In the room

Rachael and I have done a little work on Words & Pictures separately up to now, but today was the first day on it together, and it felt good. We’re not making this piece in a solid block of rehearsal time; more checking in with each other, trying stuff out, setting ourselves writing and re-writing work to do before we meet again. As we would expect, this process is partly decided upon, partly discovered – “ah, that’s how we make this piece.”

Words & Pictures, at the moment, takes the form of a book reading for a book that does not exist. A collection of texts that might be in our book if we had got around to writing it. We’ve had some material ear-marked for this piece for a while, but for today’s session we also dug out a few other texts that were offshoots of other projects that we wanted to do more with; sections that we liked, perhaps, for what they were, but that didn’t fit, it seemed, with the show that they were initially written for. Some texts we worked with today were not originally intended to be performed – but then, that’s what a book reading is, isn’t it?

As we would also expect there was some thinking today about what the rules of the piece are – is a text allowed in if it has already been performed as part of another show? – but mainly it was an enjoyable day of try-outs and discussion – finding out what connections there are between pieces, what stands up well, what we’re less interested in now, what development, re-writing, cutting and expanding needs to be done.

So we've got a playlist of possibles, edits and re-writes up on the blackboards in our workspce. Next session will be about considering these re-writes and looking at the new pieces we’re developing specifically for Words & Pictures.

"Snow" in Sheffield

Snow, a video piece by Christopher Hall & Alexander Kelly, with music by Akira Rabelais, is showing as part of a free screening at The Showroom Cinema, Saturday 25th July 2009 at 4pm:

The Definition of Beauty (15)
Is it a music video or an artwork? Well, it’s neither and it’s both. This is a programme of moving-image artworks with audio that occupy a space where it is no longer necessary to make a distinction between what you see and what you hear. Curated by Richard Bolam.

It's free, as it is part of the great free music festival, Tramlines.

Emerge Festival, Leeds

This Thursday, 23 July, 2-5pm, Rachael is running a 'rule-based devising' workshop as part of the Emerge Festival, and she's also on the panel for the Pitch and Win competition.

The workshop itself is at Seven, and more details are on the Carriageworks website. You can book directly by phone on (0113) 224 3801.

There are also other great looking workshops and scratch performances from artists such as Dan Bye, Red Grit, Chloe Bezer and Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah, so it's worth getting a week's pass.

Game Over (for now)

Photos by Nina Urban.

Thanks for playing. More later in the year, hopefully.

Third Angel on Twitter

After signing up to it about 10 months ago one lunch break, I've finally started tweeting on Twitter - mainly about Third Angel work and projects I'm doing with Christopher Hall, but I expect there'll also be stuff about living in Sheffield/Yorkshire and drinking double espresso. You can follow me @AlexanderKelly, should you be so inclined.