My Stage Door Story: About Me
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My name is Malinda, and I am a writer, proofreader, researcher and daydreamer from Stoke-on-Trent, England and the island of Mahe, Seychelles. All of my life I have been in love with reading stories and also with creating them. Be they on TV or in books, my biggest passion in life will always be stories, but of course I am also extremely passionate about the theatre and I'm a dedicated fan of figure skating and football. Although I'm usually shy and quiet at first, once you get me talking about something I love, then it's difficult to get me to stop! I started this website after publishing my book of short stories, also called At The Stage Door, in 2014; the book began as a university assignment that kept on growing every time I found myself back at the stage door. Once the book was completed, I was reluctant to stop telling my theatre stories and I realised I wanted a way to share the fact behind the fiction, letting more people discover the wonderful world I'd found; the people I'd met at stage doors who had so inspired me and the adventures which had first drawn me into stage dooring, all whilst hopefully helping out other people who would like to get closer to the world of the stage door themselves. You can find out more about me on my social media sites which are linked below or by visiting my contact page and getting in touch.
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My Favourite Things
I spend a lot of my free time writing stories, but also just daydreaming-up stories I'm never going to write seriously, just to keep myself entertained; even my job involves dealing with stories as I edit, proof-read and reaserch for projects of my own and for other people's projects in both fiction and non-fiction. But outside stories, my big passions are football and figure skating. I am a dedicated fan of my local football team Stoke City and am a louder-than-you-might-think season ticker holder. I'm also a big fan of figure skating, which takes up an awful lot of time when I'm trying to not miss out on any major competitions no matter what timezone-related complications arise! My absolute favourite figure skaters include Ashley Wagner (USA), Adam Rippon (USA), Shoma Uno (Japan) and Yuzuru Hanyu (Japan), but there's plenty more I look out for and appreciate. I love nights in watching all the different disciplines and competitions, even if it can be a rollercoaster of emotion at times, not least because I often find my favourites not doing things the easy way! Ridiculous as it might sound, I really do have some wonderful memories of watching my favourite skaters succeed, and I will never forget staying up through the night 'til 10am Seychelles time to see three of my favourite skaters make the podium together at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Besides skating, I take an interest in a lot of random things here and there, including my second home Seychelles and a lot of the culture and geography relating to other interests of mine, such as my favourite skaters' or footballers' countries and also the C18th pirates I've researched for work and a lot of the other places and people asociated with them.
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My Favourite Stories
So as stories are my big interest, I feel like I really need to mention a few of my absolute favourites (besides those I've seen in the theatre!) My television loves are a mixture of drama, comedy and hard-to-define. I'm a big fan of Red Dwarf, The Mighty Boosh and Jeeves And Wooster, and Frasier and Will And Grace are two of my favourite comfort-watches. My favourite go-to dramas are Charmed, Father Brown, Ghost Whisperer, Hotel Babylon and Sapphire And Steel, and I'm also a very big fan of CSI (Las Vegas.) Smash was another favourite of mine, mostly because I loved that there was something on TV using real theatre people in its cast and giving a little taster of that world. Another big favourite of mine was Jane The Virgin, where I loved its characters, humour and style, but think it lost something after season three and it was enough for me to stop watching. My very favourite shows in the world are Veronica Mars and Green Wing. With Green Wing, I loved its craziness but also its characters and I would love to one day create something as simultaneously crazy and beautiful as that show was! Veronica Mars holds a special place in my heart and I am proud to have been one of the 91, 585 Marshmallows who helped ressurect the show as a movie in 2014 - the Logan and Veronica relationship fascinates me and the character of Logan Echolls and his development is something I loved watching. As for authors, my favourites are Marian Keyes, Mhairi McFarlane and P.G. Wodehouse. When it comes to films, I am a shameless romantic comedy fan - I just find them comfortingly predictable!
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My Favourite Music
As you will be able to tell from my Stage Door Playlist, I have a really wide-ranging taste in music that is pretty much all over the place! However, I do have my favourite artists: Busted, Mark Owen and Taylor Swift are probably the most important to me, but beyond them most music I get will come from TV soundtracks, skating programs or recommendations via my other interests. When it really comes down to it, though, there is no band which comes close to meaning as much to me as Take That - as a four was my favourite, but they're my favourite band in all their forms. Jason is and always will be my favourite member of the band and the one I most identify with, but everything about Take That means a lot to me. Their music is very close to my heart, as it has been there for me through all the hardest times and the best times of my life. They have brought me some wonderful friendships and memories as well. I adore the entire Take That story, the friendships, the music and the live shows, and the times I've been lucky enough to see them live have been some of the best experiences I have ever had in my life. This music is an inspiration and a comfort and their live shows never fail to fuel my imagination and make me fall in love with their music even more.
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Cats the Musical & Me
The first time I saw the show I was six, and my parents surprised me one half term with a trip to see it in the West End. Incredibly, once the show was over, they didn't actually think I'd been that moved by it. What they didn't realise was that I had enjoyed it so much I simply didn't know how to express it! I had to beg my mum to buy me the video of the show when it came out a few months later, and eventually she was persuaded to buy me the video, which, to her surprise, I actually proceeded to watch almost every weekend for the next year; it became my Saturday ritual when I got home from ballet to stick the video in and dance and sing along. The characters, the dance, the music, the themes, the beauty, the spectacle, the possibilities for all those different interactions and background details...I loved it all! The whole idea of the Jellicle Tribe and the mythology around it, combined with the pure magic of the dancing and the way that seeing it live simply transports you, just had me hooked. No matter how long it went between seeing it live, I just fell in love over and over again with the show - nothing compares to the power of seeing Cats live at all. With Cats more than any other show, no two performances - and no two casts - ever present you with quite the same version of the show. Everyone brings their own interpretation to everything every night. It's unique and it holds a unique place in my heart. "Sunlight through the trees in summer, endless masquerading, like a flower as the dawn is breaking, the memory is fading" will forever send shivers down my spine.
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Arriving At The Stage Door
When Cats went on tour in 2006, I was unexpectedly thrown, headfirst, right into an adventure going beyond the magic of a new, incredible cast performing my favourite show. I went to more performances, I went to the stage door every time, and I discovered a whole new layer to the show I loved by meeting the people behind the make-up and growing close to them. Because suddenly it wasn't just about the amazing show: it was about this whole magical world of the theatre, about being in a theatre, and dressing up for it and breathing in that distinct smell of a show. And then it was about after the show as well - it was about laughter and stories which could be found spending time at the stage door and all these fascinating, brilliant people, who brought yet more stories and joy with them. Being there to support such wonderful, talented people became just as important to me as the shows. The thing about the theatre is that it is its own little world within the world; it has its own language, its own rules, its own people and its own stories to tell. The theatre is about the things I love most; stories, magic and wonder, and it is as close as most people ever come to impossible, incredible things. In the dark of an auditorium, anything could happen, and everything is heightened and beautiful. To me, spending time in a theatre is an event in itself and I don't think there are many experiences which quite compare to a live show.
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