD of talk tracks more than compensated.

There's a new album out now too, Bad as Me, but I shall wait until after my birthday before considering purchasing it.

Well, you play that Tarantella, all the hounds they start to roar
The boys all go to hell, and then the Cubans hit the floor
They drive along the pipeline, they tango till they're sore
They take apart their nightmares and they leave 'em by the door
Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out jacks or better on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
Send me off to bed forever more

I appear to be starting a Mexican hat dance for Nanowrimo

The trouble with even thinking about NaNoWriMo is that I then start to think about the plot-line for the next novel.

If it was a completely new story then I’d probably get away with ignoring the whole thing, but as the next one is supposed to be the third part of the Triangle, then the characters are pre-formed.

It means that they start to do things again of their own accord. It doesn’t help that when I was in the desert a few months ago I had a few ideas pop into my head which would fit nicely into book three.

Or that when I was in a rather agreeable hotel in the middle of Santa Fe I worked out a pretty cool idea for a scene which I’ve not seen anyone do yet.

And don’t get me started on the Vauxhall train station plotline that could be worked into the story. I picked that up when we were delayed on an inbound train to Waterloo.

It means that the characters that I’ve left by the roadside on US Highway 163 in are already on their way to the Utah border and might even pick up some horses to cut across the Colorado Plateau.

It’s all getting out of hand and I haven’t written a single word yet.

Then there's those two Navajo truck drivers who have pulled off the road by Mexican Hat and are transferring all manner of things between what appears to be two almost identical trailers. There’s clearly something going down, and it isn’t just a refreshment stop.

Oh, well maybe just a little peep...

no nanowrimo this year?

It's not that I don't want to, but I just can't rationalise doing the NaNoWriMo again this year. My hazy desert picture is indicative of the plot forming in my head.

The thing is, I have two partially complete novels from previous years that it would make more sense to complete.

One is the second part of the Triangle trilogy. It's called 'The Square' and is at that 80% complete status. I still need to write the last 3-4 conventional chapters and then I'd have a reasonable first draft on the basis that I've already polished some parts of it. I already have someone in mind to help me with a sub-editorial review as well.

Then there's last year's effort - which is called 'Pulse'. It's a different genre, but still with a London based theme around it. That's probably more at the 60% stage at the moment and as it involves more countries the various cast of players need to be scooped back into a single area for a sort of denouement.

The thing is, I've already got the hazy idea for the third book of the Triangle series, which happens to be set partly in Arizona. The rationale for the location is like the other ones; pretty much that I happened to be there and I think all the Navajo and pueblo elements can add some other textures.

Did I just hear someone say 'Step away from the typewriter"?