The best thing about acting is acting.


All the other stuff that comes with it is just stuff that comes with it. The auditions the waiting for your agent to call the fancy costumes the opening night partys the reviews the fame and fortune

The vast majority of us live out dull, uninteresting lives. We wake, we go to work, we come home, we go to bed. We get mildly frustrated, mildly anger, we laugh a little, we cry maybe every so often. It's all a bit grey, a bit dull.

But when you're acting, you get to live out crazy emotions that you don't encounter every day. You can SHOUT you can rage you can cry the tears of love, of heart break
you can laugh, slap each other on the back etc etc etc you get the picture....

Art is a metaphor for life. We see an entire life in compressed form on stage or on film, on TV. We see the high points.

Our real life is not like that. Is it?




But it can be......







When you're acting, you're outside your comfort zone, you're living outside the box.





Why shouldn't our lives be like that for real??







Why should we accept that life has to be a list of doing things because we have to do them?





Next time you're on a train, try starting a conversation with a stranger.





Hard isn't it.

We put up so many walls in the city. Not around buildings but around ourselves.

Maybe don't start a conversation with a stranger, but offer someone a seat, pick up some litter, hold the door for a lady with a buggy, buy a tramp some food and have a conversation with him.

When we give a little love, it kind of breaks down the walls doesn't it.

And we're living outside the box. It feels exhilarating. It breaks the cycle of monotony.





www.nightstop-uk.org





This is a charity that works around giving up a spare room in your house for a homeless teenager (actually 16-25) for one night at a time. I've just finished making a short film for them. They work on the kindness of strangers towards thos in need.


These kids in need will have been assessed by an agency for a possible threat and have been pronounced clean. They are not addicts, they are not criminals. They are simply kids who cannot stay at home, either been kicked out by their parents or are suffering from abuse. Nightstop link them up with a host house for one night at a time, so they don't become properly homeless, beggers, lost.

Do you have a spare room in your house.

Maybe not. I don't. I'm not in that situation yet.

But I might have soon.

Some people have big houses with lots of spare rooms.

Some people have more than one house.

Some people have many houses that they don't even have time to live in most of the time.

And the Nightstop in my borough. MY BOROUGH with 200,000 places of residence can only find 4. Only 4 houses that have someone prepared to live outside the box. To provide a room for a young person in need.

There's something just not right about this isn't there.





Next time you're bored at work. Bored of travel. Bored of the pub. Bored of the shedule on TV. Bored of your friends. Bored of the bills. Bored of yourself.

Do something outside the box.



Give a little love.




You'll be amazed at what you get back.




ps thanks for your messages. I do listen you know.

Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. The end of the year is upon us!

Eeek Thank you for your comments and messages, it’s good to start little ripples on the water. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to write about.



Anyone watch any of the latest round of celeb or wanna be celeb talent shows in the autumn? Seemed to be quite a lot on weren’t there? Christmas was packed with celebrity talent shows as well. Interesting......

I walk into W H Smiths now and see three whole rows now filled with gossip mags called 'entertainment', and other sections filled with the same stuff differently packaged called 'lifestyle'. Then you’ve got a massive section on 'movies' filled with pictures of other stars, then the'music' section as well packed with interviews and more gossip.

Half the shop. Gossip about celebrities.

Haven’t we made real progress since the dark ages.

Think of all the people making money off your lust for gossip.

Why do we keep buying the mags?

Because we worship celebrity.





Just take a breath, I’m being realistic. We live in a culture that Worships celebrity. It’s a fact. The show title says it all. Pop Idol. We give Idolic status to these Celebs. We queue up to see them in person, we scream if they look our way, we treasure items they have signed, we talk about them and the way they live their lives. They are our Idols.




I was at a mates party a few weeks back and met an editor for one of the pound-a-week gossip mags. The really tacky ones. Anyway, she spent a while justifying how this mag was different from the other mags, it wasn’t just about gossip, it filled a particular niche or something.

Yeah right.



Then she asked me what would I like to see in a gossip mag. What would I like to read about?

I said “I’d really like to see some Celebs doing something good for a change. A celeb being offered £5 million for a film and giving the lot to a charity. Not a bit to relieve their tax breaks, but all of it. They’re too rich anyway. Then I could look up to them then maybe I could call them an idol.


She shook her head. Wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t sell.

A few celebs really have some social conscience. Brad and Angelina have got the idea. Sean Penn does his best.

But the truth is, we feel uncomfortable with celebs behaving honestly don’t we. It’s too much, a celeb with all that money and power, being a nice person as well. We can’t handle it. It’s better to pick at them, make fun of them for being eco-warriors, critise their motives. At the end of the day, they still have to pander to the forces that made them famous in the first place.



We don’t want to read about people doing good things. We don't buy it.

Let me tell you a true story, for free.

14 years ago some ladies working in the East End of London came into contact with some prostitutes working in the district.

The East End is the unofficial red light district of the city, where rich city boys come after work to cheat on their wives or seek some warmth from the cold world they wrap themselves in......

.......The prostitutes or ‘working girls’ are pretty much all victims of their circumstances of life. Most have been abused as children, most also turn to prostitution to fund drug habits. Many have mental disorders. They know little of simple pleasures or family love that most of us are fortunate enough to have.......

.....And this group of ladies felt sorry for these girls. But they also felt touched in their hearts to want to do something about it. They began just meeting the girls on the street of an evening, and praying for them, and with them, and taking them sandwitches. They suffered hassle themselves, and learned to stay clear of the pimps. Gradually they got funding, they got an office, they had many more volunteers and next year they will make over 400 appointments with the girls at the office, will find housing for up to 20. Will make several hundred accompanied appointments with them to social services. Take 50 or more on excursions and do many more things which treat them as human beings and not sex objects. See www.doorofhope.org.uk for more information on what they do.


I’ve been working with Door of Hope for a year now, and the lady who runs it at the moment, Suzie Artus, is one of the most inspiring people I know. She works such long hours, suffers disappointment after disappointment every week, yet truly loves what she does, and is always positive. If anyone deserves to be famous, it is her. I could put her up there on a pedestal and say, yes, she really deserves to be someone’s idol. She truly is an idol.


In September, a group of ladies from Door of Hope, including 8 working girls, came and saw Wicked, courtesy of the producers (thank you Michael McCabe).

None of the girls had ever been to the Theatre before.

I wish. I WISH that you could have seen the look in their eyes when I took them on to the stage and looked out at the auditorium.

It’s the proudest moment I have had in this job, and probably will have.

Happy Christmas, and a happy new year.

Bless you, and may you find the strength to do what's right in the new year.

I came across this website by accident, when I was surfing the crest of a bonza of a wave on the ocean of the world wide web. www.onepercentfortheplanet.org

Sorry, but I write some really stupid stuff sometimes.....

Surfing the Web

As if the internet has anything, sorry ANYTHING to do with water, in fact, anything natural about it.

Did you know that some people have bigger online personalities than they have in real life!!!!

Are you envious of them

Anyway, back to the point. One percent for the planet. What a great idea! No matter who you are, what business you are, you give one percent away to environmental causes. It’s just so right, I don’t even need to explain it. It’s just right. It’s good. It’s human.

Because there’s a part of us that cares. When we watch ‘The Blue Planet’, when we escape to the country. When we feed our cat/dog/budgie/hampster/snake. When we hear a robin sing in the morning.

We came from nature.

But we were unique. We were given thought/speech/choice.

Particularly Choice. That’s particularly human. That’s what separates us from animals. We are not at the mercy of our instincts.



Some friends of mine have just had a child. A beautiful boy. I say ‘just’ it’s actually been a year, he’s just turned one.

He’s a great kid, and his parents are great. Two of the greatest people I know. So he’s got loads of presents of course.

Too many presents.

What does a child of one do with presents

So his parents are having him choose one present to give away

SO HIS PARENTS ARE HAVING HIM CHOOSE ONE PRESENT TO GIVE AWAY

To someone who needs it.

Maybe a child with no parents, maybe a child in poverty. Maybe a child of a friend's parents. It will vary, but you can be sure of one thing.........

That kid will give away one of his presents every year for the rest of his childhood.


I don’t know about you, but I envy that kid. He’s got parents that really love him, and really care about the kind of person he grows up to be.

So please, please, please. Our planet needs us.

Give to our planet. Re-cycle, switch lights off, support companies that try to be green just start doing all the things you’ve been saying you’ll do for all that time.

But do it because you care. Because you love the planet.

Because that’s another thing that separates us from animals.

Love

So, they're bringing back RENT to the west end after four years

When I write RENT I use capital letters to show how much the show means to me.

You see, I was in it, back in 2003. It was my second job and it was a west end lead.

But even before that, back in 2000, when I was backpacking in Australia, thinking about applying to become an actor, I was listening to RENT on CD (remember them) and I heard something that I just connected with. Something for my generation. Something real. Something raw. Something that had heart, despite its obvious flaws.

So, yeah, you could call me a RENThead even though I never slept on the streets to get tickets for it.

And now it's being directed by someone connected with Kylie, and they're cutting songs and re-staging and SETTING IT IN MANCHESTER EVEN THOUGH IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT THE NEW YORK RENT RIOTS OF THE 80's and stuff.

Ooops!



Now, I understand that already, before it's even opened, a lot of people in the theatrical community are getting very angry that SOMEONE IS TAMPERING WITH THEIR SHOW

I have every right to be one of those people.

You see, Jonathan Larson (who wrote the show, book-music-lyrics) died before the show was properly finished. And I mean finished in the polished sense of the word, like when you see a Broadway show and it's just so perfect all loose ends are tied up and you've got your moneys worth.

So the peice was still full of flaws. But like anything you truely love, you love the flaws more than the good bits after a time, so the peice grew and grew and has run on Broadway for ten years.

So the fans, who brought it from a tiny little off off broadway musical theatre workshop space to a stinking massive commercial great big BROADWAY theatre, feel that they in someway OWN the show.

Jonathan Larson's family, who have tried to look after the show as best they can since their sons death, could also be said to OWN the show.

Can we OWN a peice of art

A few months ago. I was asked by a friend of mine to do a musical theatre workshop at a drop-in centre. A place where the homeless, the addicts, the freaks, the unwanted come to seek refuge and drink soup.

I sat and had a meal with them before the session. Many were uncommunicative. In a world of their own troubles. Beaten down by society. Grateful for a decent meal but ashamed to have to be given it.

Then I taught them 'Seasons of Love' from, yes, RENT and got them to act it out to each other.

IN ONE HOUR, 40 year old skin heads nutters who had barely said two words to one another the whole evening were on their feet hugging, holding hands, looking into each others eyes and singing...

REMEMBER THE LOVE
REMEMBER THE LOVE
MEASURE IN LOVE
SEASONS OF LOVE
SEASONS OF LOVE


And I thought. Jonathan Larson died ten years ago. And his music is inspiring hope and love in these people who believe they have none.

I hope he would be proud.

I HOPE he would be proud.

And I realised, he didn't own his own work anymore now than before he died. He didn't write it to own it. To fix it. To lock it away like a miser. He, like any artist, RENT's his art. Nothing is fixed.

So, let them set RENT in Manchester. Let them sing Seasons of Love (I'm sure they wouldn't dare cut that one) and the energy Jonathan Larson put into the show will spill out into another generation.

And we may laugh at the Northern accents.

And we may say it doesn't work.

But some kid, someone who's never heard a musical theatre song in his life before will hear that show.

And think yes. This is it. This speaks to me. THIS HAS HEART.

And who knows what they will do



x

My girlfriend said I should write more about acting and writing in these blogs, not just about giving to Charity.

Ok, so last year, I had the best acting job of my career.

It was a season at Leicester Haymarket, doing a Brecht play, The Good Woman of Setzuan back to back with Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.

Now, Sondheim ain’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I think he’s the bee’s nuts. I really think we are privileged to be living at the same time as such a genius of musical theatre. When you see a Sondheim show, you are subjected to a total theatrical experience, which can profoundly move you. His shows can be hysterical, exciting and touching all at once, fulfilling both your intellectual and emotional sides if you’re a total geek like me.

I also love working in Rep, because, although they want to sell tickets, the theatres are government subsidised so there isn’t this commercial pressure that you get in the West End. There are fewer celebrities, and you also get to know the admin staff and stage management much better than in the west end.

On top of all that, I had great parts in both productions and got to work with some FAB actors. Junix Inocian won the TMA award for best actor in a musical for Pacific, and I also got to play opposite one of my old mates from uni Rob (now Hadley) Fraser. In 1998, we went head to head in Jesus Christ Superstar, then went to Edinburgh doing another Sondheim show, Assassins, so it was great and very funny to be suddenly all grown up doing professional acting together, we still both think we’re more like a pair of muppets.

I’d worked with the director, Paul Kerryson, on numerous occasions and he’s one of the biggest Sondheim fans in the county, he was doing Sondheim when no one else was back in the 80’s. So to work again with him when he was doing his favourite stuff was amazing as well.

I’ve done jobs with bigger profiles, bigger budgets. I’ve been on the posters. I’ve done jobs where I’m carrying the show, (it's all about me me me). I’ve done jobs which were much better paid. I’ve done jobs which got better reviews, both for me and for the productions; But that rep season in Leicester was my favourite. Living out crazy emotions on stage through acting, movement and song. When the work's good, being an actor really is the best job in the world.

Ooh, and someone emailed me to say after reading my last blog, they’re now sponsoring a child with Plan International. The internet rocks!!!



x

So, I've been sponsoring a child in Kenya for the last couple of years; her name is Jackline, she's 12

To sponsor her costs me £15 a month with Plan International (see the 'Single Garment' page), and this money goes to help her community, rather than to her direct, so the money is better spent.

To me, £15 a month is very little. That's 50p a day.

Indeed, if that was all I gave to Charity, I would be embarrassed to even write it.

I write this because, in 2000, one third 33% of the British public gave no money to charity at all.

I don't know what the current figure is, but I hope it's more.

Giving money away is easy, you can set up a direct debit or a standing order and you NEVER KNOW it's gone.

It's only money.

How many times do you see it in the movies, the TV, books, songs, almost any form of media.......MONEY DOES NOT BUY HAPPINESS.

The Beatles said it pretty well in 1964 "Can't buy me love".

You ever been to Canary Wharf, an area of London devoted entirely to worshipping money and it's trappings? I've never seen such a repressed group of people. All tied up in their suits, working longer hours than anyone else, using any trick in the book to wrestle money away for their even richer clients from other rich clients of some other sucker.

I wrote in my last blog about someone giving up a seat on a tube. At Canary Wharf tube station, people jump over the corners of the escalators which are already full of people to get up and out of the tube quicker.

So they can get to work quicker and earn even more money

How do we reach these people? Please let me know.

A few years ago, I sang at Elton John's house at his charity gig to raise money for the AIDS trust. It was an amazing night, all the guest were from the A-list of celebrity, or else they'd bought a ticket to sit at one of the forty or so tables. I heard stories that tickets for these seats went for around £10,000.

So, it were a grand night in a massive Marquee and we partied until about three in the morning, where I had to leave to go my gran's funeral, which was the polor opposite of emotions.

But before I left, at about half two, I paused from the dancefloor and went back to the table area, where the guests had eaten. I was thirsty and looking for a bottle of water.

But almost every table was taken. By solitary people. Rich people, some of them famous. Sitting on their own. In their £10,000 seats. Absolutely miserable some looked overworked, overfed, stretched.

And I thought, wow, money really doesn't buy you happiness does it?

Ok. This blog is not meant to be a guilt trip. But the philosopher Edmund Burke (unfortunate name ) said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. We are meant for so much more. We say we need extra money for security, for mortgage, for our children to go to posh schools, for films, for CD's for Theatre trips. We are SO RICH already. Did you know only 8% of the worlds population own a car for example.


Back to Jackline. She's great. She goes to a school 30min walk away from her village. She would love to be a nurse. She lives in a mud hut with 10 others from her family, including her parents who are farmers, and her youngest brother who is 3

Her family get their water from a lake 1km away, although the water is often infested with cholera. If she gets sick, the family would have to take time off work and travel about an hour to the nearest hospital.

I have a piece of paper filled with drawings Jackline did, which means more to me than any piece of electical equipment I own.

Jackline is like 600 million children worldwide. Who live off about 50p a day.

50p a day.

50p a day

It still amazes me.

Half the worlds population live off less than £1 a day.

Half the worlds population live off less than £1 a day.

Could one half not sort the other half out.

Unfortunately, some of us are too busy jumping over escalators to get to work.

Ok, here's the killer one. The one that really stops me everytime. Wait for it

Scientist estimate that to provide EVERY PERSON IN THE WORLD with clean drinking water, basic health and nutrition would cost somewhere in the region of TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS. or £20,000,000,000.

Looks a lot doesn't it

This is the same amount.......

That Americans spend........

On ICE CREAM.....

Every year.

So, my ipod broke. I'd had it two years. This happened about six months ago.

Before I had an ipod, I used to hate travelling on london transport. There was never space. No matter how I felt when I got on the train I'd feel knackered and sweaty getting off. The air's bad. People are rude. People don't give up their seats for those in need. I was never calm. I was always stressed.

So when I got my ipod, it changed my life. I also got mine with a free engraving 'No Day But Today' just to really cap it off. Suddenly, I had a soundtrack to life. The Northern line was showtunes. Central line stricly hip hop. Victoria line was quick so I'd have a blast of pop, then on to some indie stuff for the overland home. I had so much music, if the sound wasn't suiting the mood, I'd just flip the quickwheel round and spin another track on. How cool was that

The trouble is. It never lasts. Sometimes, you just can't find a track you want. You get bored of the games. Your ears get hot and just can't cope with anymore sound for the day. You find yourself reading aswell as listening. That takes it up another level for a while

SO, THIS ONE DAY (I'm about 22 months into my ipod relationship) I'm on the Jubilee line on the way to an audition, so I've got loads of dance gear with me and my bag is full. I've also got a carrier bag with me with water, reading book and free paper. My ipod is in my coat pocket, with me?

It's one of them days when it's really cold when you leave your flat but really hot when you're on the tube. It's rush hour. I'm boiling. I HAVE TO GET MY COAT OFF!

The tube is PACKED!

So I pull out my ipod and hold it in my right hand. My bag is one of those one-strap-bad-for-your-back-but-looks-oh-so-cool-one so I get that over my head with difficulty. The tube lurches. One of my earphones gets yanksed out my ear
jubilee line!

I right myself and put the earphone back. I put the carrier bag into the right hand with the ipod and swing my bag onto my right shoulder. My left hand is now free. I can start to get my coat off.

So far, I've managed to do this without majorly bumping anyone. the train pulls into a station. I'm half out of my coat. EVERYONE STARTS TO MOVE! Argg. Someone steps on the end of my coat. My bag falls down off my shoulder. My right arm now supports my ipod, my carrier bag and my main bag, as well as half my coat. It's beginning to give in.

I'm becoming a suddenly, a seat appears. YES!!! That's mine. As the tube doors open I'm already twisting past a foreign exchange student and a goth couple and slide sideways into the seat, cradling in my arms my coat, bag, carrier bag and ipod like a baby. Both headphones are out my ears. I'm dripping with sweat.

But I've got a seat Calm calm calm. I sort myself out. Bag on the floor, it's minging but I don't care. Carrier on the bag. Coat folded in lap. Ipod. Where are you ahh there you are ears back in. Select a track. Gotta get me in a good mood. Track one. Too quite. Track two. Too slow. Track three. Too tuneless. Track four. Ahh that's it. No it's not I don't like the middle eight coming up.

It's at this point I look up. He's not looking at me, but I know he's aware of me. He must be about seventy. He's got a thick coat on like mine and he's panting. He's clutching for dear life to the rail above my head. The trains lurching a fair bit and each lurch knocks him sideways.

I feel so ashamed. I've become one of those people I used to despise.

I struggle up with my headphones, my coat and my multitude of bags and offer him my seat. It's difficult to get past him as he doesn't sit down straight away. I'm up now, and I'm feeling a mixture of still shame and slightly better because I've done something to amend it.

Then I realise. He's not sitting down because he's offering the seat to an old lady beside him. His wife? No, I think she's a stranger. He's seventy, and he's offering his seat away!



I get off at the next stop. I go to the audition.

So a few months later my ipod breaks. I go to the store and they tell me they'll fix it for £160, which is almost exactly the cost of a new one. I might as well buy a new one, and I can get photos and videos with this version. Even more choice.

I think back to that day on the tube, and realise I'm no more in control of my life now than I was before my ipod.

I give £160 to one of the charities which supports the Micah Challenge. See the link on my 'Single Garment Page'

I go without an ipod.

I still travel a lot on the trains.

Sometimes I read.

Sometimes I text.

Sometimes I just sit. The trains are full of fascinating people. I talk to some of them, and find most of them grateful for a conversation, except the ones with ipods.

If I'm desperate for music. I take my mini-disc player, which I've had for six years and it has never let me down, althought it is not as convenient as an ipod.

I feel more calm than before I ever had my ipod.

[ more.. ]

Hey,

Welcome back to dougalirvine.com

I've had 18 months or so offline, but thanks to my dear friend Helen Lockstone who runs Actually Actors, we're up and running again. I owe her a lot for getting me off my laurels and back into business.

The internet is a funny and ever changing place. To be honest, I got a bit freaked out 18 months ago with having an entire site about me. It seemed a bit, well, vain. And if I'm still honest, it still is.

However, with sites like Myspace and Facebook all the rage, it seems like everybody's getting their vain piece of the web, and there is a major difference between a professional business website (we actors are a business, like it or not) and a hosts homepage.

Besides, I've been really busy in the last 18 months, and I've got lots to tell you about.

I've had the best acting jobs of my career, I've written a musical which has been put on in the West End, and I've managed to keep my window potted herbs alive for over 6 months!

I've also realised that the world is in a pretty old mess, particularly in the cities, and you can either sit around wishing it was better and then go shopping, or you can decide you don't need that extra DVD/pair of shoes and do something about it.

I'll be writing in this blog a lot about the charities in the 'Single Garment' page, and other stuff you realise when you stop trying to do a million things at once and just rest.

ooh, and the smilies are back and of course

I'm off to Wicked rehearsals. Thanks for checking in.

Lorra love

Dougalx