Millie Week 13 Pt 2: Thu 29 Nov - Sat 1 Dec 1990

Just like real Amateur Dramatics, Millie and company have been rehearsing their show for the past ten weeks or so, and then it's all over in three panels.

However, the storyline for the next two weeks is set up on Friday...

Millie Week 13 Pt 1: Mon 26 - Wed 28 Nov

Story's nearly over. Just one more day to go and we'll be onto a new story... or will it just be something that continues from this one. I must admit I was quite getting into the more soapy aspects of the strip, as stories and relationships grew organically from what came before.

The second strip illustrates a perennial problem of backstage life - bladder synchronisation. This becomes especially important if you have a quick changes between scenes and have to cope with it by wearing three sets of clothes in the first scene, gradually shedding layers as the act progresses. You do not want to have a sudden need to pee when you're dressed in three sets of trousers...

Millie Week 12: Thu 22 - Sat 24 Nov 1990

That first night is slowly but inexorably getting closer and closer... and nothing will stop it

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Millie Week 12; Mon 19- Wed 21 Nov 1990

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The Monday strip is surprisingly prophetic. Back in 1990 we all knew about cold calling, but the automated junk phone call was unknown. About three months ago I was plagued by them. No I haven't been involved in an accident that wasn't my fault. No I don't want to claim compensation for credit card insurance I never took out. And don't put me on f***ing hold as soon as I pick up the receiver!
If you're plagued by junk calls, may I recommend the telephone preference service - the UK's official opt out list. I joined it for free a couple of months ago and the unwanted phone calls now have dried up completely.

http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/index.html

The other two strips are more examples of direct experience. In the Tuesday one, I am that foot crushing dancer - Richard c'est moi. My apologies to anyone who has had to be my dance partner.

The second is based on the stage at the Royal Victoria Hall, Southborough, a theatre I spent a lot of my youth performing at. Stages are supposed to have a bit of a rake on them so everyone in the stalls can see what's going on - but the Royal Vic is like the north face of the Eiger. Any scenery put on that stage has to be securely wedged and blocked into position or it will start traveling slowly towards the orchestra pit. Anything on wheels is doomed - which is why no-one's ever dared to do Starlight Express there.

So that explains upstage and downstage. Stage left and stage right are more problematic - I have enough difficulty telling my left from my right anyway, so introducing directions that can change depending on the way you're facing is going to lead to disaster. I prefer the terms Prompt-side and off-prompt, or, nowadays in the White Rock, Hastings-end and Bexhill-end.

Millie Week 8 Thu 25 - Sat 27 1990

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New character alert - and this one's a keeper. Called Dave in the original scripts and then changed to Duane, as can be seen by the slightly different handwriting where the new name has been inserted. It was probably my change, my shallow babe magnet characters tend to be called Wayne or Duane.

UPDATE: SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Show's over. Normal service can now be resumed. And if you missed the Hastleons production of the Sound of Music you've only got yourself to blame/thank (depending on your opinion of The Sound of Music). In my opinion it was an excellent production of a show that really needs to be put out to pasture now.

Anyway, back to The Magic Shoebox, Crippen Comprehensive's winter show. Duane's fall off the stairs is something I know well, being very short sighted and, until I bought a pair of prescription round spectacles that fit all time periods, occasionally required to act without my glasses. Don't even bring up the subject of contacts... the very idea makes me shiver. Most people remember The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which, as Dr Caius, I had to threaten someone with a Rapier and have a short mock fencing battle with my faithful assistant, Rugby. I'm doing this effectively blind. And then I fall off the stage during a dress rehearsal. For the rest of the run, poor Rugby was sweating cobs as I jabbed sharp pointy lengths of metal in front of his nose, with no way to gauge distances apart from guesswork.

How short sighted am I? Very. Without glasses this screen becomes unreadable from six inches away.

British Summer Time ends this year at 2am next Sunday morning - the clocks go back an hour and I have to drive home from work in the dark for five months. By the time we reach Christmas the sun will be setting at 3.45pm. On the plus side - it means we get really good mileage out of our Christmas decorations.

Millie Week 8 Mon 22 - Wed 24 1990

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Not much to say about this one - apart from mentioning that I'm currently in the chorus of The Sound of Music at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings. Tonight is the last night. I've been finding being in the chorus quite refreshing - compared to having a larger part it's very relaxing. All I have to do is turn up, apply make-up, don a tux and then waltz for a bit. Normally I'd spend all my time up to my first entrance pacing the dressing room, chanting my lines and cues to myself like a Buddhist mantra. Instead, I've been backstage for most of it either reading or inking in next month's batch of Smith cartoons.

The show, incidentally, is excellent. If you're in the Hastings areas, why not come and see it? I've noted in previous blog entries how much I don't like the Sound of Music as a script, but this is a production that transcends its raw material - and the sickly sweetness is kept to a minimum.

Millie Week 7 Thu 18 - Sat 20 2011

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Jeremy James Anthony Gibson Beadle was one of those Marmite people - you either loved him or you hated him. I was one of those that loved him. If you only knew him for the practical jokes  he played on the public on ITV, you probably hated him. But there was a lot more to him than that. I never tended to watch his ITV shows, but listened to him avidly on the radio, where his other side as an English version of Robert Ripley of 'Believe it or Not' fame would hold sway. The man was a bit of a polymath on the quiet, (he styled himself 'Curator of Oddities') and was also a great fundraiser for an assortment of charities, for which he received an OBE. Lazy comedians looking for an easy laugh would always pick on him, though, not only for the TV shows, but for his withered hand, a disability he'd had since birth. He became one of those people you were supposed to hate because everyone else appeared to. He died three years ago, and the obituaries showed that he was secretly held in a lot more affection than anyone ever dared suppose.

Frame one, strip three: The Woolwich Building Society. We're still drawing real Catford at this point. Ironically for a building society, the Woolwich no longer has any buildings of its own - it was taken over by Barclays in the great financial feeding frenzy that helped tip the economy over the edge. Woolwich in South London is also where my Dad's side of the family came from. My roots are on the Woolwich ferry.

Millie Week 7 Mon 15 - Wed 17 2011

I hate learning lines. Some people are able to scan a script once and be word perfect ten minutes later. I've actually seen this happen, when in a production of A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past fell ill on the last night. Amazingly, a friend who had turned up to see the show that night locked himself in the green room, learned his part, and played the part perfectly less than an hour later. Tim Boorman, wherever you are now, you're a marvel.

I'm not like him. It takes a good week of pacing in circles and mumbling to myself before my lines sink in. Especially if they're lines I've written for myself.

Millie Week 6; Thu 11 - Sat 13 Oct 1990

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Three things to note about the second strip. The boy with the blonde hair is apparently called Tim, and I flag him up in the script as someone who will feature later. We never see him again.

Similarly, the boy on top of the pyramid in the second frame is Sammi's little brother. I think we see him in the background in strips set at Sammi's family newsagent's, but once again he never becomes a main character.

Finally, from the original script, here are my drawing instructions for the third frame...

3. I'll leave this up to Roger's imagination, but I think two people formed the sides of the toast while the others were beans last time I was subjected to this.

Millie Week 6; Mon 8 - Wed 10 Oct 1990

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This is interesting - the first strip you see here on the syndication sheet is not the one that got published - and I've only just noticed. The Mirror changed it to one that had exactly the same script and the same punchline, but took place in a busy street on the way to school. It ends with Richard spouting his Shakespeare to some puzzled passers-by. And it's a definite improvement on the original. I'll scan it and plonk it in this post later.

The character of Miss Twee was partly based on the wonderful Diana Edwardes, the driving force behind the West Kent Youth Theatre, and one of Those People Who Change Your Life For The Better; though Diana was neither twee nor as theatrical as this. I'm not convinced she would have had much time for drama workshops either. Neither did I, I always found them to be a nice way to waste an afternoon but I could never take them seriously. Acting is a mixture of let's pretend, empathy, diction and knowing where you are on a stage in relation to other people. Pretending to be an acorn doesn't come in to it.

Added, Saturday afternoon: Here's that revised Monday strip...

The naked cartoonist

No, that's not me. That's a man from a stock photography website. But I will be in this show, and I'm afraid I will be one of the naked ones.

This is one of my other leisure activities, Am Dram. And  for some reason I seem to have settled into musical theatre over the years. Past shows have included Oklahoma! (Ali Hakim, twice), How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (Bud Frump), The Wizard of Oz (the Wizard, twice) and everything from a sailor in Anything Goes to the front end of a pantomime horse in The Threepenny Opera. But this is the first time I've shown my nadgers to the world.

You will have seen the film of course, and if you haven't do it now. For the musical the action has been transposed from Sheffield to Buffalo New York, but the characters and story are essentially the same.

Rehearsals are going on at the moment. More news and (PG rated) pictures as they arrive, but in the meantime, why not book your tickets early...