Stan's Cafe

Pina Bausch

2009-06-30T23:18:00.002+01:00

Surely the choreographer Pina Bausch, who died today, was one of the most important artists working in any field during the last thirty years.

I defy anyone to come up with a cogent argument against this statement.

Pina Bausch has always been star by which Stan's Cafe has charted its course across the seas. Though the death of such a star is a just cause for mourn the joy of stars is that they shine so brightly and from so far away that their light continues to reach us long after they are gone. We shall continue to be guided by Pina Bausch, for us she will always be there.

James

The Last Week

2009-06-06T19:31:00.003+01:00

Monday: A small team of operatives descended on Montgomery School in Sparkbrook and had a really fun time letting teachers lose on Stop Frame Animation, Podcasting Kit, Fruit and Veg City Raw materials and inevitably, rice as people. They seemed to enjoy it all.

Tuesday: Mostly just meetings and e-mails and avoiding doing the intimidating jobs.

Wednesday: A meeting with Terry Grimley from Birmingham Post over at Warwick Arts Centre, which should lead to a piece in next Wednesday's paper. Then Craig and I polished Spy Steps up a bit. Including adding "New York, Moscow, Bejing, Coventry" under the four big clocks they have lined up in the foyer – I've got to post a picture of this at some point as Simon left demanding photographic evidence that we would carry out his last request.

Thursday: A trip to Leciester to sort out a major collaboration with a school over there. It's looking good. Much stop-frame action this term before a more significant collaboration next year.

Friday: Unpacking a shipping container, moving a seating bank, clearing up a load of stuff from the space, marking out a ludicrously ambitious Scalextric track, fit together and test the first six pieces.

Saturday: A bit obsessive drag family over to space to fit and test a few more lengths of scale. Get a text to look in the Guardian Guide where Lynn Gardner has kindly done a preview for Spy Steps and said nice things about the company along the way.

Tonight we start celebrating Craig's 40th Birthday.

James

Spys Steps is GO.

2009-05-28T23:51:00.002+01:00

A seriously long day was worked on Wednesday and at its conclusion Spy Steps was done. There are a few minor details we still want to improve, but it's essentially all done and we're proud of it. Ultimately the get-in consisted of five days prep and one day blitzing Warwick Arts Centre with vinyl. Whilst frantically adhering we were regularly interrupted with questions about the project and congratulations on it. So the feeling is currently pretty good about the piece.

This is the big flash younger brother of Dance Steps, which we made last year. Spy Steps makes full uses of WAC's big expanses of stone floor and plate glass. It revels in it's own on site vinyl cutter and for the well rehearsed, Nina's music makes the whole thing become not just fun, but very exciting indeed (at least I think so and I'm the only one to have experienced it like this so far, which gives us 100% approval rating, maybe we should quit whilst ahead).

Whilst the soundtrack is played each day over the venue's P.A. system at 1 and 6pm the real trick is going to be getting it available online as an MP3 so people can charge around with it on their headphones. Although I have been induced to create a Spy Steps facebook group I have yet to work out how to post the MP3 there for download, which is humiliating and has also prevented me promoting the group to 'all' my 'friends' (are all my 'friends' Electric? let's hope not).

James

Penny Dreadful Theatre

2009-05-25T20:05:00.003+01:00

Our esteemed collaborator Bernadette Russell, who was part of the devising team for Home Of The Wriggler and The Cleansing Of Constance Brown, has been commissioned to write a piece for the the theatre company Penny Dreadful. The show called Missionary's Position is currently on tour in the UK and will be at The Custard Factory Theatre this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I'm planning on being there, and recommend it as potentially a good night out. Bernadette's great to work with, she has a strong personal aesthetic and is full of ideas, so I'm keen to hear what the text will be like. Penny Dreadful aren't dreadful at all. I saw their show Bitches Ball in Edinburgh a couple of years ago and it was engaging and well performed, so there we go, that's the plug. Possibly see you there.

James

Planning Ahead

2009-05-22T06:23:00.002+01:00

As, amidst all its other activity, Stan’s Cafe scrambles to promote 24 Hour Scalextric, which takes place in less than a month time and Spy Steps which opens in less than a week, it was shocking to receive Ex Cathedra’s 2009/10 brochure through the post urging us to book for their Rachmaninoff Vespers concert on Wednesday 23 June NEXT YEAR!

James

Spy Steps: Day 2

2009-05-21T23:43:00.000+01:00

Late yesterday afternoon Simon and Craig got the great vinyl cutter sparked up and expertly tamed – it pays to buy expensive kit. Today the three of us paced the whole sequence out, resolving a few glitches and intelligent kinks. I’d had some thoughts on the train, they last night. Nina turned up to talk sound. One of the new innovations for this version of the show is to play a soundtrack through the foyer for the audience/performers to synch their action to. As a consequence a few hours were spent with Nina attempting to imagine how long certain sections of the soundtrack may need to be and when specific spot effects are required. The foyer sound system seems beefy enough and Nina was grinning widely, so it could all sound good.

Simon got his head down to designing a host of new icons for the show whilst Craig and I paced out scenes and bounced text ideas and refinements back and forth until we have most of a script we’re happy with.

It’s all coming together… so far.

James

Spy Steps: Day 1

2009-05-20T23:28:00.000+01:00

Day One proper of the Spy Steps devising/get in: Simon, Craig and I did a day at Warwick Arts Centre a couple of months ago and started to sketch out plans and possibilities, now the serious work begins.

The piece starts to form itself as the only clear logical outcome once a host of competing desires and imperatives are pitted against each other. There are architectural features of the Arts Centre that demand to be used and those place practical constraints on us. There are narrative and choreographic incidents that nominate themselves for a place somewhere within the piece. There are visual ideas, which suggest themselves for inclusion for their own sake but need to be bound into the piece. Our narrative is the algorithm which pulls these variable together to equal Spy Steps.

We have a confident swagger with the ‘Steps Series’ now. With Dance Steps at MAC last year we learnt a bit about how the idea works. Now, at WAC, we have a more open building with larger surfaces to work on. Choosing to make a genre piece has given us a host of existing references to draw on, short-hands audiences will immediately recognise and allow us to be more playful and ambitious. We have improved vinyl handling technique, a better sense of what is possible and, perhaps most importantly, we now have our own vinyl cutter.

It’s a relatively expensive piece of kit but as precision cut vinyl is the show’s primary media it seems like a sensible investment. Previously Simon’s designs have taken a minimum of 24 hours to come back from cutting shop, now we can do our own in minutes. This allows us to be more flexible, ambitious and experimental. We probably only need to do two or three more gigs before the machine has paid for itself and of course in the worst case scenario that we don’t get any more gigs, at least we can improve signage @ A E Harris.

James

Misquoted Numbers

2009-05-14T16:45:00.002+01:00

Of All The People In All The World is now open in both Toronto and Bristol. With Home of the Wriggler also in Bristol today and tomorrow, so it's busy times.

The show got a big feature piece in Toronto's Globe and Mail, it's a decently written piece but embarrassingly most of the numbers are misquoted. Which is a blow.

Back at home things are cranking up as the end of the academic year approaches. Most excitingly it looks as if we will finally get to stage Suzie Small Lifts A Car in collaboration with Mark Anderson. More details on this will follow, but the clue as to the action is in the title. Much like the forthcoming 24 Hour Scalextric.

James

Toronto Get In Day 1

2009-05-04T04:09:00.003+01:00

The container was nearly two hours late arriving but the driver redeemed himself somewhat by pulled off a precision reversing manoeuvre and thus allowing our swarm of technicians to unload in record time.

I fouled up first by not spotting immediately that the numbered doors were being set up where the lettered doors should have been and vice versa. Then it was revealed that I’d misjudged the placement of the flooring and everyone had to put their shoulders in to slide the whole construction 94cm forward. These things happen when I’m left to my own devices. People seemed to take it in good heart. The Enwave’s impressively level floor obviated the need for any painful chocking. Steve is a born Pin Man and in tandem we soon had the doors hung. When Craig and Graeme, ‘fresh’ from the airport, poked their heads in the set was up and looking good.

In Bucharest Alex was Bernadette, here she is to be Jan. By lunch she’d been though her costumes, turned up a pair of trousers and is ready to join Bernadette, Gerard and Gareth on a sightseeing adventure. Nina’s sound is plumbed in. She’s remixed things again and promised us “20% more audio excitement”, which sounds like a bold, does the dial go up to 11?

Over here we’re on 110V power, down from Europe’s 240V. Arvo’s cooked up a plan and a mixture of local lights and step-up transformers, our lighting desk plugged via their lighting desk into their dimmer racks seems to be doing the trick. The fans appear to be cranked up as much as the ever have been, which is good news for those charged with wrangling the Orange Billowing Mass. Low power fans leads to a flaccid mass and no one wants that, least of all the wranglers.

James

Easy as Pi

2009-05-03T02:01:00.005+01:00

Sit up in a foyer waiting for co-workers to haul in from Manchester, England: beat the jet-lag by staying up forever.

National Express was weirdly painless, despite being the 02.45 Birmingham to Heathrow.
Check in and all else was smooth. The long haul flight helped me solve an e-mail in-box overload.

A photo of The Cleansing of Constance Brown has recently appeared in an A-level text book, so as a Maths, Physics, Geography boy, I took the chance to see the kind of thing A-level Theatre students need to know. I can seen now why I didn't take that option – Physics is far more my thing. Air Canada's in-flight entertainment included an option of Canadian films, a number of them short. My favourite was Easy As Pi, an engaging documentary about kids from a University Maths Soc. reciting Pi to ridiculous degrees of accuracy; that's their thing.

Once imigration and customs sorts grudgingly agreed that Billy could linger a while in their country we were free to install ourselves on the 33rd floor of a Harbour side hotel (free lobby wi-fi). Later I bullied Billy and Alex into walking from 0 – 1184 West Queen Street to an Ethiopian restaurant I had spotted in our welcome pack. The walk was exciting, the city impressive. A band played from the back of a Budget rental van. Darth Vader and storm troopers guarded a comic shot. Every other shop boasted another fresh specialism. Fortunately our meal justified the march, it was delicious.

Tomorrow, bright an early, the work begins.

James

John Wood and Paul Harrison, recommended

2009-04-30T22:58:00.003+01:00

I was delighted to learn that John Wood and Paul Harrison had an exhibition showing at Ikon in Birmingham as it's year's since I have seen any of their work and I think it's wonderful.

Today, despite not officially having time, I called in to see it. The fear was that if I waited until I did have time I would have run out of time. It was as good as I had hoped. I urge all to go. Take your kids too and parents, even grandparents, leave only your pets behind.

James

Cycling Home

2009-04-26T00:16:00.002+01:00

It has been great watching Home of the Wriggler come back to life. It has also been great watching @ A E Harris become a venue. It's not all been totally smooth, but we are learning and most things have come together well.

It was difficult to judge how many nights to do with the show in Birmingham, especially outside the shelter of MAC or BirminghamRep as sole promoters. In the end we opted for three nights but with Thursday busy and both Saturday and Sunday sold out it now looks as if we should have aimed higher. With the scrum for tickets, the good feel about the venue and good performances in my mind I set off home in high spirits. Traffic was very heavy around, especially given the hour. Something had just finished at the National Indoor Arena and everyone was leaving. Streams of cars and coaches flowed in every direction, temporary traffic lights had been sparked up and marshals were waving at traffic

Torvil and Dean put our triumph in its true perspective.

James

Stretching and Compressing.

2009-04-16T11:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve spent the last couple of days editing together animations I made in a school last month. The deadline is now in sight and the soundtrack has been delivered. Conceptually the project makes sense: a storyteller works with the pupils so they all write stories, a musician works with the kids turning a small selection of these stories into audio pieces before finally, we turn up and work with the pupils adding the visuals. In reality it’s all a bit of a compromise. What works as a short story becomes over-written as the narrative for an animation. Ideally the narration would have been delivered earlier so we could put the animation over the top and the sound effects would have been recorded later, with the visuals as a reference. As it is I’m desperately stretching out our fragments of animation to cover vast swathes of audio.

By way of contrast we’ve had news from the Edinburgh Fringe people that in listings hyphenated words count as two words not one, which makes sense but seems harsh when the words are abbreviations: ‘sci-fi’ and ‘lo-fi’. The obvious repost is to rewrite the forty word copy using the most extravagantly polysyllabic vocabulary available. Surely a character count can only be around the corner. As it was time was of the essence.

Home of the Wriggler.
A lo-fi, sci-fi, docudrama. Investigators in a post-oil world, power lights with bikes, tracing entwined lives of a community once built on cars. ' ... one of our most tirelessly inventive theatre companies' (The Guardian).

The title is included in the 40 words.

James

Alumni

2009-04-15T08:43:00.002+01:00

Where are they now? Richard Da Costa.

Birmingham University Theatre Studies alumni. Birmingham theatrical man about town. MAC productions impresario – Living with Pigs.

James

Sunny Swansea

2009-04-08T13:38:00.002+01:00

8.30 is probably the earliest we’ve ever opened any performance but the conference breakfast shift made it worthwhile. Since then we have had waves of delegates attend between talks and workshops. Lots of photographs are being taken and there have been a good number of enquiries about how we work with schools and how much we charge.

It’s impossible to tell what will lead to what. Sometimes gigs that are full of enquiries lead to nothing, sometimes gigs that seem very quiet throw up a great booking. Often the lead-in time is a couple of years but I’ve always believed every gig is worthwhile come what may. Even if we send a few teachers away inspired to do something similar in their own classrooms then that will be a good result.

Next up I give a talk, I’m not sure what they’re expecting or hoping for. I’m not sure how much to tailor it to maths or teaching, the trick in these situations is to throw things open to questions as soon as possible and let the audience get what they want out of the encounter.

James

Association of Teachers of Mathematics

2009-04-07T22:47:00.003+01:00

Excitement is stirring about @ A E Harris. Today there were discussions about a showcase event taking place there in the autumn. An artsy party thing in June. An exhibition in the summer and photos taken for the venue as a possible film/tv location. Nothing may come of any of this, but the interest feels good.

P.M. a short wheelbase transit got loaded up with rice and hammered down the M50, ending up in Swansea. It's now approaching 11pm and we're just about to call it a night, ready to open a mini-version of Of All The People In All The World up for the Association of Teachers of Mathematics conference. They have treated us very well so far, food and drinks, and the few folk who have wandered in for a preview seem to like what they see, so all seems set fair for 08.30 tomorrow morning.

James

Pilot Night Submissions

2009-04-07T07:45:00.002+01:00

Yesterday Craig, Robin and I traveled over to Warwick Arts Centre to push things onward with Spy Steps, it remains to be seen how cooperative the University authorities are our gentle satire of their institution.

Last night work was done in putting together a call for Pilot 17. Stan's Cafe is going to host this platform event on 2nd July @ A E Harris. Part of the deal is that people to get to use the space from 28th June and work stuff up especially for the space. We're hoping there's a good response, it could be a special night. The link is here.

James

Building Site Visit

2009-04-04T15:18:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I was given a guided tour of the building site that was and will be MAC. It's all looking exciting. Here are some spy photos.

This is the new studio space. It is on what used to be the roof above the dance studio. This shot is looking back towards the Geese Theatre office used to be.

This is going to be the new Gallery space (double height as you can see).

This blurry shot is of the old theatre stripped out and leveled off. You're looking towards the stage end. It's going to have retractable bleacher seating with a main entrance on the first floor.

This is looking down from a place that didn't exist before over a bridge that links the first floor theatre foyer to the first floor of the Hexagon building. Down there will be the new combined bar and cafe area which will the social heart of the building.

The facilities are going to be so much better than those of the old building. I can't wait for it to open, to start playing there and seeing stuff there.

James

Saturday Unload

2009-04-04T15:13:00.002+01:00

The Wriggler set is back. No stairs, no lift, wide doorway, private courtyard, 24 hour access; unloading has never been so easy.

James

Secure and Shipped

2009-04-03T22:17:00.003+01:00

Today Wayne from Rock-It turned up @ A E Harris along with a 40' shipping container. Billy and Jake hefted The Cleansing of Constance Brown out of storage and I gained expert training in how to load a container for sea haulage. Clive did the business as usual with deft work on the forklift and made light of some irritatingly heavy kit.

Everything was in and the container sealed by three. Now it will be in Southampton. On Monday it starts its trip by sea to Montreal. In Montreal it goes from ship to train. It's due to arrive in Toronto storage a week before we require it in the venue. If the scientific tesselation of kit and strategic use of ratchet straps has worked hopefully it will all arrive intact. What could go wrong?

Worst case scenario: Ship sinks taking set with it.
Second worst case scenario: Ship survives but the set is swept of deck by freak wave.
Desired scenario: Ship and container dock safely.
Best scenario: Container gets swept off deck, washed up on a distant shore where beachcombers find it and start performing a version of the show for themselves on the beach.

This evening Home of the Wriggler is performed in Prema.

James

Stan's Cafe at Paganel School

2009-04-02T22:05:00.000+01:00

In January Kerrie and I made a piece called Smartie Mission with Year 5 pupils at Christ The King School. Attending that was a guy called Marcus who acts as a 'creative agent' for Paganel School in Birmingham, he asked if we could do a cut down version of the project with them, never knowingly refusing work, we said "yes".

For days leading up to Thursday I was cursing myself for this "yes". Attempts at preparation were squeezed in between other duties and late at night. It made me a bit more grumpy than usual at home, but in the end it was fun.

Over the course of the day we worked with every class above reception. Lettuce as Rain Forest (a change from cabbage), Fruit as Planets (again), Rice as people (yet again) and an Apple Pie as a pie chart. My advice for any would be pudding based mathematicians is to use a flan kind of pie not a crusty pasty topped kind of pie. I imagine it allows for more accurate degrees of division.

A substantial watermelon was left as a staff-room offering. Hopefully eating Jupiter will be a welcome change from biscuits.

James

Wriggler @ A E Harris

2009-04-01T23:55:00.001+01:00

Wednesday was a great night. The first Theatre Show to be staged @ A E Harris went off smoothly. Home of the Wriggler is set in a factory, normally there is a fake factory floor and a backdrop but as on this occasion we were performing in a factory this dressing seemed unnecessary.

I thought the performers did a great job and the audience weren’t bad either, clapping and laughing and even cheering a little. Bharti has picked this complicated show up amazingly fast and the others have, as usual, kept well on top of our usual ridiculously involved re-editing of who says what lines and exactly what the lines are and what’s cut and what’s added. The first half zipped along and was, I thought, great. We left the improvised ‘break’ section a bit too slack and the second half never quite caught fire, which was a shame as it was very strong in rehearsals.

Brett from Kitchen Garden Cafe ran a small bar and it was all pretty civilized in a factory kind of way, a dream come true. We're about to inherit two sofas to make things more luxurious. I can’t wait for more ‘stuff’ to happen there.

James

Late Night Sewing

2009-03-30T08:01:00.002+01:00

Late nights this weekend it’s been sewing time. The machine has been pulled out of the roof, dusted off and fired up. Velcro has been going on the blackout material. Sewing straight lines, black cotton fixing black Velcro to black fabric that’s going to be fixed to the roof in the dark is low-pressure work and thus quite therapeutic.

The Other Way Works have been doing prep for their work Black Tonic @ A E Harris, letting them in and out allowed a chance to check a prototype square of the blackout in position. It appears to work well, though application requires devious ladder choreography.

James

Another Blackout

2009-03-27T21:00:00.004Z

I abandoned my post today. The performers worked on lines and cues – of course they have to learn lighting cues as well as text and blocking. Meanwhile, I shot up and down ladders working on the black-out. Given we are @ A E Harris for two years it seems sensible to invest in a decent black-out that can go up and down relatively easily. It would be a shame to lose the fantastic natural light for all time, so the plan is to glue and staple Velcro to wooden batons, these batons then get cable-tied to the roof either side of the skylights. Then we sew matching lengths of Velcro to rectangles of black fabric – job's a good ‘un.

James

Farewell Mark Ball

2009-03-27T20:59:00.001Z

Last night a small party was thrown for Mark Ball. Mark was one of the founders of Birmingham’s Queerfest. He oversaw its mutation into the Fierce! Festival which he as its scale and ambitions grew. In parallel with the festival, Fierce! built up its year-round operation in the field of arts training and education. They picked up many contracts to deliver national Arts Council initiatives within the West Midlands. They took up the challenge of developing Live Art in the region.

About eighteen months ago Mark stepped away from day to day contact with Fierce! to take up a post at the Royal Shakespeare Company, developing work outside the company’s main stages. Now he moves on to become director of London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT).

LIFT has been in a period of flux. A few years ago the festival’s founders, Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal decided to leave. A period of organisational soul searching ended in Angharad Wynne-Jones being appointed Artistic Director and the festival moving towards East London and more socially engaged projects. Now Angharad has returned to Australia and into her shoes steps Mr. Ball.

Mark faces a big challenge in London. He takes on an established festival, possibly even a brand, not exactly in crisis, but certainly searching for its new identity. There are questions about the festival’s financing (there is a belief that money was, in part, behind its move East). With 2012 on the horizon, there are also huge possibilities. Mark is a great operator and has an eye for a headline grabbing act. His new post will be a fantastic test of his political and curatorial skills. It will be fascinating to see how his Fierce! aesthetic – principally Live Art - does or does not, map onto LIFT, which is after all a "Festival of Theatre".

Back home Helga and Kevin face a challenge in some ways similar to Mark’s. How do you move on an organisation once its founder/s have moved on?

There will be those on the arts scene in the West Midlands who have had significant differences with Mark and will not mourn his departure, but it’s difficult to deny the prolific work he has done in promoting Live Art in the West Midlands and West Midlands in Live Art. He will be missed by many but of course he hasn’t died! It can only be good for the Wsst Midlands that one of its own has taken on such an significant post in London. We wish him luck.

James