The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 21

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Hurtlocker

Date: Can’t remember…
Weather: Unpredictable

There are lots of land mines in one’s life. By that I mean people and things that can blow you up when you are careless or most unprepared. I have my fair share of life land mines and some of them blew me up pretty uglily.

You build up these land mines usually unconsciously. It could be a comment from your parents when you were young, a scar you got when you grew up or a failed relationship. Among them, failed relationships are the worst. This is because they are less time and place restricted. When you are out of a failed relationship, any time or places that have minor references to that relationship could blow up in your face, leaving you more scarred or licking your wounds for days or even months.

As a grown up man, I had my fair share of failed relationship. This is particularly true for actors who some of us have so much emotion to spare that we just fall in love thinking that we were falling in love. However, when those relationships broke down, they won’t just break your heart. They will break everything that you once related to in those relationships. And it is worst when you feel that you are going nowhere in your life and that land mine goes off.

Being an actor is a difficult thing especially when it comes to emotional stuff. My acting career is going nowhere at the moment and I am stuck in a god forsaken spaceship earning my dole for my mum’s care. I drag myself out of bed on those working days just to make sure that I got food at night (not because I’m broke but because this job has become the token for mum’s home service). Hugo has been working very hard for me but then still all I got were stereotypical odd jobs here and there. Hugo told me I am one of the better people on the book because due to my looks, I still have some stereotypical jobs coming my way. He has one of those once extremely hot evening soap stars on his book. After he left the soap, that guy couldn’t get anything, not even an audition. This used to be my comfort for “me not doing too bad”. This is until last week.

The other day I was in a local café have a latte by the sea thinking about life and career. Sometimes you need to “make plans” so you feel you are actually living. Then I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I looked up and it was Helena – my drama school sweetheart who broke up with me to go to Hollywood right after graduation. Helena is your typical blonde good-looking girl but she comes with a brain. When she decided to leave Australia right after graduation, she persuaded me to go with her because she felt that there is no future for her or me in the Australia industry. Me at that time being a hot headed graduate who thought I could take on the world, refused at point blank because I believed I should contribute to the Australian industry to repay the training I had. She broke up with me there and then and it took us both several years to heal the wounds.

Years have passed, I found out the Australian industry doesn’t really care about my repayment at all. Helena was right all this time. She did really well in LA and is landing roles after roles. They were small ones but they kept her going. Then she landed a major role in a hospital drama and became a hot cake for the Australian industry. So she got invited to come back to be the lead of a featured film. That is why she is in the country.

Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to see her doing well and back again. But she is back with her new celebrity boyfriend Damien – also co-star in the hospital drama. That was the first thing that blew up in my face. Looking at her and her boyfriend, I feel inferior for the first time in years again. She was telling me how happy she is now but all I was thinking about was all the happy things she is doing with her boyfriend now. And suddenly all the wounds that I thought were healed opened up and were gushing with blood again. My heart felt like being stabbed multiple times during the conversation but I kept myself enthusiastic and cheerful. After all I am an actor, I can put on a great show even when I am bleeding myself to death inside.

We talked for two hours and we said we have to catch up again with all the buddies at the drama school blah blah blah and then they left. I waved goodbye energetically but by that time I was almost dead inside. Then suddenly, every single land mine from our relationship was activated. Places near my place where we used to hang out with, places we had made out, phrases she used to say, and even colours she used to like. They just blew up all over the place and suddenly the whole world seems to be out of bounds for me.

I felt like a piece of trash for days and days but still needed to pull myself together for the shitty people at a shitty job. Everyday I got home I just felt so exhausted emotionally and physically. Mum was very worried about me, and acted ultra nice to me. She even kept her close eyes on my sister so that she won’t piss me off. If I were my usual self I would have jumped on the opportunity to get myself off the hook from the library job. But I was not even able to do so. Dad and I had some father and son bonding time (obviously he was sent by mum) but I was too heartbroken to spill the beans (and who would have thought so?).

Then today, I got a call from Hugo. He said he got a call from the casting director of Helena’s movie. She said she got a recommendation from Helena about me and would like me to go in for a minor supporting role. My heart raced at 100 miles per hour. Should I take it? Should I not?

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 20

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Date: Another day of full moon
Weather: Tropics of Thunder

The entertainment business is as quiet as a cemetery at night. Everything seems so dead and depressing. For people who never managed to make into the inner circles, it seems that it is forever for them to get their hands on to anything. To be honest, sometimes I do wonder what’s the point of going through three years of drama school training when all those parrots and puppets in early evening soaps get more jobs than I do? Hugo is a great agent. He manages to get whatever I can do for me but then it seems that if I want to get somewhere, I need a major plastic surgery make over. I do have some Asian parts coming by from time to time but they all required me to put on a thick “Asian accent” otherwise I was not convincing enough. It seems that for some power brokers in the industry, if you don’t look good fit into their lead looks, you are just doomed in the business.

Yes I do sometimes moan over this inequality in the business, but then when I compared myself with what’s happening to those great teachers at the drama school, I know that it is really nothing.

It has been rumoured for some time that Succubus wants to get rid of Peter, one of the prominent acting teachers at the school and in the industry, for a while. She sees him as a big threat as he knows a lot more than she does in terms of acting training. So she eventually convinced the now de-functioned and useless Board to terminate his employment with one-year extension. What does that mean? It means that Peter will still be employed for another year but his function is to teach the new person all he knows before he leaves. At one of the staff meetings, Succubus publicly humiliated Peter in front of everyone by announcing that: “As you all know, I will not be renewing Peter’s contract. We will employ better and more professional people for his position. But to show that we respect his expertise, he will extend his current contract for another year so he can teach his replacement what he knows before he goes”.

Everyone’s jaw dropped to the floor. Not because of Peter being fired so publicly but the disrespect Succubus showed in the whole thing. Succubus was so happy with her shaming stint that people said that she was in great mood for the rest of the week. Everyone felt very sorry for Peter but then there isn’t much anyone can do, as now the drama school is no longer a paradise people with creative passion but a torture chamber.

Torturing seems to be in fashion lately. In the case of the drama school it is the management against staff and in the library’s case it is the union against the management. I sometimes can’t really understand why people have that much time to play politics in workplace. Then again even in a production crew there are people who don’t like each other. The union saga at the library continued since the newsletter. George has now distanced himself from me completely since the last face off. But that didn’t stop him from going around campaigning against the management about the new wing. He even organised a meeting for a selected few (of his core supporters) as a public condemnation against the tyranny of the management over the consultation process. Out of 150 library staff, 12 turned up. 8 were his supporters 4 were people trying to find out what the hell he is doing. As reported back from people, the whole meeting was basically accusing the management of things that have no grounds to be accused of. When someone pointed out the opposite, George simply dismissed him or her as misinformed or shamed him or her as lack of support for the grass root people in the organisation. Seriously, I really have a stronger feeling everyday that the so-called union in the library is a just a scam program for idiots. There were times that I think George should start a cult with those 8 idiots at the meeting and he could be the next “big” cult leader. I have started documenting all these stupidities with the union and discussed with a few friends from drama school that maybe we can produce a satire out of it.

Anyway, I do think that some people need to be trained in a harsher environment to make their perspectives right. Maybe George and his followers should be thrown into the media world (or even the drama school now) and work their asses off there so that they can eventually appreciate how good a life they have in the library. As for me, they are just rich writing materials for personal pursuits.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 20

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United or Divided?

Date: Labor's Day
Weather: Quaker

I have been a member of Equity for years now. As an independent actor, even with the help of a good agent, you’ll need to cover yourself from unlawful and shameless shams from certain people. Equity is where you place your trust in. They ensure that actors do not get ripped off by greedy media giants and we got what we deserved. Hugo is a huge fan of Equity and encourages everyone under him to join. With a major agent like Hugo and the protection of Equity, I can sleep well through the storms of the media industry.

However working in the library is something else – especially for a university library. Yeah I heard stories about people got redundant during bad financial times but then who doesn’t? Anyway since my uni days I’d heard a lot about university unions and some of their bullish behaviours. There was one semester that my friends at another uni told me that he couldn’t re-enrol because some stupid faculty members wanted higher pay (as if they weren’t paid enough already) and more autonomy (as if they were not autonomous enough already) so they refused to hand over their marks unless the university yielded to their demands. He told me these “academics” were giving out pamphlets outside the library asking for students’ support and condemning the tyranny of the vice-chancellor. The irony was they were terrorising the future of their students with the same tyrannic collateral damage approach. So who is the bigger terror, who knows? But I digress. Working at this space ship library never failed to amaze me. Lately we received a newsletter from the union, whom I’m not even a member of telling us how they are not happy with the management and demanded us to file complaints about the ill-practice of the management. I was really scratching my head when I got the newsletter. Being a part-timer and contract staff, I never really paid attention to what’s going on around me in the library. Partly because I’m not interested and partly because I don’t really hang around with people there.

So what’s the newsletter about? It’s about the extension the library is building to accommodate more students (nowadays universities are just opening up more full-fee paying seats to earn more income). Staff members will also be moved to the new extension so the current areas can be re-zoned for student use. So what’s the union fussing about? On the newsletter was a list of “charges” against the management. As usual, connotations of tyranny was littering all over the place. But some of the funny things I spotted were like “Don’t like that I need to go through another door to go to the staff toilets” (which is exactly what they are doing now) and “Showers should be marked clearly where it can get wet and where it cannot” (what the?). Oh another funny thing was “I heard that there will be CCTV to monitor our work and I don’t like that”. I couldn’t stop laughing when I read those accusations. All I could think of was these people really don’t know how good they are having and just want to waste their lives complaining about things that nobody cares. And the whole conspiracy of CCTV monitoring their work is just ridiculous. If they were actually doing work instead of spending time putting that kind of stupid newsletter together, why would they even be scared of being monitored. Further, the CCTV has nothing to do with the library but a security code the university has to comply with for the building. So where did that imagination of them being monitored by the management through the CCTV come from is beyond normal people’s comprehension. Sometimes I do think that these union people could use their brain power to write a good thriller and maybe that could become the next Australian blockbuster.

However, the union didn’t stop there. They even sneakily went around in the staff room during lunch hours to propagate their cause (which for me has no reason for that “cause”) to solicit support against the management. One day when Claire and I were chatting in the staff room during lunch, George the union leader in the organisation came to pester us to sign the petition. I told him I’m not interested and he immediately lectured me in front of Claire of how selfish I am and thinking that as a part-timer these important issues did not concern me. I was so annoyed that I told him to fuck off and said: “if you hate this place that much maybe you should go somewhere else to work. But then again, with your ability and attitude, I don’t think you’ll last a minute in the real world. Only a workplace like this will tolerate people like you who spend your day demonising the management while getting pay cheques from them every fortnight.”

The whole staff room went quiet and everyone was looking at me. Claire was trying not to laugh and working her ass off to pull a straight face together. Shocked by my remarks, George walked away embarrassingly. I never saw his face near me since then.

Back to the drama school. Things had gone from bad to worse since Leonard left. When I ran into one of the administration people there one day at the uni café, she told me that on top of a deficit, a number of high profile donors have retracted their support for the drama school and some well-known figures in the arts industry have informed the drama school that they have changed their wills and wrote the drama school off their lists. The Board starts to get panic about these but Succubus was not concerned. She said that the drama school doesn’t need these people as she knows other better industry figures. I don’t know how this whole fiasco is going to end but certainly from other people I know, none of them think the drama school has a bright outlook.

However, I don’t really have time to think about the drama school that much as I’m working hard to further my acting career – at least to get out of this space ship and do some real work in the real world. Went to a friend’s play the other night and ran into some important figure at the post performance drinks. We got along really well and were surprised to find out that we love the same things and have the same wicked humour. We exchanged our business cards and he told me to keep in contact cos he probably has something in the pipeline with a major Hollywood figure that I could get involved. I was ecstatic about the whole unplanned outcome. Hopefully this could mean a breakthrough of my acting career.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 19

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Alice in Thunderland

Date: Days of Thunder
Weather: The clouds begin the thunder and crickets murmuring

Actors usually create characters by observing other people around them. They observe, deconstruct and recreate. That’s the art of character creation. However, when you are working in a place that is saturated with middle to post-middle aged women who thrive on pettiness in life, that won’t give you much advantage in your art.

I need to correct that statement cos I did get that gay bitch job by observing the cat fights of these women. But then if that’s all I got from them, either I will become a gay bitch myself or I’ll just be stereotyping myself further in the industry.

Alice the Thunderland has been parading her success over Eva Cologne in the project but that hasn’t made work easy for Claire and I. Despite the fact that she actually is not our supervisor, she has been showing up a lot without reasons but just to try to tell us her importance in the whole matter. Sometimes I did wonder whether she got any real work to do. Surely she has been telling people how busy she is all the time, from her own office to her ex-co-workers in the library, but then if she is so busy why would she have time to go around telling people about that? That is a paradox that Claire and I could never figure out. Another thing that puzzled us is that why does she always carry a sour puss face with her? Surely after her triumph on Eva, she would have something to smile on as they were life enemies. But then even when she smiles, it just looks like an upward crack on her sour puss face and every time she laughs her squeaky voice just makes things worse.

So you may wonder if she has such a squeaky voice why is she known as Alice the Thunderland? That is because of her temper. She is well known for her temper whenever things didn’t go her way. And at this point you have to know that her way is not always the best. But probably because this job is basically her life, she just wants everything her way to live an easy life. As far as I heard, she is never married, never had a man in her life and also no family. Her only family member is a sister who is doing much better than she is with a happy family and two gorgeous teenage kids. We’d met her once at a function she and Alice are like heaven and hell. Claire and I could never figure out how come they could be so different. Anyway I digress. Claire and I had witnessed her temper in several occasions such as meeting times didn’t suit her personal schedule. With her, she can cancel your meeting anytime she wants but you still have to organise things around her schedules. Failure to do so, you warrant an angry email from her condemning you to eternity of your incompetence. I feel lucky that I am not the person organising them but did feel for Sonia’s PA.

You may further wonder how she got where she is now if she is that bad with people. Well she might not be good with men or other staff, but she does have a superior skill at her disposal – brown nosing. In the last few years, she has been sucking up to people superior to her and presented herself as a capable person by organising trips for bosses including Sonia and the library director. She will go to the distance of beating information out of their PA’s to find when they are going on trips and “accidentally” book a trip that will run into them overseas or interstate and conveniently join them because of the coincidence. I don’t know how much the bosses like her but the fact is that she has been getting what she wants inside and outside of the library because of this superior skill. Maybe as an actor, I really do need to learn this skill to go further, but then do I want to go that low? The other day after another catastrophic meeting, Claire told me she finally knew why Alice always carries a sour puss face – because she brown nosed so much that every time she inhales she can only smell shit and thus the sour pussing.

On the home front, my sister has finally come out of her hiding. She finally faced the fact that she can’t sing. She has been pretty quiet these days probably still trying get over the mockery she got at the audition. But the good thing is that everyone in the house finally got the peace required. She also stopped pestering me with stupid ideas about her singing and dancing and let me get on with life. Hopefully she will find something she is good at and work on it. Mum is definitely happy that she gave up singing and back to her uni studies as she always prefers a “normal” career for her kids than anything arty farty.

As for me, Hugo has been working hard to sell me and I did get one or two odd jobs here and there but nothing substantial to keep my payroll coming. So it seems that I will still be doing this shithole library job for a while to keep my mum happy. Well at least I got my meals and laundry done when she is happy, so all is not lost.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 18

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Greed…um…Greek…um…Greed Tragedy

Date: Labouring Day

Weather: Frosty and cold

Many things had happened since I last wrote two months ago. We got a new Prime Minister and Australia’s first female Prime Minister who is being commented more on her style than her work. Mum got really upset about the change as she loves the previous Prime Minister because he has a Chinese son-in-law. She basically voted for him because of that.

Mum: “Of course I will wote for da family!”

Me: “When did he become our family?”

Mum: “A Tzainese son-in-law is as gud as a family!”

Anyway politics isn’t anything that I’m interested in unless they developed a more friendly art and cultural policy that helps actors getting more work. Another friend of mine has moved overseas and saw that there are more opportunities in L.A. However the catch is you will need a Visa before anyone is interested in you. My friend is half American so there is no problem for him, but for me, unless I can get a sponsor, things are not as easy. And apart from that I don’t really have an extensively varied showreel that I can put together to impress potential employers about my versatility in my art. I met a Blogger of the Herald Post the other day at one of the functions. He said basically there are no well-trained Asian actors in Australia to do any roles so I should stop complaining about it and settle with stereotypical roles. I told him that I am Australian and for his information there is lots of Asian and ethnic actors graduated from drama school so it was very deluded of him to make that statement. He said he went to more casting than I had eaten pasta so don’t argue with him. I told him I know more well trained ethnic actors than the hair he lost on his head so don’t argue with me either. He was obviously offended by my statement and walked away. Why is the truth so difficult for people to digest?

On the drama school front, the saga continued to unfold when Angela finally resigned with an explosive email about “she doesn’t want to work in an environment that doesn’t treasure her contribution and experience”. Obviously the all staff email was sent directly against Succubus. The interesting part was that under Succubus’ strict curfew Angela still managed to get the email to all staff AND students. Succubus’ was furious about that but then there was nothing she could do. She tried to locate the culprit but the IT department refused to give in to her own private detectives – yes she has employed a company to investigate “ethical” issues in the drama school.

A few weeks later, Leonard, the founder and a current Board Member of the drama school announced his own resignation. There were fights at the Board for quite a while now. The two camps were Leonard and the teaching staff representing the artistic direction and Succubus and her main minion Little Tommy. The tug-of-war was an even game until the point that Little Tommy went around bad mouthing Leonard and his allies to the sleeping members and hypnotising them into surrendering their votes to them. Seeing that she will have sufficient majority votes, Succubus then moved forward to marginalise Board Members who were against her and eliminated them one by one. The Herald Post has long been following the story since dad broke that news on his program. So at the latest open Annual General Meeting, they sent a journalist into the auditorium. When Succubus and Little Tommy found out there were journalists in the hall, they asked security to remove them as “the meeting intended to discuss internal issues that should not be of journalists’ interests”. When being pointed out that since the drama school is federally funded by taxpayers and it is an open meeting, everyone should be able to attend, Succubus and Little Tommy called for “proximity removal”. However that kind of action didn’t go well with the media of course. A week later, there was an explosive coverage in the Herald Magazine on the front page titling “Dramas at the Drama School”. In the story, there were interviews from Leonard, Angela, Danielle etc. there were also whistle blower stuff from current employees within the drama school. Although no names were mentioned, everyone knows who are rebelling against Succubus silently. I was told that Succubus was furious about the coverage and called the paper demanding an apology. However, Herald said that they will only do so if Succubus turned in all the information they need for an extensive coverage of the school – including the accounting details about why the school turned from black to red in just two years. As expected, they never heard from Succubus again.

Against all advice, my sister did queue up for Australian Idol two weeks ago. As expected, she was completely mocked and ridiculed for her lack of singing talent and fashion backward taste. Mum had repeatedly told her that she sounds like a chicken being slaughtered but my sister insisted that the music industry needs a unique voice like hers. She reckoned she would be the multi-platinum singer who can even crack the US market. She also thought that if she threw dad’s name at the audition, she will get through. Dad was quite on arms on that idea as he knew that it will just tarnish his reputation in the industry if my sister did that. So the family was in war the week before my sister got bombed at the audition. After her epic failure at the audition, she locked herself up in her room for two nights and threw all her “Singstar” games into the bin. As for me, I picked them all up and sold them on eBay for a good profit. As mum always said, there is always something good from bad situations. This is definitely one of them.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 17

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Dances with Cows

Date: A Day of My Life

Weather: Stuffy and stuffing

The New Year has been pretty slow in terms of acting work. I haven’t been back to the drama school lately as more and more teaching staff had joined the exodus from Succubus, tyranny, so there is no point going back. The latest victim of Succubus’ crazy regime was the library, which is now dissected into smaller sections to make way for her Board meeting room because “the library has the best view in the building”. Also the Australian play collection was further reduced with duplicate copies of unpublished plays being chucked out completely so that they can reduce the size of the compactus for more study rooms that are hardly used. The scenario is so depressing and even Angela is now seriously considering quitting too. She helped the drama school established the best library specialising in dramatic art in Australia, but now that is slowly slipping away as teaching resources seemed to be no longer a priority for Succubus. The drama school has just become one of the playthings she tatters with and leaves her mark to show people she was once there. As for all the teaching staff that left, she is more than happy to see them go. Now all she needs to do is to find a way to kick all the Board members that she hates out then her dictatorship will be completed. Honestly, the drama school has become such a depressing place that some stuff couldn’t even be bothered to go back and pack. Of course, as “accommodating” as Succubus is, she immediately employs people to pack the offices for them and send all the boxes to their homes as a grand gesture of “courtesy”.

Back to the library. Eva still hasn’t got over the fact that Claire and I are going to the conference at Darling Harbour. As for Claire us, we really couldn’t figure out what the big fuss is about. After all we are just going to Darling Harbour. However, as her scale of bitching expands further, we came to know that she and some other staff members see this as an index of how important they are in the organisation. I know, this sounds stupid eh? But then what we are talking about is a bunch of people who stayed in the same job forever without the willingness to really learn new skills but want to get a pay rise every year. Putting that factor into the picture, it immediately made sense to us. Originally Claire and I wanted to smooth things out a bit with Eva. At the end of the day, although she had been marginalised quite a bit in the project by the management, we still need to work with her from time to time. However, when we found out all the labels she gave us in front of the gang, we just thought “Up Yours!” We don’t really see eye to eye anymore and it really didn’t bother us. In fact it bothered Eva a lot more for she thought that we would make peace with her after she created such an “adverse environment” for us but that didn’t happen. Some people who couldn’t stand her told us that we can go to the management and complain about her bullying behaviour but then we sort of found it funny to watch a lady of her age acting like a kindergarten kid.

The fact that the library job is just for cash in pocket is good for me I reckon. At least I don’t really need to pay attention to some of those aliens who reside in this space ship. Sometimes I do wonder how a respectable profession like this could attract so many “idiosyncratic” personalities into one space. Anyway I am more concerned about my acting career. Apart from a few odd ads here and there, there hasn’t been a lot of work around for me. Hugo is working his ass off to fight of the effects of GFC on his agency so I have been networking like no tomorrow every weekend. Sometimes I felt like I’m prostituting myself for my art but then even Julia Roberts managed to score something big in “Pretty Woman”, so why not? In fact I do enjoy going to these events and functions. At least you are with a bunch of people who share the same passion and we can drink, joke and swear like no tomorrow. Something I definitely can’t do at the library or even at home...at least not in front of mum because it is “wulgar” and “not nice”.

Oh nearly forgot, my annoying sister told mum the other day that she wants to go audition for “Australian Idol”. Mum nearly threw her out of the window. Words were exchanged as I quietly finished all my sister’s favourite dishes on the table – just to piss her off more. Seriously she can’t sing at all and every time “Singstar” is on, I had to find an excuse to leave the house. The good thing about mum is she sees the flaws in her children and won’t hold back to tell them. When my sister was crushed by mum’s honest opinion about her singing, she just couldn’t take it. I personally don’t mind her going cos I think it’s about time for her to know that she is not artistically talented in any sense. Maybe she should still go and make a joke out of herself in front of the judges. I think it should be fun to watch. Sis is now trying to solicit dad’s support. See how well that will go down.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 16

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For Better or the Worse

Day: In the Light of Day
Weather: Four seasons in one day

The new academic year didn’t really fare well for the academics. Shortly a month into the new semester, two prominent teachers at the drama school decided to quit. Danielle Lazarus, one of the voice teachers responsible for first year voice training decided that she had enough of the craziness from Succubus and submitted her high profile resignation – through a mass email. Succubus, well known for having no appreciation for voice work and reckons if audience can’t hear the actors on stage, she can simply mic them, gladly accepted her resignation. She then sent another mass email to all staff saying that Danielle has accepted an invitation to her farewell party to be announced at a later date for her contribution to the drama school in the last 15 years. Her high profile move was then backfired when Danielle, to Succubus’ surprise, replied with another mass email to all staff saying that she had never accepted the invitation and was amused that someone couldn’t understand the simple English word “No”. Publicly humiliated, Succubus sent another email to all saying that from now on anyone who wants to send all staff email has to get her prior approval or otherwise risk disciplining actions from her. On Danielle’s last day, Succubus sent a bunch of flowers to Danielle to show there were no ill feelings between them. However, later during the day, Danielle noticed that the vase holding the flowers was actually defective and water was leaking all over her stuff. In response to Succubus’ friendly move, Danielle sent one last all staff email thanking Succubus for the flowers and hoped that the leaking vase wouldn’t cost the drama school too much to replace the carpet in her office. Caught out again publicly, Succubus asked the IT guy to take the all staff distribution list offline completely. Danielle was snapped up by the second biggest theatre company in the city as their in house voice coach immediately after.

Shortly after Danielle’s resignation, Luke McPherson, one of acting teachers there, decided to go too. He was sick of the change of curriculum from actual production experience into street theatres that jeopardise students’ learning from actual work. Under Succubus new curriculum direction, students will not be involved in any real productions until the second half of the second semester in their second year. Luke, who was passionate about students learning on the job to identify their shortcoming, was vigorously against this change. As a result, Succubus took him offline from the curriculum board and just assigned regular teaching duties with minimum hours with students – to avoid a bad influence on students’ mentality. When some third year students knew that, they called for a student council meeting to support Luke. Succubus, as iron-fist as she was, sent a mass email to all saying that if any student was found to organising activities without her approval, they risked expulsion even if they were in their third year – something the drama school will never do. Angry by her move, Luke file a grievance report to the board and to the Employment Ombudsman citing unfair and groundless bullying activities at the drama school. His filing caught the attention of the media and with the Board questioning Succubus on the bad publicity and her recent splash of cash for her own use, Succubus backed down to seek a settlement. Finally Succubus was made to send an apology to all staff and students over the misjudgement she made and apologised to Luke. Although Luke had scored a victory on this matter, he decided to go after the city biggest Theatre Company noticed the saga and offered him a job as the acting coach for their resident company actors. When I ran into Rena, another voice teacher there the other day, she said there the drama school’s standard is on the blink of collapsing. Probably Succubus will seek to get rid of all voice teachers there in the next year or so.

Back to the Library front, things were quiet for quite a while until one day my boss told Claire and I that we are going to a local conference at the end of next month. The conference is about application of modern technology in information services. Claire and I were fairly surprised by the notification but we gladly accepted the offer. Eva, however, was not that happy. She immediately started a personal campaign hoping to undermine Sonia’s decision by going around telling people about favouritism in the organisation. She even went to the HR manager to whinge about it. Basically she was complaining about that it is not fair full time ongoing staff like her were not chosen for the conference but part-timers and contract staff like Claire and I were chosen instead. At first people were trying to be nice to her and empathised her but then after two weeks of a campaign with a size bigger than the Academy Awards rallying, people started to get sick of her. Finally today at the tearoom, when she was saying out loudly “I don’t know why people like him, who isn’t even committed to the profession, should be given that chance.” Another manager overheard her statement, went over to her and said, “Just ask yourself, when did you last finish a project without screwing up? That’s why”.

Eva was shocked by that manager’s public comment. She immediately sculled (and choked on) her tea and left the room.

However, the damaged was done. Some of the staff members who have lower IQ bought Eva’s view and she had now successfully recruited a group of minions. Claire and I knew that the year ahead would not be easy with Eva.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 15

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Ashes to Ashes

Day: Brand Old Day
Weather: Cats and Dogs

Shortly after the holiday the drama school was back in full swing. And Succubus hadn’t waited a second to perform her New Year slaughter. The first victim was my beloved Acting Head Timothy Hayes. Tim has been at the drama school for over 10 years and under him, lots of outstanding actors were trained. He had put in a lot of efforts to keep the acting course up-to-date without compromising the main element – acting training. However since Succubus came, she was trying to up root the acting course into a way that she thought useful for students. Instead of real theatre training, she decided to put in street performance and motion capturing etc., which means new students won’t be able to get on to the stage for real production training until halfway through semester two in Year 2. The Acting Department of course is not happy, as the basic purpose of the acting course was acting and theatre training. Meeting this resistance, Succubus was trying to reduce the influence of the teaching staff as much as possible.

First of all, she invited her friends to come to direct productions and kicked the acting staff out of rehearsal rooms. Then she unraveled a series of white terror in the meeting room belittling the knowledge of acting staff and sometimes even publicly humiliated them. When such news reached the students, a few year-3 students organized a student walk out to protest against the change. News reached Succubus through the minions, so she immediately sent warning letters to these students telling them that if they walk out they will be pulled from all final year productions and they will not be able to showcase their work for agents. When Tim heard he that was furious so he went to reason with her. Succubus was waiting for this opportunity to put him under the guillotine for a long time. After the meeting, she suddenly announced that she reverted Tim’s employment terms with the school because of “inappropriate and distressful behaviours” against her. To give her sufficient time to get someone in to kick Tim out, she put Tim on a temporary 6 months contract after 15 years of service with the school. Completely angered by this move, Tim complained to the Board directly which forced Succubus to extend the employment to one year pending to revision.

When Michelle Conroy, another much loved voice teacher of the school heard that. She was so upset that she decided to take 6 months’ long service leave before deciding whether she will continue to stay at the school. Meanwhile, Succubus is gearing up herself to kick board members who are against her out of the Board. Her partner in crime Molotov Lamia was busily ringing in votes from idle members presenting their own “facts” so that they could secure their non-sitting votes. The last Director Jarrod Campell and a few other concerned members were racing against time and Molotov to secure vote before the AGM in May. At this point it looks like the school is going to fall apart under Succubus, as she did with the so call art management company in UK before she returned to Australia.

While the drama school in the heat of another political storm, I was trying to figure out my way in my own career storm. Jobs were slow since the New Year. Apart from some isolated auditions that are scarcer than isolated showers at the Red Centre, there was virtually nothing. The current situation with the media is that people are inbreeding to secure their own jobs as the economy is still recovering. As a result that means a lot of actors were not called in for anything as most main and supporting roles were decided even before pre-productions started. There was once a call from a casting director asking Hugo to send me to a free gig for a limited budget feature. Hugo didn’t like the idea of free gigs but then would look at whether it would help my careers. It turned out it was another gig asking me to be a funny Chinese restaurant owner for a comedic scene. Hugo, who really hated the idea of me being stereotyped, turned the casting agent down point blank. In fact, lately Hugo had been discussing with me about going over to LA to try my luck. The main purpose is to secure an agent or a manager there to start up myself. He said Australian media is quite hopeless for non-Anglo actors, no matter they can act or not. He said for me who was well trained and can do the job well should break away from the chains of stereotype casting in this country. His words kept resonating in my head making me to seriously re-consider my acting future in Australia.

On the Library front, things were back to normal. Normal means dealing with all the extra-terrestrial behaviours of various personnel there. Recently Eva had been publicly disputing my commitment to the job and was telling people that it was a waste of money for the Library to keep me around. When she talked about that in one of the meetings with my boss again, I confronted her on her statement. She said she was commenting in a good will manner so I shouldn’t be upset about that. I told her to piss off and told her that if she was able to finish the job in time both Claire and I will not be here in the first place. Also I told her maybe the workplace thinks that it is better to keep someone with has other commitments but can do the job instead of relying on someone who claimed to have full commitments but could never get a single project finish on time. Also I told her to wake up from the illusion that she was a good worker and did everything fantastically because she sucked at everything she did and every time people needed to pick up her shit. Claire and my boss’ jaws dropped as I said that and the meeting room sank to a dead silence. Eventually my boss wrapped the meeting beautifully and professionally and everyone left. She had a word with me afterward but at that point although I understood her good intentions, I was very through and done with Eva’s stupidity. The good thing that came out of this was Eva left Claire and I alone and completely disappeared from our office. The only communications with her now were through email (which I preferred so I could have records) and she also stopped bitching about me to anyone anymore.

I thought the New Year would be a good one, but it looks like another rough journey is about to start.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 14

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There and back again

Day: Day of most return
Weather: Pollen season without rose petals in the sky

Something I hate most is when the holidays are over. When you were a kid you dread going to school after the long holidays, wanting to leave school all the time. By the time you left school and went to uni, you started to enjoy the inhumanly long holiday periods and breaks and in between, thinking that you were in heaven. Then as with everything good, they will have to end it and throw you back into the real world cos it’s time to start an ever-lasting working life. Sometimes I wonder which is worse: to die young or to live and work to your pension age and found out either you don’t have enough money in your funds or you just couldn’t spend it all before you die.

I’ve been blessed with a successful dad and never really needed to worry about money…not really, but at least I have it when I needed it. Mum, as a traditional Chinese woman, doesn’t believe in kids living off their parents and sit on their bums. That’s why even with dad’s support I still have to go to work. If it is going to location or on set that’s fine, I can deal with it cos that’s what I want to do anyway. But going back to that Battlestar Galactica is really a bit too much.

I scored a few gigs after my spectacular gay bitch performance on the new TV series. The producers even said that they want me back again if the character returns to the series – which never happened, as I know they just wrap production for the second series. So after the gay bitch role, I was back to kitchen hand and restaurant waiter. It’s really depressing but then you got to throw yourself out there and prostitute yourself for art to look out for bigger roles right? It is the whole “looking out” process that mum doesn’t like. She said young people should never just wait but go out there to make money. That is why she insisted me to sign on for another contract at the Battlestar this year. I was devastated, but I’ve dried up my pool of excuses in the last two years, so I got no choice but to go back.

First week back was ok as all the hyena queens were still on holidays. So Claire and I were just busily catching up and having fun. Claire went back to the snowstorm city of London and told me about all the crazy things she did. She also insisted me that next year I have to go with her and she can introduce all her theatre friends to me. Obviously one of her exes before her current Aussie partner was a producer and thus through him she met all these cool people whom she remained friend with (even with her ex) after the break up. So the first week just cruised by happily without much disruption. However, when the jungle gang started coming back things just went downhill again. I don’t know what Eva did during the holidays but when she came back she suddenly had all those crazy ideas that she wanted to push through in relation to the project (which actually are not related to the project as far as Claire and I concerned). She is back with all her battle spirit and determined to take down Alice the Thunderland this year. Claire and I tried to stay amicable with her at first but after two days of harassment from her, all our nuclear missiles were out in the open again.

As for the drama school, the library has been downsized to make way for more meeting rooms in the building. So one of the compactus was gone and part of the library collection is now seeking refuge on the floor, in between stacks and under service desks. Also now they are recruiting someone to just do a few hours of night shifts to extend opening hour – and idea that Angela was pushing for a long time but then was turned down only to be revived as Succubus’ brilliant management decision right before she left for holidays. As far as I know several other teaching staff were over in London too, so whether Succubus will conveniently disappeared in the snowstorm is still unknown but I am sure that a lot of people will be cracking fireworks if that did happened. Oh one of the most shocking news before the holidays was one of her minions suddenly resigned and left. Nobody knew what happened but rumour has it that even he could not stand Succubus’ Stalinist rules. However, he is just a minor minion. The two main weapons of mass destruction are still loyally following Succubus waiting for a chance to strike. They are now like Dementors living a life just to suck happiness out of other people.

So looks like this year will be shaping up as another colourful year both at the Battlestar and the drama school. For me I wish that it will be a colourful year for my acting career.