So here’s a little teaser for our upcoming show ‘The Secret Agent’. The footage is taken from our work-in-progress showing, mixed with the brilliant work of Paddy Molloy who also put the teaser together. The music is from William Basinski’s album, ‘Melancholia’.
We’re making the show in June so this isn’t intended to show the finished product – just to give you a sense of where we might be going…
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We are absolutely and unconditionally thrilled to be able to announce that the people at the Arts Council, they said YES!
This means that we have the go ahead to make ‘The Secret Agent’ this year. We’ll post details later, but for now we’d just like to share how excited we are that this has happened. Although we’ve been developing work here and there over the last 3 years, this will be our first full production since Delirium.
We’d like to thank all those who’ve been helping us prepare for this and have shown faith and belief that we’d get to this point. We’d particularly like to thank the wonderful Lucy Moore and the amazing work she put into the application. We’re very excited to be working with her on this project and it feels like the start of something very special.
Here’s to an amazing 2013.
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I think that the last time we posted anything was last September – well I know it was, I can see from the date on the next post down!
We’ve been incredibly busy since then with various projects. We’ve both been doing a lot of freelance work as well as, of course, working hard with the amazing Lucy Moore to get our Arts Council application in for ‘The Secret Agent’… We’ll find out about that by the end of this month. Lucy worked incredibly hard on it and did a great job. As well as the Young Vic co-producing the piece, she also pulled in the Warwick Arts Centre as a partner. We have a nearly complete creative team and can’t wait to get on with the show. Fingers crossed!
In my movement director guise, I worked with David Lan on ‘Blackta’ at the Young Vic. It was the first play by Nathaniel Martello White. The whole thing was a lot of fun – a great team and a great atmosphere in the room – I can honestly say that I enjoyed every day that I was there. It was also great to be working on a show in the theatre where we’ll perform ‘The Secret Agent’ in September – it was incredibly useful to get a sense of the space and more importantly to get to know the team at the Young Vic who were amazing!
After that I started working on Hansel & Gretel with Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre – the production is still running (until the 26th Jan I think) and is aimed at 6-10 year olds. It’s the the 3rd show for children that I’ve made with Katie – it wasn’t without it’s challenges but I think that the end result is a lot of fun. It’s been a really great thing to work on these shows, I think particularly since we’ve had children of our own – making productions that Laszlo at least has been able to come and see. I suppose that Wilhelmina will get to see the next one, whatever that is! Get along and see Hansel & Gretel if you get the chance – as well as the more known aspects of the story you get to see Stuart the Bat and Rostislav the talking oven!
Next up Carolina was cast in Phyllida Lloyd’s all female production of Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse. Caro is fantastic in it – she brings a focus and commitment that is remarkable – definitely worth catching if you can. The piece itself is good – fascinating – the all female part of it becomes unnoticeable after a few minutes, but continues to bring useful and exciting perspectives on a play that is predominantly about male behaviour. I’m not convinced that the concept of the prison is thoroughly followed through, but it’s a great production and a welcome change from what has been the regular Donmar fare for so many years.
(there she is, watching the TV in the front row)!
Finally we’re both working as movement directors on the RSC’s Hamlet, directed by David Farr. It’s great to see yet another director at work – great because it throws my/our process into relief – between David Farr, David Lan and Katie Mitchell I’ve been able to observe incredibly different approaches whilst having a strong creative input myself. I haven’t worked on any Shakespeare in a long time, so that’s also a very useful thing to expose myself to. In this case I have a directing job to do towards the end of February (more on that later), so Carolina is going to take over from me once she has finished at the Donmar.
But of course, most of all, we are excited to be getting on with our own work, whether ‘The Secret Agent’, the Sinfonietta Project (Gallup Memo) or developing ‘Sheriff’. There’s so much that we want to get on with and bring all these different experiences of the last couple of years to. Here’s hoping they all work out!
We look forward to seeing you over the course of the year.
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Last Thursday we held our first ever Gala evening. We were hosted by the wonderful Neil and Sarah in their superb apartment with magnificent views. We hope that this the beginning of some new relationships that will help us towards making new work in the years to come. It was a great evening and we’d like to thank everyone who came to support us.
As part of the evening we did a little performance – we resurrected some moments from 3 Dark Tales, The Argument and then did a little from our next show The Secret Agent. It was a real treat to perform the old work again and prompted some calls for a couple of revivals!
Here’s a picture of Carolina and Dominic rehearsing a moment from The Secret Agent and there’s also one of the spectacular view from the terrace!
We hope you’ve had a fantastic summer.
the ‘O’
So last year I saw a show at the Camden People’s theatre that I thought was great. It’s from a company that trained at the Lecoq school and it’s completely nuts in a great way. It’s a piece inspired by the writings of Russian surrealist, Daniil Kharms. The company is called Clout Theatre and the piece is called How a Man Crumbled.
The performers make a superb trio and the show is incredibly refreshing in its freedom and playfulness… and it’s coming to Peckham! If you feel like seeing something with great energy and originality then go along and have a look…
133 RYE LANE
SE15 4ST
‘Art is a cupboard! We are not cakes!’
Lecoq-trained Clout Theatre invite you to dive into the absurd world of the Russian poet, iconoclast and false moustache wearer Daniil Kharms. Three bouffonesque characters intent on telling ‘The Old Woman’ story let narrative escape them as comic vignettes, metaphysical ponderings and bouts of senseless violence provide constant distraction. Expressionist silent film meets grotesque slapstick in a world where clocks have no hands and a cucumber can kill a man.
Winner: Physical Fest Audience Award 2012
Nominated for a Total Theatre Award
**** The Scotsman
**** The Herald
‘A heroic physical and professional performance full of intensity, absurdity and discordant daftness that deals with sex, death, philosophy and religion… not for the faint hearted’ Edinburgh Guide
by Natalie Woolm, thestage.co.uk May 25th 2012
Shoreditch Town Hall is to be transformed into an arts centre, which will see the building host regular, ticketed cultural events for the first time since the 19th century.
Next month, a campaign will be launched to raise £1.6 million to complete the final works required to increase the capacity of the Assembly Hall increase from just under 500 to more than 900, a studio theatre and bar area created, and artist workspaces developed. A pilot programme of arts events is to run from June until the autumn.
Nick Giles, who was previously executive producer at the Donmar Warehouse, was appointed chief executive in September 2011. He said he hoped to programme productions that “benefit from being in the spaces”.
He added: “The building has a particular character. Some of the rooms are renovated and some are still distressed so it is about making the best use of those spaces.”
He added that the programme would be “hand-picked” to achieve this and he hoped that this would make “the building come alive”.
Giles is also planning to establish a creative development programme. As part of this, the London Snorkelling Team, You Need Me and Theatre O are to become associate companies and Clod Ensemble, the London International Festival of Theatre and the Steam Industry will be affiliates.
The pilot artistic programme will start with the premiere of Sacrifices by La Nuova Musica and Vignette Productions, which will run on June 14 and 15.
So we were giving a workshop in Barcelona about 5 years ago (time flies)! and after the workshop, one of the participants, Xevi – a catalan hip hop artist, threw together this tune for us. I was just reminded of it thanks to my iTunes being in shuffle. Anyway, as it’s theatre O related, here it is:
thanks Xevi…
So I was doing some research into The Secret Agent and I came across a site with photos from the Czech secret police surveillance archives. My parents used to live in Czechoslovakia and I thought it’d be fantastic if there was a photo of them. But what would be the chances of that – a selection of about 20 photos out of thousands from the archive and 2 English people who lived there for 3 years in the 60s. Imagine my surprise when I scrolled down and found a picture of them!
In fact this is them arriving in Prague (they’re the two on the outside) on a return visit – obviously a high security risk. When we visited as a family in the 80s we were trailed everywhere and filmed and photographed throughout our visit. But to actually chance upon one of the photos without even trying – that’s really something!
from the Institute for the study of Totalitarian regimes via Vice
Those of you who know us also know that most of what happens within theatre O is done very much ‘in house’ – that’s to say on no budget and by, well, us. So it’s with some sense of achievement that I can say that we (seem) to have a mobile site up and running for those of you who are accessing the website without Flash. There’s a version for most different sorts of mobile device – here are screenshots of the ones for the iPhone and the iPad:
What should happen is that when you go to the main site there’ll be a picture of a dogs head and some text saying ‘click here to go to our mobile site’ – then click/tap and voila! Let us know if you have any problems.
the ‘O‘
It had been my intention to write something each day of our development week at the National Theatre Studio – it turns out that wasn’t the only change of plan during the week!
Interestingly (and perhaps inevitably), our plans had changed by the end of day 2 – but then that’s one of the joys of creating/devising theatre – it’s very likely to take exciting and unexpected turns!
It had been our plan to make the first 20 minutes or so of the piece. On day 2, however, we ran into one of those small, niggly glitches which is absolutely fine in a longer creation process, but with just 4 days to make a coherent and exciting presentation for potential future partners, we decided that there was probably a better way to go about things.
On tuesday evening we decided that we had to embrace the form of the ‘trailer’ – a (relatively) short burst of theatre that would give a strong sense of the world of the piece, it’s shape, the characters involved and enough clues to the plot for people to want to know more.
This turned out to be incredibly useful. Because the trailer had such clear requirements (to intrigue, excite, entice), we were able to make a lot of strong decisions very quickly. This was very clarifying from a devising/writing point of view, and an important reminder to always go to the essence of things.
All the reasons that devising is an incredibly exciting way to make theatre are also the reasons that it can fail. One of these pitfalls can be an over-saturation of ideas, whether they be visual or textual. By choosing to make the trailer we knew that we had to cull anything that wasn’t strong enough or clear enough. It helped us to decide what we needed, prioritising that above what we fancied. Given more time we would inevitably have worked hard to make those other ideas work – we would have succeeded in some cases and not in others, but maybe (and of course it’s just a maybe) at the expense of the clarity of the whole.
By making the trailer we have set really clear guidelines for the making of the show – we have the visual, rhythmical and textual framework on which to build the eventual production of ‘The Secret Agent’. This still allows for invention and creativity, but with a clear knowledge of the constraints within which that invention and creativity can flourish. When I talk about ‘constraints’, I am talking about them as an exciting and positive thing.
Of course, the main reasons that the week was such a positive experience were the people and the place; our whole team was really fantastic – we had almost everyone we needed in the room (only lacking sound designer Gareth Fry) – Carolina Valdés, Dominic Burdess, Emma McKie, George Ramsay, Helena Lymbery, Leander Deeny, Matthew Hurt, Marc Teitler, Natasha Nixon, Paddy Molloy and Simon Daw. It was immensely useful to have the whole design team there for the week so that everyone could move forward together, so that each element could grow from the same seed. To be in the National Theatre Studio was a privilege and a pleasure. There’s a great team there and it meant that we could focus on the work knowing that we had the practical support we needed to make the most of it. So a huge thank you to all of them.
And now the next phase begins; funding applications, private donations, tour booking, and finding co-producers. Our aim is to make the show at the beginning of next year, tour it and bring it to London. We’ll need a lot of support of various different kinds to make this wonderful project happen – so if there are ways in which you can help, then we’ll let you know! In the meantime, here are some pictures from the work we presented last Friday. We wanted to create a world that is strongly reminiscent of the Music Hall tradition of the end of the 19th Century, as well as with early cinema. This is the era that Conrad wrote in and it gives us a chance to explore a theatrical equivalent of Conrad’s detached and ironic writing style in The Secret Agent:
