Dublin Theatre Festival

So, being third in a three-woman team, I didn't draw the lucky straw to Edinburgh this year. That said, if I were to go, with, say, The Bearded One, I'd rather it not be during the festival so that we might enjoy the city, or alternately, that I not be at the festival for work. Demanding, I know, but that's what publicity gals are like - or so I'm told.

Besides, it's the Dublin Theatre Festival that really gets me going, as it always somehow manages to up the ante. Dublin is an amazing city for theatre, it's true, but things tend to get a bit pallsy and nepotistic, with the same pairings of actors/directors or actors/playwrights cropping up again and again. Either that, or as happened to me in my last two years of university, absolutely everything I saw was laughably bad. Every single one. It was thespian death out there, folks, but since, the pendulum has swung back to the kind of theatre we're all comfortably used to, and some we're not. The festival is a bit of fresh air, and the rest of the year seems to draw a lot of energy from it.

So, Thursday will see me at an Irish adaptation of Festen, reviewed there for the West End production. No doubt the ever-present theme of abuse will hit the reviews, which like the constant insistence on all things Catholic gets trying, particularly when you're living in England, but I'm intrigued as to how the Dublin production will rework a Danish country kitchen drama.

And, if I can get the blasted website to accept my plastic, I'll fly solo to a matinee -a parkbench first- to see the topical production of The Exonerated. Always one for a gimmick, I'm only dying to see who shows up as a guest. Unsurprisingly, given the topic, Susan Sarandon was strutting her stuff in the New York show. On the downside, it's in (though it pains me to link to anything so hideous) here we go, it's Liberty Hall.

Reviews to follow.

Freelance aspirations

So in a recent e-ponder at my understandably none-too-impressed mother, I wondered exactly how much freelance reviewing and writing one would have to get before giving up the day job. This is, of course, a very naive train of thought, but Hell, that's what blogs are for.

I have found that freelancers spend so much time having to promote themselves and their abilities that they become unreliable narrators of how they spend their time, or alternately, they've been doing it for so long that they started in a time when things were very different. I would love to know more about the harsh realities of freelance features journalism and how one makes the leap. If you've already got a national broadsheet and a few major literary outlets under your belt, what's next? How do you up the ante from £40 or £60 pieces without ending up making coffee in a newsroom somewhere? Need it necessarily be a one-way ticket to the poorhouse and 60-hour weeks alone on your laptop? Will you always be faced with people asking if you never wanted a 'real career'? Will you cease to care? Ponder ponder.

Submitting to Peer Pressure

So, despite a groaning piles of Books I Should Be Reading Because I'm Paid to Do So, I went into the singularly unfriendly Camden Waterstone's to remind myself why indies are best and to buy Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons. *will master accents and italics shortly, joy* Have a look at the master's own website, a bit cutesy but impressive nonetheless.

It's just breathtaking. The book that is, not his website. The short story is, as they say, your only man.

Much to my immense annoyance, I missed the William Trevor reading at the short story festival this weekend through a truly lame combination of fatigue, lack of funds and the lure of the Brick Lane Beigel Shop. That, and fear of meeting work folk I don't know well enough yet, but should.

So on a completely unrelated note, I'm compiling a Christmas list, one which includes precious few books (see above) but rather a list of passwords to the likes of the LRB, the New Yorker and a few other tools of the trade I would really rather like but, unsurprisingly, find that I cannot afford. I should probably do something bright like do alternate weeks of different mags with a £5 budget. That's a thought.

The Fish is Ill

I failed to point out earlier that my fish is ill. Fish are by no means equal to cats in terms of company, but one gets attached... am displeased.
(o} }} ><|

Greetings, Blogland

Being a thoroughly 21st-century gal these days, I thought that the time had come to start a blog. It will be, and hopefully remain, a fairly anonymous effort. My aim is to meet and greet some of the likeminded books bloggers, writers and critics whose work I've come across in the last year.

I make no promises to be regular in my posts, sociable in my nature, nor positive in my outlook, but I will try to keep it interesting and topical and include some photos of mine and others I like. Stealing images and words isn't nice, so try to avoid it, and I'll plan to do the same.