#what i would give to be on staff in 2016 at that theatre and see them deliver lines a little different every night

[joshuawithers]

Hoo roo, Uluru, am I even supposed to be here?

Uluru is such an icon. Its simple beautiful existence is one of my earliest memories, reading about it in encyclopaedias or National Geographic and Australian Geographic magazines. Seeing it in advertisements and in movies, Oprah and Young Einstein, but back then everyone called it Ayers Rock. Today we call it what it always has been: Uluru.

Uluru has had a complicated 200-odd years of history. Before Europeans visited Australia for the first time, the red centre was just plodding along quite well as a special place for the Aṉangu people and neighbouring Aboriginal nations.

But a few years ago everything changed. In the 1870s some white blokes sighted Uluru. 1936 saw the first tourists arrive, 12 years later some tracks that would become roads were laid, and in 1959 Eddie Connellan built an airstrip. His name’s important later on in this story.

I’ve been lucky to witness Uluru’s glory twice now and the main difference since the last time was that in 2016 people were climbing the rock, and now in 2023 every cafe, restaurant, and bar was alive with talk about Uluru from a political point of view. Some talking about the Voice to Parliament soon going to a referendum, some talking about climbing it or why we can’t now, others talking about everything you can or can not do in the area - like drinking and taking photos in certain areas, and most were talking about how the extraordinarily high prices for everything was married to a general lack of enthusiasm from staff for visitors to be present.

Most of my visit this time - aside from creating the marriage ceremony I was hired to create - was spent thinking about a comedic video I’ve seen on social media a few times recently. The premise of the video is that before a theatre performance an MC offers an acknowledgment of country before the protagonist, an audience member, asks if everyone should leave. She says “if we’re on someone else’s land, we should leave, shouldn’t we?” going further to ask if proceeds from ticket sales were going to the owners. It’s a joke at the expense of what can often seem like token or hollow effort to just be better about how Australia, the whole island and surrounding islands, were inhabited by intelligent, valid, interesting humans well before Europeans turned up and started naming things and claiming areas. Not just one group of people called Australia home, hundreds of different Aboriginal nations did.

For a few years the people new to the land were pretty bloody horrible to the locals, genocide-horrible, and in recent years current generations of leaders across the spectrum of Australian society have been throwing around the hot potato of how to deal with this generational trauma.

I was born on the Gold Coast, gifted an Australian citizenship, freedom to roam this entire country (unless there’s some pandemic apparently) and yet thrust into a political debate about being welcomed to a land, land ownership, land use, and land respect.

I’m voting yes for a voice to parliament, I believe it’s the right thing to do but I don’t think it’s the only thing we should do,?I think there’s a far bigger elephant in the room. As native titles are transferred, and places like Uluru fall more into line with the wishes of the owners, what should happen on that land? Should we leave?

1993 saw the Northern Territory government acknowledge the local name of the rock in a dual naming situation, eight years after the land was returned to the original owners, but still today the airport and the resort keep the names Ayers Rock. As you enter the airport you’ll see the name of the original airstrip builder on the building (Connellan) but to be sure not to confuse the tourists the airport you book a flight to and the motel you book a room at are the right ones, they carry the name Ayers Rock. Obviously they’re keen on keeping that revenue, and I’m keen to keep giving it.

But, customer service at most of the stores and businesses is by First National people and despite paying top-shelf prices I can’t help but feel that they’d be happier if we weren’t there. After all, we were on their land and after we set up shop there (and put chains up the rock) we gave it back to them as long as we could stay.

I’m invited to Ayers Rock this week in my capacity as a wedding celebrant by a German couple who want to commit to marriage in an iconic, unforgettable, location. They plan to apply for residency and wanted to have the most Aussie wedding ever: at Uluru. (Photos below)

The location they choose for the ceremony seemed to be ok in my humble Australian citizen opinion. The lines on the side of the road were white (not yellow “no stopping” lines), and the land off the road was unfenced. So, we started exchanging vows about twenty metres off the road and quite soon after an unhappy first Nations lady, driving a Toyota land cruiser and flashing a card that meant she could tell us what to do, told us what to do and to move on. We did respectfully, to the sunset viewing area that she suggested.

But the overwhelming experience of Uluru for my German friends and others we talked to, second to the rock’s overwhelming beauty, is that the rest of us aren’t really all that welcome - but our money is.

Which is a confusing position to leave all of us, including the First Nations people, in.

I have a proposal for all of us to consider. Let’s go all in. If we’re supposed to leave, please let me know. If we’re not supposed to be in Uluru please let Qantas and the motels know.

But if we’re going to stay, let’s work out how we can do that in a way where I don’t feel like I’ve committed genocide by asking for a $30 burger that the menu said I could have if I ordered it.

And if we’ll stay, let’s right our wrongs as a community, as a nation, as invaders, as citizens, and as residents. This middle ground was and is necessary, like birthing pains it has been taking us somewhere beautiful, I just don’t think anyone with the power to decide knows where we are going.

So let’s figure out where we’re going and let’s go there.

[prissyhalliwell]

Summary: Mr. Gold has been working for the dinner theatre company “The Enchanted Forest” for years, performing the same boring show every weekend. Nothing has ever changed, until Belle French joins the cast to play its princess.

~ Winner of Best Mr. Gold in the 2016 TEA Awards ~

Chapter One I Chapter Two I Chapter Three I Chapter Four I Chapter Five I Chapter Six I Chapter Seven I Chapter Eight I Read on AO3

Prompt: They're up on the lights together, both of them needing time away from the rest of the cast.

Prompt: Belle brings in an old photo of her and Gold after a show back when she was in high school and she stayed for autographs. He is delighted she held onto it, but it reminds him of how young she is and, most especially, how old he is.

Chapter Nine

Gold watched in half-amusement, half-concern as Belle paced back and forth in front of him, twisting her notebook in her hands.

They had a meeting scheduled at nine o’clock with Sidney to discuss Belle’s idea. It was only half past eight now, but Belle had made him promise to meet her early, so they could talk things over again. She’d claimed the extra preparation would make her feel better, but Gold was starting to suspect that the extra time was only making her more stressed out.

“What if he doesn’t like the idea?” she asked nervously, pausing to look up at him. “What if he thinks it’s stupid?”

“Then we respect his decision and complain about it in private later.” Gold winked at her, but she didn’t laugh. He reached out and laid a hand on her arm, stopping her before she could start pacing again. “Hey, it’s going to be fine. It’s a wonderful idea.”

When Belle still didn’t look reassured, he gave her arm a gentle pull. He needed to get Belle’s mind off the coming meeting and he had just the thing to do it. “Come along, I have something I want to show you.”

He’d had the idea the other day when he’d been helping Gepetto fix one of the lights. He knew Belle had probably been up on plenty of catwalks during her college theater days, since most theatre courses included some stage crew training.

But to his knowledge, she hadn’t been up on this catwalk.

“Where are you taking me?” Belle asked as he led her backstage.

“I think I know a way to make the meeting seem less scary.”

Belle gave him a skeptical look. “Really? And how are you going to do that?”

He gestured to the spiral staircase behind him. “Fancy a trip up to the grid?”

Belle’s eyes grew wide. “Now?”

“Nothing like being two stories up in the air to put a meeting with your boss in perspective.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but dug her phone out of her pocket, setting it and her notebook on a nearby table. “Alright, I’m ready.”

He set his own phone and wallet on the table as well. It was never a good idea to take any items up on the lights that you didn’t absolutely need. Any employee of the theatre was aware how dangerous a phone or other item could be when dropped from two stories above onto an unsuspecting crew member’s head.

As much as he wouldn’t mind if that person was Killian, he figured it wasn’t worth the lawsuit.

Grabbing a flashlight from the wall, he clipped it to his belt, making sure it was secure before he and Belle began making their way up the staircase.

With Belle following right behind him, he was distinctly aware of how close they were, making him rethink the wisdom of taking her up on the lights. Though it was more dusty than romantic, they’d still be up there all alone.

Suddenly, his brilliant idea didn’t seem so great, after all.

As usual, the stairs seemed to go on forever, but finally they reached the metal catwalk that served as the lighting grid. From there, they could see the arena below them, as well as the front of the stage.

Gold gazed down at the set proudly. No matter how many times he had been up here, he never got tired of seeing it from this view. He probably spent more time walking across that stage than he did in his own house. Far from being his home away from home, Gold realized that in the past ten years, The Enchanted Forest had become his true home.

He was glad he hadn’t quit, and not just because of Belle. Gold never would have forgiven himself if he had left and the company had gone under. He still wasn’t sure what he could do to help, but he would do whatever he could to keep his little theatre going.

He glanced over at Belle, who was busy taking in the view. They stood in silence for several moments, just enjoying the experience. Only a few people were in the building right now, leaving the theatre oddly silent. Most of the stage crew would be in soon, but for now, the two of them had the whole auditorium to themselves.

“It’s like another world up here,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I love the view. I find myself looking at things differently after being up here.”

“I’ve been doing that a lot lately,” Belle said, grimacing. “And that’s without the two-story change in perspective.”

“Anything I can help with?”

She looked over at him, big blue eyes searching his. “I’m...not sure.”

In the low light, he could almost imagine that the way Belle was looking at him meant more than it did. She looked so hopeful, as if he somehow held the key to her happiness.

But that was ridiculous. Only last week she had shot down Marian’s suggestion that they were a couple as a laughable joke.

If so, that didn’t explain why she was looking at him the way she was now. It was almost enough to make him believe that perhaps he had been wrong - maybe there was something there, after all.  

Either way, now wasn’t the time to act on it. If he was wrong, he’d only make things more stressful for Belle before their meeting with Sidney. If he was right...well, he’d hardly want to go to a meeting with Sidney when he could be making out with Belle.

Best to wait in either case until he could be certain. Being safely on the ground probably wouldn’t hurt either. If Belle actually returned his feelings, he could very well swoon to his death from this height.

“We should get going,” he said, breaking whatever spell had fallen upon them. “We don’t want to be late.”

Belle’s expression fell and she nodded. Gold’s heart gave a bit of a flutter. Perhaps he wasn’t just imagining things.

They walked back down to the ground level in silence, concentrating on where they were stepping until they made it safely to the stage.

“I forgot how dusty it is up there!” Belle frowned down at her clothes, brushing them off vigorously. “I look like a dust bunny.”

Gold chuckled as he brushed himself down. “But a very charming dust bunny.”

She shot him a mock glare. “If Sidney starts sneezing during this meeting, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

He held a hand to his heart. “I would deserve nothing less,” he replied solemnly.

Belle rolled her eyes at him, but there was no real annoyance behind it. Gold considered the adventure a success. If his suspicions about Belle’s feelings proved correct, he’d consider it a miracle, as well.

They had just enough time to get to the meeting without having to hurry. As they arrived outside of Sidney’s closed door, Belle grabbed his hand, giving it a quick squeeze.

“Thank you.”

The feel of her skin, soft and warm against his own, momentarily short circuited his brain. “For w-what?” he stuttered.

Her smile sent another wave of warmth through him. “For being you.”

Before he could think of a reply, she gave his hand a quick squeeze and then let it go, raising her hand to knock on Sidney’s door. At their boss’s yell to come in, Gold followed Belle inside, unsure of why he was suddenly much more nervous than he had been only a minute before.

The meeting went smoothly, with both Sidney and Tiana loving Belle’s idea, as he had predicted. He’d known Tiana would jump onboard right away and that she’d tow her father along whether he liked it or not, but Sidney was just as enthusiastic as his daughter.

Once she’d realized her audience was in support, Belle’s nerves had fallen away. They’d spent the rest of the meeting discussing the details and making plans to begin holding classes soon.

As they made their way back to the staff lounge an hour later, Belle let out a tiny squeal, twirling around in place.

“We did it!” she yelled, stepping towards him.

Gold raised his hand, thinking she was moving to give him a high five, and was taken back when she threw her arms around him, hugging him fiercely.

“Thank you again,” she said, the sound slightly muffled by his hair.

“Glad to help,” he managed to say, still unsure of where to put his arms. His brain had several ideas that were incredibly unhelpful, so he settled on placing his hands around her lower back.

She pulled back a short time later, smiling sheepishly at him. “We make a really good team, you know.”

He swallowed. “I’ve noticed. Maybe...maybe we could - ”

August stepped out into the hallway, eyeing their embrace. “Practice is this way, folks.”

They quickly dropped their arms, ignoring the smirk on their director’s face and following him to rehearsal. Gold wasn’t sure if he should curse August’s untimely interruption or thank him for it. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had been about to say, which meant he most likely would have stumbled his way through it as usual. No, it would be much better for both of them if he came up with something beforehand. The day would be busy getting ready for the performance, but perhaps after the show had ended, he might be able to steal a few moments with Belle to finish whatever he had been about to say earlier.

His time seemed to come later in the lobby that night as the lines of audience members began to dwindle. He made his way over to Belle, who was talking to the last three fans in her line. He recognized them as the teen girls who had visited previously, and silently hoped that they would be leaving soon so he could talk to Belle alone.

As he drew closer, he saw one of the girls hand Belle an open book. The contents of the book must have surprised Belle, because her eyes grew wide, her mouth forming a small “o”.

“What’s that?” Gold asked, curious about what had caused such a reaction.

Her eyes leapt up to his. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, holding what he now recognized as a yearbook closer to her chest. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

The blonde teenager snatched the book out of Belle’s hand and held it up to him excitedly, pointing to a photograph on one page. “It’s a picture of you and Belle!”

Gold’s eyes zeroed in on a teenage Belle standing next to a slightly younger version of himself, clad in his chancellor costume. She looked so young, beaming up at the camera, as the “younger” him, looking old enough to be her father, gave his typical perfunctory smile.

“Splendid,” he said, his stomach sinking. “I’m so glad you showed me this.”

Author’s Note: Apologies to whoever sent in these wonderful prompts! I think Tumblr ate the original asks, so if either is yours please tell me and I’ll give you credit. Also, huge thanks to @b-does-the-write-thing for teaching me about lights. She is the only reason anything in this chapter is accurate.

[lezziemanville]

Fic Start: BERENA “The snow could melt and go”

[[[ Note: this is unfinished but a holiday fic I was writing last year ]]]

——

“I’m sorry Miss Campbell, but there aren’t any trains out of Gatlinburg tonight.”

Clarence never liked giving bad news. It was a personal goal of his to keep his customers happy. He had always prided himself on his ability to bring even small amounts of cheer to the gloomiest of customers and to diffuse difficult situations. He hadn’t earned his title of bell captain at Cotsmere, one of the most prestigious lodges in all of the Smoky Mountains, for being subpar. This time however, faced with the unmistakably attractive but very irate Serena Campbell, he couldn’t help the fray of his usually stoic demeanor.

“Of bloody course, and why would there be? I don’t suppose there’s some sort of car service you can recommend - or is that impossible as well?” Miss Campbell’s voice was a low rumble and her steely gaze was fixed upon him, her mobile clutched white-knuckled between her fingers.

“I, well, I… with the snow… it’s making it… Miss Campbell, it’s just that, it’s Christmas Eve —“, he scrambled at explanations, excuses which he offered unhelpfully, as though the intelligent woman before him had no idea that a major holiday had chosen this particularly trying time in her life to arrive upon them.

“I know what day it is!” Miss Campbell interrupted, before shaking her head furiously and winding her inappropriately cheery Christmas scarf around her neck, “Oh for — nevermind, I’ll walk if I have to.”

“But Miss Campbell - it’s 26 degrees Fahrenheit out there! You’ll freeze!”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Serena stop!”

Clarence’s head swiveled to the grand staircase that emptied into the lobby, watching a slim blond woman in what looked like pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved shirt taking the steps down two at a time. The last three stairs she skipped altogether and in sock feet rushed after Miss Campbell who had just been swallowed outside by a gust of snow speckled air that sucked into the warm lodge from the frigid cold of evening.

He watched the blond hesitate for only a moment at the door before bracing her bare fingers against the frozen door frame and following the agitated woman out into the night air.

“Serena, wait!”

Clarence slowly let the tension out of his shoulders as he sagged forward, hovering over his computer and frantically thinking of how he could turn this special night around for a very unhappy customer and her… sister? friend? cousin? who had just dashed out into what was quickly becoming blizzard conditions, very underdressed.

———

December 20th, 2016

“Oh Bernie,” Serena said breathlessly as she looked out the window at the glorious landscape of the snow-covered smoky mountains stretching around them, “had you any idea it was this beautiful?”

“Oh yes,” Bernie replied so softly that Serena turned to look at her, feeling a prickle at the back of her neck when she caught Bernie’s gaze upon her, and not on the enchanting picturesque scenery passing by as their train winded around the mountainside.

Serena smiled shyly, eyes downcast a moment before turning back to the window, “It’s… I suppose I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Well that’s not surprising seeing as you only invited yourself along on a whim!” Bernie answered, sounding all too smug about it.

True, Bernie was right. The plan had come about rather unexpectedly only three weeks prior when decorations were beginning to pop up around the ward at Holby City’s AAU department.

Bernie had been eating the tiny candy canes faster than Serena could hang them on the tree, and she’d almost banished her from the ward until she’d finished putting up the Christmas cheer.

“How on earth do you get through your own decorating, if you can’t so much as lift a bulb to a tree here?” Serena had asked, not all that annoyed if she was honest, since Bernie had at least carried the boxes up several flights of stairs from the storage cupboards down in the basement, instead of taking a porter away from possible patients in need.

“I don’t decorate,” Bernie had answered simply, picking at the plastic cellophane sleeve of yet another small candy cane before bringing it to her teeth in an attempt to rip the packaging. Several unsuccessful tries later, she snapped it in half.

“Really, you don’t decorate at all?” Serena hadn’t really expected Bernie to be a decorating type, but she’d at least thought she’d perhaps dabbled as a mother.

“Not even when your children were little?”

Bernie popped the curved end of the candy cane into her mouth and crunched a little, “Marcus had the edge in that department. I wasn’t always around for Christmas and when I was, I usually ended up getting in on Christmas Eve and when I arrived, it had already been done.”

“Gone for the struggle of tangled fairy lights, but there to appreciate a hall-decked home?” Serena rose an accusatory eyebrow but the smile was ever present on her lips.

“Something like that,” Bernie smiled back and held out a star-shaped ornament, which Serena took and found a place for on the very old plastic tree.

“There we are. That’s it for this elf,” Serena dusted her hands off and stepped back to look at the slightly lopsided, thinning fake tree. It wasn’t the most inspired Christmas tree in Wyvern, but it would do the trick with a cash-strapped NHS and no budget for splashing out on new festive decorations.

Bernie gathered up the spare tinsel from the floor, and the odd ornament that had lost its hook over the years, popping them into one of the cardboard boxes and lifting it. Serena walked alongside with an admittedly lighter box as they made their way back to the basement.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Serena asked conversationally, using her elbow to activate the door release button. Bernie pushed through it and stood to allow Serena to pass through the open door.

“Oh, I was… well, I was actually planning to go to America,” Bernie said, as if it were the most normal thing she could possibly do, like popping out to grab a curry for dinner.

“America?” Serena was shocked. She knew Bernie was a traveling woman but hadn’t expected her to go that far on a measly week off. Especially without having said anything to her, unprompted. Granted their friendship had been a little strained as late.

They walked alongside one another down the corridor, Bernie peering around the large box in her hands and Serena helping to steer her out of the way of oncoming hospital staff, “I’ve always wanted to go to the Smokey Mountains in Tennessee and well, what with my children, very much otherwise engaged, an ex-husband who makes me out to be the ghost of Christmas past, and an empty apartment - seemed this year was as good a year as any.”

“Ah,” Serena said quietly.

Bernie turned her head to study the brunette who had gone uncharacteristically silent all of a sudden.

“What about you?” Bernie asked and Serena didn’t look at her but opened a door to the stairwell with a little more force than was needed.

“Oh, you know, had booked the week off, expecting Eleanor and Jason at home for Christmas this year, but despite my greater efforts, which were rather reaching to begin with they’ve both made other plans, and I’m looking at a completely empty home for the holidays. To add to that, I’ll be owing Ric Griffin a cornucopia of favours over the coming year for having him cover AAU, vacation days I can’t even get out of at this point.”

They navigated the stairs together, easily enough, but slowly.

“Oh, well. Gives me time to catch up on this Netflix everyone’s been talking about for years,” Serena added, distancing herself from the quickly falling mood.

“Oh, well…” Bernie started, unsure of what to say really. Of course she couldn’t ask Serena to, come with her could she? That would be overstepping the boundaries of friendship, wouldn’t it? And what if she said no? Why would she say yes? They were friends of course. Just lovely, good friends until she’d gone and kissed her very good friend on the floor of the operating theatre. They were friends still, but there was a new everpresent tension lingering between them. She’d changed things and made Serena uncomfortable. So now they were friends, but with this one memory wedged between them that neither talked about directly but both seemed to instead avoid at great lengths. And then beyond the kiss on the theatre floor, beyond the tension that followed them from hospital hall to office and home - beyond all that, it was America. It wasn’t merely taking the ferry to France for a daring weekend excursion.

“Yeah,” Serena continued, “Not an exciting trip to America is it?”

“No,” Bernie started. It almost seemed like Serena was prompting an invitation but surely she was misreading the situation though? She couldn’t…

“Serena,” Bernie stopped in front of the door to the basement, just in front of Serena who hovered over her a few steps up, “Look, I don’t want you to feel pressured, but —“

“I thought you’d never ask,” Serena beamed down at her, then descended the remaining stairs and brushed by her, swinging the door open, “If you could have your itinerary to me this afternoon I can make arrangements.”

Bernie smiled to Serena’s turned back and nodded, “Right, good.”

——

[yoshimotokouki]

[SUMABO NEW YEAR SPECIAL REPORT] Yoshimoto Kouki's First Fan Event 'Yoshimoto no Moto' Part 1

05.01.2018

Yoshimoto Kouki who appeared in “Hyper Projection Engeki - Haikyuu!! Summer of Evolution” and is also an active reporter for NTV’s ZIP! held his first ever fan event in Space SF Shiodome, Tokyo on 16 December 2017. We will report on the first half of the event and include photos.

(Yoshimoto Kouki-san holding his first ever fan event ‘Yoshimoto no Moto’)

From his debut stage in 'Patalliro!’ in 2016 as a part of the Tamanegi Troop to the 'Hyper Projection Engeki - Haikyuu!! Summer of Evolution’ (as Bokuto Koutaro of Fukurodani Academy) that was in theatres last summer, Yoshimoto Kouki gave a lot of energy to his acting. He appears as a regular model in the men’s magazine 'FINEBOYS’ to showcase his style and is also a reporter in NTV’s ‘ZIP!’

In the opening movie before Yoshimoto-san appeared, he narrated a video showing on the screen precious photos from his baby pictures to his school days as a baseball player with a buzz cut! There were also photos of Yoshimoto-san cooking, modelling activities and older private photos that made all his fans cheer out of joy. It was when all his fans’ applaud reached climax that Yoshimoto-san appeared from behind his audience! After looking at them, with a smile, he greeted everyone: “The day has finally come! I hope I could have the most wonderful time with you all today!”

From there on, a fun talk segment started with Terasako Mori-san as the MC. Regarding 'Yoshimoto no Moto’, Yoshimoto-san said “I want to make this a place (event) where I can feel as if I came back to my parents’ house as a 'source of energy’ in my actor life. I want to let everyone know a lot about me, and to make this meeting an enjoyable time for everyone.” And with that, the fan event continued.

Going back to the opening movie when it showed Yoshimoto-san cooking, he said “When I first came to Tokyo and started living on my own, I was so clueless and I couldn’t even do the laundry or cook by myself.” When I thought “wow, mum is awesome!”, I wanted to be able to do housework by myself and I worked as a part-timer in a cafe and learned cooking. Yoshimoto-san who is good at fancy cafe-meshi (light meals served at cafe) asked his fans “What do you think about men who cook?”, his audience responded with a big applaud to which he said “I’m glad to hear that, I wish I could serve my cooking to you all.” He made such a remark that boosted his fans’ expectations for his future events.

For the first time in his actor career, Yoshimoto-san played the role of Bokuto Koutaro from Fukurodani Gakuen in 'Engeki Haikyuu!!’ “Actually, at the beginning, I didn’t know the story of 'Haikyuu!!’ as I’ve never read it before. But when I got the chance to audition, I read all the manga chapters and watched the anime episodes and got hooked! I felt a connection with Bokuto and when I went to audition for his part, I was confident that I could play his character well. I was totally charmed by 'Haikyuu!!’ and with each passing performance, I was told that I became more and more like Bokuto even in real life. I began to understand that this is what it means to become an actor, and it became an important thing for me.” Yoshimoto-san stated.

Following the talk segment, Yoshimoto-san was challenged to demonstrate the acting skills of an aspiring actor! As chosen by fans in the audience, Yoshimoto-san showed improvised love confessions in the segment titled 'Ba-dump Theatre’ and acted out on different situations depending on the theme. That was the start of a fun segment where the fans would either accept or reject his love confession, depending on whether his fans’ heart went 'ba-dump!’

The first theme was 'the volleyball captain and the female manager.’ When there were only the two of them left behind the gymnasium, the volleyball captain played by Yoshimoto-san said “I’ve been able to give my best everyday thanks to you.. and before I noticed it, I’ve been looking at 〇〇-chan more. I like you. Please go out with me if we win the next match. I will do my best until 〇〇-chan falls for me” - what a manly confession! This confession got a unanimous 'accept’ from the audience.

The next theme was 'the teacher and the student.’ Yoshimoto-san played the teacher and the fans were the students who had to stay behind after class because of failing grades. As the situation continues, Yoshimoto-san started asking silly questions after questions. At the end, he asked “Who are the students who kept failing and giving me a hard time?” To which they said “It’s me.” Yoshimoto-san then said “That’s right, it’s you. But I can’t just leave you alone, so you better stick with me.” And with that he patted their head! It received cheers from everyone while Yoshimoto-san was feeling shy, and of course, the confession got an 'accept’ from everyone.

(At the 'Ba-dump Theatre’ where everyone’s heart was pounding)

Moving on after the 'Ba-dump Theatre’, a new corner called 'Yoshimoto Challenge’ began. 'In order to become a star, one must clear any challenge in one go’ - so a penalty game started where Yoshimoto-san must answer the questions correctly. To start off, a timer was set to ten seconds in which he must answer the question. If he gets the answer wrong, the punishment is 'Sunshine Ikezaki-san’s full power impersonation’ where he will laugh and shout “A man who loves Kansai and is loved by all of Kansai! Sunshine Yoshimoto!” with full power at the venue.

(Showing off 'Sunshine Yoshimoto’ at full power)

The next game was 'Kendama one-shot game’ in which he had to shoot the ball into one of the kendama cups in one go. Yoshimoto-san who failed this game had to do the penalty game 'Face rubber stretching game.’ He had to bite a large rubber band at one end, and his fan had to hold the other end. When the fan let go, the rubber hits Yoshimoto-san’s face vigorously! “It’s really scary! (lol) Everyone in the entertainment industry is awesome” said Yoshimoto-san who had to experience the rubber stretching game. It was a game that brought laughter to the audience by sacrificing Yoshimoto-san’s body.

At the end of the event, as a present to the fans, a 'Yoshimoto-san photoshoot with the audience’ corner also took place. Yoshimoto-san made a lot of various poses as a response to the requests of his fans. He also drew a lot of illustrations on the merchandises available for purchase in the goods section. The handmade parts of the merchandise were prepared by Yoshimoto-san for all his fans to enjoy.

In addition to the fan event, Yoshimoto-san’s 2018 calendar was also released. “I had photoshoots with various themes so I would be glad if everyone could place my calendar in an area where they could always see it next year” Yoshimoto-san commented. Talking about his 2018 stage projects where he is appearing again for 'Patalliro! ★ Stardust Project ★’ and 'Hyper Projection Engeki - Haikyuu!! Hajimari no Kyojin’, Yoshimoto-san enthusiastically said “I will be playing the same role as I previously did for the both of them, but I would try to bring more power into my stage acting.”

“The event was so much fun. Knowing that my fans came from different places just to come see me will be a source of energy for me from now on. I am going to work hard to give back to everyone. This is the kind of day today has become for me!” Yoshimoto-san stated. “I would also like to extend my gratitude to the event staffs who all worked together to make this event possible.” He added. And as his final remark to end the first part of Yoshimoto no Moto, he exclamed “Hey, hey, hey!”

(Hey, hey, hey!)

After the first part of the event has ended, Sumabo went straight to Yoshimoto-san for an interview! The interview and comments video(?) will be uploaded in the coming days.

Yoshimoto Kouki’s 2018 Calendar and his bromides that were on sale on the venue will also be available to be purchased online around mid-January. The details will be announced by Yoshimoto Kouki when they have been decided so please expect it soon.

For the latest information regarding Yoshimoto-san’s future projects, please refer to the official website of each performances and his official Twitter account.

☆ Information

■ Stage play 'Patalliro! ★ Stardust Project ★’ <Tokyo performances> 15 - 25 March 2018 @ The Galaxy Theatre <Osaka performances> 30 March - 01 April 2018 @ Morinomiya Piloti Hall ≪Official Website≫ http://www.nelke.co.jp/stage/patalliro2018/

■ Stage play 'Hyper Projection Engeki - Haikyuu!! Hajimari no Kyojin’ <Tokyo performances> 28 April - 06 May 2018 @ Nippon Seinenkan Hall <Hyogo performances> 12 - 13 May 2018 @ Amashin Archaic Hall <Fukuoka performances> 18 - 20 May 2018 @ Fukuoka Convention Centre Main Hall <Miyagi performances> 25 - 27 May 2018 @ Tagajo City Cultural Center <Osaka performances> 01 - 03 June 2018 @ Orix Theatre <Tokyo performances> 08 - 17 June 2018 @ Tokyo Dome City Hall ≪Official Website≫ http://www.engeki-haikyu.com/spring2018/

■ For the latest information about Yoshimoto Kouki ≪Official Twitter≫ https://twitter.com/ysmt0817 ≪Official Instagram≫ https://www.instagram.com/yoshimotokouki/ ≪Agency Profile≫ https://furutachi-project.co.jp/profile/yoshimoto/

Source

[zhantesblog]

3)Research and analysis into brand structure (making a brand)

A brands is more than just a logo; Although it might help with the brands identity you have to take into account other factors such as the vision and purpose, the customer-who is the target demographic?, price- how much are these products being sold for?, products- what is being sold?, place- where are these products being sold (online or in store), promotion-How are these products being promoted? and the packaging.

Vision and Purpose

The vision and purpose is at the heart of every successful brand. It provides businesses with guiding principles and values for the development and delivery of their brand and its outcomes.  A vision and purpose can range from serious to life-changing or just a bit of fun. It helps us to create a deeper meaning into the context of a brand.  In order for a brand to be successful, the vision and purpose must be authentic and the brand must live up to its values from the way it treats its staff to the products it sells and the way it speaks to their customers.

”… the most important brands in the world make you feel something. They do that because they have something they want to change. And as customers, we want to be part of that change...

Yes, we admire the product they make. But the thing we love most about them is the change they are making”  

David Hieatt 

SELFRIDGES Vision and Purpose:

“Our vision is to be the destination for the most extraordinary customer experience, and our people are central to achieving this. Team members across our business maintain our vision through the values we live day-to-day and the unique Selfridges spirit we bring to every project.”

Sourced from: https://careershub.selfridges.com/members/modules/job/detail.php?record=153

Image taken and found: https://envirotecmagazine.com/2020/08/17/selfridges-unveils-ambitious-initiative-incorporating-new-retail-models-and-an-attempt-to-shift-shopping-mindsets/

Selfridges is a shop run on imagination: a place where the world’s most covetable brands combine with the most extraordinary spectacles, events and ideas for an experience like no other. Selfridges began when Harry Gordon Selfridge moved from London from Chicago in 1906 with his heart set on opening his dream store. Selfridge had a revolutionary understanding of publicity and the theatre of retail and with this knowledge, Selfridges Oxford Street opened its doors to the public for the first time in 1909 and has two more stores located in Manchester and Birmingham. In 2016 Selfridges was the first ever store to be awarded the title of ‘World’s Best Sustainability Campaign by a Department Store’ in line with its focus on buying better and inspiring change and on three unprecedented consecutive  occasions in 2010, 2012 and 2014 also won the coveted ‘Best Department Store in the World’ award, underlining its place at the forefront of retail.

“Here at Selfridges we have 5 values which are the core of everything we do. They are the way we do things, they are actions not words, our moral code and guide how we behave. They are what holds us together and gives us authenticity and integrity.”

WE OWN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

WE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND DELIVER

WE SHARE OUR KNOWLEDGE

WE LEAD AND INSPIRE

WE SHOW RESPECT

Sourced from: https://careershub.selfridges.com/members/modules/job/detail.php?record=153

To secure the vision and purpose of any brand you must take these questions into consideration:

Is it a good idea?

Is it a new idea? 

Is it scalable? 

Will people want it? 

What change will it bring about?

Does it matter to you?

Does it matter to your customer?

How do you know?

Is it good for the planet? 

Is it good for the human? 

What is your niche? 

Is it a common problem? 

Does this problem need solving?

Do you love it?

Brand Identity

A brand identity is what makes your brand recognisable to your customer and how you want your brand to be perceived.

Brand Identity is created by bringing together:

Brand name.

Logo.

Slogan or taglines.

Tone of voice.

Colour palette.

Typography & graphic styles.

Visual identity.

These form a ‘toolkit’ or guideline which is to be applied across your entire brand.

LEVI’S brand identity:

Images sourced from: https://www.behance.net/gallery/40403081/Levis-Brand-Identity

Levi’s has a clear and distinctive logo that is pushed across throughout all of their branding and promotional front. It’s made very clear to their audience that they are an all American brand. The colour red is consistent and used throughout behind a brown background and two horses on their tags to create that rustic western look and feel.        

Customer

A successful brand puts the customer at the heart of everything they do. You can’t know your customer by relying on Google searches or reports. The only way to really get to know your customer is through reaching out to them and getting to know who they are.  In order to create lasting brand loyalty you must understand the past, current and future needs of our customer – where are they now and where will they be in 5, 10, 15 years. 

To begin you can consider creating a customer profile through the use of in depth questions such as:

Where do they shop and what do they buy? 

What do they do for a living?

What kind of income do they have?

What does their family life look like?

Where do they live?

How do they socialise?

What kind of holidays do they go on?

What car do they drive?

What media do they consume?

Why are they your customers?

What can you do for them?

Identifying your competitors is a great way to help gain more insight into who your customer is. Identifying your competitors means that you are able to identify what your customer expects in a product and what your customer will expect to pay for the products. If there is a brand that traditionally serves your current market but are now not doing well, this could be an opportunity for you to see the flaws that these brands are making and use this to do things differently and adapt how you interact with your customers and If there are already similar offerings on the market doing well, this demonstrates that a market exists for your products.

In our research it would be useful to conduct a survey of people from our chosen target demographic, to help gain a better understanding of our customer which will be useful in shaping both our brand and the type of products we want to sell.

GLOSSIER Customer:

Image sourced from: https://transparencydigital.ca/owning-customer-relationships-glossier-case-study/

“If we can engage customers further up the [sales] funnel and earlier in product development and brand strategy, we will be in a position to create what people actually want,”  

Glossier’s president and CFO, Henry Davis

Image found and taken from: https://mireillebobbert.medium.com/aarrr-startup-metrics-applied-to-glossier-a-story-about-the-user-journey-of-a-lifetime-2f287d0c3d93

Image taken and found from: https://www.slideshare.net/ChrisOrcutt1/glossier-customer-needs-and-persona

Customer engagement- 

Glossier’s SVP of marketing, Ali Weis has developed Glossier’s marketing team and strategy with one goal in mind: to truly understand and serve their customers. Weis has said, “We were able to test, learn and scale our structure and processes with the customer as our ‘true north’.” Weiss focuses more on customer engagement than traditional bottom-line results. This means that Glossier didn’t go down the traditional route of spending huge amounts on advertising or offering discounts and special promotions. Glossier’s cult-like following is a result of customers feeling like the company was created just for them and, in a way, by them. Because of this, their customers are made to feel like they are co-creators of the brand .Beyond the standard product development and performance measurement teams, Glossier in addition to this have what they call a Customer Experience Team- which embodies the heart and soul of the company. They are the eyes and ears of the brand, constantly collecting feedback from their community of customers and assuming responsibility for creating the best experience possible with the brand. Glossier has made it a top priority to make sure the customer’s voice is always heard and have built a structure that keeps the customer front and centre through the process.

I believe that this is a good approach in helping to build customer morale and engaging closely with your target audience. It makes them feel included and as if the products are made with them in mind- it becomes more personal. I believe that when creating our own brand, me and my group should look further into this and try to use this approach to make our customers feel more connected to our products and to create a better engagement rate with them.

Price 

The method of how you plan to trade your product will also impact your pricing significantly:

Wholesale: You produce a product and sell it to another retailer.

Wholesaler: You buy a product produced by somebody else and sell it.

Direct to customer: You produce a product and sell it directly to your customer without the middle man

A few of the factors affecting price include but not limited to are:

Economic factors & physical limitations.

Value perception.

Price psychology.

Although you might start as Direct to Customer, your margin should also take into account the potentially to wholesaling your products. Not taking this into consideration could end up with you losing money if you decide to work with a retailer in the future. You tend to make less in your margin by wholesaling, however, having your product in well respected retailers can be a great marketing strategy. Not only could it introduce your product to potential new customers, it will also add value to your product/s. You can look at is as it as a stamp of approval. Large and global retailers have also invested heavily into their online stores and distribution meaning your product will be able to reach new international markets.

Here are some economic factors to consider: 

Retail model. 

Marketing you are selling to.

Cost to develop product. 

Cost to produce product. 

Material costs. 

Packaging costs. 

Taxes / VAT. Exchange rates.  

Shipping costs. 

Marketing costs.  

Store overheads. 

Staffing costs.

Perceived value

Brands tends to adjust pricing which reflects their customers perception of a products value.

Things that can add perceived value to your product include :

Packaging Social media campaign 

Catwalk/fashion show 

Ethical/moral interests of the brand eg. Sustainability  

Materials used 

Ecommerce experience

Instore experience

Press coverage 

Brand heritage 

Celebrity endorsement 

Availability 

Pricing Psychology

Brands use strategies to influence customers to spend money. Through a variety of psychological pricing strategies, stores are specifically designed to encourage you to spend more than you intend using this tactic can help drive sales. These techniques are not limited to retail stores but are also very effective when applied to other industries as well.

Psychological pricing involves setting prices lower than a whole number. The idea behind psychological pricing is that customers will read the slightly lowered price and treat it lower than the price actually is. An example of psychological pricing is an item that is priced £2.99 but conveyed by the consumer as £2 instead £3, treating the £2.99 as a much lower price than paying £3.00. This is called charm pricing.

 Psychological pricing techniques come in many forms. Four examples of psychological pricing strategies include: 

Artificial Time Constraints

Limited time sales where everything is half price or a quarter of the price for a set amount of time- we can see these tactics in action on sites like boohoo and pretty little thing. This is known as artificial time constraints. Stores place these restrictions on their sales because they act as a catalyst for consumers to spend. If your customers believe that the sales are only temporary, they’re more likely to make their purchases today, rather than next week. This creates a sense of urgency and makes the customer feel as if they have to buy something in fear of missing out on these deals.

Charm Pricing

Charm pricing is the official name for all the prices ending in 9’s (£1.99) Studies done by researchers at MIT and the University of Chicago have shown that prices ending in ‘9′ creates an increase in customer demand for products.

Image sourced: https://www.nayax.com/psychological-price/

This phenomena is driven by the fact that we read from left to right, so when you encounter a new price at £1.99, you’ll see the ‘1′ first and perceive the price to be closer to £1.00 than it is to £2.00. In essence, ending your price in a 9 convinces customers that you’re offering a great deal even when in actuality there's not much difference. 

Charm pricing can also have the opposite effect with more higher end products. While prices ending in ‘9′ connote a “value price”, prices ending in ‘0′ suggest a “prestigious price.” So, if you’re selling more valuable items such as a diamond ring it would be wise to end the price in a ‘0′ to give your customers the impression that they’re paying for something that is expensive and worthwhile.

Innumeracy

According to a study done by researches at the University of Minnesota, most people would prefer to spend money on items labeled as ‘ Buy one get one free’ as opposed to ‘50% off two items’ even though the two options are identical (buying two items at 50% off is the same as paying full price for one and getting the second free).

Image sourced: https://www.natalieoshea.co.uk/buy-one-get-one-free/

This phenomenon is known as innumeracy, where consumers are unable to recognise or understand fundamental math principles that they apply to everyday life. 

Price Appearance

The design of your prices have a tremendous impact on how your customers perceive the value of your products. Many Restaurants for example will most likely be in a much smaller font and won't have the added zeroes at the end of the prices. They’ll be presented as ‘19′ instead of ‘£19.00′.

The reason for this is because longer prices appear to be more expensive for consumers than shortened prices, even if they represent the same number. This is due to the fact that subconsciously, the longer prices take more time to read. This effect is compounded by the use of a ‘£’ sign for prices. Not only does it make the price longer, but it also firmly relates the number to consumers’ wallets, which increases the idea of being more expensive.

Product

It is essential to select the right products for your customer.

When deciding on the type of products you want to sell you must consider:

If your product is timely and relevant?

If your product is responding to a need or a desire?

Why would a customer want to buy this product? Is it desirable?

Always refer back to your customer and your vision and purpose.

There are two routes for sourcing a product:

Product development: This is where you design & manufacture your own product.

Product buying: This is where you buy and sell products that have already been developed by a brand. 

The two most common product types are seasonal and continuity.

Seasonal: Product developed to be sold for a short period of time. 

Continuity: Also known as carry over, this product is sold all year round.

Place

 It is important to consider:

Where you want your brand to be seen.

Where your products will be sold.

What your store (physical or digital) will look and feel like.

How your products will be displayed?

What experience do you want your customers to have?

Every business must consider where they want their customers to interact with their brand. In todays retail environment this does not necessarily mean a physical place. Due to the current pandemic it would be a good idea to consider focusing on selling products mostly online. Although a web store can be much cheaper than a physical shop, you have to be aware that all elements of your online presence should be cohesive and communicate your vision and purpose clearly.

There are still a lot of costs associated with having an effective web store though. You have to make sure that your website is not only visually engaging but that it is updated regularly and that there is enough information about all of your products to assist the customer when purchasing their product.

Due to companies like ASOS and Amazon offering same day or next day delivery for free, expectations of online shopping are increasing and many small brands cannot compete with this.

You also have to take into account how your customers are going to find out about your website and even physical shops will always have a certain amount of foot fall so it is important to consider how you promote your place.

“Generation Z enjoy visiting malls, seeing people, socialising and being with their friends”

Robert Conrad, professor, LIM College

It is important not to assume that all Gen Z customers will only want to shop online as 67% still prefer to shop in stores. However, the way they shop is different from previous generations. Gen Z value technology, and want to push old boundaries.

The current pandemic has shifted many businesses focus when considering Place as global lockdowns are enforced. However, this doesn’t mean that an online shop is enough to keep customers engaged.

Due to the loneliness and digital burnout that consumers are currently facing due to the pandemic, businesses should consider how they can create a “third space” for consumers to foster an idea of community.The pandemic drove a shift from traditional high street shopping to a focus on supporting their local communities and independent businesses.

Image sourced: https://bcuadvantage.co.uk/grow/ways-to-support-local-business-this-christmas/

Promotion

How are you going to stand out?

While online tools like Instagram, Shopify and Depop have made it easier to start an online business, attracting attention from potential consumers to your products has proven difficult. Acquiring customers in this environment requires a level of creativity and ingenuity as social media is flooded with so many brands both old and new competing with each other for noticeability.

In order to successfully promote your brand you should have a detailed plan in place which covers all areas in:

PR:

Press Release.

Target publications.

Collaborators.

Influencers.

Events:

Customer events.

Industry events.

Marketing:

Advertising including photoshoots.

Media partners.

Digital marketing:

Website.

Editorial content.

Social Media.

Agree a hashtag.

Multi-media content.

Images sourced from: https://sendpulse.com/support/glossary/cross-promotion

Brands that have common interests and audiences that aren't competing with each other can cooperate for mutual benefit- this is referred to as cross promotion. This is a great way to promote products as it allows pre existing customers from one brand to be introduced to yours. According to Partnerize’s research, 54% of companies mentioned that partnerships drive more than 20% of total company revenue.

Cross-promotion is a convenient and profitable way to promote products. Because it is quick and effective, cross-promotion became especially popular during the financial crisis. If a partnership is built right, it can help double your audience. Companies exchange knowledge and ideas, give advice, and mention each other in articles on their websites, social media pages, and in emails, all while developing their promotional programs.

The main benefits of cross-promotion include:

An influx of new leads

Increased brand awareness

Increased sales

Audience growth

Lower advertising costs

Improved reputation

Packaging

Product packaging is an important customer touchpoint. Packaging can highlight and determine the value perception of your products to the consumer. Cheap packaging=Cheap product. Packaging can also form a significant element of your cost price which will also affect your retail price.

Environmental factors play a huge role when deciding on how you will package your products. What is the packaging made out of? is it sustainable? Is it cost effective? These are some of the things you have to take into consideration when thinking about how you're going to package your products.Looking at where and who is manufacturing your products can also have a significant impact and is also important to research and look into.

The type of product and method of sales (online or in store) will drive and determine your packaging needs.

Image sourced from: uk.Mimmosa.com

Brands use packaging families to ensure a consistent look and feel across their products. The colour used throughout your packaging is an important tool in growing brand recognition. 

Luxury brands invest heavily in packaging as part of the sales ritual.

[anettetheresepettersen]

【Critique in the Front Line】Between public and private: theatre performances through the school system—A field note from getting lost and soaked in search of the arts

The design of Norwegian elementary schools is made with a very specific set of users in mind: teachers, staff and pupils (and to some degree, also their parents). They are all usually introduced to the school building at the beginning of term, and after this everyone knows where the different rooms are, where to go and who to talk to. In Norway, the schools also have a secondary function as art venues. Where and how does the art critic and criticism more generally fit into this programme?

The Cultural Schoolbag: Art experience for all pupils

Since 2001, Norwegian school-age children have been introduced to professional art on a yearly basis, as a part of the public school. The project is called “The Cultural Schoolbag” (TCS), and it is a national project where the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education and Research collaborate. The idea is that all school children are to experience professional art and culture of all sorts:

The programme gives pupils the opportunity to experience, become familiar with and develop an understanding of professional artistic and cultural expressions. The activities must be of professional quality and cover the entire cultural spectrum: film, cultural heritage, literature, music, performing arts and visual arts.[i]

In the beginning, the programme included the first ten years of education, but in 2008 it was expanded and now also includes high school. This means that children experience art and culture every year, through their 13 years of elementary education.

Norway is a rather small country, with approximately 5.3 million inhabitants. These people are spread in cities and villages along a long coastline and in valleys and highlands and forests. The politics of governing Norway is explicitly decentralised, and this also goes for TCS. Norway reduced the amount of county councils from 19 to 11 in 2020. These are usually responsible for regionally programming, but some municipalities have also developed their own programmes. The funding of the programme is made possible through allocating lottery funds from profits earned by Norsk Tipping (the Norwegian state lottery operator), in addition to funding as well as administrative powers from the county councils.  

Since 2016, the organisation Kulturtanken – Arts for Young Audiences has had the national responsibility for the programme and allocating the funds. In 2019 the total amount received was NOK 285 million.[ii] I started on a PhD project in September 2019 where I will be researching how youth experience performing arts through this system. I will explore performative, creative and critical writing as a means to gain empirical data to my project. In addition to gaining data, I am interested in how critical, performative and creative writing with the arts can be used by youth. I am curious as to how the specific TCS context forms the audience, what sort of spectatorship it produces, but have at this point in my research no data to analyse. This essay is based on my observations and experiences through my practice as a critic and are more anecdotal than scientific.

The critic in/out of the loop

As I have written about previously in my article “The critic as an uninvited guest” (2018),[iii] the critic or the researcher is an odd figure in arts contexts with target groups such as children. When the performance is explicitly not aimed at you, how are you to judge relevance or quality? And even more so when the performances take place in spaces that are not always specially designed or even adapted for the arts. Through TCS, all children in Norway, of all classes and backgrounds, are introduced to a wide variety of arts expressions. Several of the country’s main art institutions either tour their productions with the TCS system, or have daytime performances or exhibitions for pupils. The geographical nature of Norway, with schools quite literally spread all over the country, has also led to an extensive touring system with art productions that only tour the TCS. The productions are public in themselves, but the performances (each viewing/showing) are closed for the public. Whether they take place at a school or at a theatre, these performances are usually not open to the public.[iv] As a critic, this has made it difficult to gain access—or even get information about which performances will be touring, or premiering, where and when. There is no press contact, no newsletter, nor any calendar with information on up-coming premieres. TCS and the schools have developed systems with culture contacts in the schools, as well as local or regional administrative contact persons whose task is to maintain communication between the schools and the artists. Kulturtanken has been working on a new online portal that will make the communication flow easier, for both the schools and the artists. As a critic, on the other hand, one is not really in the loop.

Watching performance in school

In my experience, the arrival of the critic at a TCS production is usually unannounced. One tends to have made an appointment with either the central programmer or the artists. This information is usually not forwarded to the art venue: the school. Finding the location for the performance can prove to be a more time-consuming task than initially thought. Just finding the right entrance at the school often takes five minutes (there are usually few or no signs indicating the way to the main entrance). The school has few outside visitors, so why should they?

This winter I ventured on a trip to an elementary school in the southern part of Norway to see the theatre performance Balladen om Reidun Robertson og Steven von Gutenberg (The Ballad of Reidun Robertson and Steven von Gutenberg). The production/performance was made by a theatre that calls itself “The Other Theatre” (Det Andre Teatret). The theatre is based in Oslo and their performances are usually based on improvisation. Upon entrance of the school, escaping the pouring rain outside, and finally locating the right entrance, I asked a child if she knew where the administration was. “No”, she promptly answered. “How about the teachers’ room, then?”, I asked. Upstairs, she pointed. In the administration, no one knew about the performances taking place, but were more than happy to find out for me and point me in the right direction. I ventured out in the rain again, and once again relied on pupils to find the right building and entrance. There were no signs or posters indicating where to go or when to enter, as the schools have their own systems that they don’t need to announce: Everyone there knows how it works. So, I sneaked inside, found a place at the back of the auditorium, in order not to block some of the young spectators’ view.

Two pupils were already present, as well as a couple of teachers; preparing and organising. A teacher arrived, followed by a class of children. He stood next to a row, pointed inwards and shouted the number of a class. The row quickly filled up, and the teacher moved about the space, indicating and shouting, and within few minutes, the rows were packed with children, laughing and talking, taking off their wet jackets and scarfs and hats. On stage, two children gathered, together with a performer, and quietly welcomed everyone (both performers and children) and hoped everyone would enjoy the performance. And thus, the performance could start: The lights were turned down, the performer in place, and music started playing. Comments on and imitations of what was said on stage was heard throughout the entire performance. Since the performance was based on improvisational methods and interactivity with the audience, a lot of the comments were welcomed from the stage and included in the plot, and other times ignored.

Watching performance in theatre

When I recently attended a children’s performance in a public theatre, on a Saturday, the dynamics were different. As far as I could see, none of the children present came without one or several adults. Be it parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts or other caretakers; the children were accompanied by adults. Next to me was a mother and her two sons, out of which one of them was very bored (by his own statement). He kept creeping onto his mother’s lap, whispering loudly, “It’s not fun anymore, can we please leave?” Upon which, his mother responded that he had to concentrate, or she tried to point at things on stage, and exclaimed things like “Look!”, or “Wow!”, in a desperate attempt to make the performance fun or relevant to her son. No such look, as far as I could hear or see.

In my experience, be it public performances or TCS performances: In theatre for children, there are usually comments or questions from the audience. In public theatres or venues, the questions and comments are directed towards the accompanying adult, whereas in TCS they are shared among the pupils or directed towards the stage. How this specific way of watching performing arts— “watching others with others”, to lean on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Rachel Fensham[v]—affects the art experience is something I hope to learn more about through my research. Perhaps young critics and writers could reflect on this, from their own perspective. For all I know, this might influence them less than I, as an outsider and professional spectator, expect them to.

Performances for TCS

After nearly twenty years of TCS, we still know fairly little about how the programme has influenced the children and their relation to the arts. During the children’s and youth theatre festival Showbox in Oslo in December 2019, a panel of seven teenagers discussed performing arts and teenagers. Early on, they all concluded with the following: “The most important thing in performances is to feel something.”[vi] TCS is, as mentioned, a collaboration between the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education and Research, and it is stated in the programme’s goals that TCS should 1) help ensure that students are given the opportunity to experience professional art and culture, 2) make it easier for students to experience, become familiar with and develop an understanding of all forms of artistic and cultural expression, and 3) help ensure that artistic and cultural expression is aligned with educational objectives.[vii]

“Educational objectives” is a wide description and could perhaps also include the Kitchen Table demand: learning through emotions. From a critic’s point of view, the performing arts programme certainly gives the children the opportunity to become familiar with, if not “all” forms of cultural expression, at least a vast amount of it. There are for instance several productions and artists touring in the TCS programme, that also tour extensively internationally and are a part of the general contemporary theatre and dance context.

Among them are the performance Garage by Cirka Theatre, which this spring has eight planned performances at Dansens Hus/House of Dance in Oslo for TCS. The performance has also toured to festivals in Italy, France, Germany and China. During the international ASSITEJ Artistic Gathering festival in Kristiansand in September 2019, several of the festival productions were also made available for TCS. Apart from Garage, the programme includes performances such as Vanity of Modern Panic by Gunilla Lind Dance Theatre and Playful Tiger by Barrowland Ballet. The national contemporary dance company Carte Blanche and theatre and dance companies like NIE Theatre, Panta Rei Dance Theatre, Jo Strømgren Company and Yngvild Aspeli/Cie Plexus Polaire all tour their productions both internationally and within TCS.

Most of these performances are touring productions that travel around the country and perform the performances locally (either at the schools or at public theatres or cultural houses). But some of the productions are not tour-friendly, so to speak, and rely on the pupils traveling to the theatres. Among these productions is the main stage musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at one of the national theatres in Norway. Pupils in the sixth grade in Oslo also have the possibility to be taken on a tour to the programming venue Black Box Theatre where they are introduced to the different elements of a theatre, such as lighting and sound design.

In this way, children are introduced to a wide variety of arts expression early on. They are introduced to different ways of approaching dance and theatre, and knowledge of and experiences with art is thus no longer restricted to those who can afford it or have family or caretakers who introduce them to it. Whether one chooses to seek out the arts in one’s spare time, or even choose it as a professional career, is at least made available as a choice everyone can make an informed decision on.

Art criticism in TCS

In addition to administrating art, TCS also includes some introduction courses to criticism. I have myself taught in one of these courses developed by music critics Ida Habberstad and Hild Borchgrevink, as well as developed my own course on criticism of performing arts. In one of the county councils these courses have been coordinated with the schools, and the pupils have had the possibility to write a review as a part of their exams. One of these programmes took place in the spring of 2017, when the administrative center of the county council had invited four critics from literature, film, music and performing arts to develop introductory courses. We all met and shared previous experiences with this, as well as tools and tasks. Through this, a total amount of 741 pupils from five schools were introduced to criticism as a part of TCS. After the courses, the pupils attended a festival where they saw performances, readings, concerts and films. Those who wished to do so could then write about their art experiences in a review on their school exam in April.

On other occasions, the schools and critics have collaborated with local newspapers and texts written by some of the pupils have been published. This year, the Norwegian Critics Association, Kulturtanken and the online magazine Periskop (which is dedicated to critique, debate and journalism on art for children and youth) started a joint project. In the fall of 2020, three critics with background from literature, visual arts and performing arts, will develop a workshop on criticism. This will be a pilot project with the working title “The Critical Schoolbag” which aims to invite the youth to explore formats of criticism.

Through TCS, all children and youth are introduced to the arts, but the public debate surrounding the art in this specific context still has a way to go. Who are to write about this art, and on what grounds? How could criticism by children and youth look like, in what formats and for which readers or listeners? Through my research and the pilot project “The Critical Schoolbag”, I hope to explore these topics further.

[i] The Cultural Schoolbag. (n.d.). This is the Cultural Schoolbag. Retrieved March 18, 2020, from https://www.denkulturelleskolesekken.no/english-information/this-is-the-cultural-schoolbag/

[ii] Approximately HKD239,013,754 (as at 16th March 2020).

[iii] Pettersen, A.T. (2018). The critic as an uninvited guest. In A.T. Pettersen & M. Veie (Eds.), Criticism for an absent reader (pp. 82-93). Oslo: Uten Tittel Forlag.

[iv] Exceptions are made here. Sometimes the schools buy/get tickets to evening performances where the pupils watch performances alongside “regular” spectators. Some local festival performances are included in the TCS programme, as festivals also tend to have daytime performances and pupils become a (rather large) part of the festival audience.

[v] Fensham, R. (2016). Affective spectatorship: Watching theatre and the study of affect. In C. Stalpaert, K. Pewny, J. Coppens & P. Vermeulen (Eds.), Unfolding spectatorship: Shifting political, ethical and intermedial positions (pp. 39-60). Gent: Academia Press. pp.54.

[vi] Kitchen Table Talk at Showbox in Oslo, Norway, on 5th December 2019. The festival is held at the main avantgarde theatre scene in Oslo, Black Box Theatre, and it is arranged by Scenekunstbruket (Norwegian Network for Performing Arts for Young Audiences). It is a “nationwide provider of performing arts for young audience in Norway”, and the organisation is also a part of the European project called “TEEN2”, which is responsible for the Kitchen Table Talk. It should be added here that I have been part of several projects initiated and/or led by Scenekunstbruket, and that I was part of the European project “TEEN” through which the format of the Kitchen Table Talk was developed.

[vii] The Cultural Schoolbag (n.d.). This is the Cultural Schoolbag. Retrieved March 18, 2020, from https://www.denkulturelleskolesekken.no/english-information/this-is-the-cultural-schoolbag/

This essay was originally published on the website of International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong), on the 27th of March 2020. The essay was a contribution to the column of Critique in the Frontline.

[cunyappliedtheatreblog]

Countdown Profile : Week 2 Brennan O’Rourke (’21)

Photo: Lauren Pratt

What are you up to these days, Brennan?

Right now, in terms of applied theatre work, I work for two organizations. One is called Arts for All. And I work with young ones: second graders. A lot of the work is literacy-based, through artistic expression. And I see that more broadly than just language acquisition. I see that as also social-emotional learning, and we can broaden it to other subjects as well, like math. I think a lot about working as a team and drawing on the assets of the young people in the room. Do they like to dance? Do they like to sing?

The other thing is called Project Reach Youth. I do sexuality education and theatre facilitation. In sexuality education I bring a lot of this applied theatre work with me. You know, we [show] little skits and sometimes ask them to improvise or make a short little scene. We talk about songs and music lyrics and the way that affects how we think about sex and sexuality. That’s with high school students, schools in central Brooklyn mainly. And then—we have an afterschool program—after school, I work with high schoolers and they make scenes about what they care about. Often that looks like peer education around sex and sexuality. So, around HIV prevention, STI prevention, birth control methods, gender and sexuality…but it also looks like whatever they want it to be.

The last [project] that we did was about climate refugees. Our theme was “Let’s Unpack That.” We started talking about packing and what does it mean to unpack, and then we got to moving. And we got to: some people choose to move and some people are forced to move. And they got interested in why people are forced to move. And so then we started thinking about natural disasters, and climate refugees came up, and they made this really beautiful scene…a lot of the work that I’ve done in the program started to help me in figuring out how to support them make the best scene possible, to get across the ideas that they want to get across.

And actually, through the [applied theatre] program, a few folks and I are in talks to maybe bring something together around queerness and applied theatre work. It’s still in the beginning formation, but we’re working on that, chatting about it.

What would you say to someone who was like, “oh, I’m sorry, this is a sexuality education program, you shouldn’t be working on climate refugees.”

Family and forced migration affects people’s heath in different ways, so, actually, those things are linked: our health is linked to our ability to find shelter, our ability to have insurance…our lives and the way that we live our lives or are forced to live our lives directly impacts our health and our sexual health. We’re seeing that crisis play out at the border and also affect our young people differently as well.

What did it take/does it take to be able to hear and learn what the young people’s interests actually are and to able to respond to them, as you have done?

What I think we’re good at is collaboration. At the center, there’s a lot of staff. And we also have young people who are seniors in high school, they work with us on the staff. They help us come up with these themes. And in working together, I found that I have started to really get to know them better. And I facilitate with a young person, as well. They're called senior assistants. My senior assistant and I, we facilitate together and then we usually meet after every session and talk about how it went. You know, we did a little graffiti board of, what does "let's unpack that" mean? We started talking about what is really interesting to us. But also, that senior assistant can check in with other people, the young people in the group, and be like, hey, how did you feel? And so we get to understand the ways that they like to work too, not just about the ideas but like, do they like making images? Or do they find that really restrictive? Do they like soundscapes? Do they like just improvising?

We found that this group really, really loves improvising. We brought some other different methods then that they've ended up really liking because they gave it a try. I think it's also about gaining respect and trust. Like, I'm willing to try their ways and give it a shot. And not assume that I have all the knowledge or the expertise in the room. And rely on them: hey, how do you want to work this today?

This is a beautiful place for you to be. You get to practice things you care about. Dialogue, relationships, immense creativity. A really grounded commitment to their health and well-being.

Yeah. I love it.

Oh, and justice, too. I imagine that they wouldn't bring up social justice topics if they didn't sense that it was going to go somewhere. So I feel like that's a good resonance for you, too.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. How did you get here? Tell people about where you come from.

I grew up in Kansas. And then I think my childhood, my teenage years really like informed me. My dad has schizophrenia. So I from a young age...I was learning about oppression. I didn't have those words to name it. But you know, I was learning about how people treated people differently because of something they have no control over.

And to be clear, people were treating your dad differently, because he was schizophrenic.

Yeah, correct. And at times me as well. But definitely my dad. Examples of…people wouldn't let their kids come over to our house to stay the night. Right? Very simple things. But at the time, I didn't quite fully understand. All of that is to say that I think my desire to do the work started from learning about oppression from my father.

When I went to college, I was at NYU and I wanted to study theatre and molecular biology. I was interested in drama therapy at that point. I slowly realized that being a therapist wasn't for me. I started getting involved in student activism and started thinking about the theatre of the street and how protest and performance inform each other. And then that slowly became for me....protest is one way that makes change. For me, it can be exhausting and really hard to do that work. And so I became more interested in the grassroots, community-based approach to meeting people, having dialogue, because that's the way I thrive. And I think that that's an important part of social justice and making change. We need the folks out there everyday protesting, folks fighting for abolition and…policy change, too, right?

But that work also requires cultural work. And I think we as applied theatre practitioners, we're cultural workers. And I think, if we don't have the cultural work, the small grassroots cultural work...this time is evidence of that, right? A lot of people thought there was tons of progress being made. And then 2016 hit and all this “progress” went away. But really, there wasn't as much progress as we thought, because we were ignoring a part of the work. And I think that's the cultural work that needed to be done. Not everybody was ignoring that. There are tons of people out there doing this work. But I think particularly a lot of white folks that I know sat on this idea that, you know, "we've made all this progress, we're doing so well." And I think that for me, as I got involved in student activism and things like that, this cultural work became how I saw I could make the most impact.

And so that's kind of where I came from. And then my academic advisor in undergrad told me about this program. I looked it up and I applied. And actually, that's how I found one of my jobs. I found it through the MA in Applied Theatre listserve. Yeah. The job at Project Reach Youth, somebody had placed up the job.

Photo: Salomé Egas

Now, where is all this taking you? Where do you see yourself in five years?

I came to the program wanting to do work with queer youth and potentially intergenerational work with queer elders and queer youth, and maybe even more specifically trans- and gender-nonconforming youth and trans- and gender-nonconforming elders. I was really...that's that was really what I was thinking as I came into the program and I still think that's a large part of the work that I want to do. But having been in the program and making friends in the program and starting to make connections with other facilitators that might have expanded it maybe a little bit more now.

I'm not 100 percent sure, but I do think at some point my work will take me back to Kansas. They just passed a nondiscrimination policy in my hometown's Board of Ed, Wichita, an LGBTQ nondiscrimination policy that includes gender and sexuality, which is exciting. And I think it would have made a difference as a person growing up.

And so and there's a lot of opportunities there and potential training that might be coming up. I feel like that might bring me back there.

I have this dream of opening up a queer center in my hometown, a place for community, a sober place because I think a lot of spaces aren't sober. I'd love to see that as well. Particularly for young people, right? Young people can't participate in spaces that aren't sober, or they end up doing and, you know. Yeah. So I think that at some point I feel like my work might bring me back there.

I really also love to travel. So I'd love to do that.

Wait, hold on a second. In dreams unfurled—I don't care about practicality—what would it feel like for a young person walking into your center?

I would love to have a little cafe. I was in Ireland in January 2018. And they have this thing called Outhouse. And it had this little cafe that supported the space. I would love to have a little local cafe shop that helps support/pay for some of the bills and provides jobs for folks that need jobs.

I'd love to have rehearsal space for some queer groups in Wichita. I'd have tutoring or help with school. Health services. If my biggest dream was to come true, it'd be an all-inclusive space where folks' social and emotional needs are being met and also an organizing space to organize for justice that is queer, that is intersectional, that is rooted in Kansas.

I went to the Pride Youth Theater Alliance conference in July of this past year. And I think what was so inspiring and exciting is that they talk about, “we want queer people to be able to live where they live.” Right? Queer people in rural places should feel safe and comfortable and happy to live there. And some people are living there. And I think a lot of the...rhetoric that I had growing up is like, "queer people don't live in the Midwest" or, "don't live in the country. They live in the city. And if you're queer, you go to the city and it's super like accepting and liberal and progressive and you'll be fine." And what I really found coming to New York when I was eighteen was the same people exist everywhere. And actually, there are more people here. And so actually, I probably experienced more hate or more things like that or the nasty looks or whatever, here, than I did there because I was in my car most of the time in the Midwest. So, you know, I think, for our young people, particularly knowing that they can live in the space, that they can be here and that they have the power to make change. They have the power to organize, to fight for what they believe in. And I didn't get that growing up.

You've really created a beautiful picture. What would be your dream title...I don't mean this in a corporate sense, but like what would you be called, like, "Oh, that's Brennan, the..."

Oh, my God. Um. I would love to see myself live to be a trans elder. You know, live a long life. I want to be known for...I used to say this a lot, but in the work I want everyone to feel seen, at least once, because I think the feeling of being seen can be really life-changing, even if just for a moment. "Trans Elder who Makes People Feel Seen." Something like that.

"They who make people be seen." "They Who See."

"They Who Notice." Something like that.

It's full circle: you leave home. Study and articulate your philosophy for theatre, community, and justice. Practice the work. Return home.

Yeah. Yeah. I think one thing that also informs all of that is my family. I really think living with a person who has a mental illness and also being raised by my grandmother…[she] gave me a sense of…I knew what right was. I knew what justice could look like and I...if it wasn't for my grandmother, I don't think I think I would be here doing this work. She taught me to question and to build critical consciousness from a young age. It was not "kids should be seen and not heard." It was, “learn to question at a young age.” That was a skill that she gave me that really informs why I am here today.

Courtesy of Brennan O’Rourke

Is there something that she would always say like, "oh, grandma always said...?” And what would that be?

Oh. I mean, it’s not related to that, but we were always "two peas in a pod."

Oh, come on! That's so sweet.

We were very similar. Still are very similar.

She's still alive?

Yes, she's still alive.

Okay. Good. Thank you. Is there anything else you would like people to know?

No, I think that's good. I've done enough talking.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much, Michael.

[thotyssey]

On Point With: Carmen Sidemi

This hilarious drama queen-turned-drag queen is taking over NYC nightlife one venue at a time. Dishing it all about her drag family and the pros and cons of everythingin the biz, it’s the fabulous Carmen Sidemi!

Thotyssey: Hey Carmen! How was Gay College Tuesday at the Ritz this past week? You guest performed while your mama Terra Hyman hosted. Carmen Sidemi: Oh! It was so much fun, We had two amazing DJs, Steve Sidewalk and Mikey Mó. I also never realized how hot The Ritz gogo boys are until last night -- definitely some serious eye candy. Of course, working with Terra Hyman, my drag mama, is always a kiki.

They are cute there on Tuesday nights! Like, the only twinky gogo boys left in NYC, it seems. I was thinking the same thing. Someone posted about how all the gogo boys are so big and muscly nowadays. So now, I can tell them where to find the sexy twinks. Though, if you know me, you know I LOOOVE a big set of arms and thick fingers. Lol, there's something for everyone in this city! 

So Carmen, you're at that point in your drag career where you're starting to pop up everywhere.

Definitely, that’s what I love about NYC. It has certainly been a crazy year.

How long have you been Carmen now?

I've been doing drag since late July of 2016, and my original name was Shaneeda Blank. I changed it to Carmen Sidemi about 2-3 months after starting drag. In the beginning when I only saw your name on Facebook, I pronounced it "Suh-dem-ee," like you were some Polish deli or something. I laughed when I first heard it out loud. HAHAHA. Yes, I’ve gotten that before. I have so many great stories about people trying to pronounce my name. Sheila Tack gave up trying and just called me Barbara. And during the Invasion on Fire Island, the host announced me as Carmen Si-Demi. I milked it with a big laugh, mimed "Inside Me" as best I could, and she got it along with the crowd. It was a great moment.

That's the key to a great drag name!

I agree. I love when it takes people a second to get it.

So, where's you're hometown, and what were you like growing up? Oh, man! Well I'm a Florida native, born in Pembroke Pines, and I grew up in South Beach until we re-located back P. Pines in my early teens. 

Growing up, I was -- and still am -- very dramatic. About halfway through awards shows, I start pretending like I won and end up sobbing in the mirror, giving full acceptance speech realness. My bedroom was a place where I could be myself and live my fantasy! 

In school I loved attention, but was always battling with that because at the same time I didn't want to be noticed -- people made fun of me for being feminine. It felt like a constant game of tug and war.  

However, I have to say I was so lucky because my parents and family loved and supported me always. I also had/have two childhood friends that are still so amazing. That's important, I'm glad for that! 

When do you come to NYC? 2009, when I went to the one and only AMDA. I left for a year and a half after graduation for some theatre work, and then moved back in 2013. All of that feels so long ago, OMG! Every drag queen in the city went to that school, it's crazy! Do you know any queens on the scene today that were in your classes? She's a newer queen: Chola Spears. We were best friends in school. We lost touch, but then I saw her out one night in drag and we are living. 

I didn't go to school with Marti Gould Cummings, but I remember during orientation seeing her picture on the alumni wall with some of the greats that came out of the school. So crazy how things come full circle.

 How did you meet Mama Terra?

Oh god, that was the beginning of it all, I feel like. I work at the West End, and when I started there a few years ago they had such a great lineup of amazing girls! Terra was hosting a competition, Brita and Sasha Davenport were hosting "C'mon Wednesday," and Alexis Michelle and Schwa de Vivre were hosting "Super Woman." Terra and I quickly became besties, and would hang out all the time at her place and play video games and Catan till 4am. That group of girls really introduced me to NYC drag/nightlife and made a huge impact. From there, I met Jasmine Rice LaBeija from the RRRRRRoyal Haus of Labeija, and she really took me under her wing and helped me SO MUCH! That's a great pedigree! What was your first number in drag, do you remember? I actually still use it sometimes, It was a "Letter of the Day" inspired number, and the letter of the day was “C.” Then it goes into basically calling everyone a cunt. 

Oh werk, so you had the funny mixes on day one!

I love working and making mixes, and telling a story from my own perspective, if you will.

You're quite a high energy queen, splitting and death-dropping and constantly moving... were you always a dancer?

I can just see the eye rolls from these shady queens in regards to me being called a dancer. People use the word "dancer" very loosely, in my opinion... no shade. 

I did always love to dance; I took about four years of salsa in middle/high school before getting into tap, ballet, etc. But I'm very humble when it comes to calling myself a "dancer" because it's not something I do often, lol! But I will split the house down for sure, henny!

You did a great number for Miss Lady Liberty this summer... it had, like, five wig and costume reveals! I always think about how stressful it must be to keep track of the timing of all those reveals during  numbers like that. Not to mention having  to waddle out there in the beginning like a human lasagna with all that shit bolted down so it doesn’t look like five reveals! GIRL! I had HAD IT that day. I was being such a bitch because I was so hot, and no one understood because I was trying not to spoil it. As far as timing: the song I used was pretty easy to find the timing, so it just made sense to me. It also helps to rehearse the costume and wig reveals at home couple times. I do love watching those videos; my ass looked so good that night, lol! Th next time I did Lady Liberty, I decided I wasn't going to put too much pressure on myself and just do something simple. It was actually one of my favorite performances. Of course I did do a costume reveal!

Sometimes it just takes one reveal to sell it! I like the light blue flowy, witchy robe thing you wear. Are you a designer/seamstress of your looks? HAHAHA. Oh, My summer Poncho? I bought that fabric in every color. I can draw clothes, and can sew basic things, but I'm certainly not a seamstress. I learned a few things from a costume designer in Florida, and even MORE from Jasmine Rice... YouTube helps too! Every drag queen knows, or should know, stretch fabric. Here that, queens! Generally speaking, I feel like you are a like a drag queen’s drag queen. A lot of other queens in the city are really into what you do!

I wanna shout out to some people who have excepted me so open-heartedly to the drag community, and taught me so much! They were booking me when I had no experience! Terra Hyman, Jasmine Rice, Lola Michele-Kiki, Dusty Ray Bottoms, Marti G. Cummings, Brita Filter, Ari Kiki, Tammy Spanx, and Kizha Carr. I'm so grateful to know these talented people. 

An amazing group of queens! 

Did you go to Drag Con?

I DID! My very first one. I went on Sunday and was so lucky to get to work the Gypsy Wigz booth. They styled a beautiful custom-dyed wig for me, and I just pranced around enjoying all the drag. My best moment was eating a chili dog while walking the pink carpet. If anyone thought I didn't have talent, now you do. 

Yas Mama! So, it's about that time of the season when local girls start to disappear on a Mystery Cruise, while by sheer coincidence Drag Race starts filming in California. It seems like throughout the past few seasons, there have been more and more New York girls disappearing... and if our collective hunch is correct, nearly half of Season 10 will be New York queens competing. And on top of that, now we're gonna have a new show to watch exclusively about NYC drag, Shade! Is this an exciting time to be a queen in NYC, or is this all kind of a lot? I can't F******* wait for this season! I definitely think right now is an exciting time for drag in many places, but especially NYC. I'm so excited to see so many girls I know, work with, and respect on Shade. It’s really going to get to showcase what queens really experience when choosing this as a career. 

It's funny, I always hear people say "Drag Race fucked up drag,” and I can understand that perspective. But we also get to see so many new shows pop up to make up for the girls who might have other things going on.

Well, you certainly got stuff going on that we should talk about! First off, you've been giving shows at Icon in Astoria for a bit, and now you have a Weekly 6-9pm Sunday spot there, Stay Drunk Sundays. Love that show name! How do you like it at Icon? It went through a change of management and a huge revamp not too long ago.

I love Icon. The staff and the owners have been so generous to me, I'm so grateful. I heard about a few horror stories from the past, which I won't dwell on because no one involved has any ties to the place, so all I'm gonna say is: come back and give it another try. Especially Sunday! How many chances do you get to go out after a boozy brunch, put on some heels that we provide, do at least 30 seconds of a number, and you get a shot? It's such a good time. Two weeks ago, a straight man and woman celebrating their engagement with some friends came by, and THEY ALL did a Spice Girls number. I've had a few new queens pop in to do a number. It really is such a safe space for everyone. Oh, and they have 2-4-1 drink special from 5-8!

And your show there sounds like a lot of fun. As for Thursdays, we can find you hosting Gayme Night at Atlas Social Club with Scotty Em.

Yup, I just added Gayme Night on Thursdays to my weekly schedule. We finally got rid of that bitch, Holly Box-Springs. LMAO, I’m just kidding! To spill some tea, we actually went on two dates before either of us did drag. I love that girl. 

But back to Atlas, I'm there Thursdays for trivia and all sorts of games, 8-12. We give away drinks, special prizes, and JUST added a few gogo boys to serve up trade realness. I'm thinking of new ways to make it my own; I want to have a Twister tournament one night! That would be fun! Another drag Holly, Ms. Dae, used to host "naked" Twister at Phoenix! 

OMG! I love her, she has one of the BEST senses of humor.

Okay, anything else?

No special events, other than my two weekly gigs I have right now. A few things are up in the air. It’s funny, I like to call myself the "Sandra Bullock of Drag," because a lot of my gigs are super last-minute bookings if someone can't make it! Which, girl, I’m grateful for! So, I would encourage following me on Instagram or adding me on Facebook to keep up with where I'll be. Last question: What's the worst thing about drag for you, and what's the best? The worst part of actually being in drag is, sometimes, the corset after three hours. But I would say that really the hard part -- and this is gonna sound cheesy -- is battling with myself to not compare what other people have going on, and just be proud of my friends AND myself.

 It's hard sometimes, because its rare when you work in a field where your friends are your colleagues. When we aren't in drag and go out, most likely I'm kiki'ing with other queens. But a lot of the times, we are competing [in pageants or weekly competitions] for cash money. So you’re rooting for your friends, but trying to pay your damn rent. 

The best part about drag, and why I started doing it... simple. I get to conceive performances that tell a story from my perspective. I get to do it on my own time, on my own terms. And when people laugh and cheer, it makes me so happy. I feel understood. A few times the audience will be enjoying a number so much, it will make me hesitate on my next line, because I get so excited. 

But we've all had those nights when the audience is looking at you like your fucking crazy, which is also exciting because its an opportunity to make new choices that you wouldn't have made otherwise.

Thank you, Carmen! Awesome! Thanks so much for having me on your blog!  

Carmen Sidemi hosts “Stay Drunk Sundays” at Icon (6pm) and “Gayme Night Thursdays” at Atlas Social Club (8pm). Check Thotyssey’s calendar for other upcoming gigs, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

On Point Archives 

[jo-shanerome18]

Herculaneum & Pompei

17/05/2018: We left this early morning to walk to Roma termini, needing to catch the seven twenty Freccia Rossa to Naples, followed by the first available Circumvesuviana train to Pompei Scavi.

Jumping straight on the train, Cec questioned whether we were on the correct one. "Yes" was Jo's reply, pointing out the board informing travelers of the final destination, Napoli.  Then the thought crossed Jo's mind, "why did we have reserved seats when there were no seat numbers?" Shane got off and looked at the info board back in the main part of the station. Damn, Cecilia was right! We were on the regional train to Naples not the fast train. It was a mad dash to get off the train and scurry the seven platforms to get on the correct train. Apart from the big money difference there was a huge time difference between the two trains, one hour compared to three hours! Thankfully we made the change of trains with five minutes to spare, sat back in somewhat more comfort and speed than the regional train and enjoyed the ride.

Our fastest trip in Italy. Made it to 300

The arrival of the train at Napoli Centrale was smooth and on time, an hour and five minutes after departure. Following the signs to Garibaldi Station where the rattlers would take us south caused some confusion but after a short delay we found the ticket booth. Five return tickets and we were heading down to the platform. There were only two trains that travelled in the direction of Pompei, the first was to Sarno, which veered left at Barra and went around the eastern side of Vesuvius and the second, which was ours, to Sorrento. The trip was a half hour long and was pretty packed. Standing room only. There were plenty of locals getting on and off each stop which made it awkward at times standing in the carriage entrance. We managed, and by around ten o'clock joined the queue for tickets and audio guides at Pompei. The rest was easy.

We estimated that we could see what we wanted by two, an hour back to Herculaneum, an hour there and back to Napoli Centrale. This would give us plenty of time to catch the seven o'clock train back to Rome.

Entry point to the ruins

Located on a plateau of Vesuvian lava flow and overlooking the valley of the River Sarno, the ancient city of Pompei, dating back many centuries B.C., thrived from the produce of the fertile plains that are today part of the Campania region. During Samnite rule that commenced during the late fifth century B.C., Pompei was highly urbanised, refortified and dependant on Nocera, the largest city in the area. The movement of the Samnites unsettled political order resulting in Rome intervening in southern Italy, with military campaigns during the Social War leading to Roman dominance over the entire region. A few hundred years on and after becoming an ally of the Roman res publica, Pompei along with other Italic communities rebelled, demanding equity with Rome regarding social and political equality. This resulted in Lucius Cornelius Sulla and his centurions besieging the joint, forcing Pompei's surrender and subsequent creation of a colony by the name of Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum. Once founded, Roman money moved in with private and public building popping up everywhere, embellished over the following decades under the rule of Augustus and Tiberius.

This all come unstuck a few years after the rule of Tiberius, when a violent earthquake smashed the city up, creating work for the locals for a number of years to come. With the reconstruction work still under way and seventeen years after the earthquake, Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. It put an end to it all, covering Pompei under a thick layer of volcanic ash and lapilli. Although the city was rediscovered toward the end of the sixteenth century, excavations didn't get underway until the mid eighteenth century and continues today with around forty nine of the sixty six hectares having been excavated. A century later for the purposes of study, identification and mapping, Pompei was divided into regions or neighbourhoods, and insulae or blocks. Where the names of building owner were unknown the excavators would name the buildings after whatever was found there or such.

First view of Pompei, Porta Marina on the right

The first stop was up the path to the left, initially wanting to see the baths at the start but they were closed. It would be interesting to know the damage that was done during the 62 A.D. earthquake as most of the damage repair was still underway some seventeen years after. Vesuvius didn't do as much damage as we thought. It was still total mess though. A lot must have been cleaned up over the centuries as there was not a lot of rubbish lying around. Just what was left standing.

Almost immediately, Tom and Beau headed off ahead as they were quicker and wanted to do their own thing. The rest of us stuck together, for a while anyway. After we entered and exited Porta Marina, we noticed that the ruins of the Casa di Romolo e Remo and their neighbours, Casa di Trittolemo were still there, as they had been for millennia, so we had a look from a few angles and listened to the audio. More of a story to tell with a bit of history. It put a perspective on what it was all about.

Ruins heading up Via Marina

At the top of the path, a gate to our right led us off of Via Marina into Regio VIII (The Sacred City is the Profane City), and into a mostly cleared but interesting area, the Temple of Venus, which was being dug up ever so slowly as we watched. This place was totally ruined during the earthquake of sixty two and was probably in the process of reconstruction when Vesuvius erupted. Further inconveniences were encountered when the site was bombed a couple of times during WW2. Only ruins and foundations remain as most of the stone was removed and redeployed on other projects over time. The statue in the centre was what was still left of an artistic exhibition a few years ago.

Temple of Venus (REGIO VIII - INSULA I). Statue by recently deceased Polish artist Igor Mitoraj from his 2016 Pompei exhibition amongst the Temple of Venus ruins. Archaeologists slowly toiling away. Excavated in 1852, 1869, 1872, 1898, 1937, 1952 and 1984.

Returning whence we came, Via Marina took us to the Forum and to the Basilica. This area was under scaffold last time we were there and fenced off. This time there was better luck to be had as there was freedom to roam around. Quite impressive. The elevated stage was where judges sat dealing out punishment for the locals. Apparently, it was for their own protection, it protected them from those who were not happy. Much work has been undertaken to reconstruct what must have been. The bits that fell to the ground (and not pilfered of reused) all those years ago must have been laying on the ground where they collapsed and put back up.

Pompei Basilica prior to 1875 (PompeiiinPictures)

Basilica remnants today (REGIO VIII - INSULA I). What's left of the most sumptuous building of the Forum, used for business and for the administration of justice. Dating back to between 130 to 120 B.C., the basilica represents one of the oldest examples of this type of building in the entire Roman world. Date of excavation: 1806; 1813; 1820; 1928; 1942; 1950

Following further group separation and heading toward an area that had not been seen before, rather than going over the same stuff, the southern side was the go. On our last trip three years ago, much of the area overlooking the Sarno Valley was fenced off for safety reasons. The area has since been refurbished, if that's the correct word and made accessible. Impressive villas of the wealthy and some great mosaics were scattered throughout Region VIII. Facing Vicolo della Regina and built right on the edge of the hill, the location had great views overlooking the Sarno Valley to a distant Sorrento. Not all were open but some were. It seemed that there was not enough staff to man every exhibit so they opened them to a programme. Some were shut, some were open, but they all seemed to be open at some stage during the day if not being refurbished. Vicolo di Championnet was wedged between the southern walls of the Basilica and houses of the once wealthy. The House of Championnet was one such house and evidently one of the most sumptuous homes in the city. No much remains but they're protecting what is. The ruins extend at least four levels sloping scenically towards the sea. Vicolo di Championnet extended from the Sanctuary of Venus through to the southern end of the Forum and the municipal buildings. To turn right into the much wider Via delle Scuole and the inaccessible House of the Geometric Mosaics led to Vicolo della Regina and the similarly inaccessible gymnasium, Palestra dei Luvenes.

Scale model of Campania Regio VIII. House of Championnet to the bottom left, House of the Geometric Mosaics directly under the white label and Palestra dei Luvenes around the corner toward the top

The locked entrance to Palestra dei Luvenes (REGIO VIII - INSULA II). The gymnasium is located on Vicolo della Regina with an impressive floor mosaic in the entrance hallway, which depicts a fighting scene with two bare fisted athletes facing each other. The frescos on the walls portray athletes, wrestlers, a jumper with dumb bells, and the competition judge, known as the Ludi Magister, carrying a sash for the winner. Excavation date: 1887, 1928

Sticking to the southern fringes, Vicolo della Regina took a slight dog leg at the end of Vicolo dei Dodici Dei and continued down to the Triangular Forum and Samnite Palaestra to the left and the Sanctuary of Athena and Hercules and Doric Temples to the right. Beyond both were the two amphitheatres, imaginatively called the large one and the small one (Odeon). The Romans called the Odeon, the theatrum tectum and dedicated it to the most popular theatrical genre at the time, miming. Musical performances and singing were also popular. The large theatre put on comedies and tragedies of Greek-Roman tradition. It was also first of the large public building where the volcanic ash from the eruption was completely removed. It was probably never totally covered so an obvious starting point for excavators.  

Vicolo della Regina

Teatro Grande pre 1870 (PompeiiinPictures)

Teatro Piccolo marked the eastern most point of Regio VIII. On the opposite side of Via Stabiana, Regio I (The City Commercial) commenced. Continuing on with the "wandering" through the alleyways, the next place to drop in on was House of the Ephebe, so named after a bronze statuette of Ephebus was found inside. Evidently, a wine merchant named Publius Cornelius Tages was the owner of the place.

Just around the corner and across from some seriously scaffolded buildings was a Thermopolium or small takeaway joint and further on, almost at the vineyards and the eastern limits of Pompei was the House of Venus in the Shell, fronting  Via dell'Abbondanza but also on a side street, Vicolo della Venere. By crossing Via di Nocera, Regio I was left behind and Regio II (The City into the Green) was ahead.

The House and Thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus (REGIO I - INSULA VIII). This dude owned a property on the corner of Via dell’Abbondanza and a side lane unnamed, and sold drinks and hot food, stored in large jars and placed in the highly decorated stone counter. The well maintained news stand at the rear held a lararium to the protectors of the household, Mercury (god of trade), Dionysus (god of wine) and Genius (protector of the owner). Three kilos of silver coins (about 585 sesterces) were found in one of the jars, maybe hidden by the owner until the eruption calmed down. 89 thermopolia have been excavated so far. Date of excavation: 1912; 1939

The garden of the House of Venus in the Shell on Via dell'Abbondanza (REGIO II - INSULA III). The beautiful garden in the centre of this villa is the focal point around which the house was built, perystylium surrounding the garden. The back wall of the peristylium is decorated with a spectacular fresco with Venus, which gives the house its name. On the lower part, a luxurious garden is depicted over a barrier with exotic plants and animals. The upper part of the wall is divided into three panels with different scenes, to the right, a fountain that birds drink from and to the left, a statue of Mars with a spear and shield on a pedestal. In the centre, two cherubs accompany Venus, protectress of Pompei and the erotic sphere, lying in a large shell. The house belonged to a branch of the family of the Satrii, very prominent in the last few years of the city. Date of excavation: 1933-1935; 1951-1953

Mars and Venus in the Shell

Keeping half an eye on the time, which wasn't easy since Shane didn't have a watch, the  next area was across town rather than straight back toward the Forum. There was still well over an hour to go but with half of the ruins yet to see. Via dell'Abbondanza was chockers with people, many of them kids in school groups ranging from small, up to teenagers. They overwhelmed everything that they went near, making the place claustrophobic. This made the change of direction an easy choice, back to Via Stabiana and in turn Via dei Vesuvio, taking notice of the renovation work at the Terme Centrali, the central baths that were the largest in Pompei, covering an entire block of the ninth insulae and still under construction when Vesuvius erupted.  

A block further on and across the street was the House of the Golden Cupids. Well worth a look. From there it was through the non existent Porta Vesuvio and onto a small mausoleum outside of the city walls. Necropoli di Porta Vesuvio held four tombs, most notably that of magistrate Caius Vestorius Priscus, dated to 75-76 AD. A small rise adjacent afforded elevated views across Pompei allowing for a look back at progress that had been made thus far and an appreciation of the city layout from the northern edge. Excavated Pompei to the right and paddocks to the left.

Excavated to the right (REGIO V, INSULA I), unexcavated to the left

Terme Centrali (REGIO IX, INSULA IV). The eruption preserved the baths in an incomplete state but the ambition and intention of the architect is apparent from the façade overlooking the courtyard. The bathing rooms are more spacious and brighter than anything else around. Date of excavation: 1817; 1836; 1877-1878

House of the Golden Cupids (REGIO VI - INSULA XVI). Located on Via dei Vesuvio, this house represents one of the most elegant of the Imperial era. The building is set around the spectacular peristylium with an equally spectacular garden. Named after the Cupids engraved on two gold medallions that decorate a cubicle of the portico, graffiti and a seal ring indicate the owner as Gnaeus Poppaeus Habitus, a relative of Poppea Sabina, Nero's second wife. Date of excavation: 1903-1905

Time must have been getting on. Without a watch, Shane had been prying over peoples' shoulders to keep an eye on the time. Someone's watch said one o'clock so it was off to the brothel, right back in Vicolo del Lupanare, Regio VII, Insula XII. Vicolo dei Vetti was the street chosen for the return trip, starting off at Porta Vesuvio and running next to, but not parallel to Via dei Vesuvio. As luck would have it, directly behind the House of the Golden Cupids was another interesting one, the House of Vettii. Mistaken initially for possibly a brothel due to the paintings and statues with big dicks adorning the place, it ended up being the home of a couple of rich bastards, maybe full of their own self importance.

What's the heaviest? Priapus' bag of coins or his hanging member. Good health is worth its weight in gold.  The House of the Vettii (REGIO VI - INSULA XV), belonged to the brothers Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva libert, wealthy traders whom had the god of prosperity, Priapus, painted to the right of the door within the vestibule. Graffiti at the entrance of the house indicates that the prostitute, Eutychus, who was a slave offering herself for two Asses, carried out her affairs in the adjacent room, decorated with a number of erotic paintings. Date of excavation: 1894-1895.  

Time was certainly getting on and the brothel was getting no closer. The dead end at the end of the street forced a left turn into Via della Fortuna and next right into Vicolo Storto. A further barrier at Via degli Augustali forced a right turn. No planning went into the trip and it was showing. On the right path, the next turn should have been Vicolo del Lupinare, the brothel street and it was however there were temporary barriers in place again forcing a detour. And what a detour it was, with Vicolo di Eumachia blocked off, the next street was right back to and across the Forum, and then back down Via dell’Abbondanza. It added heaps of time on to the journey. What one will go to visit a brothel. Anyhow, we had the kids last time and didn't know what to expect so weren't too disappointed when we missed out. Not this time though. Not knowing that lupanare was brothel made the building identification more difficult than it should have been but it worked out in the end. Interesting but quite bland. A few small, bawdy frescos on the walls and a half dozen tiny rooms with stone beds. The building was quite small so there was a small queue trying to get in. Once in, it only took a few minutes to look and then it was off back to Jo and Cec around the kiosk. It was time to head off.

Bed in the Lupanare (REGIO VII - INSULA XII). For those who like it firm. The five bottom floor rooms with built in beds were located on both sides of the corridor that connected the two entrances to the knocking shop on the corner of Vicolo del Lupanare and Vicolo del Balcone Pensile. The prostitutes were largely Greek and Orientals who earned between two and eight asses per root. (One ass bought a glass of wine). They and the brothel owner lived upstairs. Date of excavation: 1862

The reunion went pretty well. We all turned up in the right place, except for the boys, and the right time. Regrouping, we headed back to the front gates, past the Temple of Giove, back through the Forum and out the front gates, handing in our handsets as were exited.

Upon leaving Jo phoned Tom and Beau and found they were in a bar at the other end of the site. They left straight away and ended up meeting at the train station. They told us that afterward that they were finished and looked for pizza down the bottom end of Pompei with the restaurant spruikers shouting across the road for business. In the end the one they chose walked to the middle of the road and stopped traffic in both directions so that they could buy their food off of him. It ended up a pretty ordinary pizza anyway.

Granai del Foro (REGIO VII - INSULA VII). The granary stretched along the western side of the Forum with eight openings separated by brick pillars and were used as for the fruit and vegetable market (Forum Holitorium). These days some nine thousand artefacts, the most important archaeological pile of terracotta crockery that was used in the last decades of life of the city for the everyday activities are stored there. Date of excavation: 1816-1822

The timing for a train was a guess, we must have just missed one as it was probably a half an hour before one turned up and when it did, it whirred along the tracks, the electric motors propelling us along as if they were about to explode. They didn't and within twenty minutes we were getting off at Ercolano Scavi and walking down Via IV Novembre to the entrance to Herculaneum, the next ancient site that was destroyed by Vesuvius we were visiting for the day.

Entry to Herculaneum

As was the case with Pompei, Herculaneum was forced to survive under the sphere of Nocera until the Social War and the domination and municipalisation process that Rome imparted on all of central and southern Italy. The city was much closer to Vesuvius, also built on a volcanic plateau but also on a sheer cliff above the Bay of Naples. As with Pompei, the city underwent a  construction renaissance during the Augustan period with many public buildings being built or done up. The earthquake of 62 A.D. shook the foundations of the city requiring repairs under Vespasian. The city is overall in much better condition than Pompei, mainly due to the pyroclastic flows that buried the place under an average of sixteen metres of volcanic rock that solidified, thus preserving the city in its original state and allowing organic artefacts as in plants, fabrics, furniture and timber boat parts to survive. The upper floors of some buildings also survived providing information of building size and construction techniques.

It is estimated that ancient Herculaneum covers an area of approximately twenty hectares, less than a third the size of Pompei however, only four and a half hectares have been excavated. Much of ancient Herculaneum lies beneath modern Herculaneum.

By the time we entered the site and walked halfway down the hill to the ticket sellers, Cec had had enough. Looking at the amount of walking ahead and the stairs and ramps involved in getting to the streets of the ruins, she decided to stay near the top and rest. We, on the other hand had an hour and a half to look around the best we could. We headed down to street level and again separated, only this time Jo and Shane stuck together.

House of Relief of Telephus. Apparently, along with House of the Gem next door, this joint belonged to M. Nonius Balbus and was the second largest in Herculaneum. Named after a relief depicting the myth of Telephus, son of the mythical founder of the city, Hercules, the house of three levels afforded scenic views down toward the marina. The house dates from the Augustan period and was remodelled after the earthquake of 62 A.D

School kids getting a lesson in one of the bath houses. The public baths were a big part of the Herculaneum lifestyle.

The Barrel Arches are vaulted rooms that provided the port warehouses and boat storage as well as supporting the terrace above. The rooms opened onto the beach and must have seemed a safe place for the three hundred odd souls that perished, many still lying in situ today. They apparently met their demise due to high temperatures created by the pyroclastic clouds reigning from above

The long ramp back to the top

The western sector of the South Terrace is a Sacred Area of varying rooms and two temples side by side, dedicated to Venus and four divinities

By four thirty we had had enough. Scaling the long path back to the entrance, picking up Cec and heading up to the station was laboured as we were all stuffed. Unlike Pompei, the train arrived as we hit the platform. We picked up all the time we lost at Pompei and more. The trip back to Naples was again cosy to say the least. So cosy in fact that Jo had an admirer in such close proximity that he was rubbing his so called manhood up against her. Her frotteur was certainly overly friendly. When she moved away he worked his way back next to her. It only stopped when she put her walking stick between them. It must have been her lucky day.

Arriving back at Garibaldi Station with plenty of time to spare allowed us to head straight for some tucker. We ended up near MacDonald's but found a place selling coffee, beer and pizza. We chose the pizza but afterward wished, regrettably, that we chose Maccas. The coffee was real good with a couple of sweets that we didn't recognise. Shane went back for another coffee but a different barista made it and was nowhere near as good. The food was crap.

Chip pizza for dinner. Yum

Vesuvius from Freccia Rossa

It was late when we arrived back at the apartment so we had a quiet one, a few downstairs and a genuine goodbye to the people that had made our time at La Biga so special.

Last night at La Biga with Giuseppe

Packing was a priority before bed as we were to be picked up by our driver at ten to head to Fiumicino Airport for the long trip home.

[prissyhalliwell]

Summary: Mr. Gold has been working for the dinner theatre company “The Enchanted Forest” for years, performing the same old shows to the same old crowds every weekend. Nothing has ever changed, until the day Belle French joins the cast to play its princess.

~ Winner of Best Mr. Gold in the 2016 TEA Awards ~

Chapter One I Chapter Two I Chapter Three I Chapter Four I Read on AO3

Chapter Five

Belle felt as if her childhood dream had come true as she posed for yet another photo with fans after the show.

Less than ten years ago, she had been the one asking to have her program signed and standing in line for a picture with cast members. Now she was the one on the receiving end of teenage squealing.

It seemed fitting that everything had come full circle tonight. Now that the performance was over, she realized that it had been part of the reason she’d been so nervous. The first show she had ever attended had been a dress rehearsal just like this one when she had been a student. It had also been the performance where she’d seen Gold onstage for the first time.  

That was the night everything had changed and the acting bug had truly bit her. She’d done a bit of theatre in high school before that, but never considered it as an actual career. Her plan had been to study library science at a big university, preferably somewhere far from her well-meaning, but controlling father. He’d thoroughly approved of her plan to become a librarian - a nice, safe career path for his shy and timid daughter.

That plan had dissolved after she’d seen Gold prowl around the stage as the evil Chancellor. Watching him revel in the villainy of the character, Belle had realized she didn’t just want to read about complicated and layered characters, she wanted to bring them to life.

She’d told Gold before that his performance had inspired her to become an actress, but she’d left out a few details. Like the part where teenage Belle had stood in line for twenty minutes to get her picture taken with him after the show and how she’d gotten woozy from merely standing in his presence.

Of course, he’d been sweet about the whole thing. Had he been as nasty as his character, Belle doubted she would have developed such a crush. But the difference between the devious man on stage and the kind one before her had been the final straw. Her teen heart had fallen head over heels for the older actor then and there.  

They’d taken a photo with her old polaroid camera and she’d told him of her newfound dream of acting. He’d smiled encouragingly as she talked, letting her ramble on for several minutes before signing her program with a message to follow her heart wherever it led.

The phrase had become her mantra through the next several months of school. Through her arguments with her father about her major. Through four years of theatre courses and plays in tiny theatres that barely drew a crowd.

Was it a coincidence that her heart had led her back to where it all began? Or was it fate? Either way, Belle was determined to find out.

One of her biggest worries in getting the job had been meeting Gold again. She’d built him up so much in her mind that she’d braced herself for disappointment when she met him again.

He hadn’t been what she expected. The tongue-tied, awkward man she was getting to know was miles away from the confident, enigmatic actor she had idolized for years. He was still that man onstage, of course. Stepping out into the spotlight seemed to transform him, allow him to be someone different than he was in his day-to-day life. But the real Gold was rather shy, prone to tripping over his words and making terrible jokes. Far from being disappointed, Belle actually preferred this version. He was more relatable, more real to her than the idealized version she’d fantasized about all these years.

Even now, amidst the compliments she was receiving about her dress and performance, she was having trouble keeping her eyes from straying to him. He’d come to her aid when she’d floundered on stage and she didn’t know how she could ever pay him back.

The irony was that it had been the sight of him in his full costume - everything from the fur-lined cloak that billowed behind him to the leather breeches that clung in all the right places - that had caused her brain to short circuit in the first place. If he ever found out how many times she’d imagined a similar scene in her daydreams over the years, he’d be tongue tied for sure.

None of his signature awkwardness existed now though. Like onstage, Gold was in his element with the fans. He had a small horde of teenage girls hanging off his every word. He clearly loved being the center of attention, his smile wide and his gestures much more flamboyant than usual now that he had a riveted audience.

At least she knew she didn’t have to feel silly for her reaction now. The teens crowded around him were clearly just as in awe of him as she had been back then. In hindsight, perhaps she should have realized that seeing him again on stage in full costume would have the same effect on her as it had all those years ago. Gold and she had practiced the scene many times together since she’d started, but the combination of the lights, stage, and costume had magically transported her back to that night when she’d first laid eyes on him.

Yet another reason why theatres shouldn’t do their dress rehearsal in front of a live audience, she thought wryly. They were lucky that she only forgot her lines. If she hadn’t been busy panicking, she might have jumped the Chancellor’s well-dressed bones onstage instead.

“Is there something going on between the Chancellor and the Princess?”

Belle’s full attention snapped back to the three girls she had just taken a photo with. “I’m sorry?”

The girl who had spoken was petite with a shoulder-length brown bob. Her arms were crossed over her chest in a relaxed posture and her smile seemed all too knowing for someone so young.

“I asked if the Chancellor and the Princess had a thing for each other.”

“Uh,” Belle stalled for time to think, acutely aware that she had several pairs of inquiring eyes upon her. “Not to my knowledge. There’s nothing in the script to indicate that.”

“Huh.” The girl seemed to think that over for a moment. “So it’s just you and Gold that are – ”

“Friends,” Belle blurted out before the girl could finish her sentence. “Just friends.”

Despite her wish that they could one day be more than that, Belle wasn’t about to admit that to a high school know-it-all. Unfortunately, the teen’s keen eyesight wasn’t Belle’s biggest problem. If her attraction to Gold had been that obvious from the audience, how in the world could the man himself have missed it?

Her gaze darted over to him again and this time their eyes met. Belle blushed and dropped her gaze immediately, hoping he wouldn’t read anything into it. To her horror, she looked up to see that he had excused himself from his fans and was making his way over to her.

As nervous as she was at the moment, she didn’t miss the way the girls around her straightened, each perking up at the approach of the infamous Evil Chancellor.

“Dear god, he’s gorgeous,” one girl whispered, tugging on her long brown curls excitedly.

The third teen, a blonde with a cheeky grin and an English accent, elbowed her friend with a laugh. “Thirsty much, Jacinda?”

Gold, oblivious to the fervor awaiting him, smiled widely as he joined them. “Good evening, ladies.”

“Evening.”

“Hi.”

“Good indeed.”

Gold’s smile faltered for a second before quickly recovering. “Ladies, do you mind if I borrow my co-star for a moment?”

All three girls giggled, shaking their heads enthusiastically.  

Still in a slight daze from the last few minutes, Belle nodded politely at the girls before gratefully following Gold as he led her away from the group. They ducked into a hallway off of the main room that lead towards the staff rooms, giving them some temporary privacy from the crowd.

“Thank you,” Belle said once they were out of sight, sinking back against the wall with a sigh of relief.

Gold chuckled. “You looked a bit panicked. I figured you could use a break.” He leaned against the wall next to her, gazing at her with amusement.

With only a few inches between them, Belle’s heart began to speed up once again. She immediately scolded herself for reacting in such a way. Was she no better than those lovestruck teenagers she had just been talking to?

From the way her heart was racing, probably not.

“They weren’t horrible,” she finally said. “Just a bit intense. And nosey.”

Standing this close to him, Belle noticed for the first time how good Gold smelled. Though romance novels tended to describe a man’s scent with at least three different descriptors - sandalwood almost always being one of them - Belle didn’t think she could describe Gold’s scent in any more detail than “slightly sweaty, but nice man smell”. With further study perhaps she could get more specific, but she somehow doubted Gold would appreciate her shoving her nose in his personal space and sniffing him up and down like a bloodhound.

Before he could ask any more about the students, Belle hastened to add, “I’m sure you’ve had your share of crazy fans.”

He laughed, but the sound was a bit strained. As comfortable as Gold seemed with the fans, Belle was surprised that someone could unnerve him that much.

“You’d be right about that,” he said. “Most are harmless, but there’s been one or two troublemakers over the years. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do.” He shook off the thought. “But let’s not talk about that. We should be talking about you on your big night,” he said, gently bumping his shoulder against hers.  

Belle flushed, more at the contact than from his teasing.

“Well, so far you’ve had to rescue me from myself twice.” Belle kept her tone light as she rested her shoulder against his, hoping she wasn’t being too forward. “If it happens a third time, I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you my firstborn in exchange.”

To Belle’s delight, Gold leaned in. “I’m sure we could come up with something less….” he paused, searching for the right word. “...stinky.”

Belle let out a whoop of laughter, clapping her hand over her mouth a moment later. Gold’s eyes sparkled in return.

“Quiet,” he warned. “They might find you.”

She removed her hand. “They’re teenage girls, not hyenas.”

He shrugged. “Could have fooled me.”

Belle didn’t argue, since Gold was more right than he knew. She hoped she hadn’t been that obvious when they first met. As shy as she had been back then, she at least knew she hadn’t been that direct.

Glancing back at the lobby, Belle was torn between continuing her conversation with Gold and knowing that her job required her to return to her guests. She sighed. “I suppose our duty is to return to our paying customers now. Hopefully those horrid girls are gone.”

“I can beat them off with my sword, if you like.”

Belle smothered a chuckle. “No, I think they might enjoy that too much.” At Gold’s confused look, she quickly added, “Never mind. I think I’m fine.”

“You sure?” he asked, concern evident in his expression.

Belle’s insides melted but she managed to stop herself from throwing her arms around him in response. She leaned towards him conspiratorially. “I think I can slay the next few dragons.”

“I know you can, Belle.” His eyes twinkled. “In fact, I’d like to see someone try and stop you once you’ve made up your mind.”

His words oddly choked her up and Belle blinked away a tear before Gold could see. She didn’t want to have to explain what getting his approval meant, because she barely understood it herself. It wasn’t just because Gold was so talented or because she had a crush on him. The Enchanted Forest was the theatre where her dream of acting had begun. Here, more than anywhere, she wanted to prove herself. If she could prove her worth to everyone in the cast, especially the man who had inspired her down this path in the first place, then maybe she’d finally believe she had made the right decision to pursue acting.

She didn’t hold out hope that her dad would ever be convinced or that Maurice would suddenly forget his intense dislike for the theatre that had robbed his daughter of her respectable future. But it would be enough for Belle to know that her choice to become an actress had been brave and not foolhardy, after all.

“Shall we?” she asked, entwining her arm around Gold’s.

“Where my lady leads, I shall follow.”

Belle ducked her head, hoping he didn’t see the goofy smile forming on her face. If she was lucky, he might just mean those words one day.

Author's note: This chapter is dedicated to @b-does-the-write-thing who asked for another chapter of this long neglected fic for her birthday! There's even another chapter ready to go for next week, so look for that update as well!

[suzumoriyuiko]

Translation: Tatsuki MACHIDA interview from PIW 2017 programme

Thank you for the scans @chestnutskating!

“Ice shows are a world of competition”

2 years and a half since the sudden retirement announcement, Machida Tatsuki, who has since then kept silent, accepted to be interviewed for the first time by Prince Ice World to talk extensively about his current life as a show skater, about creating, and about his future plans.

10 years with Prince Ice World

ー You retired competitive skating in December 2014 and it’s been 2 years and a half you have become a graduate student and a professional skater. Since then, it’s the first time you accept to be interviewed. First, can we ask you about the new creation you will reveal at Prince Ice World 2017?

It’s before the real show so I can’t tell you everything about it yet, but this time’s work is again based on a new concept, and furthermore, it relies on a new method of creation. I think it’s packed of unprecedented challenges. Actually, this time’s program is a program I want to show especially to the younger men skaters.

ー So you mean you want us to feel the program as we watch it.

Yes. It would make me happy. I put a lot of thought in it, and I'm still training very hard so those thoughts reach everyone. After retirement, I realized that it’s still a world of “competition” even after retiring. I don’t think the technical development such as jumps is the only development of figure skating, and I want to contribute to it in a different way. In that way, I create to exploit those yet untouched possibilities of the sport. 

ー Every year, you’ve been presenting your new works at the Yokohama edition. What kind of place is Prince Ice World for you?

The first time I participated at a Prince show is in 2007. It was at the Hiroshima edition, right after I won Junior Nationals and I was in grade 11. As for my connection with Prince, it’s exactly been 10 years. Prince Ice World is turning 40 this year. It means a lot to me that I was able to work together for a quarter (of the journey). In the 2007 Hiroshima edition, the cast did a skating class for the local skaters. In both the classes in the morning and the shows at night, there was a good setup with great lighting and good sound system and it was my first time skating in that kind of place while listening to the music. At the time, I thought about how lucky I was. Back then, I didn’t think I’d become a show skater at all but I felt my blood boiling, like I knew my heart was heating up. 10 years has passed and I am now 27, I luckily have the chance to participate at shows but those feelings from back then haven’t faded away at all. When there’s the curtain, the lighting setup, and the sound system, and I stand in front of the audience, my blood naturally boils up and it’s just a very exciting moment. I think being able to perform at the Yokohama and Tokyo editions is such a blessing as a performer. Moreover, it’s the only ice show in the country that works as a company so I want concentrate well to succeed in delivering my own performance to the audience as a member.

Being thankful to everyone who supports me 

ー What do you think you’ve achieved for every work you’ve presented?

“The Inheritor” (2015) was right after I retired, and I was able to maintain a body that was similar to one of an athlete. I then used all the high jumping skills without regret in a way that it melt in with the work itself while setting as a goal to make a creative world that is different than the context of competition and that is unique to ice shows. “The Inheritor” was very hard. 2 shows per day for a total of 18 shows was hard to keep the concentration but it gave a true meaning to the feeling of accomplishment.

“Anata ni Aitakute” (2016) was after considering what using vocal songs meant in figure skating and then I got to the thought of using “love poems” (songs)* The work itself is pursuing this idea. It of course helped me to skill up as a performer but it also taught me several things as a choreographer. When I think of it, counting from “Journey under the Midnight Sun” (2013) and “Je te veux” (2014), if you count “Ave Maria” from last autumn (2016), it makes 5 works of choreography. I’m slowly gaining a method of working through my creations and they’re more brushed up. This time’s work, the 6th one, also introduced new ways of working and I hope that gives a freshness to my work.

*TN: Machida uses the term 相聞歌 (read soumonka) which generally means a love song. Term used to refer to poems read between lovers (or loved ones) in the past.

ー What do you have to say to your fans who look forward to seeing your performance?

The fact that there is so much people looking forward to the program I thought out with the help of the production team (Atelier t.e.r.m.) is my biggest motivation. I am just very very thankful to the people who enjoy the challenges in my programs with me and who support me. Also, since I am a graduate student, I spend the fan exchange time (at shows) in my own way and I’m thankful from the bottom of my heart that people understand my decision.

Always thinking of a good surprise

ー In your works, there is always some kind of surprise along with your artistry.

I think figure skating has to be a good entertainment, while keeping and artistic side. In that way, surprises make up a big part of the entertainment part so I value it a lot. But surprises are hard, it can’t just be anything to surprise the crowd, so I’m constantly questioning what kind of surprises are part of quality entertainment. I want to the people watching to enjoy the total result, such as the stage production, the choreography, and the costumes.

ー In “Anata ni Aitakute” a lot of people were surprised of your choice for Machida Seiko’s song.

Last year’s theme at PIW was “J-Pops!” but it was a total coincidence, I didn’t know in advance. I spend at least an year to produce a work, so I was done with the program in 2015. When I heard about the show’s theme in begining 2016. I was truly surprised. But as a result, I think I presented “Anata ni Aitakute” at the perfect moment. The stage producer Imamura Nezumi-san also commented the performance. He said “It stole the show (laughs)” I was happy that a professional stage producer told me that, even as a joke. Those things got through the show itself and the cast was very intense, it made a piggybacking effect. I think it was a nice show based on the concept of “J-Pops!” and last year’s PIW was truly fantastic. 

ー What about Imamura Nezumi-san’s stage production?

I think it’s still rare for ice shows to have a very specific base concept. He’s very nice to me, he talks to me very casually in backstage, and I appreciate that as a performer and a choreographer. He is of the theatrical industry so I’m excited to see a stage production that features the true charm of the theatre and the charm of figure skating again.

ー So you do very meticulous meetings with the lighting and sound production staff.

At Prince, the distance with the staff that support the stage is very close. The distance between the professional skaters and the athletes is very close too, you can learn so much stuff. I think it’s a very important place to form and educate future show skaters. Even for the athletes, it is a chance to get a glimpse of what goes on in the mind of a professional skater. As I said earlier, ice shows are a world of severe competition that is different from competitive skating. It is also why you can feel with your skin what kind of performance is expected of you at shows. In other words, I stand on stage thinking about what I want to show the younger generation what I wanna show as a professional. Having close communication with the staff builds a good trustworthy relationship and I can trust them with stuff easily. It also makes the feeling of accomplishment bigger when we make a show together.

ー This time’s show theme is “4 seasons.”, but do you personally seek for themes and concepts before you go into the process of production?

Yes, and I value it a lot. I think there’s different moments for a new work to come to mind - sometimes it’s listening to very good music and thinking “I want to make it with this” or other times it’s getting inspired by other genres. Either way, I find it very important to discuss with the production team to set a concept. Whether the concept or the music comes first depends on the time but the work always has a preset message behind it. And then we think about the costume and the stage production, and at the end the choreography. The image of everything is clear before I go into the choreography.

ー Doesn’t it happen that you think of a totally new concept while you’re working on something?

In that way, all my production is calculated. Some people can produce with improvisation but it seems like I don’t have that ability. Everything is constructed one by one. The concept is the core of the work and if that isn’t decided properly, the motivation towards creating might decrease. Choreography is truly very hard. Just inserting one new movement is very tiring and complicated. There’s many frustrating and discouraging moments. When you have a clear idea of what you want to do, you can get over those moments.

ー How much time do you put in one work?

It ends up taking about three months. It’s like you construct a bit, then break it, you create some more, then you break a third of it. I have my studies from graduate school too and I can’t spend a whole day on figure skating everyday so I need to progress very slowly. And that’s why having a concept is important.

ー Do you ever have the fear if “that’s the right thing” or not?

Yes, I do. I’m always asking and answering questions to myself. If this is actually good, if I’m not doing the same work as my last work, etc. I push my limits when building the core concept to make sure that when the work is completed, it will be something totally new, so when it’s done I can provide it with self-confidence. 

One by one, with a fresh feeling

ー Did your way of thinking about figure skating after skating as a professional for two years?

It’s the third time I say this, but there’s competition after retirement too. Of course technique is important, but the number of revolutions in a jump isn’t the only thing that makes the sport progress. There’s a lot of great performances, skating skills, and emotional expression from the past that are forgotten. Learning that and adding your own creation to that, there’s a competition you can and you should do as a professional. Not competing against others like you do in competition, but a serious match to create a show that can be beautiful and amusing, all at once.

Also, I think it’s important to keep in mind that we are competing with other medias and other entertainment industries. In that way, I think you can call PIW “the ice show culture” since it has been going on for 40 years, but furthermore it’s important for the generation now, including me, to contribute to progress it, all that while keeping in mind that we need to pass it on to the next generation.

ー How does the current competitive figure skating look to you?

As of jumping skills, it has gone through remarkable development. At this point, I can’t imagine what can happen. How they jump, how they can insert so many quads in four minutes and a half, it’s beyond my imagination. But what troubles me is how much this sport has become younger. If you go see the prodiums from Worlds in the 1980′s, men is around 22 years old and ladies is around 19. I think they’re younger now. And in all that, there’s so many skaters who get injured and who are forced to quit. 

What I mean is, they might retire before they gain the mature skills they need to skate in ice shows. That might make it difficult to have new professional star skaters. The sport is growing in Japan, but the number of senior skaters and professional skaters isn’t. I wish the skaters were coached with a longterm view of their activities. 

ー Any themes you want to include in your future projects?

Me too, I always have the risk of injury. It’s sometimes frustrating that I can’t train how I want while continuing my research project from graduate school. Well it isn’t necessarily depressing, since I like what I am doing. When I work as a professional skater, I try to keep in mind that every meeting is important.** I want to do every show with a fresh feeling. I didn’t lose those feelings at all. I still bring those feelings from 2007, my first emotions. the feeling of my blood boiling. I want to keep going while keeping those fresh feelings and staying challenging. I want the relationship between art and entertainment in the “figure skating culture” with the people who encourage and come to watch us to last. There’s many shows but I know PIW will keep progressing and I hope I can progress at the same speed or even faster.

**TN: He used the idiom 一期一会 (read ichigo ichie) which means “one time, one meeting”

[bunnyreading]

Top Five Favourite Contemporary Plays

My love for theatre runs deep. In terms of plays, I love reading them as well as watching them. I think it’s especially interesting to watch things and then read those words exactly how the writer intended them to be read. To me, at least. Maybe not for other people, lmao. Whenever I see a play that particularly enthrals me, I like to read the corresponding script. I have a big collection of scripts that I’ve picked up over the years and I’ve decided to do a top five of the ones that I love the most. I’ve included links to trailers and amazon pages for all of these books, so feel free to look them up!

Number 5: Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe

Photo by Sara Krulwich

Every Brilliant Thing is a new type of play with one performer who slips in and out of all of the characters. The performance uses a lot of audience participation, which means that the play is different every single time it’s done. Every member of the audience gets a completely unique experience to their time watching. The play itself is about coping and managing depression through your life, but its put in a light-hearted and comedic tone. It would have been easy for the writers to take a topic like that and make it heart-breaking and tragic, but it was upbeat, and optimistic, with very tender moments interspersed. I first came across the play when it was recommended to me by my teacher in my A-Level Theatre Studies class, and I loved it so much I did it for my extract two performance for that class. It was a wonderful piece and I loved doing it. The writing is so simple, but it also has such meaning underneath all of it.

Number 4: Things I Know To Be True by Andrew Bovell

Photo from Frantic Assembly’s Website

This is a play that I went to go see at the Chichester Theatre Festival with my school. It had movement worked on by Frantic Assembly. I didn’t know what to expect when I first went to go see it – I had heard from a few other people that it was really good and also a tear-jerker, but I didn’t think I would find it personally emotional. To describe Things I Know To Be True, I would say it’s a family-based tragedy, discussing all of the problems in families that nobody likes to discuss. The production I went to go see was beautiful, and one of the best performances I’d in 2016. Without giving away spoilers, the end of act one was so beautiful and made me really emotional – I and a bunch of other people on the school trip stood outside the theatre crying during the interval – and then, amazingly, by speaking to one of the members of staff we got to meet one of the cast members – Matthew Barker – and we got to speak with him. That was an incredible moment to end an incredible trip out. If the show is ever touring – I highly recommend going to see it.

Number 3: Another Country by Julian Mitchell

Picture by Johan Persson This is a slightly older play, and it was recommended to me through the film (starring Rupert Everett) first, but when I saw that it originated from a play, I had to get that. I love this play – I love the feeling of the 1930s school. I’ve always loved stories set in boarding schools for the sense of unease and separation from the rest of reality that it gives. Another Country is based loosely on the life of the spy Guy Burgess, and the play follows the story of the members of Gascoigne House after one of the students killed himself after it was discovered that he was gay. It shows the quick cover-up work they do in order to try to avoid scandal, but particularly centres around Bennett – the only openly gay member of the House. The relationships between all of the boys, and the feeling of jeopardy that goes through the whole play is thrilling. The film is a very faithful adaption to the play, and Rupert Everett’s performance as Bennett is so good! 

Number 2: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

Photo by Tristam Kenton

I came across this just earlier this year – every theatre season my mum and I go through the logs of all of the performances going on and book in to see things. My mum went to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern when she was studying Hamlet, and since we went to see Hamlet last year we thought it would be a good thing to go and see this year. I loved this play way more than I liked Hamlet, although that isn’t difficult because I barely managed to sit through that one. This absurdist play is horrendously funny, and I love how it pokes fun at all of the craziness that is the world of Hamlet. There are also very sweet moments in there, but mostly it’s the quick witty wordplay that makes it most amusing. The idea of taking two minor characters of a classic and writing an entire show just about them is inspired, and I absolutely loved every minute of it.

Number 1: 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane

Photo by Tristam Kenton of Sarah Kane’s play Cleansed, performed by the National Theatre

I came across Sarah Kane’s work by chance. I was going through the National Theatre YouTube channel when I came across Katie Mitchell’s newest production of her play Cleansed. I saw the trailer for that, and quickly ordered the script. I was intrigued by its oddness and by its graphic detail, and I began looking in to other parts of her work. Sarah Kane was a writer of tremendous talent, however she also suffered from severe mental illness, and she took her own life in 1999, and her last play, 4.48 Psychosis, was produced posthumously in 2000. Her work has mostly been forgotten, except for A-Level performance work, and it’s rarely produced professionally anymore. But Kane’s work is so influential and I deeply identify with it. Having experienced severe mental illness myself, everything in 4.48 makes complete sense to me, and although it may seem like morbid rambling to some people, I identify so strongly with the ideas of the play. Some people refer to 4.48 as Kane’s suicide note, but I think that simplifies it a little bit. To me, when you’re in the depths of depression, it becomes impossible to verbalise what you feel to other people, and yet she’s managed to do that perfectly with this piece of work. I’m sorry that she died – Sarah Kane could have produced so many other pieces of truly original and inspired work.

[theatrehunter]

Today’s #quickfiretheatre interview is with Morna Young!

How would you describe what you do? 

I’m a playwright, theatre-maker, musician and actor… wearer of many hats! I’m fortunate to work across theatre in different roles and I’ve become increasingly interested in multi-disciplinary artistry. I’m recipient of the Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship 2017 (hosted by Creative Learning, Aberdeen City Council) – this year’s fellowship theme is ‘the folk, the language and the landscape of the North East’ so I’ve been exploring that within my work. I’m particularly interested in working class women’s voices and challenging inequality within the industry. I tend to write in Doric and I’m a proud Scots Language Ambassador. I’m also one half of Folkify (with Sandy Nelson). We ‘folk up’ non-folk songs, anything from pop to rock to rap… it’s a fun gig to be a part of. 

What theatre inspires you the most?

Genuine collaboration. I often see theatre where the pieces don’t quite fit together -  the script, the direction, the design; they all sit in slightly different worlds. Then you stumble across the productions where everything aligns and it��s magical. I love work that challenges the norm and showcases voices and worlds that we don’t normally see. Theatre is guilty of serving the middle classes and we have to challenge that; whose lens are we looking through? We all know work when it’s authentic and, when we find it, it’s beautifully inspiring.     What is your dream role / project?

I think I’m living it at the moment. The Fellowship has given me time and space to reflect, research, play and write. It’s a dream job.

What’s your favourite play?

Tough question. Love Song by Abi Morgan, Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, Angels in America by Tony Kushner. I adore everything by Linda McLean. War Horse was up there with most magical theatre experiences I’ve ever had, I became a little kid again, completely enthralled by the onstage enchantment. I also adored Counting Sheep at the fringe in 2016… glorious.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Be you.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Listen to your gut. Focus on your own goals and stop comparing yourself to everyone else. Celebrate your friend’s successes; someone else getting a gig does not make you a failure. In fact, celebrate your failures too. They teach you far more than the successes. Great art evolves from mistakes. Be brave. It’s the only way we grow. What are you up to next? The Fellowship runs through to April next year. I’ve been working on a full-length play about domestic staff in a private school so that’s my main focus. The joy of this Fellowship is that it’s allowed me to explore my voice in different ways so I’ve got a few scripts on the go that I need to finish up. And a novel. I’m also collaborating with some awesome people including a multi-disciplinary artistry project called Folk plus Heroines (with AJ Taudevin and Belle Jones) and Projections (with Sarah Rose Graber). Upcoming performances includes Paines Plough’s Come to Where I’m From on 26th September at The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen and we’re got a one off Folkify at The Tron on 8th November.

[chelsie-fan-55]

Downton Abbey’s Mrs Hughes tells Over60 what it was like wrapping up season 6  Tuesday, Apr 26 2016  Georgia Dixon "It was only a week ago that Australia said goodbye to the hit British drama Downton Abbey, but one of the show’s stars has hinted that we haven’t seen the last of the Crawleys and the Downton staff. We sat down for a chat with Phyllis Logan, who played beloved housekeeper Mrs Hughes. The relationship between Mrs Hughes and Carson was a focal point in the final two seasons. Were you surprised that the relationship was such a hit with fans? I suppose I was, Jim [Carter, who plays Carson] said everyone kept asking, “When are you and Mrs Hughes going to get together?” I was like, “get together? That’s how you talk about the youngsters of the show, not two old fuddy-duddies like us,” but it’s amazing how people seemed to be drawn to wanting them to develop a relationship. I mean, they had a very nice relationship as it was, they had great mutual respect. Did you see the relationship coming at all? Not really, I thought “nobody’s interested in post-middle-aged love”, but obviously they are, so it’s quite encouraging. What was it like during the final days of filming? Well, a lot of us finished on the same day, the people in the servants’ hall, and there was a whole big scene and it just happened to be our final day. So all of us – Sophie McShera [Daisy], Lesley Nicol [Mrs Patmore], Raquel Cassidy [Miss Baxter] Joanne Froggatt [Mrs Bates] and myself – were like, “Oh, it’s going to be so emotional,” and Jim was batting us off saying “Don’t be so ridiculous, it’s just like any other job, you know, it comes to an end, and yeah it’ll be sad, but you know…” And we were kind of dreading it, but when it did finally come to an end Jim was the first one to crack up, because he made a sort of speech for the crew, and two of the crew members who had been with us since the year dot were hugging each other, inconsolable, and that got him going. And then after we’d all said goodbye to the crew, the girls met outside near hair and makeup and had a big group sob for about 20 minutes. You clearly have a great relationship with the other cast members, have you gotten to see them much since the show ended? Yes, yes I’ve seen quite a few of them since we finished up. Lesley is currently in LA and I was there for a while, as was Joanne, so I caught up with them. I saw Jim and Sophie recently, and Hugh (Lord Grantham) and Laura (Edith). Is there anything you would have liked to see happen or are you happy with how the series wrapped up? I was thinking, “how is Julian [Fellowes, the show’s creator] going to end it?” and when I read the final script, I got quite emotional and I thought, “actually, this is probably as good as he could make it.” So I was pleased and I don’t think there was anything necessarily that was overlooked, apart from – Lesley would say – that she ordered up a boyfriend and never got one. She would’ve been satisfied with a dog but she never even got one [laughs]. There have been a lot of stories recently about actors like Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep speaking out against ageism in the entertainment industry. What are your thoughts on it all? Have you had any challenges like that? It’s difficult to quantify it really, I mean obviously one does feel that as you get older the parts are fewer and there is certainly in Hollywood a huge pressure for women to look 10, 15, 20 years older than they really are in order to keep the momentum of still having a career, whereas, you know, why don’t we all grow old gracefully? There’s less pressure for men, it has to be said, but there is still pressure for them too. What’s next for you? Do you have anything in the works? Well I might be embarking on doing a bit of theatre. I haven’t been in the theatre for several years. I’m looking forward to getting back into it but I’m a bit daunted as well. It’s tough, being in the theatre. People think you just breeze in and you’re only working nights but you only get one take. At least you do get another shot the next performance, that’s what’s so lovely about it, you think “that was crap last night, oh I must try that tomorrow.” But you know, you start thinking about it hours before you’re due in the theatre, especially matinee days, and the amount of energy you have to give is tough. There have been talks of a movie, is that something you’d be interested in getting involved with? Oh, why wouldn’t I be? If they want me in it, I think it would be lovely to have one last hurrah, wouldn’t it? Is there anything you would want to see happen? We could have a baby. We could adopt… we could adopt Thomas [laughs]. I would like to see Daisy, for example, doing something rather magnificent or finding romance, because you know she’s been in widow’s weeds for quite some years now since William died during the First World War so I think she’s due, and she’s still young so she’s due for a nice love match." I don't know if this was posted before but it is a nice interview.😉☺

[davidfurlongtheatre]

HOW OPERA SHAPED ME AS A DIRECTOR TWICE IN TEN YEARS.

In 2006, I was a young actor, two-years graduatefrom the National French Drama school of Chaillot. I landed in London to make it as an actor. I got a dayjob as an usher at the Royal Opera House. I had good notions of acting direction, and admiration for some directors such as Robert Lepage's highly hightened theatricality or Deborah Warner’s mega-contemporary takes on classics, but little did I know that sitting through a season of operas in the best house in the world would change my life forever. Just by watching, I learned from the most brilliant series of work I could ever see in the space of six months: Lepage precisely, David Mc Vicar, and most importantly Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser's duo as directors. By simply watching and frenetically taking notes at the back of the auditorium, I was understanding what it means to have a proper vision of a stage, beyond the place of the performer, but through the lens of a bigger picture creator, a painter, a crowd-manager and almost a block-busteresque director. And I then knew I wanted to direct.

After deciding I couldn't continue being at the front of houses, I left the Royal Opera House, having been taught an immense lesson.In June of that same year, I was putting on my first play as a director. It was a four-hander which contained what I felt was a very operatic way of creating images. To achieve this, I manically researched articles and interviews by each director whose work I’d encountered.  Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser were the most articulate of all and their process fascinated me. One of their ideas became my motto, how an image can be anything as long as the audience can clearly see an obvious relation between what they see and the story being told through the direction. I applied these principles scrupulously at the scale of a studio theatre (Jermyn Street theatre to be precise) setting my play on a beach with a magical fridge standing like a symbolist cornucopia... And it worked ! The audience read the symbol, and I carried on directing !

My belief in the need for a vision and a strong concept was later confirmed in a Young Vic masterclass led by Daniel Kramer (now artistic director of the ENO) and I also probably overused it a little. But it certainly led to some foundation pieces that are still very representative of my identity as a director, like my first critical success, a version of Sartre's The Flies with a live Rock-Band standing as the only physical and atmospherical set in order to create a visceral show. Music already played an important part in my work. In the decade that followed, I became a proper director. Through training, devising, experimenting, researching and developing my work, I got a little less focused on my 'concept' as an 'auteur', and refined my craft along the way, re-placing the performer at the centre of my vision and my process. And by conciliating my background as an actor with this learning, my work finally reached a shape of its own and resulted last year in my production of 'Rock N Roll' Moliere, The Doctor in Spite of Himself. This is the best accolade I got since coming to London. A dozen rave reviews and a nomination for an Off West End award as best director. But this welcomed recognition, at a time when I could have honestly given up, came not because I was seeing myself as a genius 'auteur' but quite the opposite, it was because I accepted to be lost and to explore a crafty creative way, trusting my skills, rather than relying on formal overarching 'one-man vision', it was about the work first. And this success is what gave me the courage to get back in touch with the Royal Opera House, ten years after.

In autumn 2016, I met with Amy Lane, staff director of the ROH. I told her my story, how important Opera was in my journey, and how I was drawn back to Opera as a sort of birthplace. Of course, I had done a little bit of Opera in the meantime by assisting at the Geneva Opera Studio, led by conductor Jean-Marie Curti, and I was already familiar with directing singers, musicians and some of the elements of this artform. I had also worked backstage in West-End shows so I knew the technicalities of big shows but I lacked the experience of working at such a scale and within such a place of excellence, which is what had inspired me in the first place. I was eager to learn how to manage such huge undertakings as Operas in one of the most important houses in the world. When I mentionned Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser among my most important inspirations, Amy smiled. A week later, I had one of the best surprises of my life: I would be guest director observer on Caurier and Leiser's reprise of Madama Butterfly ! The very Opera that had triggered my whole journey ten years ago. Again, little did I know that these five weeks would change my life as a director for the second time.

In the building, the Opera company cohabits with the Ballet company and the Music department. In the Opera company solely, I've worked under the authority of the staff directors’ office who deals with everything related to directors from scheduling rehearsals to actually directing the shows on stage. This is done in cooperation with the Company's office who manage the schedule of the singers, actors and all artists involved. They all also work in coordination the stage management, the costumes, and every department in the house. The first part of my bservership consisted of following Andrew Sinclair, the main assistant director in charge of putting the production of Madama Butterfly back on its feet, before the directors actually arrived. He was assisted by Hazel Gould, who would then remain the assistant director in charge when the production would later be on stage. I have to thank Hazel for accepting a permanent buzz of questions in her ear from me and allowing me to follow her and even her thoughts, like a shadow, most of the time. She shared so much and so openly with me. My first observations were very pragmatic ones, confirming things I already do in theatre. You need to understand your 'production profile', break down the score in scenes or sections, prepare your knowledge of each scene, structure your work schedule, your calls for the cast, the rotas in the building and block or walk through the scenes with the singers/actors. These all seem like obvious directorial tasks but the scale of it is what makes the difference.

As a revival is supposed to be able to repeat as long as you want, there are hundreds of notes made on every staff's score, from the assistant director's to the stage manager's, and as many layers of notes as there were revivals of the show. You have to make sense of it all and Andrew started his preparation 6 months ago to familiarize himself with the production. By watching different videos of the same show, making his own notes, crossing them with the ones from the previous directors. When I think of the fact that I was proud to just be able to follow the score on the first day of rehearsal, it seems ridiculous in comparison to Andrew who could give a precise musical figure on his first day too and the start of any sections in Italian... In Madama Butterfly, there are 'only' 5 principals, 1 gigantic automatic set, 3 acts and 'just' one scene with 40 members of the chorus (that makes about 50 costumes and full make up to do before Act 1) ! But still, the production is considered 'light'.... Although when someone from the shoes department came down separately from the costumes’ team, I truly realised the scale of the work ! It's impossible to comprehend the amount of work going on in the building until you're a small part of it. If you decide to move a rehearsal on the main stage, chances are you're impacting on four different departments and adding a night shift for the stage crews in charge of the wagons. 'The wagons ?' I hear you ask. Yes, the whole backstage area is moveable on wagons which can accommodate as many sets as there are productions on stage during the same period, whether ballets or Operas. What makes me fitted for Opera I think, is my curiosity and obsession over Tetris, understanding how everything fits together, and taking notes all the time about the mecanism of things in order to understand this big machine.

And of course, there is the soul of it all, the music. A huge and sacred part of the work and the main character of any performance performed at the Royal Opera House. Antonio Pappano, the musical director and main conductor of the House is simply a genius. When he walks into a rehearsal room, you can sense the atmosphere being uplifted with perfection. Atttached to Madama Butterfly is also Renato Balsadonna who was resident chorus master for ten years and makes his debut as a main conductor at the ROH. And in rehearsals, the pianist repetiteur, James, who plays Puccini like it's a second nature. All their knowledge of music and of the nuances of Puccini appear every time they clarify a note to the singers. And everyone agrees that the particularity of the Royal Opera House is that Pappano is not only concerned by the music itself as a thing of beauty, but as a dramatic story-telling element. With Pappano, music is acting, and he knows his energy also conducts the intentions and the drama. For him, it's about supporting the story being told. I've even heard him say to a singer 'don't sing it beautifully, it's already beautiful, that's in the music and you have a beautiful voice so just play the situation'. Sometimes the music plays something that you don't have to act and great conductors like Pappano or Balsadonna know it.

When you meet the whole orchestra, the level of expertise takes you to another dimension. Again, if these musicians are in the Royal Opera House symphonic orchestra, it's because they are amongst the best musicians in the world. And the conductor acts also like a conductive piece, in the electrical sense: he transmits the energy of the production by talking them through the action, or just by telling them how beautifully Butterfly is acting at a certain moment. At a one point in an orchestra rehearsal, I heard Pappano starting to tell the orchestra what was happening in the show just as they were playing: 'She draws the knife and as she's about to kill herself, the kid comes running in the room'. The music was lifted, every musician was playing along as he spoke to them. It was wonderful.

You can direct everything to the music: every emotional crescendos in acting, every moment of stillness where only the music should play, every dynamic set moves, each gesture or micro-movement, because each of these details tells a story. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier are experts at doing this. They consider themselves 'Opera directors' since they hardly ever touch another artform. They've directed all over the world. They are seen as incredible image-makers and have indeed created a vast iconography around their work. Though, they explained to me that these images are not the first choices they make, these visual concepts could be anything in their form. Their first choices are essential ones, about the depth of the story they want to tell.

For Madama Butterfly, they've chosen to direct it like the tragedy that it is, in the ancient noble sense, not just a simple love drama like it's mostly done, but a deep universal, fatal, yet simple tale. And all the choices they made follow this major rule. First and most strinkingly, the vast empty zen space (designed by Christian Fenouillat) allows the characters to evolve at the scale of an antique amphi-theatre, and not in a picturesque little doll house with a garden like it's mostly the case. In their production, everything is simple and pure in order to focus on the sense of the conversation happening between the characters. Here, they're not creating pretty images of japanese landscapes, they are using huge symbolic painted backdrops to create a sensation of Japan rather than a detailed postcard. They also direct singers a lot like theatre actors. It's about transcending the form of Opera by seeking the truth of the relationships between the characters, making them think about their internal motivations and believe what they say, not just sing it.

Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier are very precise in the way they direct both the higher stakes and the details of the dialogues. Sometimes in rehearsals, one can wonder why stop at every figure, when the singing is near perfection. And then, when you get to a stage and orchestra rehearsal, you see the bigger three-dimensionnal-200sqft picture they've created and you understand why they did it so carefully: At this stage, in the huge 2000 seater that is the Royal Opera House, every choice you made is multiplied by ten and if you made the wrong ones, they are going to blow up in your face once in the auditorium. Moshe spent hours on a very intense moment for the main character of Butterfly as he was not getting enough shattering emotion but 'just' sadness, 'Sadness is easy, he said, but it's cute, and I can just switch the tv off and forget about it. Here we want something excruciating, a shock for the audience'. Indeed, he was so right, if not directed properly in the rehearsal room, it can just be pathos in the main house and this is a usual risk when Puccini is badly produced. Because Puccini is such a master of story-telling, his scenes are very short and there is only essential dialogues. So you do have to 'place' the stakes of the character at the exact level in order to reach the brilliance of the composer.

And thanks to the high stakes and to how the directors have delved into and the truthfulness of Puccini's own perfection, Leiser and Caurier's Butterfly production for the ROH is the most succesful revival done regularly over the last fifteen years. It's also thanks to what Andrew Sinclair, the resident director, calls 'their magic'. I remember when I first saw the production ten years ago, I was struck by how they created simple but also heart-wrenching moments, by just bringing to an image one single element that can tear your heart out: the bonze coming from the horizon, the backdrop of stars at the end of Act one, the shadow of Pinkerton's wife in act three, or finally the simplicity of the last image, that I won't spoil here, which is extraordinarily tragic ! All these moments seem simple but they are highly thought through, connected to the contemporary world, and therefore, to a contemporary audience. Leiser directs with very immediate references: the character of Pinkerton is compared to Trump during the 2017 rehearsals (he probably referred to Bush twelve years ago). In any case, by giving a very concrete and detailed existence, both in the acting-direction and the images created, their visions are striking and their work appear seemless. This is the magic of Posh and Mosh...

The reviews proved it several times already over the years but this 2017 revival was particularly acclaimed thanks to the impressive cast led by Ermonela Jaho as Butterfly, Marcelo Puentes as Pinkerton, Scott Hendricks as Sharpless, Elisabeth DeShong as Suzuki, and Carlo Bosi as Goro. Watching them has taught me so much about singers. First, they are also without a doubt the best in the world, they're incredibly strong and powerful and they are perfect for their parts. Casting at the ROH is known worldly for being of a very high standard. So you, as a director, need to be on top of your game as well.

Just like they know their score well in advance, you need to know your production from every angle. You need to be able to know everybody's trajectory on the stage, every subtext you want them to carry. You need to give a sense of perspective on each character and know the meaning of everything for everyone in a scene. This means being able to respond to an internal motivation question as well as to the purpose of a character or his action at a certain moment of the show. You can't just answer with your intuition, you have to justify each demand with your knowledge of stagecraft, and rely on the music to support your choices. You also have to bear in mind the unimaginable physical demands of singing 'full voice' to the biggest houses in the world and the technicalities of singing like simply taking their cues from the conductor. All of this should enter into the mix of your directing. One of the only difficulties for a director in Opera might be that singers often sing the same part in different productions and that they have a version of their part slightly embedded in their body. Your job then is to fulfil the vision of the director, to guide them as much as possible through what they should do on stage, guide what they should feel in relation to their partners and to the music. It's easier said than done, but it's still as easy task to find answers to any questions because every measure, every note, every gesture tells a story. You'll always find an answer to keep the 'spirit' of the production by searching through the notes made on a one of your team's score...whether the note you'll find is from 2005 or yesterday is another story !

The cast of this revival of Madama Butterfly were one of the best and fun teams I've ever had the chance to work with. And Marcelo and I bonded over the fact that ten years ago, he too was a young waiter just opposite the ROH and was yearning to come back her one day. The parallel was touching.

During this past decade, I've learnt to structure my work, to frame my intuition as an artist, and to articulate my practice, all with small teams of people, running my own company. What I learnt by working at the Royal Opera House in just five weeks is:

First, that I was right to find my own structure, which is comforting because it's not easy becoming pragmatic about the art, without guidance. I can now do this.

Secondly, there are many aspects in which my journey and my intuition as an experienced practitionner have proven to be very useful. In particular, my theatre background was very in keeping with the director's demands of the singers.

Most importantly, I’ve learned that these good intuitions and this 'talent' partly, matter only for the public, for the end-result, but are really not enough. If you're working in such a worldy renowned place, you're probably talented but no-one really cares about it amongst your colleagues. What matters here is your structure, how you can collaborate, your intelligence in dealing with all the talents that are contributing to your work as a director. And there are so many minds working with you. Antonio Pappano says that working on Opera is a great mix of intelligence and intuition.

Talking to the Maestro in the Cafeteria once, I said I felt very lucky to have been given the opportunity to properly start my journey in Opera at the ROH, almost too lucky because since then, everyone I meet has been telling me that Covent Garden is one of the best structured houses in the world and that I will never find such quality in every aspect anywhere else. Pappano smiled and said nothing. That smile was the simplest way to say it all. Him and people like Renato, Moshe or Andrew are rare models for me. They don't seek egotistic genius recognition, they actually took the ego completely out of it. You have to, because when you deal with as many people as they do, not only are you in charge, but you're also under constant scrutiny over every decision you make and it demands a masterful professional gravitas.

That's what I did not expect to find in Opera. The meaning somehow of everything I was already striving for in my work as artistic director of my own company. In particular, I found an answer to a question I'm often asked: Why do you want to work at such scale ? Why don't you do a solo ? Why don't you put on lighter shows, star in it and get produced, you're talented, you could do well? Why don't you do things for yourself?  And one day, in a Sitzprobe (orchestra and singers’ rehearsal), as a lot of the other departments came down, all the music team, the directors, a dozen students from the royal academy of music, six internationally renowned singers, and Antonio Pappano conducting with the most beautiful grace and softness Act 3 of Madama Butterfly. The music was of course beautiful but at one point, not a hugely emotional point though, I was looking at all these talents, all these human brains working together at creating beauty. There were about a hundred people in the room. And I was so taken by it, that I started crying very softly in front of a scene I'd already seen rehearsed a dozen times before. And I knew that it was not only because Puccini was terribly good, but also because I had my answer to the questions. Why don't I go solo? Because I don't care. I care about the collectiveness, about a group of human beings working together at creating wonders. That's all I'm passionate about, that's what holds my shows together, that's what I teach my drama students and that's why my company is called Exchange Theatre. This is no intuition anymore, it's a statement for my practice. That's why the ROH changed my life for a second time.

[wombatportrait]

I am mad they blocked this story and only let subscribers see it. But I busted through that wall. (It is a metaphor!) I copied it for you.

Liebe Grüße,

Donna

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Painstaking: Alison Douglas at work. Pictures: Justine Walpole

It is an often overlooked but proven scientific fact that wombats have feelings too. Evolution did not, however, provide the humble wombat with the anatomical means to verbally express its feelings, or a natural place in which to do so. No coastal Buddhist wombat retreat, for example, where these quadrupedal marsupials might form trust circles to emotionally release themselves from the burden of playing second fiddle to the self-satisfied koala, or ponder the viciousness of the sociopathic dingo, or truly convey the overwhelming anxiety that sometimes makes a wombat just want to dig a hole in the ground and crawl deep inside. Stop the world, I want to waddle off.

Late November, 2016: Queensland Museum taxidermist and senior preparator Alison Douglas slips on a pair of surgical gloves as she pads through a basement room past a stack of arcing whale rib bones the size of two-person tent frames. She passes a large steel macerating tank where a long-deceased marine turtle is being boiled and stripped of gunk and grit before it’s transferred to a taxidermist’s table. She passes a freezer room filled with tagged specimens: “Echidnas”, “Prep birds”, “Possum”. Each animal’s tag contains details of where and when it was found. “You can have the most beautiful ­specimen in the world but if it doesn’t have its location and date then it’s useless to science,” Douglas says. ­Science needs the animal’s story.

She comes to a back room with a word fixed to its entry: “Skinning”. A stuffed ringtail possum sits on a perch in the corner of the room. A corkboard on the wall features detailed colour portraits of animals, and Post-it note messages between colleagues: “Cat skull for Caroline.” The room is lined with drawers with various tags speaking of their contents: “Red eyes”, “Yellow eyes”, “Paired brown eyes”. Drawers full of taxidermy patching fur. Another marked “Skins, Bones and Bits”.

There’s a dead animal beneath a sheet on Douglas’s stainless steel workbench. She removes the sheet slowly. It’s a common wombat. Brown fur, lumpy body, curled in a ball like it’s sleeping. “Here he is,” she says. “Tonka.”

She stands back and looks at that face. The bare nose. The serene eyes. The odd tenderness that emanates from the little guy, somehow soulful even in death. “He’s got such a beautiful face,” she says. “He looks like someone, doesn’t he?”

He does. Someone old and wise; someone you might have cared about. Someone with feelings.

“He just looks so peaceful,” she says. She takes a deep breath, feels the weight of the task before her. “Tonka’s not so important scientifically,” she says. “But he’s very important to people.”

Tonka the wombat had any number of reasons to feel sad throughout his short life. After his mum was killed by a car eight years ago, Tonka was rescued from her pouch and hand-reared by humans at Billabong Sanctuary, a native animal wildlife park near Townsville, north Queensland. Lacking the necessary smarts for the wild, Tonka was destined for a lifetime in captivity. But if he longed for life beyond the park enclosure he rarely let it show, rejoicing in the constant companionship of a ­loving team of rangers with whom he cuddled, played, walked, ate, napped. Some nights staff members would take him home to meet their families, prop him up on the living room couch with mum, dad and the kids, and settle in for another episode of The Block. Before long, Tonka the wombat became the park’s star attraction, dazzling groups at the morning and afternoon wombat shows with his charm and insatiable zest for life. Where some marsupials recoiled from the hugs of tourists, Tonka seemed to grow in spirit and confidence with every warm embrace. Male wombats wanted to be him, female wombats wanted to be with him.

Then, in early February 2011, Category 5 Cyclone Yasi tore through Billabong Sanctuary, smashing enclosures, destroying displays, uprooting trees. Miraculously no animals perished, but the park was closed for 10 weeks as an army of rangers and volunteers worked on the clear-up.

Tonka the wombat went off his food. No ­matter what the rangers placed in front of him, even his beloved carrots and sweet potato, he wouldn’t eat it. He dropped 20 per cent of his body weight in a matter of weeks. Just as alarmingly, he had suddenly retreated into himself. The wildly charismatic Austin Powers of the marsupial world inexplicably lost his mojo. It was as if Cyclone Yasi had blown away into ­oblivion and taken Tonka’s spark with it.

Park management consulted the best veterinary minds money could buy. They did blood tests, looked for internal damage, tested for disease and infection, checked his body for broken bones or bruising. Physically, there was nothing. So how to explain the reduced interest in once pleasurable activities, the loss of energy and slowed behaviour, the increased desire to sleep and the loss of appetite? The vets had nothing to offer, except to say bare-nosed wombats have feelings too. Tonka the wombat, it seemed, was living with clinical depression.

“He’s a bit chunky,” Douglas says, studying her subject on the metal workbench. “He’ll take a bit to thaw. He needs to be thawed out before we remove the skin. There’s no getting around that with taxidermy. You do have to skin the animal. It’s quite confronting – there’s blood and there’s guts and it’s kind of like a butcher’s shop in a way, especially with an animal of Tonka’s size.”

Douglas has worked as a taxidermist at Queensland Museum for 16 years, moving into it from a background in visual arts and props and puppet-making for theatre. “My interest is not in taxidermy as such; it’s very much museum taxidermy, for the purpose of conservation. It’s about teaching people about the animals. It is sometimes the only way of seeing these animals that you would otherwise never get up close to.”

A rustic leather case of medical tools is open on her workbench: scalpels, rat’s tooth tweezers for removing flesh from hard-to-reach places, ­pliers and scissors and wire cutters and fine metal scoops designed specifically for scooping the brains out of birds’ skulls. She has a selection of drill bits for working on the bones of larger animals and fixing specimens to wooden perches.

She studies Tonka on the bench. She will draw some sketches before she skins, capture the curve of his muscles, the sag of his body fat. “You’re ­trying to recreate the body shape that comes out of the animal,” she says. “You’re taking the skin off like a glove. The whole body comes out in one piece.” She moves closer to Tonka’s face. “There is something important about seeing him at this point,” she says. “I’m trying to preserve that face as much as possible.”

It was this face that was plastered under ­headlines around the world. “Wombat Diagnosed with Depression” wrote the Daily Mail. “Depressed Orphan Wombat” declared The Huffington Post. “Wombat Diagnosed with Clinical Depression” reported the Daily Mirror.

It seemed so absurd, a clinically depressed wombat. While scientists considered whether it was even possible, animal lovers across the social media world sent deep, life-affirming messages to the inexplicably gloomy bare-nosed wombat in Townsville, Queensland.“Focus on the little things, Tonka.”“Just keep waddling, Tonka, one paw at a time.”“Stars can’t shine without darkness, Tonka.”

“One hundred per cent, he had depression,” says Samm Sherman, a 27-year-old PhD candidate at James Cook University’s College of Science and Engineering, and the former Billabong Sanctuary wildlife carer who was closer to Tonka than anyone. Sherman documented her close friendship with Tonka through a series of Instagram images tagged “#bestfriendisawombat”.

“That wasn’t a joke,” she says. “It truly wasn’t a joke. He was my best friend. You can ask the ­people I worked with. They saw it. I loved him immediately when I saw him. He was just so ­special. I would take him for walks. I’d give him cuddles, a little chin scratch. I mean, I know we didn’t hang out all the time and it’s not like we’d go to the movies or anything, I’m not delusional, but if I was ever ­frustrated or stressed or anything I could go to him and give him a cuddle and I’d feel better. And… ummm… yeah.”

She pauses for a moment. “I miss him,” she says. She pauses for another moment. “Thanks for making me cry at work.”

Tina Janssen has spent the past decade ­running Safe Haven, a wombat research and rehabilitation centre in Mt Larcom, near Rockhampton. She was one of many experts Billabong Sanctuary ­consulted during Tonka’s downturn. “Yes, I think they can feel sadness,” she says. “Wombats are a very funny animal. They sulk. They don’t like change. That’s one of the big things with wombats. If you feed them, for example, at a certain time every day and then, all of a sudden, you change that, they will quite likely not eat.

“They’re really intelligent. People say, ‘Stubborn as a mule’ and I always say, ‘Well, you’ve never met a wombat’. They just dig in. And they get attachments. I have a captive-born wombat that I’ve cared for for 12 years and just recently I went away and for three nights she didn’t eat. If they have a square water bowl then you better bloody give them water in the square water bowl.”

Cyclone Yasi brought great change to Billabong Sanctuary. With the park’s rangers focused on the clean-up effort, Tonka’s daily routine was torn asunder. With no visitors for 10 weeks, he was denied his morning and afternoon wombat shows, something akin to Olivier being asked to wait ­forever in the wings at the Old Vic.

“He loved those shows,” Sherman says. “I would see him before the shows some days. He would be waiting at his gate, like, ‘Come on, let’s go people’.” The born entertainer. Tonka came alive before a gig. “He loved the cuddles from people. He needed the cuddles. I think it stemmed from not having a mum. But when the park was closed for a couple of months while they fixed everything up, there was no time for him to be cuddled.”

By the time the park was ready for its grand reopening, Tonka was considered too physically and emotionally fragile to resume the shows, and another wombat took his place. “When he saw the people, he walked up to the fence like [he was ­asking] ‘Why aren’t you picking me up for the show?’” Sherman says. “So one of the rangers took him out to meet people again. And, then, after his first cuddles he went back into his enclosure and started eating again. It genuinely was because he wasn’t getting his cuddles from people that he wasn’t eating.” Billabong Sanctuary’s star attraction was back, and so was Tonka’s self-esteem.

Valentine’s Day. Alison Douglas walks into her museum basement work room, past two cast and painted pythons and a taxidermy deer that’s been donated to the museum by a member of the public. She enters the skinning room, where Tonka waits on her workbench. He looks playful. She’s captured him at a typically spirited moment, tugging on the shoelace of a Billabong Sanctuary ranger. “He came together all right in the end,” Douglas says. “I wanted to show that he wasn’t just any wombat, he meant something more to people. I was trying to get that sense of fun and connection he had to anyone who came along.”

She worked on him over summer. His skin was put in a tanning solution for three weeks and washed. She cast his ears and the shape of his back. She cast his skull and rebuilt it with expanding foam, and gave him glass black eyes. The insides of his body and legs were painstakingly crafted from natural plant fibres and bound tightly with string. “He was quite a challenge because during his treatment [after death] he had patches of fur removed, which limited the choices of ­positions he could be in,” she says. “The patching wasn’t as straightforward as it usually would be because there wasn’t much to work with, but I’m happy with him.” Her time with Tonka has ended. Time to take him upstairs where others can enjoy his company. Time to say goodbye.

Samm Sherman remembers when she said goodbye to Tonka. It was June last year, and Tonka had been diagnosed with kidney failure. “I’m gonna tear up again,” she says, taking a breath. “I wasn’t working there anymore by then but I still visited quite often... And the last couple of days, when it seemed like he was really having a hard time of it, we’d go and he wasn’t really eating much but he ate a pear. He didn’t stand up for a bit but he ate this pear lying down. He didn’t usually eat pears but it was because it was soft and full of fluid. And then they told us they were going to take him to the vet to euthanise him.”

She pauses again. “That was the right call because there was nothing they could do,” she says. “He had irreversible kidney damage and his quality of life was really poor. He seemed really unhappy. A bunch of us went in and gave him some cuddles. And we said our goodbyes.”

She showered Tonka with nose kisses. She scratched him on the spot on his back where he loved being scratched and he curled up in her arms. She didn’t know what he was thinking but she had an idea of what he was feeling because she felt it too. “And I told him I loved him,” she says.

Sherman went home and waited for the world to hear the news of Tonka the wombat’s passing. She watched the hundreds of condolence messages land in Billabong Sanctuary’s Facebook page, messages from across the world.

Jill Halliday: “I didn’t even know what a wombat was before I cuddled the lovely Tonka. I know how sad we feel from meeting him once so it must be awful for everyone at Billabong Sanctuary.”

Linda Chillon: “I hope that you’ll find peace and happiness wherever you are.”

Crystal Allen: “Oh no, poor Tonka. My two youngest boys come to visit each school holidays and knew his story off by heart.”

Kerrianne Chappell: “Noooo! I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it!”

In the museum basement taxidermy room, ­Alison Douglas throws a half-smile at this perfect and still version of Tonka. Soon the great performer will be back where he belongs, in front of crowds of fawning strangers. Douglas is relieved. She wanted to do him justice. She hopes people see the same thing she sees when she looks at him now, something she was trying to capture, something beyond science, something more closely related to feelings.

“He was loved,” she says. “And they loved him because they knew him.”

Tonka and Alison ­Douglas will be part of the Let’s Talk Taxidermy event on March 24-25 at the World Science Festival in Brisbane. worldsciencefestival.com.au