Mark's Blog

Recording from the recent SMA conference

2012-02-15T12:48:00.000Z

Poorly recorded on my iphone but here is the jolly musical interlude we were treated too at the first ever Stage Management Conference at the Arts Theatre , Sunday 12 February:
A SURPRISE MUSICAL INTERLUDE: especially crafted for stage managers by Ken Bennett-Hunter with apologies to Irving Berlin.
Performed by Beverley Klein with Steve Edis on keyboard

There"s No Management Like Stage Management (mp3)

I hear you need a website.....

2010-03-16T16:30:00.000Z

I've been asked a lot recentley to build websites for friends and collegues.

Being a great belieiver in keeping things simple, I have added a page to my website to explain what I can do , and how much it might cost. If you are interested click here for details.

Ommwriter - be calm dear typist

2009-11-27T00:34:00.002Z

I'm writing this in Ommwriter, one of a number of uncluttered work space writing applications that are out there. It's available right now to download as a free beta release. Normally I use WriteRoom, I like the simple old school black background and retro green lettering filling my screen with nothing else to distract me from just writing.

Ommwritter however goes a little further, and a lot more Zen. Moving the mouse reveals the menu and scroll "line" which is simply beautiful in it's spare elegance. I have the option to toggle playing ambient background noise over a gorgeous simple screen background. As I type I hear my key strokes playing back like soft rain drops, underscoring the very gentle trance music, that I can select from a few limited options, or choose to turn off entirely. Formatting options are very lean, a couple of fonts and sizes, there's no underscoring or flagging of my terrible spelling.......I'm just typing in a rather serene environment. Add a save button, and well, that's all there is.

I can either save as an Ommwriter file to come back to at a later time, or as a generic .txt file. I tend to cut and paste into Word to tidy up spelling before actually using, as with this blog entry.

I may be kidding myself, but I like writing in plain unfussy environments as it feels like all I'm doing is letting my mind be creative about what my fingers type on the screen. And, well, it just looks, and sounds so cool.

A great writing tool for chilled Mac (only) users who just want to "zero in", and productively /creatively write, without the bother or distraction of the usual screen real estate noise.

Lewes Arts Network

2009-11-04T14:14:00.000Z

I have had in mind for some time wanting to form a networking opportunity, comprising a loose grouping of Arts practitioners / representatives of Arts organisations from here in Lewes. I'm envisioning something analogous to the local business communities "First Friday" network events that happen at the Lamb and Flag. My working title for a similar event is the Lewes Arts Network.

I'm thinking of a fairly informal grouping, with an interest in live performance ( although not excluding, say visual arts), open to all, Pro.'s and Community. Initially I suspect it would at the very least be useful to put names to faces, set out our stall of current and future work, and try to avoid date clashes! I'm seeing this as a low key , inaugural meeting of a Lewes Arts Network, perhaps meeting a few times a year, as a networking opportunity, perhaps with ongoing email contact, or even a blog, for issues of shared concern.

I imagine this developing into informal discussions such as the lack of town box office, ticketing, creating and retaining audiences, funding, resource sharing etc. Long term, dear to many of us, is the idea of a theatre/arts centre type space for the town.....surely worthy of some considered thought by those with an interest in these things!

With this in mind, I have gone ahead and booked the Lewes Arms upstairs between 1900 - 2100 on Wednesday 25th November, and am in the process of sending out invites to possible interested parties.

I've put a (non exhaustive) list of invitees together, and am endeavoring to find named individuals to personally write to and invite. My list includes:

The Paddock
Lewes Live Lit
Lewes Little Theatre
Artimis Arts
Colleagues Planning a street event in Lewes 2011
Lewes Operatic Society
Lewes Community Theatre
East Sussex Arts partnership
All Saints Centre
Sussex Downs Performing Arts
Synergy Theatre
Zu gallery / parties
The Con Club
plus other including actor / producer friends

If you would like to come along, do drop me an email.

At worst a few of us have an excuse to go to a jolly nice pub for a couple of hours and have a catch up!

Airset; it's Free!

2009-02-10T20:46:00.001Z

Building “fast and dirty” web publishing solutions has been exercising me of late. At the Paddock we invested in a lovely website; looks good, shows off who we are and what we have done, (www.paddockproductions.org.uk). It is professionally produced and maintained by a great local web designer, external to our company. I guess this is a common set up for many small firms.

We do a lot of work with emphasis on community projects & one-off participatory events. When we embark on a new project or event, we have a real need to have an online presence that is a fast, direct and convenient tool for us to relay and share information with potential audience & project participants. Aside from the cost of paying our web-mistress to keep content updated, I’m continually frustrated with the inevitable time delay of sending copy and images to update our site.

The time lag really bothers me.

In the fast moving environment of theatre or events, an ability to update and publish changing content quickly is important.

I decided I wanted to create project "micro-sites". assessable from our main web presence, but acting as a hub for our immediate project needs. Once the project has finished all the "good stuff" we upload to the micro-site will get re-edited and re-formatted into our main site. The main site becomes our permanent glossy archive / “brochure”, with sign posts to our “dynamic” ( I hope!) project pages.

I could have just used iWeb on my mac, or RapidWeaver that I use for my personal site. Crucially however I want a solution that puts the application "in the cloud" so that my colleagues can also update and upload new information as and when the need arises at a time and place that suits them, usieng software not located on any one machine.

I considered, and have used in the past, google sites. I find them OK as far as they go, but I don't much like the pre-packaged templates. I read loads of press about CMS options ( that I don't really understand!), and found I don't have the patience, or the desire to learn a whole new package like Wordpress, joomla, tumblr etc.

I've been using Airset primarily as a calendar app to run my life for some time now. The recent redesign came at a time that I was mulling over my web based options, and I have spent the last few weeks seeing if I can make the Web Publish application that is part of this incredible online suite of tools fit my needs.

So far, so good. Thats not to say I haven't had problems and issues, but, praise where praise is due, the Aiset team have quickly been answering my questions and giving real customer support.....another deciding factor for me. Whilst I might grumble about "counter intuitive design" and too much clicking to achieve "simple" things, I think it outstanding that a non-techie person like me can actually do so much within Airset.....and all for free!

In summary, a combination of no cost, immediate editing, multiple editors, and superlative customer support have made Airset Web Publish a really good choice for me.

I hope this little bit of feedback helps others in coming to grips with the minefield of web publishing options.

A new pay deal for the West End?

2008-10-14T23:07:00.000+01:00

It has been some years since I last worked in the West End, but I still cant help feeling angry that the Sunday opening proposition has reared its ugly head again. My reading online and in the press suggests that there appears to be no mood or appetite to fight against this deal. Are we so easily bought that with the lure of increased cash we will give away important and hard won working practices?

Lets not sleepwalk into this terrible deal for the sake of and "easy" pay rise.

A little test

2008-10-13T21:28:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to blog more often, with hopefully slightly more depth and insight than my oh so occasional twitter posts, Im trying to mirror my blog between my site at www.shayley.dircon.co.uk and my markshayle.blogspot.com account.

Ill either fry my website, or be able to blog from my phone.....here goes

How long since the last Blog entry...??

2008-05-28T22:45:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, all a bit embarrassing, my last posting was after "Mirandolina" finished , LAST YEAR!.

Since then Christmas came and went, followed by being out on tour as Company Stage Manager for TEG ltd's "Blonde Bombshells of 1943", a great show, with another great bunch of folks. Those of you reading this on my Facebook profile, will no doubt have seen the photos from some of the more comedy nights out. Another great gig. Highlights for me were the weekly re-lights, something I haven't had a chance to do a lot of over the years, and touring in a 1984 Renault Traffic Camper van (called Reggie!).

No sooner of tour, than Production Manager for Dan Colmans Ltd production of Milkshake! LIve

Back off Tour

2007-11-20T20:37:00.000Z

Back off tour, and back in the office. Mirandolina was great fun, what a lovely company, and top small scale tour.

Back in the Paddock office lots of planning and churning over ideas for the future........

We are planning a bit of a Xmas Bash, which should be great fun, and may even raise some money for us to pay the bills!

Meanwhile my phone has been ringing off the hook with lots of work offers and availbilty checks, mostley for gigs in the New Year. Off to London tommorrow , so hopefully may lock one ( or two ) of these gigs into place!

Recovered!

2007-09-06T00:51:00.000+01:00

Well , it all seems like something of a blur now, but finally, I did my last bit of Finnish Prisoner related work and got my tools out of the venue last week!

The show DVD's pretty much sold out within 48 hours of going onto Ebay, and the photos on Flickr have been widely browsed but seemingly no-one wanted to donate any cash to us for downloads!

Had a great August with the family, went to Crete, camping and a long weekend in Butlins with my daughter ( no really, it was fun!)

Back in the saddle with my Stage Manager / Production Manager hats on for Mirandolina and having a great time.

Ola Madrid!

2007-01-17T08:54:00.000Z

In case any of you from the Madrid Course are reading this, I will try to post my seminar notes on the downloads page at some point over the weekend.

I had a great time with you all, hope it was a useful session for you, and you are haveing/have had another great time with Sarah!

Best

Shayley

Calendars and organisational stuff.

2006-11-21T21:41:00.000Z

I have taken down the calendar pages, pending a re-think on how I want to publish my diary information.

Having become addicted to the Trumba.com site they decided to make it a pay service, so I have withdrawn my custom! I am now in the process of looking for a suitable alternative and playing around with embedding my dates here on the site.

I have discovered the fantastic Remember the Milk site however. If like me you like you to do lists on line this site is a really good way of keeping it in one place and has a great interface for mobiles. And of course there is the ever reliable Backpack for lists and project planning.

CAD drawings

2006-09-05T09:50:00.000+01:00

My summer wasn't all camping and gin and tonic's; I took the opportunity of some down time to reacquaint my self with CAD drafting, something I really enjoy and have simply got out of the habbit of doing.

As a long time Macintosh computer user AutoCad isn't an option, (even if it was, its a very expensive application). My programme of choice is TurboCAD . If you need one off plans produced drop me a line, drawings can be produced in either paper or electronic versions from your sketches or I can survey / design for you.

Back To Work

2006-09-05T09:23:00.000+01:00

Well long summer holiday over, gearing up for work again with a bang. Splitting my time between:

1/ ongoing Paddock projects including planning a tour of our very successful Elsie Piddock production for next year, planning our move into new office and rehearsal space, and thinking about medium to long term projects like an opera, and Something to Dance About 2 (Return of the Hoofers!).

2/ Working with the very lovely folk at Dodgy Totty in Brighton on their current project Open for Business part of the Brighton & Hove Arts Commission’s making a difference initiative funded with lottery money from the Millennium Commission and Arts Council England through the Urban Cultural Programme

3/ Some occasional teaching and production supervisor work

Ive added a BackPack Link

2006-07-12T22:17:00.000+01:00

BackPack , I just love it! Click the badge in the sidebar of my intro page to find out more. Along with trumba it a great organisational tool, especially for collaborating on shows and projects.

If you decide to join please consider doing so by clicking through my intro page , or here as this earns me some cash towards my monthly subscription!

Calendar Page now added

2006-07-09T10:24:00.000+01:00

Ive now added my availability diary to the site using a combination of my iCal application on my Mac, iCalPublish a very good way to get your calendars out there, and the excellent trumba site.

Do let me know if it all works, and any comments pro or con would be welcome

New Website

2006-07-07T13:46:00.000+01:00

Thanks for taking the time to have a look around my little web site. Built with my own fair hand in a few hours using the marvellous RapidWeaver 3.5 software from Realmac software . I haven't had a web presence for years and this software made the process as straight forward as typing a letter.

Ill hopefully add more photos and a my availability calendar in the near future. Im also planning on adapting my old lecture notes as a free resource for any would be stage managers out there.

Please feel free to comment with ideas and thoughts on how best to develop my little portion of the Interfret