MOOLAH (It's French for Mill)

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

 

 

 So we all had a week off to take stock. Item: one work of genius, our new home, this, "The Machine", with carpeting, crawl-space, trap-doors, glass floors and lots and lots of banging. Item: another work of genius, "Money" by Emil Zola, documenting the Paris Bourse Crash of 1882, and settled on as a starting point for Shunt's new show all the way back in June 2008, before any of those little caveats gabbled softly in the closing seconds of a commercial came to pass and it all went down as well as up. Item: one beekeeper's costume, three black hats. Item: "frenetic activity", presumably to be specified at a later date and possibly involving potted plants but ultimately, I mean, who knows... Now our first two paying audiences, having paid and auded, are nursing their din-weakened teeth and the promise of a free ticket to another night, a night when we'll have the show that "MONEY" should be ready, for we are not without honour, while the neat reprieve granted the Lounge - which was to have disbanded this month to make way for the priests and planners of Twinky's Mighty Teepee but will now be staying open 'til September, hah! - means we're not without money either. So it's back to the whatever-this-is-we're-doing board and the plan I think now is - Well actually, I'm not sure how confidential this is supposed to be... I mean as long as nobody knows when you're going to open you never really have to. And although an indefinitely extended rehearsal period may sound a bit like hell, like actual Hell, like where you go when you die and you've been Hitler, a) that's Shunt, and b) the good thing is we all have this at least in common: What We Hate - and I think we pretty much all of us hated what was performed last week. (When my trousers unexpectedly fell down on the first night - not down, apart, they'd been torn in half during some wrestling - I was actually relieved, I stood there relieved, because this at least was SOMETHING not to react to, as opposed to all of that NOTHING we'd been meant to be reacting to either side of it). 

 So it isn't quite finished yet, no. But as I may have to explain to a few producers expecting sketches later in the week, say, deadlines are very well in their way BUT the best monsters are those born of eggs, yeah? And sometimes an artist will, you know, just have to sit on that egg until it hatches, and but no because it's a monster, you know, and who *knows* when they're going to hatch? (Then comedy producers, you go - That's a very good point, S Le P, we'd better leave you to finish whatever it is you're doing on f*c*b**k, oh and thanks for that alien-abduction-mentally-blanking-anal-rape sketch with the xylopnone song in it by the way, we'll get word to the Mail, don't you worry, no don't get up, don't move an inch). Bloody hell, sketches. I'd better run a bath. Here's another machine:

 

   

 Nice noises. There's more here. Oh, so what's the new plan? Well, finally, thankfully, do everything we can to make the audience the protagonist, Zola Karaoke. Throw everything out. Don't throw everything out. Wait until it's finished. Stick the tycoons in the hold and the orphans in the gallery. And turn it down. Monstah!