Stan's Cafe

New Stan's Cafe Website

2009-11-10T20:17:00.004Z

We have just launched our new website - well really it's just a new homepage - but the idea is that that now becomes more like a blog - a page that we will update more regularly, that will be able to talk about more things and that you will be able to comment on.

So from now on for all your Stan's Cafe needs you need simply visit www.stanscafe.co.uk

Kellerman at Warwick Arts Centre

2009-11-09T13:32:00.000Z

We looking forward to going to Warwick Arts Centre on Wednesday to see Kellerman. the latest piece to be directed by our old mentor Pete Brooks. For the last few years he has been teaming up with a company called Imitating the Dog and there is some excitement around seeing what he’s come up with now.

James

Ellroy is Back

2009-11-04T14:51:00.002Z

It's been a long time coming but James Ellroy is back with a new novel, Blood's A Rover. This event doesn't cause the excitement in the Caff camp that it once may have. Back in the day when Amanda introduced his work to us I imagine it was like Heroine being introduced to Miles Davies' band, none of us managed to do any work until we'd exhausted the supply of L.A. Noire.

It may sound nuts but the writing in Home of the Wriggler was influenced by Ellroy's increasingly boiled down style. Given how epigramic his last novel was I he has continued the boiling down process this one will consist entirely of acronyms.

Kindle @ A E Harris 2

2009-11-01T10:49:00.002Z

The Kindle Eat Your Heart Out show had its press night tonight, which I was kindly invited to. They've made a fantastic job of dressing the space, right from the hand painted Box Office sign, though the upturned car and dried leaves in the courtyard, giving us jam jars for the bar drinks and on through the show. There is live music and a meal, a feast in every way.

Nina Smith puts in a great performance as The Aide (essentially the narrator and guide through this promenade performance), charming and terrifying by she is Peggy Mitchell gone worse. Three gurning cooks show up, they are charged by their Queen with cooking us, the audience, a meal. This is a tall order, not because there are thirty of us, but because theirs is a post food dystopia. Every where we look there is ‘stuff’ piled high, but none of it edible. There have been all kinds of disasters, natural and man-made and as a consequence, the world has been stripped of every edible morsel, except of course the people.

Much of the show is scene setting. The Aide and The Cooks explain their world, history and challenge. We are given time to explore the scenery, which is spectacular in scale and rewarding in its fine detail. When everything has been explained and explored the time arrives to enter the spectacular white dinning room and to eat the exotic dishes the cooks have managed to summon up for us.

Opinion was divided about the meal. The set-up led people to be cautious about the food, but I’m not squeamish I thought it was all delicious. This period of eating was an enjoyable opportunity to talk with fellow guests about the show and its themes. With eating over the drama wraps itself up with the evening’s strongest piece of text.

Whilst Kindle’s cranked up performance style isn’t one I usually seek out, I did enjoy it in this context very much. Their use of live music, including singing and a small band was always strong and their use of the space spectacular. As always when promoting a show independently the challenge is always to draw an audience. I would urge people to go to say you’ve been. You will probably enjoy it and even if you’re not a fan at the very least it will give you some fantastic stories to talk about over dinner.

James

Arts Council Annual Review

2009-10-29T20:44:00.000Z

Each year we are called to check in at the Arts Council Offices to talk through our annual return, how what we did last year matched with what we said we would do and then to set out what is happening this year and what future prospects look like.

Nick, Charlotte and I rocked up for it on Thursday and it was as uneventful as ever, which is probably no bad thing, drama in these meetings would probably only ever be bad news.

James

Kindle @ A E Harris

2009-10-29T07:20:00.002Z

Kindle open their new show Eat Your Heart Out @ A E Harris today. A previous blog said their set was vast, well it's grow considerably since then. The caterers have now moved in too (the show feeds you into the bargain), they have brought with them an impressive amount of very impressive looking catering kit. If there's any justice in the world their enormous hard work should be rewarded with sell-out crowds.

There is now a video trailer for those who are intrigued.

James

Artists Taking The Lead

2009-10-29T07:05:00.002Z

I had to go to the Arts Council website to find who had got the Artists Taking The Lead awards.
Does this mean I was out of the news-loop when they were announced, or has journalistic 'outrage' been exhausted where contemporary arts are concerned? Anyway, it was interesting to see who has chosen to do what where.

I was pleased to see that both Lone Twin and The Pacitti company have come up trumps, good luck to them. It's a challenging spin on the fund's terms that The Quay Brothers are coming over to collaborate with artists in Leeds.

To save this from becoming the blandest blog in the UK I have to say the West Midland's project, a Giant puppet of Lady Godiva leading a participatory performance with a cast of thousands, doesn't spark my interest, but then I'm just me, I'm sure others are excited by it.

Follow the link to make up your own minds.

James

Barter Economy

2009-10-21T22:36:00.000+01:00

The barter economy lives on. Today the Power Plant team met in our offices whilst we were all variously away and in exchange Jony Easterby fixed our dodgy door handle, ideal.

Where’ve we been? We can’t tell you because:

1: Charlotte is on holiday and we don’t want the paparazzi getting to her.

2: Craig and I have been working on a Steps Series installation which must remain secret until half-term is up in Leicestershire (there's a clue there for the tenacious).

James

Things to See and Do

2009-10-19T21:55:00.002+01:00

A massive set has been constructed @ A E Harris by Kindle Theatre for their production Eat Your Heart Out. At first glance the casual observer may think the tickets quite dear but there is an insane amount of stuff in the plus, live music and food plus they've been working manically hard for ages on it, so essentially it's three nights out in one go and thus good value I would imagine. The show opens on 29th October and runs until 8th November (no show on 2nd November). Follow the link for tickets.

http://kindletheatre.co.uk/?p=428

If the good folk of Birmingham value @ A E Harris as a venue then it would be great to see a good crowd turning out for that show and making it a success.

Whilst @ A E Harris has Kindle installing and devising their vast new show in one area, Little Earthquake are quietly working away devising their new touring show, The Houdini Exposure in a smaller corner of the space. Earlier this year I enjoyed their previous production and expect more magic (literally and perhaps figuratively) in Wolverhampton’s Arena on 30th & 31st October.

http://www.little-earthquake.com/diarypage.htm

Finally: time is running out to get my life logistics sorted for seeing Action Hero perform at Warwick Arts Centre. I saw their piece A Western in Edinburgh and liked it very much. It was very simple, engaging and nicely judged. It will be interesting to see how this piece relates to that one.

http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/events/theatre/watch-me-fall

James

Another Award

2009-10-19T21:54:00.000+01:00

Late last week our collaboration with A E Harris won The Clark Associates Arts and Business Cultural Branding Award. The trophy was a glass sculptural item, quite heavy and delicate enough for us to be relieved it’s going to live in a cabinet somewhere in Harris HQ.

The evening was quite snappy. Craig in his Stan’s Cafe Award Suit appeared to be providing the nights glitzy celebrity sheen until it turned out Patrick Stuart was on hand dish out the glass sculptural items. Previous awards ceremonies have used recorded snatches of famous TV theme tunes to welcome people on stage, here the music was incomparably better, being provided live by the Hot House Big Band. In a further impressive innovation the organisers had booked Stage 2 Youth Theatre to run the technical aspect of the show, which was all very slick. All the awards were ripped through at a brisk pace and we were off into the night, for a small celebratory beer – slightly over-dressed for the pub, but who cares.

James

Ford-ist Approach

2009-10-06T21:37:00.002+01:00

It's always interesting to learn how things work on the factory floor. It sounds from Graeme's blog entry, linked to here, that there's something Ford-ist about the process of delivering The Cleansing of Constance Brown.

James

Constance Brown In Montpellier: Nearly Over

2009-10-02T12:55:00.001+01:00

Constance Brown has nearly done its thing in Montpellier. The show is in good shape. We’ve been deploying the British Cycling Team’s principle of constantly trying to find marginal improvements in every aspect of the show to make the whole show better. To the mock chagrin of Ray Newe I now particularly like a moment after The Mirrors scene in which all the doors are closed and there’s no one in the corridor. The corridor is a powerful presence in the show and this moment, with lights on full behind the doors and thus the corridor criss-crossed with needle thin lines of light, although it carries no intrinsic meaning, is powerful and seemingly important nonetheless. Nina after a extended period of negotiations with the mixing desk has perfected a very pleasing way of getting to silence following the exit of ‘the orange billowing mass’. Where previously she’d always been disappointed having to fade the music out (the duration of orange mass billowing is notoriously variable), now she is delighted to cut the source of the music dead and with swirl of reverb.

Of All The People In All The World is still looking good in Montpellier and one presumes, in Aberystwyth where Jack is gearing up to give his first Stan's Cafe talk. Go Jack go!

James

Welcome to the new Fierce.

2009-10-02T00:24:00.001+01:00

Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison made a sure-footed debut as co-directors of Fierce this evening. In the back bar downstairs at The Big Peg an impressive crowd of ‘faces’ from Birmingham, London and elsewhere were gathered for their welcoming. After Alan Rivett, Chair of the Fierce, gave a brief introduction the pair shared a short presentation in which they read what was part travelogue/part low key manifesto over a series of slides taken on an orientation trip around Birmingham.

The presentation was well judged, unusual without being flash, poetic without being self-congratulatory, modest in that they hid them behind their text, yet also open in their willingness to ‘be arty’ and put themselves on the line in that way. The crowd were behind them and appreciative. It’s a long journey for them but all seems set fair.

An interesting aspect of the evening was the number of people who were up from London. Laura and Harun have most recently been working at Battersea Arts Centre and seemed to bring a fair crowd of followers with them. The mingling of local and London talent was provocative. With the Fierce pair intending to live in Birmingham this will hopefully be a step towards a further opening of the boarders between the two cities.

It was a good evening to catch up with, and meet for the first time, many people who should be known. In particular I was pleased to meet Geraldine Pilgrim, whose former company Hesitate and Demonstrate scholars of British Physical/Visual Theatre will be familiar with by name if nothing more. She was great to talk with and so, taking a wild punt, I presumed she must know the excellent Alan Dix, who we met properly for the first time a couple of weeks ago in Montpellier. I guessed they must have been part of the Leeds Performance axis in the early 80s. Sure enough they know each other well and I’m left marvelling what must have been kicking off in Leeds around that time, knowing that ‘our very own’ Andy Watson/Walker speaks fondly of it and was inspired by that whole scene. Maybe contemporary Birmingham can emulate that same urgent vibrancy in some small way…

James

Constance Brown In Montpellier: Get In

2009-09-27T08:17:00.000+01:00

The Montpellier get-in is super-smooth. Fresh from Mainz people are in the groove, it’s not such a memory stretch. The theatre’s floor is level and true, no chocking required. The local tech team is top notch. We are flying.

This is the six door version sat on their stage with seats taken out of their rake so the audience sit on the risers there are nine rows so a minimum capacity of forty five, but with bleacher style seating who knows, it could go higher if the audience show.

There is a plan afoot to have a back stage audience here, as in Toronto, except there with a balcony it was discreet and somehow detached. Here they will be in the wings and up close. With luck all performers have remembered to pack their industrial underwear.

James

Things to See and Do

2009-09-24T13:54:00.000+01:00

Between two trips to Montpellier I’m trying to take in a few cultural events with mixed success

I think I’ll get to experience a cut down version of Friction Arts and Dreams of Tall Buildings’ collaboration Residuum in Birmingham’s Back to Backs on Hurst Street, but was too late to book in for the guided tour version. The installation is there for a little bit so should be worth checking out.

The plan is to scoot from this 20 meters up the road and check out the new program from Birmingham Royal Ballet. There’s a BRB – Stan collaboration in the offing (don’t’ get excited, it’s very low) so it will be good to get immersed in that world a bit more (plus I’m fired up following a recent encounter with the Royal Flemish Ballet).

The casualty of the cultural week will be my planned trip to see the new New Macho show at the Belgrade Studio space in Coventry on Friday (it’s also on this Saturday). I have been really looking forward to it but it just doesn’t work out in terms of domestic logistics. I urge all others to go and tell me how it is.

James

Travelling Home From The Domaine d'O

2009-09-22T14:39:00.002+01:00

Yesterday marked the official start of our three-year relationship with Domaine d’O, a beautiful and intriguing venue in Montpellier. Set mostly within a formal walled garden the venue has a series of formal performance spaces inside and outside as well as untold potential for performances in less formal settings. For the opening we set up Of All The People All The World in the first floor gallery space of the Chateau d’O, where it runs for a fortnight. Next week this is joined by The Cleansing of Constance Brown, fresh from a great response and glowing reviews in Mainz, which will be squeezed, in its six-door version, onto the stage of Theatre d’O.

Then, in an extraordinary development, we are in their brochure for March with a question mark beside our name. We will be back, but with what no one yet knows. Throughout, the venue’s director, Christopher Crimes, has been determined upset convention. The launch of the reorganised venue and its first season was trailed merely by cryptic posters stating simply “La lune vous attend le 21 September au Domaine d’O” which I suspect means “the moon awaits you…”. The pre-season press-conference was held just an hour before gates opened to the public. Christopher didn’t give a big speech to the thousand people; he remained anonymous. Instead, instead with keys, pencils and brochures awaiting their annotations, the public were led in groups of ten, following various coloured lanterns, through the grounds and into ‘conversations’ with artists whose work would be seen later in the season.

Whilst 300 people visited Of All The People, Chris Dugrenier and I performed our Stan’s Cafe ‘conversations’ in a small dressing room behind the theatre. Chris acted as my interpreter as I introduced the company, it’s origins, history and philosophy. Unfortunately it turns out I’m an arrogant git and Chris exacts revenge via her unreliable translation, first of my words and then my thoughts. It felt like a neat little performance well received. It has however reminded me that I should avoid acting at pretty much all costs..

Finally, an observant reader may ask why this major arts event took place on a Monday evening. Well as previously noted Mr. Crimes is looking to break with convention and so, for the foreseeable future, and for reasons he has explained to me and mostly convinced me of, Domaine d’O will be following a lunar calendar.

James

Weather Reports

2009-09-20T22:04:00.001+01:00

It’s reassuring reading Billy’s show reports about how things are going in Mainz, it mostly sounds good, though there is a worrying sense of them also being weather reports. Whether it rains or not is a major consideration in the show and seemingly it has become as unpredictable as genuine rain in the UK.

Here in Montpellier it has been reliably sunny. Of All The People In All The World is taking shape at Domaine d’O. Everything is on course for tomorrow’s opening. Causing more anxiety is the small additional performance I am doing with Chris tomorrow.

About 1,000 people are expected for the launch of the venue’s new direction. They arrive knowing nothing about what is to happen and in the course of the evening get to have encounters with artists who will be appearing at the venue over the next three years we are on the agenda. The performance is conceptually very simple. I am doing and introduction to Stan’s Cafe, Chris is translating but the translation is unreliable.

My French is very poor and my ability to memories scripts appalling and in this performance I am required to speak French and stick to a script. Hopefully we find some time tomorrow afternoon to polish it up a bit.

James

Hubris Free Zone

2009-09-18T13:24:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago I appeared in the Birmingham Post’s Power 50 billed as “the 39th most influential person in the City” (or similar). Two days ago Friends of the Earth emailed to ask if, as the 39th most influential person in the City, I could set an example on 22nd September by cycling to work, I said I already did. Yesterday a schoolboy shouted “retard!” at me as I pedalled past. There’s no place for hubris in Birmingham.

James

Arts and Business Shortlist

2009-09-17T09:24:00.002+01:00

It has been such a pleasure dealing with the good people of A.E.Harris (Birmingham) Ltd as our landlords and partners in the great adventure that is @ A E Harris, our venue / rehearsal space experiment, that we decided they deserved a bit of acclaim. If more businesses were like them then so much more exciting stuff would be happening across the country. We thought if it got them lots of good publicity then many more companies would feel the incentive to follow their lead. As a result our partnership has been entered into the Jaguar Land Rover Awards for Arts & Business. The shortlists have just been announced and we are up for the Cultural Branding Award, so come 15ht October it will be time to dust off the smart clothes again.

james

All Steps Completed in Croydon

2009-09-16T22:54:00.003+01:00

Although not officially open until Friday, Odyssey Steps was completed today at Croydon Clocktower thanks to the heroic efforts of Simon, Denise and Jack. This means that come Saturday we will have two editions of the Steps Series open simultaneously.

Promoting Giant Steps in Birmingham we are left with that familiar fear. Will your marketing effort cost more than the ticket sales you draw in? I recall writing a report once for a venue’s marketing department and floating the idea that rather than advertising the shows we should have just gone out and given the tickets away. Strategically done this would have saved us money and ensured full houses – the problem with this strategy is you end up never making any money on anything. Any which way we are as keen as ever that swarms of people get to see the latest Stan’s Cafe offerings so please do pass the word around. A sneak preview of what's on offer can be found on the Giant Steps page of this website

As one Stan team dusts itself down in Croydon another is gearing up in Mainz for the German Premiere of The Cleansing of Constance Brown. The floor plan suggests a full seven door version should be possible, but often this counts for nothing in the face of the building itself.

Back home I’m having a rather dull time rounding up and herding onto a DVD nine stop frame animation videos we made with pupils in a Leicester at the end of last term. It’s one of those jobs far better done in the heat of the moment rather than having it weighing on your conscience throughout the summer.

James

Moseley Folk 2009

2009-09-13T00:42:00.002+01:00

It was a pleasure to be back at the Moseley Folk Festival again last weekend. The experience wasn’t quite as euphoric as last year, for which weather and other external factors play a big part.

The stuff I saw/heard was a slightly random cross section. As I know next to nothing about Folk music I didn’t actually turn up especially to see anything so probably missed all the best stuff. Here goes, the best things:

Meeting up with folk and folk again.
My all to few visits to the Purity Brewery tent
Frida Hyvonen who was mesmerising, terrifying and hilarious – Kate Bush gone bad.
Circulus’ first number which was fantastic.
Seeland (I think this was them. We had to leave during as Eve was a one person four year old mosh pit waiting to stage dive.
Demon Barber Roadshow was obviously very good value and contained my favourite act of the whole festival – the Black Swan Rappers (the link’s OK but live it’s something else again, I loved it).

and the worst things:

The only thing fully worthy of mention is Adrian Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds. Their ‘folk’ versions of ‘punk’ classics felt like a waste of stage time (they got a great reception though).
Having to go home and not meeting more folk or folk.

Thanks to Gerv and his whole team for a festival with a great atmosphere. We hope for more of similar next year. The Moseley Folk festival is a great asset to the city.

James

Giant takes his first Steps

2009-09-12T00:03:00.002+01:00

Giant Steps opened today in a very low key way, as part of this year’s ArtsFest. It is open all this weekend and for the next three weekends (4th October = Last Chance To See).

I am particularly happy with this edition of the Steps Series. It is targeted at families with young children. Eve has given it a four year old’s endorsement and I’m hoping that there will be enough wit and puzzles solving to keep parents and older siblings amused too.

Simon has done a fantastic job on the design as usual so it looks beautiful. @ A E Harris we have lots of space and none of the clutter we had to deal with in previous venues, so it all feels roomy and clean – ironically, given how dirty the place is.

Nina has come up trumps, knocking out a lovely 25 minute soundtrack in next to no time.

Lots of thanks have to go to Denise, Aby, Jack, Billy, Hannah and Eve for their sticking efforts, it be came a bit of a scramble in the end.

After loading the Constance set for it’s journey to Mainz and onward to Montpellier Jake and Clive have permanently fixed an enormous Stan’s Cafe banner to the side of the our building which should be comfortably visible on Google Earth if they stray at all from the perpendicular.

This weekend Simon is hunkered down in the Leicestershire countryside with his hot new MAC, utilising it’s new improved processing speed to the full generating graphics for Odyssey Steps which will open at Croydon Clocktower on Friday next week.

I won’t be there, or in Mainz, where Fiona Putnam will be making her debut for The Cafe deputising for Bernadette in Constance Brown. It feels badly wrong not to be at either of these high pressure Stan occasions but Eve has her own high pressure situation brewing as Monday is her first day at school and ultimately first things have to be first and I need to be there for that.

At the risk of making this an overly sentimental Dad style entry I leave you with this…
Eve did love charging around Giant Steps but once she’d left she did ask “will the proper show start tomorrow?” – worried she had gone all ‘well-made-play’ on me I quizzed her: “Like the racing show” she explained. That she considers a 24 Hour Scalextric race with full webcast commentary to be a ‘real show’ I take as a matter of great parental pride.

James

End of Edinburgh

2009-08-30T11:07:00.002+01:00

We're poised in the Cow Cafe at Underbelly ready for our final performance at this year's Festival. It has been good fun. Little Gem won the Carol Tambor award, which seems right. We have had enough encouraging audience responses and promoter interest to suggest that we will be peddling Home of the Wriggler around a bit more before it expires.

James

Carol Tambor Shortlist

2009-08-27T18:54:00.002+01:00

Home of the Wriggler has been shortlisted for the Carol Tambor award. Each year this award selects one production from the Edinburgh Fringe to receive a New York transfer.

The short list is short, we share the honour with just three other productions, these are: Crush, which I believe has already won a Fringe First, Little Gem which last year won an award at the Dublin Festival and Midsummer. The last two are running at Traverse whilst Crush shares Underbelly with us in one of the more popular slots.

Obviously the whole Wriggler team here are attempting to balance high excitement with modest expectations. Taking the show for a run in Manhattan would be amazing, but realistically we must be regarded as outsiders for the prize. Although we haven’t seen all the other shortlisted pieces it does sound as if they are relatively conventional plays compared to Home of the Wriggler. We are proud to be on the list and we’d consider it an honour to be taking to New York a collectively devised show, built from the modest stories of so many people who are remarkable only to those who love them.

The irony of course is that when we made the show it was the native British motor industry which was in crisis, now it America’s ‘big three’ face crisis of their own. A transfer across the Atlantic could be timely.

I'm posting this a bit late so by the time most read this we will know the result as it is all unveiled 11am tomorrow, Friday. Fingers crossed!

James

Four or Five performers.

2009-08-20T10:24:00.004+01:00

The first review of Home of the Wriggler has been published up here. Do you trust the judgment of a critic who can sit less than five meters from a show for seventy minutes and still get the number of performers wrong?

Admittedly sometimes shows are so befuddling in their choreography that its difficult to keep track of performer numbers or are so vast it's only at the curtain call that you can tot them up, but in Home of the Wriggler there are four of them and no one goes off, comes on, changes costume or even moves particularly fast.

I’m pleased to say the publication was not The Observer.

James

The Best and Ten Better

2009-08-18T22:20:00.000+01:00

Home of the Wriggler is up and running in Underbelly’s Belly Button space. The venue is very friendly and has a great atmosphere, the space is good for the show, small and intimate with the feel of a nuclear bunker. It comes with the added advantage of being so buried in stone and hillside that, “please turn off your mobile phones” is a redundant request; no one gets any kind of signal inside that venue.

We’re three shows in now. The first bounced along happily with an enthusiastic crowd. The second was fine but little more with a more reserved clientele. Today’s was very nice indeed. With a little time to get in and less time to get out significant re-rehearsal is ruled out, but we’ve been snipping, tweaking and polishing, the results are good, the show is the best it ever has been and I’m looking forward to more people coming.

If I have one remaining horror of the Fringe it is the whole promotional nightmare. Next time I must arrange it so we are on TV every week in front of hundreds of thousands of people and in so doing absolve myself of the guilt brought on by being spiritually incapable of handing out fliers. Things have been made a bit worse by the fact that our posters got lost somewhere in the venue over the two festival weeks before we arrived. Nick Sweeting had to be sent in like a terrier to flush them out.

With one show in full flow attention has turned to 49 Steps, which we are making for Dance Base, to open on Tuesday. Even in a venue familiar with free expression of the body our antics have drawn quizzical looks, possibly due to Craig and my un-dancer like inelegance as we plot out the actions of a dashing adventure story.

For those who believe in signs – and when it comes to theatre I often do – the first sign is good for this show. It was named 49 Steps as a statement of intent, “it will be like John Buchan’s book but 10 better”. Travelling up it was my intention to pace 49 steps up Dance Base’s main staircase and see where that got us. It turns out the very top step, the one which allows a view down through the glass roof into the main studio space, is the 49th step from the street. Perfect.

james

An 'Edinburgh Festival' top ten.

2009-08-16T00:46:00.002+01:00

Traveling up to Edinburgh I grew hugely enthusiastic about the whole thing and knocked our a back of envelope Top 10 Edinburgh show experiences. I enthusiastically emailed the rest of this year's Stan – Edinburgh crew saying "send me your Top 10 and I'll post them on the blog". Unfortunately the general response has been that they'd struggle to get 10, for various reasons, but for what it's worth here are mine and maybe other people's Top 3 will follow.

1) Johann Kresnick and the Bremen Dance Theatre’s Ballet version of Macbeth. It terrified and inspired me aged 20. Seminal.

2) Some Polish show at the Assembly Rooms (possibly also 20 years ago) with people running around in circles pretending to be horses for an hour or so. I didn’t really like it that much at the time but I’ve never been able to forget it and think I now like it more than I ever have. Unfathomable.

3) Watching the Sowetto Gospel Choir with Sarah and Eve two years ago. At the time Eve had zero tolerance for street performers, anyone in a costume or anyone engaged in ‘make believe’ more richly encoded than “you be the Doggy, I’ll be the Mummy”. This was the only thing we could persuade her to see, early one rainy morning. Joyous.

4) Pina Bausch, Nelken: Powerful in all the predictable ways. It made me wish I had seen everything she had ever done. Obviously.

5) Robert Wilson’s version of Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights The Lights. He became a hero of mine via photos, text and video now finally, with this show, he delivered for me live. Cool.

6) The Tuvan Throat Singers doing their throat singing thing. Saved going to Tuva. Extraordinary.

7) Hamfisted! Bound to Fly in some scummy venue 2001. I’d met them once in Birmingham for a chat and struck out on my own to find them on a rainswept Edinburgh night. I was rewarded with a show I had no idea how to take, which I loved. Proper.

8) The Joseph Beuys retrospective at the Modern Art Gallery. Waxy (and Felty)

9) Ray Lee Siren two years ago, partly for the piece, but also for the atmosphere, the company and the reunion. Comforting.

10) The Death of Klinghoffer, by Scottish Opera: no nonsense powerful staging. The performance that confirmed practically what I knew intellectually had to be true, that opera isn’t always an utter waste of time, effort and expense. Simple.

James

Is It Happening Again?

2009-08-15T00:29:00.000+01:00

iTunes has been left to roll on alphabetically and as thrown up Party Song, by Stan’s Cafe. The 7” Single we should have pressed, but never did. I love it. I’ve not heard it in years and I love it afresh. More than that, this love has sparked a very dangerous though/

@ A E HARRIS is the perfect venue for a revival of Lurid and Insane.

It would ROCK. This time we should actually hire that Helicopter.

Does anyone have a number for Andy Watson? Does Simon Webb still have his drum kit?

We should spark up People’s Radio Freedom again.

WE SHOULD GET THE BAND BACK TOGETHER!

James

Post Hols

2009-08-14T23:23:00.000+01:00

Holidays are great and this one was particularly good, being longer and more resolutely anti-work than usual. I was in no great hurry to get back, but couldn’t have asked for a better return to work week.

I returned to less than 200 emails in my in-box. My spam filter seems to work well and clearly most emails I receive are merely responses to those I send.

Lots of stuff had moved on in my absence. The majority of items on my long ‘to do NOW list’ were achievable and painless.

There was time in the rehearsal room with the Home of the Wriggler team. We had an almost secret pre-Edinburgh warm-up gig on Thursday night to an appreciative audience mostly composed of people who had been turned away when the show sold out earlier in the year.

I met with good people at Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and MAC about various collaborations and commissions (their scam filters appear to be on the blink). I also spent a couple of hours talking to a two different theatre makers about projects they are looking to get off the ground, ‘helping’ them with some ‘advice’.

Now I’m on a cool train to Edinburgh – St.Matthew’s Passion discreetly on the headphones, a spare seat beside me, a power socket feeding my laptop, dusk on the horizon and five further hours uninteruptable thinking time ahead. If the train were towards rather than away from the family everything would be perfect.

James

1mile² Johannesburg, South Africa

2009-08-12T11:15:00.002+01:00

You'd have to move pretty fast, but this looks like a dream opportunity for a relatively experienced artist interested in the environment, community activism and spending time in South Africa.

James

Balanced Coverage

2009-07-21T13:25:00.002+01:00

One problem with not reading the right wing press is that you lose track of what your enemy is up to. We're already expecting a nightmarish time once public spending comes under the cosh (or as Australian Cricket pundits would have it – under the pump), this article in the Daily Express is just setting the climate for the debate which is to come.

The Express are clearly not keen on debate as the option to discuss whether is better 'squandered' on arts or 20 Chinook Helicopters is unavailable on their site.

james

Pina Bausch

2009-06-30T23:18:00.002+01:00

Surely the choreographer Pina Bausch, who died today, was one of the most important artists working in any field during the last thirty years.

I defy anyone to come up with a cogent argument against this statement.

Pina Bausch has always been star by which Stan's Cafe has charted its course across the seas. Though the death of such a star is a just cause for mourn the joy of stars is that they shine so brightly and from so far away that their light continues to reach us long after they are gone. We shall continue to be guided by Pina Bausch, for us she will always be there.

James

The Last Week

2009-06-06T19:31:00.003+01:00

Monday: A small team of operatives descended on Montgomery School in Sparkbrook and had a really fun time letting teachers lose on Stop Frame Animation, Podcasting Kit, Fruit and Veg City Raw materials and inevitably, rice as people. They seemed to enjoy it all.

Tuesday: Mostly just meetings and e-mails and avoiding doing the intimidating jobs.

Wednesday: A meeting with Terry Grimley from Birmingham Post over at Warwick Arts Centre, which should lead to a piece in next Wednesday's paper. Then Craig and I polished Spy Steps up a bit. Including adding "New York, Moscow, Bejing, Coventry" under the four big clocks they have lined up in the foyer – I've got to post a picture of this at some point as Simon left demanding photographic evidence that we would carry out his last request.

Thursday: A trip to Leciester to sort out a major collaboration with a school over there. It's looking good. Much stop-frame action this term before a more significant collaboration next year.

Friday: Unpacking a shipping container, moving a seating bank, clearing up a load of stuff from the space, marking out a ludicrously ambitious Scalextric track, fit together and test the first six pieces.

Saturday: A bit obsessive drag family over to space to fit and test a few more lengths of scale. Get a text to look in the Guardian Guide where Lynn Gardner has kindly done a preview for Spy Steps and said nice things about the company along the way.

Tonight we start celebrating Craig's 40th Birthday.

James

Spys Steps is GO.

2009-05-28T23:51:00.002+01:00

A seriously long day was worked on Wednesday and at its conclusion Spy Steps was done. There are a few minor details we still want to improve, but it's essentially all done and we're proud of it. Ultimately the get-in consisted of five days prep and one day blitzing Warwick Arts Centre with vinyl. Whilst frantically adhering we were regularly interrupted with questions about the project and congratulations on it. So the feeling is currently pretty good about the piece.

This is the big flash younger brother of Dance Steps, which we made last year. Spy Steps makes full uses of WAC's big expanses of stone floor and plate glass. It revels in it's own on site vinyl cutter and for the well rehearsed, Nina's music makes the whole thing become not just fun, but very exciting indeed (at least I think so and I'm the only one to have experienced it like this so far, which gives us 100% approval rating, maybe we should quit whilst ahead).

Whilst the soundtrack is played each day over the venue's P.A. system at 1 and 6pm the real trick is going to be getting it available online as an MP3 so people can charge around with it on their headphones. Although I have been induced to create a Spy Steps facebook group I have yet to work out how to post the MP3 there for download, which is humiliating and has also prevented me promoting the group to 'all' my 'friends' (are all my 'friends' Electric? let's hope not).

James

Penny Dreadful Theatre

2009-05-25T20:05:00.003+01:00

Our esteemed collaborator Bernadette Russell, who was part of the devising team for Home Of The Wriggler and The Cleansing Of Constance Brown, has been commissioned to write a piece for the the theatre company Penny Dreadful. The show called Missionary's Position is currently on tour in the UK and will be at The Custard Factory Theatre this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'm planning on being there, and recommend it as potentially a good night out. Bernadette's great to work with, she has a strong personal aesthetic and is full of ideas, so I'm keen to hear what the text will be like. Penny Dreadful aren't dreadful at all. I saw their show Bitches Ball in Edinburgh a couple of years ago and it was engaging and well performed, so there we go, that's the plug. Possibly see you there.

James

Planning Ahead

2009-05-22T06:23:00.002+01:00

As, amidst all its other activity, Stan’s Cafe scrambles to promote 24 Hour Scalextric, which takes place in less than a month time and Spy Steps which opens in less than a week, it was shocking to receive Ex Cathedra’s 2009/10 brochure through the post urging us to book for their Rachmaninoff Vespers concert on Wednesday 23 June NEXT YEAR!

James

Spy Steps: Day 2

2009-05-21T23:43:00.000+01:00

Late yesterday afternoon Simon and Craig got the great vinyl cutter sparked up and expertly tamed – it pays to buy expensive kit. Today the three of us paced the whole sequence out, resolving a few glitches and intelligent kinks. I’d had some thoughts on the train, they last night. Nina turned up to talk sound. One of the new innovations for this version of the show is to play a soundtrack through the foyer for the audience/performers to synch their action to. As a consequence a few hours were spent with Nina attempting to imagine how long certain sections of the soundtrack may need to be and when specific spot effects are required. The foyer sound system seems beefy enough and Nina was grinning widely, so it could all sound good.

Simon got his head down to designing a host of new icons for the show whilst Craig and I paced out scenes and bounced text ideas and refinements back and forth until we have most of a script we’re happy with.

It’s all coming together… so far.

James

Spy Steps: Day 1

2009-05-20T23:28:00.000+01:00

Day One proper of the Spy Steps devising/get in: Simon, Craig and I did a day at Warwick Arts Centre a couple of months ago and started to sketch out plans and possibilities, now the serious work begins.

The piece starts to form itself as the only clear logical outcome once a host of competing desires and imperatives are pitted against each other. There are architectural features of the Arts Centre that demand to be used and those place practical constraints on us. There are narrative and choreographic incidents that nominate themselves for a place somewhere within the piece. There are visual ideas, which suggest themselves for inclusion for their own sake but need to be bound into the piece. Our narrative is the algorithm which pulls these variable together to equal Spy Steps.

We have a confident swagger with the ‘Steps Series’ now. With Dance Steps at MAC last year we learnt a bit about how the idea works. Now, at WAC, we have a more open building with larger surfaces to work on. Choosing to make a genre piece has given us a host of existing references to draw on, short-hands audiences will immediately recognise and allow us to be more playful and ambitious. We have improved vinyl handling technique, a better sense of what is possible and, perhaps most importantly, we now have our own vinyl cutter.

It’s a relatively expensive piece of kit but as precision cut vinyl is the show’s primary media it seems like a sensible investment. Previously Simon’s designs have taken a minimum of 24 hours to come back from cutting shop, now we can do our own in minutes. This allows us to be more flexible, ambitious and experimental. We probably only need to do two or three more gigs before the machine has paid for itself and of course in the worst case scenario that we don’t get any more gigs, at least we can improve signage @ A E Harris.

James

Misquoted Numbers

2009-05-14T16:45:00.002+01:00

Of All The People In All The World is now open in both Toronto and Bristol. With Home of the Wriggler also in Bristol today and tomorrow, so it's busy times.

The show got a big feature piece in Toronto's Globe and Mail, it's a decently written piece but embarrassingly most of the numbers are misquoted. Which is a blow.

Back at home things are cranking up as the end of the academic year approaches. Most excitingly it looks as if we will finally get to stage Suzie Small Lifts A Car in collaboration with Mark Anderson. More details on this will follow, but the clue as to the action is in the title. Much like the forthcoming 24 Hour Scalextric.

James

Toronto Get In Day 1

2009-05-04T04:09:00.003+01:00

The container was nearly two hours late arriving but the driver redeemed himself somewhat by pulled off a precision reversing manoeuvre and thus allowing our swarm of technicians to unload in record time.

I fouled up first by not spotting immediately that the numbered doors were being set up where the lettered doors should have been and vice versa. Then it was revealed that I’d misjudged the placement of the flooring and everyone had to put their shoulders in to slide the whole construction 94cm forward. These things happen when I’m left to my own devices. People seemed to take it in good heart. The Enwave’s impressively level floor obviated the need for any painful chocking. Steve is a born Pin Man and in tandem we soon had the doors hung. When Craig and Graeme, ‘fresh’ from the airport, poked their heads in the set was up and looking good.

In Bucharest Alex was Bernadette, here she is to be Jan. By lunch she’d been though her costumes, turned up a pair of trousers and is ready to join Bernadette, Gerard and Gareth on a sightseeing adventure. Nina’s sound is plumbed in. She’s remixed things again and promised us “20% more audio excitement”, which sounds like a bold, does the dial go up to 11?

Over here we’re on 110V power, down from Europe’s 240V. Arvo’s cooked up a plan and a mixture of local lights and step-up transformers, our lighting desk plugged via their lighting desk into their dimmer racks seems to be doing the trick. The fans appear to be cranked up as much as the ever have been, which is good news for those charged with wrangling the Orange Billowing Mass. Low power fans leads to a flaccid mass and no one wants that, least of all the wranglers.

James

Easy as Pi

2009-05-03T02:01:00.005+01:00

Sit up in a foyer waiting for co-workers to haul in from Manchester, England: beat the jet-lag by staying up forever.

National Express was weirdly painless, despite being the 02.45 Birmingham to Heathrow.
Check in and all else was smooth. The long haul flight helped me solve an e-mail in-box overload.

A photo of The Cleansing of Constance Brown has recently appeared in an A-level text book, so as a Maths, Physics, Geography boy, I took the chance to see the kind of thing A-level Theatre students need to know. I can seen now why I didn't take that option – Physics is far more my thing. Air Canada's in-flight entertainment included an option of Canadian films, a number of them short. My favourite was Easy As Pi, an engaging documentary about kids from a University Maths Soc. reciting Pi to ridiculous degrees of accuracy; that's their thing.

Once imigration and customs sorts grudgingly agreed that Billy could linger a while in their country we were free to install ourselves on the 33rd floor of a Harbour side hotel (free lobby wi-fi). Later I bullied Billy and Alex into walking from 0 – 1184 West Queen Street to an Ethiopian restaurant I had spotted in our welcome pack. The walk was exciting, the city impressive. A band played from the back of a Budget rental van. Darth Vader and storm troopers guarded a comic shot. Every other shop boasted another fresh specialism. Fortunately our meal justified the march, it was delicious.

Tomorrow, bright an early, the work begins.

James

John Wood and Paul Harrison, recommended

2009-04-30T22:58:00.003+01:00

I was delighted to learn that John Wood and Paul Harrison had an exhibition showing at Ikon in Birmingham as it's year's since I have seen any of their work and I think it's wonderful.

Today, despite not officially having time, I called in to see it. The fear was that if I waited until I did have time I would have run out of time. It was as good as I had hoped. I urge all to go. Take your kids too and parents, even grandparents, leave only your pets behind.

James

Cycling Home

2009-04-26T00:16:00.002+01:00

It has been great watching Home of the Wriggler come back to life. It has also been great watching @ A E Harris become a venue. It's not all been totally smooth, but we are learning and most things have come together well.

It was difficult to judge how many nights to do with the show in Birmingham, especially outside the shelter of MAC or BirminghamRep as sole promoters. In the end we opted for three nights but with Thursday busy and both Saturday and Sunday sold out it now looks as if we should have aimed higher. With the scrum for tickets, the good feel about the venue and good performances in my mind I set off home in high spirits. Traffic was very heavy around, especially given the hour. Something had just finished at the National Indoor Arena and everyone was leaving. Streams of cars and coaches flowed in every direction, temporary traffic lights had been sparked up and marshals were waving at traffic

Torvil and Dean put our triumph in its true perspective.

James

Stretching and Compressing.

2009-04-16T11:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve spent the last couple of days editing together animations I made in a school last month. The deadline is now in sight and the soundtrack has been delivered. Conceptually the project makes sense: a storyteller works with the pupils so they all write stories, a musician works with the kids turning a small selection of these stories into audio pieces before finally, we turn up and work with the pupils adding the visuals. In reality it’s all a bit of a compromise. What works as a short story becomes over-written as the narrative for an animation. Ideally the narration would have been delivered earlier so we could put the animation over the top and the sound effects would have been recorded later, with the visuals as a reference. As it is I’m desperately stretching out our fragments of animation to cover vast swathes of audio.

By way of contrast we’ve had news from the Edinburgh Fringe people that in listings hyphenated words count as two words not one, which makes sense but seems harsh when the words are abbreviations: ‘sci-fi’ and ‘lo-fi’. The obvious repost is to rewrite the forty word copy using the most extravagantly polysyllabic vocabulary available. Surely a character count can only be around the corner. As it was time was of the essence.

Home of the Wriggler.
A lo-fi, sci-fi, docudrama. Investigators in a post-oil world, power lights with bikes, tracing entwined lives of a community once built on cars. ' ... one of our most tirelessly inventive theatre companies' (The Guardian).

The title is included in the 40 words.

James

Alumni

2009-04-15T08:43:00.002+01:00

Where are they now? Richard Da Costa.

Birmingham University Theatre Studies alumni. Birmingham theatrical man about town. MAC productions impresario – Living with Pigs.

James

Sunny Swansea

2009-04-08T13:38:00.002+01:00

8.30 is probably the earliest we’ve ever opened any performance but the conference breakfast shift made it worthwhile. Since then we have had waves of delegates attend between talks and workshops. Lots of photographs are being taken and there have been a good number of enquiries about how we work with schools and how much we charge.

It’s impossible to tell what will lead to what. Sometimes gigs that are full of enquiries lead to nothing, sometimes gigs that seem very quiet throw up a great booking. Often the lead-in time is a couple of years but I’ve always believed every gig is worthwhile come what may. Even if we send a few teachers away inspired to do something similar in their own classrooms then that will be a good result.

Next up I give a talk, I’m not sure what they’re expecting or hoping for. I’m not sure how much to tailor it to maths or teaching, the trick in these situations is to throw things open to questions as soon as possible and let the audience get what they want out of the encounter.

James

Association of Teachers of Mathematics

2009-04-07T22:47:00.003+01:00

Excitement is stirring about @ A E Harris. Today there were discussions about a showcase event taking place there in the autumn. An artsy party thing in June. An exhibition in the summer and photos taken for the venue as a possible film/tv location. Nothing may come of any of this, but the interest feels good.

P.M. a short wheelbase transit got loaded up with rice and hammered down the M50, ending up in Swansea. It's now approaching 11pm and we're just about to call it a night, ready to open a mini-version of Of All The People In All The World up for the Association of Teachers of Mathematics conference. They have treated us very well so far, food and drinks, and the few folk who have wandered in for a preview seem to like what they see, so all seems set fair for 08.30 tomorrow morning.

James

Pilot Night Submissions

2009-04-07T07:45:00.002+01:00

Yesterday Craig, Robin and I traveled over to Warwick Arts Centre to push things onward with Spy Steps, it remains to be seen how cooperative the University authorities are our gentle satire of their institution.

Last night work was done in putting together a call for Pilot 17. Stan's Cafe is going to host this platform event on 2nd July @ A E Harris. Part of the deal is that people to get to use the space from 28th June and work stuff up especially for the space. We're hoping there's a good response, it could be a special night. The link is here.

James

Building Site Visit

2009-04-04T15:18:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I was given a guided tour of the building site that was and will be MAC. It's all looking exciting. Here are some spy photos.

This is the new studio space. It is on what used to be the roof above the dance studio. This shot is looking back towards the Geese Theatre office used to be.

This is going to be the new Gallery space (double height as you can see).

This blurry shot is of the old theatre stripped out and leveled off. You're looking towards the stage end. It's going to have retractable bleacher seating with a main entrance on the first floor.

This is looking down from a place that didn't exist before over a bridge that links the first floor theatre foyer to the first floor of the Hexagon building. Down there will be the new combined bar and cafe area which will the social heart of the building.

The facilities are going to be so much better than those of the old building. I can't wait for it to open, to start playing there and seeing stuff there.

James

Saturday Unload

2009-04-04T15:13:00.002+01:00

The Wriggler set is back. No stairs, no lift, wide doorway, private courtyard, 24 hour access; unloading has never been so easy.

James

Secure and Shipped

2009-04-03T22:17:00.003+01:00

Today Wayne from Rock-It turned up @ A E Harris along with a 40' shipping container. Billy and Jake hefted The Cleansing of Constance Brown out of storage and I gained expert training in how to load a container for sea haulage. Clive did the business as usual with deft work on the forklift and made light of some irritatingly heavy kit.

Everything was in and the container sealed by three. Now it will be in Southampton. On Monday it starts its trip by sea to Montreal. In Montreal it goes from ship to train. It's due to arrive in Toronto storage a week before we require it in the venue. If the scientific tesselation of kit and strategic use of ratchet straps has worked hopefully it will all arrive intact. What could go wrong?

Worst case scenario: Ship sinks taking set with it.
Second worst case scenario: Ship survives but the set is swept of deck by freak wave.
Desired scenario: Ship and container dock safely.
Best scenario: Container gets swept off deck, washed up on a distant shore where beachcombers find it and start performing a version of the show for themselves on the beach.

This evening Home of the Wriggler is performed in Prema.

James

Stan's Cafe at Paganel School

2009-04-02T22:05:00.000+01:00

In January Kerrie and I made a piece called Smartie Mission with Year 5 pupils at Christ The King School. Attending that was a guy called Marcus who acts as a 'creative agent' for Paganel School in Birmingham, he asked if we could do a cut down version of the project with them, never knowingly refusing work, we said "yes".

For days leading up to Thursday I was cursing myself for this "yes". Attempts at preparation were squeezed in between other duties and late at night. It made me a bit more grumpy than usual at home, but in the end it was fun.

Over the course of the day we worked with every class above reception. Lettuce as Rain Forest (a change from cabbage), Fruit as Planets (again), Rice as people (yet again) and an Apple Pie as a pie chart. My advice for any would be pudding based mathematicians is to use a flan kind of pie not a crusty pasty topped kind of pie. I imagine it allows for more accurate degrees of division.

A substantial watermelon was left as a staff-room offering. Hopefully eating Jupiter will be a welcome change from biscuits.

James

Wriggler @ A E Harris

2009-04-01T23:55:00.001+01:00

Wednesday was a great night. The first Theatre Show to be staged @ A E Harris went off smoothly. Home of the Wriggler is set in a factory, normally there is a fake factory floor and a backdrop but as on this occasion we were performing in a factory this dressing seemed unnecessary.

I thought the performers did a great job and the audience weren’t bad either, clapping and laughing and even cheering a little. Bharti has picked this complicated show up amazingly fast and the others have, as usual, kept well on top of our usual ridiculously involved re-editing of who says what lines and exactly what the lines are and what’s cut and what’s added. The first half zipped along and was, I thought, great. We left the improvised ‘break’ section a bit too slack and the second half never quite caught fire, which was a shame as it was very strong in rehearsals.

Brett from Kitchen Garden Cafe ran a small bar and it was all pretty civilized in a factory kind of way, a dream come true. We're about to inherit two sofas to make things more luxurious. I can’t wait for more ‘stuff’ to happen there.

James

Late Night Sewing

2009-03-30T08:01:00.002+01:00

Late nights this weekend it’s been sewing time. The machine has been pulled out of the roof, dusted off and fired up. Velcro has been going on the blackout material. Sewing straight lines, black cotton fixing black Velcro to black fabric that’s going to be fixed to the roof in the dark is low-pressure work and thus quite therapeutic.

The Other Way Works have been doing prep for their work Black Tonic @ A E Harris, letting them in and out allowed a chance to check a prototype square of the blackout in position. It appears to work well, though application requires devious ladder choreography.

James

Another Blackout

2009-03-27T21:00:00.004Z

I abandoned my post today. The performers worked on lines and cues – of course they have to learn lighting cues as well as text and blocking. Meanwhile, I shot up and down ladders working on the black-out. Given we are @ A E Harris for two years it seems sensible to invest in a decent black-out that can go up and down relatively easily. It would be a shame to lose the fantastic natural light for all time, so the plan is to glue and staple Velcro to wooden batons, these batons then get cable-tied to the roof either side of the skylights. Then we sew matching lengths of Velcro to rectangles of black fabric – job's a good ‘un.

James

Farewell Mark Ball

2009-03-27T20:59:00.001Z

Last night a small party was thrown for Mark Ball. Mark was one of the founders of Birmingham’s Queerfest. He oversaw its mutation into the Fierce! Festival which he as its scale and ambitions grew. In parallel with the festival, Fierce! built up its year-round operation in the field of arts training and education. They picked up many contracts to deliver national Arts Council initiatives within the West Midlands. They took up the challenge of developing Live Art in the region.

About eighteen months ago Mark stepped away from day to day contact with Fierce! to take up a post at the Royal Shakespeare Company, developing work outside the company’s main stages. Now he moves on to become director of London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT).

LIFT has been in a period of flux. A few years ago the festival’s founders, Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal decided to leave. A period of organisational soul searching ended in Angharad Wynne-Jones being appointed Artistic Director and the festival moving towards East London and more socially engaged projects. Now Angharad has returned to Australia and into her shoes steps Mr. Ball.

Mark faces a big challenge in London. He takes on an established festival, possibly even a brand, not exactly in crisis, but certainly searching for its new identity. There are questions about the festival’s financing (there is a belief that money was, in part, behind its move East). With 2012 on the horizon, there are also huge possibilities. Mark is a great operator and has an eye for a headline grabbing act. His new post will be a fantastic test of his political and curatorial skills. It will be fascinating to see how his Fierce! aesthetic – principally Live Art - does or does not, map onto LIFT, which is after all a "Festival of Theatre".

Back home Helga and Kevin face a challenge in some ways similar to Mark’s. How do you move on an organisation once its founder/s have moved on?

There will be those on the arts scene in the West Midlands who have had significant differences with Mark and will not mourn his departure, but it’s difficult to deny the prolific work he has done in promoting Live Art in the West Midlands and West Midlands in Live Art. He will be missed by many but of course he hasn’t died! It can only be good for the Wsst Midlands that one of its own has taken on such an significant post in London. We wish him luck.

James

Re-Working the Wriggler

2009-03-27T07:04:00.000Z

It feels as if we are getting to grips with Home of the Wriggler now. In 2006 we only performed it four times and so didn’t have time to explore how the piece works properly. Coming back to the scrip afresh has allowed us to take a new look at things and address some scenes we felt weren’t working up to full-power. It has been useful having Bharti onboard as a fresh eye on the piece, as a result we’ve made lots of the narrative links easier to follow.

Within the overall improvement of the show there are winners and losers. A big scene has gone. Heather’s off-loaded a monologue. Craig’s picked up a new part. Amanda’s lost some bits and gained others. Occasional lines have gone, individual words have been added here and there. Bits of staging have changed. It’s rough on people who thought they ha a grip on their lines, but we’re doing well for time and had a decent run through at the end of the day.

James

Industrial Elves

2009-03-25T06:52:00.003Z

Mark Anderson paid a flying trip last week to service the Home of the Wriggler kit. The dynamo from the large bike had finally broken following major usage in schools. Mark tracked down a replacement from a washing machine repair shop in Stirchley (the dynamo is in fact a washing machine motor run backwards). Craig picked it up at the end of last week, leaving us with the challenge of fitting a wheel for the drive belt to run around. Here is the advantage of being located within a metal working factory. We gave the problem to Clive, he ferried to the A E Harris tool-shop and when we arrived for work on Tuesday morning, like a scene some industrial fairytale, it was lying completed on our workbench ready for fitting.

Now we're trying to do a similar engineering job on the show's text.

James

Carnet

2009-03-24T01:44:00.000Z

Re-rehearsals started today for Home of the Wriggler. An amalgam of freshly printed amended scripts, my annotated old script and a DVD documenting the last performance helped us piece together what should be happening.

In between times we fit in bits of clearing up after the opening, trying to be conscientious about returning everything borrowed from the Constance Brown kit back to the Constance Brown section downstairs so we're not left stranded in Toronto.

Later, after supper, I returned with Graeme and, whilst discussing a corporate job he’s leading on, we complete the Carnet. A Carnet is a list of everything that we are taking out of the country: its description, weight, value and country of origin. For a show with as much ‘stuff' as Constance Brown the Carnet is a serious task. Billy broke the back of it last week. Arvo has supplied the tech list and it’s this that we’re working off tonight. It takes us until beyond Midnight but eventually it is done.

James

@AEHarris

2009-03-22T20:16:00.001Z

We officially launched @ A E Harris on Friday. There was a relaxed party style event. Kitchen Garden Cafe did some tasty catering and handed out drinks. Craig, Jake and I set up a fairly extensive exhibition of Stan’s Cafe memorabilia including photographs, objects, reviews and things to do. We put so much effort into this we’ve decided to keep it up until the space it occupies is required for something else.

The event was well attended by friends of the company old and new. Special mention has to go to Mike, who came up from London and Ed, over from the Home Counties. It was great to see them both. Hopefully the event has stirred up some interest in people who may want to themselves present art @ A E Harris. Hopefully it will also draw an audience for our own work in the space.

After a brief speech from Alan James saying “hurrah” and a rather longer one from we saying “thank you” and “come to our shows” and “bring your own shows” and “these are some of the shows we are going to do here” and then repeating these points a few times, it was time for BINGO; back from 1994 the Bingo Machine was out and in full effect. 1994 was so long ago I had forgotten how long it can take a room full of people to throw up a winner in a bingo game. When the winner eventually emerged it was Finian Coghlan, a journalist visiting from Ireland, whose prize was to launch the space and the new season by bursting through a paper wall into a room fitted out with a working portion of our new Scalextric collection – part of the future.

We were also wise enough to invite the excellent Pete Ashton to the hence, hence you can get a flavour of what it was like, in triplicate.

James

Neep Idea.

2009-03-17T15:17:00.004Z

A steaming Vesuvius of haggis, neeps and tatties? It can only be Edinburgh and Monster Mash, one of top five restaurants of all time anywhere. Cafe Soya and The Plaza in Birmingham along with Lombardies in New York and a fish and chip shack near Granville Island, Vancouver complete the top five. My criteria don’t absolutely align with those of the Michelin man, though if I lived much closer to any of these restaurants my physique would.

Lunch was a fortuitous side-effect of a site visit to Edinburgh scouting venues for Dance Steps and Home of the Wriggler this August.

It has been well worthwhile. I’ve photographed and sketched the possible Dance Steps venue in some detail and managed to clarify with the venue what the piece is, which sometimes takes some doing.

I’m currently in the potential Wriggler venue. The vibe is very, very good. We’d be pushed for space, but it would probably be worth that compromise for the benefits of this vibe, especially in the meltdown commercialism of so much Edinburgh Fringe action.

Now for the return journey; to be fair the train is one of those leaning ones and goes like a rocket, which is just as well as spacetravel would be cheaper.

James

Go See

2009-03-14T22:01:00.002Z

The Flatpack Film festival has got such an amazing array of stuff going on this year that even those of us apparently locked into the humdrum logistics of feeding, watering, clothing and illuminating their youth can partake. Today Sarah, Eve and I found video screens in shop windows, we watched an hours worth of wonderful kids films at The Electric and a cluster of installed things at festival's nerve centre on Floodgate Street.

For me the 'must see' art of the day was Rob MacLaughlan's 'Paint Can, Revolving'. Wonderfully simple, beautifully executed, hypnotic, otherworldly and quotidian simultaneously, just my kind of thing. There's a bit of intriguing physics involved as well which is obviously and added draw for me.

GO SEE!

James

Haiku

2009-02-22T08:35:00.001Z

They have a problem with keys at the Zilkha Gallery. Not very many people have them and fewer people know the alarm code. Thus far this has only been mildly irritating but this morning we arrive 15 minutes before the scheduled opening time and no one from the gallery is around. We’ve been given a key to the front door and a dressing room, so we call Public Safety – as the security guards are called in these parts – they say they’ll be with us so we get changed. Fifteen minutes later the only people who have shown up are audience members. The others start small talk. I get on the phone. Sylvia our local performer gamely launches into organising games with the kids. Barry turns up, bless him, to ‘see how we’re doing’, he get on the phone. Our box office guy turns up. He’s got not key. He gets on the phone. It turns out a moment after our initial call a fire alarm has gone off Fire trumps Gallery Opening trumps sitting around with a Coffee and the Paper. We’re out trumped. Some audience are leaving, others are arriving. Just as we’re calculating whether Burglar Alarm plus Fire Alarm trump just Fire Alarm ‘Public Safety’ arrives and all is well. No fights break out. The Public is Safe.

After this glitch everything is great and runs smoothly. Lots of people have seen last nights TV and we’re steadily busy with visitors through the day. The response is fantastic. People tell us how much they love the show and ask questions. It’s busy but not so busy that we can’t keep building the show.

I work on statistics for the vitrines that are poised to be placed around campus. Barry and I talk about Darwin as prep for the Science Department display (later he emails saying there are 27 adult Charles Darwins living in the U.S.). Vitrines are a kind of haiku version of the show, you have to boil it all down to 1m square and keep it elegant in both visually and conceptually. It takes far more time than we ever credit it with.

Eventually Graeme and I nail the Haiku (if you’re following the show on Twitter you will already know the poem). We carry everything over to the Science block turning heads as we go. They don’t often see a brown housecoat in these parts, still less two together. No doubt a rumour is sweeping campus about this new, quasi-Mormon sect.

All goes well with the vitrine, the rice is tidy, the paper all very neatly, Darwin is there, H.M.S. Beagle is there, local creationists are laid out beside local evolutionists. All is as it should be. We carefully lift the Perspex hood over the display and gently lower it down. Beautiful. We admire our work. All is good, so casually we pull the protective plastic coatings from the Perspex and bundle it up into balls. We’re all set to go but inside the vitrine things have gone crazy. Grains for rice are rising up, standing on their ends and leaping from the piles. They’re pinging themselves against the Perspex attempting to escape and the paper is curling at its edges attempting to catch them. Momentarily our allegiances in the Creation – Evolution debate swing decisively then the crackle of static electricity breaks out. Now we’re spinning and dancing with delight. It’s fantastic, now this extraordinary show even has its own weird, flea-show style variety act, should a cabaret opening come up. With one sheet of plastic still to be pulled and my camera-phone poised we shoot what, if Craig can give me the appropriate pass-words, should become one of You-tubes more esoteric clips.

Late in the day at the Student Union Chris and I take the precaution of removing the plastic from the Perspex well away from the rice and earth everything carefully before enclosing the second Haiku.

It’s a seven hour day but shift working gives the others a half day. I’m locked into this for now. Yesterday I went for a break only to find myself online in the union digging out numbers for Albinos in Tanzania and the U.S. (more in the former) and a up-to-date number for Guantanamo Bay internees – which is often an elusive one to find.

It’s been a good day 182 visitors added to last night’s opening crowd gives us 400 so far. We have our own key to the gallery and – don’t tell anyone – the alarm has been left off. Midnight party with the Dancing Rice Grains anyone?

James

P.S. Having researched Wesleyan's Public Safety department for this blog I am now fully aware they are much more than just Security Guards. I also notice they do a neat line in statistics...

Local TV - How To Do It

2009-02-21T23:56:00.000Z

Day 3. A monster day is on the cards, but first we must eat “all we wish” for Breakfast. In contrast to the cornucopia of yesterday’s Dinner the offerings are modest and we escape still trim and bustling for action.

Chris sets to tidying the gallery whilst the rest of us charge to the Olin Library on the other side of campus with all our kit. We set up this ‘satellite’ in the foyer with of a Birth of a Nation stats on one side and university based ones on the other. We finish just in time for brief ceremonials with librarians at noon. Then high-tail it back to the gallery and have thing just about ready when Dan Kain from WFSB Eyewitness News turns up with his camera guy. They are a great team, friendly and efficient, they spend about ten minutes with the show, the piece goes out that evening and it's one of the best we've seen done on the show. It throws into sharp relief our home stations’ failure to:

a> pick up on the show.
b> display any verve in their coverage of anything at all (not that I'm childish enough to harbour a grudge as you can tell).

Click on the link to see for your selves.

Before the cameraman has finished shooting his cut-away shots Jack, Graeme and I are off to Middletown's mid-town Main Street with a huge stack of rice to do a window display. We use a statistic that is so shocking that it keeps me awake at night - but more of that in a future post. Then it’s back to the gallery just in time for a newspaper interview (the Theatre and Visual Art Critics from a local paper have come in tandem which is a great idea for a show people find tough to catagorise). The opening follows seamlessly, with more ceremonials and food, which we miss out on because things are so busy. We also fail to pace ourselves properly. Having neglected to check our schedules carefully and are shocked to realise that though the opening finish at 19.00 we're due to plough on until 21.00.

Desperately hungry and thirsty I manage to mislead people into ‘the other’ Mexican Restaurant in town, not the one that's recommended. It’s a bad business. There are casualties. Food is left. We all cling to our beer for safety.

James

Not 'all you want' or 'all you can' just 'all you wish'.

2009-02-19T08:21:00.001Z

As usual Day 2 means smaller rice piles and things start to speed up. We are in at nine and cracking on with it. I broke out briefly to visit WESU FM, which is a proper radio station, corridor walls lined with dog eared vinyl, 7” & 12”, tatty kit and a deep passion for radio pervading the place. Barry and I do double coverage on Stephan Allison’s River Valley Rhythms show. It’s a classic ‘through the glass’ interview with us in adjoining studios, meeting in the corridor as a record plays out. Stephan has a great, easy American radio voice. He is generous with his show time and as we appeared to run over time I started to grow anxious that listeners in the River Valley weren’t getting as many rhythms as they had hoped.

The big excitement within the team today was discovering the delicious “eat all you wish” facility at the Student Union building. Shockingly, it was here, at the heart of student catering that we discovered the first vitamins of our trip, stacks of salad and fruit and juice. Learning that a similar, but cheaper deal also applies to breakfast our joy was, as you may imagine, unbounded.

Amazingly even Jack, who had availed himself of the ‘make your own waffle’ equipment was able to waddle back to the gallery in time to greet our second batch of volunteer performers, a keen bunch who didn’t appear to resent being kept the full two hours, until 22.00, helping us push things on.

James

Arts Center / Centre

2009-02-18T12:10:00.001Z

It is brilliant to finally be here. We met Pamela Tatge the venue’s director back in January last year when the show was in New York. Planning for this trip essentially stared then with Barry coming over to see the show a few days later and us talking about the university researching statistics for us. Around Easter time Nick, our producer, happened to be visiting relatives near Connecticut so he called in for a site visit. Subsequently there has been an extended email correspondence.

We have been made to feel extremely welcome. First thing we were introduced to the venue’s impressive coffee making equipment and pointed to Tea cupboard (wisely both these sections of the kitchen are segregated). There was then a planning meeting with the venue staff during which we plotted through our packed itinerary and, almost before we had got down to work and certainly before a grain of rice had hit a sheet of paper we were guests at a introductory lunch during which we met other arts centre and arts faculty staff.

By mid afternoon a plan had was starting to emerge and some big piles were under construction. The gallery sets the rice off beautifully, it has a cork tile floor, walls comprised of vast rectangular stone bricks and huge windows. There is enough shape and character to give us natural sections and journeys.

At six our first team of volunteers arrived for training. They seemed like a keen bunch and rather than too much talking we launched rapidly into an apprenticeship scheme using them as extra hands to speed things along.

At eight we scooted over to an open rehearsal in which the Wesleyan University Orchestra was put through its paces playing a piece especially composed for them by Barbara Croall. Aware of the amount of prep required for tomorrow and having recently spent two days watching Birmingham Contemporary Music rehearse I decide to duck out a bit early.

Graeme cooks a fine risotto and surrounded, by the classics of Russian Literature, for my room is the study of a Professor of Russian Studies, I fall asleep listening to Fighting Talk.

James

Welcome to Middletown

2009-02-18T03:19:00.002Z

Birmingham to Newark, Newark to Heartford, Heartford to Middletown. No movies, a bit of prep, a bit of writing and 2/3 of Sadie Plant’s fascinating Writing on Drugs. A smooth trip. We have been lent a beautiful house here, right beside the Wesleyan University Campus and the others were already looking very at home in the vast kitchen with cats wandering around.

Professor Barry Chernoff, one of our hosts, came round to escort us to the local bar and introduce us to its beers, which was very considerate of him. Barry is an ichthyologist (“a fish guy”) and really great value. It soon became clear ‘theatrical anecdotes’ weren’t going to cut it alongside tales of the Amazon, Piranhas, Sting Rays and fish that at crawl inside your penis if you piss in the water. Perhaps only Werner Herzog could trade stories in this kind of company but who wants to trade when the quality is this high? We fed Barry questions, sat back and had a great time.

James

Little Earthquake in the House

2009-02-17T10:23:00.000Z

Monday was about trying to get as much done before Tuesday as possible. Little Earthquake are in the A E Harris space rehearsing their new show. Last week the staff urinals got boxed and proper doors put on the cubicles to create unisex toilets. We’ve invested in some mugs and other basic kitchen items, moved our best heater down there, curtained off the A4 room and got Clive to open the shutters on those windows, so hopefully the company will feel relatively comfortable and able to concentrate on their work not the cold.

James

Proud Fathers

2009-02-14T09:13:00.000Z

Friday came round and the staff of Bordesley Green East Nursery undertook their City Adventure Day and it wasn’t snowing, and it wasn’t raining, and it was cold, but there wasn’t ice on the pavements; in fact, the sun shone. As usual people appeared to have fun, in the afternoon’s thinking session as well as the morning’s doing session.

Benny, by careful deployment of formal white jacket and bowtie, has made the origami task his own. Graeme was on dioramas. Chris, one of our top hand massage picks, was called in as Craig’s Labour Watch status was cranked up to amber. Hannah was released from the office to stand on a bridge (she likes to get out and about) and proud Father Jake branched out into audio work at the market.

Stan followers need not worry, Jake hasn’t taken to the cloth, last Sunday Molly was born, well done Jo, well done Jake.

In the end Craig did come in and knock out a great documentary poem. We packed up together and by midnight Sorrel was born. Well done Charlotte, well done Criag.

James

The Floor

2009-02-03T12:34:00.000Z

We, though mostly Craig, have finished laying blue carpet tiles throughout the office. This, combined with the newly painted walls, makes the place look a lot more business like. We are however in danger of getting carried away, catching ourselves saying “yes, we can invite them to the office” as if that will be some great treat for people. To us the new floor is a marvel and a revelation – to the rest of the civilised world they are merely carpet tiles.

James

Contrast

2009-01-30T09:29:00.004Z

Yesterday was a day of contrasts, an example of what I relish both about this job and living in Birmingham.

Through the day Kerrie and I were up in Kingstanding at Christ the King school, working with 9 & 10 year olds on the culmination of 'Smartie Mission' our maths/food collaboration. They had counted baked beans, green beans, peas and Smarties, to measure car production, airplane growth and casualties in the Gaza crisis. Water measured sea level rise. Breadsticks became the world’s tallest buildings, spagetti measured the world's great journeys, a mashed potato range showed the world’s mountains and city altitudes to scale, cabbage compared deforestation with the area of Sutton Park. Home made pizza and home made cake along with Wagon Wheels were cut to form pie charts translating information surveys they conducted. The whole school visited in groups along with parents and Year 5 acted as their hosts and guides. It was good fun and genuinely engaging and enlightening.

Then, just a few hours later I'm being pinned back in my seat at Symphony Hall as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra let lose on Wagnerian compilation. It was a fantastic sound and a great spectacle. I loved it. To my uneducated ear the soprano, Irène Théorin, sounded like she was nailing some pretty tough stuff. The orchestra's new conductor, Andris Nelsons, was wonderful, a Disney/Pixar vision of a conductor who, with his magic wand, conjors music from a phantom orchestra and then somehow becomes that music before disappearing into the music. As you can tell, I did get a bit carried away.

However, when I wasn't being carried away my mind did wander in other directions including pondering on conductor's batons. How many conductors are there in the world who require batons. Does a conductor need more than one baton? Are there different weights? Do they wear out? Does more than one company bother making them? Surely there isn’t a huge demand. Certainly Mr. Nelsons doesn’t look like the sort to snap his baton in rehearsal room fury and hence have to buy a whole stock of spares.

Anyway, how wonderful to be able to mix these two rewarding extremes in one day.

Next Generation OATP

2009-01-23T15:33:00.001Z

Christ the King school work is going well. Year 5 have decided to call the piece Smartie Mission, it’s kind of next generation Of All The People In All The World and all angled towards giving them a major maths work out. In order to give myself a physical work out, I’ve resolved to cycle out and back to Kingstanding for each session. My reward, an endless succession of punctures in the glass strewn gutters of Perry Bar.

James

Watching Rehearsals

2009-01-23T15:29:00.001Z

On Tuesday Craig and I sat in on a rehearsal with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. It was fascinating to watch the process. The speed and precision of George Benjamin’s work as conductor was exhilarating and seeing this clarity mesh with the musicians’ tight concentration truly impressive. The adroit players breezed through Francesco Antonioni’s beautiful new work Ballata with tweaks in pacing and interpretation, identifying moments of congruence and divergence the only apparent adjustments. Better value for the rehearsal room spectator was work on Benjamin’s own piece, Three inventions for Chamber Orchestra, the fiendish nature of which allowed us, for a short time at least, to see great musicians struggling.

James

Rasta Christmas

2008-12-22T22:12:00.001Z

Who was the Mighty Dread and what tunes did he play that seized their troubled minds?

James

Copyright.

2008-12-18T23:39:00.001Z

Here’s a good HYPOTHETICAL for the copyright lawyers to play with…

An American preacher politician is invited to do an introduction at a music festival organised by a community group and a record label. His speech is recorded and appears on a soundtrack album of the event. A Scottish band write a song, which is remixed for an album, and on the album version the producer uses samples from the speech. Then an English theatre company use the sampled text, in the same sequence and with the same timings, but without the music. How badly in trouble are the theatre company and to whom do they owe how much money?

James

Come Together to Pilot.

2008-12-15T21:00:00.002Z

The majority of today was spent getting to grips with Come Together, a tiny piece we are putting together for Thursday’s Pilot Night. As with many Stan shows we take the stage with a tight set of rules, more unusually there’s a script, which comes to us from Jesse Jackson via Primal Scream.

Who knows what folk will make of it. But then that’s the point of a Pilot Night and at 10’22”, what harm can it do?

James

New Storage Facility

2008-12-11T16:19:00.003Z

A momentous day: we (Craig, me and a bloke named Dave (“used to be in the Marines – he can do the work of two men”)) moved an unfeasible amount of stuff out of the office to join the Constance Brown set and props in our clandestine new storage facility. It’s a pleasure to see it all set out in an ordered fashion.

Bays 1 – 4 Constance Brown
Bay 5 Plain flats
Bay 6 It’s Your Film (small pile)
Bay 7 Good and True (big pile)
Bay 8 Home of the Wriggler (bigger than you'd imagine) and Be Proud of Me (one table, one crate & a sling for slide projectors)
Bay 9 Lurid and Insane (mostly junk) plus Ocean of Storms (two silver boxes) and Bingo In The House Of Babel (a Bingo Machine).

On the right hand side, set back into alcoves, Of All The People In All The World

In the tec room sits tec kit.

Beside the loading bay is spare timber, banners and one tonne of rice.

IT’S LUXURIOUS!

James

Second Life in Coventry

2008-12-08T09:58:00.002Z

My thought provoking week was rounded off by spending Friday being shown around bits of the Second Life computer world. It was a fascinating experience, half anthropological safari, half mathematical mindwarp. Coventry University are focusing some of their research into performances engaging this alternative reality and are trying to lure me in. Initially I had agreed to aid by playing the role of Arch-Sceptic however, as with many of these things, once you choose to engage with it prejudices start to soften. Slowly I started to engage with the possibilities and conundrums of the media and the project started to grow more attractive. Obviously I drew the line well before having my own Avatar created, but I sense a slippery slope ahead.

James

Won £1,000 And Lost My Shirt.

2008-12-04T21:01:00.001Z

Today was another out off office – thinking of the future day. This time the location was the curious fantasy world of The Public in West Bromwich and the activity was a day about DIGITAL stuff.

It was a good chance to think for a full day without having to do anything. As a result of this and various nudging and promptings I’ve come away with a bunch of ideas about the Stan’s Cafe website, Stan’s Cafe marketing, Stan’s Cafe collaborating, a new Stan’s Cafe show and finally, accidentally we’re making a thing.

After presentations, panel discussions, ‘speed dating’ and case studies, a tombola draw threw four of us delegates together for 30 minutes to come up with an idea to pitch. After a moderately uninspiring 28 minutes we came up with a decent idea. The decent idea got short-listed by a judging panel. Thus we qualified for 20 minutes extra thinking time, by which point there were just two of our team left. The final pitch got us second place and £1,000 to take the idea on further. Which compensates in some way for losing my shirt in the wildly overheated building somewhere (relax I was wearing a T-shirt beneath the lost shirt).

Self Assessment

2008-12-04T06:14:00.001Z

This afternoon Arts Council England had called representatives from Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) to a meeting at the Paragon Hotel in Birmingham to discuss new proposals for assessment. It was another occasion on which living in a big city is a great advantage. For me it was a 10 minute cycle ride from the office but there was a man there who had driven up from Southampton. I travelled with the vague concern it may be a waste of time but noted lunch would be laid on. This other guy had a whole other level of commitment.

Essentially we were being asked our opinions of having Self-Assessment formalised as part of the Arts Council’s monitoring procedure and how we felt about Peer Review as a strategy for making value judgements about our effectiveness. It is too involved and dull to go into it in any more detail here, but contrary to my concerns it was a stimulating event. The discussions fired me up and as ever it was great to meet up with familiar faces from across the region and to meet some good people from further a-field.

In the final summing up a number of my contributions were quoted, verbatim and thankfully, unattributed. Out of context an admission of “paranoid self-assessment in the shower” is always going to raise a good laugh.

James

Creative City Award

2008-12-01T15:01:00.004Z

On Saturday, whilst Craig was leading a team of stalwarts coping with 1,000 visitors pounding Of All The People In All The World in Barcelona, I was luxuriating in the corporate comforts of the ICC in Birmingham. I was at the Creative Industries Awards ceremony, with Hannah, a team from the board and various glamorous partners.

If you follow the link to Birmingham Post's article on the event you will see that it was ‘sparkling’ occasion, which it was – massive star cloth, DJs (that’s Dinner Jackets not the other kind), beautiful dresses Etc. You will also see that we ‘scooped’ the main prize, which we did.

Last year we won the International Development award at the equivalent event. The objective of entering these awards was to raise our profile in the City amongst various ‘Opinion Formers’. With this task achieved and a 100% record now feels like the time to retire from this particular field.

It’s easy to be cynical about awards (I have been many times myself) but if you take them in the correct spirit they can do a useful job for you. I hope that more arts companies will take our place next year. Although these awards are focused in a business direction it feels important that the Arts continue to be represented there. If not the City’s Creativity is in danger of being assumed to consist merely of Digital Solutions to various marketing/distribution/communication problems. Solutions found almost exclusively by young(ish) white men sat in front of sparkling new white macintosh computers.

Come on, let’s put ourselves about a bit – the city would be too sterile without us.

James

Acts of Faith

2008-11-23T00:02:00.001Z

I’m on the train home after, Trials of Faith, the Coventry University show. Tonight was its night. I’m fairly tired but mostly just emotionally drained. I worked with 34 people devising a show and in the 10 days spent together we barely exchanged a non-show related word. Although I couldn’t do late nights in the rehearsal room I was strongly committed to the show and did a good deal of homework on it. Then it gets its single performance, so it gets cut down before it has a chance to grow, much less mature. Due to various circumstances no one I know well sees it, so there is no calibrated feedback. For lecturers these shows are so inextricably linked with the student’s education and assessment they are rarely discussed with me a works of art. Suddenly it’s over and instead of enjoying a few social moments with the cast I’m hustling to complete my role. The ensemble I have come to cherish as a team has to be divided by marks. It all suddenly seems heartless and cold. It’s a lonely journey home on a Friday night through the revelry.

Marking creative work – particularly large group devised work – is always a headache. How do you compare a strong performer against a great ideas merchant? How do you value strong positive energy against coasting talent? Is a great stage moment worth more than solid backstage grafting? How is a technically sound but uninspiring actor measured against a flawed performer who is somehow compelling on stage? This is before you get into trying to recall whose idea was whose, who was cast by who.

Fortunately there are mark schemes to help you objectively and to crosscheck against gut-instincts. Ultimately these marking sessions always seem to resolve themselves moderately satisfactorily. There is a consistent inner-logic which means every decision could be defended if it had to be – though fortunately I’m usually long gone when the marks go out!

Looking back on my own experience participating in such a project as an undergraduate the marking all now makes sense. I understand now why we were put through the agony of peer assessment. I also now understand that there was no one extra thing that I could have done to convert a 69 into a 70 and a First. I now know doesn’t work like that.

There was originally talk of Acts of Faith being presented to the public in Coventry in the summer term. It would be great if that were to happen. It would be great to return to and polish the material. It would be great to work with that great bunch of people again.

James

Her Father's Daughter

2008-11-20T23:54:00.002Z

Everything is in danger of getting a bit blurred. I spent all day at Coventry University saying “you go there, wait for this, then do/say that” to the Third Year Theatre Students as we try and hammer our piece, Trial of Faith, into some kind of shape for tomorrow evening’s performance (7pm in Ellen Terry Building’s Theatre, should anyone fancies coming). Then I charge back home to pick Eve up from Nursery. We get back to the house and immediately Eve starts directing me: “you go there, wait for me to say this, then you come here and say that”. Confusingly, I’m required to act the role of a parent watching my children (Eve’s dolls) perform in a play which she, playing the role of ‘the teacher’, is directing. Fortunately, whilst an extremely limited actor, I can keep up with the layers of fiction involved in this scenario. My fear is that Eve is currently only three and a half and already exploring sophisticated play-within-play scenarios, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep up with the levels of self-reflexive play-within-play-within-play-within-play madness she’ll be have pushed onto by the time she’s doing GCSE Drama. Hopefully she'll just be doing all the sciences with pure, applied and further maths.

James

Tourism

2008-11-07T17:38:00.002Z

Having just got on top of everything yesterday was the first opportunity to divert from the well trodden Hotel – Venue – Arts Cafe – Hotel path.

In glorious sunshine a team of us took the 131 bus from Piata Romana to the Village Museum which, set in Herastrau Park, is home to dozens of buildings lifted from all regions of the country. They have been rebuilt with care and dressed with furniture and extraordinarily beautiful fabrics. Initially it felt like walking around a film set or, with the doors and windows all being so low and small, a large scale model village. Yet, once up close when peering through the windows or admiring the ingenuity of construction of beautiful craftsmanship it became an evocative and quite wonderful experience.

In stark contrast to the Village Museum, today took the brief and rather cursory official ‘tour’ of the People’s Palace. Given that this is the world’s second largest building and has over 1,000 rooms 15 lei and half an hour shows you just a couple of stair cases a couple of – admittedly very large – corridors and a conference room. However it was worth seeing. This peek inside allows to you extrapolate as to what the rest must be like. It is a highly controversial building; being the ambition of a dictator, built extraordinarily quickly, at extraordinary expense, through considerable sacrifice on the part of very many people. As conceptually the place is repugnant and externally it is both ugly and intimidating I was fully expecting to feel hostile to it when inside. Instead, I came away feeling that to write this building off is to undervalue the efforts of those who made it and the sacrifice of those who made it possible. It will take a feeling to get my feeling lined up about this one.

More straightforward was the national art gallery, which has an amazing collection of Romanian Religious art made all the more powerful for the fact that, with the exception of the invigilators, seed to have the entire place to myself. I loved the icons but the items that consistently stunned me were tapestries like this one. Except, like theatre, they only really work when you're there with them. Trust me, 'live' they're incredible pieces, threads conncting you back in time to extraordinary artists.

The real treat has been the hours of walking on my own through the parks and streets of Bucharest. The leaves turning colour, an enormous concrete slide, the paint peeling tower block, the sunken football ground, the lakes and embassies, wooden scaffolding, lazing stray dogs, workmen cooking sausages with a blow torch, keeling women touching the hem of the priest’s robes, dug up streets and wooden plank walkways, everywhere women sweeping leaves, shaking the old man’s hand, a drained lido, the trampoline attendant in his box, the deco UN building, decayed grandeur and endless sculptures of gaunt men with beards.

james

Taking Over

2008-11-06T10:59:00.000Z

Jon carried off Gerard’s role admirably last night as the third of the replacement performers out here in Bucharest. Recasting the show has been an instructive process. Just listening in has taught me more about how things work back stage – I put these trousers on over these trousers so in the quick change that’s coming up all I have to do is take off these. You set this prop here so it’s ready for that. Make sure when you these off that you place them there so you can grab them easily later on. I have also become privy to more of the performers inner logics – when I look here I imagine I’m seeing that; you’ve just come from doing this so you feel like that; at this point such and such has happened which is why she responds like this. There have also been revealed some of the content of conversations that take place on stage between characters but are never heard by the audience. Telling other people what we do has caused us again to recall why we do it.

Both Gerard and Bernadette have found it a curious and at times emotional experience, handing over their roles and seeing others perform them. Inevitably the initial performances feel like copies of the original. Moves and gestures are altered more by vagaries of memory, biomechanics and the different presence bought by these new performers than active artistic interpretation. Yet extremely quickly, as spare processing power can be diverted from “what do I do now” to “how shall I do this”, fresh versions emerge. The once definitive performances of the devising cast enter a dialogue with alternative performances. It is a fascinating and often surprising thing to watch evolve – a reward for those crazy enough to watch the same show dozens of times in succession.

It turns out that Bucharest, despite presenting some challenges, is a great place to be performing these two shows. The country’s dramatic recent history provides both powerful content and an eager and engaged audience for Of All The People In All The World. Our sense is that Constance Brown is seen as more radical here than it is at home and responses in each direction thus feel heightened. However, what makes this almost the perfect city in which to perform this show is that when you leave the venue late at night and walk along the streets, there in the gutter, between the neon of the currency exchanges, casinos and sex shops on one side and streaking car headlights on the other, ignored by bustling pedestrians and screaming traffic alike, dozens of stooped figures, mostly women, in green work-wear, continually sweep leaves, litter and city dust from the streets. I look at each on of these and the flower sellers and prostitues and elderly beggers and think of Constance Brown in all her guises including those which never reached the show.

James

Romania Invaded

2008-11-05T13:43:00.000Z

Fifteen people flew out to Bucharest from Birmingham and London an Saturday as part of a mini Stan’s Cafe invasion and things have been pretty relentless since then. At 11 that night we unloaded the lorry from the terrifying Balcescu Boulevard (straight road, miles long, three lanes each way, the standard challenge: can you clock a ton between traffic lights?) into the Sala Dalles.

On Sunday the get in started at 9. Downstairs Constance Brown is built n the old Warwick Arts Centre style, with the set in one room butted up against a wide door way and the seating bank built in the adjoining room. Upstairs a separate team is installing Of All The People In All The World on a wide balcony looking down on the seating bank structure.

Whichever way you cut it Constance Brown is a big get-in and the show’s to large to allow re-rehearsal at home. As a result the pressure is on to set everything up with enough time to spare to bring everyone back up to speed. Adding to the excitement is the fact that this was Billy’s first time on the show as Stage Manager, Hugh’s first time in sole charge of the lights. Ray was being rehearsed into the role devised by Andy but which is rapidly becoming ‘special guest star’ slot.

By the time we were ejected from the building at 9 that evening we had most things set up and had worked through all but the last couple of scenes.

At 9 the next morning tec type folk started to polish off the last of the build and tweak jobs. The performers arrived at 11, finished off the previous day’s worth through. Worked over a few scenes again. Run a dress rehearsal. Reset. Tweaked further things and performed the show. Somewhere around the reset, tweaking further things stage Of All The People In All The World opened to a decent media turn out and VIPs. Interviews required and a smart shirt.

At some point on Monday, whilst Gerard was out with Billy sorting costume issues Jon McGuiness got his first taste of doing the things that Gerard does. Meanwhile, never less than two yards from Bernadette studying her every move has been Alex Alderton.

Another split 9 and 11 call sets up a day working through the show with Jon and Alex as Gerard and Bernadette. After a decent break Alex is thrown in at the deep end and performs the show that night with Bernadette backstage aiding and abetting.

This morning the OATP team did the first two of their three workshops, which they dealt with admirably (the Romanian kids had a fantastic grasp of English). Now I’m in danger of being late for a 4pm call for a dress run preparing Jon to go on tonight. He’s got no choice as Gerard has already left the country to look after his ailing mother. We wish him and her well.

James

Ready For The Off

2008-10-23T11:11:00.003+01:00

From the office and the A.E.Harris factory; from vintage clothes stores, actors homes and hardware shops; from the costume hire facility and fire extinguisher workshop, everything is finally gathered, in a trailer, in the Paul Mathew store, in Long Marston ready for the long haul to Bucharest.

"Moving Entertainment Throughout Europe".

james

Theatre-Going Opportunities

2008-09-26T19:44:00.002+01:00

Here in the Midlands we're currently spoilt for choice as to what to go and see.
I'm fuelled by desire and guilt. A genuine interest in seeing the shows and
by the terrible guilt I will feel if I don't make it to any of them.

Shamefully I've not been to see a show at The Arena in Worlverhapton since it got it's make over, but this one is luring me:
Slot Machine (with Constance Brown occasional/regular Nick Tigg)

Partially shamefully, and partially because I've not been in the places they often do their stuff I have never seen
Women and Theatre but like everyone else like Janice very much.

Foursight have been helpful for us and this project sounds fun.

Theatre Absolute I have seen but not for a long time and it's always up to the mark.

I'd be happy to hear reports back on any of them anyone has managed to catch already.

James

Last of the Reviews

2008-09-23T13:19:00.003+01:00

We'd been led to believe The Times review would be short and sweet. It turns out to be longer than we had thought and as sweet as we had hoped.

The Stage is also keeping up its proud journalistic tradition.

James

Another Review

2008-09-22T12:44:00.002+01:00

Even reviews read a bit like previews for this show. If only some of the passion would spill over from the comments book into the national print media.

It was a great weekend at the show. The room was mostly very busy. There were visitors from London, Brisol, Manchester and Belfast amongst the crowds, some of whom we knew, many of whom we didn't.

On Sunday a wall of noise and blaze of colour burst into the still rice landscape as a Bhangra was performed Nachda Sansaar and latterly by audience members and more or less ept [sic] members of Stan's Cafe. Though an unlike collision of forms the professional version did look rather good doing their harvest dance amonst the mountains.

Hopefully no photos of the Artistic Directors efforts will find themselves at www.thericeshow.com

james

National Press

2008-09-18T11:07:00.003+01:00

The much anticipated feature comes out in The Guardian. As anticipated it attracts attention of people who wouldn't otherwise have caught up with the show (old school friends), it lures in new audience members (a fantastic pair of senior ladies) and validates stuff people don't believe if you're saying it about yourselves (other media interest).

Now you can judge for yourselves.

James

Careful Phrasing

2008-09-17T10:42:00.004+01:00

It's often difficult to clap at the end of a Stan's Cafe piece, not for negative reasons of meritocracy and disappointment but because the way ends are structured. Our standard way around this lack of feedback / connection between performer and audience is a Comments Book as employed by some Art Galleries.

Leafing through the two Comments Books after this weekend's opening was a fantastically positive experience, people were gushing with enthusiasm. Yet, nestled amongst the feel good acclamation was one entry that exposes both the limitations and strengths of the comments book.

Someone had taken exception to our use of the term 'Coloured People' in labelling a statistic. The problem with the Comment Book form of feedback is that there's no right of reply. The author was anonymous and long gone. There was no chance of running after them and explaining – that's not our term! That statistic and those around it are those of apartheid South Africa where 'Coloured' was an official term of the regime. Yes, it is offensive but that's because the regime was offensive.

The advantage of a comments book is that we now know that someone is walking around Birmingham with the belief that Stan's Cafe were co-authors of Mind Your Language. Although we'd rather stretch our audience than patronize them on this occasion we felt we could afford to leave things to chance. The whole set of labels now read something like " 'Coloured' People In South Africa 1948 as defined by the Apartheid Regime". It's an ugly label but better than people attaching an ugly phrase to us.

James

First Weekend

2008-09-15T08:40:00.004+01:00

Over 1,000 people visited the show over its opening weekend. The result of a benign confluence of good marketing, good weatehr, ArtsFest and free admission. Many people left saying they would return with friends, so hopefully this will be the case and audience numbers will hold up for the next three weeks.

There have been some fantastic photographs of the show posted on flikr. These are all collated on a website you can reach by following the link.

james

Opening Night

2008-09-13T00:41:00.004+01:00

Opening night and all is looking good.
Good audience, good show, good response.

In theory a piece comes out about the show in the Guardian on Monday, so fingers crossed. Lynn Gardner's comment on her blog promises well. If anyone fancies adding a comment to her entry then this may help keep that entry up the Guardian Blog pecking order and thus more visable to the world (we're slowly being inducted into these subtlties of strategy.

james

Test Cases

2008-09-11T21:12:00.002+01:00

Rules for 'the rice show' are emergant. A few things are certain.

1: Each grain of rice can only represent a PERSON.
2: Each grain of rice can only represent ONE person.
3: That person cannot be fictional.
4: That person can be dead.
5: As the grains act as 'cast members' it is possible for one person to appear in a number of piles simultaniously 'played by' different grains of rice.

There are other rules of protocol, about presentation and performance but it is the boundaries of those fundamental rules that I enjoy exploring and here we have to resort to Case Law. Today Chris presented a new Test Case the discussion of which caused Graeme to appeal against a former Test Case.

Test Case 1: Degrunier vs No one (my metaphor breaks down here): The Unknown Soldier

Degrunier argued that, as a real, though unknown soldier was burried in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc De Triomphe she should be allowed to place this person into the show (her idea was that he should go into The New Room).

After some deliberation Justice Yarker denied the claim. His resoning being that, whilst fulfilling the technical requirements that the rice represent a single, non-fictional person, the symbolic power carried by the real unknown soldier collapses when translated into the show as that symbolism is removed by a further degree, it becomes a representation of a symbol. The show makes the role of the Unknown Soldier redundent as every single solider who fell on a particular battle field can now have their own rice representative, they do not have to share a single symbol. In part, this is what gives the show its power.

At the time Justice Yarker said he would consider allowing an appeal to Justice Stephens, but on retireing to his chambers the thought "no I'm defintately right on this one and that's the end of it".

Test Case 2: Rose vs Yarker: Twelve Angry Men

Appealing a previous judicial ruling Rose argued that Twelve Angry Men shouldn't be allowed because amongst other things it felt a bit funny.

Many of the trainee barrasters standing by had no idea what was going on and had to be briefed about an old black and white film staring Henry Fonda adapted from a stage play the author of which no one could remember.

Trow and Semp, speaking on behalf of Yarker, pointed out that whilst the 'statistic' appears to be referring to fictional characters in fact it is merely identifying a dozen hopping mad males. Trow used the Million Men test case to bolster his argument.

Rose internally cursed that QC Hadingue was on other legal duties in Stratford and unable to back him up.

Yarker (acting contrary all good legal proceedure as both defendant and judge) decided against the appeal. Whilst acknowledging the validity of the 'feeling a bit funny' argument and welcoming the appeal he said he was minded, on this occasion, to allow Twelve Angry Men so long as it stays in its own room and doesn't interfere with any other 'statistics'.

With both case and court dismissed everyone wandered off and no one seemed particularly bothered about being paid less than £100 per hour.

James

Visiting Artist

2008-09-11T20:32:00.004+01:00

Amid the flow of journalists wandering in and out of the show today came a woman who was clearly neither a journalist nor in the wrong place, she clearly wasn't one of our volunteers, it turned out she was Deborah Feingold.

Despite loving photography, I'm samefully ignorent of who actually takes any of those pictures I love. Man Ray, Weegee, Robert Maplethorpe, William Wegman, Edward Dimsdale, beyond that and I start to struggle. I had however heard that Deborah Feingold was due to open an exhibition just across the road from us at the St.Paul's Gallery and I had heard that a fair number of people are excited by this fact. So it was great to meet her.

She was delightful, full of energy and enthusiasm and joy. A great refreshing blast of that transatlantic vivacity which makes being in the States such a thrill. Anyway, she zoomed in, was super enthusiastic about the show, had an anguished glance at her watch and zoomed off to preparations for her opening.

It was so nice of her to find time to come over and see what we were up to that it redoubled my determination to get to the St.Paul's opening tomorrow. Back home thinking about writing this entry I track down her photographs and it turns out I've got one of them beside my bed. Amongst the beautiful portraits she takes of the rich and famous are a series of book covers and amongst these is Barak Obahma's audacity of hope, a book which I was reading fairly assiduously before this whole show thing cranked up.

As we were leaving the exhibition she did stop beside one particularly enormous pile of rice and enthuse about its quality as an object and the great light in that room and so on........ how much does Feingold commission set you back? Shouldn't a C.E.O. have a prestige photograph of himself behind his desk, even if it a secondhand melamine desk at Unit 108b The Big Peg.

James

The New Section

2008-09-11T01:08:00.000+01:00

I work on the new section late into the night.
Growing tired I slacken off, I allow myself to start reading.
I pause to look at pictures.
The stories behind these names and numbers are too much.
I'm in tears.
That's it for tonight.

James

How Much?

2008-09-10T21:41:00.005+01:00

A deputation from the show were off on Fire Marshal training this morning. Having just put out a series of statistics about workers burning to death in factory fires I hoped that they would pay close attention. Whilst being a little cagey about what they actually learnt they did assure me there's more to fire marshalling than shouting "There's a fire, follow me" and charging for the exit.

Whilst the Fire Marshals were letting off fire extinguishers the Rice Wranglers spent much of the morning being photographed and filmed in a press call. A great piece came out in the Birmingham Post yesterday so hopefully that's a sign of the P.R. blizzard cranking up another notch.

The day wasn't without anxiety. A local news agency, having received a press release, phoned up expressing an interest in the show. Normally this would be a good thing, but their first question was "how much did the show cost?". Now, I don't know about you, but I've never heard a national news story about what excellent value for money a particular work of art is, particularly not one which isn't oil placed on canvas looking a lot like the thing it is 'supposed to be'. So we didn't answer the question and we'll see what happens. Ironically the same agency sent a photographer, who arrived woefully late, but whom we politely accommodated, and he loved the show. He left with a fist full of fliers and a promise to return with his girlfriend. Hopefully this is the start of a crazy word-of-mouth snowball.

James

Nearly There

2008-09-09T22:36:00.004+01:00

The show is starting to look very much like a show now. There is more to do, but things are well in hand for press photographs and a bit of filming tomorrow. With fire marshal training, new performers arriving, more interviews and opening logistics all intruding I knew I wanted to be well ahead in developing the show and it looks like we're not far off.

A few visitors have been wandering through and giving the appropriate bowled over responses. It is always more impressive than people imagine. Tonight Collin, Paul and I stayed late. The show looks great at night in this space.

The most exciting news for connoisseurs of fine ethetical dining, is that The Kitchen Garden Cafe will be running a concession at the show. Most exciting for connoisseurs of the show – we are working on an aestetic departure. The venue has a side room which has a different feel to the rest of the space and needed a new strategy. This is in place and tentitively being inititated.

One of the things I enjoy most about working on this show is solving the connundrums it throws up. What to do with that room was a new and serious one. It took a bit of convition and guidance from Craig commit to a new approach and discard a significant portion of some people's work from yesterday. It will pay off. It gives the show now has an added twist. The secret will be revealed once the show has opened.

James

It's In The Stars.

2008-09-08T23:24:00.003+01:00

With all the ancillary action going on it would be difficult to ignore the fact that there's a show developing in the midst of it all. All 112 tonnes of rice are now safely stowed. Of this approximatly 70 tonnes has already been set out ready for the off.

The really big piles look fantastic. The organising logic feels strong. Lots of our favourites are already out. Playfulness is starting to creep in. Everyone's pretty focussed. As always with the smaller statistics now being concentrated on the speed of delivery is cranking up. We've let Arvo loose allowing him license to do 'dramatic lighting' in one section of the show. The mood is up-beat. We're on course for a good one. Not least because Rachel RICE won Big Brother.

James