congee

I was feeling so awful this morning (or was it this morning? I dunno.  Some time over the last 48 hours).  I had landed in Singapore after an overnight flight and was waiting to get on my next flight.  I went to the lounge and there....was congee!

I had fogotten how much I loved it.  It's sort of Asian porridge and you put scallions and other things into it and it is so delish.  I used to have it every day when I made Son of the Mask in Australia.

It's funny how the little things help you through.

I am off for a swim to try and get my head together.

Kafka where art thou?

I am having a Kafkaesque experience.  I write this from the Air China lounge in Beijing airport.  It is eerily empty, just me and another couple of hapless travellers, hanging around and eating noodles till our flight.

My flight from Newark today was delayed by hours so I missed my conncection to Kuala Lumpur.  Luckily Continental thought ahead and had already booked me on two more flights to get me to KL first thing tomorrow morning.  So when I arrived here there was a lovely lady called Sherry who took me around every Air China desk and office in this massive, sprawling airport.  I had been sleeping for hours on the plane and felt qite refreshed, but Sherry walked very fast and we covered a lot of ground and I can't wait to get back on another plane to get to sleep again.  It's also quite exhausting not knowing what the hell is going on or why you are being taken from one official to another and back again, a growing mound of bits of paper in you sweaty palm.  Still, all is well now, and I ma in the lounge.  There is even internet connection!  And we found my luggage! I had already comes to terms with that not happening. 

It's quite weird to be in such a huge building with so few people.  I can hear the distant sullen shouting of a child and some crackly walkie-talkie but aside from that just the hum of the bar's fridge and that peculiar noise in airports that always sounds like a faraway waterfall. Maybe it is.

I had two great shows on my last night at Feinstein's last night, well, I suppose it was two nights ago actually.  I keep forgetting this is Monday.  I was in the air for most of Sunday.  It has been areally great thing for me to do my show in that venue because once again it reminds me that, no matter if some of the crowd is not my normal demographic or if they don't share certain political or social views of mine, if you are honest and open they will respond to you and you can find a place where you connect. I know that sounds a bit wooey wooey but it's true.

 I am going to have more noodles now.  Chant that all goes to plan and I am indeed able to start filming tomorrow!!

Beijing here I come

I am leaving on a flight for China at the crack of dawn tomorrow so I am a little frazzled.  That, rmy final two shows at Feinstein's and the heat of NYC neccesitate this being a short post!

Last night the legend that is Betty Buckley came to see my show and we had a lovely chat about life and love and singing songs.  I think she is amazing and so I was so honored to be told by my friend Eddie that Betty tweeted about meand my show after she left last night!!

Here as a little weekend gift is a video that goes someway to describing the humiliation of an actor's life.

Tetchy about techy

Yesterday we had some technical glitches here at AlanCumming.com, in thatme sparkling, spanking new Ipad does not let me blog on this site. Yet.  We're on it.  It's a techy reason that is too boring and difficult for me even to have explained but I am assured people are running around with hammers and drills and those little hats with lights on them somwhere in a huge aircraft hangar right now, getting to the bottom of it.

But it was rather frustrating because my whole day had been planned around this momentous new change in how I blog. I walked with the dogs in Central Park, I went and had a delicious curry, I snoozed, I went for a little swim and a steam for my voice, all the while thinking of what I was going to say and share with you and then I discovered I was to be mute.  Silenced by the progress of technology. 

 

Now I am back on my neanderthal MacBook Pro, bought, like I mean about six months ago (OMFG I know) and I will have to continue to lug it all over the globe and risk back injury and the runiation of my dance career unril this Ipad glitch has been resolved.

Aside from that I am loving my Ipad.  Whilst I was in Cape Town my blackberry broke down, the little roller ball would not roll so neither could I.  I stopped using it and just had my computer in my trailer and in my hotel room.  I had a local SA phone which didn't ring very often cos I didn't know very many people, and suddenly I remembered what it was like to not have a constant buzzing in your pants and to be forever scrolling down every mindless missive that came through.  Now, I would go for hours without any contact with the outside world at all. And I was fine.

So my lesson from that is that I want to continue to be a little less contactable, a little more distant.  Nobody will die, civilisation will not crash about our ears, and I will have more time to stop and smell the flowers. I actually did that the other day on the Upper East Side: I rubbed some lavender into my hands and Leon, Honey and I all had a sniff.  If I'd had my blackberry I wouldn't have had a hand free or more likely I'd have been looking at something and missed the flowers completely.

See?

Ask Alan and foreskin and Eurovision!

From Dawn: I became a fan of yours after seeing you perform as the Emcee on the Rosie O'Donnel show. I'm a huge showtunes geek and your performance blew my mind. I was a new mom home with a baby with no budget to speak of so there was no way I could jet to NYC to see you in the show, alas. I've heard a rumor that Cabaret was filmed. Is this true? And is there a chance that it'll get shown on PBS or released on DVD? Also I wanted to thank you for your work as an activist. That baby I was nursing then is now a strapping 13-year old and he also has a 6-year old sister. I'm raising 'em to be fans of yours, too (although Spy Kids would've done the trick if I hadn't!) You're a great role model because of your talent, your passion, your self-acceptance (and celebration) and for the line, "You are the most interesting thing about yourself." I hope my kids are inspired by your example! And I hope I get to see you live one of these days!!   Thanks so much Dawn! I really appreciate your kind words, especially about your kids.  The London production of Cabaret was filmed for ITV in the UK, and is on youtube but the Broadway version was never filmed aside from the archive copy which is available to view at the Lincoln Center library.

Natalie asks: What's your dream role on Broadway?  Definitely Mama Rose or Lady Macbeth

From Annie: What would be the most terrifying presidential ticket you could imagine? Mine is Sarah Palin/Michele Bachmann. (Even the thought makes me sick.)  Oh, I think you hit the nail on the head.  I need to lie down for a minute.

Sibel writes: I am a big fan of your work on the Good Wife. I am even more fascinated after seeing your interviews, realizing how drastically your natural accent and body language is different from Eli Gold's. I am curious what kind of preparation you did/do to get into character. Could you share what kind of experiences you drew from, if you modeled him after someone in particular or if you shadowed certain people? I also have a particular scene I want to ask about. I love watching the dialogue between Eli Gold and Peter's mother in the season finale because your face is so expressive that I feel I can follow what he is thinking at any given moment. I am an aspiring actress and I would love to know if you have any advice on how to convey the thought processes of a character with such clarity? Do you determine every thought that goes through his mind during the dialogue before you act out the scene or does it come naturally to you once you are in character and reacting to your fellow actor's lines?   I just listen, respond spontaneously and react in character.  I think the moment you start trying to make a process and break down the scene into moments and map it out in a sort of military way you lose the very kernel of what you're trying to do:  pretending to be someone else and meaning it.  Sometimes obviously there are things in the script that demand to be marked in some way by the character, but mostly I just try and stay open, and play.

From Alice: I think it's a rather brave thing for an artist to allow an open forum of questions, just wondering if you've found it to be double edged sword?  Oh yes, Alice, it is.  But so far the good outweighs the not so good!

From Vjesci: http://www.alancumming.com/blog.php?id=284
oh no alan not "vox" but VJESCI!
i am with name!
i signed VOX probably as in ye olde romantic exes and ohs
i feel deflated having made such a blunder
do edit it as my conscience will break a stick off in my spine for being so silly
do i sound very vain? 
oh this all recalls a very appropriate lyric:
"people want to hear their names...i'm no exception...please say my name"  Glad we got that sorted out, Vjesci!

Jane asks: Do you have any phobias? Have you encountered any spiders or snakes while you have been in South Africa?  My phobias are mostly related to people and their bigotry or meanness or ignorance.  I can get very wound up by a careless comment, but I don't mind spiders etc.  And in South Africa I had a very urban existence so no scary things, at least nothing that made me phobic though I did see a few scary hairdos.  Once in Canada we had to stop filming because bears were circling us. That was scary!

Shona says: Where can I get a copy of that photo you posted beside the info on the fringe festival - I love it !  Why thank you, Shona! It was taken by the lovely Francis Hills.  Maybe you should go to his website and contact him and see if you can procure a copy that way.

Thanks to Meade for alerting me to forgeon.org, another organisation that is conerned with circumcision and more particulary foreskin regeneration.  Check it out!

Finally here is the Belarus entry for this year's Eurovision Song Contest.  It is a classic, and please keep going till the end because there is a costume moment that is priceless.

Who Do I Think I Am?

I am swanning around in my robe this morning feeling very like someone from a Noel Coward play.   There is debris from a post-show drinks party all around me and my biggest concern is saving my voice for this evening's show.  Oh, and I must do a photo shoot later, darlings.

Last night was my first night of my second week season at Feinsten's and it went really well. It was a really great audience and the show was tighter and I felt really happy with it. The new song went almost really well, aside from a little lyric blip on my part, but hey, that's live theatre.  We also realised when we got to the song What More Can I Say, that we hadn't rehearsed it earlier in the day!!  So that made for an exciting few minutes.

 It's actually really amazing to me to be writing about last night and these things that went wrong and to not have totally freaked out about them.  It's only about a year and a half since I first did I Bought A Blue Car Today for the first time and I am so happy that I have been able to overcome a lot of fears and to be this relaxed about performing in this way.  Of course, relaxation is the key: if you're not relaxed you won't enjoy it and the audience will enjoy it less too.  But I've come a long, long way.  I used to get so utterly nauseated at the prospect of having to sing in public, or even to stand up and make a speech or to try and be funny at some event.  If I had rehearsed and was prepared in the way I was used to in terms of being in a play or a musical then I felt ok, but mostly galas and cabaret sort of shows have only a soundcheck and then you're on.  I would have missed out on so many great experiences, last night being one of them, had I not persevered, felt the fear and done it anyway, and started my new career as a crooner!

The trailer for Sir Billi the Vet, the animated film I did with Sean Connery can be seen here.   It's even more insane than I remember it.  And if you go to the website's music section you can hear a snatch of the theme song sung by Shirley Bassey, who, incidentally, was the person I first heard singing the new song, Almost There, that I put into my show at Feinstein's last night!!  Woah!

And the BBC has announced the line-up for the next season of Who Do You Think You Are?, the genealogy show, and I am one of the particpants along with Bruce Forsyth, Rupert Everett, Jason Donovan, Alaxander Armstrong, Hugh Quarshie, Rupert Penry-Jones, Dervla Kirwan, and Monty Don.  Episodes start airing in July, but I go off and film the second instalment of my story next week so I am not sure when mine will air.  But it is a doozy, let me tell you!  I have already found out some pretty astonishing things.

This picture was taken by photographer Andrew Montgomery in a graveyard at the back of St Pancras station in London a few weeks ago when I was filming the first part of Who Do You Think You Are?.

Up early

My life since I got back from Cape Town has been a little surreal.  That's not to say that playing a 1960's transvestite gangster's moll from Soho, London in the middle of World Cup fever in Africa was not, but it has been quite a culture shock all the same.

Take for instance, Sunday evening, my first day back.  Here I am at Broadway Bares, almost baring all for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.  It was an amazing night and raised a ton of cash.  But most of all it was a great chance to see lots of friends and for people to come together and unite for the common good.  Oh, and get nearly naked and feel dead sexy.

Then yesterday I was flung into rehearsals for my second week at Feinstein's which opens tonight (yikes), at the end of which I came up against a huge jetlag wall and totally crashed. Luckily I made it home before I just curled up and went to sleep on the sidewalk.  This morning I am up uncharacteristically early. Even the dogs looked at me as though I were insane. I am typing this in the loo so as not to disturb the rest of the sleeping household.

I am opening my show tonight with a new song. I have realised that I quite enjoy giving myself a scare like that.  It makes me nervy and more focussed and it means the energy in the room is more exciting. For me, anyway!  Also this song is a real builder and a great way to start off the show.  I will let you know it goes tomorrow.

Quite a few of you have been asking about my recipe for stovies again.  So here I am on Tony Danza's old chat show cooking it.  Enjoy!

Home at last

I didn't write a blog post yesterday because I was in transit pretty much all of the day.  I arrived back in NYC this morning, having flown from Cape town to Johnannesburg, then Jonhannesburg to Dakar (in Senegal) and then Dakar to NYC.  I actually feel not too bad, considering.  I slept a lot on both the long flights and have had a nap this afternoon, been to yoga and feel quite perky.  I am sure I will hit a wall, but I sincerely hope it is not in the middle of one of the Broadway Bares peformances which I am making an appearance at tonight.  It's the twentieth anniversary of the show, now a Broadway institution -  and a very hot and horny one I might add - and I have been asked to go along and be one of twenty celebs who have appeared in years past.  I don't know exactly what I am to do, they just said be there at 9pm and wear something sexy.  Just another Sunday night then.

Friday was my last day on The Runaway, and now Desrae has disappeared into the ether, though I think she will always be quite near and easy to access should the need arise.  My body hair has started to inch back, my acrylic nails were dissolved away and buffed by the Kathy the nail lady on Saturday morning, and now Desrae is no more.  He will live on of course when the show is broadcast early next year, but she has definitely left the building, babes.

It's funny because the whole gender thing means that nobody, including myself knows whether to settle on calling Desrae he or she. I always thing that however someone defines themselves is how you should too, but there is a blurry line with tansvestites and drag queens when they define themselves at different times, and in jest, as both.  Desrae was definitely all man, but I think he would take being called she a compliment.

My last day was as hectic as usual, with a million different make-up and hair changes, and a really upsetting scene which was interrupted, before they got round to doing my close-up, by a massive swarm of bees who for some reason decided to come into the studio and make such a racket to say nothing of the fear they instilled in us all that we actually had to stop work and wait till they were smoked out, the smoke had cleared and the piles of dead bees had been swept away!!  When we came back in to pick up where we left off (especially difficult in an emotional humdinger of a scene like this one -  thanks, bees) it was so weird to look at the lights and see behind the gels that are clipped onto them mounds of dead bees.  It happened so quickly and nobody could explain why.  But it certainly was a memorable exit.

On Friday evening I celebrated my wrap at the Nobu Bar of the One and Only hotel with a few friends, and much fun was had.  The show actually wraps tomorrow and the offical wrap party was last night so mine was a sort of early, splinter wrap party.

I wore a blue Calvin Klein jump suit, a random choice for such an occasion I'll admit, but the reason is that I had brought it to Cape Town with the idea that if I didn't wear it before I came home then it would have to be a part of the next clothes giveaway party (I have all my friends who are my size round and we play a game and the winner gets first dabs at the pile of clothes, the runner-up second and so on.  It's recycling at its most fun).  However I confessed to Neal the costume designer that the reason I never wore it was that it was actually too big.  I had worn it only once, at the Life Ball in Vienna when the theme had been sci-fi and I was a blue and silver alien.  So Neal said he would see to it that it was taken in for me, and lo, on the second to last day, the lovely Fachary (that is not how you spell it but how you pronounce it, and as I don't have the piece of paper with it written down in front of me, that's how we're going to type it today, sorry Fachary) did just that and so I wore my perfectly fitting and reinvented jump suit to the little bash.  And it was a smash.

It is funny to be back here and it be so much warmer than it was in South Africa. Of course, it's their winter there just now, but still, it was a bit weird all the same.  I am so glad to be home, albeit only for a week. It has been a long time and I have missed my pack.

Uncle Alan

The other day I was walking around near my hotel looking for something to eat, not realising that all the restaurants and shops were closed due to a national holiday and not, as I surmised, a massive evacuation to enable everyone to go home and watch the Bafana Bafana match on TV.

A young man started walking along beside me, asking for money.  That's nothing new in most big cities, let alone in one like Cape Town where there is so much poverty existing alongside so much wealth.  Initially I was a little nervous of the man.  I was alone, there was nobody on the streets, I couldn't catch everything he was saying.  But then I listened to him more closely and he told me he was asking for money for him and his sister, they were both orphans and they needed to eat.  I had 23 rand in change in my pocket.  That's about 3 dollars.  I gave it to him.

His face lit up.  He asked me my name and when I told him he kept calling me Uncle Alan and telling me how this would mean he and his sister would be able to eat soup for lunch and then again for dinner that night.  I was moved by how happy and grateful he was.  And also shamed, as I was wearing my new Bafana Bafana soccer shirt that had cost me 220 rand the day before.

It's a very difficult to thing to negotiate poverty.  Because you can't possibly give to everyone who asks you on the streets, but at the same time you can't be impermeable to suffering and genuine need.  I always think every time I give a homeless person or a beggar money that I will redouble my efforts to stop poverty and its causes through activism and support of organisations that are skilled in this pursuit.

Right now in South Africa it is very galling to see so much money being spent on stadiums and roads and sprucing up of the place, and at the same time hearing of people demonstrating because they still do not have electricity or proper toilets in their homes.  It feels to me like the poor people of this country -  and they are also black people - are a very patient and accepting people, who have understood that the changes they were promised cannot come as quickly as they all would like.  Nelson Mandela's message when he was released from prison was indeed about patience and conciliation and forgiveness, but Ithink that all these years later, and with such opulence available to some -  an visitors to the country at that - the people's patience must be wearing thin.