Yesterday I went to see the second of two performances of “Teechers” by John Godber at the Oasthouse Theatre in Rainham. The play was being performed to raise money for Jenny’s trip to Ecuador. She assures me that this isn’t just a holiday, but that she’s going to help teach young children. More importantly, it was an opportunity to see three very good friends of mine acting. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Chris performing, I’ve never seen Jenny in as big a big part and I’ve never seen Heidi perform in a play at all! It was all very enjoyable and hopefully raised some cash to help swell the charitable coffers. Particularly impressive was that the cast of three brought to life about twenty different characters, which was an excuse for some particularly tongue-in-cheek performances which I’m sure would be recognisable by anyone who has worked in education. Not, I should add, just characterisations of students, either. It was certainly fun to see some classic silly voices be wheeled out for some of the smaller characters.
The Teechers cast
The programme for the play was also special, as I had taken the cast photos for it. It was, pretty much, my first commission, albeit not a paid one! The session, which was a couple of months ago now, was fast and fun, but I learnt the same lessons as Graham “codedragon” Binns did recently shooting outside in strong direct sunlight. Although I did have a reflector, there wasn’t time to use it as effectively as it could have been. This was because I was rushing. (To be fair, there wasn’t much time, we all had other appointments to make.) I shot lots and hoped they would be OK, rather than taking a bit longer to ensure the shots were set up properly. So I learnt some important lessons and am looking forward to the next time a similar opportunity arises.
I gave a CD with the JPEG versions of all the image to the cast with a list of of images I recommended, although I was doing so without knowing the context of the play. It was therefore quite interesting to see the ones that they selected for use; on the programme covers, a centre-page scrapbook montage and for each character (not cast) biography. (The image above is the one they picked for the poster.) It was surprisingly gratifiying to see photos I had taken all over the programme.
I also won a bottle of wine in the raffle. Having previously scoffed at the auction of cakes and comestibles at other AmDram productions, I am now convinced by this activity and will petition the National Theatre to follow suit. I want to see Trevor Nunn giving away Blue Nun forthwith!
Despite my best intentions, it’s been a while since I posted here. Last time it was to shamelessly shill the latest editions the Ubuntu podcast from the UK LoCo team. This post may not be significantly different as it seems most of the trivia of my day is increasingly dissected and distributed on twitter and identi.ca. Not that I ever intended this blog to be a log of thoughts of the calibre frequently shared via twitter and the like, but it seems I don’t feel the need to write long missives any more. (Although there may well be one about ISPs on the way. Watch this, erm, site.)
Episode 7 of Season 2 of our little podcast has hit the (community donated) mirrors this evening and is already sneaking its way onto all manner of computers and portable media playing devices around the world.This episode features an interview with the executive director of the Open Rights Group, an organisation of which I am a supporter, Jim Killock. Unfortunately the output from the phone interface was very low during the interview, which I didn’t really notice at the time. (We use a digital output from the desk into the laptop which records the show, so I should have just brought everyone else down to the same level then boosted the whole lot in the mix.) But despite a shed-load of compression, I wasn’t able to iron out the difference satisfatorily. At least for me. Technicalities aside it was good to catch up with all the latest campaigns that ORG is working on.
It is always exciting when we release an episode to see the first few hundred downloads hit the logs in a couple of hours. It feels to me that we’re hitting our stride with the new series and format now. We regularly record over an hour of material in two hours. The secret is in the preparation. It’s also in the concentration; our biggest slips have happened when someone has drifted off for a bit. The downside of hitting some kind of stride is that is feels like we’ve been doing it for a while. I feel like we’re half way through the season already, when realistically we’re only one third of the way in. Podcasting is a marathon, not a sprint, maintaining pace without burning out is the key. That’s one of the good things about doing a fornightly show; you get almost an entire week off between episodes. (We keep and eye on the website and news stories betweentimes of course.) At the moment we’re using that “time off” to tweak some of the systems behind the scenes. This has involved upgrading Wordpress and various plugins, patching podcoder and so on.
So, please download the show and listen. A lot of work goes into it. If you like it, or dislike it, please send us feedback through the various routes given on the website.
