disappearing act

Something about me and video cameras. If I was able to record a show , it was on a duff night. If it was a sellout evening, the person who promised to bring the camera forgot.
Recording any theatre show on a single camera is a disappointment anyway. The lighting is poor and the recorded sound only as loud as the camera operator's cough.
The human eye has an ability to zoom in on a single detail and dance around the full stage picture in a moment. This experience can only be captured with multiple cameras, gifted cameramen, skillful editing, re-lighting, re-location (out of the theatre and into a studio) and re-scripting. Most of my shows now only exist on VHS. The earliest recording, of a show performed in a hall in Edinburgh in 1980, was degrading into a black and white snowstorm the last time I looked. 

This year I remounted a show that I created in 2001. The show, MIDRIFF, is about a number of things including the 'now you see it now you don't-ness' of places, people, life and theatre. 

I thought of using the title 'disappearing act' as the url name for this blog but it was gone already (almost some kind of joke there). The idea was to make a record of all the the shows I've made. And maybe some I've performed in. 

I was thinking that the only problem with this idea was getting started on it. Now that I have started, I can see several reasons why this could be a really bad idea. There's exposing my indifferent ability to write and punctuate for starters. And then, I now realize, there's no way round the fact that this is a transparent bid to leave some kind of mark (oops, looks like we can expect a number of visible/invisible transient/permanent metaphors and such). But heigh-ho, here goes. It's going to happen slowly...that's if I don't give up completely...