Children’s Play, ‘The Whisper Tree’ June 18, 2012

I’ve been tinkering away on a commission for theatre company, Travelling Show, which is an interactive promenade performance written for a set location which is that of a small wood in Wales. What a mouthful. I’ve enjoyed this project. I like the challenge of having restrictions set in place and this was definitely one of the high end situations I’ve been presented with. Three actors, less than 40 minutes, in a wood, interactive, promenade, promote people coming to the forest regularly, informative, to include Welsh myths and legends. All ticked.
 
We’re about to go into rehearsals soon in London and then transfer down to Wales where rehearsals will take place in the wood it’s to be performed in. The production is part of the Pembroke Festival this July which runs from 12th till the 15th. What makes this project exciting, for me at least, is that this will be some of the children’s first experience of theatre. I try to think back to my first taste of theatre and all I can really remember is playing a green bottle in my primary school’s productions of a Disney medley and then secondary school drama trips (Forced Entertainment, DV8, Trevor Nunn’s Hamlet – my drama department were brilliant). I know that my very first musical was Starlight Express and it’s stuck with me for some of the insane things it tried to achieve. I digress, this will be exciting for me to watch the audience as much as the brilliant actors involved. The breakdown of the festival days are here. I have a feeling that all the tickets are sold out, but there’s no harm in trying. And if you’re down there please give me a shout, it would be nice to meet some local folks.

 

 

So the play… It’s about a young boy called Rory who is the new boy at school and isn’t quite fitting in. After school he decides he’s going to go into the wood and find The Whisper Tree which is the wisest and tallest tree. It’s going to tell him everything there is to know about everything so then everyone will have to be his friend. Tilly is a classmate who is forever trying to be his friend but her efforts go unnoticed and she doesn’t believe that there’s a Whisper Tree at all. So they venture into the wood to find The Whisper Tree and along the way they meet Ianto who doesn’t realise he’s woken up in a forest, the Wolf who’s hungry and scared of his own shadow and the Old Woman who comes to the forest to collect her thoughts like pebbles and knit jumpers for the birds who don’t fly south. A play about understanding what it means to grow up and separating what you really want from what you really need.
 
Most of the folks involved are people that I’ve worked with before and it’s great to be working with them again. First up is director Nadia Papachronopoulou and it’s a real treat to be working on something larger and more prominent this time round. Nadia’s been extremely busy recently juggling several plays on at the same time so it’ll be great to get in the rehearsal room with her and see her work her magic. Next up we have Matthew Schmolle playing Rory, who was stupendously great in my play, ‘I Still Get Excited When I See A Ladybird‘ last August at Theatre503 with Papercut Theatre. Also Charlotte Worthing will be playing Tilly and she was superbly brilliant in my play for Box Of Tricks, ‘Let Them Eat Cake!‘ which was performed at the Arcola in 2011. Last but by no means least is a new actor for me, but I’ve seen him in action in the REDFest recently and he’s ace – Matthew Houlihan will be playing Ianto, Wolf and the Old Woman.
 
Travelling Show is the brainchild of Artistic Director and Designer Vicki Stevenson. “Our work is interactive and inspired by audiences. We love telling stories, and finding the right tools for each show – we don’t specialise in one kind of medium just like we don’t only make work for one audience. Each production is formed with expert collaborators, whether that’s in puppetry, film or dance. This means that our work can be extremely varied while still holding onto our key premise -theatre is for audiences and artists with the best stuff coming from a strong relationship between the two.“
 
Come and ‘like’ them on Facebook to keep up-to-date with all their productions: Travelling Show on Facebook innit  

48hr Film Challenge September 26, 2009

I’ve been asked to be involved with the 48hr Film Challenge over in Jersey at the Branchage Film Festival. I’ll run the idea past you just in case you’ve not come across this before…

*In teams you arrive at 11am to the designated meeting place.
*One member from each team will pick from a hat a genre and a title.
*You go off and write, shoot, edit, finalise and bring your film back 48 hours later.

That’s pretty much it to be honest. You hardly sleep, run around like a blue arsed fly, eat shockingly shoddy food stuffs and what’s more we’re doing it in Jersey. A pretty place. The event itself is sponsored by Vauxhall and all the films will be screened after a drive-in showing of The Wizard of Oz. On a big fuck-off screen. I’m getting quite excited now. I love working in a collaborative nature and my Lovely Boss has put me in touch (and vice versa) with a fantastic director called Gaelle Denis who makes extremely pretty things like this:

… and this…

… And who has also requested that I join her team. So along with one male actor of 35, a female actor of 24, an editor and designer, Gaelle herself and moi we are competing in this crazy task. I managed to talk to Gaelle in between her leaving from one job in Berlin at the airport before she flies back here; she’s French and I have a cold, hilarity ensued.

What’s more is that the rather nice people at Vauxhall offered to loan a new shiny car for the entire festival to one team. What’s more is that I secured it! After many phonecalls, faxes, emails and anything else this brilliant opportunity has thrown my way so far it’s done and dusted. I’m not entirely sure what I’m definitely getting but I think it’ll look something like this…

The festival looks a cracking piece of marvellous things. I entered one of the Blaines’ shorts films into it last year and they both went and had mountains of fun. Whilst out there Chris mentored several filmmakers over in the Branchage Bootcamp and out of that sprung Laura Brocken’s film, “Tell” (posted below) which is what I’ve been pushing into festivals the last couple of months.

The Blaines are no strangers to this filmmaking format. They’ve competed in the Berlin challenge which resulted in them making a comedy musical spy thriller called, “Anything Goes”. Then they flitted to Paris where they made an action horror called, “Pour Un Temps” and their other foray (my personal favourite) was their comedy, “Making Juice” which was here in London. For more info check out Johnnie Oddball’s pages.

We’re all going to be camping on one site and the idea is that because all the teams have been personally asked we can all help each other out if needs be. To be brutally honest I cannot wait to be freezing my gibbly bits off standing in a field at 3am, I mean it. It’s going to be the first time that I’ve actually been involved with a short film and after learning about it all, writing short films as a degree and promoting others I think it’s about time I got my hands dirty in the most intense way ever.