heiks

I am currently moving this blog from my .mac site, so posts are from 2006, until I catch up to myself! If you've found this blog, you probably know me. If you don't know me, hello there! I mainly blog about my life in Paris (France) and what is happening in my life as an actor (or actress if you want to be British. Maybe ACTRON is less gender-specific. Shall we try that then?). So, yes, here we all are. Have fun.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

from township to tent


Well, it’s been quite a day....I saw Township Stories this afternoon.
Go to http://arts.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh2006/story/0,,1854717,00.html if you want to read an article about it.
Let’s just say it’s .... harrowing. Took me a good while to come out of shellshock. Before I had read that they call the director “ the Township Tarantino”, I sat in the theatre feeling like I was in Resevoir Dogs. Lots of violence and brutality close up and lots of beautiful music, juxtaposing the action on stage. Music from Enya, Tracey Chapman, Sting, Paul Simon and Louis Armstrong to Zola and other Kwaito artists. Yet again, there is no point in trying to describe this type of theatre in words. It has to be experienced - that is the essence of theatre, is it not?!

And then tonight at midnight, I found myself in The Famous Spiegeltent in the Spiegelgarden, watching La Clique. A burlesque cabaret with circus performers, the amazing rubberman, the skating Willards (who rollerblade and fling each other around on a tiny round patch of stage about 2 metres in diametre!) and other freaks, including the Caesar Twins. Some stuff is outrageous (mostly the things from Berlin!) some is really awesome and some is.... quite gross. Good fun!

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006

smells like...


...dressing room drama!
I have to say, our dressing room at C venues is dismal. I mean, it just can’t get any worse. We share the shack that has been erected in the cellar of the building with around 10 other companies. The cellar of the venue is a very hot place. All the beer barrels are stored there, the ice-machine and a whole lot of other paraphanalia that exudes heat and wierd smells. In the midst of all this, the venue management have erected two adjoining shacks for us to get changed and made up in. The next door dressing room has persian rugs on the floor.... and what do we get? The Big Stink. I kid you not - our place is BO Central - so much so, that Steve even brought in one of those dangly air-fresheners that people hang on their rear-view mirrors. Pine tree-shaped - you know the one. Anyway, he hung this thing over by where the clowns keep their unbearably smelly costumes and the next day someone had thrown it out! THEY LIKE IT TO STINK, obviously.
We also did a dramatic Febreze-ing session, but - can you believe it - the smells in the curtains there are so ingrained, that they overpowered the Febreze!

Actually, I just wrote all that as an excuse to put up this picture of Steve. I mean, it’s all true, but it’s not neccessarily interesting enough to warrant a post, right? The picture, however, is priceless.
Steve getting ready to perform. He says he’s really enjoying the painting of his nails before a show and he will miss it.

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Friday, August 18, 2006

Fred at the Fest


I’ve been very lucky to have friends pop by this festival to see the show and hang out... one such person was Fred Baker, who made a special effort to spend one night in Edinburgh on his way up from Vienna to Cambridge to Inverness for a wedding. Whilst the rest of the wedding party were already having a pre-WEDDING dinner, Fred was watching The Clan of DIVORCEES, bless his heart.

He also brought the DVD of Mind The Gap, the fim we made at the Berlinale this year. Good news. The photo above is of him and his wife Sandra, who directed Mind The Gap.

Fred wasn’t staying very long, so we talked until deep into the morning to make the most of it and here is what I learnt. Fred hates when women say they aren’t good at networking. It pisses him off. Apparently, networking is the wrong word. It’s “having conversations with people about your work and what you’re doing! And you are very good at that.”

So, because I respect Fred and listened closely to his 4am pearls of wisdom, I went off the next night to our publicists ‘having conversations with people about your work and what you’re doing’party and decided to try it out under that new title. I had several conversations and for a first effort on my part, it went swimmingly I thought!

Right said Fred. (couldn’t resist that, SORRY!)
Thanks Fred.

(photo: Fred and his wife Sandra at the Grand Palais in Paris)

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Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Paul Le Guen, or how to perfect your scottish


You may not know this, and I don’t blame you one little bit, but Paul Le Guen is a Frenchman from Rennes. And this is his current job, according to Wikipedia:
On March 11, 2006, it was confirmed that Paul Le Guen had agreed to replace Alex McLeish as manager of Rangers starting in season 2006/2007. Le Guen signed a 3 year contract with Rangers, with the option to extend his stay at Ibrox Stadium. So, he’s coaching Scotlands Premier League football team, based in Glasgow. Why am I bringing this up, you ask? Well, Paul Le Guen is our stage manager's answer to his language problems!
The stage manager for The Clan of Divorcees is French/Moroccan and doesn’t speak English. However, in a moment of panic when we were all dashing up the road towards the monster rental truck, thinking the traffic wardens cicling it were on the brink of ticketing, he started shouting: “PAUL LE GUEN! PAUL LE GUEN!” By using that name, he was simultaneously explaining that ‘we are from France, but we come in peace, so please don’t give us a parking ticket’! Of course, you would have to be a football fan to get it. I am not and I didn’t...

Similarly, when taking the monster rental truck through a traffic circle in the wrong direction (pesky English, imposing left-side driving wherever they went!) and having a lady gesticulate wildly at him from her little car, our stage manager rolled down his window and tossed the following phrase at her: “I want you BEGINNING!” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, lady. As a put-down, I have seldom heard anything better.

(photo: stage manager in promotional action on the Royal Mile)

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Friday, August 04, 2006

festival living


Due to unforseen circumstances, we have more people staying in our festival apartment than bedrooms. This means that the youngest team member gets to sleep in the living room. This also means that there is no common room for us to have breakfast in, as our youngest team member tends not to get up before lunch time.

Anyway, you remember our empty truck dilemma from the previous post? Well, there was one other thing in the truck that I didn’t mention. When the stage manager noticed that there was no set, he raided the mother-theatre in Paris. In an attempt to bring something we might be able to use as a set to Scotland, they took a sexy little café table and 3 café chairs from the theatre bar. Seeing as they are totally the wrong style for our play, we have set them up in the apartment instead... there is an oversized hallway that we are now using as a breakfast nook for coffee and croissants in the morning!

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