Fela Book

Saw this book today.

 

Fela This Bitch of A Life

I don’t know if this is a reprint of a book with a very similar title or a new book. I suspect the former. Be interesting to see how it sells.

Narrative vs Authenticity

Watched this video on YouTube. It’s a bunch of academics talking about Narrative and Authenticity. The notes I took while watching were:
How you tell your story
-Narrative not what we’ve done but what we wish to do/be
-Heidigger & authenticity
-Narrative being subjective and contextual based on cultural values
– telling what people want to hear?
– co-operation and collegiate
– what is my true self so how can I be authentic?
– David Boeme physicist and Conditioned Thought.
– Lonergan’s sense of questioning and enquiry. This can tell us who we are.
– What is the purpose of the story and for whom are you writing the story?
– Objective time & lived time.
– life lived as not a series of temporal moments but as a series of possibility

Struck me as lots of appropriate things for the play I am currently writing 57 Images of My Father which is about a lot of these ideas. Perhaps this is why these moments voiced jumped out at me and were written down?

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Fela! off to Sadlers Wells

Fela is off to Sadlers Wells after it finished a sold out run at the National Theatre. The show just goes on and on demonstration there is an audience for this type of show after what three years now.

Theatre Directors training

Interesting article here by the Guardian on training schemes for young theatre directors.

Read this accompanying article by the same writer also. This is more about the process of writing.

57 Images of My Father

Got a radical rewrite in mind for my project 57 Images of My Father. This broadens it out as it would now examine masculinity as well as parenthood. Going to complete the current draft first so as to have two versions knocking about. Can’t quite find the time this week so far to get on with it but hopeful to make some progress over the weekend.

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NT Live thoughts

Went to see National Theatre’s NTLive broadcast of Fela! At the Broadway Cinema yesterday. First time ever attending one of these live broadcasts of shows or sporting event at cinema and had no idea what to expect. I’d already seen the show in December and the experience stands up. It was Directed so that helped enormously in creating an experience.
Fela! is a show that works well due to the fantastic music, good dancing and strong central performance.
The script for the show is servicable at best and I was pleased that in an interval interview with the Director Bill T Jones he stressed that this shouldn’t be the only Fela Kuti related show. I emailed my script for The Remaining Five Wives of Fela Kuti to a couple of interested parties earlier this week.
You never know right. 7 years of development for Fela! apparently.

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Fela NT Live broadcast

Off to the Broadway Cinema to see Fela broadcast live into the Cinema. Saw the show live and am interested to see the approach that is taken. Having not seen any live broadcasts into cinemas I’ve no idea of the approach that is taken.

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Verity Bargate Award

Soho Theatre are doing the push for this years Verity Bargate award.

The deadline for script submissions is March 11th 2011.

MakeUp masterclass workshop

Posting details of an interesting Monster Make Up masterclass happening on 24th Feb. Got some experienced practitioners delivering the classes.
Follow @emtalentnetwork on twitter for regular tweets

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Remaining Five Wives of Fela Kuti

Just finished reading print out of latest draft of my now retitled stageplay The Remaining Five Wives of Fela Kuti.
Reading it on the screen is always a little difficult for me to see the overall shape so every five or six drafts I print it out, take a read and ‘red pen’ it.
Next draft which I’m hoping to complete Wednesday should tighten the whole thing up, ramping up the pressure and characterisations.
TWP and I are intending to send it to Oval House to see how it might tie in to their festival of Nigerian Theatre. It won’t be part of the festival but we’re hoping they might see it as being part of works looking to maintaining that festival audience after the festival has finished.

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