Themepunk Roundup: I Don't Wish to Alarm Anyone

 

"When I find myself relaxing...

I'm sometimes by the sea...

I'm sometimes lying on a rock...

But I'm never by a bee."

 

 These lines are but a fraction of my contribution to "Phantom Peak" as Pius, High Priest of the Church of the Cosmic Platypus, mini-penned at an easel in the corner of Old Town, where I would sit to receive tourists as part of a step on their trail. (Everyone who visits Phantom Peak is a "tourist", including those who know the place far better than me, and have made even greater contributions.) My character's dependence upon psychedelic fungus after an orchestrated blimp crash is one of the few details of the world's deep lore I was sure completely of. When a message like the following would pop up from a Head of Department on our work WhatsApp –

 

 – uncaptioned, I might be thrown, but I'd figure if I needed to know what it meant, I'd know, and that generally proved correct. Another contribution, perhaps my proudest, was the innovation on day one of asking tourists, once our scripted interaction had been logged: "Would you like to take a moment?" It was fascinating how well this offer nearly always went down. People seemed genuinely delighted to be just standing still for six seconds or so, stopping, and insufferably, I began to feel like an actual church. Any post introducing Peak though, should really be about the extraordinary company I worked with, but I'm making this all about me because taking a moment is how I've been spending my fiftieth birthday. Today's been lovely. Thanks to all who've said and sent nice things. According to this mural in Strangers' Hall, Norwich, I am now finally half-way through my life! I'm now trying to remember one of Pius' sign-offs. 

 Ah, yeah: Nine out of ten.

 

Photo credit: I've become lax, sorry. If anyone knows who took that picture of me, let me know.

Themepunk Roundup: The Scratchblood Comeback

 Happy Hallow, as I guess today is! Above is not a picture of Hallowe'en. I have not been working here over Hallowe'en. God knows what's happened to the poor, brave souls who are. The work WhatsApp currently reads like the transcription of a black box. Lois has lost a finger, and I'm writing this on the train to York. I only hope they forgive my abandoning them.

“Why, to the North Po- to Whitechap- to London Bridge, of course! This is the Polar Exp- the Ten Bell- the Star Inn!”

 When my job as a conductor on the Mid-Norfolk Polar Express ended in December, I knew I wanted the New Year to be, above all else, one in which I continued to play people who carry a hurricane lamp. No, I wanted to continue doing improvisation-friendly, site-specific shift work with a regular band of friends as I wrote last post, and the London Bridge Experience was my first themepunk gig of 2024. (I am committed to trying to make "themepunk" a thing. Sorry, it's my blog.) 

 

 

London Bridge! History!

 

 It was a return to Tooley Street, and to reading on the floor between shows, and writing your own script if you wanted to just as the London Dungeon had let you do when it was the rival across the road. It was also a return to painting myself a better jawline and cheekbones.

 Look at this dashing rake! Who needs appetite supressants? Compare the portrait above taken when I started work at the LBE this February, to one below of me posing next to a stuffed tapir in Bedlam at the Dungeons in 2007, and you’ll see full rejuvenation was achieved. The dead don't age (although my phones seem to have got worse).

 

 The LBE used some of the pumped odours too – and you know what that does to a pysche –  and even some of the tunes: ducking out of Fleshmongers, past the giant spiders and through the labyrinth of killer clowns to check on my microwaved Shanghai rice in the green room, I’d hear the same plainsong which used to play on the steps to the boat ride a decade and a half ago…

 There were differences too, of course: old Horror posters on the wall as you enter, which made me feel more at home than ever, real swords and a fake Viking longboat, chainsaws, Romans, a wall of broken dolls, and the fact this place is genuinely underground (I turned my flash on one day, and you don’t get gastropodinous limestone arteries like this in County Hall...)

 Everyone there works their arse off as well, like they grew up through Covid or something. Physically, verbally, chemically, no two actors share a superpower. I think it’s the only job on which I’ve lost my voice – bloody Vikings – which is another reason I've been taking it a bit easier. so, okay, the dead do age. But, readers... work with people who work their arse off. I don't mean losing a finger. I mean, say: okay, between bouts of bursting through a blood-drenched shower curtain, for example, Sam's at his laptop in the green room, putting together something like this beautifully simple, one-shot unnerver below. Enjoy! There’s Jess and Preston in the bushes too. God, I hope they're okay.

 

Themepunk Roundup: My Life as an Action Butler

 

Thanks to Gerard Giorgi-Coll. 

 

 This year, unlike last, I've been doing jobs. They've been jobs I've enjoyed, and sought out, but also what you might call out-of-work-actor jobs. There should be a better name for these though, not because I fancy arguing the toss about what counts as acting, but because, ever since I worked at the London Dungeon I have actively enjoyed performing improvisation-friendly, site-specific shift work with a regular band of friends in front of as broad a demographic as possible – Tourism jobs, if you like – and "out-of-work-actor job" doesn't really do that justice. A lot of performance work won't guarantee these things. Themepunk, as I'm going to try calling it for now, hopefully does, although you might get less time to rehearse. Here are Neil Frost and I finalising the route of The Classic Tour back in July:

  

  Press my tummy to view.

 

 I was definitely surprised when Big Ben – below with Neil, both fellow Dungeon alumni – got in touch to say the two of them had been asked by the Ghost Bus Tours to come up with a new, family-friendly, two-handed blockbuster alternative cabaret, complete with songs, costume changes, and a light dusting of Eat The Rich for its open top bus route, and to ask if I'd like to help develop the tour for actual money, and maybe perform it with Neil too, but it was a nice surprise. I figured doing a show on a bus with Neil would be an excellent way to spend a summer without having to go up to Edinburgh, and so it has proved. It's called "The Classic Tour" because that's what was written on the buses. Here's where they keep them:

 

All the other actors Neil brought on for this gig are beautiful too, although audiences have also been pretty Edinburgh-sized as well – appreciative twos and threes until tours were cut – but I'd spent long enough doing Time Tours not to be surprised by this, and I'd heard the Ghost Bus Tours was down to one actor a show as well now, hence my orginal surprise at Ben's call. But this is the bus tour I've always wanted to do, and I'm doing a few in November too, so if you fancy it, HERE.

 

 Yes! This was a plug all along! I'm also going to plug a beautifully written, handsomely received Big Finish Audio Drama I recorded last year: "Torchwood: Art Decadence", in which, as you can hear from the trailer below, I inadvertently play exactly the same character I do above. Don't tell Big Finish, They think I've got range. But I'm in, readers! I'm IN! ACTUAL ACTING JOBS! Available HERE.

Spinach or Silence as Sources of Power

 "So, Art is something which is made when you use a material to change something... but it helps people to consider the Art which is in front of them if it is grouped with another set of Art, and it's very difficult to consider Art in isolation from other Art..."

 Born Yesterday has a great format: two twenty-four-hour-old clones of the hosts ask two guests to explain the world in terms of the only three things they've yet had time to learn about. Alexander Bennet and Andy Barr are its perfect hosts, digging down in just the right spots, and presenting perfectly packaged summaries, so no matter how a guest chooses to play it – as hilarious disruptor or dweebish stickler – it's almost impossible not to be entertaining. (Like Taskmaster.) As evidence, I'd like to submit this episode, in which I'm dropped in alongside Andrea Hubert (I'll let you decide which is which) to explain such topics as Cumbria and the concept of "The Ends Justifying the Means" with only Popeye, a Hog-roast, and Birmingham New Street Station as points of reference. Other topics also emerge during the episode, such as animal cruelty in early cinema, Insults, Joy, and whether or not – according to the mathematics of decapitation – Bradley Cooper's nose in Maestro makes him more alive. 

 I've been a fan of this podcast since it began, and obviously I'm always up for explaining the world to babies, so thanks to Andy and Alexander – an old Crystal Maze colleague – for inviting me, and thanks to Andrea for being such a great teammate/opponent and for showing me all her blades. (We appear nineteen minutes in. If you fancy a drinking game, down a shot every time you notice me avoiding saying her name because I get self-consciously stuck on whether "Andrea" has a long or short A, despite it being said numerous times during the record, and the way the name's always pronounced. I'll join you.)

 "So, in building our understanding of what a Mime is, we have been led to believe that, if a dog were to withhold from you its name, it would be able to pick you up..."

 

Wowee! An Official Film!

Meet Hotten Crusty!

The author, entirerly comfortable doing a first-time Northern accent in front of cameras.

 

 I swear, I didn't just come back on this blog to plug stuff, but back in December, I was asked by Jamie Annett – the director of that episode of EastEnders I'd enjoyed being in so much - to take a day off from the Polar Express, to come and film a lovely little scene opposite "Bob Hope" (played by Tony Audenshaw) in Emmerdale. That scene went out tonight, and the internet has gone WIIIIILD...

 

  Okay, that scene's not actually mine, mine is fourteen and a half minutes into episode nine-thousand-and-five, HERE. Personally speaking, I liked Bob. His child's just died, and when I ask him how the guitar playing's going, he finds sweet relief in pretending they're still alive. Another really lovely scene then, and Tony was beautiful, and I remembered to hold my clipboard the right way round, and no-one asked me to drive the van, and the rain held off, and, once the scene was done, we all had Christmas dinner at the top of the hill. Rock on.

 

(Note, road sign right way up.)

I call this piece "The Person Who Has To Explain The Art"

 No sorry, my point was that when I initially saw those road signs turned upside-down by French farmers over Christmas my first thought had been simply, oh I guess some stuff's upside-down now. I had clocked the symptoms a few weeks earlier while tearing through Norwich Castle on a twilight ticket and noticing that one of the paintings had definitely been hung the wrong way up. Screwed, in fact. Screwed to the wall – see above. In the next gallery I noticed another, by a different artist, again definitely upside-down (I don't mean to boast, an artist like me just has an eye for these things).

 

  Every room in fact had one painting inexplicably set upside down, and my first thought here was, oh I guess this is some kind of protest – exactly the feeling I didn't get when I saw the protests in Languedoc. (Mum tells me farmers are now blocking every road into every city with tractors, so that's less ambiguous.) I couldn't think what might be being protesting however. So I went up to the information desk and said "Hello" firstly, and then "Can I ask why some of the paintings are upside-down?" and the smiling woman at the desk handed me a leaflet sporting the name Mark Wilsher, explaining "Yes, it's an artist. Five works have been turned upside down. It's all about your reaction to it." And I'm trying to work out how best to explain the way she said it, because I think that's the point of this post.

 

A sidenote: I come from a generation who have been taught, upon reading the words "the smiling woman at the desk", to imagine immediately something counterfeit and sinister – the polite, public face of an industrial carnivore – but after the trip to the castle I went back to punch imaginary tickets on a train pretending to go to the North Pole, or pour and serve real hot chocolate, because most of the jobs I've taken have been pretty public facing – not just the out-of-work actor stuff, but the actor stuff too. Other credits on my CV include: Announcer; Host; Voice; Receptionist; Narrator; Waiter; Lift Operator; and Conductor, bus. But even the murderers on that list were narratively never threats to the public. I like the public, and I like being the public. 

 

 

 Anyway, I don't want you to picture me leaving that exchange with the smiling woman at the desk in any way huffy or aloof. And I don't want to give the impression she didn't seem very much on the side of the exercise. But she did say "It's all about your reaction to it" it in a way that made me wonder how previous enquiries might have gone. I said "Aw thanks" and took the leaflet to let her know she wasn't going to get any trouble from my end at least. I don't know. Perhaps I'm projecting. Perhaps she wasn't deescalating anything, just happy to help. Perhaps I was also projecting when I thought it might have been a protest, or when I thought those upside-down road-signs in France might not. Walking away, I thought: "Well, I guess my reaction to seeing some paintings turned upside-down is to find out why they've been turned upside down. Sorry if you were expecting more, Mark." 

 But now I think maybe the work was actually having her to explain the work to me because – as you might be able to tell – I've had a far more complicated reaction to that. 

 (Sorry I didn't post much here about The Polar Express, but there was Instagram. And that's me with the outstanding Miles Mlambo above. And below, that's me getting over two million likes on TikTok. Boasts of equal stature.)

@bethmae0 💫✨️Just be you✨️💫 #polarexpress #fy #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #fypviral #foryou #foryoupage #foryoupageofficiall #trend #trending #quoteoftheday #mumsoftiktok ♬ original sound - bethmae🤍

Hat Hat Bang Bang

 

In which I belatedly honour THE film of 2023...

 

 (A placeholder's good for more than one day, right?)

 The summer evening I saw "Oppenheimer" I remember I raced hime to get to work on a version of this, inspired perhaps by Nolan's ruthless deployment of the formula: Man plus Hat times Cinema equals Importance. But I couldn't find an untreated soundtrack to the trailer I wanted to mix into it, and it wasn't really synching, and so I moved on. For the rest of the year however I continued to ponder just what that script had meant when targets other than Hiroshima were being dismissed by those men sat round the table as "too small". It was just a throwaway line, but how can a civilan target be "too small"? Noone ever explained that. This was well before thousands more non-combatants would be bombed to death with America's blessing in the Autumn. Anyway, cut to the end of year and I had another look at the edit, and decided it didn't really matter that it was shit; no less effort had gone into it than the idea deserved.

 

 

 

Also for your consideration: "There are some things you can't film" Yoshishige Yoshida

 

 And working on the mash-up further wouldn't stop anyone actually thinking that one film was a cinematic milestone and the other a risible vanity project, but I was still bugged I couldn't get an untreated soundtrack. Then, tonight, someone on F*c*b**k – already having gone into some length about how much they loathed the charmless Great Man narrative of "Maestro" – started watching "Oppenheimer" for the first time, so I decided to dust this off and join in, and here it is. Tone is tone, isn't it? Where did Michael Flatley go so wrong? Nowhere.

 

And: "When the horizon is at the top, it's interesting" David Lynch (as John Ford)