Edinburgh Fringe 2016: 600 People and more

Photo by Ed Collier.

I’m on the train home from the Edinburgh Fringe and it’s only just started.

Later in the month I’ll be back to perform 600People at Summerhall as part of the Northern Stage programme there at 2.45pm, 18-27th (not 24th) (this is a booking link – clicky).

If you’ve read this blog before, or if you follow me/Third Angel on Twitter, you might know that 600 People has grown over the last three years from a 10 minute story, to a 30 minute spoken word piece, to a ‘full-length’ (= 65 minutes) show.

It’s been performed in quite a few different contexts already – spoken word nights, research event conferences, kinda-cabaret nights, and in theatres. But only ever for one or two shows in a week. I’m really looking forward to running it for a week and a half (it goes to Greenbelt straight after the Fringe - clicky) and properly getting a hold of the rhythm of it. I’m looking forward to talking to people about it afterwards.

It's a simple show about big ideas, and whilst it is about galactic exploration, extra terrestrial civilisations and the evolution of the entire human race, it's also (it feels to me) one of the most personal pieces I've performed. At least one reviewer has asked if it’s theatre (and then concluded it is, but I think it’s a fair question). It is a bit lecture-y, a bit stand-up-y, a bit story-telling-y. Rachael, directing, has brought more theatre to it, and more clarity as to who (me or astrophysicist Dr. Simon Goodwin) is saying what. Narratively it tells the ‘story’ of a few meetings I’ve had with Simon in Sheffield; the story of the Voyager space programme, and, er, the story of the evolution of the entire human race. And it asks what the next stage of that evolution might be.

But at its heart, it’s about faith, and what we (choose to?) believe. About our capacity to believe in Something Else Out There, something else other than ourselves. I’m pretty sure it’s funny in parts; I think it finds emotion in the science; I hope it’s optimistic.

Photo by Niall Coffey

But that’s in the future for now. I’m on the way *back* from Edinburgh because we’ve just opened Hannah Nicklin’s Equations For A Moving Body at the Fringe, also at Summerhall as part of the Northern Stage programme (11am everyday except Wednesdays until 27 August - linky). Opening at the Fringe with a press show does seem like a risky strategy (doesn’t seem, is), and I wrote about that last year (here). But, just 8 hours later, with the first review and several tweets already online, it looks like it was a risk worth taking. Hannah really rose to the occasion this morning, and produced the best performance of the show I’ve seen. If you’re in Edinburgh for the Fringe, do come start your theatre day with us.

I got to see a few other shows in this brief visit, and can happily recommend:

> Sh!t Theatre’s Letters To Windsor House – a portrait of life in the rental sector that is a reality for many, but hardly reflected in the media – very funny and performed with a brilliantly irreverent energy.

> Jenna Watt’s Faslane which takes a genuinely open and exploratory approach to the personal (and familial) complexities of the Trident debate.

> Unfolding Theatre’s Putting The Band Back Together (full disclosure – I am sometime mentor of Unfolding, but haven’t been part of the making of this show) which is a joyous and (I found) desperately sad reflection on our dreams and the few short years life gives us. (Which might not sound like a recommendation, but it really is).

Also on my list – for what it’s worth – when I’m back later in the month:

Everything else in the Northern Stage programme

Joan by Milk Presents

Labels by Worklight Theatre

Mortal by Bridget Christie

Anything That Gives Off Light by The TEAM and National Theatre of Scotland (International Festival)

Blow Off by Julia Taudevin

Heads Up by Kieran Hurley

Nina Conti’s In Your Face
Child's Play by Kalon
plus

The reading of the entirety of the Chilcot Report (if it's still going when I'm back)
and performing in BLANK by Nassim Soleimanpour on 26 August.

I’ll miss Daniel by Footprint, but I saw a work-in-progress in Sheffield and can definitely recommend. I'll also miss most of Forest Fringe, and of course it's worth just heading over there any day. But Action Hero's Watch Me Fall will be (is) brilliant of course, and I'm particularly sorry to miss Deborah Pearson's History History History.

**

Right, that's it for now. I've got four bars of Mrs Tilly's Scottish Fudge (not Tablet - top tip), that should last me until I'm back.

Edinburgh Blogpost 5: Postcard From Edinburgh

This was written midway through the Edinburgh Fringe, for the British Council's Edinburgh Showcase blog.

Postcard from Edinburgh

There comes a point when you’ve been in Edinburgh during the festivals for a few days when your body clock separates from the calendar, from the days of the week, and you don’t know when you are. The marker in the week isn’t the weekend anymore, it’s your Day Off. And, er, I haven’t got any of those this year. But in a good way.

As we knew it was going to be, 2013 is proving to be our busiest Edinburgh Fringe so far. It’s going extremely well, though – our best Edinburgh Fringe ever I’d say. Cape Wrath is sold out for it’s original run and we’ve had to put in extra shows for the final week. The audience response has been genuinely moving, and I’ve been really touched by their attentiveness, and the conversations people want to have afterwards.

A Conversation With My Father has just opened and is also going well – the piece suits the intimacy of the space at St Stephen’s and Hannah has really hit her stride here. Again great feedback and interesting conversations afterwards.

And then there’s The Bloody Great Border Ballad Project, which is a pleasure to be part of. A beautiful, rambling, exploratory celebration of an evening: music, song, story and debate. Inspired by the possibility of Scottish Independence, the varied contributions from some brilliant regular and guest balladeers, combine to create a fascinating and joyous discussion about the nature of borders themselves.

Which you would think is plenty to be going on with, but here we are, the island that is the weekend before Week 3, and there are two more shows to get up and running. The Desire Paths is our contribution to Northern Stage & Forest Fringe’s Make. Do. And Mend. event which will be an exploration of the routes we take habitually or by choice, and the idea of naming one thing after another.

And slowly moving from the back of my mind to the front is preparing for What I Heard About the World. This weekend I’m making five litres of fake blood, five cardboard planes, and buying wick for Molotov cocktails. Craig and the venue tech team are working out the logistics of how best to prep a 9.30am show. Rachael is back from holiday and gearing up for a week of Showcase networking. And Jorge, Chris and I will all be telling ourselves stories, separately, before we bring them back together for Monday’s get-in.

Oh, and we’re sourcing the free pastries we’ve promised the audience as a reward for making it down to St Stephen’s that early. And, I’m happy to report, people are pre-booking – so maybe see you there.

Edinburgh Blogpost 4: Postcard from England

Written for the British Council Edinburgh Showcase blog, edited by Eleanor Turney.

Postcard from England

And suddenly it’s mid-July, and the Edinburgh festivals loom massively on the horizon. Venue teams are already up there converting rooms into theatre spaces. It’s just a couple of weeks away, rather than a couple of months.

As What I Heard About the World is a well toured show, performed recently, it has slipped into the background for a bit. The set (including exotic/stuffed animals) is already in Edinburgh, collected by our touring Tech Manager, Craig, from our storage space in Barnsley, taken to Newcastle by van, loaded on to one of Northern Stage’s three wagons, taken up to Edinburgh and finally unloaded into St Stephen’s, where it will hide behind 7 or 8 other sets until we need it in Week 3 of the Fringe. We use a lot of “stuff” in What I Heard About the World, so the shopping list has been updated: party cannons (8), baby shampoo (4 ltrs), food colouring - red (15 bottles), decorators’ overalls (5 + 1 spare).

Rachael’s been down to London to meet with the British Council and do an interview for this promo video. And people are starting to book, which is great – real audiences, and promoters we’ve worked with before. Hopefully the promise of free pastries (and a great show…) is helping to motivate people to come along at 9.30am. Theatre! For breakfast!

Photo: Elliot Roberts

But at the forefront of our minds is Cape Wrath. This is the first time we’ve opened a show at the Fringe – mainly because when we’re opening a show we occupy a space full time, and continue to work on it during those first performances – so we like to have the space to ourselves. (Hundreds of companies open shows in Edinburgh every year, so I understand it is possible…). But Cape Wrath will tour with its own space – a 17-seater minibus - so I’ll have that option. That said, though, Cape Wrath has been made, part time, over the last two years (I did this real-life journey in 2011), so it feels… well developed? Ready for an audience? Last week was our last full-time week on it – working on it as a minibus show, letting go of elements that were designed for a work-in-progress on a stage. And it works. I’m looking forward to welcoming people into the minibus. Yes, ready for an audience. By which I mean it’s at the point where we’ll learn more about it from giving it to an audience than we will from rehearsing it without one.

We’re aware it is Edinburgh rehearsals and preview season all around us. Over the last few years Third Angel has been doing more mentoring of other artists and companies. This mentoring is bespoke and responsive – what do they need for this project? What do they need for this point in their careers? Often this means the privilege of visiting their process, asking questions, giving feedback, and this month I’ve been lucky enough to visit the making processes of St Stephen’s stable-mates Daniel Bye (How to Occupy An Oil Rig) and Fallen From Grace (When We Embraced), and to spend a week with St Stephen’s alumni, RashDash (just trying stuff out).

Sometimes mentoring means collaborating on their show with them, being the other person in the room, which is how we’ve worked with Hannah Nicklin on her show, A Conversation With My Father (also at St Stephen’s), which has been on a mini preview-tour this week – Leicester, Leeds and London, meeting its audience, getting match-fit for the Fringe.

And suddenly it’s the end of July and over social media people are asking if any vans or cars are heading to Edinburgh with a bit of space in them, teaming up, helping each other out. And all over England, (and Scotland and Wales), those vans are being loaded with sets and props and heading north. It’s nearly August.

Edinburgh Blogpost 3: Postcards from Paris and Rio

Written for the British Council's Edinburgh Showcase blog, (here).

June 2013

Postcards from Paris and Rio

I’m writing this on the way home from Rio De Janeiro, where we’ve had a brilliant time at the Cena Brasil Internacional festival.

Rio de Janeiro is the furthest I’ve ever been from home, and standing on the beach this afternoon, being the map-obsessive that I am, I was keenly aware that I was the furthest south I have even been. I took a screen grab of my GPS location and took a photo of the view.

All of which is to say that this obsession with my location on the planet, in relation to the place I call home, is one of the starting points for this show. And if any of our shows really ought to take the opportunity to try itself out in front of audiences in other countries, it is this one. This is what we’ve being saying about you. We tell a story about Brazil in the show. Each country is represented by a single story. (Before Rio we were in Paris, and the show tells a story about France, too). And the reception for the work was great – and I think they liked our admission that in our Brazillian story, when Chris plays music, he plays “something Spanish, because normally, no one can tell the difference.”

Surtitles

For Paris and Rio we were performing the Portuguese version of the show, meaning two different sets of surtitles, new ones for Paris, and the existing Portuguese surtitles for the English text for Rio. As ever, the existing surtitles needed updating, prompting a discussion about how to represent the freer sections of the show in the fixed medium of projected text.

We like the presence of the surtitles – we have them to a greater or lesser extent in every version of the show – and for at least half of the show it is straightforward for them to give a precise version of what is said on stage, as these stories are crafted and precisely written. However, the show has several sections where Jorge, Chris and I tell the same story, explain the same idea, but using much looser language, responding to each other, the audience, and any moments of inspiration that strike. Consequently the exact text varies from night to night, and evolves over time, as we find new jokes and ideas to play with. There are also two different stories in the show each performance, drawing on the bank of stories we’ve been told during the life of the project.

How can/should the surtitles represent this? As many audience members use the surtitles to double check their understanding of the text, is it off putting if the text is only giving an idea of what is being said, rather than a line-by-line translation? Can the formatting of the surtitles indicate when they’re just giving an idea of what is being said? What happens if the surtitles just take a break? They’re improvising…

The preferred option will be different for each audience member of course. But as this a key part of the way a section of the audience understand the show, it feels important to explore this, and keep playing with it.

Workshops (etc)

Another great thing about Cena Brasil is the invitation to stay for the whole festival, so as to see as much other work as possible (and we saw some great work, the programme was really exciting), and to run, and take part in, workshops and talks: sharing ideas, techniques, processes, with companies from around the world.

Running workshops (from 3 hours to several months) is something Third Angel does a lot of, and Cena Brasil was a change to further develop a workshop based on the processes of making What I Heard About the World. This is something that has proved tricky to do in half-day workshops, because of how research-dependent this show is. But the two-day workshop format offered in Rio meant we could explore the ideas more. Chris, Jorge and I jointly ran a workshop that ended being delivered/presented in English, Portuguese, Spanish and French, which felt entirely appropriate, the our participants came up with some great, thoughtful, responses.

Exotic Animal Update

In Paris they found us a full-size, “teenage” giraffe – to stand in for the Parisian giraffe we have on the Portuguese set. In Rio they went English style and acquired a stag’s head.

Actual Edinburgh Preparation

Meanwhile, as all of this touring was going on, we signed off on print designs, the Fringe Brochure came out, venues announced their programmes, and the ‘What to See’ blogposts and articles began. And a couple of days after that, we announced the full line up of work that we’re showing in Edinburgh this year.

As well as returning for the Showcase, we’re opening a newshow for the first time. Cape Wrath is a solo performance in a minibus, (also at St Stephen’s) telling the parallel stories of two journeys – mine and my grandfather’s – from England, through Scotland, up to Cape Wrath, the most North-westerly point on the British mainland. I’ll be performing the piece twice a day from the 9^th of August. Chris and I are also contributing to The Bloody Great Border Ballad Project at St Stephen’s; I have collaborated on Hannah Nicklin’s A Conversation With My Father, and Third Angel is making a new one-off performance, The Desire Paths, for the event Make. Do. And Mend. – all at St Stephen’s, too, that last one in collaboration with Forest Fringe. Chris also has a new play opening at St Stephen’s, and a new show created with Hannah Jane Walker at Forest Fringe. Add our breakfast performances of What I Heard About the World in Showcase week, and you’ll see that we have a very busy schedule.

After a lay-off of a couple of months, I’ve just started running again. I’m going to need to be fit. I ran every other day in Edinburgh last August – I’m not sure I’ll have time this year.