It's Later Now

So, Aussie Rules is finished, and, with it, the penultimate stage of my time in Oz. We are not entering the final chapter of my time here (I was gonna use the final chapter title from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as the title for this post, but that's Home Again, which doesn't really suit this post, and the chapter before that is the rather esoteric (and spoilerish) Glinda the Good Witch Grants Dorothy's Wish, so I'll have to come up with something on my own). Granted, I have two assignments, one test and one exam to go before I'm done with uni, but I saw Aussie Rules as the last bastion of mid-exchange-year-Rory, a lad who could still sleep in if he wanted to, or take on a show, after all he'd have time later to see Oz- well, It's Later Now (ok, title found).
To mark this occasion, I have booked my tickets for New Zealand, and, even more excitingly, shaved my face. Yes, I took the advice of that drunk lady on the train and got a hair cut. Just not on my pate. I have a few other plans for my time here (hopefully Uluru and more penguins).

Ladies. 

Aussie Rules went very well; my hats off to Andrew for pulling off the frankly bizarre idea he pitched to me all the way back in October ('No, see, cos football is Islam...'). I had some one thank me personally for my performance and say he'd come specifically to see me (having been bowled over by me in Confetti and Everything) and honestly this was a lot more pleasant than the fan I had in Edinburgh, who walked up to me in the middle of the meadows and whispered 'multim olim' in my ear AT ONE IN THE FUCKING MORNING. But, yes, Aussie Rules was a success, and I'm proud to have it as my final impression upon the melbourne acting scene (though not the theatre scene in general- hello, BESTies).
Speaking of theatre, it was over two weeks ago, but I needs must mention the Amadeus pre-show sing-off. If only because I got to fulfill my dreams of singing 'American Pie', 'Moonriver', 'Blue Moon' and 'Mr. Sandman' before an extremely captive audience. Also, on the final night I did what can only be called an astonishing rendition of the song below.

Let that image burn into your retinas.

In other news, I skyped with Esmond on Friday, and it was lovely: we spoke for two and a half hours, and despite ten months apart, we still fell into conversation so easily. It's nice to know I'll have at least one friend when I return to the Great Wet North (I thought of that on Wednesday and by God, I'll get the mileage out of it).

In other other news, it was Victoria's birthday last Saturday, and, wouldn'tcha know, she had a sci-fi party, so naturally....

The very definition of a coquette.

What? You can't guess? I'm Poison Ivy from Batman and Robin. Duh. I mean, the hair's a little off, and I've really made no effort at all apart from holding a plastic flower and wearing a Batman-related T-shirt, but I think everyone can agree I've adequately captured the campy awfulness of that film.
The party was a lot of fun, and I got to see Victoria's assorted friends, probably for the last time before I head off; as Ryan North is wont to say, 'partying is such sweet sorrow'.

Last night was Eurovision here in Ozland, and, much like with the Olympics, I found myself the token pom in a group of Aussies watching something distinctly English. I got a lot of mileage out of the fact that no one gave us any points (it's all political, I tell ya), but I didn't realise how seriously the Antipodeans take the damn thing. Everyone, that is, except the closed captions guy, who added such delightful additions as 'you can guess what she said' and 'what's she gonna do with flowers? Put them down.'
Victoria, Aspen, Michael and myself were enraptured by the cheesiness, and I found Aspen's knowledge of past contestants to be vastly superior to my own, which isn't actually saying all that much, but she remembered 'I'm in love with a fairytale', which I only recall because it was the night I came out. Funny old world, innit?

Finally, when I was crossing the road this morning, my hood slipped (yes, it's finally started raining in Oz- laugh it up, Edinburghers), and when I lifted it, there was a car right in front of me. It was really very terrifying. I also realised I hadn't updated this thing in ages and I didn't want to die without you guys having heard my inane prattle for a month! Hence, this post.
Blame the hood.

Boasting, unadulterated boasting

This is another post I never thought I'd write, but I'm just so happy right now that I feel it's completely justified.
As some of you may know, I starred in Amadeus in my first year- during that time, I received my first ever personal review for my acting. It wasn't positive. It wasn't exactly negative, but I remember the phrases 'graceful as a hippo', 'screeching' and 'not quite there' (I searched for the review, but couldn't find it on google- I don't quite know why I'm resurrecting it on the web).
I just got in the review for the current production of Amadeus. And what I love are the parrallels- this review, as with the previous, is just on some guy's blog. They don't know me, they're not writing for an official publication, they're not a theatre critic. It's just some person's opinion.
And in that person's opinion, I am 'amusing'. That's all they said, but that's more than enough. I have improved. I have palpably improved. There is real, undeniable proof that I am making progress in one of the fields to which I have decided to donate my energy, and that makes me so very, very happy.
Go me.

P.S. That old review said some very mean things about Rik. We are not amused.

The thousand yard stare of a man who burned to death and lived to tell the tale.

Karma

I have been trying to avoid posts like this on this blog, as I've wanted to downplay my spiteful streak whilst down under, but Henriette said I was allowed a little bit of gloating every now and then and I choose now, rather than then.

Today, I had my practical phonetics tutorial- it was on Praat, a programme with which I am passingly familiar. My tutor, whom we will call Dick, because that's a name people can have and no other reason, asked us to name certain phones as they came up; I answered his questions, correctly, I might add; he snapped at me 'why don't you stop butting in and give other people a chance to answer?', so I didn't answer any more questions during the tute.
And neither did anyone else.

There were entire minutes of silence, where Dick fervently waited for someone to identify the correct phoneme, and no one did. These silences were so pregnant people kept on asking exactly how many babies it had in there. And all Dick could find to punctuate these soundless eons? The only words he could find to fill this room, so devoid of the noise that he claims to understand? 'I feel like a failure'.

Good.You should, Dick.
I fully intend to not answer any more questions in Dick's classroom, and let the deafening sound of his own complete incompetence ring loud in his ears as a class full of undergraduates show him exactly how little he has taught them. I'll let the crippling screech of his inadequacy echo throughout that cacophonous room and smile as he sinks deeper into a depression of his own making.
Because I am nothing if not obedient.

Oh, and to add a cherry to this delicious revenge cream cake; he handed out assignments today and I got a H1.
Match point, dick*.

*Deliberately left uncapitalised.

Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor

And then it was May.

We are not amused.

I must confess a touch of panic about doing all that I want before I leave- I have seventy days left in Australia, if you count the final few hours I will spend trying to sleep in Sydney Airport, which I am doing only to give this post a nice round number to which to attach itself.
I've been trying to make lists of all those things I want to do before I must shuffle off this antipodean coil, but there are just so many. In the top ten there are certainly see the penguins again (either St Kilda or Philip Island, it doesn't matter which- hell, even the aquarium would count if I do the motherfuckin' PENGUIN PASSPORT!), visit Tasmania or New Zealand (Old Zealand just looks dull, to be frank), or both if there's money. I want to see another part of Australia- Adelaide, Perth or maybe even Uluru, which I apparent keep mispronouncing as 'Ayres rock'.
I think back to Jason, and the madcap antics of his final days here- which were only in December, but now seem like they happened before the invention of Radio (I swear, I remember them in Sepia with title cards)- how he kept repeating all the things he longed to accomplish in Oz, and how, when he clicked his heels together and vanished from sight, there were still so many he hadn't brought to fruition; like visiting the Silver K Gallery or the Ballarat Wildlife Park. And then I look back on my Edinburgh bucket list and see that I only did about half the things on there before I got the heck outta dodge, and I begin to think that maybe you'll never do everything you want to, no matter where you are; I'm sure there must be something in Shropshire I haven't done, like...
...
Moving on.

So, I'm waiting until my exam timetable is released, which, according to my venticelli, will be this Friday, and then I'm gonna plot out my remaining few weeks here, and just try to see as much as possible and remind myself that you can find pictures of everything on Google, so travel's just flogging a dead horse anyway.

After being bitten by a retroactive spider...

So, I've decided that this is my blog and I can do what I want and I'm gonna write a blog post a month after the fact, and what can all of you do about it?
(You may have noticed that there have been three different blog posts in the last two days- this is because I have an assignment due and it's never so easy to write as when you're meant to be doing something else.)

So, 24 hour play- Andrew encouraged me to do it, and I'm so glad I did. It's not the first such endeavor I've undertaken, but it's the first time I've been on the acting side of the coin. As you will see at the end, this was quite a debut.
The 24 hour plays at Melbourne are structured differently to those of Bedlam (fancy that!). For one thing, things are much more randomised; writers and directors find each other in a weird mating ritual involving blindfolds, a circle of onlookers and, at least in my case, a half-eaten mannequin with the word 'Kerrick' scrawled on it (and, honestly, all the best rituals do); each writer/director pair is then assigned the number of actors to which they will have access using dice. I decided to join group number one because a) I wanted to meet new people and thus, sadly, not team up with Andrew and b) I hadn't spoken for, like, eight minutes and that's just too long.

As you can see, I chose the cheery bunch.

Group number one would later become B.E.S.T., whom I believe I have posted about before- they consisted of Laura, David, Wilson, Maddi, a third Daniel, a second Declan and a first Greta. Declan was our director, Wilson our writer. We were then assigned, through the use of slips of paper in various hats, a random object (a paintbrush), a starting location (a wedding), an event that must happen over the course of the play (someone winning something) and two words we must include ('clutter' and 'hydrocarbon') he concocted for us a dark comedy called 'confetti and everything'. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and concerning the adventures of a princess and a painter, I played an alcoholic priest and...well, I won't spoil it.

Over the course of the rehearsals, I acquired several new in-jokes ('mazel tov' and 'deep inside death' being the primary among them), some new friends and a badass top hat, which I sadly didn't just steal for myself. Definitely worth the eleven hours' rehearsing, I feel. 

So, without further adieu, gracious ladies, obliging gentlemen, and, of course, Jari, I present to you, Confetti and Everything.

"If you want to milk plows or cow fields"

So far, in the course of my adventures in Oz, I've acted against someone who's in Neighbours and auditioned against someone who was in Summer Heights High, not to mention being the same audience as Geoffrey "I'm disinclined to acquiesce to your request" Rush. But now, I think, I have reached a whole new height of star-interaction.
For, you see, yesterday, Tuesday the 9th April 2013, at 2.15pm, on a sunny afternoon in Melbourne, I made a short film with none other than motherfucking Sportacus from Lazytown.

As badass as scarface?

Not only that- I had actual lines (the humorous spoonerism that resulted from such makes the titles of this post) in a film with Sportacus. I was even DIRECTED by Sportacus. He told me he liked my line reading.
Swoon.


Daniel, you're not the only one who's acting career has taken a major leap forward in the past two weeks. 

The most easter(n)ly break yet

Wow, what a break!
This was my fourth consecutive easter away from home (I know, I know, I'm such a rebel) and probably the most jam-packed that I can remember.

On Good Friday, Victoria, Michael and I went to the Melbourne Aquarium (Michael was the host of the Australia Day barbecue I attended, and also Aspen's sweetheart); I always enjoy aquariums and zoos- there's just something about watching animals that I find incredibly interesting, even when they're not really doing anything.

I swear to God I stared at this thing for ten solid minutes, waiting for it to move.

Also, there were PENGUINS! And there's even something called 'the Penguin Passport' where you can ENTER THE MOTHERFUCKING PENGUIN ENCLOSURE!!!!!
So, yeah, that's happening.

On Sunday, we had an easter egg hunt, which was so well thought through that half the eggs weren't even found and, to my knowledge, there are still some to be claimed. Victoria and I also teamed up for an egg and spoon race, and came second, but only because I wasn't allowed to use my pasta spoon, which is, apparently, 'cheating'.

The next day, I travelled to Somers to stay at Maddi's (one of the B.E.S.T.ies) summer house for a couple of days. It was totes sweet: we swam, played pictionary (I won), Smart ass (I won) and Jenga (I toppled it and thus, you guessed it, won), had fires on the beach (which is illegal, so if anyone asks we sat on the beach at night in a rough circle around a patch of sand). But the best part is that Laura and David declared their love for one another while I was trying to sleep- I just love being friends with couples.

I stayed at Maddi's until wednesday, then returned for an evening Amadeus rehearsal.

The next two days were spent rehearsing Aussie Rules, during which I learnt some yoga positions and got to practice dying in other people's spotlights, both of which are, I think, skills entirely transferable to the workplace.

Then, on Friday evening, I travelled to an Amadeus rehearsal camp in the most cineliterarily named town I've ever encountered- 'Rosebud' (I really wanted to patronise the Rosebud cinema, but sadly did not get round to it.)
'Rehearsal camps' are apparently a not uncommon thing at Melbourne Uni (and, I think, Australian theatre in general), but I had never heard of one before. From my direct experience, they involve: acting, singing, alcohol, photoshoots, improvisation, king's cup, alcohol, would you rather?, truth or dare, alcohol and lots of conversation about the Amish. I can only assume that this is typical.
I also got to go for a quick dip in the sea in between run throughs, meaning I swam in the sea twice in a week when there's still snow on the ground back home. This is my life now.

There are two superlatives connected to this easter break: it was the week I spent least time on the internet in at least five years, as neither Maddi's house nor the Rosebud brothel had internet, so for four days out of nine I didn't log on at all.
It was also the holiday where I drank the most, with another four days ending in tipsyness. Progress. 

But all good things must come to an end and I am now back in the world of schoolery: I have an assignment due on Thursday and have just recieved inspiration for a possible linguistic study in the future. Fun times?