the invisible show
Hard on the heels of The Fall of Man retour, Red Shift premiered its latest opus The Invisible Show last week at the magnificent Latitude Festival near Southwold in Suffolk.
The Invisible Show marks a radical departure for the company, deploying digital broadcast technology to deliver a live-mixed audio soundtrack to the audience’s headphones in an outdoor public space.
Writer/director Jonathan Holloway has crafted six distinct encounters into the piece’s structure; 1. a mother coming to terms with her daughter’s pregnancy; 2. former lovers who rendezvous for the first time since college; 3. a father driven witless by his renegade son; 4. a terminally-ill woman dealing with the future care of her children; 5. loved-up teenagers in the afterglow of a first romp; and finally, (in an extension of The Fall of Man’s narrative) 6. older man and the nanny of his children face a bitter end to their affair.
The programme lasts about 50mins and has been designed for outdoor crowded spaces – the conceit being that the performers are discretely embedded within the audience. Thus the narratives can be projected onto any number of possible candidates seen in the passing crowd. In practice some of the audience were happy to lie back in the sun and soak up the audio alone, whilst others were keen to actively seek out the physical source of the dialogue. Radio mics worn by the performers permit the delivery of intimate, dramatic dialogues – without the earshot of nearby unknowing public yet privy to all those wearing the headphones. This, at times creates a fascinating dynamic, particularly when unscripted encounters take place with ‘unknowing’ members of the public.
For example, in a rendition of scene 3., actor Zac spontaneously diffused some tense dialogue with the father by asking a group of passing girls for a light for his cigarette. They duly obliged. Later, in a version of scene 6. during a heated argument between Peter and nanny Veronica, a concerned member of the public came forward to offer help to actor Natalie (seemingly unaware of the 52 people passively watching with headphones). This interface with the reality of the Festival made the show all the more successful, blurring the boundaries between Art and Life, and offering a new perspective on private Festival narratives.
This weekend, (24th July) The Invisible Show travels to Taunton Brewhouse, where it will feature as part of Westival. The crowds will doubtless be smaller than the 35,000 or so milling around the Latitude site, but it will be an excellent test for the material.
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vesalius: images from a requiem
Selected images captured from a dress run of Vesalius: a Requiem, RiAus, June 2010. Performed by Richard Chew, Philip Griffin, Graeme Rose and the choir of the Fabrica Singers. Directed by Cheryl Pickering. Visuals by Nic Mollison. Further details and credits at Various People Inc.
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Tags: RiAus, various people, vesalius: a requiem
one on one
(pic: Donald Maclellan, courtesy of The Independent)
Here’s the full programme for BAC’s (Battersea Arts Centre’s) ONE-ON-ONE Festival of intimate theatre. We’re presenting It’s Your Film, a Stan’s Cafe classic that was originally created in 1998 thanks to a small commission from The Bond Gallery, Birmingham.
It’s Your Film is a 4-minute live performance which resembles film, adopting low-tech means of delivering the illusion of a noir-ish epic into a specially-built viewing booth which audience members occupy one at a time. With a tech/performing crew of 4, it makes for an extravagant, labour-intensive event; a Festival-filler, available to no more than 10 persons per hour. IYF chimed perfectly to shifting cultural conventions, became hugely popular and transformed the way that Stan’s Cafe delivers its work. Also, as a supposedly ‘exclusive’ show, it must be candidate for one of the most performed, having notched up something in the region of 10,000 individual performances (The Independent mentions 4,500 but this is a very conservative estimate). BAC is the 40th venue for the piece – it having travelled as far afield as Rio de Janeiro, Skopje and Vancouver. For full details of previous tour dates see this Stan link.
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hick in transit glory
It comes to something when you start to feel more at home in the back of a van than within the domicile. I’m home briefly, washing and repacking, ready for the next installment, but feeling unsettled. The Fall of Man concluded it’s post-Edinburgh mini-tour this week with successful gigs in Taunton and Lincoln. Jonathan originally wrote the script during the winter-months of 2008/9 and, just as in The Pleasance last year, references to Veronica’s freezing bedsit seemed at odds to actuality amidst the superheated intimacy of either venue – sweaty, semi-clad Satan frotting and spitting over the shoulders of audience members. Audience member Crysse Morrison has written a review of a Bristol performance on her CrysseBlog, (itself an impressive document of her theatrewatching).
Here are a couple of pics from a happy week spent at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol. An excellent, friendly venue run by a team now headed up by Ali Robertson, formerly director of Cork Midsummer Festival and responsible for booking several Stan’s Cafe shows.
After a weekend’s break visiting the audaciously programmed BE Festival at Stan’s AEHarris Factory (not only bringing International Performance to Birmingham but with it the genuine buzz of an international festival gathering) and celebrating Boy✩2’s seventh birthday, I’m steadying myself for a full on week in the capital. Evenings will be spent at BAC’s ONE-ON-ONE Festival, as Stan’s Cafe revive the now legendary It’s Your Film, whilst daytimes will be spent rehearsing up Red Shift’s new release – The Invisible Show, which will be playing out to Festival audiences at Latitude and Westival in the coming weeks.
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The Ballard of Brum
I’m very excited about this week’s launch of Catherine O’Flynn’s second novel, The News Where You Are, published by Penguin. To say I’m a rubbish reader feels like an understatement – I feel proud of myself if I can get through more than one novel a year. The long-haul journey to/from Oz last month would’ve been the perfect opportunity for me to catch up but I got as far as chapter 3 of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and then gave up, favouring a string of in-flight movies that I hadn’t yet got round to seeing. So what joy and relief when your pals come out with novels that are not only intelligent and gripping but also highly entertaining (as also did Nick Walker – his debut, Blackbox, made all-the-easier for me as it was written in idiot-proof, bite-sized chapters (840 of them).
This week I bumped into Catherine in town as she was fretting over the search for a ‘back-up’ dress for friday’s official launch event. One might surmise that life ain’t so bad for the author who rose to prominence with her first novel, What Was Lost (published by Birmingham’s own Tindal Street Press) winner of the Costa First Novel Prize, 2007) but soon realised that the retail therapy was a thin veneer disguising abject fear. Apparently, a local news team from BBC Midlands Today had been sniffing around the story of the book and had invited her to appear on the programme, confronting satirist with her inspiration on an uncomfortably squishy TV sofa. I believe Cath declined the offer, admitting cowardice. There are plenty of other opportunities for her to promote the book, though, following a string of reviews in this week’s press. Here’s Fay Weldon in The Guardian, in which she likens O’Flynn to being the J.G.Ballard of Birmingham.
I haven’t even picked up a copy yet, but if my experience of What Was Lost (3 belly laughs on the first page) is anything to go by I feel sure we’re in for a treat.
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The Red Shift team reprise our production of The Fall of Man this coming week at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol (22-27th June), followed by dates at Taunton Brewhouse (29th) and Lincoln Drill Hall (1st July). It is almost a year since the show premiered at Pleasance, Edinburgh and now we find ourselves back in the sister venue in north London, rehearsing with a new Veronica. Natalie Jones is doing an amazing job of learning/inhabiting the role in the space of just a week and the show feels like it has a different texture this time around. More tender, perhaps … and delicate. The passages from Milton’s Paradise Lost have been re-positioned within the narrative and now feel like they have a much stronger function as commentary to the story of temptation, love, loss and shame.
The show presents an intense 40-minute barrage of emotion, covering the arc of an illicit affair – from first flirtatious glimpse to bruising conclusion. Via the parabolic lens of Milton, we read their experience as Adam & Eve, with damaging interventions from the Fiend himself, Satan – whose arguments (crafted in the 1640’s) sound wholly convincing to contemporary ears….
Knowledge forbidden … suspicious, reasonless. Can it be Sin to know? Can it be death? And do they only stand by ignorance? Is this their happy state? The proof of their obedience and their faith? Oh, fair foundation laid whereon to build their ruin!
Jonathan and I are prone to indulge each others’ extrapolations, rambling away about the metaphysical readings of the script – but his delight in seeing a complete run-through today prompted a description of the show as comparable to Tutti Frutti Ice Cream, chockful of various sweet and bitter flavours. Edmond and Natalie looked on vacantly and I realised that the last time I’d eaten that stuff was 1978, long before either of them had been transplanted into this demi-Eden. One wonders what the blind Milton would’ve made of the lascivious taste sensation of a Tutti Frutti, served in its cardboard wrapper?
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Tags: Paradise Lost, tutti frutti
Chew&Rose – Light Removals Inc.
We’re driving through Adelaide with a filled body-bag in the back of Rick’s 4-wheel drive; at a painfully slow speed so as to avoid rupture to the Stiff’s plasticene epidermis and to prevent its limbs from falling off on tight corners. We manage to perfect fixed driving postures, staring unflinchingly ahead to avoid looking suspicious to passing cars or pedestrians.
‘Jack’, our model cadaver, ends up in a cobwebbed garage. All I can say is God help him when the Antipodean insect fraternity finally munch through the plastic and get to him. (koalas, kookaburras and possums are cute enough in the garden, but a Huntsman spider in
the lounge and scorpions in the bathroom are reasons enough to ensure I don’t miss the flight home). My final contribution on the way to the airport is to help Rick deliver the gurney to South Australia Police Forensic Science Dept. Our friends in the mortuary have been fantastically generous in lending us information and supplies and we’re keen to return everything in a pristine condition. However, a strange phenomenon seems to have occurred to the cold steel tabletop…
As if some electrolytic event has faintly tarnished the stainless steel, an imprint of my upper body is visible on the surface – shoulder blades, upper arms and butt cheeks. We try to polish it away, but to no avail.
I’ve no idea how it happened. I didn’t knowingly leak any fluid during a show. All I can imagine is that the white heat of performance sparked some vital energy which chemically impacted on the gurney.
If we’d had more time and inclination, we might’ve solved the mystery of this, together with unravelling the centuries-old mystery of the Turin Shroud. Unfortunately, I had a plane to catch – and thinking it unwise to bring it to the attention of the SA Police, we wheeled the trolley into the morgue loading bay, issued our thanks and scarpered.
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vesalius: In Paradisum
It’s rare to get a good team shot out of the mid-thickets of production but here’s a wonderful capture of the Vesalius crew, wrapping up what was a fantastic week of realising the show at RiAus. There have been some terrific responses – even suggestions of award nominations – and I leave in no doubt that we made an impact on the cultural life of the City. Reviving the show was a dream come true for Rick, Cheryl and me, so thank you everyone for helping to make it work so well. Vesalius – a Requiem was a pretty strong launch pad for Various People too…and I suspect that expectations will be running high for a successor project. Fortunately, the minds of Chew and Pickering are o’erflowing with ideas. I leave Adelaide with a wrench, but knowing that I’ll be back…
photo Philip Griffin
Some production images will follow soon…
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Tags: cast, crew, various people, vesalius
vesalius: SA StateLine
Here’s a link to ABC’s StateLine feature on Vesalius – a Requiem, broadcast last night.
The show had its official Australian premiere on thursday evening (3rd June), with a post-show launching of Various People. Board chair, Pauline Brooks, introduced company patron Anthony Steel, (former director of the Adelaide Festival), who described the show as “uncompromising, intelligent and above all, grown-up” – which is gratifying to hear, especially as the show was conceived when we were all much younger.
As we hit the weekend there are four remaining performances, at 3pm and 7.30pm, on both saturday 5th and sunday 6th June. Contact RiAus for availabilities.
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Tags: ABC, requiem, vesalius
vesalius: pre-preview
Vesalius previews this evening at Riaus. The show is sold out tonight and tomorrow (thurs), with tickets disappearing fast for the remaining five performances. The show will feature on ABC’s StateLine on friday evening.
ABC’s Paul Klaric interviews composer/performer Richard Chew in his scrubs. Director Cheryl Pickering awaits her turn in front of the camera.
Mortician/cantors Chew and Griffin prepare for their roles…(Video artist and lighting designer Nic Mollison has created the projections, which draw on material from Vesalius’s Fabrica) .
We are lucky to have the opportunity to work alongside RiAus (Royal Institute of Australia) in presenting Vesalius in their stunningly refurbished, hi-tech building which formerly housed the Adelaide Stock Exchange. Here’s a StateLine report on the recent opening of RiAus.
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Tags: requiem, vesalius
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