02.01.2010 As the bliss-bubbles of the Christmastide ebb away, I face up to the prospect of a new year that has been trumpeted in by Captain Skint on his Frugal-horn. At the chime of midnight I was too busy having fun to hear his clarion call beneath a cacophony of TV fireworks: anticipating a reprisal of the gloomy pall of my last xmas, I hunkered down into the bosom of my lovely family and friends and have been smiling throughout. Yes, thanks to their generosity, I’ve even put on weight! A sure sign of contentment given the usual metabolic levels which render my ribs visible and my frown in dire need of an iron.
In the good old bad days of last year it was lost love that interrupted my sleep. Now I wake up in a cold flat, my breathe visible, fretting about whether I can afford to switch on the donated heating apparatus. Laughable – and how we laughed knowingly a fortnight ago watching the scene where Withnail smothers himself in Deep Heat to shield him from the cold. It was my birthday and I started to get suspicions as others’ concerns started to manifest themselves in gift form – a woolly hat, gloves, house slippers, jumper, etc. Hmmmm ….It’s like I’ve been transported back to the ragged, romantic existence I was living in the seven streets of Balsall Heath back in the early ’90s. At some point, in the interim period, I was deemed credit-worthy; and now (in these tricksy times) le Crunch is exposing my vulnerabilities. In little over a week I’ll start work on the new Talking Birds/Foursight Theatre show Forever In Your Debt and, as I find increasingly in this life of artistry, the mirror will be held up to nature.
Until then, one must be forced to tackle the daunting and humbling creative pursuit known as Tax Return.
Happy New Year, reader.
Here’s a final un-Wrap to Christmas
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Come on Barbie, let’s go Party!
ModifiedToyOrchestra_Vivid_Birmingham_Dec09-11, originally uploaded by Birmingham Live!.
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longest night
Band stalwarts Dazz and Loz had warned me that there’s no such thing as a trouble-free mto gig and true to form the Toy Orchestra’s first proper Brum show in 2 years was not without its drama. At the sound check there was no whiff of Brian; his back had gone into spasm the previous day (the result of picking up a plastic shopping bag) and he’d retired to bed in the hope of sleeping off the pain and lumbago. Unfortunately, with the show barely a couple of hours away, there was no response from his phone… Man Duffy had gone missing.
Courtesy of the Band’s own crowbar-on-a-fob (this has obviously happened before, I’m thinking…) I buzz and enter Brian’s flat, startling the trouserless occupant out of his painkiller trance.
Anyone who witnessed his remarkable Optophonic Lunaphone, (an IKON/Vivid/mac co-commission, summer 2004) will remember the dignified look that Brian sported by entering the Arena with a walking stick. The struggle of his realising that particular event has somehow become part of it’s legend. Unfortunately the ‘look’ belies extraordinary pain. This evening, adrenaline, our oft-times friend, cuts through this pain to make the show happen. We chaperone Brian’s fragile frame through the expectant crowd – (in a mixture of Moses meets James Brown) and, although there’s been no sound check – resulting in weird audio effects, compressions, crashed toys, etc.) the show seems to go down well. Somehow Brian’s difficulties took the edge off my own anxieties – like having to reset my toys mid-song when a keyboard failed, dealing with the fact that there were 2 esteemed ex-band members in the audience scrutinising me.
Through it all, Barbie beamed out to the crowd – wearing a brand new outfit fashioned especially for the occasion by Lisa Temple Cox.
For some images of Capsule’s 10th Birthday Closing Party see Katja Ogrin‘s excellent Flickr pics
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Tags: capsule, modified toy orchestra
for those about to rock
A pre-Christmas double whammy from der Rose and friends: This coming weekend sees The Modified Toy Orchestra line up for Capsule’s 10th Birthday Closing Party. It promises to be a special night. Further UK gigs for the mto are planned for the spring, starting with Newcastle Life Science Centre in March. Following saturday’s shenanigans, the following night sees Craig and me compereing the Christmas Retort at King’s Heath’s Kitchen Garden Café. Ours is hardly a honed act. There’s talk of a Festive rewrite of our moody Perseverers epic ‘Extension 526’, a scratch ‘n sniff version of the Nativity, a celebrity phone-in… Whatever… if true to form it’ll be delivered on the hoof – much like Santa’s prezzies, I guess.
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Tags: capsule, modified toy orchestra
Further to my previous blog entry, here is the published discussion document for
The Challenge of Change: How can we make a better future for theatre here in the West Midlands – a two day event organised by Mid*Point and facilitated by Theatre Bristol.
It’s a substantial thing, (which I’ve only just started to digest) and hopefully it will provide a valuable reference point and galvanising tool for future debates and connections.
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[for your enjoyment, please play The Platters “I’m Sorry…” as an audio accompaniment to this blog entry.]
Birthday delight for me yesterday as the Bristol Uni P2 team pulled out top drawer performances for our two presentations of The Little Sister. Slick, sassy and stacked with humour, I felt totally at ease as the show rattled through it’s 60-minute journey toward the final revelation that it was, infact, the little sister wot dunnit. In a spurious film studio screen-test four Marlowe-wannabes get whittled down to one as the others succumb to being recast as fall guys; picked off, one by one. The surviving ‘dick’, Marlowe, is left decidedly uneasy as he delivers his coda, flanked by a posse of gun toting femme fatales.
It’s been a stressful and exhausting couple of weeks; long hours spent crafting the material into shape. At times I felt a finished show might actually be beyond us. Now, of course, in the afterglow, I wish the rewards could be extended with further performances, but term-time is now over and all have scattered to their Christmas hideaways for deserved breaks. I arrived back in Birmingham at midnight, celebrating the tail-end of my birthday on a bouncy castle at the Stan’s Cafe Christmas Party. A perfectly mad end to an excellent day.
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Tags: Bristol University, The Little Sister
style as content
The Bristol students and I are into our first week’s intensive rehearsal period. In eight days’ time we’ll have performances, but after a grim monday (me staring panic-stricken at a conglomerated script) I acknowledge the need for a change of strategy. A return to our earlier workshop exercises immediately yields fresh bytes of material laced through with poise and dynamism. The impossibly complex plot of The Little Sister gets sidelined and in its place … the posing commences: Sequenced interludes of ‘how to smoke a cigarette’; ‘how to swoon…or how to die’; how to react at the scene of the crime’. We start enjoying it again. I’m hugely relieved though the task is far from safe. I consider that this could be another delay tactic, another series of divertissements?
Because we’re adapting from a novel it feels counter-intuitive. True to the film-noir idiom however, we focus on creating a visual, theatrical language for the piece and worry less about the literary. It’s all style over content, or (perhaps more accurately) style as content. In a dusty corner of the rehearsal room we take a few photos for publicity and suddenly I start to think it might actually happen.
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Tags: Chandleresque, film noir, The Little Sister
the challenge of change
The Challenge of Change: How can we create a better future for theatre here in the West Midlands?
I didn’t know what to expect of this two-day ‘Open Space’ gathering (organised by Alison Gagen for Mid-Point and facilitated by Seth Honnor of Theatre Bristol) and wasn’t sure I could spare the time. But re-connecting to the richly diverse theatre landscape of the West Mids I found energising and very stimulating. At The Crescent Theatre yesterday I found myself in the company of about 70/80 theatre-makers, writers, directors all with an investment in the region’s theatre ecology. Open Space conferencing allows the agenda to be set, delivered and evaluated from within. It self-regulates itself in a highly democratic way. Firstly, the 60, hour-long discussion sessions were scheduled in for the 2 days with titles such as “Why aren’t more women writers getting their work staged?”, “Less development, more production?”, “Live Art/Digital Art = Theatre?” and “Do we make a difference?” I could see the cogs whirring in James’s head across the room, wondering how he might intervene in his characteristically left-field way. Eventually he stepped forward and wrote down his discussion header … “Does anybody want to go to a party?”
My early experiences of the West Mids Theatre Forum (a long-time predessessor of Mid-Point) were of a very earnest, funding-obsessed gathering. James and I, as newcomers onto the local theatre scene, felt like fishes out of water. We didn’t seem to have anything in common with the largely issue-driven companies like Big Brum, Belgrade TIE (RIP) and Collar & TIE who were struggling to maintain their funding at the time. We were driven by an artistic agenda and had no money whatsoever … and consequently nothing to lose.
The ‘Party’ question may not be so flippant as it seems. It reminds us that without enjoying what we do, without the passion or the inspiration of each other, there is a dry and dull landscape. One that is unlikely to inspire audiences to show up.
I convened a very healthily attended and lively session called “The future of theatre involves taking theatre out of theatre buildings”. I’m not sure we drew up any radical plans or ideas, but we acknowledged the rich heritage of non-theatre-space work which has been made (and which is possible to make) in Birmingham and how our learned and shared knowledge/experience should be fed back into building-based practice. We finished with a call for a ‘National Theatre of The WestMids’, along the lines of the peripatetic National Theatres of Scotland or Wales. It may not make the cut for today’s Action/Planning list but it was worth shouting out.
My final session of the day – a burning question, was whether Birmingham/the West Mids should have its own equivalent of Theatre Bristol, which is seen as a very successful model for advocacy. Because of it’s geographic diversity and also the diversity of interests I don’t think the Bristol model could work here, but it has opened up the discussion and who knows, maybe a new kind of model will naturally emerge. The significance of Manchester’s ‘scene’ was also cited, with the International Theatre Festival its pinnacle. If ArtFest is as good as it gets in Birmingham then we are truly doomed, though; whilst it heavily promotes participation and access, there is a desperate dearth of quality. The City may have chosen to focus its ‘Festival” interests elsewhere – the International Dance Festival, perhaps? In terms of new independent theatre though, does Fierce hold the key…?
Sadly, I’m not able to join today’s sessions at The Crescent but I’m looking forward to seeing the write-ups and Action Plans posted on the website. I’m also looking forward to being invited to a party!
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Tags: midpoint, the challenge of change, theatre, west midlands
a re-Resurrection
A flurry of excited e-mail exchanges with my co-Resurrectionists Cheryl Pickering and Richard Chew confirms that our music-theatre opus Vesalius-a Requiem is closer to being restaged. Rick and I created the piece for The Old Operating Theatre Museum, at London Bridge, in 1996, having previewed it in mac‘s intimate Hexagon Theatre a couple of months earlier.
The experience of creating and delivering Vesalius was profound. It became an obsession, a love affair – and one that we knew would be properly revisited at some unknown future time. In ’97 I presented extracts amongst the specimens of the Hunter Museum and in ’98 a version of the show travelled to Bologna, sometime workplace of Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius (courtesy of The British Council). Only now though, after intermittant romancing of the idea, do we have the opportunity to re-investigate the material and make a new work. Plans are moving forward for a new show, in collaboration with the Royal Institution of Australia – Science Exchange, in Adelaide (RiAus) in May or June next year.
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Tags: music-theatre, requiem, richard chew, the resurrectionists, vesalius
little sister’s big sister
Part of the thrill, and challenge, of making a devised show is that you discover the rules as you proceed. A methodology emerges as the material gets made. Having a pre-defined formula would make for a more efficient process but I choose to adopt a more open, playful approach – knowing that accidents will yield the more exciting possibilities. (I’m reminded of photo-shoots in which all the pre -planned ideas get exhausted but it’s the throwaway shot at the end of the roll of film which ends up getting used) It’s an expensive business – not only ‘cos it eats up time but because a lot of created stuff ends up in the edit-bin – but then the whole point of this unit is to investigate the theatre-making process.
The Bristol students have been terrific so far. Bright, keen, industrious, supportive of each other and committed to an emerging aesthetic. They have bought into the uncertain elements and seem to be actually enjoying themselves. My responsibilities to them as theatre director have to be complemented by those of tutor and ultimately assessor, so it’s vital to have an eye on learning objectives, be critically rigorous and offer the wisdom and practicality of my own professional experience.
Prompted by a R4 Woman’s Hour feature I heard early in the year (marking the 50’s anniversary of Chandler’s death and discussing his portrayal of women), I chose to tackle an adaptation of his novel ‘The Little Sister’ with a gender balance of 10female ; 4male. We’re investigating the Chandler through the stylistics of film noir, as if the performance takes place on an LA film set. The four male students will play four actors who are being screen-tested for the role of Marlowe. Each of them possesses different qualities which will be exercised through the challenging environment of the entirely girl-powered studio mechanism (smoothie; lone-wolf; troubled; sensitive). Their actress sparring-partners (all femme fatales in their own ways) are double cast – as if three pairs of exuberant, glamorous, sexy and dangerous twins are all trying to test/outwit their Marlowes (and their actors) whilst the theatrical space and narrative is driven by the remaining 2 pairs -the producers and the foley/narrator team, who direct the story and fill in any additional character parts.
The concept feels good, so now it’s just a question of getting the material down into a tight manageable structure – or do I mean script ? Shucks – I mean script…. we need a script.
I print a rough draft of some scripted scenes, compiled from their own adaptations, then hand it out. It’s eyes down and a sea of furrowed brows, as they start to dissect it…
My heart sinks.
I ejaculate a comment that the “Script is the stranglehold of the British Theatre … It kills creativity!”.
George (who is fashioning herself as the Katherine Hepburn-like Producer role), raises an eyebrow and coolly says “That’s a rather sweeping generalisation, isn’t it Graeme?”. She’s so right. Our script will be a wonderful consolidation of all the work so far. I skulk off, realising I made myself sound like an idiot. We could devote a session to the writing/devising debate – but we don’t have time. Back in my 2nd year at Lancaster, Richard Wilson was forever coming out with the most provocative statements – stimulated debate, raising questions about culture, politics, society – but in this instance I decide to shut up and go back to writing the script.
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Tags: Bristol University, Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
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