Two performances in and everyone loves it. Some wonderful comments on the TimeOut website.
Wednesday 5 May 2010
Monday 3 May 2010
Countdown!
We built the set yesterday and it is tech day today. I can honestly say I have never had a better more wonderful set build. Our team is fantastic. Calm, authoritative and joyful. Thank you so much Jude, Marie, Brenden and of course our amazing other halves Alex and John. You are all National Treasures!! That goes for you too Tim. I can't imagine doing a show without your PR skills now.
Brenden - you should definitely direct more often. You are a complete natural!
Finally - Ellen, my partner in crime here. Thank you for bringing Airswimming to me. It's been great - hard bloody work, but bloody brilliant!!
Whoo-hoo. Soon up and running with it. Can't wait.
xxx
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Multi-tasking
This morning Ellen and I were running lines whilst doing yoga. Talk about multi-tasking. We rock!
Sunday 25 April 2010
Friday 23 April 2010
Grey Swan interview with playwright Charlotte Jones
Grey Swan interview with playwright Charlotte Jones
Charlotte Jones is a British actress and playwright. Her first play Airswimming debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London. Her other plays include In Flame, The Dark, The Lightning Play, and Humble Boy. Charlotte Jones wrote the book to the West End musical The Woman in White, in collaboration with the David Zippel and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
She won the 2001 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Grey Swan (GS): Charlotte, you originally trained as an actor. Did you think of yourself as a writer when you started “Airswimming”?
Charlotte Jones (CJ): I didn't consider myself a writer when I wrote it. I did it to fill the time when I was waiting for my agent to call. Having said that I loved the process- the research and the very act of writing.
GS: What do you feel about the play “Airswimming” now?
CJ: “Airswimming" is in fact the only play I have ever written on which I never did any revisions. When I doubt myself I look at it to remind myself of the honeymoon period I had when writing it- when the words came automatically and I had huge confidence in what I had created. I am amazed that the play came out in such a structured way.
GS: Did you start writing because you were frustrated as you waited for the call from your agent for acting work?
CJ: I don't think it was borne of frustration really because as soon as I started writing it was a joyful process- I couldn't bear to leave it alone. Often I wish I could recapture the innocence of that experience- the moment I fell in love with writing. Today I am mostly doing adaptations for TV which fit in with family life- I like doing them- they are like elaborate plot-hungry jigsaw puzzles- and I like the thought of a bigger audience for my work. But I don't write them from the same place as I wrote “Airswimming”. I wrote in a vacuum but weirdly from a place of greater certainty.
GS: What do you think you know now, as a writer or an artist, 13 years after “Airswimming”, that you didn’t know then, in 1997?
CJ: I think the same things inspire me now as inspired me then: people struggling with the big questions of life, facing death...the same questions- how to live in difficult times, how to transcend the everyday, the epic nature of the human spirit, the miracle friendship, love and dysfunctional family relationships. I think my plays are spiritual- which doesn't always make them fashionable or critic proof- but I can't help myself- I am interested in the human heart and all its vagaries...
AIRSWIMMING is currently being produced by CM Productions and is to be performed at the Hen & Chickens Theatre London 4th to 22nd May 2010 directed by Brenden Lovett, designed by Jude Chalk and with Jane Dodd and Ellen Gylen.
www.airswimming.co.uk
Charlotte Jones is a British actress and playwright. Her first play Airswimming debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London. Her other plays include In Flame, The Dark, The Lightning Play, and Humble Boy. Charlotte Jones wrote the book to the West End musical The Woman in White, in collaboration with the David Zippel and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
She won the 2001 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Grey Swan (GS): Charlotte, you originally trained as an actor. Did you think of yourself as a writer when you started “Airswimming”?
Charlotte Jones (CJ): I didn't consider myself a writer when I wrote it. I did it to fill the time when I was waiting for my agent to call. Having said that I loved the process- the research and the very act of writing.
GS: What do you feel about the play “Airswimming” now?
CJ: “Airswimming" is in fact the only play I have ever written on which I never did any revisions. When I doubt myself I look at it to remind myself of the honeymoon period I had when writing it- when the words came automatically and I had huge confidence in what I had created. I am amazed that the play came out in such a structured way.
GS: Did you start writing because you were frustrated as you waited for the call from your agent for acting work?
CJ: I don't think it was borne of frustration really because as soon as I started writing it was a joyful process- I couldn't bear to leave it alone. Often I wish I could recapture the innocence of that experience- the moment I fell in love with writing. Today I am mostly doing adaptations for TV which fit in with family life- I like doing them- they are like elaborate plot-hungry jigsaw puzzles- and I like the thought of a bigger audience for my work. But I don't write them from the same place as I wrote “Airswimming”. I wrote in a vacuum but weirdly from a place of greater certainty.
GS: What do you think you know now, as a writer or an artist, 13 years after “Airswimming”, that you didn’t know then, in 1997?
CJ: I think the same things inspire me now as inspired me then: people struggling with the big questions of life, facing death...the same questions- how to live in difficult times, how to transcend the everyday, the epic nature of the human spirit, the miracle friendship, love and dysfunctional family relationships. I think my plays are spiritual- which doesn't always make them fashionable or critic proof- but I can't help myself- I am interested in the human heart and all its vagaries...
AIRSWIMMING is currently being produced by CM Productions and is to be performed at the Hen & Chickens Theatre London 4th to 22nd May 2010 directed by Brenden Lovett, designed by Jude Chalk and with Jane Dodd and Ellen Gylen.
www.airswimming.co.uk
Tuesday 20 April 2010
Airswimming Videos!
Just put a few more videos on the website. Takes me ages. Want to see my friends in Oz and NZ show me their Airswimming technique!! (But don't strain your back Mary!!!)
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