My favorite ladies in the W.I. The Dalston Darlings invited me to host their event at the Land of Kings. Land of Kings is Dalston’s music, film, comedy and performance festival that truly highlights how diverse and creative Dalston is. Taking over many of Dalston’s incredible venue’s including The Curve Garden that the Darlings decked out, making it a party fit for any King. Carrying on our royal theme we decided to run a May Day Queen of Dalston competition which was compered and hosted her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II (aka me in a dress and granny wig). Local club promotors, trannies and resident Queen’s of Dalston Sink the Pinkwere on hand to dress up our lovely contestants and help encourage the sunshine to come out and play. A lovely day with great food, great cocktails and some very funny guys in dresses. A right royal rave up!
When your a struggling actor sometimes you have to take your life back into your own hands and create a masterpiece, it also a lot more productive than sitting on your backside waiting for some overpaid TV executive to have the foresight to write you into their garbage. So I teamed up with a very funny actor to see if we could make a short film and hopefully someone will find it mildly amusing too. Well we can but hope.
This blog outlines my master-plan that Rosie Holt and I came up with. Rosie is a very talented actor and funny too, but always gets cast as this period drama type. So to break the mould we started writing a series of comedy shorts to showcase how marveleous we both are. It centering on a group of out of work creatives who do terrible lowly paid jobs and have excruciatingly bad (yet funny) relationships with the opposite sex. Wow this sounds familiar. So we filmed the first (of which I hope are many) on bank holiday Monday. A bit silly because the bank holiday bought every crazy and bitter nut-job East London had to offer out and all of them demanded a cameo. Luckily despite the mentals we had a very amazing cast of actors and camera man. I teamed up with Ben Walden again who assisted me with my Jekyll & Hyde Viral and in front of the camera was James Corley from comedy duo Brown & Corley. Ben Dilloway who studied with Rosie at LAMDA and is playing Mark in Steps 9 (of 12) at Trafalgar Studios. And finely Daniela Finely who is not only a professionally trained actress but also an up and coming musician.
We wrapped filming up in one day but have been delayed with editing until Jekyll & Hyde at The Union starts. Our little film will be ready for the world next week. Judge it kindly and feel free to laugh out load.
Today I can show you my latest directing achievement. I was recently asked to produce a video viral to promote Jekyll and Hyde The Musical at The Union Theatre. This is not like the previous versions of this theatre production, it doesn’t include any hammed up acting and there won’t be any well dressed prostitutes singing in a naff cockney accent about syphilis. Instead this will explore the dark themes and subject content bravely unlike it’s predecessors. This visionary piece of theatre has been the brain child of Morphic Graffiti. A new theatre company that dares to boldly change the industry and make productions of the highest standard that would even get Mr Webber gooey.
I met with Stewart Charlesworth and Luke Freddicks from Morphic Graffiti and they explained their vision for the production, the dark content and their plans to have multimedia imagery throughout the performance. I had to create a video that reflected their bold tendencies. A contemporary ident that dealt with the dark subject matter and establish the performences’ identity. The key elements I wanted to explore were transformation, obsession and the haunting of London.
Storyboard
I started with a Mood Board then moved on to Storyboarding. Luckily we were all on the same page and Morphic Graffiti were excited about my ideas. Here’s a few examples of the work that went into the storyboard. Everything from concept, lighting, shots and camera angles, narrative and reasoning behind it are outlined clearly for cast and crew.
The Concept
Jekyll struggles, a man possessed, plagued by the demonic voice and the impulses of his alter-ego. We look at his obsession for Lucy, driven by primal urges of lust and rage. He is beast like, no longer human. We reference the landmarks of the musical, his father’s watch, the telephone he uses to murder the Bishop and see him transform into Hyde. A predator. Ever present and lurking in the shadows unnoticed. I play on the fears we have today. The fear we carry when we walk home late at night. Hyde feeds on these fears. He leaves Lucy his calling card, a symbol of death that signifies he is not through with her yet, but her fate is still undetermined because our production has not yet started.
I scouted for locations in London that Hyde may possibly use to pray on his victims. Getting inside the mind of a killer like this I soon realised that no where was safe. We filmed Jekyll transformation into Hyde in a flat. A great shoot where I got to have lots of fun with fake blood and black out the windows with plastic bags. God knows what the neighbours thought was happening. I was lucky to get Leon Lopez ofBrown Boy Productions on camera and we managed to achieve all our locations in one day of filming. Joining us on the day was our Lucy played by Louise Olleywho was a pleasure to direct. Helping me and Leon with the final edit and creating our sound scape of demonic noises was Ben Walden. I hope you like it. Here’s the final product.
To read more about the behind the scenes making of Morphic Graffiti’sJekyll and Hyde visit their blog.
If you wanna look cool this summer take a tip out of music mogul and king of everything Josh Jones who is not only the editor of Le Cool Magazine, Sup Magazine, Stroke Face, Pavement Licker and Festival Annualbut he also has incredible fashion sense. Consider him your shining example! Now go away.
The Dalston Darlings W.Ihave embraced me back into their lacy vintage embroidered East London bosom to host an event for theLand of Kingsfestival in Dalston. A very uber-COOL festival, with amazing music and all in staggering distance from my house. Sweet. The Darlings have made me sign an ‘Official Secrets Contract’ to keep my big gob shut but knowing them you can guarantee that it include some amazing cream teas, plenty of freshly made cakes and cocktails to boot. Sounds pretty amazing already. Check out Land of Kings.
Happy smiley times as I confirm two more amazing festivals I’m going to be hosting and performing at this summer with the hairy funster’s Bearded Kitten. The first is my favorite highland fling Rockness and then it’s straight on to the sexy and sandy student festival Beach Break Live in Pembrey Country Park, South Wales. Rockness I will be hosting the Rockness Express from London to the festival as well as the games area once we’re there. Then I am off to build some mental assault course that will make freshers week feel like a nice relaxing week at Gran’s.
To find out more about Bearded Kitten, who the hell they are and what on earth they do just ask. But if you’re shy, you can visit their website instead.
Yes it was that magic time of year, a day when daffodils dance, when hot cross bunnies mate like rabbits and when we stand at the top of Primrose Hill and scream EGG!!!! untill we are yellow in the face. It was Lost & Found’s 7th year of Egg Roll and this year we really EGGhausted all the egg puns with our theme of Rock & Egg Roll. I was (as always) the funny guy on the megaphone organising and hosting all the EGGciting events on the day, this year dressed as EGGy Pop. I had my beautiful co- host EGGberta from NorwEGG and we whisked and separated our eggs for our games on the hill. First up was ‘The Best Dressed Egg’ compettion and this year our contestants took it to a new level so EGGtreme it gave me a nose bleed to look up at their efforts. Our winner was the Damien Hirst inspired ‘The physEGGl impossiblity of an omlette in the mind of a chicken’ which scambled many a hungover brain and and smashed the competition of the ‘EGGorist’, ‘EGGzepline’, ‘The EGGs-Factor’ and ‘Britain’s Got Lent’. It was all jugded fairly and each year we ask a random passer by to walk by and rate our EGGtempts. This year we were fortunate to find a man with a head shaped like an egg andstrangley he was called Ouef. Next it was time to roll starting with the little ones in the kids race which we affectionately call the ‘The Mini Egg’. Then it’s the chance for the adults to stampede down the hill, most of them dropping their eggs and with that ruining their chances of victory. We moved on to ‘The Three LEGGegged Spoon Race’ and this year we had a new record as some wallies attempted to do a four legged. They failed but did it with style. Last up was the incrEGGible battle bewteen Man vs EGG orRussian RoEGGlette. The idea is simple, boils some eggs and leave a few soft. Man then headbutts the egg to see weither he can destory it or if his hopes will be scrabbled and he will be left with Egg on his face. Many came, some conquerored but Egg had the final say. All that’s left for me to say is, “Who left the homeless guy incharge of the wet wipes”. No yoking about! For more news on Lost & Found and our silliness why not join the facebook groups. Pics by Jim Hanner.
So we did it. We threw an epic party of International proportions that took over 2,300 revelers ‘Around the World’ and finally crash landed in fun town. It took two full days to build, incorporated walk-about theatre performance, interactive games, a marching band, amazing DJ’s and was host to lots of very funny people that poured their heart and soul into creating this monster event. Bearded Kittentruly showed everyone why they are the UK Festival Awardwinners.
Myself and the BK production crew built an Airport backdrop in London’s Pulse Night Clubcomplete with Departure Lounge, Duty Free, Bureau de Change, Mile High Club, Security Check Points and Interrogation Room. I compèred the Lost Luggage Lounge with the comedy duo Robin and Partridgewhere we played all manner of holiday themed games and took over the main stage for some inflight entertainment that put a smile on even the most well discerning passenger. I was Bernice, a 65 year pre-op transexual that worked in the baggage claim because I was too ugly to get on a plane, but Bernice still had big dreams and hoped one day she would join the beautiful people in the Mile High. Bernice mostly caused havoc giving out pants as prizes and swapping them for people’s virginity.
Thanks to all that came down to play with us. It was mega. Keep your eye out for Bearded Kitten at UK music festivals this summer, who knows Bernice my be there as well.
Bearded Kitten Airways are now open for business and invite you to take off with them in a party of internationals proportions. See you in the Mile HIgh Club. Book tickets online.
my beautiful co- host EGGberta from NorwEGG and we whisked and separated our eggs for our games on the hill. First up was ‘The Best Dressed Egg’ compettion and this year our contestants took it to a new level so EGGtreme it gave me a nose bleed to look up at their efforts. Our winner was the Damien Hirst inspired ‘The physEGGl impossiblity of an omlette in the mind of a chicken’ which scambled many a hungover brain and and smashed the competition of the ‘EGGorist’, ‘EGGzepline’, ‘The EGGs-Factor’ and ‘Britain’s Got Lent’. It was all jugded fairly and each year we ask a random passer by to walk by
