Theatre

Theatre ©

By Michael Casey

Theatre, or drama what is it? Its life with the boring bits taken out, though you can stumble over a bad production. I’m going to take my daughters to see Blood Brothers, it should be great, I saw it years ago so now maybe 20 years on I’ll be taking them. If you get to the lift quick you can get to the bar real fast, and then have a pint of Stella for me and ice cream for them. This is the Birmingham Hippodrome.

I did take my girls a few years ago, we saw Fame. I think they’ll enjoy this show even more. They can prep by looking on UTube, I looked at Barbara Dickenson singing “Tell me it’s not true” last night, her singing was so powerful. Both my daughters are singers, my eldest daughter has got her Dean’s Award, which is a musical singing and theory exam. So I fully expect them to learn the songs and sing them incessantly when we get home.

I started going to the theatre when I was in my twenties, I went for a number of years. In those day’s people used to dress up when they went to the theatre. I once saw Anne Diamond in a long evening dress in the circle of the Hippodrome. I used to wear my black velvet jacket when I went to the theatre. Nowadays I dress for comfort, though I’ve reached an age where I don’t wear jeans anymore, so I don’t look like a member of Status Quo sat in the circle.

Before you are married you can sit in the best seats and please yourself, post marriage you have to think about the price of kids’ shoes. You can get out of the habit of theatre. My Shanghai wife was introduced to theatre, or should I say Panto, some of which she understood, the rest was totally totally strange to her.

So marriage and a different culture led to different things. Such as Chinese food in the Chinese Quarter, just outside the Birmingham Hippodrome. Though when I first met my wife I was positively vetted by a Chinese Ballerina from the Birmingham Royal Ballet, which is based at the Hippodrome. A friend of a friend is called “Chimp” and he works as a stagehand at the Hippodrome, he even toured China with the Birmingham Royal Ballet. So you could say there will always be some form of connection between the Hippodrome and my life.

Now a show is just that a show. You are captivated and controlled by the production, you are one with the production. I once saw the Conterfeit Stones at the Alexandra Theatre, the performance was amazing. The imitations and the singing were unbelievable, I’d tell Sir Mick to go take a look at himself. This is theatre at its best where you are carried along with the show.

I used to see bands perform at the Bell and Pump, this was mainly Folk, then I’d see Jazz at the Waterworks Jazz Club  the next day, this was mainly Trad Jazz. That must have been 30 years ago, for a number of years. It’s because of this exposure to music that I can spot a good singer when I hear one. At a folk club there is theatre too, the way in which the band or solo artist holds the audience. Mad Jocks and Englishman were beyond compare, they must be all retired now.

Eddie Izzard was at the Hippodrome once and the way in which he rocked the audience back and forward, literally holding them in the palm of his hand. He did a joke about Engelbert Humperdinck and it was like watching a cat play with a mouse, such total control of the audience. Ken Dodd is totally different but he really is a Master of Mirth, control and avalanches of material, and a 4 hour show if you are lucky. He just never stops, you always get your money’s worth.

Theatre, does entertain, the Roman’s knew that, bread and circuses keep the Plebs in check. When done right the emotion on the stage spreads and touches everybody to the core. People can be helpless with laughter, crying with laughter. Some say it’s like a religious experience. The best play I ever saw in my life was Candide at the Birmingham Rep, it was standing room only.

There was a funny pitched circular stage if I can remember correctly. Period costume and riots of laughter. I imagine like the performances at the new Globe theatre in London. I have Taming of the Shrew on my Sky+ box, I need to sit down and watch it. My point though is that theatre IS better than film or your tv, it’s right there breathing on you.

When done right theatre is a conspiracy of the stage and the audience, especially something like Candide. There are no barriers, no tv screens nor silver screens getting in the way of you and the story and the performance. And yes my play Shoplife was accepted for production but not finally produced, so I still dream what if my play was on the stage.

So I hope that now my girls are older I can watch their faces as we see Blood Brothers at the Hippodrome, I hope the spark will be passed on between us. Who knows one day they may be on the stage, singing, performing or as the writer of a new play. 

Confessions of an Art Lover

Confessions of an Art Lover ©

By Michael Casey

I like Art, I suppose in a way I love it. My mum bought a picture printed on cardboard, it’s a street scene in snow, cost her 10p at a jumble sale. I still have it, it’s hanging over my bed, I’ve had it for 46 years maybe. That one thing has influenced my life till now and forever.

I even bought a book on Art while I was on holiday in Exeter with my brother, it was a 3 day weekend with hotel and car hire thrown in. He had named a locomotion engine and the holiday was the prize. So if ever you see “the graduate” that’s the train named by my brother. The art book was on sale and we got another quid off because there was a mark on the front inside page. I still have that book, it’s behind the telly.

I was just watching Andrew Graham-Dixon on tv, his programmes educate me. He’s been talking about artists from 100 years ago who were trail blazers, England’s version of Picasso if you like. Though that’s a very large over simplification.

The thing with art is its art, it’s not a photograph, it has many more meanings than a bare polaroid. Artist love the female form, the female nude is everywhere in art, and the internet in today’s world. Artists get bored with just one version of anything, so they stretch and strain the images. Look at some of Gaudi’s work for example, then look at Picasso’s, the form, the image on the canvas is changed and mangled even.

It’s as if the artist is drunk or looking through a kaleidoscope, or looking at a refection an image through a broken mirror. Nothing is as it seems it’s all been changed. The female form was corpulent and fat long ago, it was the tradition, then with time and different schools of art the nude was presented differently.

Everything, the landscape, the way of painting everything has changed, we had Constable so millions of copies of the Haywain adorn millions of homes. We had Turner with a blob of spit in the centre of an angry sea swell. We had the Pre-Rafaelites too with their almost cartoon bright colours, by the way Birmingham city gallery has a great collection of them.

Time and Tide wait for no man, ditto the artist. That’s why I need my guide Andrew Graham-Dixon to explain it all to me, and to help make the penny drop. Some may follow Man United, some may follow Formula One, others follow the still a Brit Murray at the tennis. Me I did play rugby at school, but I’d just love to sit down to dinner with Andrew Graham-Dixon and a  60 inch HD4 tv  set beside us.

As we enjoy our meal, cooked by AGD’s Italian friend I could be taught the History of Art, I have a large stomach so I could be deeply educated. The length and breadth of art, as well as the 16 course menu that would cover the table as I look up and learn my Art.  

Perhaps I am just naïve, but a painting on the wall does turn a house into a home, and if you understand all the nuances of the painting then so much the better. It’s like being on holiday abroad and being able to understand the language. Art is more than pretty pictures, it is a language, which is even better if you understand it.

as you can see I like my art, that's a copy of a Burne-Jones above the piano, it was a leaving present

Recording Star

Recording Star ©

By Michael Casey

I’ve been recording my short stories recently I recorded 4 more today in fact. As I record them the memories come flooding back, some of the stories are 3 years old, so as I record them I smile and sometimes laugh. I also want to add an extra line or two, it’s really hard sticking to a script.

There is a difference between a writer and a reader or a radio speaker. As a writer I want to change things, so recording my own words is like being on a train, I have to follow the tracks. As some of the stories are 3 years old events have moved on, so I want to change or give an update to the story. So it’s very hard for me just to read the words on the page.

I used to read the Lesson from Bible when I was young, over 40 years ago. You cannot ad lib when you are reading the Bible, or jazz it up, it is what it is. Though sometimes at Mass a priest may read the shorter version of the Lesson, you have to be disciplined. So I have to be disciplined as I record my back catalogue, I reached 194 today. I have recorded 194 out of 540 short stories.

They say Video Killed the Radio Star, if you remember the old song, so maybe I should be putting all my stories on Utube instead. Though I do think Radio is my medium, I did listen to BBC Radio 4 for 20 years before I started to write back in 1987. Words should be heard and listened to, and enjoyed, pictures can get in the way.

Recording makes you “announce” your words, the flavour is different, the comic timing has to be correct as you read. I was also thinking today as I listened back to my recordings that I could learn a lesson from Sinatra. Yes I do everything my way, I write in my own style, but if I recorded His way then it would be better. Clear enunciation, crystal clear enunciation, though you have to have a balance, I don’t want to sound like a BBC radio announcer from after the war. Having said that my daughters say I sound like a news reader, which makes me smile as my wife says I look a bit like Huw Edwards.

So on I go recording my shorts using my microphone which has a blue lcd light in it, makes me feel important, I suppose my very own studio live light. Its tiring too, all this recording, I hope that finally I can get my words on the radio. My other idea is to sell a book of shorts with facing page translations with a usb stick attached with my recordings on. Would you like learning English by reading my words and listening to me too?

I suppose in the end I may just be talking to myself, but isn’t that what radio is all about? Talking to yourself, in the hope that others are listening to you and smiling as they hear your words on the radio. I’d be happy either on the radio or in print or cyberspace. All I need is the Help of God and Two Policemen as my mum used to say.

This is me before I got a decent mike

A child's eye view another piece from 300 and Not OUT available on Amazon no. 193 on my recordings

A Child’s’ Eye View ©

By

Michael Casey

My small daughter had made a  dangly thing, I don’t know how to describe it really. It’s a piece of coloured plastic which has holes in. Well that much is straightforward, then there are flowers and coloured wires hanging from it. A kind of bad hair day made from plastic. In effect its like those doorways which have strips of material  handing down to separate one room from another. There must be a word for it but I’d know it, but I’m  sure somebody will tell me. In films its chip shops and barbers who have these “doors”, I hope you get the picture.

Now that I’ve confused things, let me continue with the tale; though I should add that I have good news to share, I’ve rediscovered Don Camillo again. So I’m expecting a delivery of a Don Camillo omnibus in the post. With such a good feeling I decided to please my small daughter an d find somewhere to display her “art”. WE did think of hanging it in our living room/ kitchen  area, I was about to find a chair to stand on and tie the “art”   to an old curtain rail, but we were overruled by the Voice of Reason which is otherwise know as The Shanghai Mum. If you don’t know Shanghai mums are very strict and don’t appreciate “art”, so me and my daughter were banished from the living room.

We retreated upstairs and we scoured the girls’ room for a location for the modern “art”, in the end we decided if we tied a piece of string to the art we could then hang it up underneath a picture that was on their wall. So we found a ball of string and cut it to the right length, and then attached it to our plastic thingy or watsit, and I was given the task of attaching it to the string that was holding up the painting.

Unfortunately the picture fell off the wall, and even when I found a hammer, all I did was make a mess and the picture fell off the wall again.

So I had failed, Andrew Graham-Dixon would have been moved to tears, so we retreated to my room and hung in on my wall. The plastic “art” was forgotten, the hammer was put away. All that is left are the marks on the wall where the picture had hung for many a year. But at least the girls have a new location where they can put a poster, all they need is gluetac, which is far easier than hammer and nails.

  

Interviewing Somebody a piece from 300 and Not OUT available on Amazon no 191 on my recordings

Interviewing Somebody©

 By

 Michael Casey

Welcome to Casey’s Company

As you can see we are a friendly company

Would you like a drink before we begin?

Sorry only tea or coffee, no Vodka or lager

At Christmas, then that would be different

But today you are here to be interviewed.

Now why did you apply for  a position at Casey’s Company?

Because you liked the 12 weeks holiday a year, but you do do preparation at home.

Because you liked carrying a briefcase, because you liked wearing shiny black shoes and a nice shirt and tie.

Or was it because you liked the idea of being called Sir?

What qualities can YOU bring to the role?

What experience do you have in a similar role?

How would you describe yourself?

Are you self motivated?

Pardon? Can I stop because you want to go and have a wee?

Ok are you ready to resume?

You want to go out and make an emergency phone call to your mum, you forgot to ask her to buy some more toilet paper, and some beef burgers and tomato ketchup.

Anything else?

Ok, lets move on.

So do you enjoy where you are employed at the moment?

You’re not employed at the moment.

You were sacked!

Why?

You were found kissing in the stationary cupboard, and when security searched you, you had 120 red pens and 120 blue pens, and 120 black pens in your nice fake leather briefcase. So you were sacked on the spot. The Police were not called in as the girl you were kissing in the stationary cupboard was the bosses daughter.

But you do have a glowing reference.

Looking at the signature it looks remarkably like YOUR handwriting.

Is there anything more you’d like to add?

You’d like to have the 1^st two weeks of August off, as you’ve already booked your holiday, other than that you can start straight away.

Oh, you forgot something, could you be paid weekly and in cash.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME.

Oh and when will we let you know if you have been successful in your application for the post.   

  and don't turn up looking like this either

In my mind I have tears

SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2014 11:31

In my mind I have tears

By michaelgcasey

In my mind I have tears ©

By Michael Casey

In my mind I have tears

In my eyes I have fears suppressed for years

In my breath I have pain was everything in vain

In my mouth I can taste the regret for not reaching

In my nose is the perfume of failure

In my hair is the grey of not getting there

In my gait   is the weight of things carried too far

In my stride my steps are small no more strength to carry all

In my laugh is the experience of rejection

But in my heart is Hope and Faith beyond reason 

  ****************

I was lying in bed and the title sprang to mind, it has not come out as planned or hoped, but the last line really says it all, we can have had a lot of life which didn’t go as planned or hoped, but so long as you have the Hope and Faith in your heart  then you carry on, and prove everybody wrong.

What's your skill?

What’s your Skill ? ©

By Michael Casey

I was talking to somebody the other day via the DT and he made me think, in fact he’s given me the idea for this piece, though he doesn’t know it yet. Yesterday’s piece “I have children” was inspired by going to the cupboard while making a cup of tea and when I opened the cupboard  what I saw made me smile and thank God, because I have children. An hour later I’d written the piece.

So today I was thinking about skills, trades, talents, flairs, not the old trousers from the 70s either. Some of us are gifted or talented in one direction or another, at school the school report said I had a flair for French, the truth was we were tested every week for 4 years, 20 questions. So it was the teacher Mr Notzing who made me good, I just did what I was told. So my generation of Casey siblings were good at languages.

Little did we know that we’d all marry foreigners, so my girls are bilingual in English/Mandarin. The next generation, our kids, seem to be going into science, my nephew has decided to do Bio-Chemistry at York, because it has a big lab there, I did mention that my own wife has a degree in the subject, my friend from grammar school has a PhD in it, that made him smile. My daughter is heading in that direction too.

But where does the knowledge come from? It’s partly in the genes, and not the Levi Strauss ones you are wearing. Grannie in Shanghai was the accountant for the bus company after all. So gifts or flairs or even talents can come to you via the genes. The greatest gift is your looks, ugly parents have beautiful children and beautiful parents have ugly kids, its God’s sense of humour and balance after all. My own kids take after the wife, thank God for that, I wouldn’t want them to inherit my hairy back.

I’ve gone off at a tangent but that’s the way my mind works, and it’s fun to see if people stay with me, or drift over to the bar, or go and fetch an iron bar to hit me with, it’s never happened yet, but you never know, you never know. So a talent, what is it? A talent is something that you are very good at, better than your experience level, if you like it’s a plus 20% and more that comes from somewhere else, maybe the ether.

People can be jealous, and snide about a talent. Oh, he’s just gifted, he didn’t have to work at it like the rest of us. Beckham had to practice to be able to bend it, he’s having elocution lessons next, he wants to be an announcer on Radio 4, well in my imagination he is. Rooney practised his heading technique too, maybe that’s why his hair fell out, but its grown back, must be the shampoo he’s using, I hope he puts it on his website then we can all buy it.

You do still have to work at your skill, your trade, your knack with this or that, you’re knackered by all your hard work, and because you’ve put the hours in then it seems so easy to an onlooker. Perhaps firemen would be good pole-dancers, all the sliding down pole practice, ask any firemen friends you have. Which brings the obvious to mind, policemen would be good at bondage, all the handcuffs and so forth. I’ve gone off at a tangent again, are you hunting for that iron bar in the boot of the car?Sometimes people are down on themselves and say they cannot do anything, I suppose girls are more sensitive and can be more self-critical. Image/size issues and so forth. I’d just say STOP. Yes you can, if I can steal Obama’s   saying. You just have to make good with what you have got.

Any organisation needs all of us, the cleaner, the guy at the door, the cook, the secretary, the lawyer, the general manager, the everybody. In my hotel days I was like a puppy dog, a 17stone puppy dog who greeted everybody within 15 seconds of them entering the hotel. Once our boss went to the Hilton over the lake, and nobody approached him for 20 minutes, which is enough time to have a meal and conceive a baby, but not simultaneously, not unless you are a chef. In fact a lot of guests thought I was the manager because of the silver hair, being 20 years older than the reception crew, and the lack of a uniform, because I was the wrong shape, ok fat for the uniforms they did have.  

It takes all kinds of everybody doing everything, if I can mangle Dana, to make a hotel, or a law firm work. Yes you need the high skill guys, the university trained folks, but without everybody with their skills and talents, the jigsaw, the mosaic is not complete. Certainly at the law firm I worked at they knew this, everybody was looked after, anybody who did not fit the bill would never get through the interview process.

Carpenters are gods, ask Harrison Ford, he was one before he hit the big time. Chefs now they are gods too, and if you work in a 4star deluxe hotel you can to sample their creation, then you realise just how true it is. They also carry knives, lots of knives, so respect them, and did you know they live on biscuits and never cook at home, as they spend a lifetime in the kitchen, and yes gas is best.

Musicians are gods too, having been influenced by Eric Clapton from the age of 10 the power they have at their fingertips or with their voice is amazing. My claim to fame is that I once almost carried Eric Clapton’s bag when he stayed at our hotel. Only I went to the wrong end of his car, the boot was in the front. The car was worth twice what my house is worth. So I smiled and said, sorry sir, the wife drives a Skoda, but he did laugh.

So we all need to remember that we all can do different things, though actors have to learn to do many, but they are acting after all. Think about a film, and I have yet to write a Hollywood Blockbuster, it could be a 20 year pregnancy though, but I live in hope.  After the writer writes the film or the book upon which the film is based it takes 100s of people to produce it.

Next time you see a film, stop and watch the credits, count how many people it takes to make a film. If it’s an action film there may be 50 stunt people alone, or if its Jackie Chan just himself. The maths is interesting though, a film can be relatively cheap, but the returns can be a factor of 10. So a 10m film could make 100m, which 1000% return, which is better than the 2% which you’ll get on your Isa. That’s why people invest in films, rich people gamble 100k each and if it works they could get 1m back.

So as you watch the credits look at all the different categories, the butcher the baker and the undertaker is the name of my 1^st book, just as that is a collection of trades and callings so are all the folks who work on a film. So if I ever get lucky, then one person, me, I could give work to a whole host of others, and all because I balanced a typewriter on a stool as I shivered in my living room, sat on an old barn chair with a broken back in front of the gas fire, as I wrote The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. And best of all the writer gets at least 5% of the initial budget.