December 2

6 filming days left and we should finish. Touch and go there for a while as 16 or so relatively smooth weeks finally came to an end. Donald's sister died, most likely of leukaemia, which took his partner Joyanne out of filming for a week and led to a serious program revamp. And then just when we thought it was all sorted, one of the lynchpins of the revised schedule turned up having shaved completely bald. He thought he had finished. A part timer whose first film this is. He's a well known boxer so one's disbelief was .......restrained .

But here we are a few days from finishing another marathon run...and funding for 6 looks pretty likely. There will be big discussions no doubt when we have our first post Love Patrol meeting. Is this how we want to spend half the year every year?

Anyway a brief post this whilst the crew move the ceiling of the police station round for a new angle. The rains have come, the air is humid, the police station low roofed and with the lights on it is unbelievably hot in there......

Week 14 or is it 15 or 16 and does it make any difference; it's still either an MCU or a wide shot.

My exhaustion is exhausted and I have opened a store with a nice range of one sided reading glasses.

Still nothing back from the robbery which proves god does not exist or that the klevas were not true believers.

We were filming a demonstration scene outside the courthouse; people waving banners demanding Tom's release were jostling with police when the real police turned up, 4 of them, and told us the Commissioner wanted us to stop filming; something to do with the uniforms and how we had to reapply to use them; after all this program is seen 'round the world' and the way we were wearing the uniforms could reflect badly on the Vanuatu police !!

A delegation is sent immediately to the Commissioner's house to get to the bottom of this while the rest of us calculate exactly how much re shooting this would mean and whether we'd finish filming next March or April. It turned out his main objection was that some of our extras whom we had chosen to be police were not clean shaven enough ( he had happened to be passing earlier). So it was sighs of relief all round, out with the razors and on with the show.

Anna from AusAID spent the morning with us filming her scenes as the doctor.We met her later in the week and she said she had been exhausted and wondered how we did it. It's good that project partners get first hand experience of the work we do and realise we're not bluffing!

Simon, our clapper board man, has not been with us for 2 weeks. His wife Helen, passed away. She had been sick for many a year with a poorly functioning lung. He had very few family in town; his wife's family are poor and had already had a death the week before. Helen passed away on the morning we were supposed to be filming at the hospital which in a way was fortunate. The group were there and basically took over the arrangements. The expense is so hard for people to deal with. The new corner of the cemetery that was opened up a year ago is a reminder in this week of the world reaching 7 billion, of how quickly our town is growing and how we'll have to find a new burial ground soon. Other parts of the yard at least have some sort of space between graves; here as you move in to throw soil on the coffin and make way for others to do likewise, you stumble over the corners of the burials of the past few days. Beru, our cameraman, was going to get Simon a makeshift cross that day, because, he said, if he didnt, there would be little hope of remembering exactly which Helen's grave was.

End of week 12.

A disaster of sorts. We opened LP4 midweek this time and had a much larger audience as we weren't competing with with Friday night fund raisers across town. It started badly (this is not the main disaster referred to above) when, as I was adjusting my parking in WSB, I didn't notice a taxi pulling in from the less used entrance side and bumped it. This old chief from the area got out and came up to me. It was actually a very funny moment. He was clutching his invitation to the event and said holding out the card, 'You invite me to your opening and then you bang my truck!' We both laughed and put our arms around each other and could see no damage in the dark. I did pass him in town the other day. I was walking along the road and he was in his truck in one of Vila's interminable jams. I called out to ask him how the truck was and he said 'ooh i bend i bend' and was moving forward before i could verify this!

No, the disaster was on return from what was a very well received showing of the opening 3 episodes of series 4. We return at 9.30- ish. The door is wide open. We go through and the back door has been rammed open with two logs. We subsequently find out that they had first ripped the TV satellite antennae plus the stake to which it was attached out of the ground and tried ramming the door with that. The neighbour had heard the noise but thought it was us!!!! Mmmmmn. Anyway, the film camera we had at the house overnight, all our laptops, Applemacs, and plenty of personal stuff all gone. Thankfully a drive with LP4 on it is still there (In case thieves you are reading this, Danny has a backup copy in Aus so don't bother coming back for it!). I'd like to believe that they were wannabe film makers and maybe in a year or two we'll be renting them our lights for their next masterpiece which they edit and colour grade on our stolen laptops. Given that the camera had no lense or CF card or batteries I sadly think that is not the case and it is probably on its way to Etas rubbish dump by now and the apple macs on their way to an outer island.

The group suspect that someone at the opening must have been in touch with the gang or at least there was general knowledge that we would be out at the opening that night. The irony is that episode 1 of LP4 starts with a couple coming home from a function to find their house totally trashed!!!

Certain group members sent a couple of guys round to pray in the backyard who confidently assured us that the stuff would be returned. This made me very angry, atheist that I am. I mean it suggests to me that they must have very good contacts with all the gangs and can clean up on the reward. But of course the belief is that God is all knowing and that someone will stumble upon the goods somewhere thanks to the wisdom of God...Two things here. That he should care about some white guy's gear that, inconvenient though the theft is, will mostly be replaced on insurance, strikes me as a little out of proportion to issues like world poverty that he must have to deal with. Secondly in a town of this size, some people will stumble upon stuff totally unassisted by God. I remember coming home in the car a few years ago after a walk in the hills and passing someone with my bike that had gone missing a week or two before. I stopped next to him and said I believed that it was my bike and he said 'Tru? Wan brata i givim long mi' I said providing i could take it home that was an end of the matter and he duly obliged.

As I say though the advantage of saying God leads to this discovery is that you can pop up and claim the reward for having prayed for its return in the first place.

That aside, filming has gone very well. We had to take a day off to rebuild the credits for LP4 that were on one of the drives that were stolen and also to make police reports, order a new back up camera etc but the group very bonded after this.

End of week 8.

Like a long walk we are entering the hardest part of the shoot. The sense of adventure has worn off, you've been going a while and you realise that there is still a hell of a long way to go. Everyone's behaviour becomes incredibly irritating; you become paranoid that everyone is deliberately challenging you, going slow. One's sense of proportion as to the importance of the film in the general flow of life is absurd ...I believe we are about to enter a double dip recession but far more important, is it going to rain today.

And others have real cause to worry; Donald's sister is back in hospital and some form of blood disorder/cancer seems likely. Pango village is tearing itself apart over a land dispute and actors from there report on various relatives who have been attacked; the police are patrolling the roads from time to time and there's a big meeting on Saturday.

Various locations have bitten the dust. Went to film in Tagabe last week and noticed that the set of flats where police officer Belinda has had her home for the past few series has been pulled down. In fact was still being pulled down as we tried to film in the store across the road.

This week's amusing moment? We're filming in a yard off Tagabe road and as often happens a passing bus slows down as they drive by to see whats going on.Of course they are always in the back of the angle you are trying to film. On this occasion the bus actually stops just as we roll and we start to make waving suggestions to the driver which is the politest way to say 'get the f*** out of our shot.' However the actor waiting to walk in to the yard on 'Action! is unaware of the bus behind him so every time we wave he moves a metre to the right and the bus stays put! You had to laugh! Self preservation!

Week 5 of LP5

I nearly wrote last week, in a similar vein to Zero Balance comments, that there wasn’t a lot to write about because it was all going so smoothly. And so I suppose it should, to some extent. This is our fourth straight year of LP; our fifth in six years; we have more gear, better cameras, we know the most frequent pitfalls and dangers and try to avoid them and yet…

So at the farewell for our visiting DOP, Chris, who did 4 weeks with us, Jo and the crew spring some news on me that they had been hiding all day. One of our new part timers whose first scene we had recorded at night the week before, has had to take up a last minute place on a training program in NZ. To their credit they had already found a replacement and recorded a demo tape for me to watch..and he was OK. Still, half a night shoot to re record some time.

Then, we’re packing up on Thursday and I am informed that a woman has been blinded by our HMI light (2.5 k). She was 60 metres away at the time and had collapsed saying she couldn’t see; she was already partially sighted in one eye. This could have been explosive but the community was almost apologetic. We took her to the hospital and there is probably more to it. She has very high blood pressure and may have reacted to the shock of seeing the light, which had made her faint. At the time of writing there has been no negative feedback from the community.

A more amusing occurrence. One mother in the same community had called the police to complain about her son who, she said, always got up late and never helped around the house. Urgent police business! A little later two of our actors emerged in police uniform on the nearby road ready for their next scene. Apparently this lad, as observed by our production team enjoying a tea break, shot out of his house and away through the settlement!

August 26th 2011. Filming has started.

The blog that went away! The play finished in another life time; finished well I believe. Full houses most of the time and many compliments although it was hard to keep up with day to day real political dramas!

Now we’re into Love Patrol season five and have completed a month of night shoots. We have new cameras; Cannon 5ds and prime lenses. The image looks gorgeous and what you can do with depth of field compared to the old JVCs is a daily delight!

Funny and not so funny moments:

We had a very good night shoot outside a store in Tagabe. 2 days later the peeling white frontage had been painted green and we have 2 day shoots still to go! So we will try and blast away some of the coat of green and repaint integrating earth as we go.

The schedule is all drawn up and we have been shooting for a week when one cast member announces she is 4 months pregnant and I have some scenes planned for when she would be 7 months …so more work on the schedule required.

There’s a lot of action in this series by our standards and I became frightened all the episodes were a little short so Jo’s been adding scenes and extending dialogue as we go which has been stressful for actors.

Lovely moment the other night whilst we’re waiting in the road in Tagabe for darkness to descend. A middle aged man comes up, shakes my hand and says ‘They must pay to visit the cave’. This is the line of the adviser to the chief from our 1994 film Pacific Star, a part presumably played by this gentleman. Some of the young members of the group most impressed by the heritage they are now part of!

That ‘fabric feeling ‘ was very strong when watching the youth hiphop group perform at the ceremony to mark Ausaid’s handing over of a million dollars to buy all the buildings we currently rent, thus securing the premises for youth for the coming decades. Some of them weren’t born when WSB started in 1989 and we were a 4 man gang doing plays about diarrhoea. Jo was next to me and we smiled at each other in that late middle age way of a ‘journey shared’ moment , trying to ignore the number of expletives in the song the kids were dancing to; looking too uncannily like recent pictures of masked rioters in London. But the energy of their dance seemed to give it such a positive vibe.

Ausaid also officially revealed our new gear transporting lorry with eye catching graphics.I must start putting photos on this blog.

May 28th

No disasters. Great reviews! See the Zero Balans facebook page. Packed Houses; well it is the school holidays! Safety officers would have a fit. We start off with rows of chairs and then when they're full and we still have a 100 outside, we ask people to move chairs forward and wedge another row in perched on the rostrum behind. We get in around 250 to 270. Wish we could raise the roof on the theatre. Still angry people outside who have come from 20 odd kilometres out of town who can't get in.

Our major battle internally has been to keep the laughter down. We had a great meeting the other day. As mentioned it got better briefly after my set of notes but in the last 2 shows it set in again. Various unnecessary ad libs and too much 'acting' in crowd scenes. Some lead actors were not happy and could feel that no one was listening to them and they were being upstaged by stuff going on around them. It's a fine line as some of the scenes are pure comedy. One much loved scene involves three community members all vying for the one chair in the ministers room to make their case to him for receiving 'funds'. And half of the long scene that makes up half the second act is again comic but once the news of the minister's dismissal by his colleagues becomes known to the community then the fawning stops and they turn on their MP. Done properly, the next 15 minutes are quite powerful and the cast can have the audience dead quiet but with ad libs and 'boo hiss' style crowd acting, the audience is let off the hook . Given that, in this section, the play suggests we shouldn't just blame politicians but look at our own actions towards them, we are making it far too comfortable a ride for them. All of this came out in the meeting; and last night we held the audience and wiped the smile off their faces.

The funny thing (well not funny at all really) is that as we struggle to keep the straight elements of the play straight so each day brings one new farcical revelation of the machinations of our MPs. It is as bad as I can remember it being in the days of the Swanson and Ghosh scandals. One youth leader who works for WSB said politicians were courting the youth he represents and they asked him how WSB dared to challenge the big men. Wise lad said he didn't work for that section of WSB.

The first week of shows.

A week into performances and the reception has been great. Full houses every night. Although there's full and full. Comfortable full and, on Saturdays, should- we -really -be -cramming -this many- people- in full. Rows of chairs are moved forwards so another set of people can perch on the edge of the rostrum behind. You begin to feel like a cattle herder at the market. But everyone is remarkably tolerant. We've also had our fire dancers on standby so they can put on a show for all those who can't get in even after the squashing up. We've had a glowing review in the paper and there's an active Zero Balance Facebook page.

The worst show was probably last Friday when crowd scenes in particular seemed to be a little OTT or if not OTT, the crowd members were acting so full bloodedly that the main action on stage was almost the sideshow. An ex actor from Canada, Dan McGarry, who lives here, reminded me of Stanislavski's comment after his troupe returned from tour, 'there will be a rehearsal on Tuesday to remove the improvements!' We tried to deal with these in notes on the Saturday and it seemed better as a result.

But it's never been less than OK and the audiences seem totally engaged. I would say we've had many more passages than in previous productions where the the audience has been listening intently with no strange laughter. This is not to damn the other productions. For those not familiar with a typical audience for these shows, they contain a smattering of babes in mothers' arms, a number of 5 to 1o year olds often on mats at the front; teenagers and upwards. So, so different from a western theatre going audience. To hold all of that audience is quite a task.

Anyone in Vanuatu reading this, we have auditions for Love Patrol series 5 at the theatre from 10am next Monday (23 May) and 24 May. We need all ages and all colours actually so maybe see you there?

29 April Lost!!

Hasn't been easy (yes at last!) Perhaps Easter Sunday was a pointer, Jo and I got lost in the bush. Was this a metaphor for a production...it was a walk we had done several times involving a shortcut back through a Forest ( represents a production that is ready to go); we make a slight detour ( rhythm of play derailed by too many public holidays and an opening date still a week away) and we are lost.

As we hadn't started the walk till three pm there was little chance of correcting ourselves and we emerged in the dusk from the forest to a plantation area we couldn't recognise. We keep walking but give up when I walk full tilt into a barbed wire fence we hadn't seen. So we follow the fence for five more minutes and then lie down for the night, first near a small river which, when bitten all over, we retreat from to hotel number 2 under a tree. We have half a bottle of water and no food and feel foolish.We also know that Emma our daughter at home will be very worried. Jo is quite cold; our clothes are damp as we had followed a river for a while. On the other hand she is quite relaxed whereas I am convinced this is my last night on earth! We speculate endlessly about the next day and console ourselves by looking up at the stupendous star filled sky. We're drifting off around 10, or pretending to, when Jo says she thinks she can hear someone calling our name. I am sceptical and don't shout back but there is the sound again and yes it is someone calling our name. Over the next half an hour torches get closer and finally shine a path across the stream so we can cross to them and there is Michael, our CEO, and several other WSB plus a lad who lives up in the bush. We are both ashamed and amazed. Emma had raised the alarm at 9pm. Beru and Ralph are in another party going down a river walk they know we do quite often and when we get to the rendezvous more trucks arrive including 3 VMF officers and several other WSB staff who tell us off so we feel like two naughty children. But it all very touching and heart warming and we agree to host a rescue party party this sunday! It's the least we can do.

So to the play which is spluttering a little. We brought Andy over from Aus to check out our lighting rig and some of it looks beautiful. Despite plotting it, we haven't had an official tech and run throughs have been bedevilled by lighting and sound blips. Family death and illness are occurring. Poor Donald has spent parts of the week running around trying to find blood donors for his sister who is undergoing various bone marrow and blood tests. Noel's big sister died on Pentecost but the family agreed he should stay in town and fly out later to attend the fifty day memorial. Some performances were ready weeks ago and are starting to go off the boil. Plus I am having doubts about my staging.

With motions of no confidence occurring every week and most politicians getting ever more shameless in their blatant disregard of the people, the play could not be more topical and could still be a winner. Tech tonight and previews for schools and families begin next week which hopefully will bring a sense of urgency and newness back to the work. I think I prefer the terror of 'Will it be ready?' to the terror of 'will it be over-ready?'

I’m sorry, no blog for two weeks and we’re at the run through stage already. Why I am sorry I don't know, as this must be one of the billions of unread blogs around the world.

But it has all been so smooth .Should this make us more worried? Of course there have been bad rehearsals; days when it doesn't work but I have thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. No major spats with cast members. Everybody seems excited by the play.  Some lovely performances.  And doubtless I am giving it the kiss of death by going on about how much fun it’s been

We are actually ready too soon although there will be more to do technically with this piece than previous plays and ‘crowd' members to put in when Health Force get back from tour.

In fact my main worry has been the amount of sweet drinks and gateau that the cast consume for breakfast! The nutrition centre has been putting on khumala bread and homemade non- sugar peanut butter which has stemmed the sweet drink flow a little.

What else has happened ? Oh yes Young Life  a band attached to our youth centre , have won an anti corruption  music  clip competition and are on their way to Nairobl to play which is a great boost for the youth centre. And Richard, an East 15 graduate with us for a year, has developed a fire dancing/breathing group who played their first wedding on Saturday . (Went well; they ended up teaching the groom how to breathe fire.) and they regularly entertain at the beach bar at Mele on a Friday night. The youth centre would appear to be a buzzy place right now.

Finally, I cant shake out of my head this image from the novel Shiloh by Shelby Foote  in which he describes a soldier in the battle of Shiloh being shot  as he comes over the top of a hill. He’s clearly dead but carries on running through  his own momentum down the hill before falling on  his face at the bottom. 

Tuesday 15 March

 

The day is greeted with rumours that a controversial MP has had a stroke. Here we are again! Just as 40 day dealt with police brutality as it was happening, now we have a play in which our central character, an MP, has a heart attack and is forced to justify his existence to Gods. Should we announce in the program that the play was written before the real life MP’s stroke???!

Then at lunch Beru says someone planning to stand in the next election, a member of the Vanuatu Mobile Force, says once elected he will make sure WSB is wiped out as he disapproves of much that we do. I always feel confused with stories like this. The brave part of me says well we must be doing something right to evoke such strong feelings in a presumably fairly reactionary body. The other part feels hurt that anyone could dislike you so intensely!

Day 2 of rehearsals and it is the phase that makes me the most nervous. That vision you have of the piece in your head is a million miles away as people struggle with lines and finding their character and actors work at such different speeds; some presenting a character before your eyes very early on, others looking completely lost or worse still, bored. There is also the fear that the vision you have is wrong for the piece; the theatre, empty, seems huge and the actors tiny and thin voiced. As we allow space for audience on the floor you also feel you are watching it across a chasm that makes it even harder to engage.

Also depressed by the number of actors drinking coke and eating gateau huite for breakfast…but buoyed by those coming back early from lunch to run the scene on their own to get it right. Most of the actors love the chance to do the big production

10 March 2011

Just come back from a great show of the new sexual harrassment play at Central School. I think we have a winner here. The teacher has asked us to come back to do each year group and we're following it up with a workshop.

We start the show with a quick agree /disagree as a 'marker' of audience opinion. Students are asked to go to an agree sign or a disagree sign regarding the statement 'Parents should not allow daughters the same freedoms they give to boys.' So far the whole audience crosses over with 100 percent of the girls disagreeing and 100 percent of boys agreeing.

It's a while since I've been into the schools and the differences are vast. One newish school was a boiling hot room, no fans, very low tin roof and a cement factory rattling on outside the window. The other schools although not palatial were more condusive to learning.Yet looking at the grades on the wall at the newer school, there were some who had done quite well. I couldn't last 5 minutes in the classroom I saw. We took the class outside for the show which meant that practically every other class seemed to spill out to watch the piece too.

Nearly ready to start this year's big play..about politics...good timing, what with a minister deciding it's OK to bash up newspaper owners. The town waits to see whether the PM or the police will do anything about it.

Half the cast still stuck on outer islands running workshops and showing our films in remote villages. One also injured her back when caught under a speed boat whilst pulling it to shore. Am planning to make some banana bread and buy some fruit and start the first day of rehearsal with a nice breakfast and read through! Hopefully that will lessen resentment about coming straight into work after 2 and half weeks away! But we have only 6 weeks to opening night.

Sadly, my head is full of rape and incest. We have completed a week of interviews and 75 % -at least - have been stories that end in violent abuse. Some harrowing tales. Some thanking the interviewer for allowing them a chance to tell of an experience they have not been able to tell for many years. One girl said that she had not told her parents of a narrow escape she had had because she knew if she did, they would stop her going out.

This is the difficulty; there is, as mentioned in the first post, little point in putting out a total tale of woe; what does it achieve? so we have latched on to a story that one of the actors told , as we discussed the interviews, from his own life and his struggle to stay engaged with his own teenage daughter. He told of how his daughter was sitting plaiting the hair of a boy in their yard. Grandparents were shocked; inviting a boy they did not know, into their yard; how could the father allow his daughter such freedom? He must put a stop to it!

When the boy left he asked his daughter who he was .'...a friend ,Daddy', she said and walked away. The actor said he couldn't ask anything else because if he got heavy, she would be cross and become distant so that maybe when she really did need to be able to talk to him , she wouldn't feel free to do so. And that has become the superstructure of the piece as I write; how do parents and daughters keep communication lines open and remain safe but free in a town which if the interviews are to be believed girls have little protection even, on occasions, in the presence of pastors, teachers and uncles who should provide it.

Well trying to blog again. LP 4 finished 20 weeks of filming in December. LP3 finished viewing late December and seems to have been the most popular to date. As I acted in it quite a bit I  finally know what it's like to be a recognised face in the street. Everyone has stories about LP. One evening late December I was walking the dog at the top of the hill and on my way back to the car. Three gentlemen looked at me quite seriously and said CID are looking for you. I thought maybe they'd been to the house and someone had told them I was out walking so I was a little nervous, wondering what I'd done wrong. Then they all start laughing and the penny drops; they're referring to Harry the character I play in Love Patrol.

So now its back to community oriented stage work. 12 of the group are researching a piece on Sexual Harrassment. When you look at figures for inmates at correctional services, sexual offences far outnumber all others. A recent survey of attitudes by Chris King for Correctional services highlighted many beliefs that might contribute to this;  beliefs about the way women dress; about women who go to nightclubs being therefore available for sex etc. So we've started with a week of discussing our own attitudes and things we might be ashamed of in our past. Now the actors are out recording anonymous interviews as we try a 'verbatim theatre' approach  to the topic. We hope to end up with several little playlets, some of which might be interactive and open to forum work.  One issue in trying this approach out for ourselves with stories the actors have provided, is that all of them have ended in rape. Yet whilst no one in the group would put up their hand to say they had raped someone, all, all of us  males at any rate, admitted to having committed  some form of sexual harrassment. If all the plays end up as rape then is it easier for an audience, though feeling sorry for what they have witnessed , not to see themselves as challenged? Hopefully some of these questions will become clearer in the next week or two.

In March we start work on Jo's latest 2 hour script which will be looking at politics; not only the misuse of power by politicians but also the community's role in indulging politicians misuses of power. Beru has built a beautiful bamboo screen backdrop in anticipation of this piece. I was keen to avoid calico backdrops for something more flexible; bamboo can suggest local housing for a village or a sort of plush background for a restaurant or meeting room. Plus it just looks nice!