Picture
Nothing to do with the massive earthquake
 
when I disperse
these words in chunks
like so

is that enough
to make you read this
as a poem?

i'll mention here 
that Christchurch
has basically collapsed

mainly to add gravity
in the absence 
of rhythm or meter

keep it light in the beginning
then show your seriousness
with a sexual abuse story
a terminal illness twist

i'm realistic
about what you'll
take away from this

even assuming
that you trust me
and read it as a poem
 
 
When it comes to activist theatre (if not all theatre) clearly there is a problem of distribution. How can the performance reach enough people to have any kind of effect? Thus, I was intrigued by this video of a piece by L.M. Bogad, which is not only used to expand the audience, but also acts as a step-by-step guide for doing similar action. It would be interesting to know if anyone has followed its example...I mean if it worked for flash mobs...
-Joel
 
 
Picture
with apologies to Howard Barker.

1.       You are probably making theatre for the wrong reasons.
2.       Few people go to the theatre to have a bad time and be improved. How will you target them in your marketing?
3.       Poetry may make nothing happen but it lacks theatre’s social aspect.
4.       Shared light is spooky because look how hard you are working and how still the audience is.
5.    The banks have gotten chummy recently, haven’t they?
6.       Evolutionarily, it may not be in your interests to be happy.
7.       Nihilism in the elderly is disconcerting, isn’t it?
8.     Truth in the theatre is quite hard to define.
9.       All that junk food is altering your perception of things.
10.    When the actors are having a bad time, comfort them by calling out things like “its ok! None of it is really happening!”
11.    Try getting up there and helping out. See what they do.
12.   Discussion of Facebook will not, in itself, make the work avant-garde.
13.    All this coffee is making you edgy. Have you added up what it costs you in a week?
14.    Lists can be written more quickly than novels.
15.    If you want to watch people bored at work, there are fast food places where you can do it for free.
16.    It is more about the asking of questions than about being so presumptuous as to proffer answers, wouldn't you say?
17.     You will see all these things differently in a few years.
18.    The news media in this country is very emotionally invested.
19.    We are doomed with or without your scholarly concern. Things will peak, dwindle, and converge by themselves. Stop reading those depressing books. Go outside, its sunny.
Picture
Where all your Beckett royalties go
 
Off our chests 21/08/2010
 
Picture
We were sarcastic to babies. We left jellyfish on the beach access steps, we wrapped a piece of dry ice in bread and fed it to a seagull, we crucified tuataras by the tracks in national parks. We thought our deodorant would get us laid by two girls at once- we weren’t even half right. We amputated the wrong limb- we had been drinking. We saw Jermaine in Patel’s and acted like he was our friend. We mouthed the national anthem, we pissed on the field. We paid her $150,000 on the quiet, which is almost $40,000 per vertebrae and not a bad hourly rate.  We needed constant distraction, a soundtrack, we had to be occupied all the time, we hated gaps, we had no attention span, we were never satisfied doing one thing at a time. We laughed at three legged dogs and sometimes we'd make them jump for food. We went around pouring raro into people's hot water cylinders. We declared war on God when we knew he was omnipotent. We sold pictures of the tumour to Woman’s Day. We hosted breakfast television; we were naked from the waist down. We knew 9/11 was going to happen and we could have warned people but our bed was warm and we didn’t have money on our phones. We rewrote Shakespeare with happy endings. We changed our relationship status to “it’s pointless.” We did our calculations in imperial instead of metric, four astronauts were asphyxiated. We tried to kill ourselves but messed it up, so we did the research and wrote a book called SUICIDE FOR DUMMIES- it was a bestseller, life got better. We put your toothbrush where the sun don’t shine. We put pornographic Harry potter slash fiction in the children’s library. We wrote fucking disgusting things with your magnetic poetry. We joined causes on Facebook.  Our ipods were full of pirated NZ music. We couldn’t keep conversations going, we found it difficult to read between the lines, we were borderline all sorts of things. We wore bangles to indicate to the boys what we were willing to do- green meant oral, blue was for with a condom, red without- we turned our collars down to show him we were up for it. We were small fish in a tiny pond. We’re guilty of static, of white noise, polystyrene packaging and bubble wrap, we put the huge amount of junk information in your DNA. We got into the stranger’s car- the offer was just too good. We cried when people died in movies because we couldn’t help thinking it could be you. We got our gum caught in your pubic hair. We wore Che Guevara T-shirts. We misplaced parts of the infant’s body, we buried her incomplete. We yelled at cicadas. We knew where Carmen San Diego was all along.

A selection from in-rehearsal explorations of Speak Bitterness in 2008. Written by Rachel, Claire, Simon, Ralph and Joel, after Forced Entertainment. Continues- click "read more".
 
 
Picture
A photo my brother took in India
 
Applications 21/07/2010
 
Picture
Onscreen
So my friend told me how his young nephew, who lives in another city, maybe thinks his uncle is a computer programme. This makes sense. Like all the other applications he is conjured by mouse-click; a flat, jerky man who by some disconcerting charm you can never make eye contact with. So, Picard-like, he points to the screen and asks for his uncle. 

Ode (2010 AD)
Oh! You spirits of far flung friends! I have lost the memory of when you were flesh. Now you blink mysteriously on and off like the lights on a thunderbirds set. Your voices, your faces forgotten; light up your small green circles and appear to me...
 
Honestly 16/07/2010
 
Darling,

I know that the writing which seems the most effortless to an outside eye is often the most carefully constructed, but no matter how any drafts I put this through it still sounds calculated.
 
I’ll think its finished, and that its saying everything I want it to say, simply and truthfully- and then I'll notice one word that doesn’t sit right or gives the wrong impression. Of course changing it messes up the flow of an entire sentence, and then the whole thing is wrong. Words can be so slippery.

Darling. Please believe me when I tell you I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve tried to write to you, apologising for everything.

X
 
 
Picture
The rebooted Dane: 'We're going to make the original look like a man of action'
We met with the director and he told us what to expect when we take our seats at this summer's hottest prequel.

We’re just so excited about finally getting to tell this story! There are so many unanswered questions in the first one. We get to explore all that stuff- the relationship between Old Hamlet and Claudius- their rivalry, where that came from. Also the precredits thing, (the showdown with Old Fortinbras- Ed), is going to kick things off in a really explosive way.

We’re really stoked to get the old favourites back- as well as Claudius, the gravediggers will make an appearance, and of course young Hamlet is there in the background. We get to shed some light on his journey. You'll notice in the teaser trailer he has a wee skull on his bib! Just some subtle stuff for the fans.
 
It’s not a spoiler to say (laughs) that the climax is the ear poisoning. We’ve had to be really... I guess respectful... with how we deal with that, its such a pivotal thing and of course everyone has their own picture of how its supposed to go! I can say though, I've seen the rough cut and they won't be disappointed, its really intense. And it should be. This is the moment when Claudius, you know, becomes Claudius, and we know the crowds will be waiting for that moment...

Shakespeare Origins: Hamlet is in cinemas in November
 
Movie Magic 20/05/2010
 
Picture
Look! Links to the short vids we made last year for the Mashpit website:

Our Recent Status Updates
When Facebook goes bad.

1001 Things You MUST Do Before You Die
There was one of these they made us cut out, and a few I'm quite suprised they let stay...

Binge News
We never found out who this boy was, he was just a miracle which appeared

Hard Night Panda 01, 02 and 03 
Its not the drinking, its how we're drinking...
 
 
Here's a thing I wrote to promote Elimination Rounds and be offensive, and a text from Drowning Bird which was done by Joel from inside a cardboard box.
YOU DON'T YOUR NEED YOUR COLOURED GOGGLES FOR THIS SHIT

Or: "Towards an Undead Theatre"

Remember how your youth group leader used to take someone hip, like Eminem, and say: "You know, there was this guy called Jesus, and he was pretty much doing what Eminem is doing, 2000 years ago, in Jerusalem.” And you believed him, right? That youth group leader sure knew how to make something old and irrelevant look new and appealing: he compared it to something you cared about. It’s an old trick, and you’ll find it works with just as well with Shakespeare, and poetry, and lots of other dead things.  In this article, I’m going to try and be like that youth group leader, only I want to tell you about theatre.  As we all know, theatre was murdered by TV and film long before we were born. Or was it? Can it be resurrected? Do we need what famous zombie director Peter Brook (11 and 12) called for: an Undead Theatre?
 
Let me begin.

There's been a lot of fuss recently about cinema realising that it can "do 3D."

No it fucking can't.  Theatre can do 3D. Effortlessly. Everything it does is totally in all directions. Look at all the dimensions. It can do smells too. At the end, the performers and you have been through something together. You know the phrase “break a leg?” Actors can break legs. In theatre, things actually happen to people and you’re there to witness it.

So forget  Avatar, taste the next big thing. You might not have heard about it. It’s not on at Readings, or the Embassy. It cost less than a million dollars to make. It’s a theatre show.
 
Binge Culture's Elimination Rounds, is, in conclusion, a theatre show. It is better than Jesus.  In it, there’s a leafblower, a feeding frenzy, a live band, and a lion mauling. People pretend to be in danger. People get sort of naked. Gravity exerts its force upon objects.  Wellington is built onstage and destroyed by a monster.

My gosh, you say, can theatre do all this? Can it really be as hip as Eminem? To which I reply: heck yes, kid, and you won’t even need your 3D glasses.

*****

You know, not all performers are naturally extroverted.
Many of them are quite shy, off the stage.
Actually, a lot of people get on the stage for the same reasons that a lot of people get drunk.
When you're on the stage,
Or on the piss,
You get to be funnier than you are in everyday life.
You get to be bolder.
More flirtatious.
You get to do things you wouldn't normally get to do.
Because people are generally more understanding when you're drunk.
Or acting.