Schwarze spiegel / Black Mirrors

May 17, 2013 in Music, Theatre | Please leave a comment

As per the last post, here’s a little video of Katharina Scmitt’s production of Schwarze spiegel in Prague, starring Ivana Uhlířová and Liza.

It seems unlikely that anyone at all is reading this, let alone someone who’s young and likely to be offended, but on the off-chance: the video contains some sexual violence, and some distant crackly music.

Arno Schmidt – Schwarze Spiegel/Černá zrcadla
Studio Hrdinů Prag 2013
Regie: Katharina Schmitt
Bühne: Pavel Svoboda
Musik: Nick Gill
Mit: Ivana Uhlířová und Líza

Two new theatre scores

April 3, 2013 in Music | Please leave a comment

Numerous projects seem, suddenly, to be happening.  Which is, of course, wonderful, but it means I barely have enough time to get them finished before I have to leg it onto the next one, and I keep forgetting to tell anyone that they’re happening.

So!

If you happen to be in Prague this week, you can see Katharina Schmitt’s production of Arno Schmidt’s Black Mirrors, which is all about a single person left alone after some apocalyptic event.  I, sadly, am not going to be able to see the opening at Studio Hrdinu , but below is a sample of one of the more melodic sections of music you could hear; it features, amongst other things, my fretted ‘cello (which has a lot of the tone of a viola da gamba, to my ears).

And, if you’re in the UK, you could come to see Andrew Haydon’s staged reading of Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine at Theatre 503 this Friday 5th and Saturday 6th April.  I’ll be playing some noisy guitar, along with Neil Walsh (violist of The Monroe Transfer, and numerous other bands) and Becki Willmore (who will be hitting some drums, and maybe some other things).  It’ll be a noisy evening, and if you like your theatre short and weird, this could be the night for you.

Ed Vaizey & Eugène Ionesco. One of these is a bell-end.

March 20, 2013 in My Important Opinons, Theatre | Please leave a comment

FIRST! A Bit Of Preamble
Fin Kennedy has conducted painstaking research, interviewed, surveyed, been scrupulously impartial and prepared an excellent report into the effects of cutting theatre funding.  Called ’In Battalions‘, it is important reading for anyone with an interest in the arts, and theatre in particular. He’s prepared this report with the intention of challenging Ed Vaizey’s deeply-held belief that ‘everything is fine’.  The trouble is that, although everything clearly isn’t fine, various cognitive biases ingrained in the human brain make us minimise the importance of things that conflict with our beliefs, and attach more weight to those that reinforce what we already hold to be true.  Ed Vaizey has rejected this thoroughly-researched criticism.

Fin needed to convince, because important people were going to read his report.  No-one reads this damned blog, not even my mum, so I feel no need to avoid calling Ed Vaizey a bell-end. 

Now, then.  Reasoned argument. 

Ed Vaizey, Minister for ‘Culture’

Read the rest of this entry »

Are Amazon counterfeiters as well as tax-dodgers?

March 13, 2013 in General, My Important Opinons | Please leave a comment

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt by being around surrounded by Murdoch-based shitty tabloid journalism for 30-odd years, it’s that you can frame anything as a question and claim it’s an investigation rather than an assertion. For what it’s worth: yes, I think Amazon are both tax dodgers and counterfeiters. But I’m not a lawyer.

20130313-124053.jpg

Look at how fuzzy the NAME OF THE BLOODY PUBLISHER is.

Obviously, Amazon are a giant company, staffed by monsters who leave the compound to destroy small bookshops, siphon profits to anywhere there’s a good rate, and shit on the dreams of everyone. We all know that. Nothing new about that. But do these monsters also go out and counterfeit the products they sell in order to make a more enormous profit, and keep themselves in monster-sized shoes and dream-shit-funnels?

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‘Mirror teeth’ wins an incredibly precise commendation from the European Theatre Convention

August 27, 2012 in My Important Opinons, Theatre | Please leave a comment

Somewhat out of the blue, I’ve received a letter from the European Theatre Convention, who give me the very specific news that my play mirror teeth is

‘one of the 119 best contemporary plays from 41 countries in the last 2 years’.  

click on the logo above to browse the 2012 catalogue

Every two years, national reading committees, members of the ETC and other partner organisations in each country chose ‘the most remarkable contemporary plays to reflect the tendencies of European drama theatre’; they then publish a catalogue of these plays, to help promote European theatre, and to promote the playwrights themselves. They’ve just launched the 2012 catalogue at the European Theatre Festival ‘New Plays from Europe’ in Wiesbaden, Germany.

It’s a very nice letter to receive, particularly as I’m in the middle of wondering whether new drafts of half a dozen scripts are worth bothering with.

They have a maximum of three playwrights from each country, and only chose two from the UK- Moira Buffini and me.  A very flattering neighbour, indeed.

Have a poke around on their site and, if you feel so inclined, you can even request a paper copy of the catalogue by emailing them.

 

O Gene! (a sort-of literary magazine, or something? I dunno).

August 23, 2012 in Bookbinding, My Important Opinons, Printing | Please leave a comment

Maga-gene.

Some friends (spearheaded by the ever-’hey-I’ve-got-an-idea-why-don’t-we’ Ben Walker) and I have been trying to put together a sort-of literary magazine for ages.  Except, now we’ve done it, it’s not particularly literary- there are some stories in it, but less poetry than we thought there would be, and there’s some sheet music, and a pretty damned awesome graphic short story by Daley Walton.  So it’s very much something that you’ll enjoy, if you like words and paper, and things that have been printed and tied together with string.

As it’s my blog, I will tell you how I was involved, while minimising the achievements of others:

  • I wrote a short story, called slpr, which is in it. There are some pictures.
  • Daley turned a short play of mine (previously performed by Leander Deeny at Theatre 503, about a thousand years ago) into a pretty damned awesome graphic short story, which is worth the price of admission on its own.
  • But wait! I also printed the covers.  That’s right.  Letterpress printed covers, on a magazine.  Luxury, I tell you.  Luxury.

It’s only £5, people.  You should get on it.  It’s nice, and we didn’t make many of them, and it will encourage us to do more stupid things in the future.  Go!  Go!

http://hellogene.squarespace.com/

(oh, and there’s a tumblr here.  Because Ben was in charge, and that’s what he does)

My music for ‘All that is solid melts into air’

July 10, 2012 in Music, Theatre | 1 comment

The latest in a continuing series of ‘bits of music to accompany theatrical performances’, my score for Tangled Feet‘s All that is solid melts into air was recently heard in Watford, Gillingham, and outside the National Theatre in London.  Some people were kind enough to say that they liked it, and to wonder if they could listen to it at their leisure.  To those people: hello.  Here you go.

Before you go any further, I should warn you that I’ve not cleaned up the file structure or anything, as these files aren’t intended for general release.  They don’t have catchy titles, or anything, and they’re labelled in a way that lets the sound operator know what’s going on, rather than the casual listener.  Conditions of clicking the link below are that a) you won’t use it for anything without asking me first, b) if you make any money from aforementioned thing, you should give me some, and c) that you come to me for music first when you’re putting on your own theatre show.  Deal?

To the music folder!

 

Hannah Simpson’s illustrations (of me, sometimes)

July 9, 2012 in Printing | Please leave a comment

A little while ago, we had the lovely illustrator Hannah Simpson as an intern at Hand & Eye; since then, she spent a couple of days drawing & painting Phil and me, hard at work.  Even better, she’s now won the Kingston Reportage Award for her work; you can see some of it on her website, and at the Rare Kingston Illustration Exhibition.  You should go.

 

Dog’s breakfast

July 2, 2012 in Music, My Important Opinons, Theatre | Please leave a comment

Thanks to the kindly efforts of Ben Walker, all my messy little sites are now hosted on a decent system, not run by idiots.  That does mean that everything needs a bit of a tidy, though.  Sorry about that.  I also need to write something, which I haven’t done for about 6 months.  Now that I’ve just about got my little Chromebook up to speed, though, it should be much easier to put my Important Thoughts online.

In the meantime, here’s a short video of some Czech actors being vampires, accompanied by some music what I writed.

Roland Schimmelpfennig – Zlatý Drak, 2012 from Katharina Schmitt on Vimeo.

Waters of Babylon / MeetFactory

December 7, 2011 in Music, My Important Opinons, Theatre | 4 comments

Hello, Internet.

Hello Nick. How have you been?

Not bad; very busy, though.

I noticed.

Yeah, sorry, I meant to come round more, it’s just. Well, you know.

Yes, I know. What do you have for me today, then?

Well, I went to Prague a little while ago, and stayed in a room that threatened to drive me mad. Trying to stave off impending mental breakdown, I made a little film of the room, and of me singing.

But you’re not a film maker, are you? And you’re not much of a singer.

That’s true, Internet. Is that going to be a problem?

No, Nick. That’s exactly what I’m here for.