Long days again this week. Not sleeping enough. Lots of projects coming to a head so I’m becoming a bit anxious – wondering if I’ve missed anything, which I’m sure I have somewhere. Really looking forward to the primary school project that I’ve been working on for about a month & a half now – they’re performing next week (the picture below is a backdrop for one of their plays). All in all I hope it’s worth it. First draft of the commission I’m writing for a community group is due tomorrow, so writing is going to take up this evening. The weather is a bit warm for my liking at the moment but I suppose I haven’t become accustomed to the summer quite yet – Jesus… I’m writing about the weather… that’s where I’m at, at the moment. Listened to a radio programme that linked increases in domestic violence to how well England does at the world cup; apparently the rate goes up when they lose, and we thought hockey was bad. Budget cuts here have been taking their toll on the arts – one of my colleagues is going to lose their job because of it. Never before has government policy so directly effected me – scary stuff. The economy here is in ruins we’re told, and with a welfare state like the one they’re running I can’t imagine how they’ve kept it going for so long. I feel like a conservative when I hear how much money has been wasted. We’ll see how these changes go I suppose. That seems like the only sensible thing to do.

Last thing: heard a radio interview with a philosopher cabby in London that asks all his passengers to write down advice & quotes, and I think he unknowingly gave some great advice as well. ‘Some of it is genius, and some of it is phalluses & foul language.’ He was speaking about the quality of some of his replies but I think that remark may extend far beyond what he meant it to – I know that my days seem to be a broad mix of those.

To be honest: I should have stayed in bed today. Arrived at the school I’m currently working in & just didn’t have it in me, which is bad news because the kids perform their plays next week. Uh-oh. Then when I get to the theatre, it turns out that in advance of the ‘Emergency Budget’ due out tomorrow there have been extensive cuts to the arts sector & one of my colleagues is probably going to lose their job – again this is before the ‘big cuts’ happen. Uh-oh. After this is all said & done, it turns out that I may not be paid for the play I’m writing for this community group – and I’ve definitely already spent that money on a trip to visit family. Uh-oh.

So, what’s there to do but go home, sit on the couch and wash away the memory of it all with some booze & gratuitious violence (note the picture with the empty glass of wine & the man bleeding to death on the telly).

Let’s see what tomorrow has in store.

Spending the day in London with the boy; that’s him in the photo. We’re off to see ‘The Miniaturists’ at the Arcola – a series of short plays one of which was written by a friend of a friend & is directed by another friend. Should be fun. Prior to that we were hanging about the British Library, seeing the sights, checking out an exhibition on maps. This may sound bad but it wasn’t as interesting as I hoped it to be. About a month ago I watched a great BBC documentary on maps; can’t remember the name but it contextualized everything a bit better & made sense of the details that I find really interesting. Valuable nonetheless. Would have preferred to see the exhibit on surveillance at the Tate Modern but it wasthe boys turn to choose. Lovely day out regardless. Would very much prefer not to go to work tomorrow.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had the time – or more honestly the creativity – to jot down some thoughts, but I’m sitting here in my car not quite ready to go to my next meeting.

the last little while has been a bit rough; not due to any tragedy, just a bit of confusion. It’s hit me that I left behind a network of creative partners and that has really scared me. It made me realize how heavily I rely on strong collaborators to work with. I suppose one creates contacts wherever they are but the group that I had was somethig special – we had a shorthand that made projects a real joy to undertake. After having a long think I’ve begun a new direction while here to develop myself as an artist in the areas that I wouldn’t necessarily have the obvious opportunity to endeavor in while back home.

I’m immersing myself in playwriting and the different opinions on the theory behind all of that. I’m transitioning into more directing and refinig my devising skills by trying out different techniques with young people. Teaching something tests your knowledge & skill level & in doing that I have learned many many things that I do not know – which is a son of a bitch.

With this new renewed sense of purpose, which is CRUCIAL for me to lie happily, I soldier on – while attemptingto remain in the Canadian theatre grapevine.

To all my colleagues back home – I miss you. To all my new collaborators I hope we can establish out own shorthand and reach that creative fury that only comes when each person involved understands the unspoken.

With love,

Josh.

It’s been a bit since I’ve posted anything on here – so long in fact that I’m not quite sure what has even transpired since then. Oh well…

This past week has been like many others… *sigh, lots of sessions in lots of schools; some good, some less than good. Going to a writing session this afternoon on writing for site-specific theatre, which I’m pretty excited about. Hoping to learn new things that I can both use in my own practice and in my sessions with my students.

Signed on to some new schools this past week and the rest of the academic year is now almost completely booked, save for a couple days here and there, which will fill up within the next week hopefully. Submitted an incomplete script to a new works festival in hopes of a workshop of it. However, in retrospect I’m not sure that I should have submitted it in the state it was in. After thinking about it for a bit I realized that I want to focus the story far more on one of the characters and now add a far more dynamic beginning that I hope will set the tone far more effectively as well as frame the story in a better manner. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that.

Thinking about heading out tonight and a bit apprehensive as I have a bit of a white wine cold this morning – well afternoon at this point; the head hurts a bit. I’m also really enjoying sitting on my couch right now, which is something I do not do enough of. Great couch. Worth every penny spent.

Still a tad bit pissed that the oven is on the fritz (a part has been ordered) as well as the boiler (still waiting to hear from the manufacturer). I’ve had less problems with an apartment that’s way older. Still really enjoying it though – the apartment is cozy (i.e. small) but it’s home. Also thinking about changing my car for a smaller one once I get my British drivers license, which I will need to do post haste. Until then, I’ll just keep thinking about it.

That’s all for now.

J.

I’ve been watching this BBC series that is compiling important trends from the past 10 years to see where we’re (particularly the British but I think you can extrapolate to North America from it as well ) headed in this next century as a society & culture. It has made me particulary aware of where we’re headed in the next century.

Went into work today despite the fact that all of the schools are still closed – I took the bus not only because the environment is cool but also because the roads are actually treacherous. I may have said this before, but it’s like an average to mild Edmonton day in January – but everyone has summer tires on their cars, no one knows how to drive on snow, and the city doesn’t have any snow plows or plans for this event. To put a bit of context on the event: the BBC issues a weather warning for -10C and snow.

Despite adversity though I ventured to the theatre and proceeded to make work for myself to do. Getting back into the groove of work is proving a bit more difficult than expected, but things are getting done, which is good.

Missing my partner whose still back in Canada with his family. I didn’t relize how much i’ve become used to living together despite the fact that we’ve only been living together for four months. It is nice to have my own space but I look forward to tripping over each other in our tiny apartment when he gets back on Sunday.

As for tomorrow? I think it will be a lot of the same around the office. I don’t know when I grew up by I think it’s happened a bit.

The entire city of Birmingham has ground to an almost standstill due to the snow. Both of the schools that I was to be working in today have been closed so I’m going to be working from home – lovely.

this is rather nice though as it gives me a bit of time to focus on the not so pressing things before they become pressing -like choosing a script for the sessions that are to be starting in a couple weeks.

All in all a lovely snow day ‘off’ from ‘work’.

Now, I’ve always treasured my thinking time – as I’m sure many self obsessed art-y types do, and like my obnoxious poetry reading brethren – this is because I value the task of reflection. Thinking back on how I arrived to wherever I happen to be allows me the comfort of creating – however fictitious it may be – some semblance of sense in my tiny little life. In order to have this sense of, well, sense, I have to force myself to keep the scope fairly narrow, which has become more and more difficult with the hopes of a new decade fast approaching.

Let’s be clear: I understand that I have neither the knowledge, nor the will for that matter to put every event that has occurred in the past ten years into a grand focus. I am chiefly concerned – both for this article and for myself – with those things that I have personally found interesting – pretentious I know. Yet, despite all my best efforts, my narrow focus on the data to be analyzed and the opinions of my  far more intelligent and down-to-earth friends, I am struggling with finding a through-line or theme, let alone meaning to this closing decade.

Do you remember Y2K? That was dumb wasn’t it? And that’s what started this section of time for us, hmmm… foreshadowing? How about 2012? Why are we so obsessed with apocalypse? Even better: do you remember when there was concern over the proliferation of PS2’s and Xbox’s to China because there was (apparently) enough American computing know-how that they could be used to remotely launch nuclear warheads (I may have twisted this fact in my head along the way somewhere so take it with a grain of salt)? Regardless of its truth its stupid.

In the last 10 years we have moved from what I would see as the end of the excitement around the advancement of technology to… well… I’m not quite sure. Now, I’m not saying that technology isn’t advancing at an incredibly fast rate. It is. I recognize that. But we’re not frightened or amazed like we used to be when car engines turn on via voice recognition. Things like that used to make even the most tech savvy of us scream hallelujah and now we’re disappointed if our tiny handheld phone doesn’t take HD quality video while syncing our calendars while price checking the cost of a dvd on amazon. I guess what I’m getting at is that the crazy technology (minus robot butlers and hover-boards – I know, I’m disappointed too) is not only here, but we’ve got used to it. The point being, that this decade wasn’t really about technology. Oh yeah! Remember 9-11? Remember Osama Bin Laden? War on terror? Weapons of mass destruction? What happened there? Sadam Hussein and Iraq? Again, this decade had two – I would venture to say – significant wars (or maybe better described as thinly veiled oil explorations) and a multitude of terrorist attacks across the world but this isn’t the first thing that crosses my mind when I think 2000 – 2009. There is definitely a new type of fear that exists across the world, new airport security measures, new big brother laws that inch us ever closer to 1984 – but again these events don’t solely define our decade.

It seems as though that when I put into perspective these and all the other elements that come to mind the only thing that seems to boil to the top is a sense of nonchalance about the history we’ve etched out for ourselves. We have carved out ten years of history and I don’t think we’ve put a whole lot of thought into it. From climate change to organic food, healthy active lifestyles and gay rights (in countries that aren’t totally backwards) it seems as though we’ve all heard the story before.

Now, I’m not yearning for the pastoral times of yore, what I’m saying is that we’ve hit something akin to a media/information saturation point that is allowing us to consider – and maybe for the first time – where we are, simply because we’ve had enough opinions, information, facts and whatever else thrust at us; and after digesting the past ten years I think we’re all realizing we don’t know how we’ve got here. The last ten years have been a wave of stuff that has happened and we’ve found out about all of this stuff in a million ways at once and were therefore unable to understand any of it in context of events or of the people involved. It’s as if we’ve been on auto-pilot the past ten years and we’ve finally come back to the cockpit to find that even though we haven’t exploded we’re not where we think we should be ten years into the 21st century.

I don’t think it’s just me either. Both the arts and popular media have hit on this theme and I think its worth taking a moment to reflect upon. If acceptance is the first step I’m not really sure either about what the next one needs to be.

Began a whole new series of workshops in a whole new series of schools this week. Excited to see how it all turns out; next week is all finished being planned out so it was time to have some fun on the weekend.

Friday evening was spent in Coventry with friends. A little bit of libations of various sorts led to a number of Disney sing-a-longs for the rest of the party-goers; I’m far from embarrassed about it though. Saturday morning was spent recovering and after a couple complications and a bit of transport improvisation  the boyfriend and I were on a train to London. The evening was spent at Shunt’s new show ‘Money’ http://www.shunt.co.uk/

Really interesting show; gave me a lot to think about and the verdict was that we all liked it.

After crashing on another floor for the second night in a row I returned safe – if not a bit worse for wear – to Birmingham for another week of fun. Making a resolution to write more consistently and go to the gym and eat better. We’ll see how these things progress throughout the week.