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.
Here’s something new, Tin Bath Theatre Company are developing a revolutionary new way to caption theatre as part of a Theatre Sandbox award. They’ll be performing a scene from their new comedy ‘You’re So Happy I Want to Die’ at mac, using a new application for pervasive media.
Our captions are a mix of subtitles and video projection and are big, bold, colourful and responsive to the performer. We are testing out how these new captions work for an audience.
Clare Reddington who runs the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol was there today, and seemed to be impressed.
Pop down and see 10 minutes of this new show for free, followed by a Q and A session, at mac today (August 26) at 7pm. If you’d like to book a ticket, call 0121 446 3232 or email info@macarts.co.uk
To read more about this research, visit the Theatre Sandbox website.
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.
On Saturday night I took a couple of (out of town) friends to AE Harris for the Birmingham European Theatre Festival. We turned up a bit late so only managed to catch the last piece – one which would’ve been a fantastic spoof on art student theatre if it wasn’t for the fact they were taking themselves seriously.
Serves us right for turning up late – I’m told some of the earlier suff was ace. The night wasn’t over though, with a reasonably-priced bar, music from the TG Collective (in the rather dark pic above), some last-night awards handed to the companies that had performed, the results of the singing workshop from earlier in the day (audio below) and, as reported on Stan’s Cafe’s blog, music and dancing till dawn.
Despite some worries about ticket sales in the weeks beforehand, the last couple of nights of the festival were pretty much sold out and the various theatre companies who had come to the city seemed to have enjoyed themselves, with much talk of returning next year.
There was a fantastic atmosphere and my friends went away impressed with the sort of thing that Birmingham gets up to, so well done all who were involved. As Graeme rightly comments:
It was worth being there for the sense of gathering alone
One last thing – it was a little odd to see AE Harris decked out as a ‘proper’ theatre but it scrubs up rather well. I’ve seen it used for all sorts of things since it opened – 24HR Scalextric, launch parties, a Christmas party, filled with rice by Stan’s Cafe and filled with detritus (including upturned cars) by Kindle Theatre. It fills a very important and individual gap in a city that’s not blessed with mid-size venues, so it’s encouraging to hear that discussions are ongoing to keep the place open past the initial lease.
The line-up for the first Birmingham European Theatre Festival (Wed 30 June to Sat 3 July) is now up. I don’t know enough about theatre (European or otherwise) to tell you whether it’s good or not, but really that seems like reason enough to get a ticket. Anyway, I’ve been assured that it is a good line-up.
Also, it’s only a tenner for an evening of entertainment. Tickets here.
From elsewhere on the webs we can see that:
To quote Stan’s Cafe from that last link:
OK, it feels like crunch time now. Is this City going to allow itself to develop a proper theatre scene or should we just all move to the seaside?
Speakeasy is be a get-together for West Mids theatre folk hosted by The Drum and in association with The Rep. It’s on Monday 7 June.
Alison Gagen from ACE West Mids and Tyrone Huggins who the chairs the Sustained Theatre West Midlands Hub (which I’d not come across before) will be there. The general format will be:
A discussion of the landscape for theatre practitioners in the West Midlands in terms of funding and opportunities, together with a preview of forthcoming work and a chance for local writers, actors, directors, producers and venue managers to network and announce their latest news.
More info via Script Online.
The REP have put tickets on sale for the second half of the year. What’s more, they’ve written an eminently copy/paste-able round-up in a blog post about it. That’s always good to see.
Highlights include:
- A new production of the sci-fi spoof Little Shop Of Horrors
- Sir Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard starring Josie Lawrence
- The premiere of an imaginative and high tech drama First Person Shooter
- Direct from the West End and Broadway, Lucy Prebble’s award-winning ENRON
- The National Theatre production of Alan Bennett’s The Habit Of Art
- Simon Stephens returns to The REP with the outstanding Punk Rock
- A witty story about friendship and betrayal amongst IRA sympathisers The Big Fellah
- Our lavish Christmas production The Secret Garden
Tickets for all productions are onsale now – see the full programme of events.
RoguePlay took over the theatre space in the Custard Factory at the end of last year but are on the move already. This from their blog:
trying to run a theatre which aims to embrace and nurture young talent has been made almost impossible when clashing with raves and road closures. We appreciate the long standing reputation of the Custard Factory as one of Birmingham’s biggest party places but the knock on effect this has had on our customers and facilities has become too much
So off they travel.
They’re looking for interesting places to use and have looked at:
Railway Stations as well as arches, Churches, Post Offices, discussed Shop Fronts, pubs and even an old car forecourt and will be re-opening the Mixing Bowl Theatre in one of these unique performance spaces
They’re still looking too, so if you know of an interesting, disused site (or if you’ve got a good space) then contact them via their blog.
mac have commissioned some new Stan’s Cafe which is being performed there from Thurs to Sat and then touring later in the year.
Tuning Out with Radio Z is best described by they themselves:
The hosts of the night time show Tuning Out know all about facing down the void. Each night they start the show blank, with nothing planned, armed with just a stack of charity shop records and six hours in which to calm the world’s chaos and settle its people down to sleep.
This is a theatre show, which is also a radio show. You can listen to Tuning Out at home on-line via our website but true excitement comes when you visit its extraordinary studio in the theatre and become privy to presenter’s deeply compromised off-mic World.
Here’s the Radio Z website. You can sign in to the News Room bit and, during the performance, interact with things, send messages and so on.
There’ll be a pre-show talk with James Yarker at 6pm on the Friday to discuss the show. I wouldn’t be surprised if the development of this show had something to do (at least in part) with commentating on a Scalextric race for 24 hours last year, but you never can tell.
Applications are now open to companies across Europe for the first ever BE Festival, which will take place over four days: 30 June – 3 July 2010
The venue will be A E Harris where, as Stan’s Cafe point out, a fundraiser will be held for this event:
Temple Theatre are going to be performing their production Out Of Chaos @ A E Harris on 21st May. Doors open 19.30 show at 20.00. Tickets £10. To reserve tickets email info@befestival.org with your name and the number of tickets you require
The show’s had some great reviews and it all sounds worthwhile considering.
Incidentally, if anyone’s looking to sell tickets online for an event, Eventbrite does the job pretty well.
Such Tweet Sorrow launched the other day; a retelling of Romeo & Juliet via Twitter. Telling stories via Twitter isn’t a new thing particularly, but the size and scope of this effort is what sets it apart. The RSC are behind this after all, and from what I gather rehearsals and workshops for this have been going on for aaaages.
Oh aye, and the Birmingham link is the involvement of Mudlark as producers, Substrakt as the website designers and Kate Beatty as the photographer responsible for the shots of the cast.
Exeunt omnes. Divers alarums.
There’s a PILOT night tomorrow – an evening of ‘new, untested shorts from some of the UK’s most exciting theatre companies’. AE Harris are housing and Kindle Theatre are hosting. It’s only a fiver so get down by 7.30pm for this little lot:
The line up will include performances from Needle & Thread Theatre’s continuing project The Story Exchange, a brick built Ziggurat from The Resurrectionists, a comic twist on a Greek myth from The Company Project, a public pillory from Mark Butcher, an operatic performance from Kirsty Lothian and the dulcet tones of Greg McLaren from Stoke Newington International Airport.
The evening will be fanfared by the City Sings Trumpeters and serenaded by The Mellow Peaches
The REP have a new section for families on their website. It’s got vids and such on it, like this one showing how to make a toy theatre:
The next PILOT Night, co-piloted by Kindle Theatre at AE Harris, Birmingham will be on Thursday 1 April 2010. Here’s some copy/pasted info. For more knowledge, and to apply, go to www.pilotnights.co.uk.
Pilot is a platform for testing new theatre work from the West Midlands and beyond. Deadline for submissions Monday 1st March, 12pm
RELEASE THE BEAST
Had an idea laying dormant for a while that you almost daren’t wake up? Not sure if it’s mad or genius?
Kindle invite performers/practitioners/fools to submit ideas for performance which frighten them. Whether in form, content or style it must push you beyond your comfort zone into unknown territory.Challenge yourself in a lively, supportive atmosphere and get honest feedback from peers and audience. All fools will be applauded.
AE Harris is an industrial warehouse in Birmingham’s Jewelry Quarter. It’s big, blank and open to you, with four huge spaces and lots of corners, nooks and crannies to test your idea in. Site-specific ideas are most welcome.
We can offer you a small bursary, documentation of your performance, and rehearsal space in the venue from Monday 29th March.
Kindle will also be hosting an unusual meal for all the artists involved on the Wednesday night, in the venue.
In other news, on 6 March you should definitely go to Warwick Arts Centre for The Bite Size Festival 2010:
a whirlwind tour of the region’s theatre, offering you the one-off opportunity to sample a range of great work in one place on the same day.
This year’s lineup includes Stans Cafe, Pentabus, Foursight, Kindle, Jane Packman Productions, Spanner, New Macho, Needle and Thread and Vanessa Oakes. PLUS the first opportunity to see two shows we’ve commissioned especially with Warwick Arts Centre and mac following the First Bite Festival back in November: Caroline Horton’s You’re Not Like The Other Girls Chrissy and Untied Artists’ Al Bowlly’s Croon Manifesto.
Grab a day ticket and wallow in some entertainingness. Kindle Theatre will be doing 30 mins of Eat Your Heart Out, which I saw last year and thought was really very good indeed.
I was in Coventry at the Institute for Creative Enterprise (home to companies like Imagineer Productions, amongst others) when I spotted the Stan’s Cafe theatre pledge cards sitting in a tidy pile on the reception desk.
The process by which they came to be there is quite compelling and seems to have gone something like this:
Whether they achieve their stated aim or not doesn’t matter. If nothing else they stand as evidence that 2 (coming out of 1) can lead to 3.
Tangent – this reminds me of the bit in Scott McCloud’s utterly excellent Understanding Comics that talks about the action all happening between the panels.
