Commissioned
The news filters back to me that, following thursday’s First Bite presentations, Untied Artists have won one of the commissions. This means a spring platform for the extended version of Al Bowlly, courtesy of WAC and the mac. I’m thrilled for Jake, Jo and Peter Cann – who’ve all worked hard to develop the piece over the past 6 months or so. The show has legs to it … as the audience participation and dancehall shenanigans will no doubt prove.
Oldershaw and Cann make you an offer you cannot put in the refuse.
Here’s the link to Steven Davies’s pictures from First Bite…(www.filmcafe.co.uk)
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First Bitten
If I start attempting an intelligible critique at this time of the morning I’ll get no sleep and will probably lose heart and give up anyway, so a brief shout to China Plate and all the artists who made up an excellent evening of performance extracts at Stan’s Cafe’s @AEHarris space tonight. Out of a grizzly damp night much warmth was generated by the 8 companies on show at First Bite. Two of the eight companies will be awarded commissions to help them develop their work into full-length pieces, with a performance platform at Bite Size (Warwick Arts Centre) in March.
Fresh from staging of Kindle Theatre’s epic and mightily delicious ‘Eat Your Heart Out’ last week, the AEHarris space was buzzing. I’m learning ever about the wealth of theatre-making in the West Mids and tonight I was introduced to numerous theatre-makers – young and established – who are active in the region. Which makes for a very promising scene.
For the record, this was the playlist;
Part 1: Friction Theatre – ‘Fear Itself’ ; The Other Way Works – ‘Avon Calling’ ; Untied Artists – ‘Al Bowlly’s Croon Manifesto pt.2’ ; New Macho – ‘Paperwork’
Part 2: Mike Tweddle & Lucy Foster’s Signs of Life – ‘Snapshots’ ; Onethousandladders – ‘Dennis Sold Me The Moon’ ; Caroline Horton/Tangram – ‘You’re Not Like The Other Girls, Chrissy’ ; Jane Packman – ‘The Woods Project’
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Tags: AEHarris, chinaplatetheatre, First Bite, Stan's Cafe
theatre-a-go-go
There’s a cornucopia of inspiring theatre events at the moment – some I’ve seen, some I’ve missed and some which I’m still relishing.
Bodies in Flight reprised their morning-commute audio-walk Dream>work last week on the streets around Market Square, Nottingham. The piece was originally commissioned by Singapore-based Spell7 for the Chinatown district and has been redeveloped for the NOTTdance09 Festival.
Twelve participants at a time, at 8am, 9am & 10am, followed performer Polly Frame and sound artist Sam Halmarack their journey through the morning people-traffic. Transmitter technology (developed by Duncan Speakman) allowed live, spoken text to be layered over pre-recorded texts, sound and music – all live mixed into the real-time audioscape of the rush-hour city centre and received through earpieces. Though seemingly exclusive to an outside world, I felt a connection to the unfurling events of the city. 
Successful audiowalks illuminate the backdrop of the city in a new way; as if you’re a character in a movie, slightly detached but with a predestined narrative which you yield to. I became aware that we were but a handful of a thousand moving characters in the story – ourselves watched by a community of semi-static guardians – shopkeepers and security personnel, increasingly cogniscent of the extraordinary game being played out and buying into it, despite not hearing what we could hear. A natural auditorium at the heart of the Broadmarsh shopping centre allowed for a spectacular setting worthy of BladeRunner – with crossing escalators carrying unknowing performers on their travels, whilst Polly engaged others in conversations in a lift. As with most of my favourite artworks, it is the idea that wins through, not necessarily the substance or elusive ‘meaning’. To be able to walk back out into the world thinking anew, with some new sense of possibility about the world and how we can see it. What was here a privilege for the few could work as a more expansive project without compromising the personal nature of it.
A couple of days later I saw the spectacularly designed Kellerman by Imitating the Dog at the Cochrane Theatre, London. Co-written/directed by Andrew Quick and Pete Brooks, the piece plays out a graphic novel aesthetic, operatic in scale. The performances are very intimately choreographed, though, and I was left wishing that the performers could more often escape from, or interact with, the machinery of projections – though I realise that the projection source is so complex that it cannot be live mixed. It was excellent to see Pete for the first time in 14 or so years (particularly appropriate given the hilarious ’14-years ago’ diary entries that Nick Walker is currently publishing on his retrojournaling blog – in which Pete features prominently)
I missed Little Earthquake’s The Houdini Exposure when my ‘too much travel and trick-or-treat’ ravaged body finally gave in to a cold last night. So I’ll just have to hope for recovery in time for this week’s triad of site-specific works: The lavishly designed edible performance Eat Your Heart Out from Kindle Theatre @AE Harris (all this week until sunday 8th), Foursight Theatre / Black Country Touring’s epic, community-inspired The Corner Shop, which also runs until sunday 8th at an empty shop unit in Wolverhampton’s Mander Centre. I’m also looking forward to watching a preview of Jane Packman’s Woods Project, performed at dusk in Highbury Park, King’s Heath.
Aside from The Little Sister, I’m now bending my performance muscle to Untied Artists Al Bowlly’s Croon Manifesto. A first meeting this morning helped to fashion a structure and rationale for a First Bite Festival presentation, which will take place @AE Harris in ten days time. Jake, Peter Cann and the band gave Al Bowlly an early draft outing at Pilot in the summer. (see vid documentation)
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Tags: @AE Harris, Al Bowlly's Croon Manifesto, Bodies in Flight, Kindle Theatre
a shred of talent
I gave up school trumpet lessons… and within a week (with help from Tommy Vance’s Friday Rock Show) fell in love with a certain kind of musicality – that is, one that was based on a shred of talent. Meanwhile my best buddy and neighbour Andy Lee, dressed in his Harrington and two-tone trousers, was bringing round his latest finds – a mixture of ska, electro and some honkingly abysmal pop-shite that I would politely acknowledge while he waxed on about his latest girl-find. To me, Adam & the Ants were a mere novelty act; Ultravox had a likeable portentiousness but were really for poseurs, and my appreciation of Human League was numbed by the fact I watched them on TOTP playing keyboards with one finger.
Tonight, it’s no longer 1981. I’m rehearsing with the Toy Orchestra; a band championed by HL’s founder Martyn Ware. I play with one finger, concentrating really hard – my remaining fingers tucked in so I can see the keyboard properly. Any aspirations I had for adding stage choreography to the mix have been shelved ‘cos it’s too hard just playing the Casio SK-5, one finger at a time.
After nailing ‘Up Above the World So High‘, the last remaining track from the band’s forthcoming album, Brian plays a selection of priceless Youtube clips, which remind me why it’s so important to promote a meritocracy.
Check this one out…. (Carlos Santana shreds with Eric Clapton)
I couldn’t watch it all, because I was crying and holding my belly … it hurt so much.
Maybe the impact will diminish on repeated views?
Further shreds are available for inspection. I was taken by the Pastorius one (partly because it reminded me of my Claude character doing his tribute bass solo Aurora – “a hard bop in an 11/8″ – in Stan’s Lurid & Insane) but it made me go and look for the Jaco original, which is pretty impressive.
A burgeoning music scene in Brum forced a dilemma last week when I’m invited to join two groups of friends to two separate club nights in the same venue – King’s Heath’s Hare and Hounds. The Kindle girls heading for Friendly Fire Reggae night, the mto boys next-door at The Sugarfoot Stomp. I chose the latter, which faltered a little but picked up in style in time for the Kindlings return.
Kindle (here pretending they’re not a theatre company) open their new show, Eat Your Heart Out, @AE Harris in just over a week. It promises to be spectacular, food oriented collaboration which will demonstrate more than a shred of talent.
The Modified Toy Orchestra will perform a reduced set at Capsule’s 10th anniversary party on the 19th December. I’ll be playing one finger at a time.
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Tags: Hare and Hounds, Jaco Pastorius, Kindle Theatre, shred
the little sister
This week I led my first sessions with current 2nd year Theatre students at Bristol University, as part of this year’s Performance 2 Unit. As with last year’s Relâche, I find I’m working with a fiercely intelligent, attentive and feisty group of young people whose talent and bearing will no doubt propel them to bright futures. Session One is always quite nerve-wracking for all concerned – and I explain to them that until I begin to understand the particular interests and dynamic of the group, I cannot make firm decisions about how the devising process will be crafted.
The Unit brief I’ve called Chandleresque and we’ll be adapting a lesser known Raymond Chandler novel called The Little Sister. With a student cohort of nearly 3 females to 1 male I’m planning to have one eye on the representation of gender in film noir, with the role of The Little Sister herself (whom Chandler calls Orfamay Quest) played by many female performers.
One ambition of the process is to excite the students to the possibilities of the medium (by drawing on a cocktail of visual, filmic conceits, hands-on stage mechanics and creating a bespoke film-studio style foley team – providing live sound effects and doo-wop underscoring of the action). A further ambition is to try to find something real and immediate to the group that connects the thematic content of the story with the energy, interests and experiences of fifteen 19-22 year olds; something that begs to ask “why here? Why now? Why us?
I’m deliberating over this as I drive home to Birmingham. Just out of Bristol, at the Thornbury turn-off, I notice two mobile TV units parked up on the motorway bridge. Just beyond the bridge a police incident unit sprawled along the slip road, a tented area protecting the site of some grisly discovery. I consider the fact that I may have unwittingly driven past an abandoned body the previous day.
Two days later and the story is spread all over the front pages of the London freebies. Melanie Hall, last seen in a Bath nightclub in 1996. Her remains discovered in bin bags. How many times have I driven past, just a few yards from her improper grave? How many millions of others have blindly gone by on their millions of journeys, ignorant to her dreadful circumstances?
I consult TimesOnline for further information and am struck by the first public comment,
the parents should hire a private investigator. it would be hoped that family and friends would help with the expense. if the police can’t see a “yob” standing in front of them, how can they find a killer?
p. bloomberg
old man
glendale, ca
The world of Chandler is closer perhaps than we think.
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Tags: Bristol University, Chandleresque, The Little Sister
getting to know the neighbours
Chris Corcoran is the new Craig and it’s great to have him back on the Stan roster for the first time since our Morality Shopping escapade on Bromsgrove High Street in 1994. Strange though that with new performers on stage you start to learn fresh details about the show. With Fiona’s arrival in Mainz came my discovery that in the ‘Domestic Scenes 1 & 2‘ one of her characters is married to one of Jake’s characters. And only here in Montpellier, 28 months and 80 or 90 performances into the life of Constance Brown, have I found out who my immediate ‘Domestic Scenes’ neighbours are – to the left Alex’s hoodie and to the right Gerard’s jogger, who I now realise is partnered with Craig/Chris’s bathrobed beauty-treatment character. The show may be very technical in its delivery but, from the performer’s perspective, meaning is rendered in the finest details which subtly shift and allow for varying interpretation. As with The Rice Show and It’s Your Film before it, the show inspires discussion and debate from within as well as without.
A botched reception early in the week (owing to a misunderstanding) did not give us the best start, but since then it’s been a pleasure to get to know some of the staff and audience here at the Domaine d’O. Everyone is very friendly here. There’s also been a great willingness to speak each other’s language, with some brave and perhaps comical results.
With the hard work of the week done, a few of us hung out at la plage at Palavas-des-Flots yesterday, then went straight to the theatre, still salty from the Med. Post-show, local riceworker Nico led us to a recommended restaurant in town – where the true delights of French cuisine; bouillabaise, chèvre, steak tartare, are a welcome change to the snatched kebabs that characterised the early week’s dining.
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Tags: Montpellier, Stan's Cafe, The Cleansing of Constance Brown
Antigone
Though an ancient and beautiful city, my prior knowledge of Montpellier was restricted to its reputation as bastion of the architectural postmodern. I wandered from the old town into the Antigone district to check out what looks on the map like a St.Peter’s Sq. gone mad. (link)
As a statement in Civic ambition (aggrandisement) it is pretty staggering. Le Corbusier has been reigned off in this district, in favour of a Classical vernacular which borrows from ancient Greece (or Rome – take your pick). It was conceived and built between 1979-83, though you’d be forgiven for thinking it were newer maybe – after all, this is probably the template for much of what was de rigeur elsewhere in the late 80’s/early 90’s.
“Ricardo Bofill’s post-modern sensibilities…have allowed him to create heroic public housing with advanced concrete techniques that evoke the splendors of past French rulers such as Louis XIV and Napoleon.”
Here you can find les Places Zeus, Dyonisus, de Marathon et de Thebes. A copy of the Samothracian winged Victory takes pride of place in Place de l’Europe, like a headless chicken frozen in its grandiloquent flight. (Classy – yes, and reminding me how nasty the pseudo-Classical carbon fibre figures were that used to occupy Paradise Forum, underneath Birmingham’s Central Library). For Antigone to have been built at all, particularly during a time of recession, must have involved some serious visioning from the Mayoralty, and probably a lot of demolition and rehousing. But the fact that French Cities can be so bold and make such proud, architectural statements whilst simultaneously referencing and protecting their local vernacular is impressive. In another 20 years much of Britain’s postmodern architecture will be being bulldozed, but concrete Antigone will be a lasting reminder of the time that the modern became passé.
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Tags: Antigone, Birmingham, Montpellier, postmodernism
Montpellier
The Cleansing of Constance Brown opens tonight in the elegant surroundings of the Domaine d’O, Montpellier.
Director Christopher Crimes specialises in the development and establishing of new venues/programmes. He first booked Stan for a European version of the rice at the impressive Theatre le Quai, in Angers, 2 years ago. Here in Montpellier he is rewriting the theatre programming manual. The programme here follows a lunar calendar. I’ve still to get my head round this one, but in simple terms the shows all open on a lunedi and Constance is perfoming in the first phase of the moon’s cycle.
This is the start of a 3-year relationship with the venue and James has been speccing out the wealth of spaces at the Domaine d’O, indoors and out, that may provide a future backdrop to a Stan’s Cafe offering. A rice team of Stan’s finest Francophones – Chris Dugrenier, Jack Trow, Jake Oldershaw, Charlotte Gregory and Bharti -“je parle un petit pois”- Patel have already been here a week, installing Of All the People in All the World (France) within the chateau itself. We spent yesterday working Constance Brown back up to speed (with Ray back in the Andy/Gareth/Tigg role) and later joined the remaining rice crew for a Mauritian meal in a little place beneath the City walls, followed by a wander through Old Town: A myriad of tiny mediaevel streets, opening out to sophisticated squares and boulevards. I left the others at a bar and tried to lose myself in the backstreets. We’ve got a 2-shows per day schedule and have the tough task of working Chris Corcoran in as the new Craig by the end of the week, but let’s face it, spending time here will be no hardship (…pics).
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Tags: Chateau d'O, Domaine d'O, Montpellier, ofallthepeopleinalltheworld, Stan's Cafe, The Cleansing of Constance Brown, thericeshow
betrothed and bethroned
I’m round at the familial home in Naunton Close and mom spots the calendar. After a sharp, but understated “Ooh!”, she declares that she and my dad were engaged on that very day, 25th September, 50 years ago. Details emerge to embellish the tale – a friday night, in town, the ABC cinema. Dad can’t remember the film – no, neither of them can. That was irrelevant… maybe. He remembers riding to the jewellers earlier that day, with a saddlebag full of cash. The ring had been chosen a fortnight earlier, so it was just a question of mood and the moment.
Happy 50th Anniversary, Michael Rose and Margaret Gordon (née)
We are eternally grateful for your expressions of and commitments to love.
I immediately text the sisters, who both reply simultaneously with an identical opening …..
“Wow!”
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GraemeRose Blog 
The Commentators
The Commentators is an unlikely phenomenon that has become the latest addition to the Stan’s Cafe portfolio. Since the success of Stan’s 24-hour Scalextric, collaborations with Birmingham Royal Ballet and the BCMG are in the offing. This is a project with educational potential too. The idea has already been picked up as a literacy tool with a boy-friendly flavour.
Friday evening saw the Launch of Birmingham Contemporary Art Festival at Eastside Projects – aka. ‘The Event’; a Digbeth Biennale, if you will. 3 days beforehand I get a call from James asking me whether I can step into his shoes for a continuous commentary of ‘The Event’. It’s a daunting prospect, but unlike the Scalextric this is a mere 5 hours long.
Craig and I roll up and take our positions high up on a freestanding corridor construction, with the installations spread out on all sides throughout the warehouse building. We’re dressed in sheepskin coats. Craig sports a trilby, me a flat cap. The lip-mics spark up and through the power of digital radio, Rhubarb Radio broadcasts our inane ramblings to the world.
Works of visual art, audio-described as if by Motty and Clive Tilsley. Craig hits a rich seam focussing on the unfolding narrative of the toilet queue, whilst occasional twitches of the curtain offer tantalising glimpses of dancefloor activity nextdoor. We discuss the contents of some of the printed matter that’s been produced for the occasion, including a box of cartoon pamphlets titled Fuck Book. Just when we think we’ve got the measure of the room, commentating on the proliferation of certain styles of clothing, beard or spectacle counts, there’s a surprise entrance from a new group of visitors (take for example the Jockey Men’s Morris Club, who danced their way in wearing full regalia) or an individual bearing a striking resemblance to…. (Iggy Pop was in the house, as was Rutger Hauer, Debbie Harry and Noel Gallagher). Yeah, it was one hip do.
From our lofty position the private narratives are made public – lovers in clinches, moustachios executing guerilla interventions on the artworks, drinks spillages, altercations, etc. At one point there’s a flurry of movement from the staff – clearly mobilised by some crisis. We speculate as to the disaster outside the building and on the arrival of emergency services (we can see the reflection of flashing lights through the entrance door). It’s all good material for us, isn’t it ?
…… oh……..hang on…..what’s that? … Iggy Pop’s been run over ?!!
We’re politely asked not to focus so much on the road accident in our commentary, as it might be deemed insensitive. Gavin the director of Project Eastside is looking pale and worried all of a sudden. It’s been a great night, but it might not end so. There’s a lorry load of Fuck Books arrive at that moment, hot off the press. We change the topic accordingly.
At midnight we wind up our broadcast, climb down and are assured that the injured guy is in hospital but will be ok. Scott the dj says “He would have loved the idea of you making a commentary of his accident”. Scott is smiling wistfully but talking about the guy in the past tense. I’m a little uneasy – and not so sure we really did chime with the mood at floor level after all. We make for the exit. James, an androgyne who looks like he’s just stepped out of a Steve Strange (or the ‘Ashes to Ashes’) video says, “I loved your characters. You were really fly up there”.
Were we? Yeah I guess we were.
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Tags: Commentators, Project Eastside, Stan's Cafe