Back in London

Back in London
Posted by roezone at 2:05 pm, September 1st 2010.
The title Back in London, at a post-Edinburgh date, would usually spark a negative blog about returning to real life.

But actually I'm feeling more positive about things than ever right now, probably so much so it's slightly sickening to the outside world. Well outside world, I'm going to sicken you. I've had enough negative days in my life, so here's a positive day:

Tuesday 31st August 2010 - a positive day

Morning - met up with Patricia who works for The Parish that runs St. Mary's Hall in Balham. A Parish Administrator might give the impression of a lovely, but incapable and very slow beaurocrat, but Pat was the most swithced on church worker in the country. Everything was databased and internet enabled and she really knew her stuff and was very good at showing me round and very supportive of what we do. The new Thursday venue hall is actually:

- Clean!
- Quiet!
- Has Lights!
- Spacious!
- Clean!
- Just for us!

I know they sound like simple things but it's about time Hoopla Thursdays came out of the shadows and started being in proper venues. Also when I was explaing things to her I started to realise what a good thing impro and drama is. I always thought of us as a bit of a bastard child, but actually when you look at the evidence we're quite community focussed:

- What do you do?
- Run impro and drama workshops?
- Who can come?
- Anyone.
- What about people who haven't acted before?
- Yep, anyone. Anyone can come.
- Great. What's it for?
- Fun. Just to have fun with other people you wouldn't usually meet and not worry about anything else in your life for a couple of hours.
- Sounds good. Here's the key.
- Thanks.

Lunch - Met up with Andrew Gentilli from Cannonball to pad out a plan we can up with at 1am while drunk in the Spiegeltent in Edinburgh a couple of days ago. Good news is that the plan stood up to the sober test, and the notes from our phones still made sense. Bad news is I can't yet tell you the plan as we haven't officially released it yet. It's good though, and obvious. We had lunch at 12pm in a cafe and ended up staying until 3pm, the waitress seemed a bit confused by our prolonged presence so we brought extra coffees we didn't really need.

4pm - The Miller. I can't believe it! Two killer impro venues in one day, this one for shows. I met with The Manager and he's really on side with us and was really helpful. Also more good news is that they've recently invested in more chairs upstairs and better sound. So now have a venue space with:

- Proper stage!
- Proper lights!
- Proper sound!
- Proper blacked out room!
- Proper seats!
- Proper poster space!
- Proper ongoing marketing!

I was so happy I could have kissed him, but this was our first meeting.

5pm - Guy Fletcher. Some of you may know Guy, but for those who don't he was previously a New York City Ballet professional dancer who tragically broke his leg and could no longer dance, so turned to impro and also to the world of dating coaching. He now lives halfway between those two worlds, and there are some very strong connections. We had a drink and a chat and then we ended up in the flat of a bloke who was writing a novel just so Guy could check google maps. We then went to a pod cast of a dating company called DayGame.com and I ended up being interviewed about impro, which I actually loved and now I want to start a pod cast and do that more. I don't like being on camera, but I decided that I love being on radio, as long as I don't have to hear my stupid lispy middle class south london school boy voice.

8pm - Edgar. A meeting in Hyde Park in the dark on a park bench about the wide world of impro and Hoopla. I still think Edgar is an impro genius and everyone doing shows should employ him to come on board and stop them taking it to seriously. We planned some cool stuff, wish we had more time.  This was followed by a Hoopla team social in Marble Arch KFC.

No I don't have a day job yet, where do you think this blog keeps coming from?