Let's go to the pub.

I'm currently spending most of my walks to work, and bus journeys into town, talking to myself. I'm telling myself the stories from The Lad Lit Project, which I am performing in Leicester next week. This isn't really a revival, as The Lad it Project is still officially in repertoire. But this is the longest lay-off I've ever had since performing a show. Lad Lithere). toured fairly regularly for four years, but it's three and a half years since it went to the Pazz Festival (there's a short documentary/interview about that,

What I always find interesting about reviving a show in this way, is how much of it comes back between the first and second runs of the material – without needing to refer back to the text or a video. Running the show to myself over several walks to work, there are many gaps – whole sections, paragraphs, turns of phrase – in my recall of it. But I've learned now not to get the text out at this stage. I start at the beginning again, and many of the gaps fill themselves, just through having been identified, it seems.

This time, even after such a break (I have performed Lad Lit many times, though) the stories were all there. It was the numbers that were missing, the statistics and measurements. Also missing was the detail of the stuff that's “about me”, but according to other people: various analyses of my personality through blood-profiling, starsign, handwriting analysis, and so on. But even that's all come back pretty quickly after one read-through. For a show that wonders where, in the matter of our bodies, our memories reside, this all feels appropriate.

I'm looking forward to performing the piece again – the show still means a lot to me, and I'm remembering that I find these collected stories both funny and moving (and I'm remembering that audiences do, too, fortunately). I'm enjoying the tweaks and updates that the show now requires. The Lad Lit Project is a show that thinks of peoples' lives as being broken up into chapters, and so a three and a half years gap inevitably means that there are a few important developments to reflect.

One thing I'm particularly excited about is that the venue for the show is a pub. The last UK performance of Lad Lit had a very nice pub nearby, but this time it's actually in a pub – The Crumblin' Cookie in Leicester, as part of a great new project by Hannah Nicklin called, straightforwardly, Performance in the Pub. For a show that was praised for, and sold on, the way if often feels like a chat in the pub, and indeed, starts off pretty much with a paean to the glory of the Great British Public House, it's perhaps surprising that this hasn't happened before.

And the biggest challenge of returning to this piece? Well, one of the lines in the text states that I tell “a topical football joke, that is only funny to people who know a lot about football.” I've kind of lost most of my interest in the overpaid activities of the Premiership in the last couple of years – so this is going to take a bit more research – or suggestions? Feel free to comment below.

As a final note, The Lad Lit Project is double-billing with It Starts Like This, a lovely piece by Jodean Sumner of Trace Theatre, which is well worth your time. So hopefully see you down the pub (Thursday 24th May, 7.30pm, pay what you want tickets bookable here) for a pint and a chat.

Seasons Installation Sketches

Clearing out our workspace at Brookfield Yard is throwing up plenty of "oh, remember this?" moments. It's been hard to resist re-reading all of the old notebooks and sketchbooks. Flicking through a shared/group sketchbook, I came across these drawings from (I think) early 2000. I'm not sure if they were plans for an actual set of installations or not. But I quite like them. Eyes-closed room drawings and an early interest in fakes and replicas.

Click on the images to enlarge, or look at them on Flickr.

 

 

 

GIFT Inspiration Exchanges

A five-hour Inspiration Exchange at The Sage, Gateshead, as part of GIFT 2012. A rolling conversation which hit a really nice rhythm of visitors for nearly the whole time. This allowed the conversations to digress and loop back and make connections throughout the day.

I swapped THE IDEA OF A RETRONYM 
for ECTOPLASM IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

I swapped HOW THE CHURCH BELLS WORK
for DENDROCHRONOLOGY

I swapped THE GOLDEN RECORD ON THE VOYAGER SPACE PROBES
for WHO INVENTED THE BALLOON LAUNCH?

I swapped RED K6 PHONEBOXES
for PHANTOM FOOTBALLERS

I swapped EMPTY BENCHES
for DESIRE PATHS

I swapped HURRYSICKNESS
for A BLOODY ROLLING PIN

I swapped A BOTTLE OF MARBLES
for GIN RUMMY WITH MY GRANDAD

I swapped RUBBER DUCKS IN THE SEA
for BLACKBERRY PICKING

I swapped SOMETHING MY MOM SAID TO ME WHEN I WAS 19
for THE TRUMAN / "QUEY" / "ME" SHOW

I swapped AIR CRASH INVESTIGATION
for WHY DIDN'T I TAKE MY MONEY WITH ME?

I swapped A 6B PENCIL 
for TOO MUCH HEAT ALTERS YOUR PERCEPTION
and I swapped TOO MUCH HEAT ALTERS YOUR PERCEPTION
for BUILDING HOSPITALS

I swapped 23 POSTCARDS FROM AMERICA
for THE ISLAND WHERE VOLCANOES GREW OVERNIGHT

I swapped AMPERSAND & INTERROBANG
for FLOAT-FLYING‽

Inspiration Exchange Information Poster

Third Angel presents an

INSPIRATION

EXCHANGE

GIFT Festival

The SAGE, Gateshead

Sunday 6^th May, 11am – 4pm

Hello – welcome.

This is an Inspiration Exchange. Please feel free to stay and listen to the conversation for as long as you wish.

After each story-exchange, Alex will ask if anyone has a story they would like to hear, from the story-cards on the table. All of the stories are about things that have inspired someone.

If you would like to choose a story, the deal is that you will be asked to swap it for a story about something that has inspired you. Your card, with your story title, will then go into the pack, for someone else to choose later.

The Machine

At GIFT Festival in Gateshead this weekend we are showing a new piece, The Machine. Well, I say new...originally made as a one-off for Off The Shelf and Bloc Projects space last October, The Machine is the first live performance of the English translation of Georges Perec's radio play, originally broadcast in German in the late 60s.

The project came together pretty quickly last year, and partly to do with brochure deadlines, despite the fact that both Rachael and I, and Third Angel associate artists Christopher Hall and David Mitchell were involved, along with recent collaborator Lauren Stanley, it wasn't billed as a Third Angel project.

I was also delighted that we were joined by new collaborators Teresa Brayshaw and Oliver Bray, both of whom we've been talking to about making something together for a while. The focus on language, and fast turn around for the piece, suited Teresa and Oliver's strengths exactly. We had a great time making the piece, and it went down really well. (There's a really interesting response to the piece in relation to game-play over on the Overlap site).

The opportunity arose to show the work again this year, and it seemed weird not to officially acknowledge it as a Third Angel project. So we have reconvened to explore the text further, and take it to GIFT, where we had such a good time presenting a Playing With Time screening last year.

It is the first time, as Third Angel, that we've worked with a whole, existing text. A few years ago we responded to Schiller's Maria Stuart, incorporating elements of his text into our piece Stage an Execution. Co-incidentally, Schiller features quite strongly in The Machine a couple of times.

Back in October I wrote:

It is unusual for me to start with a text. Chris gave me the script and what struck me about it immediately is that it's pretty much impossible to read on your own. I love that about it - you need four voices, four readers, for it to make sense. I could tell, dipping in to it, that it was fascinating, funny, complex...but I couldn't read the shape of it. I also knew within minutes that I wanted to do it.

When we gathered to read it as a group I began to see the text as much as a diagram, or a set of instructions. The formatting, a column for each voice, doesn't just tell you who speaks next, but demonstrates how the narratives and games of the piece flow across the line of voices. Considering that it was written as a radio piece, I'm taken by the visual, physical, aspect of this.

What I also enjoy about it is that the games that Perec plays in the piece, irreverently deconstructing Goethe's poem, Rambler's Lullaby II, remind me strongly of the way we explore text - particularly in rehearsals for film projects. These approaches pull apart the existing text enough to shed new light on it, and to find new meanings in it - sometimes flipping them completely. Perec really pushes this at times, creating whole new bastardised versions of Goethe's poem through serendipitous, randomised word replacements. But ultimately this increases your (well, certainly my) appreciation of the original. And what we're noticing is that within the stylised, systematic approach of the System Controller and the three computer Protocols (the voices of the piece are the control and subroutines of a computer programme), he also paints subtly distinct characters.

As performers, each time we come back to Perec's text, we find more in it - connections, subtleties, gags... and each time we have a bit more research and dramaturgy to draw upon. In rehearsal we're taking Perec's approach to his own text, playing with intonation, delivery, trying things out - taking the games too far - but finding new things that work each time. What continually amazes me is that we are working with a translation - Ulrich Schönherr has had to not only translate the words, and meaning, he's had to play the linguistic games of the original version with his translated text, obey the rules of the game in a new language. And he still finds the jokes.

Our intervention into this radio text in order to make it theatre is pretty subtle. We're performing in the round, and in a mode that nods to the idea of radio drama. We deliberately steer clear of it feeling like the recording of a radio programme, but we are definitely playing out to the live audience. We're having a good time with it. If you're going to be in Gateshead this weekend, we'd love to know what you think.

**

The whole GIFT line up looks great, and it really was a lovely festival last year. We're also presenting an Inspiration Exchange on the Sunday, 11 - 4pm.

Of Work Made and Un-made

For the fortnight after Easter weekend, Forest Fringe are taking over The Gate in London, with a really exciting line up of artists and projects. Our regular collaborator Chris Thorpe is curating the first week, and performer Dan Canham is curating the second.

For Chris' week, he's performing a different one of his brilliantly complex story-monologues each evening, and presenting something(s) from (a) guest artist(s). On Monday 9th April I'm going to be showing something of/talking about a new project Cape Wrath.

I would hesitate to call it a work-in-progress. A work at the start of its progress, perhaps. Though that said, it has been in process in my head for a while now. But this talk at The Gate marks the beginning of making the thought-and-travel-and-research-and-conversation-process-so-far, into what will be a performance. Of some sort. At some point.

Last September I travelled from my home in Sheffield to Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point of the British mainland. (I tweeted about it as I went and you can read a Storify of that, here). I went because over twenty years previously, my Grandad had undertaken the same journey, from his home (in Walsall) to Cape Wrath. When he got there he sat and looked at the sea for a couple of hours and thought about his life. Then he got back on the bus and went home. I've known for a few years that it would be something I would do, too.

I don't know exactly when the performance of Cape Wrath will be “made” by, or what it will eventually be. But if I've learned anything about making work in the last 17 years, it's that you should trust your instinct and that the next thing you make should be the piece that you, or your collaborators, need to make next. The thing that preoccupies you. The story that bothers you, or moves you. I'm interested in letting Cape Wrath evolve, rather like the touring version of Class of '76 did, into whatever it will become, partly through try-outs like we'll do at Forest Fringe. So, I'm going to be talking about the project, trying out a few things, reading some stuff, showing some video. Taking the next step.

The following week (on Wednesday 18th) Annie Lloyd and I will be talking about The Dust Archive, our book of performance memories from Leeds Met Gallery & Studio Theatre. I've written about The Dust Archive a couple of times on here, but talking about it now has added poignancy as the performance programme that survived the closure of the Studio Theatre itself also came to a close last month. In one of those timely not-quite-coincidences, the final performance in that programme was Dan Canham's 30 Cecil Street, the piece he is presenting nightly during his week at The Gate. Dan invited Annie and I to talk about The Dust Archive because of the elegiac nature it shares with his beautiful documentary/dance piece.

Given that The Dust Archive marks the end of something, albeit unintentionally, and feels like the closing of a chapter, it has been gratifying to see it take on a life of its own. Perhaps that's just what objects are able to do; as someone who mostly makes performances and screenings that I am then usually present at, I can sometimes forget that exhibits and books are out there, meeting audiences on their own. Yes, of course that's what books are able to do. Anyway. An example of that is an article by Saini Manninen in the latest volume of the Journal of Media Practice. In The art of leftovers: Memory, matter and decay, Saini discusses The Dust Archive in relation to the work of Alastair MacLennan and to Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth installation in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, arguing for the idea of an archive “as something which does not resist decay but partakes in its processes.” You can read more about her article here.

And you can still get a copy of The Dust Archive itself. There are still a few copies of the Second Printing left, so Annie and I will be selling copies (at a discounted price) when we talk at Forest Fringe (and signing them should anyone want), or you can get them direct from us.

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.