Third Angel and friends at the Edinburgh Fringe & Forest Fringe

So the Edinburgh Fringe brochure is out, and tickets are on sale. We're showing more work in Edinburgh than ever before, including opening a new show for the first time. Nearly all of this is being presented with Northern Stage at St Stephens (and is part of their DaySaver scheme - well worth checking out, because the whole programme is brilliant.)

The full schedule of Third Angel, and Third Angel artists', shows looks like this:

Third Angel presents
CAPE WRATH

An epic journey in a stationary minibus.

Written and Performed by Alexander Kelly

Directed by Rachael Walton

9 – 24 August 2013 (not 12 or 19)

14:00 and 15:30 (1 hour)

£11/£8

Northern Stage at St Stephen’s

Venue 73
, Box office: 0131 558 3047


Book online here.

“After he retired, my Granddad went on a trip from the Midlands up to Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of his native Scotland. He sat, looked at the sea, and thought about his life. Then he got up and went home. Over 20 years later, I got on a coach and followed in his footsteps. This is what I learned.”

Join 14 other passengers for a story of family, of fellow travellers, of whisky and chocolate, of the longest bus route in Britain. Heartfelt, moving, compellingly intimate, Cape Wrath takes you on a journey to the edge of the island, and wonders what we think about when we think about our lives.

Hannah Nicklin

A CONVERSATION WITH MY FATHER

made in collaboration with Alexander Kelly

Mentored & supported by Third Angel

14 – 24 August 2013 (not 20)

20:00 (65 mins)

£11/£8

Northern Stage at St Stephen’s

Venue 73
, Box office: 0131 558 3047


Book online here.

Watch the video trailer, and read more, here.

This is a story about them. This is a story about us. This is a story about my dad - a retired policeman - and me, a protestor. Its about fear, bravery, what it feels like to be kettled, Super Ted, the Lone Ranger, policing the people in front of you and being sent out of class. It's about working out what matters and standing up to protect it. It's about me, and my dad. 

"It’s gentle, it’s inclusive, it’s quietly but persuasively angry and political in perhaps the least alienating way possible." Exeunt Magazine

Northern Stage & Friends

THE BLOODY GREAT BORDER BALLAD PROJECT

Curated by Lorne Campbell

3 – 24 August 2013 (not 6, 13 or 20)

22:00 (75 min)

£11/£8

Northern Stage at St Stephen’s

Venue 73
, Box office: 0131 558 3047


Full listings and Book online here.

We'll be presenting a (slightly shortened) version of our new spoken word piece, 600 People, as part of this great project. Part protest, part prophesy, part poetry, part party. Writers, performers, balladeers and special guests from North and South of the border create an epic new ballad written with and for the audience, every night of the Fringe.

Alongside a series of newly commissioned "ballads" from Third Angel artists Lucy Ellinson, Alex Kelly and Chris Thorpe, plus brilliant people Kieran Hurley, Cora Bissett and Daniel Bye, a glittering array of guest artists will join our resident balladeers and the audience to source, form, hone and perform a mighty new ballad for our times. We'll try to be greater than the sum of our parts. 

Third Angel & mala voadora present

WHAT I HEARD ABOUT THE WORLD

A co-production with Sheffield Theatres and Teatro Maria Matos

In association with Worldmapper.org.

20 – 24 August 2013 

09:30 (70 mins)

£12/£8

Northern Stage at St Stephen’s

Venue 73
, Box office: 0131 558 3047


Book online here.

Yes, that's 9.30am. Theatre for breakfast! Free pastries! 

A theatre piece with two songs; one original, one karaoke... As the world seems to get bigger our understanding of it gets less reliable. How on earth can you know all the places you've been, let alone the places you haven't? 

Devised and performed by Jorge Andrade, Alexander Kelly and Chris Thorpe, What I Heard About The World is a bold, ridiculous, heart-breaking attempt to hold an accurate picture of the whole world in your head. A place with only five official haircuts for men. A place where you confess your sins to voicemail. A place where a radio station only broadcasts silence.

Returning to St Stephen's as part of the 2013 British Council Showcase.

"Gorgeous...makes you think about the world, makes you laugh about the world, makes you glad to be part of the world in all it's madness." Totaltheatre.org 

Northern Stage & Forest Fringe

MAKE. DO. AND MEND.

19 August, 10:30 - 16:30

More details here.

We'll be contributing a new piece of work to this brilliantly timely event, jointly hosted by Northern Stage and Forest Fringe:

"You are invited to a day of action. A gathering of the many kinds of people that make up the Fringe’s remarkable community, not to talk, but to act.

With the help of some inspirational and provocative contributors, we will spend the day imagining and implementing real solutions to problems you suggest. Our attempt to change theatre (and perhaps the world) for the better – in one day.

Beginning at St Stephen’s and concluding at Forest Fringe, with a collective jaunt between venues – including a new work created by Third Angel especially for the event."

And as if that is not enough... Third Angel artists Chris Thorpe and Lucy Ellinson are both opening new shows in the Edinburgh festivals, too:

Chris Thorpe and Hannah Jane Walker present

I WISH I WAS LONELY

12.15 (1hr 30)

16 - 25 August

Forest Fringe
Out of the Blue Drill Hall

Naturally the whole Forest Fringe line-up is brilliant, check out the details here.

The Gate presents

GROUNDED 

by George Brant

Performed by Lucy Ellinson

Traverse Theatre 1-25 Aug, times vary.

Details here.

So we'll be pretty busy up in Edinburgh in August. Do come and see us if you're there.

The Contemporary Ensemble

ALEX: There’s a section in What I Heard About The World that we call ‘radio silence’, which we tried in a couple of different ways up on our feet, and then in one of those moments where it was just ‘Right, I’m going to write something’, Chris came back after an hour with this text almost as it is in performance now. So the story was very familiar to us but we didn’t have the mechanism for telling it. And at some point in that hour, I don’t know if it was the beginning or half way through, Chris had got this particular text device.

CHRIS: Yes, I think that kind of sums it up. There’s now an option, where there wasn’t before, within devising time to just say ‘Leave me alone for an hour, we’ve tried this out, we’ve been talking about this, we know what we want to say’. One of the options we have is for us to just go into the corner and come back and put a text on the table and say: ‘This is what I have interpreted as what we want to say’, and quite often that works.

We've just received our copy of The Contemporary Ensemble, edited by Duska Radosavljevic, which looks like a really great addition to the discussion of how theatre is made now. One chapter is an interview with Chris Thorpe and I, discussing the making of What I Heard About the World, Presumption and Parts For Machines That Do Things, as well as the sometimes intertwined histories of Third Angel and Unlimited Theatre.

You can order the book direct from Routledge here. 

Edinburgh Blogpost 1: Where From Edinburgh

In the run up to presenting What I Heard About the World as part of the 2013 Edinburgh Showcase this August, I'll be blogging about our preparations for the British Council.

After our first visit to the Showcase with Where From Here in 2001, I was invited to write about our experience for the BC's On Tour magazine. I had been planning to post this article here anyway, and in the end we've used it as the first of my posts for the Showcase (here). 

WHERE FROM EDINBURGH?

photo: Rob Hardy

Every May and June since Third Angel was set up in 1995, I've found myself having the same conversation with several of my friends. It goes something like this:

Friend: So are you going to Edinburgh this year? 

Me: Well, I might go up for a weekend/to attend the Television Festival/Film Festival/see a couple of shows, and then go and visit my Mom. 

Friend: But Third Angel isn't taking up a show? 

Me: You must be joking. No chance. 

Friend: Really? Why not? 

Me: Well, it costs a fortune to take a show to the Fringe, it's a massive lottery as to whether you get an audience, it's really hard work, and we would have to squeeze a show that normally takes a whole day to set up properly into a 30 minute get in and share the space with six other companies, and we just couldn't do that and do the work justice.

But this year [2001] was different. This year we were offered the chance to be a part of the British Council's Edinburgh Showcase with Where From Here, a show we had originally toured in Britain from November 2000 – March 2001. We were dubious; we take the reasons for not going to Edinburgh listed above very seriously. Where From Here normally takes a full eight hours to set up, an hour-and-a-half to perform, and hour-and-a-half to get out. If we took it to the Fringe we would have to do all of that in four hours. We make it a rule not to pay venues to show our work – we get paid a fee or at the very least a box office split with a guarantee because this is what we do for a living. The Fringe is the opposite of the way we work. We were dubious. But then again…

Where From Here is, commercially and critically, our most successful show to date. We had already shown it at Mousonturm in Frankfurt and it had been well received. The British Council were keen for us to go and they thought we could get more international work out of it. This was too good an opportunity to miss. But there was one other thing. Where From Here was devised and performed by Rachael Walton, my Co-Artistic Director, and Jerry Killick (pictured above). We couldn't imagine it being performed by anyone else. But Jerry was already committed to another company throughout the summer, and so wouldn't be able to come to Edinburgh.

We decided we would find a way. We got the venue we wanted: Theatre Workshop is the sort of space that Where From Here was designed for. We reprinted our publicity materials, we found a flat and we did our research; we spoke to Sophie and Andrew at the British Council, and to friends in companies who had been a part of the Showcase before. We managed to kidnap Jerry to come and perform the first night of the show, and decided that as I knew the show best after him and Rachael, I would play his part for the rest of the week's run. We prepared ourselves for what we expected to be the hardest week of our careers.

We had been warned that the Breakfast Meetings were vitally important and would be terrifying at first. Hilary Foster, Third Angel's administrator, and I turned up at the first morning's meeting and surveyed the scene from behind coffee and croissants. Everyone was talking to someone. Everyone was making deals, confirming international tours already, and no one had a clue who we were, or wanted to talk to us… or so it seemed. But we were prepared and entered the fray. We met some nice people, none of whom had seen our show.

And then the next morning it all changed. Rachael and I went to the breakfast meeting together; I had performed the show the night before for the first time. It seems obvious now, but people who had seen the show recognised us. Promoters seemed to have seen the show and quite a few had liked it. The British Council officers were able to introduce us to delegates who had seen the show and were interested in booking it, or at least talking to us about it. Where From Here was a well-toured show by the time we got to Edinburgh, but it was enlightening to discuss it with an international audience. For the rest of the week we broke the rules and all three of us went to the Breakfast Meetings early, and stayed until we were thrown out.

And what of those reasons not to do the Fringe? Well, it was hard work, but the show did go up and down in under four hours. We got pretty good audiences for a Fringe show. We didn't make any money. But almost 150 promoters from all over the world saw Where From Here. The feedback has been informative and very encouraging. We're taking the show to the Merlin Theatre in Budapest for seven nights in December. We're talking to promoters about festivals and bookings throughout 2002, and collaborations for 2002 and 2003. It was the hardest week's work I've done in a long time, but at the time of writing this, the benefits for Third Angel could be incalculable. We have rethought our plans for the next two years, and could well find ourselves touring Where From Here, and our new show Believe The Worst, through until December 2002. The Showcase was clearly too good an opportunity to miss. 

Alexander Kelly is Co-Artistic Director of Third Angel. Third Angel presented Where From Here for six nights at Theatre Workshop, as part of the British Council's Edinburgh Showcase, August 2001. Third Angel's next show, Believe The Worst, toured Britain from November 2001 – March 2002. As part of the Edinburgh Showcase 2013, Third Angel will be performing their show, What I Heard About the World, from 20-24 August at Northern Stage at St Stephen's. 

Board Recruitment

Third Angel is seeking new board members.  We're facing one of our busiest years to date: we're breaking into new territories internationally, opening a new show at the Edinburgh Fringe alongside a remount of an existing show for the British Council's Edinburgh Showcase and 2 one-off commisions. We're making a brand new piece in the autumn and starting early development on another, as well as trialling our new management structure and building a fundraising strategy that's fit for the tough financial environment in which we're now all working.  

With such a packed programme we need new members to join our board to support us, question us, and cheer us on. We're looking particularly, but not exclusively, for people with experience in financial management, and of course a passion for the arts is essential.  

Please email Rachael Walton, co-artistic director (rachael[at]thirdangel.co.uk) for an information pack and details of how to apply, or give us a call on 0114 201 3875 for a chat about the role.  You'll also find a lot more about us and our work at www.thirdangel.co.uk.