“Twelve
Step Writing exercise - Day
4: Write a
letter to an agent telling her how wonderful you are.”
So
obviously, I thought long and hard about how to approach this step.
It's a very stupid exercise if I'm being brutally honest. If you have
an agent, they already have an idea of your skillset and will be
working toward selling you. You
only need convince them with your work.
If
you don't
have
an agent - and I don't – then sending a letter telling her ( why her
by the way, are all literary agents women ? That's
a little bit presumptuous
)
how wonderful you are probably won't do much to sell you. It MIGHT
make you seem something of an obnoxious blowhard and
unless you're going for the Salman Rushdie audience, that's not
something you really want to project.
I
think the object of the exercise is to give you a false confidence,
to let you take stock of your own skillset, to allow to explore and
even exploit it. But
to what end? I
don't know, if I'm trying to start a play or even
just
blocked, stopping to write about how wonderful I am isn't going to
cut it. It
will fell like a lie. I will start getting angry, obnoxious and silly.
But
I've decided to embrace this exercise all
the same,
for all it's cheesy, contrived silliness it
seems like fun.
Rather
than writing a pleading, self-stroking letter that might come across
as over-egged masturbation, I've
decided that the best
way to prove to an agent just how wonderful I really am, is to let my
own work speak for itself. I've
decided to present my Actor's CV! That agent had better duck, because
brilliance is shooting off in her direction!
“Number four “Do” for
writing a blog : Include images.
While readers come to your blog for information and personality, they also need to be stimulated visually. Not all posts will lend themselves to an image, but when they do, take advantage of it.”
While readers come to your blog for information and personality, they also need to be stimulated visually. Not all posts will lend themselves to an image, but when they do, take advantage of it.”
DOMINIC PALMER
An Award Winning Actor's CV ( excerpt )
Award Winning Dominic – The Man / The Award Winning Actor
Height - nearly six foot
Weight - 13 Stone but can go heavier if required
Age - 39 years young
Hair - long, fair to middling
Eyes - brown, but can wear contact lenses to look like a cat or whatever
Skills - Award Winning Dominic has a range of acting skills, including line-learning.
Has a particular strength for accents, and acting with them. Although Award Winning Dominic is comfortable with every genre, for example rape drama, he loathes musicals and anyone who likes them, and is particularly comfortable with comedy, and rape drama.
Has a particular strength for accents, and acting with them. Although Award Winning Dominic is comfortable with every genre, for example rape drama, he loathes musicals and anyone who likes them, and is particularly comfortable with comedy, and rape drama.
Style - Naturalism is the key. Award Winning Dominic works hard to maintain a realism, a pathos and salty anger in each of his performances, whether as a blowhard Knight or naughty schoolboy looking for the best Christmas tree ever, or a raped prisoner in a borstel for young offenders.
Philosophy - there is no such thing as a small role. Acting is about the joy of creation, not awards.
Awards - Won best supporting actor in 2005, nominated twice for same in 2010 and 2011.
Quote
“Look, just because I've won an award, been nominated twice, commanded a standing ovation, and earned the most amount of money for one drama group since it's inception, doesn't mean I know enough about acting to advise. Obviously I do, because of the above achievements. The biggest thing I'd say is, you can't let something like awards or monumental amounts of praise about your acting and writing skills, or the sideways glance that blonde gives you in the lobby of the Mermaid “arts” Centre after An Trial that one time give you a big head”
2014
BABY BEAR PAPA BEAR
2011
The hugely anticipated sequel to Papa Bear Baby Bear; Award winning Dominic takes on writing, directing, and performance duties to once again expertly essay the physically threatening and verbally violent Scottish security guard Paul Brady in a play that hugely manipulates Award winning Dominic's mother's Cancer diagnosis in late 2013 to create a hugely successful black comedy about a birthday party. Audience members are heard to report : "he's put on weight since the last one, hasn't he?" Accents - Scottish. Direction - Award winning Dominic and Kris with a K McGuire.
2013
THE TEMPEST
Award winning Dominic is conned into taking part in this failed outdoor version of Shakespeare's least interesting play under the illusion that he is going to be paid. Though Award winning Dominic is above petty name-calling, he is NOT above taking on small parts that open and close a play, to give the performance a much needed kick in the teeth of energy and save an otherwise moribund show from sinking into various muddied grounds. Audience reactions to his committed performance sadly lacking in fervour. Most audiences at this show clearly muddled in the heads. Accents - English. Directed by - someone who still owes Award winning Dominic €300; yet has somehow managed to see fit to pay certain members of his cast for their panto-esque performances. Award winning Dominic is not bitter. He won an award once, and that is it's own reward.
PAPA BEAR BABY BEAR
Black comedy in which Award winning Dominic plays dark-edged and angry security guard Paul "Papa Bear" Brady opposite Kris with a K McGuire's naive Barry "Baby Bear" Bracken. Written and produced by Award winning Dominic, this is a tour de force of a performance, brutal, physical, and filled with menace. If there had been justice in the world, Award winning Dominic would have won an award for his committed portrayal of the deeply obnoxious, self-obsessed, racist, sexist, and angry Papa Bear. Especially as this character is so far away from Award winning Dominic's real personality. Accents - Scottish. Directed by - a turd in a dress.
2011
GRAINNE'S WARRIORS : ACROSS THE BOARD
Revue show performed in Martello function room. Award winning Dominic
performs, writes, produces and acts as artistic director on full
length sketch show, expertly marshalling a cast of nine –
collectively known as Grainne's Warriors – to raise funds and
awareness for Award Winning Dominic's abilities as an award winning
actor/writer/director. Accents – English and Neutral. Artistic
Direction – award winning Dominic, with several individual sketches
directed by Award Nominated Derek Palmer and Don Bagley.
ACROSS THE BOARDS LITE
Prevue show performed for Summerfest Bray, a micro-version of Across
the Boards. Award winning Dominic produces, and acts as artistic
director, writer, editor and performer of the Skeleton Show, The
Brother's Palmer. Accents – English and Neutral. Artistic direction
– award winning Dominic, with individual skits directed by Award
Nominated Derek Palmer and Don Bagley.
THE ANNALS OF SIR CRUNCH – A MUSICAL IN THREE SCENES
With original songs and story by one-time award-winning Keith
Hennigan. Award Winning Dominic performs, writes, and directs this
extraordinary one-act musical based around the journey of a young
bar-girl masquerading as a male, and an arrogant misogynistic wizard.
A journey into the liver of darkness, this satirical, hilarious
comedy is lauded by laughter throughout it's two-night run, mostly
while Award Winning Dominic is onstage performing his self-penned and
self-directed lines.
Award Winning Dominic takes on the double task of acting and writing
with considerable aplomb. It's no big deal, it's what he does.
Produced and performed through Delgany Drama Group, who excitedly
remark afterwards, “it was a very ambitious failure wasn't it?”
Accents – Scottish and English. Directed by Award Winning Dominic.
ONE ACT HAMLET
Performed through Square One “drama” group in the Mermaid “Arts”
Centre, Bray, as part of the annual Bray One Act Festival, Award
Winning Dominic is nominated for best supporting actor for his
scintilating - filled with “simmering hatred” - turn as the
tragic main character Laertes. With a considerably – some have
commented since seeing his performance, stupidly - cut down
role, he still manages to make an indelible mark on the stage, in a
show filled to the brim with other actors. Accents – English.
Directed by some fat lad with a beard who spent more time working on
the performance of Hamlet, then working with Award Winning Dominic.
And it was Award Winning Dominic who was nominated, NOT Hamlet!
2010
ONE ACT HAMLET
Performed as part of a “friends” night for Square One “drama”
Group in Colaiste Raheen National School. Award Winning Dominic will
go on to be nominated for best supporting actor in the Bray One Act
Festival – as above.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE
Square One “drama” Group's tiresome and overlong retread of Oscar
Wilde's blandest and most wearisome play is given welcome lift and
vitality by the Award Winning Dominic – surrounded by a cast of
other actors in roles in the play. Despite his clearly being far too
young for the role of Lord Illingworth, he is roundly described as
being “not bad, if a bit too overboard with arm gestures”.
Accents – Oscar Wilde.
THE LIMBOTEERS PRESENT – TIM : A SLICE OF LIFE
Award Winning Dominic performs,
writes, and directs this feature length original tale based on It's A
Wonderful Life, Midsummer's Night Dream, Wings of Desire, and
MacBeth. Starring as Tim, whose name is in fact part of the title,
Award Winning Dominic brings his trademark pathos and salty,
full-blooded anger to the tale of a man discovering only after death,
through the skit-based interpretation of his life by a group of
Limbo-based performers ( The Limboteers ), how to live. Heart-warming
and biting in equal measure, Award Winning Dominic's fresh, raw, and
sometimes loud performance is matched by his adept and satirical,
hilarious and poignant writing. Achieved a standing ovation on it's
closing night, most likely due
to Award Winning Dominic's
participation as a writer,
director and performer.
Accent – neutral.
Directed, written, and
performed by Award Winning
Dominic.
TIM – THE TRAILER
Award Winning Dominic
workshops the cast of Slice of Life to create an improvised “trailer”
to his forthcoming show. In it, he portrays a hugely characatured
version of “himself”, generously portraying himself as an
egotistical, self-obsessed, angry, narcissistic director/writer/award
winning acotr, clearly a satirical fabrication of Award Winning
Dominic. The trailer, performed in Colaiste Raheen Bray as part of
their “friends” night, creates a genuine buzz for Slice of Life
and for a short time coins the phrase “don't look at (Award
Winning) Dominic's hair.”
THE LIFE OF GALILEO
Approached personally by director Conor O'Malley to perform in his
near three hour epic of Brecht's hideously dreadful “The Life of
Galileo” for his company The Lyric Players, Award Winning Dominic
essays the essential roles of “thin monk” in the first act, and
“desk clerk” at the very end of the play. “Desk clerk” in
particular shows once again Award Winning Dominic's comic timing and
ability to turn his underwritten cameo role into a rounded,
realistic, memorable and above all fullblooded and saltilly angry
creation of pathos, this time with a pencil. Award Winning Dominic
also provides – along with some other okay actors I suppose –
offstage footsteps for a scene somewhere in the middle. All agree
that it was Award Winning Dominic's footsteps and murmer of “hubub”
that most people found unforgettable during this otherwise tedious
scene. Accent – neutral.
DISTRACTED GLOBE
Performed through Delgany Drama
Group, in the Mermaid “Arts” Centre as part of the Bray One Act
festival, Award Winning
Dominic is nominated for
best supporting actor award for his role as Eric, a lecherous actor
too
busy letching
on one of his co-stars to notice the farcical chaos of an aftershow
run amok around him. Award Winning Dominic garners a rave review for
his Roger Moore-esque performance from the
adjudicator with the stutter – despite his being too young for the
role. Accent – Roger Moore.
2009
DISTRACTED GLOBE
Performed through Delgany Drama Group in Delgany National School, for
an audience of other people who laugh uproariously throughout,
whenever Award Winning Dominic's portrayal of Eric the actor is
onstage. All agree he's just not onstage enough, which perhaps the
director should have listened to in anticipation of the next
performance. Not complaining but when your public love you THIS much
it pays to listen to them. In money. It's done now but – Award
Winning Dominic should have been listened to. As should his adoring
audience have been. Award Winning Dominic will go on to be nominated
for best supporting actor in the Bray One Act festival, despite being
under-directed. Accent – as above.
2008
CURSES FOILED AGAIN
Performing through Delgany Drama group in Delgany National School,
Award Winning Dominic portrays a young actor on the edge of love
while rehearsing for a play, and his character, Sir Victor Pureheart,
within the play within the play within. Smoothly, expertly, and
hilariously seguing between the dumb and lustful Scottish actor, and
the debonaire, heroic, and thoroughly English Pureheart, Award Winning
Dominic proves once again to his loyal followers what a versatile
actor he is. Accents – English and Scottish. Would no doubt have
been nominated for a best supporting actor had Curses... gone on to
the Bray One Act Festival in Bray. We'll assume.
SKETCH SHOW FOR DELGANY
In tandem with performing in Curses, multi-talented, Award Winning
Dominic co-writes, co-directs, and co-performs in a sketch show that
accompanies Foiled Again... - as it's FOIL, one might say, although
some might argue that with more control Award Winning Dominic
produced the greater work of the two that night, something perhaps
that should have been noted by the director of Curses Foiled Again.
People remark afterwards, “it was a bit like Monty Python, wasn't
it?” which obviously it wasn't, so you can see what Award Winning
Dominic has had to put up with, yet manages to circumnavigate to
continually create the gold he has created. Accent – neutral.
Directed by Award Winning Dominic and his brother, award nominated
Derek Palmer.
HEAVEN'S ABOVE
Performed for Square One “drama”
Group, in the Mermaid “arts” Centre as part of the Bray One Act
festival, Heaven's Above is some of the worst writing Award Winning
Dominic has ever come across. Written
by the director's brother ( total nepotism, and something Award
Winning Dominic has gone to great pains to avoid in his lifetime,
working mainly off his own back and reaping extraordinary rewards as
a result of which he has ), essaying
the role of an alchoholic ex-actor who is
somewhat unrealistically
visited from beyond the
grave by his ex-acting and sparring partner, Paley – played by some
fat guy with a beard using what could barely be described
as passing for an English accent, certainly
in comparison to Award Winning Dominic's mastery of the accent
– Award Winning Dominic finds depth, humanity, pathos and a
full-blooded, salty
anger in the
awkwardly written addict role, creating a winning double act with the
fat gruff bearded actor, despite Award Winning Dominic being too
young for the role. An usher is heard whispering, “you guys should
have won” after Award Winning Dominic is
left completely and unfairly bereft of awards by a recently exhumed
corpse. Accent – neutral.
2007
AN TRIAL
“Experimental” version of mildly controversial, otherwise
hilariously terrible and naive play, performed in the Mermaid “arts”
Centre for Square One “drama” Group, Award Winning Dominic essays
the role of a free-wheeling womaniser accused – ludicrously, as
part of Society as a whole – with aiding his sister's suicide, even
though he clearly wasn't anywhere near her at the time. If people are
looking for someone to blame, maybe they should blame the person who
committed suicide instead of the usually hapless people surrounding
them who, rightly or wrongly, are often caught up in the travails of
their own petty existence to recognise how much someone else is
suffering. In particular how can you even blame a person who hasn't
SEEN the victim for years, as Award Winning Dominic's character
hadn't. Is it fair to place him on trial? Obviously not. A rare,
dramatic role, Award Winning Dominic relishes the opportunity to
method act, becoming this character, and create pathos and a
full-blooded salty anger for his otherwise unfairly judged character,
so much so that he is able to improv lines and improve the writing
live onstage. Other actors simply cannot keep up with his fresh
performance style! Award Winning Dominic also provides sound design
and music for the “ghostly chorus” scenes. Accent – Irish.
2006
FOUR PLUS TWO – A COMEDY REVUE
Tired of listening to the various uppity nonsense of other, snobbish
drama groups, or taking part in poorly constructed oirish plays and
badly staged “classics”, Award Winning Dominic constructs a
sketch show with a difference. Writing and co-directing this revue,
Award Winning Dominic creates a throughline story, entirely
improvised live by himself and future Warrior Grainne, performing as
bickering stage-hands whose escalating argument in between sketches
provides a fresh and original twist on the sketch show format. Four
Plus Two is initally greeted with terrible skepticism by idiots in
amature drama circles who think they know better than Award Winning
Dominic because they put on shows by Dylan Thomas, but like the
under-privilaged ethnic children in Sister Act 2, this independently
produced, original show attracts great buzz and becomes a true smash.
Accents – English and Neutral. Directed by Award Winning Dominic
and award nominated Derek Palmer.
UNDER MILKWOOD
Performed in the Mermaid "arts" Centre through Square One "drama" group, this bizarre and ultimately pointless cornucopia of crass sexual innuendo and poorly adapted poetry by drunkard Dylan Thomas is given overtly literal and smutty direction by Square One. Enlivened by a sexually charged performance from Award Winning Dominic as the Inn-keep, Sinbad Sailor, who improvs much of his on-stage movement to terrific effect, and even re-directs the play live - memorably during the now legendary little boy running from the bar with the bottle of beer moment. Accents - Welsh. Technically.
2004
THE LAST OF THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Performed in the Mermaid “arts” Centre, this is Award Winning
Dominic's first show with Square One “drama” Group, making his
debut in the Bray One Act Festival at the same time. Essaying the
role of Finbar, a highly wound “homosexual” fellow in a
hilariously awful sex-farce that, like every single sex-farce that
attracts amature drama groups across the country, trivialises
infidelity for cheap laughs, yet judges the minorty characters for
being different. Award Winning Dominic plays a character so
completely against type it's actually hilarious to even THINK of him
playing Gay, considering how completely opposite to Gay Award Winning
Dominic is. Award Winning Dominic – who is not Gay - is correctly and platonically complimented for the control he has of his body onstage. Award
Winning Dominic is awarded Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal.
Ever modest, Award Winning Dominic very rarely mentions this and will
be hard pushed to discuss it when probed. Accents – Homosexual.
2003
THE LAST OF THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
Performed in Colaiste Raheen, for Square One “drama” Group's
“friends” night. Award Winning Dominic will go on to win Best
Supporting Actor in the Bray One Act Festival.
1995-1998
Award Winning Dominic makes his stage debut aged twenty in The Celtic
Story, playing several characters, most notably – despite being too
young – founding manager of Celtic, Willy Maley. As part of The
Rotunda Drama Group, Award Winning Dominic will co-write, co-direct
and perform in several shows, culminating in his original pantomime,
A Christmas Tale.
“Fourth
step in twelve step addiction program : Admitted
to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of
our wrongs.”
Dear Mr God sir, can you help me : I'm just too perfect. Send help. Yours faithfully.
Dom
Tomorrow : "Day 5 - Write
a 20-line poem about a memorable moment in your life."
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