Regular collaborators...

Regular Third Angel collaborators Lucy Ellinson, Jeremy Killick, Gillian Lees and Chris Thorpe all have other projects on at the moment.

Lucy and Jerry are appearing in  Monsters at the Arcola Theatre in London until 30 May.  More information on the Arcola website, and an interview with the writer, Niklas Rådström, on the Guardian website.

                 The Moon, The Moon

Chris is one of the writers on The Moon, The Moon, by our good friends Unlimited Theatre, which is on at West Yorkshire Playhouse next week, 13 - 16 May, and then at Southwark Playhouse in June. 

"As beautiful and as enigmatic as the moon itself."  The Guardian 

More information on the Unlimited site.

Gillian is touring two shows with Proto-Type Theater, the lovely Whisper and Virtuoso (working title), which I haven't seen yet.  Again, full details on the Proto-Type site.

9 Billion Miles From Home at the greenroom, Manchester, 1 May 2009

Last Chance To See?

Well, for a while at least...  Next week Presumption is on at Leicester's fantastic new CURVE venue, with a post-show discussion on Wednesday.  This is the show's last scheduled outing for a while.  There will hopefully be some international work with it next year, but this could be the last showing in the UK.  It's our most performed show to date, following the three week run in London just before Christmas.  That run produced a real range of reviews, from raves to stinkers, which I liked.  But my favourite review was on Culture Wars, headlined 'A warm bath, run by another'.

Also on its possible final outing is 9 Billion Miles From Home, which we're taking to the greenroom in Manchester on Friday evening.  It's nice, as ever, to be going back to the greenroom, who we've been working with for 12 years now, for this possibly-last performance, as we know we'll be well looked after.  If you're coming down, there's a Seed Fund project, "Moi..?" by Gemma Neep at 7pm, which is free if you've got a ticket for us - which is a really nice initiative that the greenroom are running.  The 'durational ritual' part of our performance will begin at 7.30pm, with show time officially at 8pm, plus an after-show discussion.

These projects have both been around for a few years now, in their different guises, so it won't be an entirely emotion-free week, putting them [temporarily] away.

Reading and Writing in Leeds

Chris Hall and I have two video pieces opening at Leeds Met Gallery this week, accompanying a great looking show called The Cover of a Book is the Beginning of a Journey.  Here's the publicity blurb:

Friday 24 April- Saturday 23 May
Reading and Writing | Christopher Hall and Alexander Kelly
Christopher Hall and Alex Kelly take aspects of Alex’s personal history as the starting point for two engaging DVD projections.

23 Postcards From America
In 1975, when Alex was a young boy, his father travelled America and wrote to him almost every day. As the postcards appear the piece evokes not only a particular time in the artist’s life but captures the essence of an era, before the internet and accessible global communication.

The Chapter Titles From The Unwritten Book Of My Life Story
A blackboard stands silently; chalk-written titles appear, projected on it, from the unwritten book of Alex’s life so far. This strangely mesmerising work presents a story told in chapter titles – some ambiguous and some obvious, all personal and all open to interpretation by the viewer.

Although these are 'Christopher Hall and Alexander Kelly' projects, they have connections with Third Angel's work.  The postcards appeared (in fictionalised form) in Experiment Zero, and the Chapter Titles were inspired by The Lad Lit Project.  The 'named authorship' is a blurred line on these pieces, and, we have thought several times, is probably more significant to us than to the people who see the work...

Learning to Swim

learningtoswim2
Originally uploaded by third angel

There are some new photos on our Flickr photostream. These are images that may well feed in to future projects 'Words and Pictures' and 'Learning to Swim'.

Making Discoveries

I was asked by the Yorkshire Post to write something reflecting on the importance of Forced Entertainment, as they hit their 25th Anniversary.  I offered a personal response for last Friday's edition, and it's online here.

Playful Humans

We've just finished the first three weeks work on the new piece, Homo Ludens.  The title comes from Schiller's Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man.  We've been invited by TiG7 in Mannheim (who we presented Presumption with last year) to create a piece that responds to Schiller's idea to be presented at Schillertage (who we made Stage An Execution for in 2003) in June.

It's a fantastically open brief to direct and devise the show with (initially at least) three performers from TiG7, Rita, Martina and Julia.  I'm directing with Lucy Ellinson (who's touring Presumption with us, and who was also part of Standing Alone, Standing Together), and Rachael and Chris Thorpe are sticking an oar in, too.

Schiller's Letters... are full of ideas about beauty, art, freedom, time, infinity - y'know, all the big stuff.  Our process so far has involved the usual tools of show and tell (particularly picking our phrases, ideas, whole paragraphs of Schiller's that intrigue us, inspire us, baffle us or infuriate us), story telling, playing and deconstructing games, research (inventions and futurology) and writing up big lists.  The images here are of maps of deconstructed adventure game books.

Three weeks of conversation, discussion, writing, seeing other work, trying stuff out.  A really positive experience on several levels - lots of sitting round a table sharing ideas and getting to know each other, trying to play without being competitive (I think its fair to say that Julia and I found that the hardest), asking ourselves when human beings are at their best.

There are connections here with some of the larger cast creative learning projects I've made in the last couple of years.  If you'd seen them you'd see a visual lineage with Lifetimes23 (University of Hull @ Scarborough, 2008) and Compendium, and a thematic connection with A History Of Objects (Leeds Met University, 2008).

We're making a piece in which each audience member's actions and decisions have a direct effect on their unique experience of the show.  We're aiming, of course, for this to feel special and exciting, rather than making people feel like they've missed out on some stuff.  Each of the 4 performers in each show (we think we'll need to perform it with two teams) will look after a single audience member - again, we're not interested in that feeling in any way uncomfortable - and will have their own version of the task of the show.

My feeling, a week or so after we've stopped working on it for now, is one of delicacy and fragility.  That's what I think we need to hold on to as we build the rest of the audience experience over the next few months.  A careful balance of control and unpredictability.