Emergency Drinking Water

This month I've been making a show with MA students at Leeds Met University. I have a (very) part time salaried post at Leeds Met, but this project was very much like the "visiting artist" models we deliver in Universities across the country. We make shows with groups of up to 30 students - treating them as much as possible, within the educational framework, as we would treat fellow devisors in our other projects. The difference, of course, being that rarely do we get to work with a cast of that size.

Emergency Drinking Water, which we presented last week, was closest to a normal Third Angel devising process - if there is such a thing - partly because it was a team of just eight devisor-performers.

We re-mount the show in Leeds in September - here's what Version 1 looked like.

EMERGENCY DRINKING WATER

Devised & Performed by

Jane Bellamy

Hannah Butterfield

Louise Hill

Kimberly Maud

Rochnee Mehta

Debbie Newton

Lisa-Jane Pennington

Tina Torrington

Devised & Directed by

Alexander Kelly

Lighting Design &

Technical Management

Matt Sykes-Hooban

Rehearsal photographs by 

Kiran Mehta / Leeds Metropolitan University

Performance Education

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to be at a Valedictory Lecture at Leeds Met University by Professor Noel Witts.  Noel has been instrumental in setting up the Performing Arts provision, which is led by Teresa Brayshaw, at Leeds Met - but that's only the most recent in a very long list of achievements. To explain Professor Witt's importance to the world of contemporary performance education would take a much longer blogpost - or in fact, a book.

I first met Noel when we were both on the selection panel for the New Works Festival in Leicester in the late 1990s. What impressed me then, and still does, is that despite (or, in fact, because of) his extensive experience, what he's most interested in is what you think - what you've seen recently, what you thought of it, what you're making, why you're making it. It was entirely typical that in his own Valedictory Lecture, he gave about half of his floor time over to showcasing performance by his colleagues and students at Leeds Met - from first year undergraduate to Principal Lecturer.

I am lucky enough to benefit from Noel's experience at both Third Angel, where he is on our Board, and at Leeds Met where I am an Associate (very part time) Senior Lecturer. Noel's lecture was in part a riposte to Simon Jenkins' attack on Universities in The Guardian last year, and in preparation for the lecture he asked some of us to share a few thoughts on the importance of Performing Arts being present in Higher Education.

I was flattered that he included my brief response (alongside that of Oliver Bray and Teresa Brayshaw) verbatim. And as this week I also started making a new piece with second year Art Event Performance students at Leeds Met, it feels appropriate to post them here.

It's important that the performing arts are in Higher Education, the way we deliver them [at Leeds Met] anyway, because the provision is better than being professional. At least better than starting out on your own. In a three year BA degree you get to make, what, 18 shows/projects, with over 30 different collaborators, and taught/directed/led/mentored by 10, 12 different practitioners and artists.

You wouldn't get that environment if you just became a self employed artist 'straight from school'. In fact, you wouldn't get such an environment until much later in your career, if you were lucky. So the environment we provide is actually better than the profession in some ways - better than vocational.

And an educational institution, particularly a University, should reflect the society it is part of, and, surely, try to be better than it. And where does a society do much of its thinking, discussing, dreaming? How does it try to understand itself? Through its culture. So a University should be home to those voices.

There is, of course, a much bigger discussion to be had about this, but for now, I just wanted to mark Noel's Valedictory lecture - and say: Thank you, Professor.

Playback

If you're in Leeds next week, it would be great to see you at this performance intervention that I've created with Level 2 BA Art, Event, Performance students at Leeds Met University. It further explores the story gathering and re-telling work I've been doing in Third Angel in the last few years, with projects such as Where Have They Hidden All The Answers? We're exploring why we choose to tell, and re-tell, stories and why we choose to hear particular stories over others. We'll also be collecting stories, too - any story you want to tell us.

You can drop in any time for a 10 minute performance experience, and see it as many times as you like - there are over 200 story/performer combinations to choose from... It runs at Broadcasting Place - opposite The Fenton.

Here's the official info:

Leeds Met Art, Event, Performance presents
PLAYBACK
A documentary performance Devised in collaboration with Alexander Kelly (Co-Artistic Director, Third Angel)

Monday 14 December, 11am - 7pm
Tuesday 15 December, 10am - 6pm
Broadcasting Place, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2

Hello there.
Please sit down, make yourself comfortable.
I’ve got a story to tell you.

On Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 the Playback researchers will be sharing and collecting stories in Broadcasting Place, Leeds Met University.

Turn up at any time during research hours, select a story title, and our researchers will do the rest. Each performance experience will last about 10 minutes, and you are free to visit as many times as you like. If you would like to contribute a story of your own to our research, we will be delighted to take care of it for you.

Table Manners pictures

Some images from Table Manners, the project I made last month with Contemporary Performance Practice students at Leeds Metropolitan University. These photos are all by Sebastian Juszczyk (thanks Sebastian).

The show consists of a series of performer-audience member encounters over a table top, sometimes working on an individual level, sometimes with the performers all working together delivering the same material.

At the start there's an etiquette demonstration with paper cutlery and crockery:



Then the worktop becomes a drawing table:









And a place for conversation and story telling:







In the middle of the show there is a one-to-one origami lesson for each audience member:







And there are quieter moments of contemplation:





Each of the 20 audience members meets 13 of the 20 performers. So it was possible to come to see the show more than once, which a few people did, and see a very different version. I was making this piece in the middle of the making process of Homo Ludens, and there is a shared formal exploration here, in the dual layer of group performance/one-to-one performance experience.

Table Manners origami paper

This is one of a couple of images I've just put up on our Flickr photostream from last week's performance project, Table Manners, devised with students of Contemporary Performance Practices at Leeds Met University.

The show was performed for 20 audience members at a time, all sat around a large U shaped work bench, and was structured as a series of one-to-one performance encounters across the table top, including etiquette instruction, drawing, dialogue scene, handwriting demonstrations and an origami lesson. The image above is the 'origami paper store', held in place by candles, positioned on a 'neat table' in the centre of the space. This centre table was partly inspired by the amazing Pile of Index Cards (PoIC) project/system, particularly this image.

The 20 solo performances happening at any one time began in sync, or as a group performance of a shared text, early on in the piece, but moved into individual responses to particular tasks and instructions, sometimes becoming completely different. So depending on where you sat, and which combination of performers you met, and in what order, you could get a very different show from someone sat 4 places away. The intention was to use the table not as a barrier, but as an intimate place to meet someone, talk, hear stories, make something.

Table Manners

As part of my part-time role (somewhere in between senior lecturer and artist-in-residence) at Leeds Met University, I've been making a show with the final-year BA Contemporary Performance Practices students.  This is the third year I've run this end-of-course module, and, being only slightly obsessed with the number 3, it does feel like this is the last installment of a trilogy of large-cast (for us at least) shows made in and for a particular space, Leeds Met's House 14 rehearsal room and performance studio.  The first two pieces were Compendium in 2007 and A History of Objects in 2008, and this year's is called Table Manners.  All three are theatre pieces that play with the performer/audience member relationship to a greater or lesser extent.  

Table Manners is for a limited number of audience members, but there are a few spaces left for this year's showings.  Full details below. 

TABLE MANNERS
A tasting menu of things that are right and wrong with the world, 
brought to you by the students of Contemporary Performance Practices, Leeds Met University
Directed by Alexander Kelly, Co-Artistic Director of Third Angel
  
We’ve been trying to understand etiquette.
We’ve been trying to remember what happened where.
We’ve been trying to work out why some things are good, and some are just rubbish.
We’ve been taking responsibility, we’ve been laying the blame.
We’ve been trying to make the world a slightly better place.
We’ve been sitting down to eat a meal together every day.
We’ve been trying to keep our elbows off the table.
It isn’t always easy. 
We invite you to come and help us.
 
Performance Times:
Tuesday 19, Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 May
Doors open 7.45pm, showtime 8pm
Matinee: Wednesday 20 May
Doors open 2pm, Showtime 2.15pm
 
Venue:
House 14
14 Queen Square
Leeds LS2 8AJ
 
Free! But limited audience, so advance booking advised.

If you're interested in seeing the work, contact me on my Leeds Met email: a.kelly [at] leedsmet.ac.uk.