Sic Transit Gloria Seami

Last night peace was declared and the Peloponnesian War ended.

That's the bit I'm up to. Crappy literal translation will be done by the end of the week at this rate. Then I start the editing, and Auditioning people on the week of the 28th of July!

I'm also highly bored, doing translating on the sly at work, and in spite of early morning energy, am now feeling lethargic. I blame work and the desk and stuff.

I really wish I had access to my omniprop email at work. I mean, I have real work to do...

Oh vivienne_aster....!

( Guess what I did now! )

I've just encoded (of all things) the second half of the KO recorded 'The Frogs' onto an MP4, and am chucking it into iMovie to turn it into something youtube-able.

Yes, it's omniprop on the net in a whole new way!

King Turd was great.

No it really was, I'm pretty stoked with the whole thing in the end. I think that, ultimately, we nailed it. Not an easy piece to come to grips with, but I think the decisions that Paul (and to a much lesser extent I) made worked well. In all honesty if you'd asked me about 4 weeks ago what I thought of the show, I would have probably ummed and ahhhed a lot, avoided the question and thrown myself out of the nearest window to escape..... But something clicked, and it just started to make a lot of sense.....

Apparently the Herald Sun violently disagrees, I haven't seen the review and I can't find it anywhere to link to. Fortunately this has only impressed Paul. I look forward to reading it myself.

The Program (AKA my mate Wendy) seemed to like it. Cover that off with everyone who's opinion I respect giving good feedback, and some nice words (albeit unpublished) from Cam Woodhead at The Age, and I'm happy. I also haven't read his stuff yet, but I'm sure we'll get it soon.

So yes, one play ends another begins.

STAY TUNED THE BACCHAE IS COMING!!!!!!!

We gotsed reviewed . Somewhat generously too. Yay!. Now I have to go to work. I got about 2 hours sleep. I still haven't eaten breakfast.... I have to leave in 5 minutes.... Interesting.

It came off. (The Clouds opening night that is)
(if someone had asked me if I thought it was going to come together 3 days ago, I would have said 'Hell no')

Mesa happy.

Yay

Eliza's even happy.

Which means no one is getting arrowed.

Yet.....

Eliza also got to fill out Omniprop's first incident report form! She had a turn in the theatre and fell up some stairs. So hespa got to fill out a form to say that it happened 'Just in case the injury one day causes her arm to fall off'.

I'll leave her to tell the story.

I don't have a copy of the the poster to put up yet.... I'll organise it in a second, BUT.....

COME SEE OMNIPROP'S LATEST EFFORT!!!!!


The show's coming together to make something a bit unusual, a bit different.... It's noice.

It's in a week  and a half, and (please back me up on this loyal cast and crew) it's worth seeing.

Here's the official spiel:

The story of a heavily mortgaged, and somewhat 'simple', farmer, a smooth-talking philosopher and a spoilt S#&$t of a son caught up in Aristophanes’ kooky world of sham and con-artistry. What could possibly go wrong ...?

Omniprop Productions brings to life one of the oldest pieces of European comic theatre in existence in a brand new, bitingly contemporary and rollickingly funny production of Aristophanes’ classic The Clouds. Director/translator Seamus Magee has assembled another fearless group of University Students to tackle the at times monolithic theatrical tradition of Athens with a new ‘Austrayan’ translation of the hilarious battle between ‘right and wrong’ - or ‘old and new’ - for a modern Melbourne audience.

Chaotic, absurd, lewd and at times cuttingly truthful Aristophanes’ 2500 year old comic world isn’t as far removed from the here and now as you’d think...

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

And yeah....

I'm directing a play.... again.... and I'm wondering why I actually do it.... again....

Let me give you all a run down of the last 2 weeks:

1. Rehearsals were slow to start - no ones fault, but it's just shit that happened. This has put me a bit under the pump, but we'll survive.

2. Room bookings have proven to be the normal nightmare. Again I'm used to that - and used to the dreaded 'space hunt' during rehearsals. It's all part and parcel of trying ot use the unions limited reasources.

3. I've had 4 of my cast pull out on me. And only 1 (Erica) actually did it in a timely fashion.

Another did so at the readthrough (fair's fair) because it clashed with another project (drama project that is) that he was doing as part of his course..

Another did so when they realised they might actually ahve to do some work (OMG, plays need work? Who knew?) - but they did give me some warning.

And then I had another pull out that decided to wait untill we'd used up a week and a half of our 6 week rehearsal period... She'd told me she was worried because the show dates clashed with teaching placements. Which is fine, but I'm sure they were clashing, oh I don't know, 3 weeks ago...

4. One of my cast has been sick for the past week. Recovered now, but that means her scene (which I was supposed to have covered off by now) hasn't had any work on it whatsoever.

So, after 1 bout of ilness, 4 (yes 4) re-castings, and a couple of holidays, hopefully we'll now start to settle into it a bit....

From what I have seen, there's been some excellent, excellent work. And now that my lead and my Assistant Director don't have another project going on, it'll only get better

Did anyone else in MUCAAS notice my surname's spelling through SIC? McGee? McWhat? man....

Has to do with stuff discussed at the recent meeting for the theatre company.

I'm trying to organise a benefit for Omniprop's April show. It'll take place, probably in the second week of March (week 2 or 3 of semester). I want to try and negotiate something with The Stork Hotel in North Melbourne, because: It's close to uni, it's got well known classical leanings and because it's somewhere different.

What I'm as thinking for the benefit gig was a kind of mock debate - probably along the lines of "roman stuff is better than greek stuff" - Obviously I'd come up with a better worded topic.

But starting with LJing mucaas people, who'd be interested? I'm looking at gerbilsage, mstakenidentity jpom40 especially (because you'd all be very funny). I'll post something in the Mucaas mailing list too. Just drop me personally a line if you'd be interested in participating, and I'll get the ball rolling. I'd probalby get Erica too, if she's up for it. We'll see....

It'll be a traditional debate, 3 speakers a side. I'd chair, and try and get 2 staff from the classics department to adjudicate.

Anyway that's the plan so far....