Just a reminder for those in Brisbane that the Redemption 101 Movie Premiere is on tonight, 6:30pm at the Schonell Theatre, Union Rd. University of Queensland, St Lucia. It’s a light hearted, quirky, full-length science fiction film made by a local studio. Party with the, er, stars, afterwards and best of all, have something to poke fun at me with.

And for those who aren’t in Brisbane and can’t make it, check out the trailer below and buy a DVD from the website.

For those who are interested in science fiction, particularly the home-brew, long-tail kind, you probably want to check out the premiere of Redemption 101. It’s an added bonus if you are looking for an opportunity to poke fun at me – I feature as Klang the less than brilliant Aldaran pilot.

The premiere will be at the Schonell Theatre, St Lucia on March 24th. Drinks in the foyer start at 6:30 with the red carpet parade at 7pm. Tickets are $14 ($7 concession) and you can order them online from the Redemption 101 website (contact details for offline orders are there too). You can also preorder your copy of the DVD which will be released at the premiere. 

It’s been quiet around here of late because I’ve spent pretty much all my spare time at rehearsals for a new play debuting in Brisbane titled The Last Of The Red Hot Irish Lovers which is probably best described as a light hearted drama.  I’ve been put in charge of the technical side of the show – mostly focussing on sound.  If you’re near Brisbane I strongly recommend you go see it, the opening night was tonight and there are shows Friday and Saturday from 7:30 and Sunday from 2pm as well as Thursday, Friday and Saturday of next week from 7:30.  All at the MetroArts building in Adelaide street.  Tickets are available at the door or bookings can be made by contacting me (contact details are in the sidebar).  I think it’s about $15 a ticket or $10 concession.   If you need further info give me a yell.

Angel Studios is starting to plan a round of screen tests for the people interested in being a part of our films and stage productions. We’d essentially like a database of actors we can flick through and find a list of people who might be suitable for a given role. We also need to do a bunch of auditions for our upcoming short film which is just starting production. There are a few people I want to get back in touch with to particularly invite along to do a screen test but we need to sort out exactly how we want to do it yet. Even so, if anyone’s interested in getting involved in film or stage productions, no experience is necessary, give me a yell (adrian at intencha dot com) and I’ll let you know when we’re actually ready to start doing some. It’s a lot of fun.

Wow, what a fantastic day. MarchFest was yesterday and for those who didn’t make it, you missed a sensational day. While there’s always a few things that go wrong when you put on a big production like MarchFest is, things went exceptionally smoothly and all the reports coming back have been really positive. It was particularly good to see the number of people who offered to help out and did so with such talent and energy. We even had a few people email us completely out of the blue offering to help out. Anyway, I’m going to bed as I haven’t had much sleep this weekend and I spent most of my waking time either lugging around heavy staging, PA systems or lighting or running madly between the two venues to make sure that the next band at each venue got set up quickly with all the sound stuff they need. The life of a stage manager and sound engineer in one is never easy. Good fun though. Hopefully now I’ll have some more time to do some recording with Soul Purpose and finish writing my musical.

I haven’t had a lot of time to continue writing my musical but none the less it is progressing. I’m pretty happy with the first act now and have a plan set out for the second. I’m a little concerned that it might be a bit depressing though. It can be tough to confront issues like adoption, abuse, homelessness and alcoholism without becoming very depressing. At the same time it’s important not to gloss over the issues or the whole musical just becomes too surreal or worse, becomes a Disney movie…. It’s interesting to see a distinct style developing in my writing as well with a number of recurring techniques being used, mostly subconsciously, through the musical. I’m particularly pleased to see that these techniques aren’t just a copy of things I’ve seen elsewhere – they’re actually fairly unique concepts, if not in themselves, in the way they are used. Still, the greatest challenge for me will be weeding out all the really cheesy lines that seemed like a good idea at the time but just don’t work when actually spoken by the character. That task is yet to come. Anyway, back to the MarchFest website, the program went up this evening.

Things are rocking along with MarchFest 2004 though it, combined with product releases at work, have been keeping me extremely busy. On the plus side the performer list is now up at the MarchFest website. Information on the fashion parade and art gallery to come soon hopefully. Don’t forget to mark your diaries to attend on the 20th!

I mentioned earlier that MarchFest was coming up. The website has now gone live. If you’re in Brisbane on the 20th of March why not drop by and check out some of Brisbane’s finest local talent?

At last, a simple to use playwright tool! Not at all documented admittedly and looking very incomplete but it seems to work okay. Plywood is a python script that works with latex to format a simple text file and turn it into a PDF laid out according to the Samuel French style. It’s horribly incomplete but it’s a great idea and it seems to work. It also includes emacs bindings to make it even easier, but I’m using SubEthaEdit for now and I already know vi so learning emacs seems like to much work now. An example script would be something like: title: Example Script author: Adrian Sutton characters: Adrian Sutton (AJ) – A very excited new user of plywood. newact: setting: AJ’s office. AJ – [jumping up from his computer] Woooooooo! I found a playwright tool that’s not ridiculously complex. (AJ jumps up and down in excitement then runs off to find a beer to celebrate.) The actual package contains an example that’s even worse than that….

Preparations for this year’s MarchFest are moving into full swing. MarchFest is a festival of music, art and and entertainment held every year at Kangaroo Point Uniting Church. We usually get a pretty sensational turnout of local Brisbane talent from a wide range of musical tastes, ranging from choirs and pipe organists during the afternoon in the church, to jazz, blues and rock and roll on the main stage and rocking on into night with punk, rock and alternative. So mark those calendars early, it’s always a good day. In the meantime, I’d better get to finishing the website for this year…

This year I plan to write and produce a musical stage production. I’ve already got an excellent choreographer and an award winning composer so things are starting to fall into place. I’d really love to find a talented director and they are so central to tying everything together and it’s really not my field. Soul Purpose will probably form the basis for the band, but we’ll most likely acquire a few extra players to fill out the sound a bit and particularly to provide some more orchestral instruments to produce that great theatre sound – not to mention making things easier for the vocalists. In terms of a story, I’ve got a few ideas floating around my head at the moment, and have just gone out and bought a little notepad I plan to carry everywhere to note down any ideas that pop into my head. Lately there seems to be a lot of ideas running through my head which is good to have back. About 10 years ago I used to constantly have ideas for computer programs to write running through my head but that died out and I’ve been idealess for quite some time. Now the ideas are back but this time targeted towards performing arts which is a little surprising since it’s typically been my sisters that have been the writers of the family. I seem to be doing okay at it myself though – the Mafia murder mystery dinner I wrote a few months back went really well and that involved writing about 30 000 words of character descriptions for the 50 people that showed up (a sell out btw). Anyway, things are in the early planning stages at the moment but it looks like we may do a small production, possibly a cabaret style thing, late April or early June and then swing into a full musical production in the second half of the year (by then the script should be finished). So if you’re in or around Brisbane Australia and want to get involved with any phase of a musical production, from writing the script, to building sets, directing, producing, cast, crew and right through to marketing drop me a line. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about these developments a fair bit as the year progresses.