No Stars / Reviews Round-up

A blog-post in two parts.

1. No Stars
Before we went to Edinburgh this month, I was planning to write something on here about review star ratings, and how I try not to acknowledge them. I really dislike them as an artist, but also as an audience member. This is a widely debated issue, so, briefly: for me it feels that whatever gets written in the review, it is always overshadowed by the number of stars. No one puts three stars on their flyers, do they? As someone who makes shows, who understands how much work goes in to developing and making a piece, the star-rating system is, for me, a woefully blunt instrument with which to assess or discuss or recommend work. So, since Presumption toured in 2007, we've avoided putting star-ratings on our publicity as much as possible.

But if you go to Edinburgh, we thought, and refuse to quote star-ratings on your flyers, aren't you basically shooting yourself in the foot as far as getting an audience is concerned? So for our trip to (the frankly brilliant) Northern Stage at St Stephens as part of the Edinburgh Fringe this year, we (I) conceded and put 4 stars and a nice quote from Exeunt Magazine on the flyer and in the brochures. I realise, retrospectively, that this was a bit silly, and if we were going to acknowledge stars for the print we should have put all of our 4 star reviews on the flyer. Because if you only quote one set of stars in Edinburgh, it looks like they're the only stars you've got...

Part of me was hoping that in Edinburgh we would pick up both a 1 star and a 5 star review, to complement the 2, 3, 4 and 4andahalf (thank you, Public Reviews) -star reviews we picked up on tour (I seem to remember that both Chris Goode's Hippo World Guest Book and ...Sisters got this full range of reviews, which I thought was brilliant, and would have been pleased to be in such company). But we didn't.

The star-ratings issue came up in a really interesting discussion between a group of artists, writers, critics and marketing officers at a Dialogues day at St Stephen's in August. Dialogues is an new initiative set up by Maddy Costa and Jake Orr to facilitate greater discussion between people who make theatre and people who write about it (with the understanding of course that many people do both). It felt like the start of a really positive development to me, with some good discussion and healthy disagreement (notably on the stars issue - though not solely along artist/critic lines as you might expect). There's a nice response to the day by Catherine Love, here.

But I didn't get time to do that, and now we are post-Edinburgh, and the reviews are in, and, unlike on the tour, where the show divided critics, in Edinburgh the reviews were overwhelmingly positive. But I wanted to acknowledge that "unwritten"  No Stars blog post, before moving on to this reviews round-up, or "Review Dump" as I saw our friend and collaborator Lucy Ellinson refer to such a thing recently. (If you're near London in the next few weeks I heartily recommend you go see Lucy in Erica Whyman/Northern Stage's brilliant production of Will Eno's Oh the Humanity at Soho Theatre).

2. Edinburgh Reviews Round-up
I am aware that this whole entry is in danger of becoming one long humblebrag, but, with the inevitable SPOILER ALERTS if you haven't seen the show, to the business in hand. 

Our Edinburgh coverage produced my favourite responses to What I Heard About the World - quite a few of which do not have star-ratings attached.

Alice Malseed's reading of the work on her blog Spiel is, for me, really on the money:
All these things happen gradually and suddenly.

And on the New Art blog, Wojtek Ziemilski produced a really interesting and personal response:
how much of my world view is just about making it easy on myself?

Of people actually reviewing, Dorothy Max Prior wrote a fantastically detailed (so much so it gets an extra SPOILER ALERT) and positive review for Total Theatre Review:
bridging the gap between 'new writing' and 'live art'.
On the back of which (I imagine) the show was nominated for a Total Theatre Award. We didn't win, but it was a real pleasure to be on such a great shortlist.

And although she didn't review it in the paper, Lyn Gardner did a lovely 'homage' to the show on the Guardian Theatre Blog:
Third Angel's collected gems offer as informative a take on the world as any government statistics.

Catherine Love wrote a lovely, thoughtful review for Exeunt.

Fringe Biscuit's review was so succinct (because it is a tweet) I can quote it entirely:
What I Heard About The World, St. Stephen's. A fiery show that provokes and unsettles with striking, often brutal storytelling. Amazing.

The Telegraph found the show:
a reminder of the best and worst of human behaviour, by turns hilarious and moving.
Although like several other reviewers, Laura Barnett wonders about how many of the stories are true. 

So, to be clear. They're all true. Because if we put in stories that we know are false, how can we expect you to believe any of it? With this piece we're specifically interested in the way true stories are used and repeated (more on that here), rather than lies and urban legends (that's another show). 

Fest called us entertaining, inventive and hugely informative.

Broadway Baby called us Worldly Wise.

Fringe Review proclaimed us a Highly Recommended Show.

Public Reviews found the show Challenging in the very best of ways.

And for Theatre is Easy, the show was beautifully different... A Must See!

[I've noticed, writing this up, that I have used "the show" and "us" or "we", interchangeably. A 'tell' there, of course, about why we can be so sensitive...]

That, as far as I know, is it for reviews. The Twitter response was overwhelmingly positive, thanks to everyone who took the time to see the show and then tweet about it, tell people about it, write about it, talk to us about it. We really appreciate the feedback and the discussion.

Although there are no other dates actually confirmed at the moment, we are optimistic that What I Heard About the World will tour internationally next year. We're still collecting stories, too, and Story Map will visit Hatch, Leicester, on 14 October. So please do keep sending us stories.

What Is Story Map?

The What I Heard About The World UK tour draws to a close this month, culminating in two, 12-hour performances of Story Map at The Core at Corby Cube on Saturday 17 March (where the final - for now - performance of What I Heard... happens the night before), and at The Albany in London, on Saturday 24 March.

The performances run 10am - 10pm, free, no need to book: just turn up whenever you want, and stay for as long or short a time as you like.*  If you can't make it in person, you can follow the performance online [click here].

And what is Story Map? This video by Hannah Nicklin explains all:



If you've seen What I Heard About The World, or indeed, if you haven't, but have thought of any stories, from whichever country, that might fit in with our quest for stand-ins, replicas, replacements and fakes - we'd love to hear them. Come in an see us.

Or, if you're not near Corby or London whilst we're up and running at The Core and The Albany, you'll be able to submit stories online (and follow our progress), at the Story Map site, or on Twitter using the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld and by following me @AlexanderKelly.**

Although we'll be working through the world one country at a time, you can send us a story whenever you want, and we'll put it on the map when we get to the right country. At the last run, at ARC in Stockton, we got 130 stories for the 202 countries we put on the map. So, again, we'd love to hear from you.


*Current audience (jointly-held) long-service medals are for 11 and half hours viewing at ARC.
**I'll actually be a digital simulacrum operated by @hannahnicklin for the duration of the story mapping.

"When something is this good..."

A quick round-up. Into our third week of touring, and the audience response has been great - really positive and engaged. We're really pleased with how people are connecting with the work.

In the warm up to this year's State of the Arts event, Alison Clark-Jenkins wrote a really interesting post on the SOTA Liveblog about the trying to comprehend enormity of the theme Artists and the Future Environment. That chimed with how we sometimes felt making this show, so I was really pleased that in that context she wrote:

I went to see Third Angel’s ‘What I heard about the world’ last week. At its simplest level,  some stories about some people in some places. In reality, a beautiful piece of  theatre with a deep, connected, emotive narrative. When something is this good, it stays; gently applying pressure to recall as you slow for an amber light, or look out of the window in a long meeting.  So, something is activated, I’m connected.

We've also done a couple of interviews about the project:
Here's Chris talking about the importance of corroborating the stories.
And here's me talking about clipboarding in Coimbra (amongst other things).

On the subject of corroboration, two popular Story Map stories have appeared in the news during the last couple of weeks - the Japanese Zoo Safety Drill (which even made it to Newsnight) and the Robot Camel Jockeys... ahead of the news, that's us.

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.

Research Table at Forest Fringe

What I Heard About The World - Research Table at Forest Fringe, Edinburgh, 21 August 2010. 11am - 11pm, Afghanistan - Zimbabwe (with 4 minutes to spare). Performed by Jorge Andrade, Alexander Kelly and Chris Thorpe.

Thanks to everyone who came in and spent time with us, and/or contributed a story, and particular thanks to Andy Field, Deborah Pearson, Ellie Dubois, Freya Millward and the whole Forest Fringe team of volunteers and the Forest cafe staff. It was a great day.

Photographs by Isa Maubach (thank you Isa).

At the Research Table

photo by Mark Cohen

What I Heard About The World was born during a conversation in Jorge Andrade's flat in Lisbon in 2007. Since we had met in 2004 we'd been talking about making something in collaboration with Jorge's company, mala voadora.

As is often the way, we had had a moment of realisation that this collaboration wasn't going to happen unless we actually, you know, started it. So we met for coffee, each bringing a few ideas to the table. Jorge told me about several stories that had caught his attention recently: the US military's programme of providing servicemen's families with 'flat daddies' whilst they were away; a survey that claimed that the number one pastime for off-duty western soldiers in Iraq was play war-sim games such as Medal of Honour; demonstrators-for-rent in Germany. I pointed out to Jorge that all of the stories he had been collecting were about fakes, stand-ins, replacements.

The conversation moved on to maps and mapping, and how a map is a fake, or a stand-in. We began discussing a project that located these stories of the inauthentic on a giant map, a map that morphed and shifted between different projections and purposes. By the end of the conversation we had the title, and enough information for a project proposal.

**

Something that looks like chocolate, but that isn't chocolate.

Something that looks like cheese, but isn’t cheese.

Something that makes it look like a house is built out of stone, when the house is still built out of brick.

Something that is like a person, for you to have sex with, but isn’t a person, but is still for having sex with.

Something that is like a person, but isn’t a person, that is used to measure the damage that a real human being would suffer in car accident.

A machine that makes waves like the sea, but in a pool.

A machine that lets you do something that is like going for a run, but is actually staying for a run.

Cardboard boxes originally used for protecting machines whilst being delivered to their new owners, used to protect sleeping humans.

On the internet, and in the published press, fictional characters commentating on real world politics.

In 2009 the amount of digital storage capacity surpasses the amount of information in the world.

A grown woman lies in bed, unable to sleep, listening to generative lullabies on a phone application invented by a man who was once famous for making music.

To make models’ lips look more kissable they are injected with collagen, to the extent that the make up artist is told to only use the softest lip brush, and the gentlest of touches, lest the models’ lips explode.

The bible being translated to a phonetic language that some people think cats would speak like, if they could speak. srsly.

A well paid football player, who works on possibly the best tended grass in the country, has his own lawn replaced with astroturf for his children to play on.

camera perfect.

disaster capitalism, selling futures.

collateral damage and friendly fire.

longterm relationships with a girlfriend simulation service.

cut flowers. here you go, watch them die.

**

Fast forward. Jorge and I have been joined by Chris Thorpe as co-devsior/performer, and have been kicking ideas around with the generous team at Worldmapper.org. We are in the process of making two discreet pieces, one of which is a research engine for the other.

The theatre piece What I Heard About The World opens with a three week run at Sheffield Theatres in October, before transferring to Lisbon for a Portuguese tour. The research process for that piece has been running since the start of the year, online, in conversation and at work-in-progress showings in Sheffield, Glasgow and Oldenburg.

The work-in-progress showings have produced a stand alone durational project, that we refer to as the Research Table, and which we will be running for 12 hours at Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, on Saturday 21st August, 11am - 11pm. Chris, Jorge and I will be attempting to map the world, alphabetically, using post-it notes; we'll be discussing, no doubt, what territories are, and are not, actually countries. And we'll be collecting stories, hopefully one for each country. Stories of the fake being used in place of the real, stand-ins, replicas and replacements. We'll be retelling those stories throughout the day, labelling each story with just two words, and illustrating it with a single hand drawn image.

Those stories will then feed in to our bank of material for devising the theatre piece during September and October. If you can't make it along in Edinburgh, you can still contribute to the research process online. You can comment here on the blog or email us at alex[at]thirdangel.co.uk. We're also running the research on Twitter; you can find me @AlexanderKelly, or simply tweet something with the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld. We'd love to hear from you.