Actually, now I come to look at that headline, I'm not sure what the "win some" might allude to. Maybe, after the horrors of the past couple of months - terror attacks and towering infernos - it's something of a win just to be alive to enjoy the unseasonal summer sunshine (unseasonal for the UK, I mean). Yeah, maybe. On the other hand, it's not as if I've not got stuff to bitch about. Just last night I learned, at the monthly meeting of the Sussex Playwrights, that I'd failed to win the Constance Cox Award with my radio play Will. Still, at least I can take comfort from the fact that the first prize went instead to my friend John Dutton. No, really, I mean it, I'm delighted for him; it's just the second and third prize-winners I want to kill. Anyway, it was nice to be shortlisted - which is more than I can say for my attempt to get into the company currently being assembled by the Kevin Spacey Foundation. Still, I won't be the only one to have learnt today that they're not getting a recall. Watching my rivals do their pieces at the workshop audition a coupla weeks back, I was both inspired and depressed: no-one was shit, and most were much, much better than "not shit" - many were truly brilliant, in fact. Inspiring, yes, but depressing, too; not only because of the personal competition, but also because it so starkly underlines the injustice in our industry. So much paid work gets divided up among so few actors - and so very needlessly so, when there are people, including those I auditioned with, struggling to get as much as a little toe in the door. Still cheer up, eh, Robert? There is stuff to grin about. Yes, it's true. In the writerly realm, I spent last week completing a first draft of my insanely ambitious Fashion! project (a musical adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes), and I wrote a short story for the Brighton Prize competition. Added to which, yesterday morning I saw myself on the big screen at the Duke of York's Picture House, playing a detective in the thriller Angel on the Ceiling (that's me in the picture, without the beard). Written and directed by my friend Simon Drake, it's been a long time in the making - more than two years' shooting (I did my scenes just before Christmas 2012) and as much again in post-production. Glad to say it was worth the wait. I'm very proud to have been involved, and I wish hearty good luck to Simon and his collaborators in getting it seen now by the wider world.
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AuthorRobert Cohen – a man in showbiz so stepp’d in that, should he wade no more, to go back were as tedious as go o’er. These are among his musings. Archives
September 2023
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