“A Journey Round My Skull”, by KILN Ensemble (formerly Kindle Theatre) will be on the Festival circuit this summer. The show performs at Latitude in Suffolk (17th-20th July) and then at the Summerhall (venue#26) for the duration of the Edinburgh Fringe (1st – 24th August).
Check out Mat Beckett’s Trailer, captured during the show’s premiere week at Bristol Old Vic earlier this year.
A Journey Round My Skull (TEASER) from Mathew Beckett on Vimeo.
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Firestarters
It takes some bright sparks to start a fire. Kindle Theatre were formed out of the Drama Dept. at Birmingham University. They graduated in 2005 and got on with the business of devising and touring new theatre. This week they changed their name. The heat was too much for mere Kindling. A new name heralds new horizons and a different degree of heat.
The new-look KILN were officially launched this weekend at A.E Harris, Birmingham. You will be able to find them performing in Edinburgh during this year’s Fringe Festival 2014 with not one, …not two, ….but three different shows on offer at Summerhall. It will be a KILN mini-Fest … and it will bake.
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Sieg-fried
twilightofthefreakingods glimmer #2 from Stans Cafe on Vimeo.
According to Peter Cann, It was a death scene so arch and so protracted that it rivalled Jimmy Cagney’s in Public Enemy (see here). Lasting 15-minutes or more, and unrehearsed, the job was to wind up on the pallet and be able to remain there motionless for a further 25 minutes or so, knowing that in a cateclysmic finale the FreakinGods would arrive and forklift away the tearstained bier.
The very definition of pathos.
James and the Reel Access team have been editing footage from the two 4-hour long performances of TwilightOfTheFreakinGods. Watch this space for news of a screening later in the year.
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Paint It Black
Last Autumn, following the 4-hour staging of twilightofthefreakingods, Stan’s Cafe bade farewell to the epic industrial spaces of A.E.HarrisVenue, handing them back to the A.E.Harris Co. manufactory. The previous five years’ occupancy had seen countless spectacular works, performances and events – from the 112-tonne world version of The Rice Show (Of All The People In All The World) to Kindle’s lavish and immersive Eat Your Heart Out! to the giant 24-hour Scalextric. A.E.Harris had hosted the excellent BE Festival, the British Dance Exchange and had also become temporary home for visiting productions by Birmingham Opera, Birmingham Rep. et al. The venue had become one of the most exciting, innovative spaces in the City’s history; the stuff of legend, but for Company members of Stan’s Cafe the demands and costs of running/maintaining such a large space started to weigh against the advantages of having them. There followed the mistaken beliefs that either Stan’s Cafe had moved on or been kicked out of A.E.Harris: Neither of which were true. Rather, the rented portion of the factory has been downsized.
Spaces formerly known as ‘Europe’, ‘America’, ‘Africa’ and ‘Asia’ – together with the ‘A4 Room’ (the names all legacies from the organisation of statistical gatherings in the Rice Show) have now gone, but the Office, Yard and Kitchen, together with ‘Australia’, remain.
The stripped-out flooring and rig of the former dark space has gone some way to fitting out the future performance space of Australia’ and today, Stan’s Cafe hosted a ‘Paint Party’, replete with good pals, baked tatties and gallons of matt black to slap onto scrubbed walls. Here is some evidence of the day’s transformations;
(featuring the brush-wielding talents of Mick Diver; James, Craig & Charlotte of Stan’s Cafe; Tony Appleby; Olivia and Sam from Kindle; Iain Smith & Bharti Patel; Phil and Gareth from Little Earthquake; Jack Trow; Rochi Rampal; Chris Dugrenier and Adrian Baynes; Eve Yarker; the Rose Boys…)
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The Norman Beaton Fellowship
The Norman Beaton Fellowship is an initiative to encourage the inclusion of regional voices from ‘non-traditional backgrounds’ in BBC Radio Drama. The Fellowship is launched as a competition to attract voices through a series of regional heats, followed by a Semi-Final and Final – both hosted by the Radio Drama Company studio at BBC Broadcasting House, London.
I first become aware of the competition when it was co-administered by Birmingham-based producers Kate Chapman and Peter Leslie Wild back in the mid-Naughties. The remit of the Fellowship was and is partly to offer pathways for actors of Black and Asian heritage, for whom access might not be so readily obtained via the traditional training routes via Drama schools. A criteria for NBF is that applicants should have no accredited Drama School training (a ‘Soundstart’ sister award scheme, the Carleton-Hobbs Fellowship, is designed to offer Drama School graduates the same opportunity).
This year I was invited to apply for the NBF via The Birmingham Rep, and after succeeding in the regional heats round and then the London Semi-final, I revisited Broadcasting House last week to attend the NBF Finals along with 11 other performers from across the UK. From a series of rigorous on-mic recorded challenges (pre-selected monologues prepared in advance, sight-readings handed out 15 minutes beforehand, duologues and 4-way dialogues prepared overnight) the studio judging team selected two winners, whose prize is a 5-month contract as part of the BBC Radio Drama Company. Friends Sarah Thom and John Flitcroft won top prize and runner-up respectively back in 2012 and Sarah has been regularly on radio ever since.
The Winner’s list for 2014 was published here today.
….No, I didn’t win, but am very happy to have been awarded one of the consolation runners-up prizes, with an RDC recording promised for later in the year… All in all, it was a great opportunity to feel the white heat of the recording studio and to see first-hand the whirring machinery of the Corporation in its glitzy new surroundings in W1.
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chef concertino
DJ & composer Bobbie Gardner composed her conceptual ‘Chef Concertino’ as a 5-minute musical/culinary challenge in which ‘The Chef’ duels with ‘Le Chef’. It premiered in the Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham on 23rd January 2014.
Bobbie’s uncle, Urban Thompson, prepares one of his dishes with running commentary – in this case a Thai Prawn Salad packing a fiery punch – whilst Edwin Roxburgh conducts the full symphony orchestra of the Birmingham Conservatoire. A handful of Urban’s ‘desert island discs’ are referenced in the composition. Keep your ears peeled for those auditory allusions. Yours truly introduces the piece, plays stooge and acts as glorified floor-manager as chef Thompson battles the might of the orchestra.
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Tags: Birmingham Conservatoire, Bobbie Gardner
feet off the table!
This photograph cheers me up no end as I push through the pain barrier to submit the annual Tax Return. The image has been shared with the Tweetosphere via the ever excellent @brumpic. It shows Dirty Harry looking bamboozled with what might be the Albany Hotel’s bar menu, c.1967. One can only imagine the array of succulent Brummie dishes on offer – Faggots & Peas, Suet-Crusted Hotpot, Spam Fritter and Chips, etc.- no doubt garnished with the obligatory sprig of wilted parsley and topped off with lashings of HP. For pud, Spotted Dick with Condensed Milk, surely? (I imagine curry would’ve been too radical to include at this point). Let’s hope Mr.& Mrs.Clint enjoyed their visit and that he didn’t get told off for rocking on his chair.
Made my day; via "@brumpic: Albany Hotel, Smallbrook Ringway, Clint Eastwood & wife Maggie, 1967 pic.twitter.com/XwduiEYY75"
— Graeme Rose (@Graerose) January 29, 2014
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Tags: 1960's, Birmingham, Clint Eastwood, Smallbrook Ringway
Living Toys
It’s the realisation of a dream combination; Stan’s Cafe v. Modified Toy Orchestra v. Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. ‘Living Toys’ is a programme of new music performed for a family audience, with Stan’s Cafe devising a theatrical frame through which young eyes and ears might access and experience contemporary music for the first time. ‘Living Toys’ is also the title of the suite composed by Thomas Adès (conductor: Christian Karlsen) which provides the climax to a sequence of compositions by Richard Baker/Brian Duffy/MTO, Colin Matthews and Arne Gieshoff, whose ‘Verdreht’ received it’s World Premiere today at the CBSO Centre.
In other news from this week, I was delighted to perform alongside Urban Thompson in the World Premiere of Bobbie Gardner’s ‘Chef Concerto’ in the Adrian Boult Hall on thursday. In this five-minute work, the Symphony Orchestra of Birmingham Conservatoire play a competitive accompaniment to the chef as he prepares and presents a dish – in this instance a phenomenal Thai Prawn salad.
Performances of ‘Living Toys’ continue at the CBSO Centre on tuesday 28th January for invited schools’ audiences.
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A Year of Stan
2013 was impressively productive for Stan’s Cafe and I’m chuffed to have been involved in projects throughout the year. Here is a downloadable cartoon round-up, by Craig;
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