T W Plus: Blue Blue Plus: La H Fro Be Be Not For Me, Not For You, But For For You,But For Not Me, For Not he Pu he e elsh elsh kes Alive – su – Alive kes a T m ri here with the the with here n R pp g voi g m ussi e et et i n D a T c n r hought Poli hought es – P – es W a f

go VOLume 21 | ISSUE 04 | winter 2009 / 2010 | totaltheatre.org.uk ith ith ro

n totaltheatre – developing contemporary theatre shi n c L D a s i s ks! ks! ove – Bl – ove ivi ul Cl ul n n e n T D el an he he u c a y b d r d e h e rk rk T li D ac ot n e a a f ca , k a ve ve ro i T S i n l he he de k T Clod Clod m a n he yW U rrived: Bli rrived: n W s – BAC tur BAC – s K t a heel o heel e hite hite tre Aw tre Da n d vid vid a En c l, Pe l, o f se H m a D o n rd wi rd mb e to e e n y n d a rith, rith, le ed i ed th i th S le u LI nn mm n MF n side out side an ers ers L it’s 1984 it’s o d n K do a eswi t the the t n , Freshl , c k E di nb y urgh Festiv urgh - c ooked ooked c ri a c l Fri l kets i kets n ge 2009 ge Brighto n n Dell’Arte Abroad: explore the arts in Bali 4 Jan to 6 Feb 2010

Artists, teachers, students and designers — immerse yourself in the ancient arts of Bali. Study traditional , shadow puppetry or mask carving with village masters and Dell’Arte faculty. Find out more at www.dellarte.com/bali total theatre magazine SUBSCRIBE! VOLume 21 | ISSUE 04 | WINTER 2009 / 2010 Total Theatre Volume 22 Issue 01 will be published March 2010 Join us now! Send a cheque made payable to University of Winchester with your contact details, including postal and EDITORIAL contents email addresses, to Administration.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES UK Abroad As the year, and the decade, draws to a close it feels like an opportune moment not only to Total Theatre Magazine Features Student £20 £40 look back, but also to ponder on the future. Individual £30 £50 Editor Not For Me, Not For You, But For Us P6 Ten years ago, the cover of the Winter 1999/2000 issue (Total Theatre Volume 11 Issue 4) Dorothy Max Prior Alexander Roberts goes to BAC featured enterprising and eccentric performance artist La Ribot. She was profiled as an [email protected] Small-scale arts company / venue / school International Mime Festival P10 £50 £80 artist appearing in the 2000 London International Mime Festival. Plus ca change! It is great From Russia with Love to note that the Mime Fest is still going strong, and in 2010 is presenting shows by equally Editorial Forum Dorothy Max Prior meets BlackSkyWhite outrageous and entertaining female performance artists (such as bearded lady Jeanne Robert Ayers Revenue funded Company Mordoj) as part of the eclectic mix of work pulled together under the now-preferred label Franc Chamberlain Mime Fest Previewed! – John Ellingsworth £75 n/a ge Richard Cuming New Dogs, Old Tricks P14 of Visual Theatre. The Mime Fest is previewed in this issue with an article on Russian mav- a ericks BlackSkyWhite, together with a round-up of key shows. Anthony Dean The People Show 120 Higher Education/Library Barry Edwards City Circ P16 £75 £110 TOT

Back to our 1999 issue and we see an article by David Harradine, of then emerging (now ud de l Marigold Hughes John Ellingsworth A Miriam King Corporate / Commercial /Arts Agencies L THE established) company Fevered Sleep, about intimate theatre work performed in homes and Playing With Time P18 £110 £150 other out-of-the-black-box sites – flagging up something that would become an increasing- laura lloyd Christopher Hall of Third Angel Rayna Beccy Smith A ly popular mode of practice in the coming years. There’s certainly an extraordinary number h Total Theatre Awards Special P21 TRE p Edward Taylor Multi Access Subscription: ideal for of shows around in 2009 that take the audience out of their seats and in to a very different 1984 P26 relationship to the performance. This is reflected in the high number of intimate, immersive Mischa Twitchin academic institutions / libraries. Five print ma Mark Down of Blind Summit Theatre interviewed or interactive shows shortlisted for the Total Theatre Awards (reported on in this issue). Cassie Werber copies of each issue, plus unlimited access g online via Ingenta Connect. a Tom Wilson zi Regulars

n In the reviews section ten years ago we find many familiar names: Clod Ensemble (also fea- e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e turing in the current issue, with the company’s Co-Director Paul Clark our Voices subject), Listings Editor Academic Institution hoto Christo

Split Britches, David Gale, Station House Opera, DV8, Guy Dartnell, Told By An Idiot, Frantic p JOHN ELLINGSWORTH Being There P8 £250 £300 l. [email protected] Assembly, The Cholmondeleys, Forced Entertainment, Complicite – and the first show by a a David Hoyle’s Rules & Regs at BAC Corporate new collective called Shunt. These are some of the artists who form the ‘backbone’ of the Absolute Beginners P13 theatre work that we have supported over the years. Another familiar name, featured in this Reviews Editor £300 £350 estiv The Canny Granny on climax & catharsis current issue with a multi-voiced artists’ diary, is The People Show – going strong for 40 f beccy smith e Out & About P20 Details on request from the Total Theatre years, and proving that there’s life in the old dog yet! m i Pippa Bailey’s Festival Highlights Magazine administration department. m Editorial Assistant (Features):

l Voices P24 Absent from our pages in 1999, but firmly established now, are Punchdrunk (founded in Alexander Roberts Email: [email protected] n na Paul Clark of Clod Ensemble ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter 2000) who are reviewed in this issue. I’d hope that they would still be with us ten years

hence. And I’d expect new circus stars Ockham’s Razor (previewed as they prepare to tio Editorial Assistant (Reviews): DISPLAY ADVERTISING / MAILOUT

launch new show The Mill) to be swinging to ever greater heights over the coming decade. na Marie Kenny REVIEWS P 27 Prices on request for full page, half, quarter or eighth page display ads. ter

So gazing into our crystal ball, who else might we expect to be featuring in Vol 31, Winter n Advertising & Includes: Festival Fringe and Forest Fringe; Prices on request for UK and/or

n i international mailout service. 2019? Perhaps budding street arts performers Plungeboom, flagged up in our round-up of Subscriptions Manager Lakes Alive; Arcola’s Adventures in Movement season;

the Lakes Alive season; or Kindle Theatre, whose bizarre banquet-performance is reviewed do christian francis Email [email protected]

n Lepage’s Blue Dragon at Dublin Festival. here. Perhaps Total Theatre Award winners Beady Eye Productions/ Kristin Fredricksson [email protected] [email protected] SUBMISSIONS TO TOTAL THEATRE or The River People or Dafydd James. Perhaps The Fiasco Division, referenced in Absolute LISTINGS P36 Beginners, our regular column written by Total Theatre’s Canny Granny, Laura Lloyd – who MAGAZINE / NEWS AND LISTINGS

t 2010 lo Design Feature proposals and submissions of

in another life is a rising star with The Honourable Society of Faster Craftswomen. a Studio Tonne News & Previews Winter 2009/2010 articles, reports or reviews should go to the

oil Training & Professional Development editor: [email protected] Maybe the names of the artists seen in the flurry of Scratch festivals, Rules & Regs encoun- p [email protected] ters, and studio theatre presentations at in late 2009 will still be on Performer & Company Updates Press releases, information on our lips in ten years time: Non Zero One, Deborah Pearson, Coney, Inua Ellams, subject Printing performances or events, and other publicity to _change (creators of Home Sweet Home). Certainly I’d hope to see BAC supported Andus material for Total Theatre Magazine: loge du [email protected] companies like New International Encounter (reviewed) and Blind Summit Theatre (who E [email protected] are presenting new show 1984 over the midwinter season) going from strength to strength. j News and listings items: BAC’s work is the subject of a special focus in this edition of Total Theatre Magazine. Published by: [email protected] university of winchester Copy and ads booking deadline for I would also love to learn a decade from now that the BAC affiliated project Forest Fringe e Mordo in association with (reviews section) has inspired other enterprising souls to seize the moment and create total Theatre the next issue is 18 January 2010. Total wonderful new opportunities for the making and presenting of theatre work. ann Theatre Volume 22 Issue 01 will be Total Theatre Magazine published March 2010. Who knows where we will be in a decade’s time. Regardless of what’s to come, it is good to University of Winchester

be leaving this decade with a feeling that ‘theatre’ – if I can dare to use that word without over: Je Faculty of Arts CONTACT DETAILS any qualifiers – is in a pretty good state. There’s exciting times ahead! c Winchester SO22 4NR Administration: Total Theatre Magazine © Total Theatre Magazine University of Winchester All rights reserved. ISSN 0960-6106. Faculty of Arts Dorothy Max Prior The views expressed or opinions stated Winchester Editor in Total Theatre Magazine are not SO22 4NR necessarily the views of the editor or Tel: 01962 827092 publishers. Similarly, statements made [email protected] or opinions expressed by the advertisers are not necessarily shared by the editor Editorial: or publishers. Reasonable care has been Total Theatre Magazine taken to avoid error in the magazine but no liability will be accepted for any The Basement @ Argus Lofts errors which may occur. No material in 24 Kensington Street this publication may be reproduced in Brighton BN1 4AJ any way without the consent in writing of the publisher. The publishers will not Tel: 07752 142526 accept responsibility for the safe return [email protected] of unsolicited material. We assume www.totaltheatre.org.uk permission to publish any unsolicited material unless otherwise stated in writing. 4 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 5 f e a

bac special Alexander Roberts tures meets David Jubb and David Micklem, Battersea Arts not Centre’s joint artistic directors, and reflects on a for building with many theatrical me, purposes and possibilities

not 3

to a stop in the foyer. This large entrance BAC’s ‘theatre’ in 2009 certainly extends There is no doubt that the BAC party is in Battersea Arts Centre – based in the same 2 n TOT

19th century former town hall building space is characterised by doors, corridors beyond the artist, the audience, the show full and 2009 has been a year full ot

A for and a great marble staircase, all leading and the single event. It’s evident that BAC of successful adventures for both artists

in South West London that has been its f L THE home since its birth in 1980 – boasts a off to the here, there, and everywheres is on a journey of evolution and pioneering and visitors. The hope, for me at least, is or

of this 71-roomed building. It’s an exciting an ideology that champions the possibility that the journey does not stop here and y

myriad of corridors, doors and theatrical ou, A TRE possibilities. space just to look at, but I had also heard of a theatre experience made up of more that each success brings a desire for more

you, n ot ot ma something. From the corridor on my right than is expected. I have encountered change and development.

I caught wind of some music and followed moments that were surprising, enchanting f g Joint artistic directors David Jubb and or or a and transformative – this is as much The building’s motto, ‘Not For Me, Not zi David Micklem are on a self-proclaimed the sound down the long, tall hallway. m n mission to ‘take ownership of the word Opening the door to one of the rooms I was because of conversations I have had, and For You, But For Us’, suggests that all of e, e, e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e but

“theatre”’ and transform the way that BAC greeted to my delight by a massive party people I have met, as the theatre I have those that visit the building get the chance b functions as a building. in the Grand Hall. There was tea and cake, seen, and events I have witnessed. to place their hand on the BAC steering ut f for and elderly men and women loving it on wheel. Long may it take the risk to let that | us or For Jubb and Micklem, the term theatre the dance floor. It appeared like some sort BAC, however, are not embarking on a happen and long may it avoid pressing refers to a place rather than an event, of flash mob or installation piece. I had solo mission and we should acknowledge cruise control. a

‘a place where both ordinary and become an unwitting witness to a BAC Tea other London-based pioneers – Shunt lex extraordinary things happen’. Jubb Dance. Funny, surprising, and bizarre. Lounge, The Theatre Royal Stratford us an explains that BAC is driven by an ‘interest East, Southwark Playhouse and Camden n der ro der ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter in programming a cocktail of different A few months on and I am standing in the People’s Theatre being examples of other events that bring people together… and for foyer again. I am here this time to see theatre platforms that invite a more

those experiences to be transformative’. the Scratch Festival – just one of many global sense of the relationship between For Punchdrunk’s Masque of the Red b visitors scrambling around the programme, architecture, the theatrical event and Death, presented at BAC 2007–2008, erts see www.punchdrunk.org.uk/past/ Micklem coins it a ‘porous building’. He trying to negotiate what to see and when. social space. tmotrd.htm says: ‘The town hall has always been a Amongst the line-up are Non Zero One and place where people have come together, Stolen Words, both taking the opportunity Nevertheless, it is exciting that BAC is Kneehigh’s Don John ran at the BAC from 9 April–8 May 2009. See www. 1 in the same way that they do in a theatre; to work with the building’s architecture inviting so many practitioners to make kneehigh.co.uk come together to celebrate something, or as a creative partner in the work. There full creative use of what the building’s question something, or debate something. are performances going off everywhere, architecture has to offer. BAC is actively Grotowski: Theatre and Beyond conference and touring exhibition The theatre that we are imagining at from the foyer to the black box spaces, to developing the physical capabilities of its took place in June 2009, at University little nooks, crannies and corners. I found many rooms and spaces, in order to further BAC does all of those things. As well of Kent, and at BAC. For further as producing and championing theatre myself, for twenty minutes, stranded – enhance the availability and flexibility of information see www.britishgrotowski. shows in our building, we also still have sandwiched between two performances their invitation. co.uk going off simultaneously. weddings, conferences and community For details of the BAC Tea meetings. All of those elements are of To date, a new brand of programming is Further to that, BAC’s choice to use and oher events see www.bac.co.uk equal importance to us in the ecology of gaining momentum at the BAC – as I’ve After nearly a year of regular visits I am artists and audience as active parties in Alexander Roberts and Dorothy Max witnessed in numerous visits over the past well and truly seduced by the endless this enterprise will surely strengthen the a theatre.’ Jubb adds: ‘The building was Prior from Total Theatre Magazine previously quite fixed in how it was used, year. creative possibilities offered by this new outcome. attended the BAC Scratch festival and conversations with artists would be BAC approach. 25–26 September 2009 My first outing to the venue in 2009 was to As BAC now moves towards realising quickly reduced down to ‘well, do you want Coming soon to BAC: Battersea it in the 150 seat black box or the 60 seat see Kneehigh’s Don John. The theatre had Jubb and Micklem see everything that elements of David Jubb and David Arts Centre presents Homotopia’s black box?”’ burst out onto the street – the company is programmed at BAC as a chance to Micklem’s BAC vision, there is a question, Jiggery Pokery, from 1–19 December. of Kneehigh actors sporting tank-tops and ‘scratch’ the space. As such, it is not which will at least for now remain A one-woman homage to Carry On But they have been working together to flares, to the flicker of tacky fairy lights and just the artists shaping this building, it unanswered, over whether BAC is slightly actor Charles Hawtrey, performed move things on… the pong of scampi and chips. The chosen must also be attributed to the likes of the imbalanced in the level at which work is by Amanda Lawrence (known for site for Kneehigh’s story was the Grand homework club, the yoga class and the serving the building, rather than serving her work with Kneehigh and Told Starting in 2007 with Punchdrunk’s Hall, which had been totally transformed handful of visitors drinking coffee and the artist. This question feels particularly by an Idiot). BAC’s main Christmas Masque of the Red Death (a whole- and split into two, the space converted into eating cake in the café. relevant when Jubb and Micklem talk show, Blind Summit’s adaptation of 1984, will be running from 2–23 building site-responsive work which ran a 1970s lounge bar, and an end-on stage about the idea that when a piece of work December 2009 & 4–9 January 2010. and auditorium. is shown at BAC, it will leave carrying with from autumn 2007 well into 2008), Jubb (See feature elsewhere in this issue and Micklem have been running a series it a ‘BAC signature’. It is certainly a valid for more on this production.) There of initiatives entitled The Playground A few months later I was back once more, pursuit to explore the different possibilities will also be a number of Scratch Projects. These instigate collaborations this time to see a retrospective of the image 1 | coney’s a small town for collaboration between venue, artist, performances from BAC regulars with artists, audiences, BAC staff and late theatre practitioner Jerzy Grotowski. anywhere. photo by gavin millar audience and community at large, but alongside this main programme. There is little to say about this exhibition, image 2 | Deborah Pearson still there is a value to the artist as the architects to experiment with, explore performing as part of Rules and For further information on any of the and develop the nature of the building as a beyond it being a disappointment, but the Regs. Photo by Kristian Wilding instigator and owner of their own work. above, and more, see www.bac.org.uk theatre. time I spent at BAC took an interesting image 3 | Kneehigh’s Don John. Photo courtesy of Mobius turn that day. Just as I was leaving I came

6 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 7 f e a BEING THERE tures three points-of-view of david hoyle’s installation / performance for rules & regs at bac, 25 september 2009

the rules

1 Think of 2 Don’t be Yourself 3 Be Straight with Us 4 Panic

My allocated room was dingy and rather depressing … shades BAC BAC TOT of Miss Haversham (where’s the wedding-cake and mice?!). The A

budget was spent on transforming the nicotine-esque walls to S L THE P

bright white. Words which related to my interpretation of the four E C I

‘Rules’ were painted onto the walls (expertly by Cath O’ Gorman). I A A | L TRE mixed up the aristocratic world of Evelyn Waugh (with particular b ei ma reference to Brideshead Revisited and the Lygon Family, whose n g there | there g g home Madresfield Court served as a template for Brideshead) a

zi and the world of Dis-Enchanted Youth, presenting photographs n of various youths who had gone into schools or academies and e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e shot people indiscriminately. The Grandiosity of The 18th Century- D

House Party converging with The Dysfunctional NOW! A VID

I reasoned that there was a as some great estates HO Y

were founded on murder and ruthless seizure of territory – a LE I’m ushered into a room with a ring of pineapple on my finger, comment on the seemingly NICE and the seemingly EVIL. placed there by our host’s rather elegant attendant (‘The David Hoyle was in residence at BAC as a participating Blackamoor’). The room contains an installation/performance/ To present the killers as aristocratic ancestors, their faces framed artist in Rules & Regs. Musical mixes for the evening were n ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter party presented, hosted and haunted by David Hoyle. The warmth in gold (some smiling attractively), was deliberately provocative. provided by Grim Outlook. David was assisted by Thom of the welcome makes me question whether our host and I have We live in a world where the media feasts on the latest atrocity: Shaw (meeting and greeting). actually met before. We haven’t. That’s just how things work in they need the killers to sell their product. Rules & Regs is a practice-led development initiative for this room. It has an intimacy somewhere between a secret society, artists working in Live Art that travels around the UK and an adolescent bedroom and your Nan’s front room. These are poisonous times of manipulation and mis-information – ‘Home’ is something of a recurring artistic motif for David Hoyle. is sited at a new venue for each phase of its development. is it any wonder that in the confusion guns are fired, people are The award-winning short film At Home with David Hoyle (directed Each month-long programme is curated by a different On the walls are a series of photographs, portraits of the growing blown away? We tell our young people that murder is bad, yet at by Nathan Evans) took us inside his Manchester pad; a visit organisation and culminates in a public exhibition of work, club of young men who made themselves heard in school corridors the same time normalise perpetual war. to BAC for the Burst festival saw him create an artist’s garret the chosen artists each creating new work in response to and classrooms across the civilised world, gunning down their usurping the Romantic tradition; and in his latest BAC residency, rules devised to challenge their usual creative strategies. For classmates, teachers and finally themselves. They are in gold History records how the aristocracy for centuries ruthlessly sent he’s created a Brideshead-inspired stately home – replete with the BAC residency, the artists were: David Hoyle, Deborah frames; an aristocratic lineage of disaffection, icons of alienated youths to their deaths. The dukes involved in Highland clearances; banqueting table, stained glass windows (well OK, painted Pearson, Sharon Smith, and Swen Steinhauser. The artists youth, the alter-egos and supervillains to our ideal selves. the Crimea; Lord Kitchener sending gilded youths in their Perspex, but equally lovely), and portraits of the aristocracy. were in residence at BAC from 1 September 2009, with thousands to be torn apart in Ypres or the Somme during WW1. showings of work taking place 25–26 September, in tandem with the The walls tell of broken adolescence across the years. With the The New Aristocracy, that is… for within the six gilt frames are BAC Scratch festival. For further information see directness of slogans scrawled on school-books, the evils of photographs of ‘Disillusioned and Immortalised Youth’ – high- I hosted a Party in this room, with wine and candles, and engaged www.rulesandregs.org society are referenced with words daubed on the white walls in in conversation with all who attended. This was a space that said school killers (or presumed would-be-killers). In smaller frames stark red and black – a savage and eclectic barrage of references. that at some level ALL is PROFOUNDLY CONNECTED and that on another wall are some of the bon mots of these young men: Other David Hoyle events late 2009: This litany of rage is tilted at the dogmas and demands that DISPLACEMENT activities can distract us from a wider REALITY! ‘Humanity is Over-Rated’ and ‘Remember Me This Way’. have broken many young men over the centuries, and balanced David Hoyle’s Total Abasement came to The Basement arts with David Hoyle’s: Death, Revenge, Society Is Evil. Be False, 25 September was my first night OPEN to the public! We drank, David Hoyle’s performance personae range from extreme alter- centre in Brighton on 30 October 2009. Displacement, The Myth of the Masculine. we conversed, we spun around to the music. We transgressed! egos (like the dearly departed Divine David) through to a lightly- See www.thebasement.uk.com Together we created a temporary autonomous zone. It was masked version of his own dear self, and it is this David that Among all this is David Hoyle, standing, sitting and dancing by his Bacchanalian, and we all had a wonderful time. Nobody got killed. shares the space with us tonight – chatting, drinking, smoking, David’s Theatre of Therapy is at The Chelsea Theatre in London 6 & 7 November as part of the Sacred season, words. Reworking them, mulling them over, often just chatting dancing, discussing his artistic influences. which will also include On the Couch with David about whatever comes up, having a laugh. Wine, grapes, more Evelyn Waugh was a huge inspiration to the project so I shall As a veteran of the punk era, the evening reminds me of the Hoyle. pineapple rings, candelabra, conversations with strangers: gifts finish by quoting what he insisted be printed at the front of opening of the Prostitution exhibition at the ICA in October 1976. It made not against the darkness, but inviting it in, asking how it is Brideshead Revisited. I AM NOT I, THOU IS NOT HE OR SHE, THEY is interesting to note that it is still the same things that can shock For details of this and other shows and events at Sacred doing. Maybe we can start to understand, just a little bit. ARE NOT THEY. see www.chelseatheatre.org.uk/sacred2009.htm and subvert: the tongue-in-cheek ‘celebration’ of teen violence;

the use of images of criminals as artistic icons (remember We all drink lots and smoke inside. David Hoyle David Hoyle will also be hosting a life-drawing class in the Vivienne Westwood’s Cambridge Rapist T-shirt?); gay men sculpture gallery at the V&A in London on 27 November. Tim Harrison who refuse to play it straight; an interest in Englishness (Derek Jarman’s Jubilee); the appropriation of upper-class fashion foibles If you wish to contact David Hoyle, (Adam and The Ants). On that former occasion, the Daily Mail email [email protected] response was ‘These People Are the Wreckers of Civilisation’. And — surprise! — three decades have passed, but we haven’t gone away! Punk: the Crone Generation… Images: David Hoyle at BAC for Rules & Regs, photos courtesy of the artist Dorothy Max Prior

8 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 9 f e a

london international mime festival tures from russia with love Dorothy Max Prior meets Dimitri Aruypin from BlackSkyWhite, who bring USSR Was Here to the 2010 London International Mime Festival

The Midsummer madness of Glastonbury The aesthetic of the piece is a sort of twist- BlackSkyWhite are based in Moscow, but At the heart of USSR Was Here is the col- BlackSkyWhite wouldn’t exist’ says Dimitri. LO TOT Festival feels a long way from now, as we ed Gothic-Romantic. A parade of increas- have never felt the need to ‘penetrate the lective memory of centuries of struggle and The importance of the performer as creator N A plunge downwards towards the darkest ingly disturbing ‘creatures’ arise from the theatre community’. Although their work upheaval. of their own work, and the deep level of DO L THE

point of the year, but let me take you back to hellish smoke, demonstrating their angst has common territory with other Russian work explored by theatre-makers who con- N I one of those balmy summer evenings… through solo movement sections, or in pair- physical theatre companies – such as The work is very much in the style of tinue to work together over many years, is N A TER TRE ings that sometimes confuse the viewer by Derevo – they have developed on a lone intense and atmospheric visual theatre that crucial to Dimitri’s understanding of what NA

ma It’s 11.00pm, still warm, thankfully dry, and shifts in which they take on the trappings of trajectory. They worked initially without BlackSkyWhite are known for, and bears makes good theatre. Dimitri is seen by many their signature clearly. In many ways, it is a people outside the company as the auteur TIO g the Glastonbury Theatre and Circus Fields each other’s identities. It is hard to believe funding or support, making around one NA a of the work, the driving force, but he says: zi are full of happy revellers. There’s a floodlit that there are only two performers, as we show a year. Artaud’s writings proved to companion piece to Bertrand’s Toys (which M L n outdoor aerial rig, populated by spangly- seem to encounter so many beings: shad- be a strong influence on the company’s was created a year later, in 1995, and ‘I am not the creator, I am the gardener. I e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e I costumed trapeze-ers, a number of small owy fairy-tale figures appear and disappear, work, and they see their driving force as the which won a Total Theatre Award, amongst know how to take care of the actors. I know M stages featuring various fire-spinners and cajoling and retreating; patriarchal figures desire to ‘bring dreams to the stage’. The other accolades, when it appeared at the how to take care of the technical things.’ F E acrobalancers, and at the far end of the the- rant and rage; and dislocated dancers references to dreams are many in Dimitri’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000). Both He also says, of the creation of the work: ESTIV atre field, street arts company Emergency to the sound of an old radio broadcast, musings on theatre, and unsurprisingly he pieces reflect on death, loss, and horror. ‘It takes so long to make a show that it is A

Exit Arts are drumming and dancing and clinging to each other as the world falls has a strong interest in Carl Jung’s writings The starting point for Bertrand’s Toys was impossible to say who made what.’ | 2009 L Dimitri is something of a polymath, a profes- setting fire to things, their giant metal Rung- down around them. on the dream life, the collective uncon- ‘the realisation that the most concentrated sor of mathematics turned theatre direc- a-Rung elephant all the while harrumphing scious, and the archetypes. evils do exist — Satanism, serial killers, It is obvious that, despite his many compet-

tor, designer and sound artist; a trained f

loudly. The soundscape is a dense collage of elec- torturers — they are really in the world, and ing talents and interest, theatre is where ro n scientist with a detailed knowledge of ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter tronic music and found sounds, with text Having built up a sound reputation for their the people I love have joined a world with Dimitri needs to be: ‘I won’t go back to russi m European history – not to mention his inter- Meanwhile in the cavernous theatre tent, used as part of the integrated soundscape early work, BlackSkyWhite decided, in them in. This thought brings me so much mathematics,’ he says, ‘I make theatre work est in philosophy, theatre, literature, and currently pretty empty, a show is beginning. more for its sonic (rather than semantic) 1993, to respond to the cultural turbulence pain.’ USSR Was Here is haunted by the because I need to show people what it is to music. Throughout our various talks, he Jarring electronic sounds burst out of the qualities. There is, in one section of the happening all around them – initiated by ghosts of ‘the 20 million Russians dead in be alive – to live with the knowledge that | love with an moves easily from one subject and area of PA, the stage is lit with a wash of intense piece an ironic use of lip-synching and in Gorbachev’s 1980s policies of Perestroika the World War, and the further 20 million we can die at any moment, and thus the knowledge to another – and he obviously red light, and the space pumped full of another a disturbing play on the powerful and Glasnost, and the subsequent dissolu- young men lost to Stalin and to emigration’. importance to really live life. It’s a kind of doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I manage to keep smoke. image of the ventriloquist’s dummy (which I tion of the Soviet Union in 1991 – with the Thoughts of death are never far – and if it reality, but a very different one to the com- up (just about) on the discussions on the took to be commentaries on political postur- creation of a piece about Russia and the is reasonable to talk of a nation having a mon one.’ comparative theatrical visions of Artaud,

Out of the darkness emerge two figures, ing, speechmaking and the constant dispari- many histories of its people. Dimitri speaks tendency towards one temperament, then DOROTH Maeterlinck, and Meyerhold; on Russia’s whose masked faces and dislocated move- ties between what our leaders say and what passionately of Russia, which he describes Dimitri is perhaps typically Russian in his Returning one last time to a favourite topic, troubled relationship with its allies in the ments cast a mesmerising spell. I’m sitting they really mean). as ‘less a nationality than a mentality’. It tendency towards melancholy. He talks the dream nature of theatre, he finishes this Second World War; and on the musical near the front, and my gaze is locked onto is obvious that USSR Was Here is a work about ‘feeling the abyss within yourself’ and particular conversation with this thought: MA Y genius of Ryoji Ikeda, Jocelyn Pook, and these horribly compelling beings, who one Welcome to the world of Russian renegades close to his heart, and at the core of the says, with a sigh, ‘you cannot predict your ‘The dream on stage is not a metaphor, it is

Diamanda Galas. I fail dismally on anything P X moment seem hardly human yet in another BlackSkyWhite, presenting USSR Was company’s repertoire. dreams’. Weeks later, he emails me to say the real life.’ relating to physics and maths (despite moment all-too-human; morphing from one Here, a show which will have its premiere (as if I hadn’t noticed!) that crucial to his RIOR drawings he makes in my notebook to state of being to another with alarming and in the capital as part of the 2010 London The investigation of Russian history and psyche and his work was an awareness of illustrate points about ‘symmetric groups’ For more information on BlackSkyWhite disturbing regularity. When I eventually International Mime Festival. cultural identity takes the form of a dream- death, a sense of the finite. Yet, he says, it or whatever) and am told sternly ‘not to be see www.bsw.ru drag my eyes from the stage and glance like journey through the inner psyche of the is ‘the feeling that life here is finite that is afraid of mathematics’. Eventually he takes USSR Was Here was seen by the around me, I’m surprised to see that the Whilst in Glastonbury I had several con- nation, rather than anything that one might the only thing that brings sense and makes pity on me, and suggests I try, for starters, author at Glastonbury Festival of tent is nearly full, the attentive audience versations with BlackSkyWhite’s Dimitri call a regular narrative history, or ‘political life valuable’. reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Contemporary Performing Arts, June shocked into silence (a near impossibility at Aruypin about the making of this work, theatre’ in the usual sense of that term. Yet of Time. 2009. See Glastonbury). It’s as if all these people have about the company generally – and about politics and histories – both national and As in Bertrand’s Toys, key elements of www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk been charmed into the tent, for all I know life, the universe, and much else besides. personal – are crucial to the work, with USSR Was Here are the strong physical Somewhere in that discussion comes an walking hypnotised in silent procession This, I should say, wasn’t difficult to arrange ideas for the piece fermenting over many performances of the two actor/dancers, USSR Was Here is presented by the explanation of why he gave up mathematics from the world of summer evening fun-and- as I was staying with the company in their years. Dimitri is a great believer in allowing and the intense relationship between the 2010 London International Mime Festival to become a theatre-maker, which hinged games into something deeper, darker and tent (a rather military arrangement with the subconscious to do its work. two played out onstage. As in other shows at ICA, The Mall, London SW1: 16–20 around meeting Marcella Soltan in 1987, far more dangerous. camp beds lined up on one side of the space, by the company, costume and mask are Jan 8pm. £14 (£12 concs) 020 7930 3647 and a slow-burning desire to make theatre and metal storage units serving as tables for In the process of exploring the fear and used to create illusion, but the corporeal Booking opens 12 November. See that manifested over a 3–4 year period. He the seemingly continuous consumption of anxiety generated by the changes occur- language is at the heart of the piece. www.ica.org.uk/mimefestival learnt on the job, he says, ‘I have no diploma ridiculously strong black coffee). ring, and to investigate the notion of what or qualifications; I’m a trained scientist, not The London International Mime Festival ‘being Russian’ might mean at the cusp of In particular, the work is a brilliant show- a trained theatre-maker’. He is, if anything, runs 13–31 January 2010 See the twentieth/twenty-first centuries, the case for Marcella Soltan’s extraordinary a little disparaging about theatre training, or www.mimefest.co.uk company worked with their own childhood physical performance abilities – she has the at least about some aspects of it, describ- memories, with shared histories, and with most unsettling shapeshifter ability to twist ing the obsession with Stanislavski’s and archetypal images inspired by notions of and turn her body into anything she wants Grotowski’s ‘methods’ as being something cultural identity. For Dimitri, the essence it to be. Dimitri and Marcella are partners in Images: All photos are of Black akin to Scientology. And as for ‘theatre Sky White’s USSR Was Here. of Russian-ness is a willingness to chal- work and in life, and their intense director/ studies’ – ‘what’s it for?’ he says dismis- Courtesy of the company lenge – be that a challenge to 500 years of performer relationship is at the heart of the sively. capitalism, or a challenge to Nazi Germany. company. ‘If Marcella stopped performing,

10 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 11 f e a the london absolute tures id. b ’s Mor

international n beginners sdóttir n ivisio ör j o D

mime festival 2010 c s a B a the canny granny muses john ellingsworth picks his dd he Fi on climax and catharsis highlights from this year’s ge: T

1 eclectic programme Ima Photo E by

Boiling kettles, thunderstorms, yodelling Amy Russell, drama teacher at London’s And watching Deborah Pearson’s work for Switzerland, Belgium, France, Israel, Spain, Russia, , 2 THE TOT Denmark and Italy – as usual the Mimefest pulls its performers in orgasms – the origin of the inherent sat- Lecoq inspired school, LISPA, says: ‘At Rules & Regs at BAC recently – a journey A

from all over the world, with this year’s highlights including Theatre isfaction of dramatic climax needs little LISPA, we’re very much into the building into a British bunker, that turns out to be a LO L THE

Etgar’s Eshet, a puppet-retelling of an Old Testament story; Kitt explanation. blocks, but there are as many theatrical nuclear bunker, that turns out to be spon- N Johnson X-Act’s Rankefod, a solo performance charting the origin structures as musical ones, and they’re not sored by the BNP – that step-by-step alter- DO A N TRE

of the species; Ateliers du Spectacle’s A Distances, collecting Climax feels part of the natural order: the all going to come to a symphonic fourth ing of our awareness, inching us further and I N TER

ma seven short pieces of animation / machine theatre; Kefar Nahum, build-up of gack on the emotional white- movement. What about Eastern music – the further forward in our discomfiture – was NA g the latest from LIMF favourites Cie Mossoux Bonte; a London head until it’s a relief when late at night you Indian raga, or the rising and falling of the itself a kind of build that needed no great a TIO zi premiere for USSR Was Here by Russia’s BlackSkyWhite; and new squeeze it between two fingernails and it Gamelan at a Topeng event in Bali. Or the crescendo. n

work from returning companies O Ultimo Momento / Joao Paulo dos pings onto the mirror. This release is known trance-like effect induced by companies like NA e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e

Santos (King of the (Chinese) Pole) and Collectif Petit Travers (a as catharsis. If reading about this makes you De la Guarda?’ Or perhaps giving the audience release is M L brilliant French company with two previous LIMF successes under uncomfortable, don’t worry – you probably not as interesting as not releasing them? I M

their belt). And if that’s not enough, Tom Morris (Former Director of just need a good cry. On stage at least, Daniel Kitson never Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment F E

BAC, then Associate Director of the National Theatre, now Artistic seems to need a climax. In The Interminable writes in his collection of essays, Certain ESTIV Director of the Bristol Old Vic), returns to give the 2010 Mime London-based company The Fiasco Division Suicide Note of Gregory Church, a show he Fragments, of the audience as witness, and

Festival Talk. Entitled Chapter 3, the talk takes place at the ICA on have recently developed a theatrical train- presented at the Traverse for the Edinburgh of performances that leave their mark on A 23 January, 2.30pm. ing process in laughter and crying. They’ve Festival Fringe, he insists that his story is the consciousness, ‘unable to stop thinking, | 2009 L been exploring the physiological processes not a novel, with the right people falling talking and reporting what we’ve seen’. n ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter

The two UK representatives at LIMF this year are both circus com- of catharsis, doing laughing yoga, breathing in love, actions delivering consequences. I’m still thinking, talking and reporting ab

panies: Mimbre, whose Until Now is an extended stage version of and voice exercises. Though be warned: Instead, it’s all about inaction, and a very about that. solute the outdoor show that toured the festivals in 2009, a three-hander Laughing whilst doing yoga could itself end human ongoingness... using acrobatics to explore and illuminate the fluid changes in in tears, or at the very least incontinence. Laura Lloyd is the Canny Granny

There’s a risk of disappointment in an b

the trio’s relationships; and Ockham’s Razor, who are at the Royal egi Opera House’s Linbury Studio with The Mill, a completely new piece Jacques Lecoq insisted that a denouement absence of climax. Virtuosic acts like those The Fiasco Division’s new piece nn directed by Toby Sedgwick and played out on the Mill itself, a giant was a necessity of effective theatre. He in Cirque du Soleil and Victoria Thierrée Happiness [END], seeks to induce ers custom-built aerial wheel. The new show follows Ockham’s Razor’s devised an exercise in which students build Chaplin’s Aurelia’s Oratorio (created with multiple cathartic climaxes through established modus: creating a piece of equipment and then develop- the intensity of their reaction to an event daughter Aurelia Thierre) have to build laughing and crying. Showcasing in ing a narrative in the process of finding out exactly what’s techni- – say, washing up whilst a tsunami hits. in increasing impressiveness. That’s not Norway on 13 November 2009, and cally possible on it. In past shows their kit has stayed relatively Consequently, when Armageddon strikes the same as being an anticlimax though. in London on 20 November 2009. For close to traditional circus apparatus (a frame in Memento Mori had and my street starts pissing molten lava into Gormley’s fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square further details see www.thefiascodivi- some of the properties of trapeze without the torsion or swing; the the sky, I’ll probably freeze until someone often seems to host one of those. But then, sion.com or email [email protected] 3 rope in Every Action took corde lisse and complicated it with two 4 bangs a tambourine and shouts ‘C’est six! after you’ve been hoiked onto a massive One and Other was a live artwork by pulley-wheels), but the Mill is a step toward something more chal- Reagissez!’ pedestal and are sitting on your toy horse, sculptor Antony Gormley. 2,400 par- lenging and complex. In circus it’s closest to Wheel of Death though what more is there to do for an hour than ticipants representing every region of it’s most accurately communicated as a giant suspended hamster More recently, and with age perhaps, I’ve wave to your friends below? (Perhaps that is the UK each spend an hour alone on wheel – one that performers can run inside or on top of – with steel begun to wonder whether climax is all it’s the point, to remind us that we are small and the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, London over the course of 100 days rims and terrible, dangerous momentum. Exactly what theatrical cracked up to be. Anyway, is it really that ordinary…) and nights. The project took place narratives will emerge from it remains to be seen, but it’s a good natural? A tree burgeoning, a British sum- July–October 2009. For further details place to start. mer, greying hair – these things are wonder- There’s power in deliberately denying cli- see www.oneandother.co.uk ful and are more of a natural fade. max (as opposed to failing to rustle one up) For further information on the work of UK companies at LIMF 2010: and perhaps it’s not the only way to achieve Deborah Pearson with Rules & Regs: catharsis. Alexander Roberts (of the afore- www.rulesandregs.org/bac09.html Ockham’s Razor’s The Mill can be seen at Linbury Studio mentioned Fiasco Division company) cites Tim Etchells book Certain Fragments Theatre, , Covent Garden: 19–21 January Gob Squad’s Kitchen – a recreation of a is published by Routledge: 7.45pm (after-show discussion on Weds. 20th) £6.50 / £11 / Warhol film in which ‘nothing much hap- www.routledge.com. Further informa- £13 / £16 (£7.50 students / under 16s) pens’ – as a climax-free show that gave him tion on the work of Tim Etchells can be Bookings: 020 7304 4000 or at www.mimefest.co.uk ‘waves of perceptual shifts’. ‘There was reached at www.timetchells.com, with For more on Ockham’s Razor see www.ockhamsrazor.co.uk more than one moment when something a fortnightly blog being published by Mimbre’s Until Now appears at Southbank Centre’s Purcell dropped, and it wasn’t for everyone at the the artist at www.timetchells.com/blog- Room: 25–27 Jan 8pm (after-show discussion Tue 26th) same time. There were triggers that were section/notebook/ £14.00. Booking opens 13 November on 0844 847 9928 or available to everyone.’ Cirque Du Soleil: at www.mimefest.co.uk. www.cirquedusoleil.com For more on Mimbre see www.mimbre.co.uk Image 1: Jeanne Mordoj’s Eloge du Poil. Photo by Christoph Raynaud Jacques Lecoq: The London International Mime Festival runs 13–31 January de Lage Image 2: Ockham’s Razor’s The Mill. www.ecole-jacqueslecoq.com 2010. For further details on any of the shows, to download a Photo by Nik Mackey programme, or to book tickets, see www.mimefest.co.uk Image 3: Okidok’s HaHaHa LISPA: www.lispa.co.uk Image 4: Mossoux-Bonté’s Kefar Nahum. Photo by Mikha Wajnrych

12 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 13 WEEK 1 I dip my toes willingly into the unknown… f e a

22 participants, 10am–6pm My own practice works within the loose tures Monday to Friday, plus homework. framework of the surreal and the absurd, which generally manifests itself through new dogs ‘I can see in his eyes that, yeah, he regrets sculpture and fine art performance… capitalism.’ working as part of such a huge group is unknown territory for little old me. I never You’re trying not to be visible but you are, imagined it would be quite as powerful old tricks and it’s beautiful and it’s like a painting. as it is… We are at times menacing and destructive then at the blink of an eye, As a performer, find the point at which you delicate and graceful… No mean feat for know you are being listened to. some 20 something individuals who barely 13, 14, 15 August 2009: the Gaffer technology, sewing Bavarian aprons, know each other a week! performances were fantastic. The importance of the dynamic of a show, All three shows sold out, and the and the Johnny Hutch Boot Camp – it’s not your but not necessarily as in beginning-mid- The past few days have found us in People Show were extremely average workshop, but what else would we dle-end, instead to do with instinct, like smaller groups working site-specifically in proud to host a new forum for new a day going from night to dawn to light to various points of the People show building. artists. The audience feedback was expect from The People Show? dusk and night again. Michele, Nicola, Lyndal, Camilla, Alice astounding. and myself are in the garden. Not the I want to see (and hear) two minutes best of spots to work in today… But we Endings. No – new beginnings. N TOT of just the balloons squeaking minutely braved the good old English summertime New aims: to support the 22 new EW

A Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you – talented People Show artists as DOGS L THE against each other in front of the micro- in our matching red plastic ponchos (think People Show 120: The Workshop phone. strawberry flavoured condoms!) And much as we can. To do the 2nd act

A airport show again in another venue

began adding to the foundations we have OLD TRE I want to hear Delano tell his whole jour- already built… and, in my case especially, with all the original cast. To do the TRI ma ney home by only describing people’s discovered a few things that really should workshop every year because it is C g too important not to. To refine and

shoes. be left alone! BTW ladies… I have to | KS a The People Show have been creating devised zi insist the lobster stays… Even if only as respond. n

Hi (first name) performances for the past four decades, and are p e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e

I want to see Ruby just stand and lick the my cigarette holder! ; ) Lili eo often considered to be the UK’s first experimen- The viscosity of icing sugar inside of a chocolate bar wrapper until p le show 120 show le Thank you so much for attending our tal theatre company. In summer 2009, they cre- the lights go out. Ira Wow, late, I should go to bed and I should The ratio of hair to talcum powder audition day for People Show 120: The ated a three-week intensive summer school with write some freedom slogans for the toilet The relative merits of expensive Workshop. The point of this session is 22 exciting new artists. This diverse and multi- Images are emerging in my head that link and learn my poem and sew a Bavarian balloons all our diverse journeys to one port of apron... Sophie The many varied uses of lampshades that you get to see if you want to work talented group developed, honed and expanded as clothing with us – and we get to see if you are their skills under expert guidance from People call, one airport, one train station, the last place on earth – how did we get there? WEEK 3 A People Show 120 workshop n right for this project. Show artists, to create a show combining prom- Who did we see? Why are we here? What As this week began the practicalities of excursion to Gatwick Airport ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter enade performance, cabaret, film, new writing, have we got to show for our journey? performance and fear of failure became The session will be in two halves: the dance, music, light, sound, puppetry, animation... What are our fears, hopes, dreams? ... paramount for the participants. This was All things that are spinning (right cough spit drool sneeze cough ... frantic countered by continuing to play with round) in my head tonight. Good first being a workshop with a few short night john-boy. (Anna) devising exercises, where you will work mushrooming uncontrollable ... who ideas and exercises and reinforcing some knows!! of the principles of People Show perfor- in a group. The second half is when we mance which include drilling and refining Words by Gareth Brierley, Sadie Cook, Tyrone Huggins and members of the People Show 120 would like you to present the following Right got to go or will be late to see you. theatrical moments, and maintaining the company. Images: Sadie Cook task. James idea of a sharing of our work ahead of delivering a polished performance. With The Task: WEEK 2 this in mind the form of our presentation The careful planning of each session that was progressively shared and under- Tuesday, 28 July 2009 characterised Week 1 was now more stood by all. It’s day two, every few hours my reasons for being here change and Take 1–2 minutes of a scene from a film fluid and was necessarily more respon- that’s great and unsettling and I like it. Mark Long gave a chat this People Show 120 Company: of your choice. You will then present that sive to the issues emerging from the work The fact that each space could handle morning on the ‘serious’ business of making theatre, devising, the Anna Benner, Jade Blue, Ira Brand, scene to the group in any manner you being developed in each of the spaces... different amounts of audience (twelve ingredients, what its all about. Michele James Cowan, Rachael Fountain, want. You can act it out, dance it out, The participants were divided into groups was the maximum in one of the spaces), Chantal Francis, Delano Giovanii, of fives and sixes and were assigned a helped to shape the form the presenta- Ruby Glaskin, Teba Gomez, Sophie sing it out, describe it, symbolise it… etc. Beginnings. Four People Show artists sitting in a small, cold room space within People Show Studios for tion would take. By now each group had Habenicht, Isobel Henderson, drinking coffee, coming up with ideas. If the People Show did Whatever you like. which to create a piece of work. These full possession of the aesthetics and Camilla Lysell, Lyndal Marwick, workshops what would they do? Useful stuff. Pulley Masterclass. spaces were the garden, the toilets, the shape of their work, to which we added Laura Milnes, Michele Moran, Gaffer Technology and its Origins. Johnny Hutch Boot Camp. Two Use it as a starting point for a small piece stairs/foyer and the tank room (props and the constriction that their performance Rebecca Nada-Rajah, Rachel Owens, years later and we still haven’t done these workshops, let’s just wardrobe store). One particular focus should have a duration of no more than Alice Parsloe, Nicola Singh, Isobel of work. If this task was given to me, I get it done – summer 2009. Looked back at the notes… they were Slater, Lili Spain, Monique Squeri was to ensure that those with least per- ten minutes. Together these limitations might take the lift action scene from Die good ideas, but we needed to get simpler – more direct. What formance experience did not settle into led to a form in which 60 audience mem- Blog: Hard and describe in detail to you every shall we call it? People Show 120 (it is the next number after 119 comfortable roles of non-performance, bers would be divided into 5 groups of 12, http://peopleshow120.blogspot.com after all), The Workshop. detail of Bruce Willis’s rope work. I might but were challenged to discover a perfor- so that at any given time four audiences The People Show Team: take the final speech from Bladerunner mance mode that suited their ability and/ would be seeing work in the four spaces Workshop leaders: Gareth Brierley, We put into action the marketing plan which we had formulated or interest in self-development. with the fifth group held for a time in the Sadie Cook, Fiona Creese, Tyrone and do it a bit upbeat. before and during the funding application process. We received Huggins hall. Out of this necessity grew the idea over 150 applicants by deadline and then engaged in a careful and General Manager: David Duchin Day … erm ... *lili struggles to count of the hall as a gallery in which a specu- Play to your strengths and don’t worry. rigorous vetting process, which resulted in getting the numbers People Show artists: Mark Long, her fingers* ... Nine … and my first blog lative photographic idea begun in Week down to 44 applicants for the audition days. George Khan, Chahine Yavroyan, attempt … 2 became the focus alongside written or Richard Rudnicki, Nik Kennedy, Nick Any questions just email me at representational material. Tigg, Fred De Faye, Bernadette [email protected] I embarked on this workshop looking for Russell Images: All photographs are of The People Show’s adventure and I haven’t been disappoint- For further information on The People People Show 120. Photos by Sadie Cook ed… I have pushed boundaries and pull Show, and details of past, present, muscles that I didn’t know I had! Each day and future projects, see www.peopleshow.co.uk

14 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 15 f e

1 2 a city circ tures From a giant-sized Mobile to the Wheel of Death, John Ellingsworth finds a lot to like at London’s city-wide circus season

I got to see Wheel of Death for the first time on London’s South Going into the summer, there was fine outdoor work within other Bank in September. It’s a remarkable thing, a house-size struc- festivals, including, at Victoria Park’s outdoor festival Paradise ture that pivots two wheels around one another – one small, the Gardens, a collaboration between Chinese Pole artists Gemma other large and caged so that a performer can run within or on Palomar and Telma Pinto and Avant Garde Dance (the risky and top of it. Imagine it as a bit like a fairground Big Wheel except often disastrous combination of and circus finally there are no safety harnesses and you have to power it yourself pulled off), and an incredible ensemble piece from Gandini and it goes much faster. It’s genuinely terrifying to watch, each Juggling, Gandini NightClubs, which united ten jugglers from a turn of the Wheel rasping a little more from your strained nerves. broad spectrum of styles and temperaments and nationalities and C TOT Most circus carries some measure of physical danger, but I can’t was made in a week over the course of the company’s residency IT

think of any other discipline which has the same sense that the at the National for Watch This Space. It was the larger pieces C Y A L THE

performer is running always just ahead of a wave of disaster. I found myself least taken with: the self-regarding virtuosity IR

(Recognising the strong malevolent energy of the Wheel, present- of renowned French company Le Cirque Invisible at the Queen J | C A TRE ing company Les Studios de Cirque de Marseille interpreted it as Elizabeth Hall, and the ENO’s production of L’Amour de Loin OH

an SF-style device, crashing into different time zones to enslave (directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, formerly of Cirque du Soleil and N ma whatever humans encountered it.) It certainly got to the audience. Cirque Éloize), a leaden two hours of thinly plotted opera where ELLI g a Screams, exclamations, breathy disbelief, and a huge collective the circus artists represented ‘spirits’ and were mostly just pulled N zi GSWORTH

n wwwoooaaaaaaaaahhh whenever a performer picked up enough on to do splits then floated off. Still, the City Circ hit rate is already e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e pace to hit an anti-grav dead point at the top of a rotation, air- a lot higher than many other, more tightly curated, festivals. borne within his wheeled cage for a few terrible seconds. The ’09 programme was mostly circus theatre rather than cabaret La Roue de la Mort: La Trilogie du Temps closed off the circus or act-based work, but there were some exceptions (the So and strand of the National Theatre’s Watch This Space festival, and, So Circus Cabaret and Circomedia’s You Take My Breath Away) and with it, the longer, broader City Circ season that began in March Pam explains that they needed to be flexible: with NoFit State’s Tabú at the Roundhouse. Highlights in-between ‘Yeah, it’s difficult. Certainly the Arts Council those two dates included the London appearance, pre-Edinburgh but Crying Out Loud as well are interested 3 n

ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter Fringe, of Circa from Australia (seen at the Riverside studios). in circus theatre – indoor, hour-long enter- tainment, not acts. Sometimes it’s difficult Originally an Arts Council initiative called the Circus Venues because some of the artists that are the best Alliance, City Circ got a new name and a shift in direction when it artists working in Britain still only have twen- was handed over to producing house Crying Out Loud to manage. ty minute shows that are mostly outdoors. But we’ve had a lot of discussions within the [City Directed by Rachel Clare, Crying Out Loud represent such the- Circ] group about what the definition of circus atrical and circus luminaries as James and Aurélia Thiérrée, is. Some of the shows in the brochure people Circo de la Sombra, and TPO Company, as well as taking on the would say aren’t circus – some of them have administration of individual projects like the Europe-wide funding no tricks in them, no flying in them, things like initiative Jeunes Talents Cirque. With City Circ, they were more- that. And we haven’t quite got it yet – haven’t or-less given free reign to do what they wanted. ‘We called a lot got the crux of the definition yet. It’s a difficult of meetings,’ remembers Pam Vision, Crying Out Loud’s Associate one. It’s such a mix of different types of the- Producer, ‘a lot more meetings, with the idea of making it into a atre – it’s really good theatre that has its root season and sort of into a festival. To give people a focus of when in circus.’ they needed to programme some circus, what they were look- ing for, what the shape of it would be around London, how many With the first year finished, Crying Out Loud other people were involved. […] What we’ve found in London have begun planning for the future. There’s is that venues are very protective of their programme and their some housekeeping to be done – a bigger knowledge, their audiences. And I think we really want to see website, a combined marketing campaign that them collaborate more and open up.’ About half of the venues who expands from print to the furthest frontiers of attended the meetings actually programmed circus – some had digital media, a number of funding applications already been intending to, but in many cases it was the guidance – and if the money comes in, they’d like to be and support offered by City Circ that made it possible: Broadway able to commission or co-commission new Barking and Arts Depot are two venues new to programming work – something like the way the Without circus who put on, respectively, Circomedia’s You Take My Breath Walls consortium does for street arts. Another big ambition is to Away and Muziektheater Transparent’s Feedback, and want to do take City Circ national with satellite seasons in other UK cities, more in the future. and in London to have a festival within the festival. Crying Out Loud’s General Manager, Marie Remy: ‘One of Rachel’s ambitions For a season without a central curating intelligence, the first City will be to have within the season a short blast of more challenging Circ has shaped up pretty well. The official opening for the season work, themed around the body. And maybe also a commission for in April was alongside the Lyric Hammersmith premiere of Hang children’s work – starting in 2010, but touring in ’11.’ It’s all depen- On, a collaboration between aerial theatre group Ockham’s Razor dent on pulling down the money, but at least now they have a solid and Theatre-Rites. It aimed itself directly at the younger members base to build on. ‘It’s all been really good feedback from the ven- City Circ took place at various venues throughout London of its family audience, and even if in doing so it became a little ues,’ says Pam. ‘Sounds like we’re just complimenting ourselves, from April to August 2009. See www.citycirc.com Image 1: Theatre-Rites/Ockham’s Razor’s Hang On distant to the adults, the children were loudly excited as aerialists but they’re all up for it again.’ Image 2: Circa’s Circa clambered over a giant turning structure based on the mobiles of Image 3: Les Studios de Cirque de Marseille’s Crying Out Loud, established in 2002, is an organisation, Alexander Calder. La Roue de la Mort led by creative producers, that creates memorable events for festivals and theatres in the UK, USA, Australia and Europe. See www.cryingoutloud.org 16 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 17 f

The fact that APC was filmed on two e 3 a different models of HD (high definition) tures playing cameras in low light conditions, featuring several very long dissolves and slow-mo sequences, created technical challenges when it came to the DVD authoring. The with time encoding process couldn’t handle the very subtle and languid shifts from one type of black or grey to another. I’m poor Filmmaker Christopher Hall at compromising in these situations and explores the fourth dimension work on the film to resolve these problems continued right up to and beyond the and muses on the relationship delivery deadline. I had to find a solution to the slow mixes from video black to between live performance and studio black which created a large film in his work with Third Angel amount of visual compression artifacts. I 2 tried straight cuts, a device I’d not used anywhere else in the film, and they worked. Once again technical challenges had 1 Whilst setting the rig we embraced our P TOT

first challenge: the camera we were using prompted me to question the nature of the L AY

A for the overhead shot didn’t have a wide work, and the answer was a development I L THE N

enough lens to frame the whole of the and improvement of the work. G

completed circle. Some experimentation WITH A TRE followed with framing and lighting and 2 March 2003: We’re shooting a film, TI

ma hard questions were asked about the not quite a documentary but not quite The one concept that has been specifically M

documentation of a performance. I suspect Christopher Hall is an Associate C | E g fundamental nature of the circle-making planned for online distribution has proved a that nailing the description of what An Artist of Third Angel. Established in zi process. We decided to make a smaller so contentious for us that Alex now refuses Sheffield in 1995, the company makes HRISTO n circle with only one performer – Alex’s part Acquired Taste (AAT) actually is isn’t all e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e to even discuss it. work that encompasses performance, that important. Alex tries to drink, for was cut before we’d even pressed record. theatre, live art, installation, film, video The devising and development of our ideas the first time, three pints of Guinness as P 23 April 2007: We’re viewing an untitled art, documentary, photography and HER and of the film’s themes continued well into quickly as possible, in a pub with his dad rough cut of a film that I’ve been cutting, design.

its production. and some friends present. An Irish friend H

on and off, for a while. It was to be a A had estimated that it would take about 30 kaleidoscopic trip around two separate Third Angel’s latest project is LL Staging the action for camera allowed minutes. Alex did it in less than ten. cities on the same day at the same time. Words & Pictures, a book reading us to view the material we were working I was walking through a snow-covered for a book that doesn’t exist (yet). with in new ways. This was now a filmic So AAT, which had been planned as a A theatrical collection of short n Sheffield, and Alex was taking a tram ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter performance and the devising continued, multi-screen gallery piece of up to an hour stories, obsessions, illustrations 18 January 2004: We’re having a pre- APC is derived from the theatre piece 9 through sunny Lisbon. Alex was having and digressions. Following October subtly shuffling away from its theatrical in length, became a short film. It is our production meeting for Realtime, a work Billion Miles From Home, which features such a great time at the Gulbenkian appearances in Belfast and Sheffield, most widely shown film, presented in a that provides some of the most explicit Alexander Kelly and Gillian Lees creating origins. This process continued, getting Foundation that he forgot to do the filming. Words & Pictures will be at Leeds examples of our time-related interests. It a white circle on a black stage using particularly intense during editing. I wide variety of contexts, and consequently The work is now a minimalist piece of Met Studio Theatre (University of is also the last film that we produced in only culinary dusting cups and bags of discarded a lot of the material that we we’ve learnt a lot about how we like our abstract images slowly mixing in and out Leeds), Wednesday 11 & Thursday the traditional manner: writing a script, talcum powder, a process that took about had originally, formally planned, and work to be viewed. Although not intended with a soundtrack idea lifted from an Akira 12 November, 7.30pm. Booking: 0113 shooting that script and then editing to 40 minutes in real time. In a ten-minute concentrated on the second camera pick- as a comedy, it has been shown at comedy Rabelais CD. After seeing the cut, Alex 812 5998. See www.leedsmet.ac.uk/ closely follow the script. The on-screen film we wanted this process to retain its ups. Clean, well-lit close-ups of the silver film nights; not planned as an experimental suggests that we contact Akira asking for arts Follow the projects performer, Jerry Killick, sits impatiently ritualistic quality, and to exemplify the dusting cup were jettisoned in favour of short, it has been shown to students his permission to use the track as he now progress on the company’s blog: www.thirdangeluk.blogspot.com in a waiting room with a clock, asks the fact that it’s supposed to take as long under-lit lines of white powder falling studying experimental film; and as a couldn’t imagine the film without it. Akira through a black frame, slowed down to performance piece it has been shown to audience a number of questions about their as it takes. Alex also wanted to add an agreed. For further general information on almost a standstill. theatre students who subsequently made perception of time, their time-based habits element that had been discarded during the Third Angel, email info@thirdangel. their own versions. Often it has simply and asks them to perform a task: to wait in devising process, a spoken description of Like Realtime, I doubt we’ll put Snow co.uk or see www.thirdangel.co.uk silence until they think that a minute has the 153 images that were part of the NASA Slowing down these delicate images been shown as a short film. online, giving people the option to fast passed. Voyager Space Probes that were launched provided the meditative qualities that forward or click off. We want our films to we had originally been looking for when In common with many of our films, the in 1977. The diverse images include a be viewed from beginning to end, in one go. Image 1: Third Angel’s The film presents ideas about, and satellite picture of Earth, mathematical developing the work. I spend a long time exhibition of AAT is something that we try We like introducing them. To be in control. A Perfect Circle working with the films on my own before I to keep on a tight reign. Very few of our Image 2: Third Angel’s Realtime challenges and plays with the audience’s formulae, rush hour traffic in India and Image 3: Third Angel’s Snow perception of, real and screen time. diagrams of human conception. We had am ready to show any of my collaborators films are online. Although a convenient Experimenting with Snow’s distribution we All images courtesy of Third Angel Towards the end, the film rewinds and new thematic issues to embrace as well as a cut – discovering what I find interesting distribution medium, online is not how I like gently nudged our comfort/control zone. presents a different version of itself after the practicalities of the shoot. about the work and understanding my to watch short films and generally its not Alex and I had two video installations at the rewind point. Crucially for us, it is own reactions to the material. Striking how I wish our film work to be presented. Leeds Met Gallery in April/May 2009. At only shown in contexts where the viewer This was a two-camera shoot, one silhouettes of Gillian describing the Implicit for me in the uploading of a clip is the opening we gave DVDs of Snow to cannot pause, rewind or click off. overhead, framing the whole of the action, aforementioned Voyager images were lost the relinquishing of control over my work, anyone who seemed interested. Liberating, and the second doing pick-ups of the early in the edit, they weren’t working, and which troubles me in ways not easily but it also felt funny (funny peculiar) to just 6 April 2009: Alexander Kelly and I have performers on the floor. There was also they were diluting the atmosphere that articulated. Statistics help: Wired reckons hand over a disc to people. Several weeks been to a DVD proofing screening of a new a series of storyboarded sequences that I was developing. However, I did retain that the optimum length for a YouTube clip later I find it tricky to untangle my feelings. Third Angel film, A Perfect Circle (APC), at needed to be shot, on our second studio the dialogue and as I often discover anew is 59 seconds (easily the length of a fade We don’t know when, how, if, those DVDs Site Gallery. The DVD is commissioned by day. when cutting, freeing the sync sound from from black on one of our more abstract will be watched. Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum to be the visuals can be creatively liberating. On films), and Tubemogul reckons that about premiered at the 2009 Istanbul Biennial. APC I worked a lot with sound design to 54% of viewers will have clicked away And that of course is one of our things. We APC is a good example of our working enhance and explore the atmosphere that after that first minute anyway. And there’s like being present when audiences engage methods and broadly this is how almost all was developing. the advertising, picture quality quibbles, with our work, inviting their comments. of our films get made: planning, accidents, and streaming speeds. Audience numbers This is what turns us on and it’s how we adaptation of other ideas and embracing Working concurrently with sound and are potentially huge, so are we missing a like our films to be watched. the devising process. picture and exploring their complex trick? We don’t know. relationship is an important part of my practice, and is an aspect of filmmaking that I never cease to find astonishing.

18 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 19 Ima f e a tures ges: NoFit S NoFit ges: Total Theatre t a te Cir te Awards 2009 c us P us a

rkli The Total Theatre Awards, established University of Winchester; Robert Jude in 1987, honour the best theatre-makers Daniels, Senior Lecturer – University f

out & c Photos e. performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. of Chichester; Lyn Gardner, Critic – The Guardian; Ben Harrison, Artistic Director Die Roten Punkte Robot/Lion Tour The Total Theatre Awards 2009 brought 30 – Grid Iron (& Total Theatre Board); about assessors and judges together to view and Donald Hutera, Critic – The Times; Louise

ourtes discuss 236 theatre shows presented at Jeffreys, Head of Theatre at the Barbican; this year’s Fringe. For the first two weeks Dorothy Max Prior, Editor – Total Theatre

of the Fringe, assessors view all of the Magazine; John McGrath, Artistic Director tot TOT y o registered shows and nominate the better – National Theatre of Wales; Steve a A the c f the l the l L THE pieces to move forward (which means Scrivens, Programmer – Royal & Derngate Pippa Bailey shrugs off the autumn chills Les Enfants Terribles being seen by at least one other assessor). Northampton; Nick Wood, Course Leader

Ernest and the Pale Moon a A tre tre

TRE Total Theatre makes a commitment to – Central School of Speech and Drama. remembering this summer’s festival season o mpany seeing all registered work eligible for Unfortunately Kate Potter, co-artistic a ma

the Awards. This year the assessors director of Great Leap Forward who was w a g

As the autumn settles in for the long chill, which informed the company’s next 2009 rds a were: John Ellingsworth (writer/editor listed as a judge had to pull out during the zi I am reflecting on the fact that Britain moves. During the evening performance, – Total Theatre Magazine and Sideshow judging process. n e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e really does spring and autumn best, as professional and community were artfully Circus Magazine), Matthew Evans seasons go. However much we hope for combined. In addition to the expected (director), Jusztina Hermann (performer/ A huge thanks to all of the assessors and heat, summer is inevitably variable and this spell-binding circus, the audience was teacher), Holly Kendrick (Director – judges for their effort and commitment and year has been no exception. Thankfully introduced to a local unicycle troupe You Need Me National Student Drama Festival), Lisa for taking the responsibility of this difficult British audiences are hopeful and whose leaders had actually married on Certain Dark Things MacFarlane (producer), Angharad Ormond task so seriously. resilient, so the outdoor summer festival their cycles (yes, really!); young lads from (performer), Joanna Mackie (performer/ has grown and multiplied over the past a football team; and a newly invented director), Joanna Robinson (performer), If you would like to see the notes from the decade and I was lucky enough to get sport involving trapeze – a cross between Caitlin Rucker (performer) Beccy Smith judging meeting please email director@ n to several between July and September. netball, basketball and quidditch. The (dramaturg/writer/Interim Director Puppet totaltheatre.org.uk ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter What I noticed was how much the outdoor Parklife project is brave and has great Centre Trust), Charlotte Smith (writer), festival is integrating performance and integrity. It will be interesting to see how Brina Stinehelfer (performer/writer), This year the Total Theatre Awards participation, blurring lines and realities in the series of residency shows are then Kelly Taylor Smith (performer) and Wendy announced a new cash bursary of £800 very interesting ways. distilled into a fully-fledged production, Windle (producer/performer). for each winning company to help them what dramaturgy is employed, and how document the months following their win. Stockton International Riverside Festival they retain the flavour the community This team met regularly to share their Provided by the Centre of Excellence in (SIRF) installed NoFit State Circus in groups bring to their work. See more in views and challenge their perceptions. On Theatre Training (CETT) at the Central Trinity Green Park for the full five days Brighton and Norwich for their respective 20 August the assessors met for the last School of Speech and Drama, this money Inspector Sands of the Teeside celebrations. Parklife is festivals in May 2010. tunes. Bestival culminated in an adaptation power plant If That’s All There Is time and in a charged five-hour meeting will contribute to artists and companies an extraordinary undertaking, aiming to of The World Famous and Peepolykus decided on the shortlist. Each assessor being better able to capture and develop develop a new outdoor show via a series of Audience participation where revelers theatre company’s touring show Blast can put forward up to three shows they their work. Their reflections will also help residencies interacting with local people, turn performers were featured at both Big (Blastival) over two nights, starring intrepid think deserve to be considered for Awards emerging companies address the joys and the company parked up circus-style in a Chill and Bestival – rival ticketed music spaceman Michael Santos trying to reach and then shows are argued off the longlist. trials of making new work. town park. There is a large circular stage festivals. The Big Chill at Eastnor Castle the stars and festival director Rob da Bank, No-one has seen all of the shows, so and an aerial rig, sans tent and open to in Herefordshire entered the Guinness DJing atop a mighty ‘afterburner’ bonfire. many tastes and styles of theatre are Every year Total Theatre invite applications the elements. For four days in Stockton Book of Records with 4026 zombies as The escapist aims of Bestival cast all represented. The real challenge comes to take part in the assessment process, local groups met circus folk and exchanged part of a scene at the centrepiece of a 40,000 punters into active players where with trying to find appropriate categories so if you are curious or critical then skills, then presented a ‘show’ on the mockumentary by Film4 and Warp Films Subject to Change fact and fiction become indistinguishable. Home Sweet Home so that shows are compared with work please register your interest at awards@ final evening. Now, showing process or called I Spit on Your Rave. The undead Even the police looked like characters in a that shares form. This year the categories totaltheatre.org.uk work-in-progress in public is extremely are the result of a virus released at the surreal drama, a sign of the times perhaps. saw two new areas of development – difficult to achieve well. The dangers 2012 Olympics with Noel Fielding playing Music and Theatre, and Innovation/ The 2009 Total Theatre Awards are being include public humiliation, professional the zombie king. This travelling circus Interaction/Immersion – alongside Devised supported by barbicanbite09, Central and/or critical damnation, as people are approach to filmmaking, where volunteer School of Speech and Drama - Centre for Pippa Bailey is Creative Director of Performance, Emerging Company and too quick to judge and may not sufficiently crowds are included and therefore Excellence in Training for Theatre (CETT), the Total Theatre Awards. See report Physical/Visual Theatre. appreciate the process. But NoFit State invested in the outcome of the film, is at London International Mime Festival, on the Awards 2009 elsewhere in this may have cracked a new model. While the heart of participatory arts practice Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Royal & publication. The judging panel represents a wide range working within tight restraints of budget, and increasingly being adopted. At Planet of academics, critics, presenters and Derngate Northampton, University of schedules and weather, they brought Bestival on the Isle of Wight the annual For the Stockton International artists. This year we were fortunate to Chichester (MA Theatre Collectives) and a large young company to SIRF, held fancy dress party adopted a space theme. Riverside Festival see Hoipolloi The Doubtful Guest have Bill O’Brien, Deputy Chair for Grants University of Winchester. workshops in the park, exchanged skills A large percentage of the crowd obliged www.sirf.co.uk and Awards at the National Endowment for and then captivated the good people of with impressive costumes emerging For the Big Chill see the Arts in Washington. It was fascinating Pippa Bailey Stockton who were glued to their seats from tents all over the site, transporting www.bigchill.net to have an American perspective. Bill was See over for the winners of the Total in the rain for an afternoon of repetitive the festival to another galaxy. The acts For more on Bestival see joined by: Christie Anthoney, Director – Theatre Awards 2009! rehearsal. These rehearsals were all also played their part with Lily Allen (Lily www.bestival.net Adelaide Fringe; David Bauwens, accompanied by live direction, announced Alien?) dressed as Barbarella and the Producer – Ontroerend Goed; Matt The World Famous over the PA by director Orit Azaz asking for English National sporting futuristic Burman, Executive Producer – Norfolk www.theworldfamous.co.uk feedback and gauging audience response, costumes while dancing to contemporary & Norwich Festival; Richard Cuming, NoFit State Circus Idle Motion Head of Department, Performing Arts – www.nofitstate.org Borges and I

20 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 21 T o t a l T h e a t r e A w a r d s 2 0 0 9

The River People Beady Eye / Kristin Fredricksson Adrian Howells Clod Ensemble Dafydd James / Ben Lewis Improbable Theatre Lilly Through the Dark Everything Must Go Foot-Washing Under Glass My Name is Sue Panic for the Sole

Award for Devised Innovation/Interaction/ Immersion tot

TOT Performance Award for Physical/ Award for Music Total Theatre Award for a a A l the l L THE Beady Eye/Kristin Fredricksson Adrian Howells Visual Theatre and Theatre Significant Contribution Everything Must Go (Or the Voluntary Foot Washing for the Sole to Theatre-making a A The Arches at St Stephens Clod Ensemble Dafydd James/Ben Lewis tre TRE Attempt to Overcome Unnecessary Obstacles) Under Glass My Name is Sue Improbable Theatre a ma The past few years have seen an increasing Augustine’s Pleasance at McEwan Hall Pleasance Courtyard w a g Award for Emerging number of shows that challenge the This Award was given in recognition of rds 2009 rds a zi Artist/Company Kristin Fredricksson had some stiff traditional divide between ‘onstage’ and Under the revised rules for eligibility for the My Name is Sue starts with the entrance the achievements over many years of n e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e competition in this category, which ‘audience’ space – through the immersion Awards 2009, late-opening shows could through the auditorium of a person with a this internationally acclaimed company, The River People included no less than three former Total of the audience into a created environment, enter the shortlist if seen and nominated gawky haircut, dressed in a simple wool and in acknowledgement of the way in Lilly Through the Dark Theatre Award winners (Hoipolloi, through the creation of an intimate by two judges. Under Glass was thus seen dress and cardigan, who perches herself which they have brought ‘total theatre’ Bedlam Theatre Company FZ, and Inspector Sands). exchange between performer and audience in the last week of the festival, highly perkily on the piano stool, switches on to an impressive range of audiences. Everything Must Go is an everything- member, or through the encouragement recommended for inclusion in the shortlist, her chintzy standard lamp, and introduces Improbable’s work spans diverse areas 2009 was the year of white-face clown, including-the-kitchen-sink show, and of active participation of the audience in and subsequently won the Award for herself in a lilting Welsh accent: ‘Hello, my of live performance including opera petticoated Victoriana and quirky stringed features robust physical performance, the action. Thus, the Total Theatre Awards Physical/Visual Theatre. Under Glass is a name is Sue, and I’m here to sing you some (notably their co-creation for ENO of the instruments at the Edinburgh Festival puppetry, object theatre, projection, judges in this category found themselves promenade piece, but rather than wander songs’. Later, there’s a perfectly-realised Phillip Glass opera Satyagraha), musical n Fringe! Perhaps it’s the Steam-Punk and monologue in an autobiographical cycling (Rider Spoke), sniffing the night freely, the audience are immersed in almost theatrical moment as three more ‘Sues’ theatre (e.g. Wolves in the Wall, created ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter influence? The River People may share piece that is, in essence, a eulogy to air in the Botanical Gardens (Power total blackout, their attention drawn to take their place on stage, relentlessly in collaboration with National Theatre this Gothic sensibility with many other Fredricksson’s recently-deceased father. Plant), building miniature cities (Home a series of glass boxes or framed stages straight-faced and staring as they provide of Scotland), outdoor performance companies, but what marks them out is the Karl Fredricksson is a long-haired, cross- Sweet Home), non-stop-shopping at the by an imaginative use of light and sound. accompaniment on cello, violin, and drums. (famously with the all-done-with-Sellotape interesting marriage of form and content, dressing former athlete who would, had he supermarket (Wondermart), or perhaps Each performer uses their ‘station’ to Sue’s offbeat ditties – delivered in a extravaganza, Sticky) and an extensive for they have taken the brave step of using not died, performed in the show with her. even having their feet massaged... The great effect, creating a series of moving quavering falsetto – tell of a life marred by repertoire of devised physical/visual their own difficult autobiographical material He may be dead, but in his absence he is winning show in this category, Adrian pictures that explore a whole plethora of strange encounters, sudden bereavements, theatre that has puppetry and object as the subject of their shows – in the case very much present onstage. Images of the Howells's Foot Washing for the Sole, is a issues around ‘containment’, ‘framing’, and and puzzling events. We start to wonder animation as a strong element of the work of Lilly Through the Dark, the subject is man are everywhere: on screen in super-8 performance work for an audience of one. ‘the gaze’. There is no one ’thing’ that the if everything is as it seems – Sue has had (from early work such as 70 Hill Lane and coping with bereavement. It’s a tale told home movies; in cardboard cut-outs; as Howells is a highly competent performer piece is about, but there are a multitude more than her fair share of ‘accidental Animo through to the recent Barbican co- with artful sensitivity, and just the right mix a giant mannequin that ‘observes’ her for who exudes an air of confidence, trust and of possibilities suggested: from scientific occurences’, and we watch her reach for production, Panic). Their use of Open Space of pathos and humour. Lilly had previously most of the show, eventually joining her authority. Whilst washing and massaging experiment to art exhibit; from peep show the pill bottle on top of the piano more than Technology in the creation of the Devoted been presented in Edinburgh at The Bedlam for a last waltz. For one hour only we get the feet with tender loving care, he shares to the imprisonment of office life… A great once, washing a handful down with what and Disgruntled series over the past four as a work-in-progress, and it was good to to know and love this man, and when it his thoughts on the symbolic relevance of concept, well realised, with a wonderful we suspect might be gin drunk through a years has empowered artists and theatre- see the company taking the sound decision finishes we experience a real sense of feet washing, and the cultural resonances integration of all its constituent elements – straw… but regardless, we allow ourselves makers to address challenges facing the to return for a second year with this show bereavement. Heartbreaking but soul- associated (such as the story of Christ a truly ‘total’ theatre piece. to be drawn into her slightly wonky world, sector. Improbable have collectively shown in its developed version, invigorated by a enriching. washing his disciples’ feet), which leads and by the end she has us all clapping our a determined effort to reflect on and new design. A life-affirming story about easily into reflections on the current Also shortlised in this category: hands and singing along to the cheery change the world of theatre-making and the death, beautifully told. Shortlisted in this category: The Doubtful Guest situation in the Middle East, and on notions A Lot of Nerve presented by Martha & Arthur, refrain: ‘We’re All Going to Die!’ world in which theatre is made. presented by Hoipolloi, Theatre Royal Plymouth of ‘peace’ and ‘service’. It’s a gem of a Pleasance Dome; Circa presented by Circa, Assembly Hall; Cocorico presented by Patrice Co-written and directed by Ben Lewis (of Shortlisted in this category: Antoine & the Paper with ETT/Escalator East to Edinburgh, Traverse piece, small but perfectly formed. Thibaud/Prod Illitees, New Town Theatre; Inspector Sands), with Sue played with Aeroplane presented by Blak Wulff Productions, Theatre; Ernest and the Pale Moon presented Crime of the Century presented by Chickenshed, C Chambers; Borges & I presented by Idle by Les Enfants Terribles Theatre Company in perfectly-pitched precision by Welsh Also shortlisted in this category: Home Sweet Zoo Southside; Raw presented by Fidget Feet Motion, The Zoo; Certain Dark Things presented association with Pins & Needles, Pleasance (male) musician/composer Dafydd James, Home presented by Subject to_Change, Forest Aerial Dance Theatre, Dance Base; This is Now by You Need Me, Underbelly; Sweeney Todd – his Courtyard; Horse presented by Company F/Z, Special Commendations for shows Fringe; Internal presented by Ontroerend Goed presented by New Art Club, Assembly at George My Name is Sue toys cleverly with the Life, Times and Execution presented by Finger in Underbelly Hullabaloo; Icarus 2.0 presented by closed before the judging period: and Richard Jordan Productions, Traverse St; Zeitgeist presented by Zen Zen Zo Physical notion of the ‘unreliable narrator’ and the Pie, Gilded Balloon; 6.0 How Heap & Pebble Camden People’s Theatre, Pleasance Courtyard; 100 Wounded Tears presented by at The Point; Love Letters Straight from your Theatre, C Chambers. creates a wonderful onstage world that Took on the World and Won presented by If That’s All There Is presented by Inspector Dot 504 at Zoo Southside; This Is Heart presented by Uninvited Guests & Fuel, draws us in with a horrified attraction to its Dancing Brick, Pleasance Dome. Sands, Traverse Theatre. Pleasance at McEwan Hall; Nic Green’s Trilogy Added (with Under Glass) during judging week: a Picture of a Person I Don’t Know occupants. Good songs too! presented by Pere Faura, Dance presented by The Arches, St Stephens Church; The Overcoat presented by Gecko, Pleasance Power Plant presented by Mark Anderson, Anne Base; The Red Room presented by Bean, Jony Easterby, Kristen Reynolds and Also shortlisted: Accidental Nostalgia presented David Hughes Dance Productions, others, Assembly at Royal Botanical Gardens; by Cynthia Hopkins With Jim Findlay and Jeff Traverse Theatre). The Little Box of Horrors presented by Bootworks Sugg, Traverse Theatre; Brocante Sonore: The Mechanicians presented by Zic Zazou, C at Forest Fringe, various locations; Wondermart Total Theatre Award winners Chambers; Die Roten Punkte – Robot/Lion Tour presented by Rotozaza, Forest Fringe at various report by Dorothy Max Prior supermarkets. presented by Rodney Breit, Richard Jordan and Paul Lucas, Pleasance Courtyard; Midsummer (A Play With Songs) presented by Traverse Theatre See also reviews section of this Added to shortlist during judging week: magazine, and the Edinburgh Festival Rider Spoke presented by Blast Theory, Dance Company; Sporadical presented by Little Bulb Base at various locations/cycling; Ringside Theatre, Forest Fringe. Fringe 2009 archive under Reviews on presented by Mem Morrison/Arts Admin, the Total Theatre website Signet Library. www.totaltheatre.org.uk

22 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 23 f e We have always been very influenced Clod Ensemble was created in 1996 aT For us, the answer isn’t to abandon by musician Paul Clark and director ures by Lecoq’s idea of the ‘poetic body’ VOICES narrative drive, but to find it elsewhere – Suzy Willson. in music. I wrote a five-movement piece of and of working with neutral mask whereby you embody the movement The company will be touring Must and music – mostly using a string quartet and Under Glass in 2010, and also have Paul Clark, composer and dynamics in nature (water, fire, sunset, percussion, but also electronic sounds, and plans for earlier show Red Ladies. co-artistic director of samples of distorted radio. We actually mountains etc) before transposing them to drama. In a way Must was a They are also working on the very synchronised the lighting desk to follow early stages of two new pieces which chance to explore this idea in words Clod Ensemble, whose show the sound score, so we were able to make won’t reach full production until 2011. Under Glass won the Total quite precise adjustments to what people rather than in movement. The starting One is a piece they will be developing were seeing and when. We spent a lot of point was thinking of Peggy’s body as with dancers another is a piece for a landscape in contrast to the stark Theatre Award for Visual time thinking about the structure of the live music and lights. piece – how visual and musical material ways in which the medical profession Clod Ensemble will also be continuing Theatre at the Edinburgh were going to interact – so we had a can view her/our bodies. their programme of Extravagant Acts Festival Fringe 2009 firm structure, full score and a sketched for Mature People at centres for the lighting plan before we went into our final We worked with Hansjorg Schmidt elderly and their Silent Movie Music few weeks of rehearsal. to create a detailed lighting plan workshops with children, as well as which could interrogate, romanticise a new Performing Medicine Season Under Glass had a long gestation period. We deliberately worked with different It’s not a straightforward piece to tour or objectify Peggy’s body on scheduled for Autumn 2010 on the VOI

TOT theme of anatomy and physiology. Suzy (Willson – Clod Ensemble’s co-artistic types of performers with very different because the boxes are very heavy to move stage and we plundered the Wellcome

See www.clodensemble.com C A director) first had the idea about ten years movement vocabularies. Suzy worked and all need a lot of care and attention Collection’s library of images to create | PA | ES L THE ago for a piece in which all the performers with each performer individually to create to look good. As you’d expect, you get a sequences in the show where we can are within some sort of glass container but the choreographic/dramatic material. We very different experience depending on the literally see the interior of a body in A C UL TRE it took years to actually start working on were lucky to work with a really enviable space. beautiful microscopic detail.

L ma it. At first, we weren’t sure whether it was cast of four dancers (Ramona Nagabcynski, A

going to be a sequence of short solos or The first time we performed Spectator My main job for Must was to write the RK g Ragnihld Olsen, Francois Testory and a score rather than be involved in the

zi one longer piece. When we were asked by Joy Constantinides) a clown (Angela de at Sadler’s Wells the glass case was on n BAC to contribute to their End of the World Castro) and four very physically savvy the apron of the stage and the audience overall structuring and writing of the e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e Cabaret it seemed like perfect opportunity actors/performers (Silvia Mercuriali, Jason were also sitting on the stage. The piece. The pianist John Paul Gandy to make some headway with the idea and Thorpe, Sachi Kimura, Olwen Fouere). spectator sits on a red velvet chair in her and violinist Calina de la Mare were in concentrate on just one container. So, we box and behind her there were hundreds our very first piece, so it was written made the first seven-minute solo with It was quite a strange process for them. It of empty red seats in the vast main house with them in mind. But the score is Silvia Mercuriali (of Rotozaza). is not easy to have any complicity with auditorium. That kind of experience is written down rather than improvised, other performers or indeed with the impossible to recreate when we perform so they were brought in late in the The performance took place on a bed of audience when you are inside a glass it in a traditional black box theatre. The process. grass in a container roughly the size of container. But, in a sense, this was what End of the World Cabaret piece on the n ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter a double bed, but not tall enough for her the whole piece was about. grass, however, is more consistent as the It is a much more relaxed score than to sit up straight in. The audience are always in the same intimate Under Glass – a jazz trio playing was driven by the constraints of the We didn’t want to make a durational piece relationship to the box. much less dense music than I would container. It could seem incredibly or an installation that gave the audience normally write because the spacious and then impossibly cramped. total freedom. It wasn’t that we aren’t We now have several versions of Under of the text was leading. We’ve tried to The container, in some ways, worked like a interested in that type of work, but in this Glass in additional to the full-length keep the music live wherever venues mask – magnifying tiny movement details instance we were happy to, more or less, production. In Edinburgh, for the British have the budget – even though the in unexpected ways. Sadler’s Wells then control the audience’s gaze. As music was Council Showcase 2009 as part of the music is pretty much incidental, it commissioned three new short solos for so integral to our work we looked for ways Fringe, we made a shorter 20-minute seems to make a huge difference different events. it could help. structure for four performers. It is a fair to the piece to have the physical amount of work, adjusting to different presence of the musicians in the room. We wanted all the containers to make Some of the devices were quite simple – spaces – finding the best method for the different demands on the performers. As if you make a sound go bang behind an audience to safely navigate the space, Each project has a very different we’d suspected, each vessel suggested audience’s back they will turn around to changing the soundtrack to suit the process. Sometimes the music leads, its own movement dynamics: Jam Jar see what’s happened. In this way we were room(s), relighting. But it is good to see the sometimes it follows. Sometimes I get revealed lots of twists and still images, able to keep the audience moving when we piece reinvent itself. very involved in discussing the visual the Spectator (a very large tall box) long wanted, but also still when we wanted. content, other times I don’t have much expansive limb movement, and Wall Flower Must, Clod Ensemble’s collaboration with to offer. Sometimes we have no text; (a three-metre-wide panel screwed to the The music was also working at a deeper Peggy Shaw, was structurally driven by other times we commission a writer wall, meaning you are unable to take a full level. Under Glass is an unashamedly spoken text rather than by music. So the to make a text (as we did with Alice step forward) an almost two dimensional, abstract piece: its themes are pretty easy main collaboration was between Suzy and Oswald for Under Glass). Some pieces flattened-out dynamic. to get to grips with (finding freedom within Peggy who created the script over two are site-sensitive, others not. restriction, solitude, living within one’s years. Suzy had the concept and a set of The next challenge was to try to put limits, entrapment etc.) but there was no ideas which she gave to Peggy, who wrote several pieces in the same space, to make clear narrative arc. responses to them which would be broken a single 50-minute promenade work with down and the whole process would begin eight different pieces, so we could create again… more expansive movement sequences, with trios, duos and so on. The new ones Must is more text-based than any of were a Twins Petri dish containing an older our previous pieces. The movement is man and woman; Office, a cube containing primarily in the poetry of the text rather an office worker and, finally, Flood a larger than in any detailed choreography. cube holding a pool of water.

Clod Ensemble Under Glass. photo manuel vasson

24 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 25 reviews 1984 I Wonder Puppet Theatre pioneers Blind Summit’s latest venture is the Christmas show this year at BAC. Sometimes Total Theatre Magazine finds out more from company co-artistic director Mark Down Who I Am How’s it going? What’s the devising/creating story? Are you working as you always do, or is there anything different or specific to this process? Dorothy Max Prior goes to the We are working as we always do – turning up, getting a few Forest Fringe, Edinburgh 2009 people along, scratching our heads, doing some stuff, trying to reviews work out what we did...

We sit in complete darkness (or at least as complete as There is a script. There are puppets made of cardboard. There is a Tom Duggan,Tom Lyall & Mischa Twitchin I Wonder Sometimes Who I Am. TOT brilliant cast of seven actors. There is no projection... Images courtesy of Mischa Twitchin and Shunt the Forest Fringe can manage), and we are surrounded

A by sound. The sound penetrates the darkness, wraps L THE The best thing about making a show is working with other people. us, comforts and disturbs us, is somehow inside us and outside of us. Schoenberg’s music – degenerate A Bringing many people together and trying to get them into a single TRE shape where all their individual voices can still be heard. It’s all music, as the Nazis would have it – is everywhere, all ma about the people. around us, wonderfully crackly, the early gramophone

g it is played on adding its own layers to the sound. And a zi I guess the big departure for us is to have a fairly full-length script those trademark Schoenberg declaimed lyrics… the n odd and lovely songs, the melancholy voices of fallen e | vol 21 | issue 04 |wi 04 issue | 21 vol | e before we start. We have written it over the past year mainly, but we began almost three years ago! Essentially we have been angels. There are other voices too; phrases of spoken devising and writing with a small, varying company during the year. language, mostly fast and German, sometimes slow and We have done a few Scratch showings, writing and rewriting, to English; multi-layered, the phrases merging with the find a premise that can tell the story. music to make a different sort of music. A political rally, raised voices, chanting. Now a gentle voice reflective, The challenge in adapting a novel (in this case, George Orwell’s musing: ‘I wonder sometimes who I am…’ It’s as if we classic, 1984) to stage is that you lose the author’s voice – which are listening to one radio broadcast, and there’s at least n is a prime relationship to the work as a reader. In a play the two others playing at the same time. This feels familiar ter 2009/2010 ter characters tell the story. The premise for our adaptation is that the – I often go to sleep listening to Radio 3… Is there company are an agitprop company in the ‘1984’ of the novel who something in the room? It’s hard to tell what’s seen and are telling the story for the audience as a lesson in thought-crime. what’s imagined – in the darkness, imagination and memory merge, ideas are animals. Everything is seen, Tell us about your YouTube Scratch idea… Forest Fringe was set up ‘to create space in the everything is real. Is this what Schoenberg means by At the moment it is very much an experiment. The viewing figures midst of the Edinburgh festival for artists, directors ‘sounds for the eyes’? A ‘transfigured night’. are so small I guess I should call it a hobby really. The idea came and writers to play and experiment’, and 2009 saw Out of the darkness come flashes of light. A desk about from a frustration of making and seeing YouTube trailers its third season. There’s been a steady build over lamp switched on/switched off. Illumination: a pair for theatre which are like film trailers, which I think is ridiculous. three years, with a healthy mix of established artists, of hands, naked, wringing out their sorrows. Now Theatre is not film because it is interactive, unfinished and messy. presenting works in progress and artists at all stages one hand bare, one hand gloved in black leather; now That feels like a perfect fit with YouTube. The good thing about of development trying out new ideas or experimenting both hands blood-red. When there’s nothing but the YouTube is that people can write comments and we wanted to with new ways of working. The sheer volume of work hands, the hands become the face, the body. Later, a start a dialogue. The bad thing about YouTube is that you look at on offer seemed overwhelming at times, the Forest burst of flame leaps out of the darkness; surrounded the number of viewers and realise no-one really watches puppet Café a buzzing hive of activity day and night. And by blackness, it feels like a great conflagration. The videos when they can watch two girls and a cup. this year the festival spread out onto the streets and destruction of Dresden, Coventry. sites of Edinburgh (Rotozaza’s Wondermart at the Anything you want to say about BAC and your relationship supermarket; Home Sweet Home in a shopping centre; Schoenberg, like all who are exiled, sits between with them? Bootworks’ Black Box on the streets). In residence cultures. He’s on the edge of the Old and New Worlds. We are in a longterm relationship with BAC and we love . Mark Down is an actor, puppeteer, and director. He and nightly were Little Bulb Theatre, presenting an ever- A Romantic and a Modernist. I Wonder Sometimes Who We grew up there and have continued making small pieces with designer and puppet-maker Nick Barnes are co-founders and changing version of their new folk-musical, Sporadical I Am explores the liminal – the point of change between them, for example Odde Angel in Punchdrunk’s Masque of the Red co-artistic directors of Blind Summit Theatre. – a fine festival romp replete with cardboard props light and dark, between ‘meaning’ and ‘feeling’, Death, and a small Scratch piece in the main hall last year. It feels Blind Summit’s 1984 is at BAC 2–23 December 2009 & 4–9 and Am-Dram operatics. Other highlights included between consciousness and unconsciousness. Leaving like home. Low Life was made there and we have re-rehearsed January 2010. See www.bac.org.uk a lovely show (presented as a part of a day of work the performance space, the question to ask is not there many times. The set was basically made up of furniture we Blind Summit will be running a Puppetry Skills Workshop made in Bristol) by young company Tinned Fingers: Our ‘what does it mean?’ but ‘how do I feel?’ I feel like borrowed from the cafe each time we went out on the road. Monday 7 December, 10am-1.30pm @ BAC, London Daddys Ears (sic) featured storytelling in many forms I’ve been on a journey, that my head has been filled, The workshop provides hands on experience of basic puppet –verbal, visual, physical – with the audience embroiled that I’ve sat and watched pictures flickering in the As for if and how they are changing – I don’t really know, but I skills such as focus, fixed point and breath, manipulating in the creating of the story (about human identity, and fire, that I’ve travelled through time, that I’ve made a am sure they are – I am still infuriated and excited by ideas I hear objects and working with 3-man operated puppets. survival), blowing up balloons, operating the CD player, greater acquaintance with the subject of the piece, there, they still shock me with their outrageousness on occasion Places are strictly limited and cost £25 (+VAT). Included in the wearing the animal ears… Schoenberg. and their conservatism on others ... it all feels very familiar really! price is a ticket to watch the matinee performance of 1984 on the 7th December. One of my favourite shows, and one which in many Artaud talked of making a theatre that honoured For more information or to book your place, please contact ways epitomises the spirit of the Forest Fringe, was the profound, poetic bearing of dreams – I Wonder Helen Hodge at [email protected] or 020 7272 9020. a piece made by Shunt artist Mischa Twitchin in Sometimes Who I Am comes closer than most to For more on Blind Summit Theatre, see www.blindsumit.co.uk collaboration with Tom Duggan and Tom Lyall – I that ideal. A beautiful, entrancing piece that makes Wonder Sometimes Who I Am. colourful pictures with sound, and suggests lost worlds with pictures that we are not sure if we really saw or

Image: Blind Summit Theatre 1984. merely imagined… synaesthesia for the soul. Photo courtesy of the company

26 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 27 reviews Reviews from Edinburgh David Hughes Dance / Al Seed The Red Room Festival Fringe August 2009

New International Encounter (NIE) My Life With the Dogs

Simon Chatterton / Mark Anderson / Camden People’s Theatre Icarus 2.0 Grid Iron Barflies Ann Bean et al Power Plant Dancing Brick 6.0 How Heap and Pebble Camden People’s Theatre David Hughes Dance/Al Seed took on the World and Won Grid Iron Simon Chatterton/Mark Anderson/Ann Icarus 2.0 The Red Room Barflies Bean et al

TOT Pleasance Below Traverse Theatre Dancing Brick Traverse at The Barony Bar Power Plant

A 6.0: How Heap and Pebble took on the Royal Botanic Gardens L THE The venue is a tight fit for the set, actors, Pestilence, lunacy, sexual excess, World and Won Scrawled in chalk on the pub blackboard: and audience – although the claustrophobic New International Encounter (NIE) hysteria… it’s all here, served up with Pleasance Dome ‘If I had to choose between drinking and A night-time trip to the park is always A TRE feel turns out to be just perfect for Icarus My Life With the Dogs grotesque glee and playfulness. The fucking I think I would have to give up exciting… through the gate we go, sent Pleasance Courtyard fucking.’ Welcome to the world of Charles down a path, told to follow the light. ma 2.0. The highly disturbing onstage world Red Room is an interpretation of Edgar Dancing Brick’s latest show sparkles in the we find ourselves locked into is peopled Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death – a Bukowski – or is it the world of his alter- Now here’s the glasshouse, projections g Pleasance Dome. Heap Krusiak and Pebble a by only two characters – a father (who Strangers in the Night is something popular text amongst visual theatre makers ego Henry Chinaski? It’s hard to tell. Set in highlighting its metal skeleton. We weave zi Adverati are skating champions who must n shifts dangerously from the cloying to the of a theme tune in New International (Punchdrunk and Paper Cinema being two adapt to a world without ice. This lovely a real working bar, Barflies takes beat poet inside and outside, I lose my companions e | vol 21 | issue 04 |wi 04 issue | 21 vol | e combative) and an eerily naive pubescent Encounter’s latest production. But Frank other recent Red Death interpreters). This idea is developed with physical ingenuity. Bukowski’s work and life as its subject, and end up off the beaten track, peeping son, shut away from what we are led to Sinatra’s twinkly blue eyes are also oceans one’s a dance-theatre piece directed by Thomas Eccleshare and Valentina Ceschi with Grid Iron’s starting point a selection of behind ferns, crunching gravel underfoot. believe is a dangerous outside world. A away from the dark tale of My Life with the a physical theatre performer/director (Al capture gushing celebrity and coy Bukowski’s short stories, weaved together If this were just a chance to wander round third ‘absent character’ is a wife/mother Dogs. Seed); a beautiful burlesque romp with – emptiness perfectly, with every twitch. The to form a linear narrative. (Mostly ‘realist’ the Botanical Gardens at night, that’d referred to with terse disapproval that as you’d expect from Seed – strong ice dance champions, a Torvill and Dean in tone, but for one magic realist story of a almost be enough, but this is more, much masks desperate longing (the father) or Four-year-old Ivan Mishukov lives in elements of dark clown or Bouffon. satire, are very funny. Their greatest work man who shrinks until he is just six inches more… just plain unmasked desperate longing (the a small flat near Moscow, and is not Carefully crafted, expertly performed, includes Escape, a political piece in which tall, then gets used as a dildo.) To be fair, son). welcome while his vodka-soaked mother The Red Room (after Poe) explores typical Grid Iron make no biographical claims, There’s a row of tall and proud customised n they play Tibet and the Dalai Lama. Apollo ter 2009/2010 ter and Uncle Boris ‘make the noises’. He runs Gothic concerns: the battle between features Neil Armstrong and the lunar and yet this imposed narrative somehow standard lamps for a start; a great glass Their onstage ‘home’ is less a theatre set away, eludes a paedophile, and (a true reason and emotion; the struggle of docking module, whilst shaving eighteen bolsters up the common confusion mansion full of lily ponds and weeping than a lovingly constructed installation – a story) survives for two years living with the individual versus the needs of the seconds off Holst’s The Planets. between Bukowski’s works of fiction and willows hung with distressed dresses; a mad professor’s den of jars, bottles, tools, wild street dogs. This is rich material for collective; the lure of the dangerous the facts of his life. forest of illuminated His Master’s Voice and accumulated junk. Why are these physical theatre. As well as a panting pack ‘outsider’; the fear of the invasion of The theme of global warming is cleverly gramophones whizzing and whirring; two locked in here together? An outside of dogs, the movement includes television the body. understated. The pair struggle to perform But putting that aside, and moving on kinetic flowers spinning amongst the world exists, or once existed – evidenced broadcasts (an actor with a hollow set on a wooden floor because the ice has to what Grid Iron actually do with their foliage; a tree full of electronic fireflies, in letters, and mentions of a former family around his head), and tableau vivant images It’s certainly a ‘total’ visual theatre melted, but the environmental catastrophe chosen material – the mahogany-and- a courtyard full of flares and flamelights. life and a lost daughter. The crackling of the wayward mother and Boris caught experience: there are stunning lighting is not overdone; instead, explored mirrors environment of the Barony Bar is a There’s the sound of Tibetan bowls singing sound of a radio seeps in – the shipping red-handed. shifts (electric emerald, lurid lime, vivid through comedy. Details of the design, great space, and Grid Iron use it to brilliant (set in motion by vibrating mobile phones), forecast, or a straining, slow-mo version violet,) as we skip merrily through the costumes and music also work well. Heap effect, the audience seated at tables with and of electronic insect hummings; the of the theme from Dirty Dancing. There The piece is set in 1995 and the political colour-coded rooms in the doomed castle nonchalantly wastes plastic bottles of a Whisky Sours; the blackboards embellished whisper of cracked and warped old records, are occasional forays to the outside world, transition from communism is also felt (the of the story, towards our final razor bright blue sports drink, taking a single with Bukowski bon mots; a blue neon sign the clicking of a thousand cricket legs. which involve protective wear and safety Scorpions’ Winds of Change is another red destination; gorgeous white-on- sip from each, even before giving Pebble bearing the legend Sloefuck flickering ropes, but we are not party to what is seen anthem). We see Ivan outside a sweetshop, white costume/mask design, with some hers. Audio ranges from birdsong to White above the action. There’s charged The glasshouses (turns out there’s not one outside – we are held inside. Only ‘Icarus’ looking at new fizzy drinks and chocolate, interesting peripheral puppetry (cloth Christmas. The comic timing is perfect, performances from the cast of three – poet- or two but four or more I seem to remember, leaves, returning bruised, battered, and then dangerously lured away with a hot horses emerging from swathes of skirts); including the audience participation. Three drunkard ‘Henry’, an ‘everywoman’ female although it is easy to get disorientated), bewildered by what he finds. Eventually, dog. Fairytale traditions combine with and entertaining performances from a volunteers receive whispered or card character who is humped and bumped on and these plus the space in between, he takes flight… with a pre-determined witty ensemble theatre devices and vibrant team of dancers collected up from many instructions to play interviewers, and are bar and table and floor, and (my favourite) around and outside of them, have been outcome. music. The audience are addressed directly, disciplines (ballet, hip hop, contemporary, always handled sensitively. the witness to our poet’s excesses and used as a canvas (though not of course and it’s particularly funny when we are told capoeira) who meet the physical theatre despairs, Silent Dave the barman, who a blank canvas) by a group of artists that Intense, funny, shocking, surreal… to imagine a Mancunian actor in his forties sensibility of Al Seed’s direction full-on – My only quibble is with the structure of doubles as singer/musician, as when he includes environmental sound installation Icarus 2.0 can be read as a parable of as a child, or a 37-year-old who has just for example, when a courtly gavotte breaks the show. This is nicely non-linear, with accompanies himself on the Old Joanna for artist Jony Easterby, Mark Anderson of the adolescent male need to push past taken up jogging as a Russian policeman. into a chaotic clown fight. the stars taking final bows throughout. a rendition of Lilac Wine. The Photophonic Experiment fame, and the father; as an investigation of the line However, the shape of the piece can seem legendary performance artist and founder between parental love and abuse; as There are some similarities with previous As an added bonus, for the run at the flat, with the story left hanging. This is I don’t feel that this is Grid Iron at their best member of the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, an exposition of the idea that for a child NIE production The End of Everything Ever Traverse Al Seed was performing in the nonetheless a beautiful follow-up to last – but nevertheless, a good piece of theatre, Ann Bean. struggling to live up to the memory of (the last work of a trilogy exploring early show – and although this was a last-minute year’s 21:13. Eccleshare and Ceschi are two presented with the professionalism and a dead sibling, death can have a fatal 20th century experiences) – both focus deputising for a dancer on compassionate engaging young performers with… star panache we would expect from Edinburgh’s I wish I could have made more trips to attraction… it’s all this and so much more. on a lost small child in a harsh adult world. leave, it is actually hard to imagine how quality. finest. Power Plant, there was so much to see and Perhaps this just means that the company the piece might be without his distinctive hear and smell and feel. A beautiful site- Dorothy Max Prior has a distinctive, haunting style, rather physical presence. Charlotte Smith Dorothy Max Prior responsive piece; a magical journey into than getting stale. My Life with the Dogs the undergrowth of the psyche. starts a new trilogy that explores more Dorothy Max Prior . recent European history. Dorothy Max Prior

Charlotte Smith

More reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2009 can be found on our website www.totaltheatre.org.uk/reviews 28 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 29 reviews

Free communication. Using spoken language It’s a rare production that invites its stage (English and French), movement, film, crew to participate in the curtain call. But faa ll T he recorded sound, and a kind of theatre-of- in this case it would have seemed churlish objects – in which the placing of the vase not to. The separation of the stage into an of lilies on the table, or the moving of a upper and lower level allowed for magical

tre H al tre chair, creates a constantly evolving still- set changes to appear as if from nowhere. life – Déchery and her offstage collaborator, Tiny trains and traditional Junks crossed Adventures the documentary film-maker Chris Eley, the stage, toying with the idea of scale and f M an H al have made a very pleasing and thought- perspective. Projection allowed Chasse to in Movement at provoking piece of contemporary theatre. literally illustrate Chinese calligraphy as he Arcola Theatre Kindle Theatre Eat Your Heart Out ‘paints’ symbols onto the cyclorama.

Lamf . Photo O liver f Clam At the heart of the piece is an investigation Studio K Kindle Theatre into how we communicate: how we ‘read’ The script was perhaps the only Eat Your Heart Out what we hear and see; how everyone disappointment as dialogue at times July – August 2009 Coachwerks, Brighton speaks and uses different languages; seemed stilted or overly simplistic. The September 2009 and how this continuous negotiation of concluding scenes cleverly and poignantly understanding and misunderstanding is left the audience questioning the West’s I nearly ate a small cricket pierced on a pin multiplied when we come from different influence on the East, the two cultures’ inside an orange nasturtium flower, but cultures, with different ‘mother tongues’. relationship, and what this could cause

TOT chickened out at the last moment. Kindle What fascinates Déchery most are the China to lose.

A Theatre’s immersive performance piece near-misses, when two words or actions L THE ord felt like Gormenghast meets Babette’s are so similar that we think we understand, Louise Finn Feast, set in operatic Flemish painting. You but have miscommunicated. Take the word A

TRE would like to say the set was sumptuous, ‘lecture’ for a start: in English, giving words No Theater / Young@Heart and it was in a way, as you were led by a

ma in a talk; in French, receiving words, on the End of the Road bent and hissy-voiced retainer through page – reading. g a Studio K is a space at the back of the Arcola Theatre. With a blue One of the strengths of Adventures in Movement is that the festival a phantasmagoria of contemporary junk, zi corrugated steel roof, it looks more likely to contain vegetables is promoting both new and established companies, side-by-side. n ranging from old oil-fired radiators to soft In many ways this piece is typical of e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e than cutting-edge dance. Aficionados know that this is part of the Wanna Play? by established contemporary Arabic dance company bell-shaped bin bags strung from the walls. much work doing the live art circuit at the venue’s charm—but it’s also a new space for a new festival. IJAD is sometimes disturbing, with teasing doll, flapper girl and Through the curtains of recycling, a chorus moment – solo performer (female) using techno moves as well as the three female dancers struggling with of cooks, in voluminous chef’s costume, the self as the source, mixing and matching Forty companies perform for Adventures in Movement, a broad apples in skinsuits, suggesting a twisted creation myth or rite of gently moan and sing. a toolbox of performance tricks (projection, and ambitious four-week programme that promises ‘ballet, boys passage. In contrast, 2B3D has a clear overall dynamic, creating choreography, performative objects and bikes, capoeira, a fairytale of swans and a mass exercise a surreal world of bubbles, skateboards, architecture, antlers Once led through to the feasting area, the etc). What distinguishes this piece is the No Theater / Young@Heart routine’. The Arcola may be known for experimentation, but it and bright costumes. The performance can be furiously inventive, cook’s tableaux and song picked up the confidence and skill of this theatre-trained End of the Road hasn’t made such forays into dance and physical theatre before. breathtakingly quick and also moving, such as in a traditional male/ threads of the post-apocalyptic story from performer – in contrast to many people Royal Northern College of Music / n The Arcola’s executive producer Leyla Nazli has now skilfully fitted female duet (Ali Temple and Kirsty Green). ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter the retainer. They referenced a queen who presenting this sort of work, Déchery has Manchester International Festival together some diverse jigsaw pieces into coherent, interesting spoke in a lofty out-of-touch voice from a what it takes to carry the audience through July 2009 evenings. The same evening Vocal Motions bring powerful, a capella crackling TV screen suspended above our the journey, and to engage them in her singing with strong harmonies and unexpected cadences to heads. The weird food (strands of seaweed, story. I had seen the More4 documentary on the Freefall Theatre’s Half Man / Half Clam is a gem. The main The Passion of Saints Sergius and Bacchus. However, the tortured the crickets, pork cake) didn’t overshadow Young@Heart choir a couple of years ago, character chokes on his own emotions, but the movement is lithe, movement, passionate subject and freeze-frame changes can be the well-crafted physicality and narrative Dorothy Max Prior and was pretty astounded by the strength, teasing and expressive. Danielle Meehan and Joe Wild excel as overly intense. of the piece, but rather felt like a natural tenacity and imagination of this group of a drunk couple stumbling home and gobbling fish in an aquarium. development of it. Robert Lepage / Ex Machina people from Massachusetts, who are aged Beautiful, lingering folk is sung and played by Jamie Doe and Some shows involved extensive audience participation. Fiskultura, The Blue Dragon between 73 and 89. They are a choir, but a Max Jones on kalimba, gramophone horn, melodica, guitars and group gymnastics from the former Yugoslavia, is recreated in Mass This show was part of Kindle Theatre’s The O’Reilly Theatre / Dublin Theatre choir unlike any other. I went to the show penny whistle. Some of the writing may be trite (in character) and Exercise with Nadia and Olga Sokolski (Ivana Peranic and Lara continuing development of performances Festival with some positive expectations, but also the puppetry harder to follow, but this is a lovely piece with an Ritosa Roberts). This eccentric piece manages to be deceptively based around cooking and food (in other October 2009 expecting a fair amount of nostalgia and unflinching sense of humour. simple, deliberately monotonous and fun at the same time. It shows they’ve roasted pheasants over hot schmaltziness. But this wasn’t merely was part of a double bill with Vulnerasti by Lo Commotion Dance coals) and Eat Your Heart Out was inventive, In Chinese calligraphy, the first stroke that a group of old people singing – it was a Another favourite evening was full of contrasts. Curved Space Company, an elusive meditation on illness, in which the dance fun, and impressively performed. Kindle is taught is a straight line that represents performance of great breadth and depth. Theatre’s 3 Crystals takes the story of Dorothy Hodgkin and her conveyed more fragility and subtlety than the spoken word. The managed that difficult line in interactive the horizon and separates heaven and The set was fantastic, featuring a see- life-saving research into insulin. Crystallography is a clever Anonymous Ensemble’s Wanderlust (shortlisted for a Total Theatre theatre between looking after and earth. Or so we are told at the opening of through revolving door through which subject: the dance gains momentum as the crystal is captured Award 2008) has a picaresque plot, music that fits well (such as challenging your audience, without any The Blue Dragon (written by Robert Lepage many of the performers appeared, and a on film and released with a final burst. It breaks up a narrative when a cough becomes a burst of techno), stilt-walking and varied lack of pace or style. There is a real sense and Marie Michaud) where this notion bar. Other performers just wandered on to that is sometimes linear, but well acted, in a promising ‘scratch’ puppetry. However, despite generous sweets and vodka, I find the of freshness in the performing – and the of inclusive division infiltrates Lepage’s the stage. Most of the ones coming through performance. participation relentless – perhaps a better fit for festivals than a cricket was fresh as well. stunning production. the revolving door were dressed to the reasonably sober Monday. nines, as if going out to a show. They didn’t Maddy Wynne-Jones captures emotional nuance with Tempered Bill Parslow Pierre (Henri Chasse) is an ageing artist acknowledge the presence of the audience. Body Dance Company in Amuse Bouche. Four perfect duets range Some work will inevitably seem raw in a programme favouring who has fled to China to escape the Some of the musicians also wandered on from a raunchy, breathless opening accompanied by Nina Simone’s the new and experimental. ‘Virtual reality theatre’ (live digital Chloé Déchery criticism of his Canadian peers. Claire from the wings; others joined them later. He Needs Me, to the light, upbeat This Magic Moment (performed animation and dance) about prosperity and unhappiness sounded Useful Knowledge to Know (Marie Michaud) is his acquaintance and by Ming-Hei Wong and Claudia Palazzo). The choreography in the unusual, but (No) Living Room by al’Ka-mie became laboured on Nightingale Theatre, Brighton former lover who travels to adopt a child. It was an amazingly moving and powerful closing piece is kaleidoscopic: new patterns constantly emerge, stage. We Will Overcome by writer/director Charlie Shand was September 2009 Pierre’s current lover, Xiao Ling (Tai Wei experience, living up to the publicity for the before and as others fade. weighed down by cliché, despite its subject of the freedom riders Foo) a young artist, acts as the bridge show, which described it as ‘a hauntingly challenging segregation in the 1960s and the young energy of The There will be classical music, sung in between these two and the needs and beautiful show about age, memory and the (Prelude) by Wreckless Arts, a solo piece by Jemima Hoadley, Kamichi Plan. Italian, which no-one will understand; desires they’ve come to China to fulfil. power of music.’ It gave me a completely incorporates sign language in a graceful, thoughtful performance. there will be white flowers, lilies perhaps; Michaud captures perfectly the humour, new perspective on what being older Sound by La Horrox and Rossi Adams suggests crackly An enjoyable festival, which with any luck will be back at and when she caresses this chair, we will desperation and pathos of a woman who means. It challenges the stereotypes and microphones, techno beats, interference with bassline and raw Arcola in 2010. know that the performance will end… has realised, too late, the futility of her social norms of old age without once ever tinnitus – all part of a struggle for expression. lifestyle. Tai Wei Foo’s choreography and overtly referring to these things. Hopefully, Charlotte Smith Chloé is French, a lecturer, not a dancer. movement suitably contrasted with her Young @ Heart will return to the UK – if they This mantra is repeated throughout her aseptic portrayal of the thoroughly modern do, go see! lecture-performance, Useful Knowledge Chinese artist. Her dance in the snow was to Know, an exploration of the tripwires of electrifyingly beautiful. Paul Allender

30 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 31 reviews

lakes

Red Herring. Photo Stewart Smith Carabosse alive Once Upon a Summer’s Eve – Keswick, August 2009

Once Upon A Summer’s Eve sees quality (and mostly British) street TOT Sadly the classic bank holiday weather affected the early evening theatre acts gathered for a lakeside feast of bucolic art – a Lakes

A programme so we made our way to the big tented show, Circenses

L THE Alive event in a landscape of such intrinsic beauty that the glorious by Circus Ronaldo. I’ve said before on these pages that there colours of the setting sun threatened to upstage the many acts. isn’t a better group around in terms of top quality, comic, live A TRE entertainment and the same still holds true. This time the audience The event kicked off with Markmark performing their evergreen ma are split in half – one half goes backstage to see the preparations street theatre show, Idiots. Mark Tillotson and Simon Kerrigan are g for the show, whilst the other half sees the show, and at half-time a perfectly complimentary double act who wow their audience a

zi they switch over. We went backstage to start with, entering the with their slick timing and easy rapport. I particularly like their Mark Brew Company at Dance Daze. n Big Top via laundry hanging out to dry. This section is widescreen, e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e measured restraint, while appearing to be making it up as they Photo Tony West impressionistic, very textured and there’s a lot of little sub-plots go along, they are actually very much in control – the adlibbing is Plungeboom to keep in your head. The mood is by turns fractious, panicky, effective, and nothing is overdone. Dance Daze at Penrith July 2009 chaotic, sulky and furious as props don’t work, stage animals get Mint Fest – Kendal, August 2009 accidentally shot, and blunders conspire to change the running Also seen was the world premiere of The Cabaret of Dr. Caligari, Penrith is a picturesque small town in the Lake District that, as order or wipe certain acts off the bill completely. People return in which James Macpherson (of Artizani) has created a bold far as I could tell, is normally a little starved of arts activity. So it Mint Fest (the largest of the Lakes Alive programme of Cumbrian from in front of the curtain with odd props, we hear the other and ambitious new street theatre show. With a cast of seven is good to honour in these pages the arrival of Dance Daze, a new festivals) follows in the grand tradition of many French street arts half of the audience laughing and find ourselves wondering comedians, the show features a collection of exotic characters mini-festival dedicated to dance-theatre works sited outdoors, what’s going on out there; likewise those on the other side hear n festivals where a small, unlikely town plays host to a well-funded performing cabaret routines in a bizarre style that would have which was launched by Cultural Olympiad guru Bill Morris who ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter festival with an international perspective, the local population us laughing and wonder what’s happening on our side. All hung delighted the late Angela Carter. James, as the malevolent MC, stressed the value of having a programme of ‘world class’ work take to it like ducks to water, and pretty soon it’s attracting together by lovely music from the houseband overlooking both bravely holds it all together, while his young cast cavort with presented in Penrith. And whilst it was certainly true that the visitors from far and wide. A daytime programme of street shows stages. There are moments when all hell is breaking loose as well enthusiasm. audience was a little less forthcoming than so-called ‘educated is complemented with an evening of stand-alone shows and as moments where you can just sit back and reflect. street arts audiences’ in places with established festivals, the installations. I was pleased to have the opportunity to see Bash Street Theatre’s cowering in doorways was at least as much to do with the rain Half-time and we swap over to see the actual show. This is a show The Station, which impressively engaged the audience for as the fear of art and artists – once the sun broke through, and First up were Plungeboom with their new Lakes Alive commission, showcase of some exquisite circus skills presented in a very an hour, with performances of intricate precision and beguiling the local population had got used to the idea of the streets and in which two ‘French’ chefs standing in their own kitchen unit unshowy fashion but after about 15 minutes it becomes apparent charm – and demonstrating that a complex and sustained narrative squares being full of artistic activity, there was an obvious feeling recruit a handful of young chefs to find ingredients for a meal for that we aren’t just seeing what the audience in the first half saw, is possible outdoors, even in these damp and windswept latitudes. that this was something they could happily get used to. Companies a troll. Plungeboom are a young Manchester group whose rise to and by the end both audiences can see each other over the debris Their beautiful set looked perfect with the lake behind. presenting work at the first Dance Daze included Srishti, Stopgap, street arts fame has been very quick. This is down to the unique of a show that has literally brought the house down. We are left Balletboyz II, and the company I was there working with, Ragroof quality of their work and their ability to put their ideas across in a with a very sober image of the future of circus as real father and Also on offer: Whalley Range All Stars presented their imaginative Theatre. fresh and engaging manner. There’s a lot of chat, which usually real son sit in the ruins next to a skeleton version of grandfather on Compost Heap, a visually poetic piece with the confidence to play puts me off, but they avoid the weary at-one-remove cynicism that a merry-go-round horse, trading verses on concertinas. at its own pace. Performances, characterisation and set fitted in And then there was Punchdrunk, with The House That Jack can hamper the street artist and instead have the audience eating perfectly to the rural setting. Red Herring constructed a Punch Built. It’s a piece that seems to have caused some consternation out of their hands. They were up against an extremely loud and Circus Ronaldo for me leave all other circuses who use narrative & Judy set-up in the centre of the park where it looked striking amongst people who associate Punchdrunk with large-scale lazily presented sideshow, but carried on regardless. trailing in their wake – indeed the skills are so subsumed into the against a picturesque background. They then went walkabout in immersive theatre work, forgetting that the co-director of the story that it’s easy to take them for granted. But it is the skill at their Punch and Judy characters. Utopium (from France) presented company (Maxine Doyle) is a Laban trained dancer/choreography, Fairly Famous Family presented Anyone for Tennis on the road – a telling a story which remains in your head as much as the eternal Snow White with Gallic whimsy in an ironically knowing style. And and that dance-theatre is at the heart of the company’s work. measure of a good street festival, in my opinion, is when roads are question of how Danny Ronaldo swaps the bike frame around their set also suited the location, resembling a fairytale castle in There have also been grumblings about the light and easy mood closed off and you can stand where you damn well want to stand. without you noticing so he sits on the pedal wheel instead of the a forest. Strangely, this French show was the most verbal, and of this work, as Punchdrunk are associated with the dark and This featured a small lawn tennis set-up with a net and a high saddle. He’s done it in two shows now and I still haven’t twigged. although losing something in translation, it did have an interesting the dangerous, but surely the exploration of other moods is their seat for the umpire to sit and control the goings-on. Very Middle quality. prerogative as a company? Personally, I find it to be an engaging England in look and feel. A member of the audience is selected to On such a wet day a fire installation is the perfect end, and French and enjoyable piece. The soft and easy movement work (with be the Minor Royal who will present the shield; two are chosen company Carabosse provide a magical and beautifully realised The event ended with Tubas on the Lake by Tres, which was – yes typical Doyle choreography, focusing on the relationship between to be ball-boy and ball-girl, whilst another is chosen to be John version in a nearby park. They use different qualities of fire to give – tubas playing harmonies in boats on the lake, sailing across the performers rather than the creation of abstract pictures), the McEnroe. The second company member becomes Pat Cash in a real sensation of space and size and do it so effectively that the water, an intentionally low-key finale – although they missed a gentle clowning, and the whimsical humour of the set-up (the all his mullet-haired, strutting glory. The show takes us through space they use appears to be bigger than it actually is. I saw their trick by not illuminating the boats, as lanterns would have looked construction/deconstruction of various edifices from a wall of hay a Wimbledon final complete with daft slow-motion replay and first show 10 years ago where they incorporated performance in a beautiful reflected in the waters of Lake Derwentwater. bales) all combining to create a harmonious and happy piece of although it’s familiar stuff the charm of the commentary (which poor and rather po-faced manner to frustrating effect. Good to see outdoor dance-theatre. Not what some people might expect from hides a few salty innuendoes along the way) effortlessly carries that they’ve ditched that element and paradoxically strengthened Michael Lister Punchdrunk, perhaps, but that’s alright Jack! us along with it. The audience is tight in on the show, and there’s the theatrical possibilities through other means.

nowhere to hide so it relies on a lot of varied skills to carry it off – a Dorothy Max Prior perfect piece of street entertainment. Edward Taylor

Lakes Alive is a four-year programme of world-class arts events. It is a Kendal Arts International initiative produced by Julie Tait with Jeremy Shine and MIA.

32 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 33 Total Theatre Volume 22 Issue 01 will be published March 2010

Advertising booking deadline: 18 January 2010 n

Little Angel Theatre Shona Reppe Puppets ews Jelly Bean Jack Cinderella

EWS NEWS from NEWS FROM ARTS

N Cie Mossoux-Bonte venues ORGANISATIONS Kefar Nahum appearing at LIMF

2010 LONDON INTERNATIONAL Green Ginger Rust at Suspense THE ARCHES TOBACCO FACTORY PUPPET CENTRE TRUST FUEL AT THE ROUNDHOUSE TOT MIME FESTIVAL 13–31 January Russian/German physical theatre company Melanie Wilson’s Iris Brunette is a sortie into Having recently secured funding from the Arts To name something is to call it into life, to Derevo unite with St Petersburg theatre a curious cityscape of the future past inspired Council for a groundbreaking and important determine its future. Inua Ellam’s Untitled is a A

L THE by the film La Jetée by Chris Marker. The piece period of activity, the Puppet Centre Trust, magic realist story, set in Nigeria and England, This year’s Mime Fest features 15 companies mavericks Akhe to bring you a spectacular follows compassionate voyeur and time- England’s national development agency for the of identical twin brothers separated at birth, from 10 countries, with a plethora of premieres, premiere. For the first time ever in the UK these

A two companies will come together to produce travelling refugee Iris as she delicately uncoils dynamic artform of contemporary puppetry, one twin without a future, without a purpose,

TRE including The Mill from Britain’s Ockham’s Razor, the remembrance of a friendship destroyed is now able to deliver an even more strategic without a name. Inua Ellams is a poet and one of the festival’s three co-commissioned a brand new promenade work, Natura Morte, in association with Scotland’s Conflux project. The by the outbreak of war and the unfathomable programme of lobbying, advocacy, education graphic artist whose critically acclaimed debut ma works. Switzerland’s Zimmermann & de Perrot Arches are putting them all together and letting demise of lost kinship and love. With its elegant and training on a national stage. Overseeing the theatre production The 14th Tale was awarded

g open the season at The Barbican, the first of them run loose through every corner of the huge imagery and elegiac sound score, Iris Brunette organisation is newly appointed director Linda a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe a many different circus-theatre shows on offer, zi venue building, exploring and transforming is a disarmingly engaging piece. Playing 20 & Lewis, formerly director of the visions festival 2009. He was born in Nigeria and now lives and

n and there’s world-class puppetry and animation corners that have never been seen before (10-14 21 November. (an international festival of visual theatre, works in London. Untitled, the last in a series of e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e from around the world, including Israel’s Etgar See www.tobaccofactorytheatre.com puppetry and object theatre in Brighton), South performances in development presented by Fuel, Theatre with Eshet. November). For Christmas, the Arches will also be running an in-house retelling of Little Red East Arts Drama Officer, theatre manager, is on at the Roundhouse’s Studio Theatre 20 &21 Riding Hood, complete with puppets, music, and lecturer. Linda will be assisted by Emma November. See www.phaze05.com Other highlights include Circus Klezmer’s JACKSONS LANE Leishman who has been appointed as PCT’s uproarious wedding, visual theatre supremos song and dance (2 December – 3 January). Attend a superior form of pantomime this season Administrator. See www.puppetcentre.org.uk BlackSkyWhite and Mossoux Bonte, and the See www.thearches.co.uk with Jacksons Lane’s in-house production of CIRCOMEDIA multi-talented bearded lady Jeanne Mordoj with Cinderella, a new adaptation of the classic story For the third year running Circomedia are her badgers and mountain goat. incorporating magic and acrobatics courtesy of british Dance edition 2010 delighted to present The Birdcage Christmas Jacksons Lane associate artists So & So Circus 3–6 February cabaret. As usual the show will be hosted by Rod So all-in-all 19 days of contemporary visual SUSPENSE Theatre. Written and directed by Adrian Berry, Prestigious biennial dance showcase British Laver, Circomedia’s head of juggling, and will n As this issue of Total Theatre Magazine goes to this updated version sees Cinderella transported feature other performers from the Circomedia ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter theatre performance, meet-the artist sessions, Dance Edition announces an extensive print, London is gearing up for its first festival workshops, and the festival lecture to be given into a world of reality TV, fame and fashion as programme for 2010 returning to Birmingham, stable including Bongo Bolero along with more of adult puppetry for over 25 years. The festival, by Bristol Old Vic artistic director and National she seeks her true love on Britain’s favourite a thriving cultural centre and international recent graduates from the degree course. The hosted by Islington’s Little Angel Theatre, Theatre associate director, Tom Morris. See talent show. Cinderella runs 7 December – 3 destination for dance. A National Dance show has musical accompaniment from the Hot takes place over ten days, in seven different also the features section of this magazine. Full January. See www.jacksonslane.org.uk Network Initiative hosted by DanceXchange, Potatoe Syncopaters and features several acts venues across London, involving twenty-four listings, further information, and booking details Shows includes Arthur Pita’s new production from the Gandini jugglers. Performances are at companies. With performances, lectures and on the website: www.mimefest.co.uk God’s Garden – a world exclusive, Jasmin St Paul’s Church, Portland Square, Bristol on 3 & masterclasses from UK and International CLOSING Due to financial difficulties Hackney Empire will Vardimon’s critically acclaimed Yesterday, 4 December. Tickets £49.50 each; box office 0117 practitioners, the creators of Suspense have be closing its theatre programme in January Vincent Dance Theatre’s If We Go On and In the 922 3686. See www.circomedia.com set out to prove that puppetry isn’t just for CPT artist 2010 at the end of the pantomime season. While Spirit Of Diaghilev from Sadlers Wells. The non- kids. Highlights include performances from Chris Goode the theatre itself will go dark, the venue’s theatre-based strand of performance explores UK companies Green Ginger and Horse and NATURAL THEATRE COMPANY community and education work will continue some of Birmingham’s more unusual spaces Two events that come under the Natural Theatre Etgar Theatre Eshet at LIMF Bamboo, US company Inkfish and TAMTAM and the intention is that the Empire should for dance and includes work by Liz Aggiss, Clod umbrella were nominated in the finals of the Objektentheater from the Netherlands. Little CAMDEN PEOPLE’S THEATRE reopen after a ‘period of reflection’. Built in 1901, Ensemble, Dudendance, Iona Kewney, Anna prestigious 2009 Bath Life Awards. Bonbon Angel has been supporting the development of Applications are now being accepted for Sprint Hackney Empire has in recent times retained Krzystek and TopShot. See www.bde2010.co.uk Cabarets, which encourages the development puppetry in the UK since 1961 and has joined 2010, which will take place in London next a commitment to its variety background while of local acts, was up for Best Event, and the forces with The Central School of Speech and March. CPT are happy to accept proposals programming experimental and interdisciplinary notorious White Wine Arts Trail, which takes Drama to create professional masterclass CIRCUS DEVELOPMENT for imagined or existing works from emerging work in its smaller Studio Theatre. See www. 110 people on a theatrical tour of all the galleries opportunities included in the festival programme. or established companies and individuals AGENCY hackneyempire.co.uk The Circus Development Agency works to that spring up at Bath Festival, was up for the working in theatre, performance and live assist and develop the circus arts in the Arts Award. These are both regular events At the Suspense launch event, festival director art. Previous participants include: Unlimited, WARWICK ARTS CENTRE UK. It runs monthly one-to-one surgeries supported by the Naturals as part of their Peter Glanville (Artistic Director of Little Angel) Cartoon de Salvo, Fevered Sleep, Shunt, Following the huge success of The Gruffalo and with professionals from the industry, free to community involvement. Coming up: Bonbon claimed that shows such as War Horse, Avenue Wishbone, Chris Goode, The Paper Birds and The Gruffalo’s Child, Tall Stories returns with the anyone who would like to speak with them Cabarets on 19 November and 17 December. Q and the ENO/Blind Summit Madama Butterfly Mamoru Iriguchi, with work encompassing story of Billy the Goat and the mysterious Snow about their chosen area of expertise. For a For full details of these and all national are revealing how ‘sophisticated, irrational one-on-one performances, boat trips, durational Dragon. Billy is the kid. The Snow Dragon runs 5 list of the surgeries available, and a wealth and international Naturals gigs see www. and grotesque the artform can be’. He added, performances, puppetry… the list goes on. December – 3 January, and is recommended for of other information about circus in the UK, naturaltheatre.co.uk and www.widcombe.net or ‘The work we have programmed for Suspense For more information or to apply (deadline 30 ages 3+. See www.warwickartscentre.co.uk see the organisation’s website. The CDA also email [email protected] represents not only the changing landscape of November ’09) download an application form at runs a journalist training project which has contemporary puppetry practice but a challenge www.cptheatre.co.uk to the way theatre is made – opening new doors ICIA included mentoring from Lyn Gardner, theatre Natural Theatre Company of expressiveness.’ Two total theatre productions coming up at critic for The Guardian. The organisation are ROUNDHOUSE University of Bath’s Institute of Contemporary currently searching for a new trainee journalist, Suspense is running 30 October– 8 This Christmas the Roundhouse presents Little Interdisciplinary Arts: bgroup’s about around as well as looking to recruit new volunteers to November 2009. For full listings visit Angel Theatre’s Jelly Bean Jack, an exciting new pays reference to the timeless tradition of assist with their newsletter, website updates www.suspensefestival.com version of Jack and the Beanstalk that combines a circular gathering, seating its audience and research. If you’re interested see tabletop and shadow puppetry, bringing to life in a ring of 50 chairs for a dance piece that www.circusarts.org.uk or email the story of the brave little boy who climbs charts the passing of an hour and explores [email protected] a magic beanstalk and overcomes a fearful ritualistic conventions from the primitive to giant (5 December – 3 January; ages 3+). Also the modern day (14 November); and Mem playing over the Christmas period, Tall Stories Morrison’s Ringside, which draws on a lifetime and Network of Stuff’s Them With Frozen Tails of remembered Turkish Cypriot family weddings follows up previous successes The Gruffalo and to bring to life a long overdue wedding reception. The Pickled King with another masterclass in See www.bath.ac.uk/icia/home storytelling (15 December – 3 January). See www.roundhouse.org.uk

36 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 37 horse + bamboo forkbeard fantasy CIRCELATION CLOSES TADASHI ENDO WORKSHOP TRAINING AND After ten years supporting the professional Tadashi Endo, director of the Butoh-Center development of British circus artists, Circelation MAMU and the Butoh-Festival MAMU Germany, PROFESSIONAL have decided it’s time to shut up shop. Over is running a two-day workshop at the Courtyard its lifetime Circelation has run 23 week long Theatre 14 & 15 November. Over the years DEVELOPMENT courses, 12 weekend tasters, hosted more Tadashi has formed a deep relationship with than 200 circus artists, developed 30 emerging Butoh founder Kazuo Ohno that informs his directors, and programmed 35 leading cross- work. No theatre, Kabuki and Butoh, as well artform directors/artists from the UK and as the traditional forms of Occidental theatre, ARTSADMIN WEEKENDERS around the world to lead laboratories. Founders combine to create his special style – a tightrope Artsadmin’s Weekenders are open to all Leila Jancovich and Chenine Bhathena have walk between eastern and western culture, practitioners regardless of level of experience; decided to close Circelation due to their other mixing theatre, performance and dance. He tes all that is required is an openness to meet, work commitments, but also with confidence calls it Butoh-MA. Alongside the course, on 14 talk, play, perform and collaborate. Come to that the sector is now well served by similar November, Theatre Training Initiative will also a one or all – each Weekender operates as a initiatives – CAST in Bristol, Creative Exchanges be presenting a night of highlights from the mpany standalone while the series as a whole offers an at Circus Space, Jeunes Talent UK via Crying Mamu Butoh Festival Archives, introducing d opportunity to work with an outstanding range Out Loud, and the education work of many UK rare footage of works shown at the festival. p of artists. Autumn/winter weekenders: Chris schools and companies. See www.circelation. See www.theatretraining.org.uk or email o Goode (28 & 29 November), Lone Twin’s Gary co.uk [email protected] Winters (30 & 31 January), Anne Bean (27 & 28 c u February), and Blast Theory (27 & 28 March). NICA COACHWERKS UNSCHOOL See www.artsadmin.co.uk The National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA) is OF PERFORMANCE Australia’s centre of excellence in contemporary A place to learn and share the work and findings ANALOGUE BEADY EYE / KRISTIN DING FOUNDATION TOT THE DRAWING THEATRE: circus. As the only training institution of its of theatre artists, Coachwerks’ Unschool of Following a critically acclaimed near sell-out FREDRICKSSON In Hanging by a Thread the audience is run of Beachy Head at the Edinburgh Festival slowly guided into a wordless story. The two A CREATIVE LIFE DRAWING kind in Australia, NICA provides professional Performance is currently running its autumn After a wonderful Edinburgh Fringe where L THE training through accredited courses including programme. The next short courses are Steve Fringe, plans are being made for a UK/ Everything Must Go, Beady Eye’s inaugural characters are a mother and daughter who WORKSHOP international tour in autumn 2010. The company create and are consumed by a bed that has The Drawing Theatre is a spectacular fusion a three-year Bachelor of Circus Arts and a Lambert’s Theatre of Violence, an exploration show, won a Total Theatre Award (for Devised A Certificate III in Circus Arts through Swinburne of the philosophies of Grotowski and Artaud will be back in the rehearsal rooms at Farnham Performance) and the Arches Brick Award, tour developed a life of its own. Using objects, TRE of theatre and drawing in a creative workshop University. The full-time degree course (20 November); Emily Ayres’ Intention, Maltings throughout autumn 2009, developing booking for April-June is underway and Kristin puppetry, physical performance and original designed to inspire and excite. Combining ideas for three new experimental projects. music to depict obscure worlds and shadowy ma elements of performance and movement, prepares young people from across Australia Opposition, Surprise (23 November); Rachel is delighted to be working with producer Jo and the world for exciting careers in all facets Ellis’ Theatre Beyond Words, focusing on Analogue has also been invited to take a short Crowley on this. The show is about Kristin’s emotions, Hanging by a Thread stirs and g light and sound, participants explore the residency at Central School of Speech and delights its audiences. Devised and performed a of the circus industry. NICA is supported by the the creation of physical characters that dad; finally he is in the limelight. Dates so far

zi human figure in hidden spaces and beautiful Australian Government through the Department embody the themes and images of a work Drama working with MA students to research include the Theatre Royal Bath, the Barbican by Amelia Pimlott and Hannah Marshall of The n architecture, turning inspiration into sketches, and test out ideas for future pieces. Alongside Ding Foundation, with puppet direction by Steve e | vol 21 | issue 04 | wi | 04 issue | 21 vol | e of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. (24-26 November); Anna-Helena McLean’s and Ruhrfestspiele in Germany. For updates on collages and 3D drawings. This workshop, held the creation of new work, Analogue continues Tiplady and lighting by Jack Knowles. At Norden at BAC on 5 December, is suitable for all levels For information about shows, short courses and Actor-Chorus-Text, a workshop in musicality, the tour and future projects, see the handmade special events see www.nica.com.au movement and Shakespeare (27-29 November); to develop their education programme, running website www.kristinfredricksson.mfbiz.com Farm Arts Centre, Maidenhead 27 November. of ability – accessible for beginners; inspiring workshops at schools and universities See www.myspace.com/thedingfoundation and challenging for those with more experience. Eva Recacha’s Words Movement Montage, an improvisation and choreographic workshop throughout the South East. BLIND SUMMIT Advice and tuition will be available for those MASK WORKSHOP See www.analogueproductions.co.uk who need it. See www.londondrawing.com focusing on piecing together fragments of In a world where even your thoughts are FORKBEARD FANTASY WITH CHRIS VERVAIN Forkbeard Fantasy’s latest show The Colour Performers are invited to participate in movement and text (12 & 13 December); and controlled and revolution is just around the ANGEL EXIT THEATRE of Nonsense is a comedy thriller about a workshopping Euripides’ Bacchae in mask. Led Ania Psenitsnikova’s Butoh Workshop (14-17 corner, Julia and Winston begin a clandestine ISAN CONFERENCE: A straggling gang of buffoons are washed priceless Invisible Artwork… and its theft. by mask specialist Chris Vervain these free December). For full info on Coachwerk courses romance... In a startling new adaptation of THE SPACE BETWEEN among the flotsam onto the shores of the With Forkbeard’s famed mix of visual trickery workshops are a chance to develop skills in (n Brighton) see www.coachwerks.org.uk George Orwell’s 1984, Blind Summit combine n At The Space Between ISAN will be facilitating ghost village at Chesil Beach and conspire and film, and nods at Edward Lear and The ter 2009 / 2010 / 2009 ter performing Greek tragedy in mask, working physical theatre, puppetry and music to in-depth discussions of issues critical to the to spin a yarn of smuggling, dastardly deeds Emperor’s New Clothes, this new production is creatively on the text of Euripides’ Bacchae with THE SPEAKING DANCER create a cutting-edge and thought-provoking development of the outdoor arts sector, as well and wicked adventures. Deeply rooted about the highs and lows of creativity and the a small group willing to collaborate together on Directed by Jacky Lansley and taking place performance. At Battersea Arts Centre 7 as providing a great opportunity for networking within the rugged landscape of Dorset, and paralysis of indecision. Touring nationally from interpreting and performing the play in masks. at the Studio, The Speaking December – 9 January. See and information sharing. The programme will presented in Angel Exit’s trademark style, October 2009. The company is also now taking The series of workshops might be developed into Dancer: Interdisciplinary Performance Training www.blindsummit.com be a lively mix of presentations, practical Moonfleet joins live music from an original early bookings for its two Summer Schools, 2-9 a production. Dates to be arranged in autumn/ is a professional development programme open activity, debate, discussion and networking. score, striking physicality, puppetry and July and 16-23 July 2010, and its February short winter 2009. See www.chrisvervain.btinternet. to dancers, actors and performance artists BOTTLEFED Experienced speakers and facilitators will lead with a graduate or postgraduate qualification ensemble storytelling to weave together local courses. For details see the sessions and maximum input will be sought co.uk or email [email protected] After successful performances of Hold Me Until and/or three years professional experience in legends, sea shanties and the area’s hidden You Break in Iceland and Switzerland, Bottlefed www.forkbeardfantasy.co.uk from the delegates to explore specific issues history. Based on Falkner’s classic coming- CLOWN THROUGH one of the performing arts (can be combined is back in London to develop the piece into an in greater detail. Featuring keynote addresses with visual practice). For more info on the of-age love story, Moonfleet is currently HORSE + BAMBOO THEATRE from Jeremy Deller, Lyn Gardner and Pax Nindi, installation with live music. Research days and MASK COURSE programme and also hiring the Studio see www. touring the UK, with dates including Croydon work in progress performances are scheduled Award-winning Horse + Bamboo Theatre The Space Between will be held at the Assembly Coinciding with the London International Mime jackylansley.co.uk or email drs@jackylansley. Clocktower 26 November; Rondo Theatre, Bath to take place at BAC 12 & 13 November. Kathrin present Deep Time Cabaret, an exciting new Rooms, Derby 18-20 November. See Festival, Jonathan Young (Shams Theatre) com 3 & 4 December; and Bridport Arts Centre 12 Yvonne Bigler, one of Bottlefed’s co-artistic production from one of Europe’s leading visual www.streetartsnetwork.org.uk will again be leading this intensive, month- December. For full dates see directors, was invited as one of twelve theatre companies. The show is a humorous and long training in contemporary clowning from www.angelexit.co.uk European artists to take part in ENPARTS anarchic production that mixes theatre, Eastern 4 January 2010. A bold synthesis of Native SKYLIGHT CIRCUS ARTS CONFLUX Campus’ The Electric Body at La Biennale di European absurdism, folk songs and dances American and European clowning traditions, Children as young as five and adults of all ages Based at The Arches, Glasgow Conflux is a new BASH STREET THEATRE Venezia in September/October 2009. In 2010 with film and animation to create a visually participants go on a visionary journey, each can enjoy learning circus skills this autumn with project that will develop a voice for Scottish Bash Street performed The Station for the last Bottlefed is involved in Mapping Pathways, a evocative and powerful story about the wonder making and wearing six masks, which then Rochdale’s Skylight Circus Arts. Bridging sport artists working in street arts, physical theatre time in the UK earlier this year at the x.trax project that will deepen the involvement of of the universe and our place in it. Directed by becomes the basis for a powerful, non-ego and the arts, everyone can find something for and circus. Conflux will create opportunities Platform 4 Piccadilly festival in Piccadilly the arts in mental health settings. See Bob Frith with music by Loz Kaye and puppet based way of clowning. Veronica Cohen from them at circus school. Intensive one-to-one for the development of existing professionals Gardens, Manchester in September. The www.bottlefed.org or email [email protected] design and direction by Alison Duddle. For Barabbas described the course as ‘by far the classes in aerial technique are also available as well as for a new generation of artists. from Mish Weaver of Stumble Dance Circus, show has already been well received at major adults and young people (11+). These professional and emerging artists will most productive, supportive and informative festivals in Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, See www.horseandbamboo.org route into clown I have so far encountered’. an innovative performer and teacher whose be showcased at Conflux festivals in 2010 and work is on the cutting edge of contemporary Spain and Poland this year. After last year’s tour 2012, with eyes firmly fixed on further chances Places limited. For more information see to the commissioning festivals, the company METRO-BOULOT-DODO www.shamstheatre.org.uk or email circus. Mish will teach a wide range of trapeze afforded by the Commonwealth games in 2014. re-rehearsed the show quite radically in the MBD are pleased to announce they’ve been [email protected] techniques along with a whole new approach to For more information on Conflux’s plans for the aerial choreography. For course dates and times closed season, and then spent a further four- commissioned to create Whispers from a future see www.conflux.co.uk see www.skylightcircusarts.com day residency at the Dommelhof creation centre Rickshaw by the Igniting Ambition Programme NOMADIC ACADEMY OF FOOLS in Neerpelt, Belgium in May doing some extra in the East Midlands. Taking place entirely in a The new Nomadic Academy of Fools had its INTERNATIONAL adjustments. The result is a more streamlined moving rickshaw, Whispers will be an intimate Conflux: Al Seed first week on the road at the Actor’s Space show, with a new twist in the relationships the chipolatas street arts experience featuring stunning The Fooligan in Catalonia at the end of September, with PHYSICAL THEATRE LAB between the characters and a punchier start to audio, an intriguing narrative, beautiful artwork Organised by IUGTE & ArtUniverse, this weekend workshops and performances by the proceedings. The Station is now available and a dizzying ride around a city. Made in Physical Theatre Lab offers intensive practical Jonathan Kay and also a nearly complete for booking by all festivals in 2010. collaboration with Ling Peng, a classically training, lectures and discussions for actors of CHIPOLATAS Richard II performed by the newly galvanised See www.bashstreet.co.uk trained Chinese musician, Whispers from a physical, dramatic, dance and musical theatres. In 2010 The Chipolatas will be 18! To celebrate A Company of Fools (made up of those who Rickshaw will be available in 2010. See Dancers, choreographers, circus performers the company are taking the street to the have trained in the Academy over the last two www.metro-boulot-dodo.com years). After that they headed to Pezenas in and directors welcome. The Lab takes place stage and working on a new piece, Gentlemen Southern France for October, and will be in at the historic 15th century Retzhof Castle in of the Road, a high energy performance Berlin in November and then back in Brighton Leitring bei Leibnitz, a beautiful town located mixing physical feats with live squeezebox for December. For more details see www. within 30 minutes of Austria’s Graz Thalerhof and breakbeats. Three musical clowns tap jonathankay.co.uk or email Airport, 22-27 February. Accommodation into themes that are both traditional and [email protected] and three meals per day are organised for contemporary, embracing the old and the new, participants. The working language is English. transcending trends and creating a timeless See www.iugte.com quality. The emphasis is on celebration, generating a contagious energy between the performers and the public. See www.chipolatas.com 38 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 39 company updates 41

MPANY Shadow Play , a dark physical O , a new show for TRE C LIGHT A

G rg.uk o N , is in London 21 & 22 November THE KED The Dreadful Hours g light ked How Cold My Toes n Tmesis VELLI ESIS theatre. A l npac velli NPAC M u a ta including a four-week run at Bristol Old Vic over have joined forces with urban dance company half a piano. See www.unpacked.org Fittock on Festival in November, and so far includes some www.tmesistheatre.com 3-6 March before embarking on a national tour. website for venues and dates. The company will will be shown in development at the Suspense by Javier Marzan (Peepolykus) and will open at journey through the seasons. A coproduction with Bristol Old Vic and Birmingham Rep, the Liverpool Everyman Theatre and writer Chris then to The Royal Exchange Studio, Manchester Champloo to take young audiences on a magical Christmas. See www.travlight.co.uk U room. In their new home they are currently Settlement with offices, a meeting room, suppress the endless promise and idealism piece, summer and are now installed in Barton Hill storage space and a beautiful light rehearsal show will tour nationally 22 October – 17 April, of those first sparks of limitless love. The old and new stories, a monstrous hoover, and everyday realities of suburban isolation slowly T TR at The Pleasance Theatre, Islington. See ages 2+. The team that created also be making some new work, a little of which comedy exploring what happens when the company’s first piece with a writer is directed creating The Liverpool Everyman February,11-13 going The company’s successfully re-worked first Tmesis Theatre are collaborating with The Travelling Light have moved base over the This winter Unpacked are touring their show Jumping Mouse around the UK – see their o tr t

RES È Lipsynch TI N N . An exploration RO S F mpany IRDS DIVISIO o , will be touring UK schools showcases first at Operahuset AN O S C tre c ER B S a A I TRE Â Contes Dorés esis the improvisation. For further details of The Fiasco 8-12, With the support of Arts Council England and Wahlverwandte (Germany) and Persona working towards two new productions in 2010, [email protected] work called Happiness [END] with fifty over 65s and fifty 12-16 year olds to from the French-speaking world, these gold- beginning work on a site-specific production. Lawrence (Kneehigh) and Maryam Hamidi (A Ex Machina in the epic nine-hour Moments Peace Theatre). The company will Montreal, 27 February–14 March 2010. In the De Salvo), Chris Thorpe (Unlimited), Mandy Division’s activities see www.thefiascodivision. themed stories are told with the company’s trademark use of physical theatre, original tsf.org.uk or email [email protected] Nordfjord in Norway, before arriving in London 26 November 2009 for a month of further 2010, The Fiasco Division will be collaborating Gestion Cultural (Canary Islands), Theater music, mask and shadow puppetry. TSF’s meantime, TSF is devising a new multi-lingual Sheffield Theatres, The Paper Birds have just undertaken an R&D period at The Lyceum See www.thepaperbirds.com or email Spain, Germany and Cyprus. For more see www. scratch and development. January – March production, Islands, in collaboration with MCB show in the UK spring 2010 before going to of laughing, crying and cathartic climaxes, THE PAP THÉ THE F artistic directors John Cobb and Sarah Kemp as it goes on its world tour, next appearing in continue touring In a Thousand Pieces while continuing their R&D development as well as create a new work through game structures and com or email [email protected]. continue to perform with Robert Lepage and TSF’s French production for children aged The Fiasco Division are developing a new Happiness [END] Theatre alongside Alex Murdoch (Cartoon Theatre Co (Cyprus). It is planned to tour the January-March 2010. Based on two fairytales m ti , Odyssey M Behind the Mirror ITU N IR I The Terror ofThe Terror Happiness! A NF I Behind the Mirror and R+D D ORS Odyssey and m TRE A TRE C A A itu n ir i a is sleeping, and a small child is lost behind a information see www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk half remembered details of times and places, hearted and buys coffee at the station. A lover were also picked out from 400 applicants for from Rose Bruford and Goldsmiths College, became a critically acclaimed sell-out success bustling streets of London to the centre of a Kicking off with Arts Council funding for their Mann picking up The Stage Award for Best to Island Gardens. A daughter wakes light- the Exchange Theatre’s Residency Programme to create a production that is immersive and their debut production, New collective Theatre Corsair will perform result of an investigation into female persona Solo Performer. summer the company’s latest show sell-out UK tour of set design with new text and promenade performance. Bringing together graduates on their forthcoming production, the company of Arts, Theatre Corsair work collaboratively detailed, transporting the spectator from the darkened room: text flies overhead; there are or email [email protected] THE THE at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with George are available for touring in 2010; for more again this winter at the Amersham Arms. The and the use of the actor’s self when building and current students from Camberwell College changing faces and a chase through the night closed door. See www.theatrecorsair.com character, the production combines intricate Theatre Ad Infinitum have had an amazing year. nf – The Orchard Project, in New York. Then this d i ors tre c tre a a a the the Money

TRE A Beach Road is a tale of THE E T N CAP The Idiot Colony the starting point is true , is based on a book of letters exchanged imprisoned Soviet dissident, living in Kishinev, is unknown. If it were built today it would is Shunt’s first full company show since 2006. in Bermondsey Street, audiences are led inside with family of Marina Aidova, the daughter of an www.redcapetheatre.co.uk beginning to disappear from the east coast of Road will be written in collaboration with RedCape Theatre have been working on England – literally falling into the sea. Beach Moldova. Scheduled for first performances in two new shows. technology. The original purpose of the machine RED then be performed in Moldova. See that Golden Age, colossal bulk was the plat the empire is just around the corner. them. At 42-44 Bermondsey Street, London SE1. New York playwright Suli Holum. RedCape’s 2011, Amnesty’s 50th anniversary, the play will In a tobacco warehouse by London Bridge Performances until 31 December, Tuesdays- SHU Saturdays. See www.shuntmoney.co.uk second upcoming piece, From Newbury With swimming, and trying to turn back the tide. As stories: stories from communities which are sits the giant centrepiece of a great industrial premiere at The Corn Exchange, Newbury and probably fit into the palm of your hand, but, in set built in the centre of an empty warehouse defiance, a shrinking island, synchronised du jour. The future is behind us. The end of exposition – an abandoned relic of Victorian antiquarian booksellers in Newbury, and the and the action unfolds around, above and below Love

Taking place in an extraordinary three-storey 1971-1986 between Harold & Olive Edwards, Dinner The Tempest TRE A THE rary theatre tre o a H A M 4 e the ntemp SH OR o I F , an installation for people with early- cap T A ng c i AJN L red p its audience in a shared feast. Devised and insight into a defining moment in the country’s leading to a finale which delightfully embraces history. As the performance space transforms listings. Platform 4 have also just finished was President of the United States, Ustinov and Liverpool’s Unity Theatre in England. At Bonnie Bird Theatre, Laban 21 East and South West of England – including Leicester Curve 21-23 January; The Pound, March. See the company’s website for full R P this Autumn to venues across the South, South November and Colchester Arts Centre 25 November. See www.rajnishah.com Created during the era when George W. Bush Corsham 29 January; and Bath Theatre Royal Platform 4 are touring their take on video artist Lucy Cash. Funded by Arts Council rights, ownership, hopes, harvest and division, performed in collaboration with costume designer Lucille Acevedo-Jones and film and onset dementia in association with the Nuffield gently uncovers sub-themes of consumerism, and shifts through extraordinary images, it

Theatre. See www.platform4.org Palace with America provides a gentle but provocative A Midsummer Night at the Starlight Picture lo e v Around A ) and Floor Plan l theatre - de ta , a cabaret take TRE o t War Horse A Footsbarn for ZOR A THE The Mill previews at the R H S E TC A R AM’ NBA A KH 40 E ie P C IE OL n in contemporary devised theatre. Openbatch international touring. For more info see www. for the National Theatre’s work in a wheel of wood and steel – suspended from Dartington College of Arts and specialising while undertaking her usual busy schedule of beyond your control. Directed by Toby Sedgwick breaks down the areas of devising into gesture, Lowry, Manchester 7 December and the Wales Experience the sweat, grind and grit of physical Millennium Centre 12 December, premiering at the London International Mime Festival 19-21 (Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer taking on two new performers to augment the core company, text, topic, technology and composition – with Devising’ workshops to students. theatre company made up of seven graduates N N they will be developing ideas for a show Nola Rae will be joining NIE are undertaking a twenty-day research and 22 December – 3 January. Nola is also Openbatch Theatre is a new Bristol-based musicians. Travelling from Antwerp to Columbia, new work and current touring shows see www. nie-theatre.com nolarae.com requirements. See www.openbatchtheatre. researching a new show for children for 2010 six metres in the air and powered by the performers – where a seemingly small decision show Floor Plan and offering ‘Introduction to setting, with the use of a live soundtrack and performing director. Openbatch’s workshop or action can gather momentum and impetus during their residency there. For more details on on Shakespeare, at Shakespeare’s Globe on a family show based on Jules Verne’s development voyage this November, sailing on each session tailored specifically to the school’s exploring the tales and music linked to the sea. explores the individual vs the group in a factory are currently touring their first professional at BAC. Join them for scratch performances a banana boat freighter with eight actors and O O co.uk or email [email protected] Footsbarn Christmas Cracker the World in 80 Days with development time Then in December the company will be working January. See www.ockhamsrazor.co.uk

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 21 | issue 04 | winter 2009 / 2010