A brand new year and a brand new start. So it’s a big fat excuse to use the brand new decade to get back into the blogosphere once again (I’m sure I wrote that I while back too).
Being a freelancer, I do find it difficult to get into a routine of scanning the internet for my sources and material and thus compiling a good quality post on a regular basis. However, I’m going to try to blog more freely, keeping it simpler and less time-consuming and therefore blogging more frequently. I’m sure, as many other bloggers find, that you place yourself under pressure to try to create quality posts each time so the reader can take hearty interest in each and every word.
Though I’ve realised this is unrealistic (for me anyway) and will have to accept that some posts will be better than others and it is more about the frequent nature of my page rather than what exactly it is featuring. That said, I’m not going to churn out any old crap but instead re-kindle my love for the theatre world and persevere, yet again, with the reason why I started in the first place – to help bridge the gap between the internet (and all it’s wonderful uses( and the age-old land of the theatre as we know it.
Along with the frequency of blogging, I’m going to try to see more theatre, arts and live performance this year, thus actively supporting much of what I write about. As I work in live entertainment, I have started to become desensitized to the act of the live performance. I see so much, either from the wings or the Front of House control position that I begin to treat it more as work rather than really being able to indulge in the performance itself – which, for me, is what seeing live performance is all about. So I think it’s a fine work/play balance that I have to try and find again. That said, I think it would be a good idea to bring in some of my experience in my day-to-day work in Technical theatre to mix the blog up a little.
Moving on and now the Christmas/New Year party season is well and truly over and most of us head back to the day-job, I think that we have to battle the January blues and start looking for the golden nuggets of the year. You can find adecent summation on Lyn Gardner’s Guardian Unlimited Blog of What to see (my personal recommendation is Barbershopera II – a great way to be entertained by a talented, tight-knit comedy troupe) and of course check out The Stage newspaper’s Listings. However, I am also going to make it my goal by keeping my eyes peeled to the some of the must-sees in this up coming season (call it the Winter into Spring if you like).
Finally, as much of my work is based in an around the amateur theatre scene, and the fact I came up through the ranks of the said realm and I owe it much to my own career in the arts, I am going to try and provide more coverage and support to this strand of the arts on my page.
So firstly a plug – The Drama Student Online (the online version of the mag) is a great site which is very active and has a number of articles to keep a student enthused about drama learning. Also, I watched some of So You Think You Can Dance the other night on BBC One and although it is yet another highly commercialised performance based reality television show and we all know most of the finalists have been through extensive training anyway, it is still inspiring for young people to watch and encourage them to delve into performance in some manner. So on that note I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my old drama group, the Stanford Avenue Players in Brighton, is overwhelmed with budding young Ray Quinn’s and Jodie Prenger’s searching for their limelight – and that is why they’ve revived their previous hit of Jim Parker and Wally K. Daly’s Follow The Star – a fantastic little post-Christmas musical.
Until Further Notice 