If anyone who reads my blog is actually planning on seeing it (Karie, maybe?) I'll have to give you a spoiler alert now. The director/writer wants to keep the ending hush hush from everyone so we're all sworn to secrecy so for her sake and for anyone in Brum or who plans to be in Brum for the play I'm alerting you all now: scroll down to the ~*~
So, I touched on the fact that it's about a boy and his imaginary friend. He changes schools because his old school had asbestos so they had to remove all the children. There's a bully at school and tyrannical teachers, yada yada yada, and also a love interest. When the main boy, Josh (played by Ben), begins to show interest in this girl, Kestrel, the imaginary friend (played by Will) starts holding a grudge and stops interacting with Josh. Josh of course doesn't want this and wants to prove his loyalty to his friend, so the friend makes him vandalize the school and then grope a girl. The mother of Josh (me!) gets concerned and sends him to a psychiatrist who concludes that Josh may be suffering from a mild case of abulia.
In the last session between Josh and the doctor they talk about the friend, whose name is finally revealed to us as Ryan. He is also apparently two years older than Josh.
The play ends with the doctor and mother talking about the session and Ryan and at the sound of his name the mother freaks out and tells the doctor that she had a stillborn baby two years before Josh was born and that they had named him Ryan.
Dun dun dun...
And that's the end.
Rather sudden, I think. I'm not sure how it's going to be done.
~*~
On another but similar note: Mark "The Voice" Langley came to Birmingham to do an American accent workshop for Article 19. Of course I went cuz I could listen to the guy for hours. And I was going to take notes for my Theatre Praxis scene group cuz we've decided to do a scene from an American play, Independence* by Lee Blessing, and they wanted to try their hand at the American accent but couldn't make it to the workshop.
James and David gave me such a hard time because they are convinced that I am in love with Mark.
There's a definite Henry Higgins quality to him. There's just something about phonetics...hm.
Anyways...
At the beginning of the workshop he went over the different accents of North America as well as went over a brief history of the migration of the English, Spanish, French, Scots, and German and how that influenced the way they speak.
For example, on the west coast there were the Spanish, so if you mix a Spanish accent with a general American accent you get our Californian monotone way of speaking. As he explained all this he actually demonstrated it in his voice and his accent morphed from Spanish, you could hear the American coming in and then voila, he sounded like home.
He did the same thing with the French in the South, the Scots with Canada, and the Germans with the midwest. I was in awe!
James decided Mark was happy to see me too. I was his American example just like in the old days of Oleanna. At the end of the workshop James wanted to get Mark to ask me to say "f*** me" again so he said "Mark I personally have trouble cursing in an American accent so if we could talk about that for a bit....and use Alex as an example."
James didn't quite succeed. Instead Mark asked me to say "f***ing bastard".
"Oh so elegantly spoken," he said, "but she means it!"
The workshop lasted 3 hours, but it just flew by; he is such a good lecturer!
He then had to catch the train for a meeting elsewhere but once he was on he sent David a text wishing us well and telling us to keep in touch.
Such a sweet man!
James and David gave me such a hard time because they are convinced that I am in love with Mark.
There's a definite Henry Higgins quality to him. There's just something about phonetics...hm.
Anyways...
At the beginning of the workshop he went over the different accents of North America as well as went over a brief history of the migration of the English, Spanish, French, Scots, and German and how that influenced the way they speak.
For example, on the west coast there were the Spanish, so if you mix a Spanish accent with a general American accent you get our Californian monotone way of speaking. As he explained all this he actually demonstrated it in his voice and his accent morphed from Spanish, you could hear the American coming in and then voila, he sounded like home.
He did the same thing with the French in the South, the Scots with Canada, and the Germans with the midwest. I was in awe!
James decided Mark was happy to see me too. I was his American example just like in the old days of Oleanna. At the end of the workshop James wanted to get Mark to ask me to say "f*** me" again so he said "Mark I personally have trouble cursing in an American accent so if we could talk about that for a bit....and use Alex as an example."
James didn't quite succeed. Instead Mark asked me to say "f***ing bastard".
"Oh so elegantly spoken," he said, "but she means it!"
The workshop lasted 3 hours, but it just flew by; he is such a good lecturer!
He then had to catch the train for a meeting elsewhere but once he was on he sent David a text wishing us well and telling us to keep in touch.
Such a sweet man!
---
*Independence synopsis: The setting is the small town of Independence, Iowa, the lifelong home of Evelyn Briggs. Her oldest daughter, Kess, is a university professor in Minneapolis, but she has come home at the request of her sister, Jo who is concerned for Evelyn's mental health. Kess, a professed lesbian, wants to cut her family ties once and for all; Jo, an incurable romantic and longtime virgin, has now become pregnant; while Sherry, salty-tongued and amoral, wants only to finish high school so she can leave home for good. In the end, there is no accommodation possible but, instead, only a kind of arbitrary independence for each of the protagonists, as they come to realize that each must find her own heaven-or hell-in her own way.
