The Structure of a Story

We've been touring two slightly different versions of What I Heard About the World in Portugal and the UK over the last two years. In Portugal Jorge performs in Portuguese and English, whilst Chris and I perform in English, and the English text is surtitled. In the UK version we all perform in English. In both versions, a small section in French is surtitled in the home language of wherever we are.

In the UK version, Jorge tells a story in Portuguese which isn't surtitled. He checks if anyone in the audience speaks Portuguese, and if anyone does, he includes them in the story-telling. It is important to us that Jorge gets to speak in his native language in the UK version of the show, as it means he is able to be more "himself". And I guess on a really simple level it's a reminder that we can't understand everything that happens in other countries, other languages.

This week we've been in Helsinki with the show, at the STAGE festival at Korjaamo, and it's the first time (bar early work-in-progress showings in Germany) that the show has been performed in a country where neither English or Portuguese is the first language. We performed the English version of the show, with the majority of the English language (plus the French) surtitled in Finnish. Of course the Finns' grasp of English is, on the whole, embarrassingly good.

There were two sections that we didn't surtitle, because they are the loosest performance-wise,  the most conversational, and so quite easy to follow for an audience who have a bit of English. We also think (though with only anecdotal evidence) that it is more distracting for the surtitles to seem to be inaccurate as we go "off script" live.  Even though the audience are listening to a whole show not in their first language, we decided to keep the section where Jorge tells a story in Portuguese - without surtitles - for the reasons mentioned above.

After the second performance we had a post-show discussion, and we were talking about this with a couple of audience members. They said that they really liked "not understanding" the Portuguese-language story, because it changed their relationship with Jorge and made the show "more human". One of them then observed that although he couldn't understand what Jorge was saying, he could follow, from Jorge's delivery, "the structure of a story" as he was telling it. 

I really like this idea, and I realised that this observation articulates something I already think about that section of the show, where we are playing with how briefly we can tell certain stories, and still make the point with them that we're trying to make. This is the section of What I Heard About the World that is most like the story-telling in Story Map - five stories told directly to the audience, a couple of different ones (from me) each night. For me it feels like the stories in this section have been told several different ways, with different structures, until we have found the structure that suits them - suits what we want to do with them - best. The content of the story is the same, but we try several structures for it before settling on the right one.

What I Heard About The World: Video Trailer

A video trailer by Lauren Stanley
What I Heard About the World by Third Angel & mala voadora
On tour now, full tour dates here.

Packing the Van

Why tell these stories now? Why tell these stories again?

Stock-piling books, DVDs, comics, articles and music to take with me on tour. Stuff that's been on the to-read/watch list for months, some stuff bought especially. Touring luxuries.

Getting a bit done on the next two shows - moving them forward, conceptually and logistically, to a point where they can rest for a month until the latter half of the tour releases the head-space to pick them up again.

Checking the words are still there. Or rather, the stories. Discovering, as usual, on talking-to-myself walks to work that the words are still there - but the numbers aren't. Going back to the text to check dates and quantities.

Going back, too, to the wider research from making the show. Refilling my head with the stuff that is there in the show as spice and flavour, or (to push a metaphor) as stock, rather than as a main, visible, ingredient.

Planning workshops, talks, screenings and schedules. Getting my hair cut.

Asking myself, why tell these stories again, now? Remembering what first grabbed me about this stuff when Jorge told the first three stories. What made me want to tell these stories and find more of them. Thinking about how this project meant we had to look for bad stories, and the awkward contradiction of feeling pleased when we found them.

The What I Heard About The World project has been active in various forms, on various platforms, for almost two years now. That's pretty good service. Why tell these stories again?

I remember being sent a link to a story about a Korean couple who let their three-month old baby die because they were spending so much time playing an online game called Prius, in which they had to look after a (fantasy, magical) child. I thought simultaneously, (as a maker) brilliant, and (as a parent, as a person)...just...well, I don't know. Shock, disgust, disbelief. Anger, in fact.

I've been remembering that this contradiction is one of the things the show is about. It's about how we use stories. How we fit them in to our own agenda. At about the same time a similarly horrific and tragic story occurred in Sheffield - but not with the game element, and not, obviously, taking place in Korea. It seemed to me at the time - and a more recent internet search seems to confirm this - that whilst the Sheffield story was in the papers, it wasn't as widely reported as the story of the Korean family.

We like a good story. We like to repeat a great story - and to be brutal, the Korean baby and the computer game is a great story - partly because of the game, and partly because of where it happened. Korea. And as Chris says in the show,

...the thing about Korea, is, it's a very long way away. I mean, not if you live in Japan, but it's a long way away from the UK.

And, as Chris wrote to me just now, of course comparatively few of us have been to Korea. But we know it's part of our world. It has to exist, because we've heard of it. It's indisputably out there. We can watch its news. We can youtube its game shows and buy its exports. But for most of us, the place itself is just a series of facts, of anecdotes, without the balancing force of direct experience.  

I'm thinking about how, on one level, these stories of stand-ins are metaphors; their subject matter reflects the job they do as we carry them in our heads - as a stand-in for knowledge. As a substitute for understanding what it's actually like. Not that all the stories are as dark as the Korean story by any means - some of the stories in the show are ridiculous to the point of being almost unbelievable. A series of fakes, carefully crafted to let us believe we see the real thing.

They're a great stories. They suit our purposes. So we'll tell them again.

Back on tour

*This post was UPDATED on 12 Feb 2012*
[Watch a video trailer of What I Heard About The World here]
[Watch a video trailer for Story Map here]

In February and March we're on the road with both Story Map and What I Heard About The World, along with a programme of talks, workshops and related events. A simple tour list is up on the News Page of the website, but I thought it might be useful/interesting for some readers to go into a bit more detail about what's happening where, when and why. To tell the story of the tour, as it were.

We now think of the two pieces as a companion pieces (more on that in later blog post, I think), and certainly the plan is that in each performance of What I Heard About The World we will include a one different story that we have found through the Story Map research.

 photo: Craig Fleming

We kick off with what feels like a combined two-week North-East residency at ARC and Northern Stage, who between them are hosting the complete range of the project plus some other associated projects.

ARC, Stockton on Tees

Story Map: Tuesday 31 January, 10am – 10pm

You can follow it, and take part, online.

What I Heard About The World: Thursday 2 February, 7.30pm

NORTHERN STAGE, Newcastle Upon Tyne

What I Heard About The World: Wed 8 – Fri 10 February, 8.15pm

Plus:

Weds 8: post-show mini-Playing With Time video screening in Stage 3 – we'll be introducing three short films from the Third Angel repertoire.

Thurs 9, 7.15pm: pre-show talk Stories We Didn't Tell. Created for the Society of Cartographers' Summer School and the NASN's Dialogues series, Stories We Didn't Tell explores the development of the show and the three way collaboration between Third Angel, mala voadora and Worldmapper.org. It includes, unsurprisingly, a few of the stories we don't tell in the show, and considers why we don't tell them. (This talk is available for other venues – get in touch).

Also on Thurs 9: post-show talk with the creative team.

Then What I Heard About The World is on tour across England, starting in the North West:

AXIS ARTS CENTRE, Crewe:

Thursday 16 February, 7.30pm

Having worked a lot with the Axis team in Alsager, this will be our first visit to the new space in Crewe. We'll also be showing two new video pieces - Story Titles and World Cartograms - inspired by the research process, again in collaboration with Worldmapper.org, in the foyer gallery space, all week, too.

ZION ARTS CENTRE, Manchester:

Friday 17 February, 7.30pm

We are delighted to be the opening event of the new WordofWarning programme in Manchester. There will be a couple of speeches, a bonus short performance and drinks – come and celebrate!

And then we head South, with a welcome return visit to be part of the fantastic season at:

THE JUNCTION, Cambridge:

Monday 20 February, 8pm

Followed by two weeks at the brilliant:

SOHO THEATRE, London:

Weds 22 Feb – Sat 3 March (not Sun 26), 7.45pm
plus Saturday Matinees at 3.30pm
It's our first visit to Soho, and we're really excited to be taking the work there - come along, tell your friends! We'll be running a number of workshops whilst we're in London – get in touch if you'd like us to run one with you.

Also, during the run at Soho, Chris and Hannah Jane Walker will be presenting The Oh F*ck Moment, as a late show on Friday and Saturday evenings at 9.45pm. It's a great show, so why not come down and see both...

After that, What I Heard About The World continues, heading to the South West, the South, and, er, the Middle (ish). Trace this last two weeks of the tour on the map... We start with one of our favourite venues:

EXETER PHOENIX

Tuesday 6 March, 8pm

And then a run of really exciting venues that are all first time visits for us:

THEATRE ROYAL WINCHESTER,
Thursday 8 March,8pm

THE BREWERY, TOBACCO FACTORY THEATRE, Bristol:
Friday 9 & Sat 10 March, 8.15pm

UNIVERSITY of BEDFORD THEATRE  

Wednesday 15 March, 7.30pm

What I Heard About The World tour finishes at

THE CORE at CORBY CUBE:
Friday 16 March, 7.30pm

followed by Story Map:
Saturday 17 March, 10am - 10pm

Then to finish off the whole tour, we head to (South) London with Story Map:

THE ALBANY, London:

Saturday 24 March, 10am - 10pm

photo: Hannah Nicklin

So, a bit more about the project:

Both pieces are devised and performed by Jorge Andrade, Alexander Kelly and Chris Thorpe, and created in collaboration with José Capela and Rachael Walton. 

In Story Map we are joined by online-documenter/researcher-corroborator-dramaturg Hannah Nicklin, and throughout the project we have been assisted and documented by Lauren Stanley.

All of this has been managed by Hilary Foster for Third Angel and Manuel Poças for mala voadora.

What I Heard About The World

"A theatre piece with two songs: one original, one karaoke."

There's quite a lot on this blog about the process of making the show: 

Here's where it all started.  

Here's us refining our brief. 

Here are some thoughts on the influence of Worldmapper. 

Here's the start of Lauren's rehearsal diary. 

Here's a bit about the use of drawing in the project.
Here are some thoughts on taking the show back out on tour in the UK.

Story Map

A 12 hour durational research performance.

You can follow Story Map online, as it runs live. Just visit:

http://whatiheardabouttheworld.co.uk

and/or follow me (@AlexanderKelly) on Twitter.

There are some thoughts from me about the 12-hour nature of the performance, here.

**

Third Angel and mala voadora present

What I Heard About The World & Story Map

A co-production with Sheffield Theatres and Teatro Maria Matos, Lisbon

In association with PAZZ Performing Arts Festival and Worldmapper.org.

Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

12 Hours

The first couple of hours are the least like performance. The quietest. The most like the devising-room game or task from which the show is born. The most like the three (or now four) of us playing the game by ourselves, with the audience dropping in to see how we're doing.

Mornings are more like a working exhibit for people to interact with. I enjoy the atmosphere of this: the phase where we are still finding our rhythm, getting a handle on the acoustics and layout of the space. We're slowest in these early hours, despite the fact that the smaller number of visitors means we actually have more control over the work-rate. We are working the whole time, we just get through less countries than the 17 or 18 an hour we need to. I'm still getting my drawing-fingers loosened up, Chris is still looking to find his two-word-story-title punning-mojo, Jorge still getting into the groove of the randomised-country-selection-system, and how much he should control the pace. There's more discussion, more digression, more discarded drawings.

It's strange to think of it as 'performance' or 'show' during the morning. It's pre-matinee; pre-lunch. Often, when the audience speak to us in the morning, it is individually, telling just one of us a story - at the drawing table, or across the book, or taking Chris aside by the map - rather than telling the whole room, from their seat.

Although we ran early versions of Story Map for three- and six-hour performances, now we know we can just about get through the whole world in 12 hours, that's the timeframe that interests us. That's what gives us morning starts, and I like the different feel the piece has as we progress through the day.

Lunch time, of course, is when it gets busy. Audience members have food and drink with them. We do, too, going cold behind us. We stop thinking about the time, just keeping the cycle of the piece going. When it gets busy we feel the pressure to entertain, to play to the room more, but we enjoy the shift into doing the task for/with the audience. With the people in the room. And we like, of course, the fact that there are more people to tell us stories.

After lunch people drift away, back to work, out to the shops, back home. By half-past two, three o'clock, it's much quieter. We notice the time again. Have a quick break. Get coffee, have a tidy round after the lunchtime rush.

In the afternoon we're more likely to notice people again as they arrive, welcome them. Families. Kids. We have to think more about the telling of some of the stories, avoiding certain details, making the darker material we have gathered into something more like fairystories. Chris is able to find a role for kids in the stories, or a connection with their own experience.

We pass halfway late in the afternoon, and do our first full count, invariably finding that at the halfway point (time) we are not halfway through (countries). We work out the new hourly rate required for the rest of the day. Someone works out how many minutes per country we have. The dilemma is that we don't just want to charge through, ticking-off countries, the point is to gather, and tell, stories. But we (well, certainly I) do want to complete the task, too. (About) 200 countries in 12 hours. So our concentration does shift; we get quicker at moving on to the next country, we keep the momentum going, and the conversation focussed on the stories of replicas and substitutes that we are seeking.

Tea time. More people come and go. More people dropping in after work. There's a change in the feel of the audience, too. They seem happier to sit and watch, now, only talking when they are certain they have a story to contribute. Perhaps because this is the more normal time for "watching a show", but in early evening, they seem more traditionally "audience"-like.

With two hours to go, the numbers start to build. People who were with us earlier in the day come back. They want to know what they've missed. We get more requests for stories, more stories offered for the countries that are still unclaimed. The show itself is busier now, more theatrical. There's pressure on Chris to tell more stories, whilst Jorge starts to drive us faster, taking over and moving us on. I start to get a backlog of drawings to do. We feel the need here to share/gather stories from the biggest audience, whilst also feeling the pressure to hit the target: we have a very clear minutes/country rate to achieve worked out by now.

And then in the last half an hour we find we have all the time we need. We can slow down. I start to worry that we won't fill the last twenty minutes. We're able to take more story requests. We know the last five countries that we have to do, laid out on Jorge's table, and whether we already have stories about them to share. I enjoy the serendipity of this, how the last country always seems appropriate, somehow.

We name the last name: conventional longform, conventional shortform, local longform, local shortform. We place it on the map. We solicit, or tell, a story. We name the last story. Two words. We illustrate the story and stand the last drawing on the map. Sometimes, sometimes we have a couple of minutes to spare.

Naturally I enjoy the fact that it doesn't end here. People gather round the map, ask what a particular drawing means, which title it relates to; they tell us more stories, ask what will happen to the map.


**
Photographs here are of Story Map at Hull Truck Theatre on 1 September 2011 as part of Freedom Festival, by Hannah Nicklin. More photos (along with videos and audioboos of some of the stories) are up at whatiheardabouttheworld.co.uk, which Hannah set up, and on her Flickr pages.

Story Mapping at Hull Truck

What I Heard About The World and its sister project Story Map are both back out on the road this autumn.  We are translating the English and Portuguese version of What I Heard About The World, that tours in Portugal, back in to English this month, and previewing this new version in Leeds on 5 and 6 October, before a more extensive UK tour at the start of next year. We'll also be presenting the dual language version in Porto in November, too.

But this week we re-launch the research for the project with Story Map, running from 10am - 10pm on Thursday 1 September, in the upstairs foyer of Hull Truck Theatre. As ever we'll be mapping the world from memory, placing post-it note countries on the map, deferring to the CIA as to what actually constitutes a country, and collecting stories of fakes, replicas, substitutions and stand-ins. The stories we collect are pinned with a title and an icon, and then re-shared throughout the performance. If you're in Hull, pop in at any time, choose a story or help us fill in one of the gaps by sharing a story with us. Stay for as long or short a time as you wish - it's free.

If you're not in Hull, you can follow the show online, and contribute stories to the map. Chris, Jorge and I will be joined by Hannah Nicklin, who will be documenting the map as it grows throughout the day at whatiheardabouttheworld.co.uk, and on Twitter using the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld.

Story Map at Transform

12 hours. 201 countries. 120 stories. Minutes to spare: zero.

We had a great time at Transform at West Yorkshire Playhouse. A really varied audience, including kids for the first time, who we got some nice stories from. One of my favourites was "Waterloo Bear". The girl who told us the story has a friend who is really keen on Paddington Bear - so keen in fact that he has eight Paddingtons. To differentiate them from each other, he has renamed seven of them, but always after a London train station. So one of the bears took his place on the map:

There's a really nice response to the piece, and other Transform work, by Clancy Walker, on the Culture Vultures blog, here.

There are more images of the piece over on our Flickr page, here.

Story Map

This Saturday we're running Story Map as part of West Yorkshire Playhouse's fantastic Transform season. Story Map started life as one of the research engines for What I Heard About The World, and has been through a number of incarnations, and names, on its way to become a stand-alone piece.

In the early devising process we referred to it simply as 'Map Game', and it was a way of getting existing research material/knowledge out of Jorge, Chris and me: we would set arbitrary journeys around the world, landing at seven or ten countries, and connect stories between them. This evolved into an exercise we could play with other people in the room which we presented as an 'in progress/research performance' - which we called Research Table - with Forest Fringe in Glasgow in Edinburgh. We ran this for two, 3 hour blocks at The Arches, and then calculated that we could probably map the whole world in 12 hours, which is what we attempted at the Forest Cafe last summer - making it with four minutes to spare.

In Edinburgh we worked alphabetically from the CIA World Factbook - agreeing on 201 countries and collecting over 100 stories. When we remounted a smaller, six hour, version at the Society of Cartographer's Summer School in Manchester last September it occurred to us that now we had set the countries on the map in alphabetical order, it would be too easy to do it that way again. So given that we had an audience of mapmakers we decided to make it more difficult for ourselves by choosing the countries 'bingo style'. I say more difficult for 'ourselves' - I mean more difficult for Chris, who's job it is to actually place the countries on the map. The means of representation - every country represented by post-it notes of the same size - are deliberately restrictive, but it was fascinating watching cartographers help Chris to get the Caribbean islands just right.

As noted previously on this blog, the stories we seek in Story Map (and online, via Twitter and Facebook for example) are stories of fakes and replicas - not deceptions, but rather stories of substitutes or stand-ins used knowingly in the everyday. And the stories from Story Map do become part of the theatre piece: if you've seen What I Heard About The World, the Natashas story was given to us at Forest Fringe in Edinburgh by someone who had been on the bus with them, and the Dead Man's Suit story was emailed to us during the run in Manchester.

But Story Map is more than just a research engine for the theatre show - it has grown to become a stand alone element of a multi-platform project; it explores some of the key themes of the project for us. In the theatre piece the idea of mapping is much less obvious, and it was important to us to make a piece of work in which we name every country in its own language.* The theatre piece is not as specifically concerned with the inauthentic, either - it has become about something else, about the impossibility of holding the world in our heads, and the tools we use to nevertheless attempt to do so.

Story Map attempts to gather stories and to label them with a two word title, pin them to the map with a single image - and to get the names and colours right on the map. It's about the task of cataloguing the stories, and telling them, and re-telling them. It's about the stories, whatever our agenda, that you want to tell us.

So, if you're near Leeds this weekend, or online, please join us:

Third Angel and mala voadora present

Story Map: What I Heard About The World

Transform Festival, West Yorkshire Playhouse

11am - 11pm, Saturday 11 June 2011

Twitter hashtags: #whatiheardabouttheworld #wyptransform

Devised and performed by Jorge Andrade, Alexander Kelly & Chris Thorpe in collaboration with José Capela & Rachael Walton

Story Map is a companion piece to the theatre show What I Heard About The World, co-produced by Sheffield Theatres and Teatro Maria Matos, in association with PAZZ Festival and Worldmapper.org.

Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Third Angel is Regularly Funded by Arts Council England, Yorkshire.

There's loads of other great stuff on as part of Transform, including Melanie Wilson's Simple Girl this week, Geraldine Pilgrim's epic Handbag on the same day as us, and Chris Goode's remarkable new project, Open House next week. Well worth checking out.

*Of course, what we actually do is name the countries in English and then what the CIA says is their local language.

What I Heard About The World - dress rehearsal photos

These are photos from the dress rehearsal of What I Heard About The World at Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre, October 2010. Thanks to photographer Craig Fleming for letting us post these.

Rehearsal Blog 9

Here's Lauren's report on week 6 of rehearsals, the final week in the Lyceum Theatre rehearsal room before moving to the Crucible Studio Theatre for production week. A week of some quite big decisions and changes.

Rehearsal Blog 9: When the World Became Very Big, and Then Very Small

So, the last week of rehearsals. Perhaps not perfect timing for a complete redesign of the show, but a feeling that it was necessary seemed to be shared by the group. Rachael suggested a new running order, and that the 'playing space' should be changed to be very wide and shallow. Props and furniture were scattered across the stage, each piece having one function but not being moved once its used. This forces the performers to move about and create 'business', making it more visually interesting for the audience.

Chris also suggested the idea of literally tracking the journey of the stories; for example the first two stories in the show are from Singapore and Liberia, so they could describe how you would make that journey in real life (since it was me that did the research I can tell you it involves three international airports and bribing a helicopter pilot).

The 'Massacre' section includes material that has remained virtually the same since the performance at Forge almost six months ago, plus a new lengthy text, but it was finally decided that it needed to be shortened. This was a running theme for all the texts that remain in the show, with most of the texts being tightened up, both to shorten the running time, and to improve the flow and dynamism of what remained. For the same reason, some changes were made to who performed the texts, also to ensure that no one performer dominated certain sections of the show.

Rehearsals continued in this vein, but something still didn't feel quite right...so on Wednesday there was another development in terms of the staging, with the playing area reduced to a more intimate size. This obviously had implications for what the set looked like and how the performers interacted. Rachael had invited Julie Horan to work for a couple of days on the art direction, and between her and the group, a domestic feel to the staging began to emerge. The stage now read as a living room that the performers lived in, so this meant that it made more sense for them to tell the stories as much to each other, as 'out' to the audience.

A run-through on this basis with an audience of a few invited guests was performed on Thursday evening, which threw up some interesting points for the performers to consider, including the reading by some of the audience that Alex and Jorge are Chris' imaginary housemates.

One problem that needed solving at the end of the week was defining Chris' role; due to the nature of his texts, it wasn't clear if he was purely a commentator or a fellow storyteller aswell. Since neither the text or the set configuration was final until we moved into the Studio the next week, it was difficult to decide. Hopefully with a new venue and a new set, it would be one of those problems to which the solution would emerge in the space.

Rehearsal Blog 8: Forgive Them Father

Catching up with the rehearsal blogs from Lauren... this is for the latter half of week 5 of devising/rehearsals:

Post 8: Forgive Them Father, for They Have Sinned.

The rest of the week was spent developing each story section individually, with a view to having another run-through of everything on the Friday. This focussed on what the performers will actually do whilst telling the story, especially if they are the narrator.

Most intriguing of these sections came from Jorges’ experience of confessing to a priest when he was young. This links to a ‘sin line’ in France, which we were surprised to discover still exits and was immediately worked into the show.* Since a lot of the stories are told in the first person, it didn’t feel like a problem that one of them is actually a personal experience, but it was also attempted with Chris confessing to Alex.

On Friday the performers did a run-through of all the developed material, in a rough order without any transitions or ‘connecting’ sections and it came to almost two hours. This was a little more than the performers were expecting, but didn’t see this as a problem as they felt the show would shrink with further rehearsal. In discussing it in the afternoon, some sections were agreed on as needing big changes, but no-one was prepared to rule anything out entirely at that point.

There was still a hesitation about the role of the screen and live drawing, but it was left until further development was done to make the final decision. It was also thought that Jorge needed more 'normal' things to do and say, as there was a danger that he would be seen as the 'clown' of the trio by the audience.

At this point, some stories that were on the ‘in the show’ pile had been left undeveloped, and would probably remain so as there was already a lot of material written or prepared. The week ended with the performers feeling pretty happy with how the material was coming to life, and were hoping for more of the same next week.

*If you feel the need to confess any sins to an automated Frenchman, the number is: France 0982 463 438

Rehearsal Blog 7: What We Think About The World

Here's Lauren's report from the first half of last week - which was Week 4 of the devising/rehearsal process.

Rehearsal Blog 7: What We Think About the World?

The first task of the week was to do further work on the opening of the show, as it felt important to use the introduction as an implicit statement of intent, and to have it decided in the performers’ heads. This didn’t quite go to plan however, as discussion drifted back to the intentions of the show as a whole.

The material at times feels like the results of a fact finding mission (this perhaps reflects the methodology of getting the stories in the first place), and it was thought that maybe this should be embraced; the show is a snapshot of the world, the performers have heard about it and are ‘reporting back’ to the audience. This allows for the idea that the world the performers describe can only be their interpretation of it, as well as using Portuguese and native tongues when naming countries.

Alex’s ideas about the show changed a lot over the weekend, and some of them were discussed and tried out. He suggested there should be 24 stories, one for each time zone (though this isn’t mentioned to the audience), and that they should be placed on a map but not a literal one, perhaps one made from spotlights. The stories should be character focused, although not necessarily the central character(s). There was debate about whether having a map on stage all the way through would create the same problems that using lots of flat daddies would. Perhaps markings on the floor could suggest a map?

Sifting through the material already generated, and choosing other stories to make a total of 24, quickly made it obvious that this was too many. There were also big geographical gaps in story locations; it wasn’t decided definitively if this was important or not. It was agreed that the rest of the week should be spent developing each of the stories not yet touched on, with the aim of putting it all together on Friday for a run-through. For the time being connecting the stories was not important.

On Tuesday, the Brand Awareness, Radio Silence and Emergency Exit stories were looked at in more detail, which bought up thoughts about the physical aspect of the show. What should performers not actively involved in a story do; should they be on or off stage, should they be setting something else up for a future story, should they just disappear for a bit? Minimising the number of props used, and using them several times was thought to be a cleverer way of dealing with telling some stories. For example a radio is being used during Radio Silence, but could also be used for Massacre, Night Flight and Sin Line. This way all the props could be on the stage all the time, in line with the store room aesthetic the group have been discussing.

The development of Radio Silence induced an interesting debate, as it tells a story where sympathy for an Israeli family could be inferred as taking sides in a particular, complex conflict. Should the way the stories are presented be influenced by the performers’ opinions; does this make it not What I Heard About the World, but What We Think About the World? Some discussion about whether the show was obligated to mention Palestine in the interests of balance, or whether this was too much comment, and the show should just to present the world as they have found it. The performance is a version of the world, and the audience should be allowed to take from it and create their own, new world. 

Rehearsal Blog 6: “The Heartbeat of the Show”

Taking us up to the end of Week 3, here's Rehearsal Blog 6 from Lauren:

Post 6: “The Heartbeat of the Show”
A new day bought new enthusiasm and fresh ideas to the group. Chris had written a text entitled A Series of (Very) Short Pieces About What People Are Doing Right Now, essentially a (very) long list of one sentence summations of stories, both previously collected and new inventions. Alex, Jorge and Chris were (very) excited at this new development, believing it to be potentially the “heartbeat of the show”.

Various improvisations were tried, with Chris reading the text and Alex and Jorge trying ‘interruptions’ to flesh out certain stories if they came to mind. This felt like an promising structure for the show, and in the afternoon was tried again with the order of the list randomised, and shared between the three of them. I think everyone went home feeling a lot of progress had been made that day.

On Thursday, a need to develop shorter versions of the stories was felt, as all the texts up to that point had been at least five minutes long, and whilst they were liked by the group, it would have made for a very long show if all the stories were fictionalised at such length. This new brevity was mingled with the text developed so far, in a repetition of the ...What People Are Doing Right Now improvisation later in the day. Interruptions were both pre-planned and improvised with certain sentences triggering certain set pieces that have previously been developed.

This was the first attempt at performing an entire show with the material, so some things worked well and some didn’t; Jorges’ wailing was a personal highlight! The performers were generally pleased with how well it went for the first try, and how well it seemed to flow. Overall another good day.

With some overnight perspective, the group discussed the run-through and agreed that the content was good, but that they needed structure and to inject more emotion. There was a lot of pacing around thinking what to do next rather than feeling it was ok to sit to one side, and the function of the live drawing needed to be clarified.

A possible introduction idea was developed by all three; that of relating Sheffield to the rest of the world, and of Jorge speaking in Portuguese and Chris attempting to translate. This was developed for the rest of the day, as well as an exercise where Alex attempted to draw a photograph based on Chris’ description of it.

On Friday we were also joined by Clive Eggington, photographer and co-founder of Archive Sheffield, an organisation hoping to: “create new photographic images to depict and preserve the diversity of the cities population”. He is hoping to take photos right through the process, and everyone is happy to have him onboard, and are also hoping to star in one of his stories! It feels a bit surreal to have two levels of documentation going on in the room, but I’m sure we’ll get used to it...

www.archive-sheffield.org

Rehearsal Blog: All These Events Are Happening Now

So, here's Lauren's blog post from the start of last week - Week 3. This takes us up to the point where we had to confront the fact that the idea that we were so excited about in Week 2, whilst visually very strong, was actually getting in the way of performance.

These can be tough decisions. Rachael reminded me of an early version of 9 Billion Miles From Home at Chelsea Theatre, in which we had a field of suspended stars or globes, each beautifully, individually lit. They looked great. But getting up to do anything in amongst them was confusing and impractical. They didn't last into the next stage of the process, but they informed the circular obsession of the version of the show that followed. It is proving to be the case here, too, I think...but, anyway, over to Lauren.

Post 5: “All These Events are Happening Now”

The start of the third week saw the move to the Lyceum rehearsal space, which gave the performers more space and room for a bigger screen, so that the projection aspect of the show could be developed more effectively.

With Rachael in rehearsal at the start of the week, it was seen as a good time to check everyone was happy with the progress made so far, and to compare notes regarding what the performers thought the show was at this point. There was a feeling that the format needed to be decided upon soon, to have as much time as possible to refine the content, as the set design was very simple.

Discussing their ideas of what the show is, proved a point the performers are making in What I Heard; we each have our own version of the world in our heads, never exactly the same as anyone else’s. There were debates regarding the differences in each others’ visions; stories versus characters, nations versus individuals, the function of the stage props and what they represent, whether the show should have discrete sections or should appear to flow as one narrative.

One point agreed on was that the show needed to convey that all the events they mention are happening everywhere, all the time. At the moment there were long texts about one story, but there needed to be ‘micro-narratives’ featuring others, to make the world the performers are creating richer and more textured.

In the afternoon, Alex, Jorge and Chris read through all the text that had been written so far. Reacting to this, Rachael wondered whether the show was actually commenting on the world it was describing. There was disagreement about this, as the tone in which some stories are told in could be thought of as commenting on them.

On Tuesday, the performers met with the set & prop builders, and this forced the performers to clarify their thoughts regarding the use and number of ‘flat daddies’ in the show. They seemed important to include because they have been the hook for getting many people interested in the project from the start, but including many of them may have spatial problems on stage.

These doubts were cemented with the deconstruction of the ‘hijack’ text, again with Rachael and Capela offering feedback. Working out what all three were to do whilst the text is performed by Chris quickly exposed weaknesses in that 'set piece', but also the need for more brevity in dealing with most of the stories in the show. To remedy this Rachael suggested an exercise, in which all three should write material where stories are told just through dialogue, or in the third person.

At the end of the day, energy felt very low and there was a bit of mental panic about throwing out another set design, but as always, tomorrow was another day...

Lauren's photos of the rehearsal process are on her Flickr page, here.

Society of Cartographers Summer School

Lauren's report from Manchester...

Post 4: What I Heard About The World - Research Table at The Society of Cartographers Summer School

On Thursday 9th, the What I Heard team took a day off from rehearsals, to take part in the Society of Cartographers’ 46th Summer School in Manchester. There was some concern, given the previous day’s breakthrough, that the day in manchester might be a bit of an interruption to the devising process, but in the end it turned out to be worthwhile for everyone.

The research table had been run a few times before, so Chris, Alex and Jorge were familiar with the format, so they decided to introduce countries to the map at random rather than alphabetically. Chris then had to place the post-it note representing that country from memory, Jorge read aloud the long and short form of the country’s name in its native tongue, then any stories were collected. Where nothing new came up, or there were no delegates present, pre-gathered stories were re-used.

The delegates seemed to enjoy the improvised, ‘lo-fi’ nature of the map, and had no hesitation in telling Chris to rearrange his post-its when inaccurate (FYI, St Kitts and Nevis is North of St Lucia, not the other way round...). The nature of what a country is has been discussed by the performers before, but it became especially prescient in the company of experts, and there were many interesting discussions about mapping, borders, the history and politics of dividing up the world. We even learnt a new word: exclave.

Alex gave a talk about the development of What I Heard in the afternoon which was warmly received, and we received several new stories from delegates, which will be looked at further next week, and perhaps worked into the show.

Photos can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurencstanley

AudioBoos of Alex’s talk can be found here: Part 1 and Part 2

Rehearsal Blog 3

Here's Lauren's report on Week 2's work in Sheffield:

Post 3: What I Heard About The World Rehearsals Week 2

The start of the second week saw the first weekly visit by Rachael Walton, co-artistic director of Third Angel, and we were also joined by José Cappela, co-artistic director of Mala Voadora with Jorge. This gave the performers the opportunity to hear the opinions and ideas of people new to any developments in the rehearsal space.

Through analysing their progress, it was decided by everyone that greater clarity was needed on what the show is about, and how the stories that have been collected will be deployed. Jorge, Capela and Rachael focused on investigating possible connections between stories, whilst Alex and Chris wrote some potential text for the show, which also developed the way the stories will be blended into one coherent whole.

This naturally led onto discussion as to the role the table/stage will play. Once props were introduced, do they stay there or are they removed? Do performers stay on the stage throughout, or get off it when they are not playing an active part in the show? Should the stage be sloped or flat? Do we even need a stage? This was a source of much debate through the week, but on Wednesday there was a breakthrough that Alex, Jorge and Chris were all excited about (something that I obviously can’t tell you without spoiling the show, sorry!)

It felt important that from now on the performers should set out how they will use their devising time at the start of the day (e.g. improvise around a text for an hour, think about set design for a morning), rather than working where their thoughts took them. This ensured there was tangible progress at the end of each day, which in turn maintains motivation and energy levels through the process, and staves off panic of course!

We all have our own idea of what the world is (like the old adage that if you ask people to imagine a tree, everyone pictures a different tree), so the performers needed to clarify each others’ perception of the world, and that the world the show describes is the performers’ collective version of it. The ‘real’ world and the performers’ world have a relationship with eachother, but they are not the same thing. The performers’ description of the world they have heard about allows the audience to imagine and question the version of the world they hold in their heads.

Overall, a lot of progress was made in the second week, and whilst what a lot of what was developed in the first week has now been scrapped, I think everyone is more satisfied with what has replaced it.