The lonely turf

Well, I finally wowed them with my beautifully staged presentation!!! This has been an incredulously stressful time in my life, but only because I will insist on EXCELLENCE!!! After all, what is theatre without excellence? (And vica versi, of course!!!) Many of my fellow MFA students seemed a tad nervous about the presentations... Obviously they had failed to put in the work what I did. This is simply not good enough and I may well have to email Vernon with my misgivings... For instance, Fiona Pith, who has been attached to the Gunston Players in Tifton did a positivly WOEFUL 20 minutes on "Why Metatheatricality and Abstinence Accords With Twenty-First Century Stage Praxis"... which is, like, so last century. And Foster Urgent, a rather tall and slightly menacing student, produced a banana and simply ate it for twenty minutes very slowly... THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, PEOPLE!!! DO YOU WANT TO BE MASTERS OF FINE ART OR DON'T YOU??? Anyway, soon it weas my turn and I think the judging panel (Vernon; Wally Grey from the Orange Cheese Theatre and a great friend; radio actress Glenda Mint (love her work); and Carpenter Shedd, the original course instigationist) immediately felt relaxed, knowing pearls were going to be forthcoming.

My subject and title (which I had changed after much reflexology and self-questioning) was: WHITHER ART? A SURVEY OF CURRENT METHOLODOGIES AND INTERSTICESES and I began as I intended with the following:

"In my survey of current praxis in the theatrical world of theatre it has strucked me many times (pause) that THEATRE IS ALSO AN ART. By wich I do not of course aver that it is not also a SCIENCE (very long pause), but that it is finally and uneradicably an ART. To back up my praxis I visited a PLAY... (first slide: a programme for my play, to illustrate my argument) But that was scarce enough, for I also READ THIS PLAY (new slide: me reading quietly). This illustrates two different factors which I believe COMBINE (next slide: an armlock) to give us a RESULT (final slide: a happy face)..."

I continued in this fashion somewhat longer than I intended, but 90 mins of me is usually worth it, and I could tell from the silence at the end that people did not know what to say when I finally wrapped proceedings...

No-one spoke to me, not even in the pub afterwards, but then directing is a lonely business at the best of times (Harriet Marriott was always telling me that at The Royal Shrug - well, before her op, of course), and I am ready to plough the lonely turf...

All I have learnt from today is three things:

1) Theatre is INTELLECTUALITY combined with PASSION
2) Art is not ENOUGH: you have to have TIME
3) I am beyond most of my peers in my GRASP of the ESSENTIALATE

I feel ready for my next challenges!!!