Waiting For Godot - Sydney Theatre Company 2013

A few weeks ago myself, Guild, NaomiStyleWeekly and another friend went to see Sydney Theatre's production of Waiting for Godot, with Hugo Weaving and Richard Roxburgh in the starring roles as Vladimir and Estragon respectively. 

Myself and my friend had studied WFG in Extension English, but Guild and Naomi had never read it. I am not a huge fan of the Absurdist genre so I wasn't quite sure what to expect when watching it performed on stage, but I have to say - STC's production was absolutely perfect. In fact, after watching it, I like the play much more than I did while reading it!

In terms of staging, WFG is far more scripted than Shakespeare, and it's written in such a way that there's little you can do in terms of changing things, or cutting out/adding parts. As it is, I thought the acting, the setting and the costumes were all phenomenal.

The play is literally just set on a road with a tree, but this production had put an industrial sort of take on it, with ruined buildings and pipes in the background, and the tree little more than a thin white trunk with a single branch. I thought this was fantastic as it gave it a sort of post-apocalyptic, Fallout-esque vibe that really highlighted the fact that this is a text from the Cold War era and called back the paranoia and fear of nuclear warfare and the aftermath of the Atomic Bomb.

Weaving and Roxburgh were both fantastic - Roxburgh particularly, his Estragon was completely adorable and quickly became my favourite character (I had always preferred Vladimir up until this point).

What I loved about this production was that they really forefronted the friendship between Didi and Gogo - something I was aware of but often overlooked in the play. The two actors had fantastic chemistry and the sense of brotherliness and companionship came across strongly - and served almost as a beacon of hope amongst all the dreary waiting around. 

The comic side of the tragicomedy was also brilliantly executed - both in terms of the physical comedy and the witty exchanges between the characters. It's one thing to read it, but seeing it performed in stage was hysterical. In particular Lucky's speech ended with him half-falling off the stage to hang over the edge right in front of the front-row audience members.

The mannerisms of all the characters were spot-on, and in terms of costume and appearance they were all exactly as I imagined them from the play!

There really isn't much more for me to say - as I mentioned before, it was perfect. Thoroughly entertaining, funny but also sad, the sense of waiting futilely came across strongly, the bromance was fantastic, the acting was great (Roxburgh stood out to me the most but the actor of Lucky also did an admirable job, both in delivering that ridiculously long monologue as well as stumbling around and drooling everywhere).

My only criticism - and this is a very, very minor quibble - is that at the end of each act, they could have waited just a little bit longer after saying "Let's go" before ending the act. Just to get the full impact of that dire, dire stage direction "They do not move." That was my only problem with it.

Other than that, I had a fantastic time watching this! I hope my friends who accompanied me also enjoyed it - and I would love for Naomi to do a guest piece for the blog on her thoughts, if she wants.

I rate it five puddings! Would watch again.

FURTHER RANDOM NOTES:

• I'm not sure if it was the lighting on the stage, but you could see showers of spit spraying from the actors' mouths just about every word! Nothing wrong with that, of course, I'm not sure if they had microphones and it wasn't distracting or anything - but combined with Lucky's (scripted) drooling, I found it rather amusing.
• The turnip Vladimir gave Estragon was so tiny that until he bit into it and there was a crunching noise, I actually thought it was an imaginary turnip! Haha!
• In terms of my own interpretation of the play - I try not to rationalise it as being at a particular place or point in time. It's Absurdism, it's not meant to be logical or real in any way. As it is, I tend towards the existential reading of the play, and see it as a study of humanity, human relationships and the purpose of life. We do spend a lot of our lives waiting - waiting to finish school, to grow up, to get married, to have kids, for our kids to grow up - in the end, is everything we do just a series of actions to pass the time?
• The program contained the story of a group of prisoners who performed WFG in jail, and were successful enough that they went on tour. All but one of the actors took the chance to escape on their opening night. When Samuel Beckett, the author of the play, was told about it, he found it hysterical.
• One phone went off, right at the end. Theatre etiquette, people. *unimpressed*

Guild, the Didi to my Gogo, still has not posted anything on this blog! I would be very interested in hearing her thoughts on the play, as someone who had no idea what she was getting into when she watched it. *long, unsubtle stare in her direction*

(I have a massive backlog of things to write about- Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth, Belvoir Hamlet, Bell Shakespeare Comedy of Errors and The Walking Dead Season 4 part 1. Stay tuned :) )

NANOWRIMO UPDATE

I mentioned a few days ago that I was restarting my nanowrimo because the original idea I had really wasn't working.

BEST. DECISION. OF MY LIFE.

I wrote more in the first 3 days of this new story than I had in the entire time I was writing the old story, and as of today I have surpassed 25k words and am now only 1715 words behind, which I can easily catch up on.

I'm also have far more fun with this story than I was with my old one. Mostly because this one is much lighter and the characters are far more diverse and less serious.

I'm procrastinating from drawing so here's a rundown of what my new story is about:

• Set in a post-apocalyptic, futuristic society in approximately the 24th Century (still working out the details). About a century and a half ago there was a nuclear war over a power source called 'the vore'. Since then, humanity has rebuild to a point where they are about technologically equal with what we are now, but large areas of the world have been reduced to a barren wasteland.
  
• There are groups of people known as 'otherworlders' (placeholder until I think of a less cliched name) who, in the wake of the war, accidentally absorbed the remaining vore energy in the world, granting them supernatural abilities. They have been exiled from society and are considered dangerous and hostile.
  
• The story revolves around a character who is a blank slate. She has very little basis for knowing who is good or evil, she is at a point in her life where both sides of the impending 'war' have arguments that sound appealing and morally correct, and she doesn't know what to believe any more.
  
• The story starts with the character going on a mission at the command of a mysterious otherworlder who has kidnapped her friend and is holding her for 'ransom', so to speak. She will only be released when the FMC kills a man living on the other side of the wasteland and steals a mysterious orb in his possession for her.
  
• The story will then, hopefully, devolve into something concerning the otherworlders/humans (I won't give too much away about what the whole conflict is about).
  
• The story itself is a mix of sci-fi and post-apoc genres, but I'm throwing in things like zombies just to keep the action flowing and amuse myself xD
  
• There are three main characters so far. Sloane, a mechanic and a party girl who has never taken anything seriously in her life. She is tough, tomboyish, not the brightest light in the house, and fairly morally ambiguous. Darian, a kleptomaniac fry cook who has fallen into things that are way over his head, and Hackner, a gruff mercenary with a grudge against the man Sloane has been asked to kill.
  
• I am using this story to indulge my love of neon hair colours. Yay for futuristic worldbuilding~

So far I'm quite happy with the dialogue and some of the descriptions I've got down. My main concern is the plot and pacing. I feel like I have far too many events and that I'm dragging them on too much for the sake of filling up more words. I'm 25k in and she's still doing the first mission she was sent on!

But I'm gonna keep trundling along, because as the motto for Nanowrimo states: editing is for after.

(going to Waiting For Godot tomorrow - I can't wait! :) )

I Can't Look At Deep Fryers The Same

Guild and I have just started watching a long-running British show called Spooks.

This endeavour started out as the grinding task of sitting through 7 seasons of a show we knew nothing about, in order to get up to the entry of one Richard Crispin Armitage, who comes in as a main character called Lucas North.

We were not overly impressed by episode 1, finding it confusing and difficult to keep track of all the characters, with a plot that did not particularly pull us in.

But then episode 2 happened.

Episode 2, where a character previously thought to be quite main was brutally murdered. And I mean, brutally murdered. It sprang out of nowhere, I didn't think they would go through with it, when BAM, they were dead, and Guild and I were left staring at each other in horror over the remains of our dinner.

Nothing has shocked me this much since Hershell's leg got chopped off in the series 3 premiere of The Walking Dead.

Upon reading about the reaction to this episode I learned that it was originally going to be the season finale, but got pulled forward, and the character death was for the express purpose of letting the viewership know that in Spooks, no one is safe.

And gosh darn did they get that across well.

They wanted me to sit up and pay attention? THEY HAVE MY RUDDY ATTENTION. I am hooked to this show now. No longer am I just sitting around waiting for RA's character to enter, I am genuinely invested.

Matthew Macfadyen's character (or baby Darcy, as I mentally see him - this show started 11 years ago) is also great. In fact, all of the characters are starting to become more developed (and I'm hoping the show goes a Stargate SG-1 route with their cast) and are all very well acted. But Macfadyen's Tom is currently my favourite because while he is quite stoic, he has a very subtle personality that he plays extremely well. He has also, in the course of a mere 4 episodes, sustained enough trauma to fill an entire h/c bingo.

In any case, I look forward to watching the rest of Spooks (and hearing Guild's thoughts on the show so far, once she gets around to actually posting something).

I think this might even make it up there with Endeavour and Breaking Bad. I'm honestly enjoying it that much. It's very well written, but there have been a few slow bits thus far - we'll see where the next 9 seasons take it.

(It is also complete, which means we can marathon it :3)

This Might Be A Very Bad Idea.....

I'm restarting my NaNoWriMo.

asd;golkasgndsa it's just going so terribly that I honestly think I have more chance of getting it complete if I start a new story, from scratch, 20k words behind than if I continue grinding away at something that I'm quite honestly not enjoying.

Characters tend to carry stories for me. And the characters of my previous idea seemed great in planning, but right now none of them are really coming to life, and it's frustrating.

(cue ranting about characters no one but me knows about yet *WEEPS FOREVER*)

Neo - Mr Existential Crisis, and I don't know why I didn't see this coming earlier because I had enough gosh-darn trouble writing Hamlet for my major work. Neo has 24601 issues and I'm not able to get them across subtly enough.

Sheva - Ridiculously hard to express her personality without revealing why she's so angry and revenge-fuelled, and that would mean letting out her whole backstory straight away.

Konnor + Cady - TOO SIMILAR TO EACH OTHER and don't have distinct enough character voices.

Damon and Morrigan are the only two characters I have a handle on - and guess what? Damon's not in the story yet (he's about 5-7k words away from entry and I'm already 3k words behind and unsure if I can bring myself to write up to him) and Morrigan made an appearance at the start, but is a good 15-20k words from returning. Ack.

In any case, CHARACTER VOICE IS KILLING ME because no one is distinct enough and I had this trouble with Sci Fi Oth already and managed to push through it, but it's just not happening here.

If anything the problem is that I planned too much. Seems counter-intuitive, I know, but in all my other stories the characters that have flowed most freely sprang from no planning at all. Damar wasn't even meant to be in his story. Taspir and Hush started with two very basic character ideas and grew as I wrote them. I genuinely made up Arkab as I went along and by the time hedied he had gone through a roller coaster of mood swings and I still felt like I had managed to keep him in his own, very distinctive character the whole time.

And Creed quite literally appeared out of nowhere and has become the only character who I can confidently write at a moment's notice (probably because almost anything can come out of Creed's mouth and not be OOC; dude has no limits).

In any case, I worked out that

• my original idea is not working; plot wasn't solid enough from the start and I thought characters would carry it but they didn't
• there isn't enough humour in my story because of the limits of the characters I'm using
• a lack of modern-day slang and profanity is making it hard for me to write filler like I normally do
• I'm not in a fantasy-genre mood right now, which really isn't helping
• subject matter is too serious + heavy for something like NaNo which requires a lot of blather
• I'm genuinely not happy with what I've written so far and it's putting me off writing more

I'm not having fun and for something like NaNo it's enough of a problem that I'm going to start again, from scratch, do a couple hours planning and give up some fanfiction-reading time over the next few days to catch up on those 20k words, and GET THIS THING WRITTEN

I'm going to draw off existing characters (Wyth, Creed, Damon, anyone) to put together a new cast quickly. I have had a couple of vague ideas swimming around in my head since playing Assassin's Creed III and catching up on The Walking Dead; combined with some old story ideas I had on the backburner, it should be enough to get a working plot together.

As far as how confident I am in my ability to catch up on 20 000 missed words?

I wrote over half my major work draft in one day (albeit after a week of angsting and procrastinating). When desperation calls I SHALL DELIVER or something like that

speaking of delivering

last night as I lay in bed contemplating, I came up with a monologue for Iago in the next installment of the Sci Fi Othello AU that I was really happy with. It was only a few sentences but I really, really liked the exact wording that I had worked out.

Being me, I did not write it down, and come today I cannot remember it.

I remember what it was about, and what he was getting at, but the exact wording I had is gone. And it is frustrating me beyond measure.

Hopefully it returns to me or I will not be amused :(

Anyway. Off to listen to music and plan out the basic skeleton of new story now. I'll reset the word counter on the side bar once I've made a new start.

NaNoWriMo.... go!

It's the first of November! Which means NaNoWriMo has begun!

National Novel Writing Month is a challenge where you plan a story and aim to write 50, 000 words within the month of November.

The last time I did this, I didn't actually do the challenge - in 2010 Guild, AreivZ and myself missed the start so formed our own "New Years Novel Writing" challenge, where we gave ourselves 50 days to write 50, 000 words (a significantly easier task).

I finished in 35 days last time (here is my breakdown below, give or take some words):

Given that 30 days is a far narrower timeslot, I'll have to write an average of 1.6k words a day. The key to finishing NaNo is not skipping any days - as long as I push through and write a few hundred words even if I'm writer's blocked, I think I should be fine.

I've planned out my story in the EPIC GREEN PLANNING BOOK Guild bought me a while back! Because I enjoy shamelessly plugging my own writing I'll keep a record of how far along in the challenge I am (percentage wise) on the side bar.

And now, because I am procrastinating from actually starting writing (great, Roz, off to a great start) here is some info on my NaNo project for this year:

• It is written in response to Guild asking me to write her a "brotherly fantasy story"
• It is set in the same world as a fantasy story I had previously planned, but six years earlier (sort of a prequel). This particular world is a continent on a globe I share with Guild and AreivZ - we each have our own continent and will eventually crossover our characters when they travel across the vast oceans! bwahaha
• Said fantasy story I had previously planned is mostly centred around a country called Westverness and its surrounding regions; this story is set on the other side of the continent, in Ascetir
• My main character has an amputated right arm, a big tattoo covering his torso and arms that I ripped off from Prison Break, and is undergoing a prolonged existential crisis
• There are no pirates in this story because I have too many pirate characters already
• Most of the story is set on an island that is removed from what is going on in other parts of the world
• There may or may not be far too many belonging themes in this story (I thought I had escaped forever..... nooooo!)
• The plot itself is reasonably simple; I'm hoping to drive the story through character-centric issues (every character has their own issues/subplot they need to work out)
• The more I think about it the more I realise how horrifically cliched my whole idea is. AH WELL
• A lot of things we did in history regarding the leadup to World War I are becoming increasingly relevant.
• Crystallised magic makes a triumphant return.

...I should probably start actually writing this now. As such, I am off to procrastinate further by bubbleshooting to Imagine Dragons and the Pacific Rim soundtrack, and then washing my hair (as you can see I am being thoroughly productive in the aftermath of my HSC).

THEN I shall write. Hopefully. If I don't start today I'm doomed to fail this thing though (as I said, to have any chance of finishing NNWM you need to write every day even if it's just a few words).

This weekend I'll put up a post about Downton Abbey!

Ta all~

EDIT: 2 hours later and I still haven't started! OTL

Writing Resources!

(3U maths tomorrow... once this is over, I'm free for life! *dances*)

Since NaNoWriMo is coming up in just over a week, here are some useful resources for all your authory needs.

Baby Names List - this particular baby names site is the one I use the most, because it's sorted alphabetically in a way that's very easy to navigate, it comes with clear meanings, pronunciations and variations on each name, and it has an insane amount of cultural diversity.

Polyvore - what your characters wear can be important in developing their personality, tastes and interests. Polyvore is a site that allows you to create collages and images of various outfits and accessories. It's especially useful if you often draw your characters or are thinking of doing a graphic novel. Generally more useful for female characters since most of the clothes are womenswear.

Room Floor Plan - a quick and easy tutorial on how to draw a room. Very useful if settings are important to your story, or you're doing a comic.

Writing Memes/Questionairres - a masterlist of writing memes/character questionairres. I have used these many, many times in the past and they're a brilliant way to develop characters. Stupid little things like favourite colours, foods, hobbies and quirks add so much to a character's personality and growth, even if they're never mentioned in-story.

100 most important questions - speaking of questionairres - a list of details you should know about your protag.

Seventh Sanctum generators - Seventh Sanctum is considered the go-to as a fantasy or sci-fi name/place generator. I personally am not a huge fan of the names that it comes up with, but often it's a good basis point for you to then edit/customise from.

Common archetypes and symbols in literature - the title is fairly self explanatory; this is a pretty basic list but still useful in gaining a general understanding. Of course, the real fun is in twisting these tropes to create something new and exciting.

• 10 Types of Emotional Manipulator 
• Sociopathic tendencies
For your villains and anti-heros. Or even just your heros - that could be interesting.

Mythical creatures - a detailed list. Dragons are starting to become overdone. Try looking into the mythology of other cultures. In early drafts of my major work I started to find Danish/Scandinavian mythology quite interesting.

Yay! I'll add more if I find anything particularly interesting, although most other things are a mere google search away.

I waste my life writing fanfic

Sometimes I look back at this year and last year and think that I haven't been very productive in terms of writing (unlike 2010-2011 when I was working on three original stories, and finished two of them).

Apart from the Major Work and the town story, I only started a couple of other projects and didn't get very far in any of them.

But just then I counted up the total words in all of the drabbles (fanfiction) that I've been filling in on the h/c bingo for my own amusement over the last year or so.

84, 819 words.

That's almost 300 pages of random crackfic. For no one's eyes but my own because most of it is terrible.

On the one hand, I'm thinking, yay, I've been vaguely productive after all, and at least I've been getting in some good practice with action/dialogue (and attempting different writing styles and perspectives in some of them).

On the other hand... that's 84k words I could have spent on an original work!

Much as I enjoy fanfiction and think it's a great way to prompt people, especially teenagers, into reading and writing more... when it comes down to it it's really good for nothing but your own amusement and occasionally that of others you share it with.

After the HSC I'm going to do NaNoWriMo for the first time in three years. Hopefully this will get me back into writing my own original stuff.

(On another note, everyone claims that you only improve your writing by writing something every day, so hopefully this has been subconsciously helping me....?)