7/28/2006

so why go?

Why the dearth of posts?

Well, as i said, I got sick of listening to my own whining and realised that I was disappearing up my own negatively contemplative fundament. My jaded-quotient was off the scale.

Additionally I found out that rather than simply being an inconsistent, over-sensitive, self-destructive twat I had, in fact, been bearing the burden of a mental health problem all of my adult life. While it was a huge relief to have the recurrent (and indeed sisyphean) patterns explained and, strangely, forgiven it also blew a volcanic plug of fury & resentment which I needed to surf. The beast was finally named. At the time catastrophic, in retrospect cathartic - I may write of this in detail - not sure.

And so I got to a place where I was reviewing my identity and purpose. Acting was revealed to be a self-obsessive and delusional pursuit. I ditched it - vowing never ... etc. I realised that the complete lack of status, creativity and 'success' in my career to date was killing me and decided to put all of my energies into my corporate work.

This I did to almost immediate success. After putting the word out I was blessed with a plethora of work which significantly helped the financial situation. Additionally I was also presented with opportunities to design and deliver my own actor based training programs for a number of world class clients. A fun one was a training program delivered as a Compliance Boot Camp for an international mechant bank - these are the guys who investigate the Nick Leessons of the world - delivered in frankfurt with delegates flying from US, Europe and Australia. It went down a storm and my team played a blinder. Lot's more work in the pipeline.

In early feb I arranged a state-of-the-union meeting with A.Gent. We both quickly realised that it wasn't working out and neither was giving the other what they needed. We agreed to part company - although I do still get the odd call re specific castings.

In early in june I received a call from the mutal friend of a director whom I worked with on the Blue Room in 2003. She asked if i was available. I said yes, subject to script, rehearsal schedule & work commitments.

Primary criteria was artistic. Was it a worhwhile piece?

It was a nice, well-written, new piece; cast were lovely; as were the production team. It was easily the most fun, relaxed and effective production process of my career. It has also done my rep absolutely no harm and I now have a really nice profile in the upper echelons of London Fringe.

Also during the process the sleeping giant that is my guitar awoke with a vengeance - more on that later.

I have emerged artistically invigorated and with my ego nicely patched and bolstered.