SEPTEMBER 2014

[Barry]

7th September 2014

This week has been blighted and coloured by the loss of three close colleagues. One in a week would be too much.
But some joy with meeting my sister in London for the RSC Wolf hall/Bring Up the bodies double bill, a trip to the Tower of London and then a boat trip down the Thames. An action packed 24 hours - the image of the sea of blood poppies pouring out of the tower of London, and splashing round the moat in a frozen cascade will never leave me. art at it's most powerful, most daring, most simple, most imaginative and most accessible. It simply works and moves visitors to tears. astonishing. The tudor intrigue of the plays was equally exciting and clear and thought provoking. A tailed description from the headsman about the etiquette of beheading Anne Boleyn was uncomfortable and provocative in view of recent events. Have we learnt anything. Governments can still twist the law to serve their needs, throwing up the religious card to justify their contradictions. Surely we should live our lives based on common sense and common decency, not as the result of a fairy tale?
And with all this, work has continued on the series and with my script. The latter has taken an unexpectedly dark turn....lovely.
And Boxtrolls is out this weekend. The standard of animation, of technique and technical achievement will be raised considerably. Interesting that all three Laika films have been about characters crossing over into secret hidden worlds, whether benign or malignant, but ever since Rosalind went into Arden, Alice went down the rabbit hole, Dorothy went to Kansas, this has been a major plot device. in the film I'm writing, it's not that straight forward, but there is another time period overlapping the present, rather than a different geography.

[Barry]

September 26th 2014

Part of the silence of the last few weeks has been due to purchasing a new laptop complete with windows 8 - how come something intended to be so user friendly is simply not. Stop bringing up so many tabs and such for every action, and just how many places are there to put the photos. a few good features but crikey it has complicated things. I've spent many hours transferring things and trying to order things so that I can find them. It has taken me several evenings to actually locate right click, which isn't actually right at the right. I do like the underwater/autumn mah-jong though!

The other part of the silence has been through sheer volume of work and related projects and real life. A lot of real life recently. Yes, there was the wedding, and sadly four losses (and Nigel's very moving and sunny funeral in Eastbourne), but happily one work birth. Charlotte, one of our producers, gave birth yesterday. It's odd as though I have known many pregnant ladies, I've never actually witnessed the miracle on day to day basis. It's quite amazing and very affecting. Such joy and relief that all has turned out well. Well done Leo and Charlotte and welcome to the world Henry Leo. And Charlotte you will be so missed in the office.

but yes there has been a lot of work, and much technology involved, but I have done much writing on the film script and I am very pleased with it. Seeing Boxtrolls has made me think about this carefully, and whilst the scale is so different, and the tone hugely different I do think it works at the moment. I've also been busy with a few articles for students, and trying to get the set ready for the musical, Gypsy, that I have designed. I kept it as simple and as raw and striking as I could but it still seems to have stretched resources at the Garrick. The Garrick is certainly an odd fragmented place at the moment. It is in transition but not as much is happening on site and that has ripped some of the buzz out of the building.