Obligatory lengthy end of project self-indulgent musings

I have to admit, I always wanted to be in a band.

The trouble was not being able to play anything, or having the patience to learn properly. I remember during A-Levels trying to muscle in on a group of mates who were starting a band - surely they could do with a third guitarist? Right? I could learn as we go along. Their refusal was absolute, and not unfair.

For the past 18 months I've been in a band, of sorts. We've had bust ups and tantrums, there have been tears and a lot of laughs, and I know we're all extremely proud of what we've achieved.

One of the greatest thrills for me was seeing the snowballing of this 'band'. What started as me shutting myself off from the sun in a cafe basement three days a week, for months, writing, and re-writing without notion of an outlet, somehow sprouts into a company of actors, musicians, choreographers, lighting designers - dedicated, skilled people who believe in the potential of the play became involved from up and down the UK, until during our rehearsal before the first Tabernacle Theatre show I was standing behind the sound-desk watching 20 people making final preparations, including seven actors and a six-piece orchestra, three of whom came down from Edinburgh specially to do those four shows.

A few days before the first Tabernacle show, the Director of the youth club where I lived and worked for 8 years turned up to see if he could put to rest his fears about the play leading to some real trouble in the 'Endz'. They were fair concerns - he has to deal with the reality of the lives we're portraying on stage. He left satisfied that the message is an important, relevant, and necessary one. But that wasn't the best thing to come out of his visit - he brought with him a young man whom I've known since I started working at the youth club; a young man who somehow managed to fall through the cracks of the educational system, and subsequently had difficulty finding work. It just so happened we were in desperate need of assistants to help move the set between scenes - a job that requires some mental dexterity and sure-footedness (and as far as I can tell goes largely un-sung). He totally nailed it, and continued to do a fantastic job for all the actual shows (that's him carrying a piece of set in the picture above).

The involvement of that young man from the South Kilburn estate was one of the greatest achievements of the whole production, but one I could never have predicted. And that's been the norm throughout this whole process; we prayed that God would be glorified through this show, and I believe He has used it for His glory. I've been constantly humbled by responses from people who find themselves moved because they find the play speaks to their own situation past or present. We joked nervously about the potential for negative reactions from members of the the actual estates featured in the play - but after the final show, two young guys both of whom in part inspired aspects of the characters in the play gave us their full and enthusiastic endorsement - which I count as the greatest praise Lost In Mozart has received.

There have been so many other great outcomes from producing this show, this blog entry is already long enough, but one of them is that Lost In Mozart will live on next year with a different theatre company who want to produce the play. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Lost In Mozart in the paper

This article is the main feature for the What's On section in the Brent and Kilburn Times this week. Some slight misquotes in there...

Tickets still available through the link on www.lostinmozart.com

Only a week to go!

While London burned...

I'm very proud to say that while London burned at the hands of the rioters, this is what we were doing:

Filmed and edited by the very multi-talented J Hay

Playing to the home crowd

Here's a trailer for the London run of Lost In Mozart. On October 6th the show will make its London debut at the 200 seat Tabernacle Theatre Notting Hill, a very north London venue for a very North London play.

A few weeks before we began the Edinburgh run, the Evening Standard ran this article with the headline ' Landmark black venue 'turning into a trendy bar for bankers' - so I'm especially pleased to be bringing a play to the venue which challenges many common depictions of council estate (so called) 'gang' culture, portraying the urban landscape of North London as majestic, beautiful, and something that people who live there can take pride in.

Young people from the communities that inspired Lost In Mozart have written the lyrics for the rap sections within the play, so the show will be bringing their voice back into the Tabernacle.

Tickets for Lost In Mozart at the Tabernacle are available from http://www.tabernaclew11.com or through http://www.LostInMozart.com

Top Three Lessons learned at Edinburgh Fringe 2011

Our month-long run of Lost In Mozart at Edinburgh Fringe 2011 is over, and we're seriously proud of all we've achieved; an average of 31 people came per show, thats 619 people who've seem the show, and the real thrill has been how many of them stuck around to praise us afterwards, sometimes tearfully.

But it isn't over yet! 6th October Lost In Mozart opens in London's Tabernacle Theatre Notting Hill for four shows only - grander, louder, epic-er... Secure your tickets now at www.lostinmozart.com

And we'll be applying to the London show all the things we've learned over the past month. Now, I can't speak for anybody else, but here are the top three most important lessons I've learned:

3. Don't say your play 'is' West Side Story on the flyers – there is a danger people will take it literally.

2. Actors differ from normal humans in subtle ways one might only perceive after living with a herd of them for a month. They have sponge-like memories, and they can rave it up until 6am, sleep two hours then turn in a powerful performance (even if the rest of the day is then spent passed out on the floor of the venue bar...)

1. In order for the lighting desk to work, the Master fader has to be up, otherwise you will condemn your actors to the indignity of coming on stage in the pitch black and having to act anyway while wondering what's going on while you leg it upstairs to find a technician who'll come and show you what suddenly seems incredibly obvious.

“I saw Jeff leg it out the door and I thought 'that's it, he's f**ked off!' - Ray Sesay, AKA Tribal.

Auditions, read-throughs, and cold sweats

Since my last update on the mayhem of Lost In Mozart we've achieved quite a lot although the list of stuff do sort out before August seems to get longer every day! Also, although it's a great intention to blog the process of producing this play, the reality is quite frustrating because of certain things it would be irresponsible to write about on the internet. These include the fact that we've been in talks with a couple of exciting names in Grime music about contributing tracks, but of course until that's settled I can't say who. Also, we've been doing some work with young people from youth clubs in the areas the play talks about – I was at one of these a few days ago, one I hadn't been to before, and found that the workers were more than willing to help, but also very nervous about certain place names even being mentioned, especially as the previous week a stabbing had taken place as a result of the kinds of postcode territory rivalries that Lost In Mozart centres around. So as much as I'd like to talk more about this process, suffice to say that, with the help of Urban Mission TV, we're well on the way to getting the soundtrack sorted with young people right at its core.

The other big news is that auditions took place during the past couple of weeks, and we now have a solid and talented cast! (that's a couple of them in the picture above being put through their paces by Nicole). Now this IS a process I can talk about. I found it all at once extremely exciting and extremely uncomfortable to watch actors performing scenes from my play for auditions, then a week sitting in a circle for a full read-through. Previously the only time this had happened was using scenes from the screenplay version workshopping with some of the young people who inspired the story – brilliantly in this case they relished the opportunity to play versions of themselves, and crucially, recognised the world and characters as authentic. My one great fear in that case had been that months of carefully thought out story construction and rationalising would be destroyed by just one Nelson Muntz-esque 'Ha hah!'. However, and I promise this was due to logistics and not cowardice, I couldn't be present at that session, and watched it a week later on video. For the auditions, and the read-through, I was present and cringing. The cringing wasn't constant I hasten to add, and reflects not at all the competence and talent of our more than capable cast; but their raw interpretation of sentences and dialogue that I have hitherto solely given life within my own head, frequently shone a harsh and unforgiving light on nasty clusters of long neglected and festering sores on the page, the pain of which I had perhaps simply learned to live with.

But in a way, resolving some of these issues is what I'm looking forward to most about the process we will now begin; rehearsals. The script can, and will, be modified and tweaked, but I have resisted the urge to spend the days following the read-through slashing and re-writing as I could very well have done. Instead I hope to enter into much more of a collaboration from this point onwards – listening to the views of the Director, and the Cast. Of course there's a very real possibility that I might strongly disagree with all their opinions, but that's still collaborative right?

This Sunday we're filming and promo with three of the actors using the grant the nice folk at IdeasTap gave us specifically for that purpose. We'll be sure to take lots of photos too, so my next blog entry might be (mercifully?) more inclined towards showing than telling!

And cold sweats? Well we still have to get those pesky lyrics written, we need a stage manager to take on the gargantuan task of getting all the buttons pressed at the right times during the show (ipods, macbooks, and yes, VCRs!) and we haven't yet recruited the classical musicians we need... it'll be fine, won't it Nelson?

Deep Fried Film Festival screening

On Friday August 19th, hot on the heels of its well received debut screening in London in January, my Psych Cyber-horror Ke11y_Cute directed by Ang Yee Sien is heading north of the border for a screening at The Deep Fried Film Festival. I have to tell you, it looks great on a big screen, but it's not for the faint hearted!

The venue is the Conforti Institue in Coatbridge, near Glasgow (where everything is deep fried), and of course, at the same time, just a thirty minute train ride away in Edinburgh, Lost In Mozart will be on stage at the Fringe (every day except Sunday).

Now, to me, that sounds like a fantastic opportunity for a Scottish weekend away - and if you head over to our WeFund page, you can even find out how to get a bed in Edinburgh for the night, tickets to the show, and a host of other sparkly Lost In Mozart goodies!

And while we're talking about Lost In Mozart, keep your eyes peeled for some exciting news within the next few days regarding the soundtrack!

Represent Lost In Mozart, Big'up Society

God willing, my play Lost in Mozart is going to run at the Edinburgh Fringe during August, and now because of a very generous grant from the Arts Council England in response to my third attempt at (virtually) the same application, I'm very excited to say that Lost In Mozart will also be gracing an as yet undecided London theatre in either October or November!

Lost In Mozart is an urban musical centring on two teenage photography students who form a powerful friendship across the warring postcode territories of the South Kilburn, and Mozart estates. The play is driven by grime rap lyrics, and by classical music courtesy of the lead character's secret obsession with the symphonies and concertos he uses to soundtrack an urban landscape many dismiss as bleak, but in which he perceives majestic beauty. It will be a spectacular show with live urban and classical music blended with stunning photography. In the coming weeks I'll share with you the audition, rehearsal, and design process until we've put the whole show together.

Arts Council England don't fund anything north of the border though, so we're still haemorrhaging our own savings to fund the 20 performance run in August at the Fringe. Not that it won't be worth every penny of course, but it would be lovely if some of you were to take pity on us, starving and sleeping rough for the sake of Art...

And that's where WeFund enters the picture

WeFund is a 'crowd funding' initiative based on funders leaping on board in response to incentives that money simply cannot buy, visit our WeFund page to frolic among the goodies on offer, including CDs and scripts signed by the creative team, and my pledge to write you a personal short story in return for your support.

The model is very 'Big Society', and I genuinely hope that crowd funding initiatives such as WeFund are the future for arts funding as well as for charitable works and projects that seek to relieve poverty and suffering; it asks us lay aside our doubts, greed, and cynicism, and to contribute with whatever we are personally able to sacrifice in the name of the bigger picture and greater good. So come on, represent Lost In Mozart, Big'up Society.

Ke11y_Cute screening

Quick heads up of a nice short films event called ROTORELIEFS, where Ke11y_Cute, the cyber horror short film I wrote, directed by Ang Yee Sien, will be screened this Wednesday 19th Jan from 7pm.

And while I've got your attention, I just wanted to say Happy New Year, AND, just because I haven't been in touch since October, that doesn't mean I've been doing nothing... on the contrary; 2011 is going to be the year of Lost in Mozart: BOTH an epic piece of theatre for the Edinburgh Fringe and beyond, and the best British movie, well, ever.

Now, I fully expect that getting these tandem projects off the ground is going to be an lot of work as well as a lot of fun. There are sure to be stories to tell along the way...