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.

Third Angel in Edinburgh, 25 - 28 August 2009

We've recently put our Edinburgh dates up on the news section of the website. After saying how exciting their programme looked last year, I'm very pleased to say we're going to be part of Forest Fringe this August.

That means we're not part of the official Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Forest Fringe is its own mini festival, and consequently doesn't need to stick to one week minimum runs. The programme changes daily, and the work is free to go and see - they just pass a bucket round at the end. It's a great line up of artists this year, which we are delighted to be a part of. There's more about Forest Fringe and their fund raising campaign (putting shows on for free is expensive) on their blog.

We'll be showing the revised and updated version of Class of '76 for two nights and a work in progress version of a new piece Words & Pictures... If you are on our e-list, please note the slightly earlier start time of these shows than was stated on the last mail out. (If you want to join the e-list you can do it here.)

THIRD ANGEL in EDINBURGH
25 - 28 August 2009 at 7pm. Free!
Forest Fringe
Bristo Hall (above The Forest Cafe)
3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh EH1 1EY

Words & Pictures
(a work in progress)
Tuesday 25, Wednesday 26 August at 19.00 (45 min)

A collection of short stories:
Chapters from the Unfinished Books of our Life Stories.
Texts to explain our obsessions and our passions.
Writings that try to understand why it is we are fascinated by those empty benches we see by the side of the road.
That try to remember what it felt like to stand on the highest diving board as a kid.
That try to explain why we hated that job.
Notes that try to understand games and songs.
Words to accompany pictures.
Readings to be heard in the dark.

There comes a time in your life by which point you should have written a book. If you were going to. Well, we’re at that time, but we just haven’t got round to it; we’ve been busy. Really busy. There’s a book’s worth of stuff there, but, well, there’s been too much else to do. But we do like the idea of a book tour. Touring, we’ve done a lot of that. So we’re cutting straight to that bit: The Book Tour. Words & Pictures is a book reading for a book that hasn’t been written yet, let alone published.

Words & Pictures is commissioned by the Off The Shelf Festival of Writing and Reading 2009, and Leeds Met Studio Theatre.

Class of '76
(an old favourite)
Thursday 27 and Friday 28 August at 19.00 (60 min)
"incredibly moving and beautiful" Yorkshire Post
"magical and beautiful" Total Theatre

Class of '76 was originally commissioned by Small Acts at the Millennium and Site Gallery, Sheffield.

Respecting the Grid

Perhaps it's just us, but we thought Katja painting 100 squares by hand (with assistance from Martina, in this video clip) was kinda beautiful...



Video by Rita.

On the Moon

Who would have thought that a James May documentary could bring a tear to the eye? Apart from the annoyingly intrusive soundtrack, a really great programme last night, I thought.

For the record, from ongoing interest and particularly 9 Billion Miles From Home research, my top two book recommendations on this subject are Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell To Earth by Andrew Smith and Ascent by Jed Mercurio - the first reportage/documentary and the second fictional but inspired by real events. Both remarkably moving pieces of work. Smith's book was surely an inspiration behind, or an influence on, the movie In The Shadow of the Moon, which I can also thoroughly recommend.

Homo Ludens

Homo Ludens opens tonight at TiG7, Mannheim, under the guidance of Third Angel associate artist Lucy Ellinson, in collaboration of the whole of the team from TiG7. It's been an exciting, fun, challenging and sometimes moving process, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the audience/players experience it. Full credits below.

Third Angel & TiG7 present
HOMO LUDENS
Devised and written by the company
Inspired by Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man
by Friedrich Schiller

Performed by:
Rita Böhmer, Daniela Cohrs, Lucy Ellinson, Martina Heubel, Einhart Klucke, Martin Kornmeier, Jellena Lugert, Alexander O. Miller, Julia Rützel, Stefanie Rapp, Natascha Slominski

Games Waiters:
Tobias Grauheding, Tobias Hannemann, Christian Lidy, Pascal Wieandt, Nils Witte

Licht- und Tontechnik/Lighting and Sound: James Bogner
Bühnenbau/Set Construction: Hubertus Seelhorst
Malerei/Scene Painters: Katja Angerbauer & Stefan Schneider

Research texts by Chris Thorpe
Co-directed by Lucy Ellinson
Directed and designed by Alexander Kelly

Third Angel management: Hilary Foster
Third Angel Co-artistic Directors: Alexander Kelly & Rachael Walton
TiG7 Künstlerische Leitung / Creative Director: Maike Lex
TiG7 Organisation / Organisation: Christine Seikel

HOMO LUDENS is produced within /
wurde im Rahmen der Freien Theater Tage
SCHWINDELFREI 2009 produziert.
Kindly supported by / Mit freundlicher Unterstützung durch
John Deere & Sheffield Theatres

Das Theaterhaus TiG7 wird unterstützt vom
Kulturamt der Stadt Mannheim und dem Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg

Third Angel is regularly funded by Arts Council England

Postcards From The Road - Mannheim

A note of caution to start, one of the images lower down this post is of the Schillertage 2009 publicity campaign - which some people may find quite strong, featuring, as it does, a very new born baby. Certainly the woman who stopped as I was taking a photo of it felt it was a bit too strong... or that it was weird that I was taking a photo of it, or both. But first, clocks.


The clocks at Frankfurt Airport railway station are all in sync - to the second. There are perhaps 8 along one platform, perfectly in time. Doesn't really tranlate to a photo of course.


We needed to borrow some furniture for Homo Ludens from NationalTheater Mannheim. When we made Stage An Execution for NationalTheater's Schillertage 2003 we got to explore their costume store (although we ended up making the costumes from paper) which was suitably impressive. We actually rehearsed Stage An Execution in this building, that also houses the furniture store, although we didn't come and explore that time. This floor is tables, cupboards and sofas (plus those two grandfather clocks). We needed chairs or stools, too: there's a whole separarate floor of those. They had to pretty much drag Lucy and I away before we started staging Presumption there and then.

Homo Ludens is a collaboration with the wonderful TiG7, which is both a company/producing house and receiving house. They are one of 5 independent, or free, theatres in Mannheim. The free theatres have their own strand of Schillertage, which is called Schwindelfrei. There's no direct translation into English - or no equivalent single word at least. It's a pun (kind of, I think), and it translates as 'freedom from the fear of heights'. And all of their print is vertigo inducing op-art, which you can get a taste of here.

The theme of the whole of Schillertage this year is the idea of play and the playful human. Whilst I was there the advertising campaign went up - some posters using the Schiller quote that 'man is only truly a man when he plays', and also these new-born baby posters.


I asked our collaborators from TiG7 if there is any ambiguity about the phrase 'Spiel starten' - could it mean 'start to play' - but they said that although it hints at that, the over-riding meaning is as it it looks - 'Start Game' - enhanced by the computer game style graphics. This image, and the slightly sinister undertone, really got under my skin whilst I was there. Very powerful marketing. I think our work offers a more optimistic counterpoint to the slightly bleak reading I have of this image. But as that bleak interpretation is mine, maybe that idea is somewhere in our piece, too. We'll see.

Who is Alexander Kelly?

Well, looking at this I'd say a slightly haggard looking 40 year old midlander... When I was in Mannheim with Homo Ludens rehearsals last week I did an interview with artmetropol.tv, who did a nice piece on The Lad Lit Project last year.

I would also add that it was the end of four long days of rehearsals, and if you give it a few minutes I do warm up a bit. Rita, the interviewer, is one of the maker-performers of Homo Ludens, she's just having to pretend that she doesn't know much about it.