For J.

So there you are,

Holding her hand.

Touching her cheek.

It's okay.

I don't blame you.

Why would I?

It's not your fault.

But there's something I have to tell you.

She was young and careless when we first met,

But she already had her dreams.

And she did everything to make them come true,

And I thought I would be there

To see the moment of joy.

And there's still so much for you to learn,

For you've known her for a few months only,

And I, for seven years.

But I know that sometimes

Less is more.

And you might have already noticed

That she loves escapism,

And she reads an awful lot.

And soon you'll learn how she holds her pencil

And how she tosses in her sleep.

And that she doesn't speak when she's down.

Or maybe she does to you,

For you're her other half.

And it's fine that you're the one who stays with her at night,

And that each week, she checks your rota first, not mine.

But please,

I'm begging you,

Don't you ever let her down.

Keep her happy.

For me.

For you.

Because she's everything to me,

And, in a different way,

She's everything to you.

And you're everything to her.

So please.

Give her all the things I couldn't give her.

Be her soulmate.

Be her best friend.

Be her whole world.

Don't ever leave her.

Be her family.

Marry her.

Give her children.

Make her happy.

Make her forget about me,

Because I don't need her grief or her guilt.

I just need her to be happy

With you.

Long time no see.

I've spent some time today to go through a couple of old files, and I've found some interesting things including a poem I've written back in 2016, after my then-squish found a romantic partner and left me behind. Because yeah, I'm on the aromantic spectrum. I don't even know if this counts as coming out, I've been quite open about it on other platforms for the last couple of years. Oh, and I know Pride month is just about to be over, but better late than never.

Sing

Yes, I've seen that movie. No, this post is not about it.

I'd been thinking about creating a YouTube channel for a while, but I thought I wouldn't really use it for anything interesting and probably wouldn't have anyone interested in my stuff that much. But then I was told by a couple of people it'd be cool if they could listen to my originals online, so I uploaded my first video a couple of days ago. Not such a big thing, though, not even a professional recording, but still it's mine. Go ahead and enjoy. If you can. And share it to make your friends suffer, too.

Random Info Entry Loaded with Ads

Evil roles rules.

My new short film The Two of Us by Kullas Media is out. One of my most enjoyed roles and definitely the most challenging filming process I've ever taken part in. Check out this gorgeous poster.

This weekend I'm going to play the Second Witch in The Bright Umbrella Drama Company's production of Macbeth at the Moira Calling festival. Tickets can be bought here. If you cannot make it this weekend, we'll also be performing at the end of September in the Accidental Theatre in Belfast.

Everything and Nothing

Sorry about the entry title, Eoin.

I passed my drama exam. That was, let's see... two months ago. It wasn't as tough as I'd expected.

Also, some other things happened that I haven't written about yet. For example, I finally got an opportunity to visit the Giant's Causeway in, I guess, April or May (yes, I know, long time ago). I took some photos of course.

In June I made a very important decision in my life: I bought myself a ukulele. That's been the best thing I've done for my happiness in a while. It's a wonderful little instrument, very easy to play and carry around. Also, sounds lovely. I got a Makala MK-S, which is not too expensive but very basic. I'm planning to get an electro acoustic one as well so that I can play at open mic nights and all.

BCA Week 20 and Performance Day, Plus Modelling

This was our last week before the performance of The Sound of Musicals, which means that we didn't really do anything else but practiced the whole show and fixed the details that had to be fixed. Also, I spent some time during the week to get a costume for Let It Go, and I was quite worried for a while because I found nothing, but in the last minute I managed to get a dress and also a tiara.

It was quite an exhausting week, especially the weekend, because I had to work all day on Friday and Saturday, and we had an extra rehearsal on Sunday right before the actual performance. I think the show went very well apart from some tiny mistakes, but those always happen, even with professional actors.

Frozen – Let It Go

The Rocky Horror Picture Show – Time Warp

On Friday I was extra busy, because I had a modelling job for the morning up at the north coast. It was quite interesting as I've never done any professional modelling before, but I got very tired by the end of it because the weather was unusually hot and the sunlight was very strong. I even got sunburnt pretty badly by the end of it even though I put on suncream in the morning before I left home. But it was worth, because the pictures are awesome. I'm even allowed to use them as headshots, so I'm really happy :)

As for Blood Brothers and The Maids, I didn't really have time to work on either of them before Sunday, but I tried to read the scene from The Maids as often as possible to memorise the lines.

On Monday I finally had enough time to work on that last monologue of The Maids. The first thing I did about it was finding out the objectives. The objective of the whole monologue is that Solange wants Claire to hurry up with the preparations so that they can start the actual ritual, because she wants it to be finished before Madame comes back home. Earlier in the play (not in our scene) she and Claire talk about spending too much time on the "preliminaries", the preparations and introduction of their roleplay, and that's why they don't ever get to the end of their ritual (which is the murder of Madame). She intends to skip those parts to have more time for the main part of the ceremony: the insults and then the actual murder. In the second part of the monologue she tells how excited she is about getting rid of Madame. The reason for her excitement must be that, as the sisters also mention in other parts of the play, killing Madame would make them "free". They sort of see themselves as slaves. On the other hand, I think Solange already knows during this monologue that she won't be strong enough to finish the ceremony and it has to be Claire who actually murders Madame.

BCA Week 17, 18 and 19

I'm struggling again with timekeeping for my diary, and I was sick for a few days, so I'll write only a short summary of the last three weeks. But to be honest, there's not really a lot to write about, because we didn't do much that's worth mentioning. This doesn't mean we're not working hard, we simply don't do many new things but mostly work on the existing pieces. As the performance is in a couple of weeks time, the teachers have been focusing mainly on the musical pieces rather than on the exam dialogues, but we still have plenty of time to practice our scenes with our partners on our own.

Week 17

This week we mostly focused on the choreographies of the group songs. We did a little bit of everything including both the solo songs and the group stuff. As somebody is always absent and we never have the full cast, it can be quite difficult sometimes to do the rehearsals of the group songs: one day you're standing between two people in a formation, then the next day there's somebody else next to you, which is really confusing. But apart from these difficulties, the whole show is getting better and better.

The Maids

I've finally finished reading the play, which took me surprisingly long. The language of the play is quite difficult to understand, and also the general idea is a little bit absurd and confusing, but it still helped me more to understand what exactly is going on in our exam scene and what sort of character I will be playing. Solange is very dominant, she's almost controlling her sister, but actually she is probably weaker than Claire – for example, she is definitely not brave enough to finish the ritual and murder Madame, in spite of hating her a lot more than her sister does. So she is quite a complex and interesting character.

Week 18

I didn't go to the rehearsal this week, so I used the extra time to work on my analysis of Solange. I did the same thing what I did for Mrs Johnston: writing at least ten fact about the character in first person:

My name is Solange. I work as a maid. I live in my madame's house. I have a younger sister Claire who also works at the same place. I am not very attractive-looking. I am more dominant than my sister, she usually obeys me because she is afraid of me. I love my sister. I hate Madame. I envy her youth and beauty and wealth. I am performing secret rituals with my sister about murdering Madame. I've never managed to finish these rituals, because I'm not brave enough to murder Madame.

Week 19

This week we went through the whole show from the beginning to the end. My solo song is going to be the first one, so my teacher said that is must be as powerful as possible. I hope I'll be able to manage. I got a couple of general advices about moving on stage such as:

   * I should try to picturize the lyrics using my hands, body movements, gestures etc.

   * when I have to stand still, I have to try to stay completely still without moving with the rhythm of the song

One huge difference between playing in a play and singing in a musical is that you have to use a lot more gestures and move a lot more in general while you're performing a song. When you're acting, you normally don't have walk around that much. Because I haven't had many experience in professional singing before (in this case singing in a church choir doesn't really count as experience, I think, even if it was a professional choir), I still need to get used to this, so I spent pretty much of my free time practicing Let It Go during the last few weeks.

The Maids

Since my partner and I had some time on our own this week, we sat down and discussed the play and I also had enough time to work on the objectives of Solange during the scene. Here they are:

Line 1: wants to play Madame

Line 2: doesn't want to take the apron

Line 3: wants to insult her (as a part of the roleplay)

Line 4: doesn't want the apron, but wants the ritual to be realistic – wants Claire to put out the light

Line 5: wants her to obey

Line 6: wants her to stop saying those things

Line 7: wants to know what she means

Line 8: wants her not to care about Madame

Line 9: wants her to be quiet

Line 10: wants her to take her seriously

Line 11: wants her to continue

Line 12: wants her to feel scared

Line 13: wants her to be scared and ashamed

Line 14: wants her to stop talking about God

Line 15: wants her to calm down

Line 16: wants to perform the ritual and this time eventually finish it

As for Line 16, which is the short monologue, I'm planning to make a more detailed analysis, because that's the part of the scene I'm struggling the most with.

BCA Week 16

This week we mostly worked on Evita and the exam dialogues.

Oh What a Circus

We made a couple of changes in the choreography, such as a bit more movements and walking around on stage during the instrumental parts of the track. The plan is to carry candles in our hands while walking, which, I thing, would be an awesome sight from the audience.

Blood Brothers

There's little to do about this scene apart from practicing it as many times as possible with my partner. We made some experiments with different movements and positions, and we decided which one to go for. Also, my teacher told me that I have the habit of looking down all the time, which I need to fix, because if I don't lift my head up, the audience doesn't see my expressions and reactions. So that's another thing for me to work on.

The Maids

We performed our scene to our teacher, who was quite impressed. Though we still need to plan the positions, movements, props etc. properly, I also think we did quite well for the first try. The other thing I have to practice is my short monologue at the end of the scene. As I still haven't finished reading the whole play, I didn't have a chance to make notes about my character's objectives, but I think once I do that, the monologue will be easier to perform, too.

BCA Week 14 and 15

Due to private life issues (moving to a new home and other things) I didn't have enough time to finish my entry of week 14 and 15, and I'm feeling quite bad about it, because such a lot had happened during the last two weeks, including a discussion and reading of The Maids and getting some more background roles in musical pieces.

Week 14
This week I spent most of my time at the rehearsals on my solo song Let It Go. I worked on my vocals as well as the visuals of the song. My teacher and one of my classmates gave me some advices on the movements, which was a great help as I am not really good at moving on stage without any given instructions at all. I made a list of their tips so that I can remember them and use them later when I'm working on other projects:
* Use the space around you, don't stay in one place all the time.
* Avoid turning back to the audience unless it's really necessary for the choreography.
* Don't start a song too strong, because if you do so, you won't be able to get even stronger later. This goes for movements and also vocals.

We didn't work much on the dialogue scenes this week, but I started to read The Maids and later I will also start doing my character analysis. The reason why I haven't started doing it is that my partner and I are not really sure which parts of the scene will stay and which will be cut, and also the teachers haven't confirmed yet which one of us is playing which character.

Week 15
We started this week with working on the two exam dialogues, then moved on and started to make the choreography ofthe two songs from Evita: Oh What A Circus and Don't Cry for Me, Argentina.

Blood Brothers
This week we worked on the small details of the scene such as positions, movements and gestures. Also, my teacher advised me to use my own accent instead of trying to go for the English accent which is required for the play. I originally planned to learn the English one once I was absolutely comfortable with everything else about the scene, but since we don't have much time left until the exam, I agreed with her.

The Maids
We had the first discussion with one of our teachers about the scene from The Maids this week. First we had to read the dialogue with my partner, then the teacher talked a little bit about the play itself. I have not finished reading it yet, but I've read summaries so I had a rough idea of what is going on during our scene, and I also found some information about the characters:
* Madame is a rich and very beautiful lady. She's very young, around 25, and she has quite an immoral lifestyle, she goes out often at night and all.
* Claire and Solange are her housemaids. They're sisters, and their age is somewhere between 30 and 35. Their appearance is quite ugly and grotesque, they're not attractive at all. They both hate and envy Madame and often think of murdering her.

The relationship between Claire and Solange:
* Claire is the younger sister of Solange
* codependence on each other
* Claire is afraid of Solange
* taking turns of playing Madame in their roleplaying rituals

Originally my partner and I planned that I would play Claire and she would be Solange, but our teacher advised us to swap roles because in Blood Brothers I'm playing the less dominant character, so in this scene it should be the opposite. So now that I know for sure that my character is going to be Solange, I will soon start working on the analysis.

Evita
The main idea is that we're going to be people at a public mourning for Eva Perón. Since I know very little about the musical Evita, I still need to look it up, but I don't really have time for that at the moment. All I know is that Eva Perón was a real person from Argentina, who lived in the 20th century and was a politician and also an actress.

BCA Week 13

This week we finally started to put the whole show together. The first song on the list is my solo song from Frozen, followed by a couple of other solos and then the group songs.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

This one is still one of the best exam pieces; even our teachers said that this week. Since the choreography is already complete, we have nothing else to do with it apart from practising a lot.

Grease

First of all, I think the choreography for Greased Lightning/Summer Nights works quite well. I'm not doing lots of movement in this one, so it was quite easy for me to learn it. We Go Together, however, didn't go very well this week. I had been struggling with the dancing part ever since the first time I saw it. It's only a couple of seconds, but still, it's a bit too fast for me, I was never really good at dancing. I'm not the only one though; when we rehearsed this piece this week, almost everybody in the class did the choreography incorrectly. We only did the first half of the song, so we still need to set up the rest of the choreography later.

Frozen - Let it Go

I performed my solo song again this week. My teachers are thinking about using a shortened version of the song instead of the original. To be honest, I'm not sure that would be as powerful as singing the whole song, but I'll go with whatever they say. As for the choreography, I'm still not sure what exactly to do. My teachers will probably get some more people from the class to support me in the backgound and/or join in the chorus the song, but we will discuss it next week. I like the idea because that would boost up the visuals a little bit.

Chicago

We couldn't rehearse Cell Block Tango this week because some people of the group were absent. I really hope they keep practising while being away; some people are still having issues with the backing track because it's faster than the one we had previously used, but I think it's only a matter of listening to it as many times as possible, and if it's still confusing, they can just look it up on the internet, I'm sure they'll find somebody covering that version of the backing track.

All That Jazz was eventually dropped from the programme,  I'm not very disappointed, to be honest, I'm not really a fan of that song, and I didn't even have a big part in it, but I know that some other people of the group worked really hard on it, especially the girl who takes the led in it, so I feel sorry for them.

Blood Brothers

We performed our scenes from Blood Brothers to the class and the teachers this week, and got some pretty useful feedback. I was told that I have too big face expressions; I overdo it sometimes, which can make a verious scene kind of funny. To improve this, I was advised to practise in front of a mirror.

The Maids

We did the first reading of our second drama scene with my partner. We haven't started working on the visuals yet - the teachers said that the scene is going to be cut later, so we're not going to perform the whole dialogie but some parts of it. I still need to do the analysis of my character and read a lot more about the play itself, but unfortunately I haven't had time for it and I don't think I will in the next two weeks or so.

BCA Week 12

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

This week we continued working on the choreography of Time Warp and Sweet Transvertite. At first I didn't really like Time Warp, but since we finished coreographing it and started to put it all together with everybody else, I kind of started to like it more and more, and eventually it became one of my favourite pieces from the whole exam show. The others must feel the same, because I can see that everybody truly enjoys performing this song.

Frozen - Let It Go

This week I performed my solo song for the first time with the teachers and my classmates being present. I think it was okay, my only problem is the choreography; it looks so amazing in the movie with all the special effects, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have the same result on stage. I looked up on Youtube if there is a stage version or anything of this song, and I found this pretty amazing video of  Disney's Hollywood Studios:

I think it will be useful for me to watch it again a couple of times for creating my own choreography.

Chicago

We performed All That Jazz and Cell Block Tango to the class and the teachers. Cell Block Tango went quite well despite the fact that eventually we'll use a different backing track during the exam than the one we'd been using when practicing with the group. The exam track is a lot faster that the one we got used to, but I didn't have any problem with that, since apart from the speed of the rhythm everything else is more or less the same. All That Jazz was a bit more confusing, though, because not only the track is very fast, but also the lyrics go differently, so it didn't go well at all.

The Maids

My partner and I've been working on our first dialogue from Blood Brothers since the beginning of the course, and we've improved quite a lot since we first rehearsed the scene, so it was time for us to get our second piece for the exam. After I got the script in class, I took some time to read through and try to find out what it could be about, but it looked so weird and meaningless that I decided to just leave it for later when I'm back home. The only thing we did with my partner was deciding who plays which character. Mine is going to be Claire. We didn't get any background information about the play from the teachers, the only thing I knew about the scene is the names of the two characters and the title of the play, which is "The Maids". I'd never heard about it before, but since we had some spare time in class to familiarize ourselves with the text, I tried to make a very basic character analysis based on only the information found in the script. This is what I got in class:

• the two girls are housemaids
• they are sisters
• they hate their employer
• in this scene they are about to perform a kind of weird secret ritual

After this, I looked it up at home and found out that it's a 20th century French play (the original title is Les Bonnes) written by Jean Genet, first performed in 1947. Later in 1974, a film of the same title was also made based on this play. It is indeed about two sisters who are both housemaids of the same house and secretly perform ritual role-plays about killing their Madame.