Created in Birmingham

Last year I was lucky enough to be selected by the Cultural Leadership Programme to spend a year on a professional development and work placement down in Bristol. So I put my usual job of making new theatre performances on the back-burner and headed down the M5.

My year was spent working as part of the small but highly effective iShed team, which is based at the Pervasive Media Studio, and is a part of the larger organisation and venue Watershed.

My task was to help shape and then produce the first year of Theatre Sandbox – a national commissioning scheme for theatre companies to engage with emerging technologies in their practice.

Except the thing was, I didn’t know anything about these technologies myself… yet. But this is why I’d applied for this placement – to learn. And learn I did.

… RFID … wifi beacons … interaction design … augmented reality … QR codes … arduino … bio feedback sensors … these words floated around me, and eventually began to settle as I saw and experienced concrete examples of them being used in practice.

I learned most things through a kind of Pervasive Media Studio osmosis. Just overhearing people’s conversations, lectures, lunchtime talks and workshops introduced me to a slew of new vocabulary, possibilities, hardware and software.

And just a few short months after my own first introduction to Pervasive Media (here’s some definitions of this diverse field) I started to lead our six commissioned Theatre Sandbox theatre companies into how they might incorporate these technologies into their own projects and practice.

It was incredibly exciting to see how experimental theatre practice could have a dialogue with experimental technologies – each one’s processes, restrictions, affordances and modus operandi affecting and influencing the other.

I found it interesting to observe how different the usual process of theatre making: end goal make-or-break

(idea ? develop content ? refine, perfect, edit ? assemble acting, design, sound elements ? performance of finished show in front of audience ? reviews)

was to the process of technology development: iterative

(idea ? sketch version ? test with users/audience ? integrate feedback, create prototype ? test with users/audience ? integrate feedback, refine product ? release finished product).

Sometimes during Theatre Sandbox these two processes seemed directly at odds with each other, and it will take more than just this one pilot project to re-educate both communities in how to contextualise and best offer feedback to these kind of projects whilst in development. It felt daunting and precarious for the theatre artists to test their work at such early stages in its development, but such testing was essential for the development of the technologies and the experience as a whole.

I was pleased to discover that some of the core skills of theatre artists were particularly valuable within the sphere of technology development. Where some technology developers may be guilty of getting caught up with how cool their new tech is without much thought for their users, how it actually is to use, whether its useful or fun. Theatre’s focus on the audience and on their experience of what is presented to them dovetailed neatly with technology’s system of user interaction design. Theatre artists naturally considered their user/audience’s interaction with the technologies and the work, often finding cunning and ingenious ways to make the hardware and interactions part of the fictional and aesthetic world of the performance.

Theatre artists are also adept at weaving stories, and creating meaning from potentially disparate incidents and experiences. The Theatre Sandbox projects successfully integrated technologies but never became obsessed by the tech for its own sake – the story and audience experience always remained the focus, and this is what ensured that the projects were genuinely engaging for their audiences.

Please do watch this short overview video of the scheme featuring extracts from all six projects, narrated by myself, and shot and edited by Birmingham’s own Chris Keenan.

I completed my placement in December 2010, and am now back in Birmingham eager to start using my new-found skills in this region: helping others develop projects; brokering arts and technology partnerships; and creating new theatre productions that integrate pervasive media with my own company The Other Way Works.

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By Katie Day

Katie Day is the Artistic Director of Birmingham-based theatre company The Other Way Works who have been pushing the boundaries of theatre practice for around eight years now, and produce site-specific audience-interactive performances like our hotel-based thriller ‘Black Tonic‘.
www.theotherwayworks.co.uk

Capital‘s first Festival of New Writing is taking place at The Old Joint Stock between 22 – 27 November, bringing writers, actors and theatre makers together to celebrate developing work.

The festival will use the current political climate as a backdrop, offering an informal platform for participants to explore new work, ideas and audiences. They have also launched a competition asking ‘What’s your take on Cameron’s “Big Society”? Have you been affected by any of the issues raised?’, urging playwrights to create small plays about a big society.

To enter, take a look at the full details, and send your entry to catherine@capitalplays.co.uk by 5pm on Friday 12th November 2010.

For further information on events happening throughout the Festival, visit the Capital website.

Women & Theatre are currently recruiting a community cast for The Palace of Wasted Dreams, set to take place at mac in the spring of 2011. This participatory musical theatre project explores women’s relationship with alcohol, and is the culmination of a two-year project called Wasted.

Women & Theatre are holding a development weekend on 6 and 7 November at mac from 11am – 4pm, where you can find out more about the project. After previewing some of the scenes and songs you’ll have the opportunity to sign up as part of the cast. It’s not an audition, and you don’t need to have any previous experience – a perfect chance to try something new for 2011 perhaps?

All they ask is that you can dedicate the time and commit to rehearsal and performance dates, which can be found over on their website.

If you’d like to get involved in the production, both on stage or back stage, contact Pippa Frith on 0121 440 4203 or email pippafrith@womenandtheatre.co.uk

Award-winning writer and performance maker Michael Pinchbeck will be arriving in Birmingham on 11 November, bringing his parents and the The Post Show Party Show along with him as he recreates the 1970 post show party where they first met. Set around an amateur dramatic version of The Sound of Music, his mum played a nun, and his father a Nazi.

Mixing text from the past and present with movement to the real-time soundtrack of The Sound of Music, Michael Pinchbeck asks what is present and what is absent, what is professional and what is amateur.

For tickets, call the box office on 0121 446 3232 or go to www.macarts.co.uk to book online.

Desipulp in association with The Drum present a fresh reworking of the 1997 hit Arrange that Marriage.

Throw in a couple of hysterical parents and some confused young people… add a ‘liberal’ helping of emotional blackmail and some good old fashioned cultural pressure… allow to simmer … then sprinkle with music and dance from the Bollywood, Nashville and R&B genres…

What do you get?

The most frivolous and irrelevant theatrical examination of the arranged marriage paradigm!!

Catch this darkly comedic show from 9 – 14 November. To book tickets, call the box office on 0121 333 2444 or visit www.the-drum.org.uk

Tickets are £10, but if you manage to book before 10 October, it’s 2 for £10, and before 5 November you can get tickets for the Wed/ Thu/ Fri performances for £7 each. And as if that’s not a good enough set of deals, The Drum have a limited amount of free tickets for theatre goers under 26 as part of A Night Less Ordinary.

‘An evening of barely organised theatrical chaos!’

The next PILOT Light takes place on 14 October at 7.30pm, The Victoria, and is on the hunt for untested, unpolised and unfinished ideas from theatre artists. This is great chance to meet and share your thoughts with like-minded people, where mistakes are welcomed so long as you bring your passion along too.

It’s an opportunity for theatre artists from the West Midlands to test out 5-10 minutes of work that is right at the beginning of its developmental process in front of a curious, confused and courageous audience. It’s also a chance to find out who else is doing what in the area, and make new creative connections.

If this sounds like your kinda thing, email your proposals to PILOTlight@mail.com by 2 October, with the following information:

Contact/Company Name:
Description of idea (max 200 words):
Length of performance (10 minutes max):
Number and names of all people involved:
Estimate of travel expenses (we have a small budget for travel expenses that will be shared between participants).

Successful applicants will receive email confirmation by 5th October.

Picked this up at Artsfest. I can’t find much about it online, but it looks interesting.

20 – 22 September at The Victoria, Green Gorilla Presents – Polite Assassins – A play celebrating an almost forgotten heroine air-brushed out of history, Mary Seacole. Starting at 7:30pm, tickets are £7/ £5 concessions.

So the programme for this year’s Artsfest is now up online, complete with a nice little selection of search options so you can filter through the events that you’re interested in.

The festival runs this weekend, from Fri – Sun, and is the biggest free arts and culture festival in the UK, with around 600 performing, visual and digital artists at events taking place all across the city.

I would give you a run down of everything happening, but there are heaps of events, performances, screenings, workshops and all sorts of goings-on, so I’m not even going to attempt it. Chris did, however, mention a few things to look out for the other week.

Six Summer Saturdays Week 2 from Birmingham Hippodrome on Vimeo.

If you’ve been in and around Birmingham for the past four weekends you’ll have seen all sorts of shenanigans going on as part of Six Summer Saturdays. Shows and highlights from the best outdoor theatre have been organised by the Hippodrome, which are free to catch all over the city.

There are only two Saturday’s left in the series, but still plenty of performances to catch on 21 August and 28 August.

Following critical acclaim from Edinburgh Festival, 2010 Scotsman Fringe First Award Winner ‘My Romantic History’ is honeymooning at the The Rep from 1 to 11 September.

If you haven’t met someone by the time you graduate, you’re going to marry some idiot from your work. It’s that simple. Do you know how they get animals to breed in captivity? They put them in the same cage.

Tickets are £10 with concessions available, and you can buy online from The Rep’s website.

Between The Lines is a promenade performance taking place at the Central Library on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 September at 7pm, 8pm & 9pm.

Intriguing events are unfolding between the dusty bookshelves.

Night time strangers exchange unexpected messages, books fall open on empty pages, and a writer is eating his words.

Silence creeps through the maze of lettered corridors.

Some people come here to lose themselves, others to be found.

The Library at Night is not for every Reader

I have no idea what it will involve but it looks kinda cool.  Places are free but, because of the nature of it you’ll need to book – just call 07530 939 380 or email needleandthreadtheatre@yahoo.co.uk.

Here’s the flyer:

Transmissions is the Rep’s young (as in 12-26 year old) playwrights’ programme and was started back in 1998.

To celebrate this decade of fantastic new work, we’re staging extracts from plays that were big hits at previous festivals alongside some new commissions that look to the future.

Click for show details and suggested highlights.

The Birmingham REP has a new website. I haven’t had a good dig yet but a cursory glance reveals it to be rather progressive with comments, feeds (RSS and iCal), blog-style news and a snappy design, as you’d expect from a Made Media production given their work on the THSH site last year. In fact comparing the two this appears to raise the bar a bit, which is always good to see. Two thumbs up from me.

• OJS Theatre – What’s On May to July 08
  Comedy and theatre listings for the Old Joint Stock Theatre during May to July 2008
• Birmingham Words handover
  The National Academy of Writing/BCU are taking over Birmingham Words from 12 May. Good luck to all involved and I’m looking forward to seeing what the “new and exciting directions” involve.
• International Dance Festival Birmingham – Collective Memory
  Wechtie is doing a fantastically useful collective memory for the IDFB. If you’ve spotted any online coverage then post a link in the comments on his blog.
• Supercool mention Winnie O’Brien
  I like the look of Winnie O’Brien’s work but can’t find any information on her (yet). Props to Supercool for posting this.
• New Ikon Eastside Space
  27 May sees Ikon’s itinerant Eastside programme re-open in a new location on Fazeley Street, Digbeth. It opens with Soi Project, an artists’ collective from Thailand and Japan.
• Woom Gallery in the Jewellery Quarter
  Some interesting things happening here “the common thread being; the venue’s charm, underground edge and our input into aesthetics.. leaving the audience with the feeling of being part of something a bit special”.