New Stranger to the Welsh Crew

Hello everyone! Peri asked me to do this and I've finally got round to doing it! I'm Cadi, I'm 15 and I'm the newest Stranger to the Welsh Crew. I found myself starting in the full out Stranger week, and like Alex said, it was intense and amazing. It was slightly daunting to begin with, new faces, trying to remember names and feeling a tad shy, but they're such a brilliant group of people it was probably one of the best half-term holidays I've had in a long time. It was fantastic to have Alex our designer along on some of the days to talk to us about different approaches to set design and masks. What with that, having a chat with you guys in NZ about your fantastic ideas that you have, throwing ideas back and forth with the film crew and doing various interesting writing work shops with Jon I have to say I was literally bouncing at the end of the week. It's amazing what a few words and some research can do to get the ideas flowing.

Just popping in two monologue here that I made up. One of our ideas is to have various characters from the past and present having mini monologues being spoken. This was inspired after reading some of Dylan Thomas' characterisations in "Under Milk Wood". I have written two - a Travelling Baker Lady and a Librarian and I'll post them here for you to see.

Travelling Baker:
"I am Anwen - a baker born and bred. Flour runs through my veins like blood. I travel to different villages in my van, see their cultures mix and rise. Brown bread, white bread, soft and crispy, cold flan, shortbread, cake and even sweet items which result in a blanket of wasps as my constant companions. Baking is my very core, my very living, breathing life. People buy my goods and I give them an open ear to stories from their woven worlds in return. Gossip, rumours, truth and twisted tales follow my every step. I travel from Ammanford to Brynaman; I see and I hear the young and old, the likes of Mrs James gossiping about the neighbours cat; and I bake my bread in an honest silent routine."

Librarian:
"Books. They smother the world around us, my world. Even my name, Betsy, is found in a book. Every second of every minute of every day of my working life is spent with them. Fiction, biographies, fantasy, non-fiction, history books, books on wars, on animals, on countries, books about books. I see them every day, I touch their battered crumpled spines as if comforting them. People see me and they see a woman working in an environment she loves, whispering words to dog eared old tomes. Yet they are wrong. I, the Librarian, have the darkest secret of all. I hate every sheet of paper that make the books within my Library. I hate the works they whisper, the songs they sing. I loathe and despise how the words imprinted on the fading paper can change a person. I, Betsy, go about my work and treat the books I look after with an air of enjoyment, of serenity and pleasure. Yet it is all a falsity. So, let this be our secret, okay?"

Right, I'm now looking up the screen and seeing a rather large amount of writing ... So I'll stop here with the last few words of sending my thanks to all you guys in the Welsh crew who are officially amazing at making me feel welcome!
- Cadi -

Refugee song mix!

hey hey there; I've done a very rough version of the Slough/Nelson refugee song. The Slough group performed an acappella version of a poem they had written on video. Tom at Real Time extracted the audio and emailed it to me in NZ. The Nelson team then put it into Reason and Digital performer and jamie recorded a guitar track and helped us with some harmonies. We decided to add a dub-reggae feel as this music is very popular over here (check out Fat Freddy's Drop, Katchafire and Salmonella Dub for NZ examples). I've left a couple of gaps with a more urban loop underneath and would like to see what you guys in Slough and Wales want to add. Unfortunately I work on a Mac and the blog site doesn't let me upload stuff on Safari so I need to upload the files later at work. hope I've whetted the appetite!