Thursday 25 August 2011

Ok cool so here are some guidelines on reviewing I was handed and endow upon you for posterity, they have served me well: - Write in the present tense so much as possible, it makes for a more engagin read

- Avoid the use of "I" <- it's a strange one because we all have egos but it does serve a purpose, there are rare occasions where it's acceptable. Some sites liek BroadwayBaby have reviewers that always use it and they seem less professional. It's a bit silly on one level but that's how it goes.
- Personally I find having a "tack" or and angle to come at it from really helpful, some kind of overarching umbrella that eveything fits into - 200-500 words, but closer to 200 is better that closer to 500, that's the skinny policy because apparently people don't read longer articles online they will stop halfway through, I used to always write nearer to 500 first but I've become more economical over the fringe, partly because I had to becasue I'm seeing so much and partly because I've learned to say what I need to say quicker I see 240-300 as ideal really
- read reviews! It really helps to see how other people are writing to see if you like it or not or if the way they are writing is good what makes it good, if bad, what makes it bad. But in the end it's about finding your own voice.

The Rules of Engagement:
- be polite to everyone, I know you'll have no problems with this
- Don't discuss the show with anyone in the venue or in ear shot of the venue
- Don't discuss shows publically (such as on facebook) until your review is up online, we each have varying levels of how comfortable we are with talking about stuff to close people like pals who might ask before it goes up. Gareth will almost never do it except with us, I've been known not to do it as well but during the year we don't have the writers privelages to put stuff up directly so it can take a while, we're working on trying to come to a compromise to sort that out.

I will subedit your articles before putitng them on the network, not much gets changed but I find having Gareth edit my work helps so hopefully you'll feel the same. Also if you want any mentoring in that process I will offer you feedback, only because I felt I didn't get enough when I started writing as a critic, I always felt out in the cold working on my own a bit so it's up to you, I don't consider myself an expert writer or anything but everyone has something valuable to say.

Superfun!




* insulting to very poor
** poor to average
*** above average to really very good
**** very good to excellent
***** life changing

Checkout my review of Legally Blonde - The Musical at The Kings

Review::: Legally Blonde - The Musical

Saturday 20 August 2011

Illich - The High Brow Sketch Show (Episode 10)


Performed by Illich, recorded and engineered by Jono at the Soular Power Suite

Time is my road

Time is my road,
The world is my chariot
Always I'm seeking
but Never to find,
Should I arrive,
I'll soon be departed
May god leave me wander,
the rest of my life

May god leave me wander,
the rest of my life

Thursday 18 August 2011

Selfish Gene - The Evolution and Philosophy behind the World's first Biomusical!

The Selfish Gene nears the end of its run here at Zoo Roxy, but I don’t believe it will be the last we hear of this new and innovative work of musical theatre. For posterity I caught up with the creative team, Jonathan Salway (writer), Dino Kazamia (director/co-writer) and Richard Macklin (composer) to find out what it’s all about, and put the world to right.

Part I – The Evolution of the Selfish Gene

Antony: “First off, so how did you guys come to collaborate?”
 Jonathan: "We met at Eastbourne College. I came in as a freelance drama teacher and these two guys were very active in the drama department, Dino with the acting and Richard had done some incidental music originally that was just spot on, he could see a scene and get the music."
Dino: "We were studying but we tended to work more on our own projects."
Jonathan: "In fact I'd had the idea for the musical before seeing Dino and Richard do their own show."
Dino: "We'd worked with Jon before when we did an adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Richard did the music, I acted and Jon directed it. We knew we wanted to do a bigger project. Richard and I wrote a musical, almost a comedy pastiche of musical theatre…"
Richard: "Gently mocking the whole genre."
Dino: "It turned out we were actually quite enjoying it as a musical. We put it on with students and that went down quite well. Then we got Jon in…"
Jon: "…to help a bit with the directing and I thought - ah, just a minute, we have to do this again sometime on a bigger scale."

Antony: “The Selfish Gene musical explores the themes raised by Dawkins’ book using an analogy of the nuclear family. Can you comment on how that idea came about?”
Jon: "It was quite early on. I'd read the book, it just seemed to raise some fascinating questions. I said to Dino we should turn this into a musical, but it will sound like a lecture if we don't have a narrative, so that's what we chose."
Dino: "With a nuclear family you can cover so many dynamics. The Married Couple, parenthood, adults and younger people as well. It opens up all the doors as well as playing into the fun clichés we jumped upon."

Antony: "How did the music and lyrics come together?"
Richard: "John and Dino wrote the lyrics having read the book, identified the bits they wanted to turn into musical numbers and then sent them over to me, I fashioned them into songs."
Dino: "It was mostly Jon early on, wrote them in straight onto the page without knowing what the music was going to be like. The when Richard came on board he adapted them."
Jon: "I think initially I wasn't putting much rhythm into them,"
Dino: "As time went on the more emotional songs we could almost give to Richard and say, this is the kind of thing that needs to be said."

Antony: “So the relationship developed into more of a dialogue?”
Dino: “Yeah, you could say it evolved.”
Everyone laughs.

Antony: "I loved the verbosity of the lyrics, and the fact that despite the wordiness they weren’t alienating, you understood what you were hearing"
Jon: "I didn't want it to sound like a lecture. So we developed a genetic” stumbling over his words “Sorry generic biologist” everyone laughs “Professor character as a sort of narrator.”
Antony: “I like it, I’m going to use that.”
Dino: "It was more a sort of Greek chorus that comments on the action and question rather than explaining what is happening.”

Antony: “I felt like you were born to play that part. Did you always know you were going to play him yourself Jon?”
Jon: “ummm….”
Dino: “I knew.”
Antony: “When did you know for sure you wanted to play him?”
Dino: “I’m not sure that you wanted to. I decided…”
Jon: “I suppose when I… um… Dino persuaded me. Also I wanted to use quite a young cast on it and thought…”
Dino: “We had to have someone who knew the thing well. Like you said he was born to play the part, he looked right, I knew he could play that kind of role.”
Jon: “And fortunately I didn’t have to have my hair cut.”
Laughs.

Part II – Putting the World to Right

Antony: “Onto more philosophical questions! In the play even altruism is presented as selfish. ‘Well you have the inclination to protect her, because you share genes…’ What are your positions on that theory?”
laughs
Dino: “Well… it’s a difficult question, but one thing I have learned from the book is that though it is possible to reduce our altruism to biological terms, there could be a form of true altruism that we as conscious being can achieve, but that is only through rejecting the selfish gene motivations, the base desires that drive us. Humans have a certain morality that we have evolved.”
Jon: “Dawkins says in his book that in the gene view of the world altruistic acts can result from selfish-gene motivations.”

Antony: “In philosophy, the theory that everything you do is necessarily selfish is termed psychological egotism. The problem is that you can always reinterpret motives. Say I do something kind for Dino, and Rich says ‘That was just to endear yourself to Dino, or make you feel good about yourself.’ Freud has been criticised for finding sex in everything, similarly I could say that everything you do is motivated by wanting to be a gardener Jon, and when you brought over this glass of water before the interview it was symbolic of you wanting to water the plants.”
Laughs.
Jon: “That’s very true and people will probably argue that Dawkins starts his book with this theory and you can make everything squeeze into it. But never do I feel the book in cynically saying ‘that’s just selfish that you’re being altruistic.’ “
Dino: “He’s even coined the term meme as a suggestion for mankind to take up in opposition to being self-seeking.”
(A meme [pronounced: meem] is defined as cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. So for example a political ideology, religious belief, artistic concept or general viewpoint.)

Antony: “To Richard - is love just a genetic calculation?
Richard: “You can probably trace everything back to that but we’ve also developed certain genetic overrides and you could argue that love is one of them.”
Antony: “Interesting, love could be a meme rather than gene-motivated.”
Jon: “I don’t know if Dawkins says that, he suggests psychological faculties evolved as sensors so you could be predicting this and love was one of those to hook you in, but then that brain that was evolved through those emotions and then became mimetic.”
Dino: “Love tends to make people behave very irrationally and not necessarily in a biologically sensible way so as for it being a selfish gene, it does seem to go against…”
Antony: “It could be a combination. “
Dino: “Yeah.”

Antony: “In general the idea of being motivated by genes, and even memes to an extent, goes against our ideas of agency. So next philosophical question; do we have any free will or only the illusion of free will?”
Everyone Laughs.
Antony: “Any takers?”
Dino: “Well that’s kind of getting into your definitions of free will…”
Jon: “We steered back from that one… because I’m not sure that’s ever an issue that Dawkins addresses. We do imply at the end that we can make our own choices and decisions.”
Dino: “Free will implies more than one will battling against each other. I don’t believe there is another will, although our genes may be trying to survive it’s not a conscious thing.”
Antony: “It’s programmed.”
Dino: “Even programmed implies a programmer, we don’t really have the language to put it across.”
Antony: “There’s no purpose without a purposer as my 2nd year philosophy tutor put it.”
Dino: “Exactly.”
Jon: “But we do make decisions against our selfish gene, such as contraception! Maybe we can include something about that in a future incarnation of the show.”

Antony: “Ultimately your show is very life affirming because in the end you bad guy gets a shock, his selfishness has turned his life upside down and has to rethink his strategy. They tyranny of the selfish genes gives way to the possibilities offered by memes.”

Jon: “If you’re going to play the game once you’re probably better off cheating. But long term you’re better off cooperating.”
Dino: “If you cheat you win more, each only wins a little bit when you cooperate, but if you always cheat everyone will constantly defect and everyone will lose.”
Jon: “Overall nice guys finish first.”
fin

Wednesday 17 August 2011

A Little Perpective

Highest estimated cost of riots: £100m.

Total MP expenses bill (2007): £87.6m
Tax spent on Libyan intervention: £1 Billion
Tax money spent in Iraqi conflict: £4.5 billion
Tax money spent on Afghan conflict (up until 2007): £7 billion

Tax payers bill for banking crisis: £131 Billion
Tax Avoidance by Vodafone: £6 Billion
Tax avoidance in 2010 by richest people in UK: £7 Billion
Perspective: priceless.

Tuesday 16 August 2011

In print in the Shimmy Skinny today!

My feature on Muscial Theatre was printed in the Shimmy Skinny today so hopefully people all over Edinburgh will be checking it out over a cup of coffee :-D you can catch it online here:

MUSICAL THEATRE

the idea for this feature was actually originally birthed on the 27th of June - I even wrote  a blog about it you can read it here.

Monday 15 August 2011

Illich Sketch Show @ Pilot 4 during Edinburgh Fringe

So the Illich Sketch Show was performed live for the first time in the history of the world, ever, ever last night at the Flatrate event, Pilot 4.

Euan Sinclair had this to say on the matter:
"Our first live show was every bit as chaotic as you'd imagine, but Illich went down well with that Edinburger lot. And we performed a new sketch - written three days' previous - that we intend to inflict upon YOU!! ILLICH Hath Spoken."


My brother Jono drove us down from Glasgow and kicked around, even made a cameo appearance as Illich character Mad Dog MacGraw and friends Finn Townsley, Adrianna Polito, and others turned out to support. Yay.

The 10th installment of Illich will be up on youtube shortly. Exciting stuff.