stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007 From: SW London (UK) Status: offline
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Wow Aneirin I can only wish I had oodles of time to create nothing more than a visual something as an expression of my soul, but the reality is different, for me. I consider myself an artist, and my art is perhaps the most linguistic form of art and entertainment - theatre, or more specifically, fringe theatre. I write and direct my own plays, and also occasionally the plays of other people, other people sometimes direct my plays, and I run workshops, training and productions also for disadvantaged people such as the homeless, the gay community and other stigmatized groups. Theatre is my passion, my career, my occupation, and now it's become my way of life. But theatre isn't just an art form, it's also a hard, painstaking, cut throat business. What you see in the listings is just the tip of the iceberg, the West End and 'rep' *(first class theatre) is just the icing on the cake, there are many more fringe companies, and even more theatres who do touring, they work in education, in the community and even in healthcare, teaching, providing occupation, and helping lots of people overcome a wide variety of issues including depression, abuse, and substance misuse. Theatre is not just something visual, but an experience, something to take part in, to share, and ideally to remember. How many of you remember being in a school production, and how many years ago was that? Can you remember what part you played? What was the production? Can you perhaps remember your lines, or how you felt when you went out on stage? From theatre you get many forms of entertainment, television, film, comedy, performance art, just as you can create an entire performance from just a picture, a short story, a photograph, or even a painting. It's taken me over a year to create a theatre here in London, and while we open our first play in two weeks time we still have a couple of months of playing to empty chairs while we build both a repertoire as well as an audience. But in a way I'm lucky, I have established my name, and not even a change of gender and name has taken much away from my reputation, I'm still the same person, the plays are still mine, and I have my own archive of reviews and articles. The people will come, just as I am developing projects with the homeless, the gay community and people are interested in becoming involved. But then again this didn't happen without sacrifice, I've done my share of menial jobs, dropped leaflets, cleaned dishes, scrubbed floors, taught English, translated texts, I don;t own property nor a car, instead I invested in my work and for many years wrote and directed plays without funding, able to run theatres by getting bums on seats. At this moment in time I'm not worried. The people will come. Art and artists are as essential to the world as anyone else, not just for what we create and what we share with the rest of the world, but for the simple fact that like musicians and those in sport we provide people with something to occupy their time, interests, entertainment, as well as communicating with their soul. We are the cement which holds society together. Consider that without art, without entertainment, without music, and without sport there would only be drinking, shopping and fucking - and what sort of life is that?
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CM's Resident Lyricist also Facebook http://stella.baker.tripod.com/ 50NZpoints Q2 Simply Q
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