Releasin' the Press Release

I must first flag up that Chrystal had nothing at all to do with the creation of the press release. Now, I don't mean this in the nasty, fawning sense of 'GAH, YA LAZY PUBLICIST, YOU - WHADDAYA GET YA ACTOR TO DO DA PRESS RELEASE FOR! EH EH EH?' Truth be told, I never asked her, and I only hope that I haven't offended her in the process. Chrystal is one of the more phenomenally busy women in Great Britain round about now. Not only has she been simultaneously in rehearsal for two Edinburgh shows - the rebooted Silent Cannonfire (the extra 'n' persists - gladsome!) and The Cure - but she's been dashing off to London and heaven knows where else in aid of the publicity for Rent. (I've been privileged enough to view what Chrystal deemed a rough pencil sketch via webcam... Suffice it to say that if that's what 'rough' means, I can incinerate my GCSE Art portfolio in good conscience, choking away my misery on the compound fumes of pastel and PVA.) Now I understand she's been clapped in iron handcuffs by the company of The Cure, who have opportunely press-ganged her into grinding out multitudinous meals of a foody-based nature to satiate their gaping maws - morning, noon and night! - all while snap-snapper-snaps her photographalist-type renderings and spouts the verse of Auden like a deranged sprinkler system. So, rather than drag her from her RIGHTFUL PLACE in THE KITCHEN (feminists will slay me for that one), I thought I'd have a crack at putting the thing together myself.

Directory James forwarded me the email from the ADC that got me kick-started. Turns out that it's standard practice to put together a large selection of advertising materials to unleash on the press. This came as a nice surprise, simultaneously betraying just how little I know about theatre production. So, I set to slamming together all that I remembered from the glory days of Microsoft Word (circa 1997). You know the sort of thing. Autoshapes - oh, yes, lots an' lotsa Autoshapes. Free Rotation. Text boxes. Different fonts. (Why is it that young children impulsively put their titles in bold and italics and then underline 'em? COULD THERE BE ANY GREATER FORM OF EMPHASIS?) Word Art! Well. Not Word Art. Or Clip Art for that matter. It's but a poor minstrel's version of Chrystal's sumptuous poster design (which I'll post up here when the final one is ready), but it does at least pay homage to the colour scheme... and make use of her photographs! And, self-deprecation aside, I'm reasonably happy with the fruits of my mediocre design skills:


As always, clicking enlarges, but should the text still prove difficult to decipher, I've pasted it beneath for your continued ocular comfort:

'I am in the theatrical profession myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, my children are in the theatrical profession. I had a dog that lived and died in it from a puppy...'

In this unique entertainment, one desperate actor will play twenty characters to bring the world of England's greatest comic writer to vivid, anarchic life. The public readings of Charles Dickens have passed into legend. The most famous man of his day, Dickens's genius as an author was matched only by his astounding gifts as an actor, and audiences flocked by the thousand to see him perform in person. The public readings are often considered the greatest of all lost dramatic experiences. Drawn from the exuberant texts of The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby, PICKWICK & NICKLEBY will reclaim all the humour, horror and boundless heart of the defining theatrical event of the Victorian age.

Candlelit, swathed in smoke and smelling of plum pudding, the atmospheric background of a provincial theatre sets the stage for the character actor's audition from hell. Featuring a sprawling ensemble of Dickensian grotesques – the flamboyant Vincent Crummles, the blustering Serjeant Buzfuz, the demented Wackford Squeers – PICKWICK & NICKLEBY promises an evening like no other. There will be wigs. There will be costume changes. There will be facial gesticulations, outlandish walks and utterly unhinged voices. Perhaps even the ghost of Dickens himself will put in an appearance... With all the bombast, bravado and barnstorming one could possibly desire, PICKWICK & NICKLEBY is unmissable.

In many ways, the text is no more than an expansion of the blurb I devised for the ADC brochure. I was fairly pleased with that blurb and starved of imaginative new selling points, so it seemed appropriate to renovate rather than demolish and build from scratch. It's curious how labouring on something as highly-worked as a little bit of advertising gives you an entirely new insight into your own writing style. Just by scrutinising the above, I've come to realise how dependent on the gimmicky nonsense of alliteration, tricolons and list-making my writing has become. Not to mention a growing repertoire of pretty much interchangeable adjectives denoting generic splashes of elation... The text is sensationalistic to put it mildly (it's advertising - you'd be a fool to expect anything less), but I'm pleased to say that it doesn't contain any out-and-out lies. Treat it as a little preview of some of the concoctions brewing in our theatrical laboratory.

To recant for my overexcited misdemeanour in fashioning my own press release (I am miserably chastised...), I'll leave you with an image of Chrystal's own taking. It was snapped while I was all unawares, trying to flatten my unholy mop by aid of partially wettened comb in my Cripp's Court silverfish conservation centre (ie: 'bathroom'), shortly before shooting the image for the ADC brochure. It's been up on Facebook for some time now, but I recently stumbled on it sequestered away in Chrystal's sanctum sanctorum; her wonderful online gallery located just here. Attached was the following caption, which provided warmth and fuzziness all round:

James Swanton, fellow Selwyn English student and character actor, prepares for a publicity photo shoot for his show 'Pickwick and Nickleby' due to be performed at the ADC Larkum Studio.

It's one of the very few non-gurning photos of myself that I don't mind. But perhaps this is a bit of a gurn. The sole comment said: 'oo! The concentration!'. Hmm. Concentration my foot. It's a gurn, no bones about it. As I said, it was caught without my knowledge and/or consent... and I know that that's precisely the sort of photo Chrystal likes best! Goodbye for now!