However. You want to know how it went, right? Well, just very quickly, then...

The first night was...good.
The second night will be better.
The last night will be perfect.

Our only hitch last night: at the start of one scene, a taped announcement is supposed to relay an instruction to the "housemates". As the lights come up, "Dan" and I are the only two characters on stage, sitting in silence, "Lexis" cooling himself with a fan. The lights came up - we sat and waited - and there was no announcement. Seconds felt like hours. We were stuck. The content of the announcement is absolutely critical to what happens next. You can't just skip it. "Dan" continued to glare crossly out into the audience (although he was actually glaring straight at the sound & lighting desk), while I continued to flutter my fan around, occasionally sighing or yawning for effect. In actual fact, beneath our placid exteriors, both of us were frantically trying to dream up an improvised line which could break the deadlock. Eventually, one of the other off-stage actors could be heard from behind the scenes, intoning the announcement from the script. Sweet relief. But what could the audience be thinking?

As it transpired, the audience merely thought that we were satirising the boredom of the Big Brother 24 hour live feeds, where absolutely nothing happens for hours at a time. Phew. So that's alright then. But it had better not happen again...

As for my own performance: I thought it was okay, but it had definitely been better on the second dress rehearsal, two nights earlier. A little bit too nervy and spiky, I thought. Tonight will be smoother, and more measured, and perhaps fractionally more restrained. Why, I'm almost looking forward to it! At least, as much as stage fright will allow.

I know I've got a reader in Paris called Sarah (a friend of the other K), but since the Great Home PC Crash of August 2003, I no longer have her e-mail address. Sarah, if you're reading this - please drop me an e-mail.

If you were still thinking of volunteering as a guest blogger on Troubled Diva during the next four weeks - sorry, but I'm going to have to disappoint you. With sixteen people already having expressed an interest, I am now officially closing the guest list to new applicants.

Now, if there's one thing in this world which I find harder than dealing with rejection, then it has to be dealing with rejecting people. So I'm going to wimp out, and offer guest blogging slots to EVERYONE WHO VOLUNTEERED. Hurrah! Smiles and cheers all around!

Besides: with sixteen guests in all, and four weeks to fill, we have a pleasing numerical symmetry.

(Also: most fortunately, nobody unpleasantly beastly, yawnsomely dull, or functionally illiterate applied. Which is another good reason for quickly pulling up the draw-bridge, I think.)

I'll be sorting out the time-slots between now and Saturday, hopefully sooner rather than later. If I've got you down for Week 1, then I'll be e-mailing you this evening.

Right then. Just over five hours to go until my dramatic re-birth, on the stage of the Studio Theatre in West Bridgford. The first abdominal flutterings have just started up. Gulp. Wish me luck.

(Actually, don't wish me luck. What a boring comments box that would be.)

My God, the things you do in the name of art...

   

   

(Click on each thumbnail to enlarge.)

"So, what sort of voice are you going to be using for this character?", K asked me yesterday, about an hour before the second dress rehearsal.

Using my first two lines of the play, I gave him a quick demonstration. Generic London queen, probably north of the river and veering towards Essex. (Let's say Walthamstow, then.) Common, shallow, bitchy and very, very camp.

But most especially: very, very camp. Camp as Christmas. Camp as tits. Camp as a row of pink tents. As camp as camp can possibly be.

K looked aghast. Horrified, even. Hurriedly, he attempted to rally.

"Well, I expect I need to see it in context with the rest of the play."

After 18 years of close study, I am attuned to his every vocal nuance. I know when he's merely being polite.

Once again, just as I had done four and a half weeks ago, on the afternoon of the audition, I started to fret. What if my entire characterisation was a hideous mis-calculation? Crass, cheap, reductive and - if viewed in a certain light - even rather homophobic?

But we've talked about this in rehearsals. The whole point of my character is that he's a stereotype. He's meant to be irritating, albeit comically so. Obsessed with his own supposed fabulousness, and desperate to be on TV by any means possible, he - like his fellow "bimbo stereotype" housemate in the Eye Spy house (for which, read Big Brother) - is exactly the sort of pathetic attention-grabber who so frequently crops up on shows like these. Part of his comedy comes from the gap between his deluded self-perception and the awful reality of his character. Another part of it comes from the wince-inducing sense of inevitability that surrounds him. Of course he'd say that. Of course he'd do that. Of course that's how he'd react.

Taken on a different level, I can even see him as a form of critical cultural commentary. Why are so many representations of gay men in mass popular culture still restricted to the sexless predictability of the camp stereotype?

Granted, there has been a marked shift of empowerment since the days of John Inman, Larry Grayson, and Dick Emery's "Hello honky-tonks, how are you?" Today's camp stereotypes - from Julian Clary onwards, I would contend - are firmly in control of how we are to react to them. This is where Emery et al went so excruciatingly (and damagingly) wrong: for their lily-livered representations denied the essential strength and power of the Flaming Queen. For the C21st FQ, camp is no longer a pitiful affliction, to be suffered with indignity - instead, it is both his armour and his arsenal.

All well and good, of course. The queens have come in from the cold, and 'rah for that. But, in an age of five-nights-a-week Graham Norton, aren't we growing increasingly weary of that whole winking, nudging, naughty-but-nice schtick? Kenneth Williams perfected it forty years ago, and - when he's not being sidelined by dire, ill-advised sitcoms - Paul O'Grady (Lily Savage) is doing an admirable job of carrying the torch. So, when we see yet another character like mine, gormlessly parading his off-the-peg hand-me-down "outrageousness" as if he truly was his Own Special Creation, Sweedie Darling...well, I think we might fairly be allowed to grimace, without fear of reproach.

Besides which, let us not forget one salient fact. K is bringing his parents to watch my performance on Friday night. And I've always Played Butch so convincingly up till now. The fragile illusion is about to be shattered.

Right then, I'm off to get my bleached Hoxton fin done. Ciao, sweethearts!

Ladies!

Of the 10 (ten) can-I-be-your-guest-blogger? applications which I have received since Monday's shout-out, 9 (nine) of them have been from men. Does this mean that Troubled Diva Guest Month is destined to be a testosterone-packed ManFest? And what does this gender imbalance tell us? That Lady Bloggers are a modest and retiring species, who prefer to keep themselves in the background, whilst the men go forth and spill their blog-seed in foreign parts? Surely, surely not.

So, all you dear, sweet, bashful Ladies - I implore you. Come and spread a little of your girlish fragrance over my oeuvre. Grace these oh-so-masculine pages with some of that "feminine perspective" that we boys keep hearing about. mikejla at bitinternet dot com, if you're at all interested.

Take a look at comment #5 on the Thespian Life post (two below this one).

For the first time ever in the history of Troubled Diva - he speaks!

I feel so...so...validated.

Now, do you reckon I could get him to guest blog - or would that be a case of running before you can walk?

For reasons which I can't altogether fathom, I've been #3 on Google for "Popbitch" for the past couple of months. This has never really generated very much traffic to this site - maybe two or three hits a day - until 8:49 this morning, that is. Since then, I've been deluged...



Meanwhile, the Popbitch home page isn't loading up properly, and neither is the message board.

So...is something going on? Huh? What? What? If you know, then do tell.

Update: Popbitch now loading OK (if a bit slow), but referrals still coming. Probably all be over by tea time.

I was fully expecting the world of Am Dram to be populated by the sort of characters you find in Alan Ayckbourn plays. There would be a grande dame figure called Pat (half-moon spectacles on a chain, voluminous paisley shawl), with a serenely magisterial air; everyone would be secretly a little bit in awe of her. ("You'd have to check that over with Pat, I'm afraid.") There would be a "character actor" called Bernard, who would be given a Comedy Turn cameo role in every production; he would play all of these parts in exactly the same hammed-up way, mugging furiously to his loyal crowd in the audience. ("Good old Bernard - couldn't have a show without him.") There would be a slavishly self-martyring borderline hysteric called Hilary (Costume Department), who would rail constantly about having to do ALL THE WORK, with NO SUPPORT and PITIFUL RESOURCES, and absolutely NO THANKS AT THE END OF THE DAY FROM ANYONE. The stage manager would be a surly sociopath, answerable to no-one. There would be a subtle but rigidly stratified order of precedence amongst the actors - in effect, a miniature Star System - with an inner clique of three or four players who would constantly bag the best roles, to much furious sotto voce mutterings from the rest of the company. ("Well, I think we all know why Rupert gave the part to Helena, don't we? I mean, I don't deny that she's a very pretty girl, but really...")

To this effect, I have been pleasantly surprised. Everyone involved in this production has been - well - normal, and nice, and unpretentious, and socially skilled, and welcoming, and co-operative, and mutually supportive, and all of that. Who knew?

The constantly nagging question of the past three or four weeks: why haven't I been doing this before? Why has it been eighteen years since I last acted? (Not even K has seen me on stage.) This - the acting - is actually one of the few things which I can do reasonably well. How ridiculous to have let it slip. I can't begin to understand it.

I seem to be better at it this time round, as well. Back then, in the days of University Dramsoc, with all of its intimidatingly faux-soignee Crispins and Portias and Ramsays and Dinahs and Dominics, my self-subordinating timidity could hold me back. Besides, how much did any of us really know about the intricacies and nuances of adult human behaviour? Too many times, we would fall back on Doing It Like We've Seen It On The Telly - or else we'd come over all self-consciously Art-ay, in a kind of clueless sub-Samuel Beckett way. Whereas now, despite playing a deliberately stock character - the Camp Stereotype - I can work from real life observation, rather than guesswork and second hand imitation. He could have been James Dreyfuss, or Kenneth Williams, or Brian Dowling, or "Just Jack", or Graham Norton, or any of the rest of them, but no - my little "Lexis" is his very own special creation, Lord love him.

To this end, Buni and I went out and conducted some Field Research a few weeks ago. In the Lord Roberts and @D2 (our local midweek gay venues), we trained our eyes on all the trashy queens, and solicited advice from all and sundry. What would he wear? How would he sit? How would he hold his cigarette? We tuned ourselves into the prevalent look: low-slung, distressed, "extreme boot cut" jeans ("flares" to you and me), mussed-up "fin" hairdos with the blonde highlights growing out, metal chains which dangle from the waist to the backside via the kneecap, buckled leather wristbands, chunky neck chains...quite a studied, carefully constructed look, it seemed to me. It would probably take hours to assemble, and much trawling through God knows how many funky specialist shops...

But, no. What I hadn't realised was this: you can buy the whole look at Top Man. Every last little accessory - it's all there for the taking, and my word, so CHEAP! Especially when Buni (my newly appointed Stylist & Personal Shopper) presented his NUS Discount Card at the till. Having set aside half a day to turn me into a trashy queen, we'd got the whole thing - including three changes of top - in less than an hour. ("It's a mid-life crisis in a bag!", we quipped, skipping out of Top Man together.) The ease and speed with which we were able to do this was both astonishing and somewhat disillusioning. Homogenised Chain Store Street Style: ho hum, how very humdrum. I really had credited the trashy queens with more creativity than that.

All that remains for my transformation to be complete: the haircut and the fake tan. Buying my bronzer in the chemists yesterday lunchtime, the sweet little old lady at the till smiled at me and said: "Ooh, going anywhere nice?"

(Good GRIEF. It's for a PLAY, woman. Because WHY ELSE would I POSSIBLY want to buy bloody BRONZER? Do I LOOK like the sort of person who would turn themselves ORANGE before going on holiday? Are you perhaps confusing me with SOMEONE ELSE?)

And, oh dearie dearie me, orange is most definitely the word. Shiny, luminous orange. David Dickinson, Dale Winton, Judith Chalmers orange. People in the office have already commented - and I'm still only on my second application. Just wait till they see tomorrow afternoon's Spiky Bleached Fin hairdo. Ooh, there'll be talk.



Ah yes: the Spiky Bleached Fin hairdo. Now, I'm all for taking my character as far as I possibly can - but, well, I'm visiting clients in Paris next week, and the flight leaves on Monday afternoon, and the salon doesn't open on Mondays. It's a good job that the guy who cuts my hair is an old friend, who might be persuaded to do me an out-of-hours favour on Sunday - because I simply CANNOT walk round the streets of Paris with orange skin AND a Comedy Haircut. At least, not without a sign round my neck, in two languages, saying: IT WAS FOR A PLAY. IT'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK STUPID. I AM NOT HAVING A MID-LIFE CRISIS.

The perils of the thespian life, eh? Still, I'm doing it for Art. So that's OK then. Because Art trumps Life, every time.

Labels: top25

I'm warning you now: new content might be rather thin on the ground this week, what with being in a play and all (the first dress rehearsal takes place tonight). But I'll squeeze in what I can along the way.

Next week - and, in all likelihood, for the following four weeks after that - I'll be in Paris from Monday evening to Thursday evening, with no Internet access.

I think it's therefore time for a new "collaborative community" stunt. Presenting...

TROUBLED DIVA GUEST MONTH!

This is how it's going to work. I'm looking to recruit at least two guest contributors per week, for a four week period, i.e. at least eight guests in all. The weeks in question are:

· Week 41: Monday October 6th to Sunday October 12th.
· Week 42: Monday October 13th to Sunday October 19th.
· Week 43: Monday October 20th to Sunday October 26th.
· Week 44: Monday October 27th to Sunday November 2nd.

If you'd like to be a Troubled Diva guest blogger, then please e-mail me: mikejla at btinternet dot com. You need to be prepared to make a minimum of five guest postings (there's no maximum), reasonably evenly spread throughout the week. Also, if there are any weeks which you can't manage, then please let me know.

Don't be shy now...and most especially, please don't feel that you have to "know" me in order to volunteer. Here at Troubled Diva, we like to Celebrate Diversity. We're an Equal Opportunities Weblog, no less.

(And we've had a Guest Week here before, of course. Ah, them were the days.)

Go on. Stick your name down for it. Especially you. I'm really hoping that you're going to volunteer. You'd be great, you would.