I played beloved English children's author Enid Blyton, and used suggestions from the boys and girls in the audience to inspire a new adventure story.The "hook" of the show was Oscar the border collie - that's right, we put a live dog onstage, Famous Five-style.
Oscar belongs to my friends Alisha and Mark, who very kindly lent him to us for training, rehearsals and the show. The Wah and I have known Oscar since he was a puppy - he's so happy and friendly. It really was a case of the dog inspiring the show.
Thankfully, the audience responded just as I'd hoped: they loved it if Oscar did things "right", but laughed even more if he did things "wrong", such as wander away, leave the stage, or refuse to follow directions. They particularly seemed to enjoy Oscar's single-minded determination to grab every piece of kabana he possibly could - kabana being our "training tool".
The talented Anthony Massingham took some photographs during the course of the show; these popped up on my Facebook feed after I returned home. He's done a wonderful job; but I wanted to post the following photo because of an interesting quirk.
My schtick in the second half of Enid Blyton: By the Book was to bring out a feast of proper English sweet treats - such as raspberries and cream, jam tarts, liquorice and sponge cakes - and proceed to be a mammoth glutton for the rest of the show.
Anthony took a great shot of me stuffing my craw, as Oscar and the other actors played out a scene. But look closely at sidebar advertisements:
It's quite a humourous placement of targeted advertising - but still, I didn't really need Facebook telling me to lose weight!
Awww Nat! That is funny, but you don't need to lose weight! You're beautiful!
ReplyDeleteCharlie the Wonderdog has competition...
ReplyDeleteNat, did you know that Jennicki has never read the Three Golliwogs?
ReplyDeleteWonderful story, sorry I missed the show.
ReplyDeleteGoogle and Facebook do through up strange combinations of advertisements to context.
But where is the ginger beer, the lashings of ginger beer.
oh Barnesm, the ginger beer was there alright! Look in the right of the photo, 4 bottles all lined up.
ReplyDeleteI think you should retaliate with further excesses.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could persuade an English Sweet shop somewhere to give you a few barrels of old English lollies - bulls eyes, bon bons, barley sugar etc.
I can envisage you sitting behind the typewriter, barely visible behind 5 or 6 3kilo barrels of such, and periodically peering over them to raise your eyebrows at the audience.
I would offer to lend you my gollywogs, but having seen the last performance I'm scared you'll
1. Bleed all over them
2. Try to kick them and do yourself an even worse injury than last time.
xxx
Looks hilarious. If I wasn't in assignment hell I'd be tempted to venture out and see it. I'll keep an eye out for the Babes Fiasco, though. Should have settled down by then.
This is just weird how your blog doesn't want to post my name.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I do try.
cheers
Quokka
Wow, what a sense of humour you have. As for me, I have actually written an actual book about Enid Blyton, titled, The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage (www.bbotw.com).
ReplyDeleteStephen Isabirye