week of work work of week

by the end of today i will have clocked up 74 hours in work in total. eek. that's like two work weeks in one week. no wonder i kept falling asleep after work. to be fair, most of it doesn't seem like work. chapter still feels like somewhere i go to hang out, although i do work hard i tend to think about it like i'm volunteering somewhere. i'd do a lot of this for free, but don't tell that to dark mavis...

the first "work" thing i did that was good fun was to usher for the turkish film THREE MONKEYS. it was the story of a rich politician who kills someone in a hit and run one dark night and convinces his chauffeur to take the blame for it, reasoning that he would be out in a year and would get a nice cash payout. the driver takes it and his wife and son get his wages for the time he is in prison. whilst there his son gets involved with some kids he shouldn't and his wife gets involved with someone she shouldn't: the rich businessman. it was a really great film, beautifully shot. it was claustrophobic and you could feel the heat coming off the camera, many shots were so tight on the actors that you could see the sweat drip from their skins and each dark folicle of facial hair. it was very atmospheric. it was part of the WALES ONE WORLD film festival we have at CHAPTER and every year we get a bunch of films that stick in my brain and never leave but don't get much publicity and small audiences because they're "foreign". i think things have changed quite a bit over the years but you still don't get enough people going to these films.

tuesday was a different story. tuesday was massively over-subscribed. EVERYMAN were putting on PEER GYNT and had a cast of thousands and an audience of about 6 people for every cast member wanting to see their sister / father / friend on stage and it sold out every night. everyman are an amateur company with huge ambitions. to put on peer gynt (a play that was written not to be performed but to be read) and keep it to the 3 1/4 hour length is a mammouth task and i think to a large extent they were successful. unfortunately the first night was a bit of a disaster because to peer #1 getting shitfaced prior to going on stage due to nerves. they had to rewrite dialogue and replace him after he intially left the stage in the first half hour. i, being naive, didn't realise he was drunk, i just thought he was a terrible actor. he was throwing himself around the stage and messing up the dialogue and just looked a mess. thankfully everyman has a team of good actors, a couple of which have clearly missed their calling to become lawyers and civil servants. i must admit that i didn't really enjoy it. i'd seen peer gynt when i was at school and completely hated it but since then had studied it and saw it as ibsen's most interesting play. however, i do HATE ibsen. maybe its better in norweigan? for me i think his plays are leaden and every staging i've seen of them has been unintentionally hilarious. i often quote the heavy handed "torvald, i've changed" bit from A DOLLS HOUSE and still think its a bit of a stretch that many people compare GHOSTS to HAMLET. at least shakespear was playful in his language. my friend mja was in the play and i enjoyed seeing her in it. it did feel like it was never going to end and a few of the oldies (it had a majority elderly audience) left in the interval.

wednesday "work" was watching CHE: PART 2. unfortunately i hadn't seen CHE: PART 1 and this felt like an extended battle scene. you could tell it was technically perfect; every character, however minor, was named; each location authentic. but i didn't feel it had much story to it. i did find out a little more about che guevara and thought benicio del toro was truly brilliant in it but it just didn't penetrate my brain very well. i think this is probably my fault for coming into the story mid-through, like complaining about a film when you've missed the first hour, it did make me want to see part one, i think there may be more talking and story in that one.

on thursday we saw DOUBT which was purely recreational. i went to catholic brownies (long story) and wanted to be a catholic for years. i loved the idea that if you did something wrong you could just go to confession, have some cool bread circles and jesus juice and it would go away. guilt gone! of course, its not that simple. the catholics are the guiltmeisters and tell you what to do all the time. my pre-teen OCD love of rituals would not make up for being guilty for being born. but hey, the movie was great. meryl streep was amazing, terrifying and unforgiving like nature and phillip seymore hoffman creepily charismatic. i loved the way that everything that was mentioned, even incidentally was concerned with doubt and faith: lessons about roosevelt's "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and believing in yourself and not gossips, it was stunning.

last night we went out for my friend casey's birthday drinks. in the end there were something ridiculous like 5 birthdays this week. an expensive week in cards! lovely rhodri had some birthday drinks with us as well, humble little chap didn't make a fuss of it and went somewhere quieter since it had got mad busy in chapter. casey got for his birthday a cross stitch of jesus from caroline, a weird bloody prosthetic hand from ewan and a card made from a sexually abused children's report from amy. i occasionally think me and casey have the same brain.

tonight there are a bunch of gigs and films and things but i just want to go home with my cat. i haven't got a plan today and i just want to cwtch with my cat and watch him playing. casey's film night is, again, on the list. cross fingers i don't fall asleep...