GIFT "Solo" Workshop

Next week at GIFT (a properly brilliant festival, check out the line-up here) I'm running a workshop called "Solo" Performance. The speech marks are there because solo work is, of course, rarely made alone. I've been thinking about this recently for a number of reasons. 

Since January I've been working on Hannah Nicklin's solo performance A Conversation With My Father, and after a slightly convoluted (on my part) discussion about what to call my role (somewhere between mentor, director, dramaturg and co-devisor), we've opted for "Made in collaboration with". Sometimes, I think, that role is simply being in the room; or leaving the room, coming back with soya hot chocolate and saying, "how have you got on?" And sometimes it's saying, "Why not try this?"

I'm co-supervising a series of graduation pieces at Leeds Met at the moment, a number of which will be solos. The university has a no solo-working rule for the studio spaces - for Health & Safety reasons. I don't have a problem with that, and in fact an advantage is that it means the student/artists have to have someone in process with them.  It puts me in mind of Alex Swift and Daniel Bye's great project, Can't Do This Alone, which was born when they invited anyone making solo work to join them in the workspace when they were making paperhouses and The Price of Everything, respectively.

In a lot of my work making shows with students (and also in our project Homo Ludens) I find that what I often do is create a frame or structure in which they are invited to create their own material - often solo performances - that are still made in collaboration with the group.

And recently I've been performing The Lad Lit Project again, which, as I've acknowledged before, is a solo show made by more than 40 people. The content of The Lad Lit Project was sourced from a number of people who came in to tell their stories, and was shaped by key relationships with my Third Angel co-director, Rachael, and with Dee Heddon. But the mode of delivery and storytelling was arrived at by having other performer/devisors in the space with me, at different stages. Initially this was because we thought there would be three people on stage. But latterly, when we knew it was a solo performance, it was still useful to have other people getting up and doing stuff with me; trying things out in pairs and threes in order to generate material that would eventually be performed solo.

So that thinking has informed the workshop for GIFT. Here's the blurb:

"Solo" Performance 

Saturday 4, Sunday 5 May, 10am-1pm, Gateshead Old Town Hall

Third Angel’s Alexander Kelly leads a workshop exploring group strategies for making solo performance work – as rarely is solo work actually made alone. Using rule-based devising exercises, the workshop will draw upon autobiographical, story telling and research-led approaches to making solo performance work. The workshop will conclude with a short group showing of some of the material generated.  

This is a two part workshop, Saturday and Sunday morning. Participants will also be asked to carry out a short (30 minute) research task between sessions.

 Booking info here.

Playing Detective (2)

The recordings of Slung Low's last 15 Minutes Live are up on Soundcloud now. I wrote at the time  about what a great event it is.

It's lovely to listen back to my piece, Playing Detective, performed by me and the brilliant Lisa Howard. I was mildly dreading hearing myself, (I've never quite shaken off the "Do I really sound like that?" feeling) but actually it was pretty okay. Composer Heather Fenoughty, the band*, Alan Lane, Matt Angove, John Hunter and the rest of the Slung Low team** really did a great job. Big thanks to all of them. And I have to say, the other performers who are in the other four pieces are really remarkable - check them out, a brilliant bunch, elegantly directed by Alan.



Inevitably, I listen back to it as a writer and hear a work in progress. There are things I'd change about this piece itself (less clues, mainly, to give them a bit more space), but also I hear it as one output of the ongoing Clues project.

I'm reading detective fiction again (as well as books about maps [of course] and astrophysics/philosophy for 600 People), at the moment. I've finally got around to Ian Rankin's Rebus, and have recently discovered Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie (both recommended). I think this one will crop up again in the future.

*John Arnesen, Chris Brain, Tom Collingwood, Sam Jones, Chris Noble
**Laura Clark, Lucy Hind, Danielle Le Quesne, Alice Bolton Breeze & Andy Thomson

600 People update

The planned first performance of 600 People, as part of Is There Anybody Out There? at The Orangery in Wakefield last month, was snowed off. We weren't sure if we could get all the performers and organisers there, let alone an audience. We talked about it on the Friday afternoon, and decided to make the call on the Saturday morning.

This was a strange experience in terms of performer energy - even once a postponement was looking likely, I had to continue rehearsing as if it was going ahead.  Preparing a new piece has a very different trajectory to touring or reviving a piece, of course. We often (and I'm sure many other theatre makers do, too) talk about a new piece being "ready for an audience". We don't mean it's finished, but rather that we're not going to learn much more about it in the rehearsal room; we need the live response of an audience to give it a new, different energy. We're ready for the clarity and inspiration that performing to people-who-haven't-seen-this-before gives you. 

With 600 People I was ready to perform what I'd got, ready to see what an audience made of it. As the snow continued to fall on the Saturday morning, and news came in of people stranded on motorways, and other shows across Yorkshire getting cancelled, we knew we didn't have any option. 

My planned schedule for this final day had been a couple of runs in the afternoon and then the show. So I postponed all of that last-leg in my head, and it felt weird for the rest of the day. A nice bonus afternoon with the kids. In the evening, I didn't do anything else instead of the show, I just didn't do the show.

This week it was confirmed that Is Anybody Out There? is happening next week - with the same line up, which is great news. In the meantime we've also confirmed that it will go to GIFT in Gateshead in May.

This morning I walked to work, via the dentist, and performed 600 People to myself (either side of a filling). Considering its such a new piece, I was relieved that so much of it was still there, and pleased with how several new - better - phrases and links popped in to my head as I ran it. Another couple of runs like that and it should be ready for an audience.

**

Third Angel presents
600 People
Written & performed by Alexander Kelly
Inspired by conversations with Dr. Simon Goodwin

Is Anybody Out There?
The Orangery
Wakefield
Thursday 18 April, 8pm

GIFT FESTIVAL
Gateshead
Thursday 2 - Sunday 5 May 
Schedule to be announced.

Originally commissioned for Northern Elements, a development programme funded by Arts Council England and managed by ARC, Stockton Arts Centre.

Is There Anybody Out There?

I'm excited that today I start (well, technically, pick-up) work on a new show, 600 People. It's a short piece, premiering at Is There Anybody Out There?, a new spoken-word event at The Orangery in Wakefield, on 23 March at 8pm - featuring some great spoken word artists.

Here's the blurb about 600 People itself:

“We step out of our solar system, into the universe, seeking only peace and friendship...” 

So says the message from the human race on the Voyager spacecraft. But is there, y'know, anyone out there? Alex really wanted to know so he went to speak to an astrobiologist to find out. This is what he learned: Stellar Wobble. Light Clocks. The Mirror Test. The Distance Ladder. And murderous dolphins.

The conversation with Dr Simon Goodwin that inspired 600 People is touched upon in both 9 Billion Miles From Home and Technology, but this is the first time we've really got to explore what Simon told me and how it affected the way I think about the universe.

I'll be talking to Simon some more, and attending a couple of his lectures about astrophysics. No doubt I'll be tweeting about how much of that I understand, hash-tagged #600people.

But if you're in Yorkshire, come along and see us in Wakefield.

Playing Detective (1)

I’m writing this during rehearsals for Slung Low’s 15 Minutes Live. It’s a great event – five new radio plays performed live with and audience, and recorded for podcast. They’ve done two so far, each in a different venue, and this weekend is the third.

At some point last year Alan Lane asked me if'd like to write something for this one. I was chuffed to be asked, as it seemed to tie in with what we’ve been doing with The Machine.  I originally imagined that I’d write something about the Friendly Floatees, a story that I really like but that never found a home in What I Heard About the World. But then the Floatees did turn up in Emergency DrinkingWater, and so I left them there.

I started thinking about developing the idea of the Clues Game that I’ve tried out on Twitter a few times (you can see a Storify of it here). Piecing together the clues of a story. How an object is a clue to numerous plots and narratives. I started calling it Playing Detective.

I started running again last April, after a six year layoff. It took a few weeks to get the rhythm back, but then I started to enjoy the head space it gave me. I found myself writing Playing Detective in my head on these runs. Or rather, and I know this is a cliché, it started to write itself.

If you’ve seen Third Angel's work before, or read this blog, you may well be aware that I have a passing interest in genre fiction. Not just detective novels, but also Lad-Lit. And Playing Detective seemed to jump, or blend, genres. A story appeared unexpectedly, but that seemed to fit, as often detective fiction is about one thing on a plot level, and about something else – a place, or a wider issue – underneath that.

The Clues Game is still in there, but the piece as a whole seems to be as much about remembered experience (no surprises there), about cataloguing and about the people who are such a huge part of your life at a particular age, in a particular time and place, and what it’s like years later when they are no longer around.

Playing Detective is one of five scripts we’re performing tomorrow. I’m in two others, Lullaby by James Phillips and An Anatomy of Grappling by Chris Fittock. They’re both great, really different, and it’s nice to be involved in them as a performer, partly because that helps me to not be the writer (too much) when rehearsing mine. It's interesting, too, to find connections between the three pieces, all written entirely independently. I haven't heard or read them yet, but I’m looking forward to hearing the other two pieces, Judith Adams’ Sista Icarus and Mark Hollander’s The Tragic and Unexpected Conflation of Reuben Fleischman. 

It’s fast and busy work here. As I write this in the kitchen at The HUB, the band are rehearsing the songs for Lullaby in the next room. Food is being prepared, the kettle is always on, and the foley and sound team don't seem to ever get a break. It's not a bad way to spend a Saturday. If you're in Leeds tomorrow, I think it will be a great way to spend a Sunday. Come down.

Postcard from Cove Park

Back in 1995, after we'd made our first show, Testcard, Rachael and I went to Bakewell for the day. We'd been asked to apply for a few commissions, and were getting asked things like "Where do you see the company in five years' time?" by potential funders.

We realised that there was more work to make together, and that we needed to think a bit more about what this collaboration - or company - might be, beyond that first show. We spent the day walking, talking, drinking coffee and eating Bakewell pudding. We set ourselves a five year plan, which we went on to stick to and achieve nearly all of.

In the years that followed, "Doing a Bakewell" became Third Angel shorthand for going and having one of those future planning days. Or, more recently, half-days; there never seemed the time for such long discussions.

That changed this year. The reason it's been quieter on this blog for the last six months is because of the Organisational Development project we've been running. We've been having conversations and making plans: really useful and challenging conversations with consultant/advisors Joanna Ridout and (our board-member) Kamal Birdi, plus a generous group of producers and artists who have given us their time, experience and wisdom for free: thank you Artsadmin, Jo Hammett, Ric Watts, DepArts, Natalie Querol, Sheffield Theatres, Stan's Cafe, Forced Entertainment, Peter Reed, Gary Hills and others we are still to schedule chats with (and others I have no doubt temporarily forgotten). We've got a "fridge door" full of thoughts, realisations and ideas to explore further, along with a new company structure to implement. Fruits of the business developments born of this process will fall into place over the first half of next year.

But without doubt the most significant part of the process was the week Rachael and I spent at Cove Park in September, supported by Fuel Theatre and Cove Park themselves (big thanks to both organisations).

It is a wonderful, inspirational place - just remote enough to give you the isolation from the day-to-day pressures of running a company. There's a communal space with a huge table, library, wifi and computers. The accommodation has no wifi, and no phone signal, but room to talk. And space, amazing views and lots of weather - weather you can see approaching down Loch Long.

At some point that week Rachael said to me something that I've been repeating to people ever since. The value in it was the time it gave us to have "the conversations that are too big for a meeting" - that can't be fitted in to two or three hours, or even a whole day; conversations that can't be restricted by having to make room for other things on the agenda. Conversations that, therefore, get put off.

This space enabled us to have a three- or four- stranded conversation over the five days, pausing one strand to pursue another when needed, recognising that we couldn't always make a decision until something else was discussed. So we got to have, seventeen years down the line, as fundamental a conversation as we had in Bakewell. The decisions we made probably won't seem massive from the outside; nor will they produce a Radical New Direction. But they have clarified things for us, inspired us and given us a renewed energy.

We immediately scheduled another, equally useful, company away day with General Manager Hilary, and put plans in place for this to be a fixture in our annual planning. Get out of the office and walk and talk. For whole days at a time.

It's been a really good year for Third Angel. The tour of What I Heard About the World / Story Map went brilliantly, working at Northern Stage at St. Stephen's was fantastic, The Machine was something quite different for us, and this was all complemented by a series of other repertoire shows and new video work. Education and mentoring projects were rewarding, successful and great fun. We've pretty much made the next show Cape Wrath and have exciting plans in place for the two shows after that... To have the view from Cove Park in addition to all of that makes it feel like 2012 has been a very important year for us.

A massive thank you to all of the other collaborators, supporters, partners, friends and of course audiences who have been part of the last twelve months with us. Happy New Year - we wish you a brave and rewarding 2013.