Saturday, January 26, 2019

First night of auditions: tick.

Another day at work: tick.

Show to attend to review: tick.

Show review written: tick.

First beer of the weekend opened, at 12:01am: tick. 

That's a productive couple of days.

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Drum roll.

Introducing:

The Porty Podcast.

Friday, January 18, 2019

Strangers keep getting in touch wishing to audition. My vision for the show is expanding and growing.

The choir has grown from a small little knot of strong singers to a healthy twenty - set as the upper limit by our choir master - to an exponentially enormous swarm of angels surrounding the audience from on high (the balcony) with their angelic harmonious voices sweeping away the assembled company on a wave of exquisite sound. As flames from a fire kindled on the beach lick at Joan's toes.

Neil and Liz keep telling me not to be so fanciful. I think a drector's job is not to listen to best advice, right? As that's s sign of genius.

Auditions start a week yesterday but actually, on Tuesday as someone can't attend the real dates so wants to be seen in advance.

I think this show might rival the London Olympics opening ceremony. For spectacle, if not athletic prowess.

Monday, January 14, 2019

With all credit to The Wee Review, things have been a little lively since they published our audition notice. Various emails from people I've never heard of have been sliding into my inbox which is lovely. I did a bit of tweeting of local accounts and they've all been fantastically sharing. And then some man got in touch and said would I be interviewed for the Porty Podcast

I'm ashamed to say I haven't bumped into the Porty Podcast before but then I'm not very plugged into local community things to my vague shame. And I'm increasingly learning that this is foolish as the local cultural life is thriving. To be fair, the Art Walk was a perfect demonstration. 

So I met Mr Podcast yesterday and he turned out to be not just any old enthusiast but an ex-BBC journalist with 30 years of experience. He reckoned he'd interviewed did he say 1,500 people a year or 15,000 people a year when he was working? Surely the former. So we had a lovely meandering chat about Portobello and the local arts (and rowing) life and his time with the BBC and he slid in a couple of questions about the show along the way. 

But then he turned on the digi recorder and whipped out his shiny silvery mic and he was instantly professional and polished and so very articulate, focused and impressive. He asked the sort of questions that you can't possibly not answer respectably - and when I answered shamefully, he very sweetly reinvented my halting stutters so I seemed succinct and pointed rather than stumblingly oafish. And my out and out stupidity, he says he'll edit out. 

So watch this space. I shall share when it's live. With all thanks to Mr Porty Podcast.

Wednesday, January 09, 2019

I'm not sure this qualifies as "news" but all the heartfelt thanks to Mr Peacock for sharing it as it's had lots of reshares and so I hope people will pour along in droves to t'auditions.
Dear blog. I'm so sorry. I've been a terrible custodian. I will try and do better. It's not one of my new year's resolutions but I will try. I've mostly been too busy to write it rather than having nothing to write. So there are worse problems to have for sure.