Rain & Potatoes Blog

Three More Shows to Go and Still Taking Input

2007-11-18T20:41:50Z

We've just finished our first week with It's Not All Rain & Potatoes out in front of a live audience: two previews, a press night on Wednesday, running through to two shows on Saturday. After a slightly anxious start - one day to tech and get in a new show - we were up and running. By Tuesday the material had found its feet. By Thursday it had good reviews. Not that this stopped us - as promised - we cut and rewrote before each of the performances, based on feedback from audiences and our own sense what works and what doesn't. Very satisfying, if challenging! We're getting everything we can out of this first outing, honing the show based on audience reaction. Ahead lie three more performances, in Antrim, Strabane and Portwstewart, and a chance to see what they audiences make of the show outside Belfast.

Irish Superheroes - Guilt Girl and It's No Wonder Woman

2007-11-01T21:25:43Z

Today we went back to act 2 - the version we're finally pretty much happy with - actually let me start again...

Today we STARTED work on act 2 - after finishing the last of the major rewrites this morning at 7:05 am. We have tomorrow, Saturday, and then 5 more days till we start teching. Ahhh the mad mad delight of the theatre. And I'm wanting to make sure that we don't peak too soon! Perhaps that's slightly premature. Today's discoveries? The dialogue for Irish super heroes "Guilt Girl" and "It's No Wonder Woman", how many times Jean and Sharon should order a new bottle of Chardonnay in their discussion of being a modern woman trying to date an Irish Saint, and the exact position an Irishman should assume when approaching Angelina Jolie, even if it's only in his imagination. These are the pressing concerns of the hour! Get through to the end of Act 2 by tomorrow, and off book by Monday.

Singing & Rewriting

2007-10-25T16:06:03Z

Today Faolan and Stephen were up in Coleraine with us, crammed into the "studio" that is the spare room, working on the songs. We worked on getting the tune down, huddled around the accoustic guitar, then moved out into the living room to stretch our legs and hear what things sounded like when we could actually stand up-right, especially Faolan who had to unfold himself like a complicated piece of origami. A stop for some gossip and lunch and then back upstairs for more songs and a chance to listen to a clip of James Joyce reading Finegan's Wake for Stephen, who has to play Joyce as an 8 year old in our version of the Nativity, written by Joyce, Heaney and Doyle, with special guest Oscar Wilde appearing as the donkey....

Donkey: "I have nothing to declare but my genius"

Mary: "smart ass"

We have done more work on the Gaelculator, based on the suggestion that arrived via this blog, and trimmed the Ireland-as-Hollywood-sees-it sketch, but I now have to go through the script and try to make sure it is balanced in its references to Catholic and Protestant perspectives - I think we'll be fine as long as we make fun of each, equally. I'm a bit troubled by the fact that simply talking about "Irishness" can be construed as "Republican" - I have to trawl through the script and see if we can insert balancing references to "the Island of Ireland", Northern Ireland, etc etc. I wish there was a neutral term, especially as I don't want this to be a piece about "that" issue, but rather a cultural examination of the "characteristics of people who live here". Interesting....

Final Storyboard for Act 2

2007-10-18T14:25:24Z

Click for a closer lookAfter another intensive day locked in Nuala's spare room eatin' tea and drinkin' biscuits the final storyboard for Act 2, with all the bits fitting together has emerged. We, on the other hand, appear to still be stuck there 24 hours later, and this blog is currently being written by a figment of my imagination.

Trigonometric Irish

2007-10-15T20:41:02Z

Act 2 Storyboarding StartsToday we spent all day working on the story board for act 2, and revisiting the flow of act 1. Toby's comment about how if you're English sometimes Ireland feels like very complex calculator full of mysterious symbols, stayed with us, and we've ended up writing a scene inspired by him.

Writers Hard At Work on Irishness

2007-10-13T12:07:47Z

Sometimes it's just all too much...

Storyboarding the Production

2007-10-13T11:58:03Z

As we move through various sections of the show, nailing down how we want things to flow, which bits need to be improvised, where the scenes we've already got fit in, and who might possibly be in love with who, we're storyboarding. Here's a sneak preview of what the first act was looking like a few days ago:

Click on the image for a closer look!

36 Little bits of paper and two Irish lads

2007-09-27T16:23:28Z

Well things are moving forward! Having just come back from working in China, my brain keeps thinking of metaphors like "the long march". The long march to where, I ask myself? The long march to Tipperary? The long march to Belfast for the auditions? Or just the long march down to the living room floor, where all the little bits of paper with each of the 36 scenes on them are spread out on the carpet so we can see them clearly (and the cat has something comfortable to sleep on). Yesterday she spent most of the afternoon on "Celtic Tiger Grannies", "Nuns 1 through 3" and "Romantic Irish Advertising". For some reason I can't think clearly unless I can actually SEE the shape of the show on a wall, on a cork board, or in this case - on a carpet. This weekend involves more writing, and thinking about how the whole piece links together.

So how does it all come together? About three weeks ago I wrote a scene in which all the bards of Ireland came back in a giant voice over to lay a curse on the actors, but now, looking back, I'm just not convinced it's the jolly framing device we're looking for. I'm trying to keep my writers head working when I've spent most of this week writing a funding application - and then next Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I'm running workshops about the show. I can't decide whether they will give me a new insight into what we're trying to do, or pull me yet further away. It'll depend on my students, really. (If any of you lot are reading this - HELP HELP! Come and keep me on the writing track!)

Faolan - Mug shot or CV shot?
Stephen - equally seriousAnd we've cast. It took two rounds of workshop auditions and the agony of saying "no" to people who should have been in the cast if we'd had more money to pay for a larger cast, but we've ended up with two pearls beyond price: Faolan Morgan and Stephen Daly, who recently appeared together in Jigsaw Theatre Company's As You Like It, also at the Baby Grand. Stephen is also currently in Bruiser Theatre Company's Blue Remembered Hills - which reminds me, must email that man about the employer's liability insurance!

The Irish Way of Death

2007-08-14T21:37:23Z

The second It's Not All Rain & Potatoes brainstorming group seemed to spend a considerable amount of time discussing the Irish way of death. I have a feeling this is going to get particular attention in the show. Some of the stories and ideas people came up with included:
The changing wake – the protocol, where would they wake you if you die and you're a young urban professional living in a luxury flat (sorry, appartment) in Belfast?
The best one was: The story about the fellow who died in the cab. Everyone in the cab thought he was just sleeping because it was very peaceful. It was one of those Irish situations where you share a cab with lots of people you don't know. The fellow travellers and the cabbie couldn't get anyone to take him: hospital, police, morgue - nobody wanted the paperwork, and they ended up driving half the night, getting stopped at a random road block (a regular feature of the old Irish way of life a decade ago, but which took some explaining), sent back to the police station who sent them away again.... finally went back to ER, where they waited for an unattended trolly, put him on it and slid him in the doors before making a swift exit.
Crap jobs through history: the move from keener to cleaner.
Another one: the awful change to “closed house” funerals - terrible! You don't get to view the corpse and there are no sarnies.
The professional funeral goer – saw a funeral - pulled in - offered the hand – it was a Tupperware party!
Everyone has had an experience like this: ..... I once spent an hour in the wrong house, at the wrong wake before I realised...
An undertaker in Armagh heard the rumour a local fellow had "passed away", turned up at the house only to be shouted at by the man himself: “Gerald would you ever fuck off, they’ll ring you when I’m dead!”
Funeral competitions – I saw her last week, I saw her only yesterday, she was breathing not a half hour ago!

Send us your good death stories!

Second Brainstorm for Rain & Potatoes

2007-08-14T21:28:51Z

Long long long overdue, it occurs to me that I never posted up the content from the second brainstorm for It's Not All Rain & Potatoes. It's fitting that I remember this on the day we went back to all the notes and wrote the first scene. We thought it would be a good idea to bring all the Irish bards in on the action.

Anyway, here is what the second brainstorming group: Vinnie, Tania, Nuala, Andrea, Anthony and Steven came up with between themselves, in no particular order....

We discussed: “what do you think the project is about?”
Answering the question: who are the Irish?
Answering with a collage that adds up to a feeling of “yes!” bullseye
Making people laugh with recognition
Presenting the Irish to ourselves and the world
identity
Exploration of opinion & preconceived ideas
A show to launch Terra Nova Productions
A showcase
Answer to: how did Ireland reach 2007?
Exploding misconceptions and preconceptions
Identity: personal vs cultural vs ethnicity
Where are we now how did we get here?
NI artificially monocultural due to troubles

Sketch and Content Ideas
What foreigners see/hear, What we see/hear
Irish parenting: Your father saying "Do that other one (song/joke) that you’re good at"
Racing commentary as a basis for dialogue – needing a translator though it’s “English”
Gate49 at London airport
New Ireland Pocahontas McGiven – an actual name!
Dogs playing snooker and smoking on pup pictures
The distant family shame (possible with ominous chord) that only the matriarch actually knows about, the skeleton in the closet
Your sister is actually your mother, and your mother is your gran.
The “cure” – mysterious and folky, like the person who administers it
Getting above one’s self. “I knew him when he was shite” Irish modesty, How the Irish treat celebrities. The Irish head greeting
Exports: the titanic, bombardier
The quiet millionaire – the ones we think have money but don’t
Automatic assumption of the search stance without thinking
The Irish vs Ireland
Form SEX M F, response, once, in Bundoran
Story of the dead man in the shared cab story
Loose head in clouds – sky too close
Expressions: saying "starving" for cold
Would be lonely if I go, I would miss it – Ireland?
Childhood innocence
Big families
Not materialistic – joy from the simple and crap
Sad for loss of innocence now
It would have been better to have been a boy
An old fashioned approach to women – the natural self-separation of the sexes
Simple times were safe, they were also a prison
Apologetic about being from Ireland – has that changed~?
Apologetic about being from Northern Ireland, but also have a chip on my shoulder