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canaryquillastrology · 6 years ago

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Ruling Planet Deity Archetype

SUN: THE CREATOR

He is a golden Sun god, handsome and strong, with a youthful face and body. He is often depicted with a shining smile as an expression of his warmth and boyish optimism. The Creator is a god of creativity and the ego, associated with the forge, the arts, and sculpture. He is also an embodiment of male fertility and fatherhood, and patron to young children, of which he is very much alike. At his worst, he is egotistical, selfish, self-centered, and arrogant, demanding what is not given to him. He is a god that thrives on love, praise, and attention, and in turn is endlessly generous, proud, and kind to children, artists, and those seek him out.

MOON: THE CHILD

She is a silver Moon goddess, small and fragile. But what she lacks in size and light, she makes up for in emotional strength. She is the daughter of the Mother, and clings to her gravitational pull like a dependant child. The Child governs the tides, the oceans, and all bodies of water, pulling them back and forth toward her whenever she rises into the sky. At her worst, the goddess is needy, clingy, moody, temperamental, and childishly irrational. She needs comfort and security in order to settle her highly reactive moods. But in return, she gives us intuition, compassion, empathy, and all the emotions we feel.

WHITE LILIES | IVY | WATER | ALL WATER-DWELLING CREATURES | BLACK CLOAK

MERCURY: THE SCHOLAR

He is a fat, soft looking young man in a modest cloak. He is most often depicted over a book or a scroll, writing or reading, to show he is a god of knowledge, communication, and intellect. But in myths, he is usually at the center of conversation, debate, or discussion, either teaching in a classroom or in a crowd of his peers. He is a patron of rational thinkers, philosophers, scientists, and anybody else engrossed in their studies. His dark side is his intellectual egotism, short attention span, and tendency to stir the pot out of boredom. But he is a god of intelligence, memory, and language, and gives mental gifts to those who worship him.

VENUS: THE MAIDEN

She is a beautiful goddess, much adored and sought after by the suitors who covet her. The Maiden is depicted as a young, lusty woman with long hair and pouting lips. A goddess of love, beauty, sex, and true femininity, she is sensual and seductive, with a want for beautiful mortals and all the finer things in life. Her darker side comes out when she isn’t desired, where she becomes vain, possessive, jealous, fat, and lazy. But when she is secure in the knowledge that she is loved, she is pure and lovely; polite, cooperative, diplomatic, sensitive, and open to compromise.

MARS: THE WARRIOR

He is the torrid god of war, violence, and bloodshed, often depicted in battle as a heavily muscled man with rough skin and a thick beard. The Warrior fights first and foremost for his own personal gain, be it to win an item of his desire, attain some goal, or extinguish some enemy. At times his efforts are noble, heroic, justified in their brutality. But at other times, he rapes, pillages, and slaughters scores of innocent victims. He gives strength, conviction, bravery, independence, and determination to those who worship him, chiefly to soldiers, assassins, and hunters on the prowl.

CERES: THE MOTHER

She is the green Earth mother, goddess of female fertility, motherhood, pregnancy, family, food, home, and caregiving. She is depicted as a pregnant woman with wide hips and large, swollen breasts. All living things are her children, whom she loves and takes care of their whole lives long. But in this respect, her dark side is that she loses all rational sense when something threatens her child, and cries when they grow the nest and try to leave her. At her worst, she is coddling and manipulative, prone to guilt-tripping and cries of loneliness. At her best, she is protective, strong, soft, warm, and kind.

JUPITER: THE JESTER

He is a nubile man who calls himself a fool, a comedian, a trickster, and a seducer. He sees and speaks the truth nobody else wants to hear through jokes and sarcasm and wit. His charm is in his frankness. He can say things nobody else can, and get away with it, because he can make the gods laugh at their own folly. The Jester is drawn center-stage and to parties, feasts, weddings, and theatre, where he parades his antics on stage to the amusement of the crowd. He is a patron of actors, musicians, travellers, and entertainers from all walks of life, worshipped to rid themselves of homesickness, stage fright, and pre-show jitters.

SATURN: THE CRONE

She is an old woman, close to the end of her life, draped in grey hair and sagging skin, criss-crossed with bulging veins and knobby joints. She is the grandmotherly patron of wisdom withered from experience; of the harvest; of elders passing down knowledge onto the younger mortals below. She teaches responsibility, preparing for the future, focus, and sensible choices. To some she is boring, ugly, restrictive, a harbinger of a slow death and the horrors of old age. But she is respected as the one who taught mankind how to harvest and preserve food, allowing them to survive in hard times.

CHIRON: THE HEALER

The Healer is an elderly man, scrawny, with a short beard and a body covered in scars and bandages. He is said to be very kind, caring, and gentle, with delicate hands dedicated to his mortar and pestle. He is the grandfatherly patron of the healing arts, of medicine, tinctures, herbology, and surgery. It is said he hears more prayers than any other god, of desperate voices wishing for good health and to overcome what horrors they’ve fallen to. At his worst, he is useless, an embodiment of false hope in desperate times. At his best, he is a miracle worker, able to pull mortals back from the void.

MORTAR AND PESTLE | ST. JOHN’S WORT | WEREWOLF ROOT | BETONICA | ACHILLEA

URANUS: THE USURPER

His face is hidden, so we do not know if he is a young man, or an old one. What we know is that he is a disruptive, anarchic, rebellious man, set out to overthrow those in power and free the people from tyrannical leaders. Revolutionaries pray to the Usurper more than any other group, for he is the embodiment of their cause, no matter what it is. At his worst, he is a god of madness, chaos, mayhem, and destruction. He is both feared and hated for the disruptive changes he brings upon society. At his best, he is a symbol for freedom from slavery and subjugation, of revolution, and a leader for anyone who feels abandoned or alone.

SWARMS | POISON, VENOM | WOLF | STORMS | DISEASE, MADNESS

NEPTUNE: THE MYSTIC

She commands the veil that separates this world from the next. When we are born it is she who pulls out a droplet (a soul) from the sea of creation. When we die, she is there, easing our soul back into the waters of the afterlife, where we dissipate and become one with one other. She is a goddess of birth and death and rebirth, of magic, sleep, dreams, drugs and alcohol, and spirituality. Associated with death, she is frightening, foreboding, morbid, and macabre. But associated with birth, she is joyful, exciting, and a welcome sight.

PLUTO: THE MONARCH

She is a queen, a patron of royalty, money, precious metals and jewels, and seats of power. She represents those who reign safely from the throne rooms in castles in state capitals. To many she is an abusive, tyrannical, exploitive Monarch who exacts war and violence upon those under her control. But to others, she is a dedicated and faithful ruler who serves her people loyally. She and the Usurper are forever battling against one another, with him trying to overthrow her, and her trying to stay in power, the two of them locked in an immortal, unwinnable battle for all time.

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skulkingwriter · 6 years ago

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So on Saturday, I was in a concert in the Albert Hall, and had to sit on stage through the first three movements of Beethoven’s 9th which... not to be snarky about an obvious classic, but for me, it is not... the most intellectually engaging piece in the world. So I had to find something to think about, and I was staring up at the shadowy figures in the royal boxes, and... this happened.

If I could, I would have drawn it, but I can’t, so instead you get the written waffle version. This is out of standard continuity, for reasons that will become obvious.

Vox Machina are at the opera...

They’ve been given a tip off that something lichy is going to go down during the performance, and have decided to infiltrate.

Percy is in full De Rolo Mode: impeccably dressed and fantastically snobby, keeping vigilant for lich nonsense and genuinely paying attention to and enjoying the music. He is a annoyed that he couldn’t find a way to smuggle Bad News into the opera with him but his pistol is securely stashed inside Vex’s handbag. Vex is sitting beside him having come in on his arm, gorgeous gown, little mask, opera glasses. She’s loving the pagentry a little more than the opera itself, and now it’s well underway she’s starting to lose focus a bit and getting fidgety. She’s mostly using her opera glasses to watch the crowd - supposedly keeping a sharp eye out for liches, but she’s also spotted two men picking their noses, a couple flirting via passed notes in one of the boxes opposite, and a woman reading a book in the back row.

Trinket is outside the box eating all the little sandwiches from the picnic trolleys and enjoying himself very, very much.

Keyleth is in a lovely but really unnecessarily complex gown that Vex had to help her get into and which will almost certainly end up on fire before the end of the night. She loves the opera so much you guys, she is leaning on the front railing of the box with her chin in her hands, gasping with every swell of music. She’s basically forgotten about the lich. She’s going to cry.

Next to her: Grog, seeming-ed into a beautifully tailored tuxedo. He looks dapper as fuck with his beard and bald head and little bow tie - he doesn’t like the restricted movement but he does enjoy being dapper. as. fuck. He’s doing his best with the opera: Keyleth is having to help him keep up with the plot and he has a lot of questions about why these people solve all their problems with singing instead of violence – but the music is starting to get to him, and by the end he’s going to have his elbows on the railing right alongside Kiki.

Pike is acting as their ‘bodyguard’, standing by the door to the box – mostly so she didn’t have to take off her armour. She’s going to do a good job of bodyguarding and be vigilant for lich business, but she’s enjoying the opera a lot – and she’s enjoying watching Grog enjoy the opera even more.

Vax declined to put down his daggers and get dressed up and sit in a box for several hours, instead he’s up in the rafters, watching the crowd, waiting for something suspicious to happen. He’s trying not to let himself enjoy the opera too much, because he feels like he needs to be Vigilant, but there are a lot of themes of family and loss and it’s giving him a small case of the feels. Luckily he’s in the perfect position to have a good brood about it without anyone knowing about it, bar the large yellow moth that’s landed on the beam beside him and seems almost as if it’s watching along with him.

Scanlan is in the orchestra pit. Because Scanlan is conducting the opera. He had about 20 minutes to study the score after getting the real conductor blackout drunk, and he’s having the time of his life. He’s alert for strange goings-on among the players and on the stage but he’ll be damned if this isn’t going to be the greatest performance of The Barber of Zadash these people have ever given.

And meanwhile, in the box next door to VM, the Mighty Nein are at the opera...

The Gentleman has sent them to keep an eye on the lead soprano, who is a Friend and Investment of his.

Caleb is in his Smart Caleb disguise, sitting perfectly still, suffering patiently through a set of mild flashbacks. At the peak of their training and brainwashing, the three young wizards would attend social events in Rexentrum. He’s remembering enjoying the opera with his friends. He’s not particularly enjoying this one.

But he’s enjoying it more than his ‘date’, ‘Tracy’. Beau is wearing a slinky gown that she hates, and she’s got her hair down which she hates. She’s completely incapable of sitting still in her chair, and is bored and frustrated out of her mind. This all reminds her of her father’s pretensions to high culture and she hates it. The soprano’s hot, and that’s about all this entire exercise has going for it. She’s going to go to the bathroom four times in the first act. She’s sitting up on her haunches in her chair, spinning a throwing star like a fidget spinner, even though the chair’s really not big enough and her gown really isn’t supposed to stretch that way.

Jester is in the biggest dress with the most skirts any of the Nein have ever seen, absolutely dripping with jewels, gold tips on her horns. She knows and loves this opera – the soprano role is one her mother’s sung many times (and better than this soprano, which she will point out to the others ad nauseum). She’s clutching Fjord’s arm and making comments about how well the orchestra is playing and other versions of this opera she’s seen. He’s looking dapper and slightly stressed in a very nice suit that Jester insisted on actually purchasing for him even though he could absolutely have made himself look like this by magic. It’s got nautical buttons. He’s not really paying attention to the opera – he likes it well enough but this whole thing is making him deeply suspicious. He has a bad feeling about it. The Gentleman wouldn’t tell them what danger there was to his soprano. And also he thought he just saw a feather fall out of the rafters. Are there birds in here? There shouldn’t be birds in here, right?

Nott is seeminged as a young halfling girl. She likes the music, but she figures she can enjoy it while sneaking up and down the corridor stealing bits and pieces from the nobles in the other boxes. She avoids the room with the scary-looking gnome cleric standing at the door. At some point, she’s going to come across a bear eating a tray of cucumber sandwiches and they’re going to stare into each others’ eyes for a moment and then Nott will just… back away...

Yasha’s sitting at the back of their box wearing a loose gown over the top of her normal clothes, and Beau is so angry that she’s got away with doing that - Yasha has no plans to let on how endearing Beau’s fury is. She’s reminded of the circus in a weird way – the trappings of the opera couldn’t be further from the sawdust and grifting and living hand to mouth and town to town… but in some ways it’s exactly the same. She misses Molly, and she misses Toya. And those feelings could be overwhelming, but she refuses to be overwhelmed, so she leans back in her chair, folds her arms and focuses on watching the soprano and the rest of the Nein. At one point, Nugget – who Jester blagged into the theatre as an emotional support dog – bamfs into her lap, and Yasha spends the rest of the opera petting him.

Caduceus is utterly enchanted – mostly with the intricacy of the orchestration and the costumes. He gave up following the plot and now he’s just watching the players’ fingers move. It’s the time he’s ever seen something like this and he’s amazed. He’s disguised as a human but he’s still so tall he has to sit in the back row of the box and can still see perfectly. He’s also seen Vax up in the rafters, but doesn’t think anything of it. After all, it must be a great vantage point to watch the stage from, he sort of wishes he’d thought of that.

At some point, Jester realises that this is a great opportunity to make a little mischief for the Traveller, and sends a thaumaturgical fart that looks, sounds and smells as if it’s come from the conductor in the orchestra pit, right at a crucially quiet moment. The front row of the orchestra falter slightly in their playing, and the gnome in the tux turns around briefly, with an expression like he knows exactly what just happened, and his eyes lock on the giggling tiefling and then the soprano reaches a high note and liches explode out of the trap doors on the stage and everyone in the royal boxes rolls for initiative...

#critical role #fanfiction...?#sort of?#I would call this a Logic but I don't think that's what most people call it #I took this week off to finish my novel and so far I have written THIS #*throws this at you*#just #there you go #I should learn to draw better so I can fanart shit like this it would be more efficient

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sinrau · 5 years ago

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See that pic above? Americans woke up to soldiers and fencing surrounding the White House.

An op-ed in the New York Times calling for the use of domestic military force, aka, soldiers shooting people in the streets. Major cities under curfew. A phalanx of mysterious men in body armour carrying machine guns, only without badges, who wouldn’t respond to questions — like Trump’s new personal secret police. Or maybe SS.

Finally — finally — the general understanding seemed to dawn that this was fascism. Pundits and intellectuals used the word “fascism” for the first time. They were horrified and shocked. The idea seems to be, right about now, that America’s in danger of having a fascist collapse.

Wrong.

What the hell do you think the last four years have been?

There’s not some kind of vague remote danger, or imminent threat, of fascism breaking out in America. What planet have you been living on? The last four years have been America’s collapse into fascism.

The American pundit and intellectual and even well-meaning white liberal are suddenly using the word “fascism,” now, in shock and horror. Now that troops are on white streets. Wait, you mean it wasn’t fascism when brown kids were put…in cages…in camps? What the?

Well-meaning white America is saying suddenly now that soldiers are on its streets, “But Oh My God! This is fascism!” It doesn’t see the shattering hypocrisy, the devastating irony, therein. Do you mean that all of the following weren’t really fascism to you: Camps, cages, bans, raids, purges, violence, hate at minorities emanating from the head of state, institutional dehumanization? What the? Are you serious? It’s the kind of thing that makes literally everyone else in the world at this point gnash their teeth at the American Idiot, and not know whether to laugh or cry maniacally.

America’s had a fascist meltdown. Over the last four years. The next six months are merely the end stages. In which we find out if America goes full-on fascist the whole way, irrevocably, or not. Can that be staved off?

If you really want to know, then is nothing more crucial right about now than not erasing the last four years of history, but really understanding them. How, precisely, they have been grade-school textbook fascism. The real thing. Not a drill. Bona fide, actual fascism. That everyone should have recognized, and most of the world did. Only America didn’t get this point, it seems.

It was always fascism. From day one of the Trump administration. That was the explicit goal and objective. From day one.

Remember how his advisors advanced the ideas of ethnic cleansing and purification? How he began his campaign by calling immigrants and refugees “vermin” and “animals”? Blaming them for the economic woes of the average American, who suddenly found themselves downwardly mobile, poor, and desperate? Trump blamed a certain hated minority — Latinos, mostly, but also blacks and Muslims and Jews — a demagogue scapegoating them for all a nation’s problems, from poverty to social disintegration to hopelessness to a lack of good jobs to crime. Just like Hitler had in the 1930s to Jews, too. Yes, really. Ask your Jewish friends. 99.9% of them will agree.

That was fascism.

Remember when Trump got elected? His first major priority wasn’t to give Americans the healthcare they lacked. The retirement they needed. The raises they hadn’t had in generations. It wasn’t to improve their lives in any way at all, with a better social contract. What was it? To build a wall. And then it was to build a network of concentration camps. Concentration camps.

That was fascism.

Then his advisors had the idea to put kids in cages in those camps, and “separate them” from their families — translation: rip them from their mothers’ arms. In those camps, in those cages, those kids weren’t even allowed to hug each other. They didn’t have adequate food, water, or medicine. International observers classed this as torture, because that is exactly what it was, properly speaking.

That was fascism.

What was the next major priority of the Trump administration? Now that it had its camps, and its first hated minority in them — when would they come for us, the Muslims and Jews and blacks wondered — would Trump finally do something for the “real” American, his base of fanatical whites? Nope. Still, he didn’t give them healthcare, retirement, jobs, education.

What did he do instead? He began to “raid” towns. Have papers checked on public transport. Immigrants and refugees were hunted like desperate things — the “vermin” he and his base thought they were. Some cities proudly called themselves “sanctuaries.” But you don’t need sanctuaries if there aren’t fascists hunting the hated.

That was fascism.

The raids soon enough became just another feature of daily American life. And as they intensified, mass deportations became another priority. Guess what the “forcible removal” of populations is called? Genocide. That came after the first genocide, which was child separation, because taking the kids of one kind of people is a form of genocide, too.

Don’t take my word for it. The last living Nuremberg Prosecutor warned around this time that the Trump Administration was now committing crimes against humanity. Think about that. The man who put…the Nazis…away…warning America was now doing the same category of things they did. He would know. He helped invent the idea, Ben Ferencz, that brave and noble soul.

Do you know who listened to him? Nobody.

To this day, nobody in America’s major media has interviewed…the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor…saying crimes against humanity were happening all over again, this time in America. I think I’m one of a handful of people who wrote about this point at all. What the?

That part was fascism, too. How so?

Well, because it meant that Americans didn’t get what all this really was — who was teaching them any of this? America’s major media, at this point, wasn’t warning that all this was a serious and real fascist collapse. They were warning against saying just that. And then, they were interviewing…neo-Nazis…doing fawning profiles of them. Instead of Ben Ferencz.

What the?

It’s no wonder that the average American was bewildered. This might have felt like fascism. But surely it wasn’t. Nobody said you could call it that! Chris Hayes, Robert Reich, and so on, even the nation’s self-described liberal pundits, didn’t say it. Neither did the political opposition.

There was a word for all this. Denial. America was now a society in denial as deep as an ocean. The Trump administration’s priorities had all been the stuff of textbook fascism: one, demonization, two, camps and raids, three, ethnic cleansing. In magazines and newspapers around the world, questions began to be asked. German ones explicitly began referring to Trump as an aspiring fascist. One put Trump doing a Nazi salute on its cover. Only in America was there any question: no, this couldn’t be fascism, could it?

When the Germans are telling you he’s a fascist, he’s a fascist.

In the 1930s, too, denial had been key to the rise of the Nazis. The good German wouldn’t have believed it if you told him the Nazis were about to murder 6 million Jews. They were doing great things for the Germans! Some Americans will object to that parallel. Nonetheless, denial played a key role in the rise of American fascism, too.

No major institution in America admitted it was now having a fascist collapse: media, intellectuals, opposition, or the people themselves. Those who thought it couldn’t say it, and those who hadn’t been educated to think it, who’d been cautioned away from it, by the failure of America’s intellectuals and media, genuinely appeared to have no clue.

That was fascism, too. The atmosphere of denial as deep as an ocean, that America was now drowning in. Life went on as usual.

Why do we warn of fascism? Remember that old quote? “First they came for this hated minority, then they came for that hated minority, and finally they came for me?” We warn of fascism to prevent it’s slippery slope, it’s ruinous decline, it’s shattering spiral of self-destruction.

White Americans didn’t get it. Fascism was coming for them, too. But as hard as anyone tried to teach them that — they seemed incapable of listening. Sure, maybe you did. But there was no widespread understanding in America whatsoever that it was having a fascist collapse.

So America took an even more dangerous step.

Trump was impeached. For what? For camps? Purges? Raids? Bans? Hate? Genocide? Nope. For offering…a bribe. So the man who the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor said was committing crimes against humanity was impeached for…a bribe…not for crimes against humanity. What the?

The Democrats impeached Trump. For the wrong thing, not the right thing. They gave all that fascism a free pass, legitimized it by turning a blind eye, showed that no justice could be had for it. That is why impeachment had no effect on Trump’s fortunes. It didn’t matter because, well, it didn’t matter. And they did that calculatedly. “We can’t impeach him for that, because, well, there’s no fascism here! There can’t be!”

That’s called appeasement. And it’s another key step in any fascist collapse. Because a demagogue is a bully, and when he knows he can get away with abusing a whole society, that is exactly what he’ll go on doing.

At this point, any decent observer of fascism could have predicted: now it’s going to be white America’s turn.

Today, it is.

Soldiers surround the White House. The President calls for Americans to be shot on the streets. His party supports him. That phalanx of secret police guards the demagogue, accountable to no one but him.

Suddenly, white America’s crying — now that it’s on their doorstep — “but this is fascism!”

Hello. It was always fascism. From the day of the camps, raids, bans, purges, cages. From the denial, through the appeasement, to the complicity.

Remember the old quote? In America, it goes like this. “First, they came for the Mexicans, and I did nothing. Then, they came for the Latinos, and I did nothing. Then they came for the Muslims, and I did nothing. Then they came for me.”

White America’s figured out that it’s fascism…too late. Far too late.

How does a nation grow this ignorant? Didn’t they teach white Americans in grade school — like they taught the rest of us — that camps, bans, raids, purges, hate, are what fascism is?

That when a head of state says that hated minorities are “animals” and “vermin”…and acts upon it…that’s fascism?

How can white America be this selfish? This blind?

I have never — ever — seen another country like it. Never. And neither has the world.

The American Idiot has become a figure of global renown precisely because the world is shocked and horrified that Americans didn’t know fascism when it was literally putting kids in cages before their very eyes. What the? No wonder everyone I meet that’s not American laughs at Americans for being hopelessly foolish now.

That is hopelessly foolish. It’s blindingly idiotic. They teach us what fascism is in grade school — all of us, everywhere around the globe — for a reason.

So we can see it coming, before it’s too late.

America didn’t.

America’s not on the brink of a fascist collapse. It’s not in danger of having one. The last four years have been one. During those four years, a demagogue and his army of American Idiots built all the nascent institutions of a fascist society — camps, bans, raids, purges, and so forth. All that is now just everyday American life. And everyday American life now feels so scary, horrifying, brutal, violent, and dystopian precisely because Americans are living in a fascist society.

Only the final steps of fascist collapse are now left to take. A demagogue seizing power for life, declaring martial law, calling a state of emergency, postponing elections, cancelling them. Who’s going to stop him? Why do you think that phalanx of men in body armor who nobody can recognize or account for is there?

Only the final steps now remain. The final seizure of power.

Then the transformation of a society is complete. What do you think will happen if Trump isn’t removed from power by November? Do you think another four years will end in anything but even more tragedy? Do you think that there would be another election after that? Do you think America as we know it would survive?

Don’t kid yourself. Wake up. Wise up. Open your goddamned eyes.

The last four years were America’s fascist collapse. This is just what finishes the job.

Americans, like so many before them, didn’t get it, until it was too late, even while the alarms were blaring in their very eyes, their house was burning down, and the smoke was in their nostrils. Nope, no fascism here! Those kids in cages? Those towns being raided? That President scapegoating whole minorities and banning them? That’s not fascism? No wonder they came for you in the end, too, finally, occupying your streets. Who was left, after the Latino, Mexican, Muslim, black, Jew, but the well-meaning, oblivious white American? The last one still in denial?

It was always fascism.

That, my friends, is why, and how, history repeats itself. Through cowardice, through folly, through ignorance, but most of all, through blindness, deafness, and silence.

Umair June 2020

#IFTTT #WordPress

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pubtheatres1 · 6 years ago

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Archive interview with actor CHRISTOPHER TESTER The pub theatre circuit has rising stars of its own. Christopher Tester is currently playing the role of the Count in a new stage adaptation of DRACULA at the Jack Studio Theatre opening 9 October. As repertory actor with Arrows and Traps, he has achieved much critical acclaim for his roles with them, including the sold out smash hit, THE WHITE ROSE in August. His past roles have included playing Romeo in a national tour of ROMEO & JULIET, Bosola in THE DUCHESS OF MALFI and performing in KING LEAR at the Almeida Theatre with Jonathan Pryce in the title role. It’s great that the pub theatre circuit has theatre royalty of its own, with actors of Tester’s calibre. Yet this isn’t his main source of income. Tester also works from home in his own recording studio. This is his full-time job. It hasn’t been a straight line to success for Tester. He explains that he worked in box office, “the wrong side of the box office, and front of house at Almeida,” but he also got the opportunity to perform on stage at the Almeida. It was while he was leading this double life that he decided he really needed to change his life. “The voice over work is flexible” he says. “I can perform on stage in the evening, and work anywhere, location, location, location”. He taught himself all the editing and technical skills he needed thanks to “the wonders of u-tube and on-line tutorials and that kind of stuff”. He’s picks up what he needs to learn according to the job. “The higher-end clients, just want the recording and they’ll adjust it for their television commercial, compress it, equalize, speed it up or slow it down”. Tester’s worked with BMW, Legal and General and Warner Brothers, as well as being the voice of BMW in India. “They couldn’t afford Benedict Cumberbatch … they have a much smaller budget” says Tester with an ironic smile dancing around his lips. Laughing and smiling a lot are not Tester’s style. He has a bell clear voice with a, take me seriously, edge to it. He’s quite intense and this is something that comes across well in his roles. His voice overs are his business and contacting potential clients to market himself has been very successful. Being an actor is more difficult, as Tester explains, “you can’t keep writing to directors and casting directors, developing that relationship pivots on whether they come to see your work”. You can change your agent and your headshot but that’s all. Tester’s problem has been that despite having very hard-working agents, he wasn’t getting the auditions. “You either divest responsibly into agents to get the work for you and I think there’s a necessary cost to your mental health as a result of that” says Tester. “There’s a lot of talk about actor’s not getting a yes or no after auditions. They may learn 12 sides, 15 different scenes with 24 hours-notice. They stop life to do that, and then they don’t hear yes or no. My problem was not getting an opportunity to be rejected - rejected from rejection.” So, he’s not “waiting for the phone to ring”, he’s creating his own work or collaborating on projects with theatre makers. Tester’s collaboration with Arrows and Traps began when he auditioned for Shakespeare in rep a couple of years ago. The director Ross McGregor didn’t cast him in that but told him that the next project was CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and he definitely wanted to see him for that. “Thankfully I got it” says Tester. “It established this kind of rep system. Actors who perform with them once are automatically under consideration for subsequent plays.” Tester has been with them for four plays, all performed at Brockley Jack Studio. Tester explains the value of the system. “There’s a core company but the casting will depend on where people are professionally and logistically. We have a short hand mystical-speak in code, Ross knows how we work and what we respond to and what our processes are. Some actors come to the first rehearsal off book and pretty much know what they’re going to do, others discover it late in rehearsals, sometimes on the night. Some explore the concrete and others the grey area in between. It’s about putting together the people who will fit the particular demands of the project.” Tester gets cast in lots of intense roles. It’s clear to see he has this natural intensity that he brings to the stage. He played the title role in Ross McGregor’s adaptation of the novel FRANKENSTEIN (2017). It was nominated for two Off-West End Awards. Prior to that he played the lead role of Rodion Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (2017). He was nominated for BEST MALE PERFORMANCE by OFF WEST END AWARDS. The knockout reviews included one from The Stage stating that “the evening belongs to Tester’s charismatic performance”. Timeout went with "Christopher Tester is chokingly plausible" and London Pub Theatres “his guilt and doubt and introspection are all perfectly pitched”. When asked about his favourite role, Tester responds with a glint in his eye. “Obviously, Dracula.” It is his current role but he admits Crime and Punishment was “a personal challenge, just because it was 90 mins straight through and I never left the stage … with that level of intensity.” Tester (36) is one of the more experienced members of the rep company. “I think there’s a certain element of being able to set a tone in the rehearsal room. If everybody is straight out of drama school, it can revert to being quite laughy and jokey, it’s necessary, but you need someone in the rehearsal room that sets bar for learning lines and trying different things. That’s also Ross’ job but its collaborative. We’re learning from each other.” Three or four of the actors trained at Fourth Monkey which is very movement based. They bring something that Tester doesn’t have, he says that “being trained at drama school, there’s movement, but it’s not the same.” Tester’s a self-proclaimed workaholic which comes across in the interview. He has a notebook with him which is stuffed with lines and extra pieces of paper. His nose was buried in it and he seemed surprised to find his interviewer had arrived but switched tasks immediately. He explains that if he’s not doing something it makes him “feel anxious”. So, it’s good to hear about the gentler, slightly switched off, side to him. He likes cats. He owned a Tonkinese cat called Zara. He admits that the cat helps him to feel calmer. “Especially when working from home, it’s a good dynamic” says Tester and then gets a little teary when he has to explain that the cat died. He and his partner are devastated. “We’re having a six-month period of mourning then getting another cat. I can’t really operate at optimum level without a cat.” Tester has other means of relaxing, “going on holiday” and the fact that his fiancé is in “no way related to the industry, she’s an accessories designer, so she’s also creative but in a different way.” Being completely self-employed, Tester says that exercise is part of his structed day working from home. He runs and lift weights which he finds great because there’s a “progression, doing more weights and more reps”. He’s constantly building to a goal. He believes that the “tenets or principles of weight lifting can be applied to voice over stuff”. He’s just finished the run of Arrows and Traps THE WHITE ROSE. The show sold out its run, was nominated for Off West End Awards BEST PRODUCTION and received fantastic reviews before playing at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford as part of a UK Tour. Rehearsals have already started for DRACULA. “I‘m really interested in actor process, things like emotional preparation”, says Tester. “It’s a technique by an American actor teacher called Nicky Flax. She calls it flaxing. Rather than engaging intellectually, you have to think of something sad so I’ll think ‘my cat died’.” In some ways its similar to Method acting but Flax takes it further as Tester explains. “Emotions are locked in different places in the body, by releasing, unlocking them from the body, these emotions can come to the surface. Different parts of the body relate to different emotions. She has a very sequential way you have to go through it - takes 5 or 10 minutes - feelings of welling anxiety are in the stomach, vulnerability in the upper chest, laughter at the back of neck. It’s not specifically goal oriented its more sensitive and aware.” Tester believes that “day to day we have a certain level of armour, otherwise we couldn’t function.” “If you go to the theatre, you don’t want to see someone being self-indulgent”, he continues. “You don’t want to see someone cry on stage, you want to see someone fighting not to cry. I can see you’re not crying, you’re frowning, pulling faces but you’re not crying. You’ve got to have that emotion to fight against in the first place. I found her (Nicky Flax) work more relevant to me as an actor, than about a year’s worth of drama school training. So even with the character I played in THE WHITE ROSE which got to be quite cold and clinical, there’s still got to be an emotion under that and the process that Nicky applies to me meant that I can bring that in the end.” Tester has worked with many other pub theatres including Finborough, Old Red Lion, Theatre 503, White Bear Theatre and Rosemary Branch. “I loved the first pub theatre Rosemary Branch. Sess and Cleo were lovely and supportive. There’s something about the support of a venue and the personal touch. Kate and Karl are the closest to Sess and Cleo, supportive not bullshitting you. By the same token there’s a lovely intimacy to both theatres, especially Brockley Jack, that level of intimacy with the audience, an ability to show lots of detail.” Both theatres have a very loyal local audience and Brockley Jack’s growing reputation has got them a lot of attention from further afield. Whilst Tester is mainly a classical actor, he has also had contemporary roles. The reason he got into acting classical texts was his “stereotypical pilgrimage” to Stratford to see Toby Stevens in Coriolanus in 1994. “What planted the seed was just because how I look and how I sound as well, I fit into classical theatre” says Tester. Other notable roles in new works have included his diverse portrayals of Andre Raffalovich in THE PICTURE OF JOHN GRAY (ORLT) and Lance Armstrong in PEDAL PUSHER, (Theatre Delicatessen) which was a dissection of the doping culture in professional cycling. He also starred in new adaptations of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY and JOAN OF ARC for London's critically acclaimed rep company The Faction. Tester points out the necessity of making a classical text “seem incredibly contemporary just in term of making things fresh, relevant, not being a museum piece and that is what’s exiting otherwise an audience cannot relate to it”. This is something Ross McGregor does in his adaptations. In both Frankenstein and Dracula there are some expectations which have to be fulfilled. “There has to be a monster, scares, shocking scenes, violence in some ways, otherwise you’re denying what that text is” says Tester. “But it’s much more interesting and properly engaging if an audience can empathise or sympathise with the characters in some way. Otherwise they just find something on Netflix. You don’t need to go to theatre, theatre has got to offer something more.” “Dracula is going to be very exciting because it’s a kind of roller coaster ride”, he says. “It’s going to be really quick, fast, sexy, violent and dangerous but the story is seen in a different light. I’m a monster who feeds on peoples’ blood … how can I sympathise with him? What fascinates me is his loneliness, and isolation”. Christopher Tester plays the title role of the Count in Dracula Arrows and Traps present DRACULA by Bram Stoker Adapted for the stage by Ross McGreggor Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, SE4 9 – 27 October 2018 @September 2018 London Pub Theatres Magazine Ltd All Rights Reserved Images top to bottom: Crime and Punishment The Picture of John Gray Frankenstein (2017)

#Christopher Tester Dracula Crime and Punishment #Brockley Jack Theatre Arrows and Traps Frankenstein The Picture of John Gray Off West End Awards

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