Looking forward to Edinburgh

Forest Fringe opens today. It feels odd to refer to Forest Fringe as “our Edinburgh venue”, because it’s more than a venue – it’s a whole two week festival, and in any other city at any other time of year it would seem pretty big. But in the sprawling chaos of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe it probably seems quite small. Small but not lightweight in any way, it’s already massively influential in only its third year.

It’s not part of the Fringe, and this year neither are we, which makes the whole Edinburgh experience much more affordable, for companies and audiences – all the shows are free. This economy means you can’t book in advance by phone or internet – but you can book in advance in person – or just turn up for the show. And that’s the way it seems that Forest Fringe works – the more flexible approach means that the programme changes daily, and it’s worthwhile for audiences just to hang out there and come back from one day to the next (certainly that’s what I’m planning on doing as much as possible) – so booking in person isn’t a massive hardship in that context.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing work by Lucy Ellinson, Chris Thorpe, Curious, Action Hero, Coney, Tim Nunn & Gillian Lees, Rotozaza, Zoo Indigo... and also being surprised by artists whose work I’m not familiar with. See the full list on the Forest Fringe site.

I will be venturing beyond Forest Fringe to see a few things – I’m booked up for: Land Without Words, featuring a solo performance by Third Angel Associate Artist Lucy Ellison; Internal, because I’ve heard so much about Ontroerend Goed's work and formally this piece sounds not-dissimilar to Homo Ludens, but thematically very different; Stan’s Café’s Home of the Wriggler, which is powered by the performers riding bicycles; and I’m really hoping to get to Little Johnny’s Big Gay Musical by Random Accomplice.

I’m sadly not going to get to see Nic Green’s Trilogy, but if I was going to be in Edinburgh for longer it would be on my must-see list.

Potential Performance spaces

Last week I got a tour of Leeds Town Hall to look at some of the spaces they have available for performances and installation work. Their arts team is clearly really forward thinking, using these spaces for their annual Light Night event every October. I looked at the older and more modern cells, and got to climb the clock tower, which feels like a movie set. They are such great spaces you would really have to work with them, and not install or perform too much; audience members would get so much just from looking around. Something to bear in mind as we think about possible future projects.

Some of the photos I took on the tour are on our Flickr Photostream.

Homo Ludens on artmetropol.tv - now with subtitles

The artmetropol.tv piece about Homo Ludens - shot at one of the preview performances, so the space isn't quite finished - now has English subtitles. Watch it here.

Psalter Lane, one year on

Just over a year ago, I wrote this piece for the Sheffield Telegraph about the closure of Psalter Lane campus. We (people who live nearby) were expecting demolition of the more recent buildings, some new build and the conversion of the old library building into flats and luxury apartments.

One the routes I take in my walk to work goes down Psalter Lane (not very lane-like, if you don't know Sheffield), so I've been watching with interest whilst not much has happened. Apparently the developer has pulled out - there are a lot of empty luxury flats and apartments this side of the city. So this it what I see on my way past.

In the room

Rachael and I have done a little work on Words & Pictures separately up to now, but today was the first day on it together, and it felt good. We’re not making this piece in a solid block of rehearsal time; more checking in with each other, trying stuff out, setting ourselves writing and re-writing work to do before we meet again. As we would expect, this process is partly decided upon, partly discovered – “ah, that’s how we make this piece.”

Words & Pictures, at the moment, takes the form of a book reading for a book that does not exist. A collection of texts that might be in our book if we had got around to writing it. We’ve had some material ear-marked for this piece for a while, but for today’s session we also dug out a few other texts that were offshoots of other projects that we wanted to do more with; sections that we liked, perhaps, for what they were, but that didn’t fit, it seemed, with the show that they were initially written for. Some texts we worked with today were not originally intended to be performed – but then, that’s what a book reading is, isn’t it?

As we would also expect there was some thinking today about what the rules of the piece are – is a text allowed in if it has already been performed as part of another show? – but mainly it was an enjoyable day of try-outs and discussion – finding out what connections there are between pieces, what stands up well, what we’re less interested in now, what development, re-writing, cutting and expanding needs to be done.

So we've got a playlist of possibles, edits and re-writes up on the blackboards in our workspce. Next session will be about considering these re-writes and looking at the new pieces we’re developing specifically for Words & Pictures.

"Snow" in Sheffield

Snow, a video piece by Christopher Hall & Alexander Kelly, with music by Akira Rabelais, is showing as part of a free screening at The Showroom Cinema, Saturday 25th July 2009 at 4pm:

The Definition of Beauty (15)
Is it a music video or an artwork? Well, it’s neither and it’s both. This is a programme of moving-image artworks with audio that occupy a space where it is no longer necessary to make a distinction between what you see and what you hear. Curated by Richard Bolam.

It's free, as it is part of the great free music festival, Tramlines.

Emerge Festival, Leeds

This Thursday, 23 July, 2-5pm, Rachael is running a 'rule-based devising' workshop as part of the Emerge Festival, and she's also on the panel for the Pitch and Win competition.

The workshop itself is at Seven, and more details are on the Carriageworks website. You can book directly by phone on (0113) 224 3801.

There are also other great looking workshops and scratch performances from artists such as Dan Bye, Red Grit, Chloe Bezer and Theatre Company Blah Blah Blah, so it's worth getting a week's pass.