“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein

Well, what a week it’s been here at Filskit Theatre Company. Between the three of us we have spent roughly 32 hours on trains, seen 24 performances of eight shows and consumed what must be gallons of tea. But it was all for a very worthy cause, as we attended the Imaginate Children’s Theatre Festival in Edinburgh.

Whilst this was our first time at the festival, Imaginate itself has been around for quite a long time: in their own words, “Every year the Festival presents the finest selection of shows from Scotland and across the world; each and every one adding their own wonderful character and zest to a programme of exciting and stimulating shows to suit children and adults of every age.” And boy, they’re not kidding. It was an exciting, international programme bringing together shows from as far flung as the USA (Intergalactic Nemesis).

The festival is open to the public and many a school group giggled along to shows such as Curious Seed’s Chalk About. Along with family audiences, these festivals are always popular with people in the theatre industry such as venue programmers, as they’re a great way of watching a large range of diverse, new work in a condensed period of time. The traditional route for this is through the purchase of a delegate pass. There are various delegate packages available, depending on how long you wish to attend for and how many shows you wish to see. We attended the Take Off Festival in Durham as delegates back in November and had an amazing experience. But, as you can imagine, these delegate passes certainly do not come cheap and when you add on train tickets, accommodation and food to the ever-increasing costs, it’s no wonder that small, newly-formed companies are often under-represented on the delegate list.

Luckily for us, we were thrown a lifeline. Instead of buying our delegate passes, we all attended the festival as volunteers. Our various duties included meeting school groups, front of house work and answering phones. In return, we got to enjoy the Imaginate experience, fully equipped with shows, talks, networking events and even a ceilidh. As a young company, we are always keen to see other shows – it can help shape your own work and inspire you to push the boundaries of your practice. For us, this was such a fascinating process. We could view a cross-section of contemporary dance, puppetry, comedy and projection, suitable for a range of age groups and all in one city.

One of the things that we like most about attending theatre festivals is being surprised: we all go with a list of shows in our heads that we think we are going to absolutely love, but sometimes it is the unexpected ones that really make an impression. One of our highlights from Imaginate has to be Maas Theater en Dans’ Wanted: Rabbit from the Netherlands: very funny and very, well…Dutch! Another favourite of ours was The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean by Scottish artist Shona Reppe, a quirky piece with great pace and an excellent design.

At a recent Theatre for Young Audiences event at Rose Bruford College, there was a lot of praise for children’s theatre from Europe, particularly from the Netherlands and Belgium. There is no denying that European work is innovative, beautifully simple and very well done, so we can completely understand its popularity within the industry. The big question for us is how can emerging TYA companies from England capture this quality in our own work? How can we allow ourselves to be less conservative and take more risks? One thing that seems to be working for Scotland and Imaginate is exposing new TYA companies to this work early on, by supporting them in attending TYA festivals both at home and abroad. This exchange makes perfect sense to us. Whether you see moments that inspire you or that make you think “let’s never do that”, the work that you see will impact that which you create. So, which European festival to visit first… hmm.

Image: Einstein Bikes

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Opening the event was a trio choreographed by Rachel Burn, entitled Pull Through, Flick. Each performer demonstrated undoubted skill and strength in their movement; Burn’s expressive choreography evoking a sense of built-up desperation throughout, often closely integrated with the music. The solemn, almost spiritual, journey through darkness into light is reflected in the shadowy lighting design. And while this was appropriate stylistically, it posed practical problems. The lighting did not do the performers justice, with much of the definition unfortunately almost completely lost in the dimly (in fact, barely) lit space.

What’s On Stage Best Choreographer Award nominee John Ross performed his own choreography next, depicting the story of an Afghan soldier who lost his life in battle. The honesty of Man Down was brilliantly executed, accompanied at moments with voice recordings of a fellow soldier’s letter to the deceased’s mother – a touching addition to the striking soundscape of warfare. Ross’s mature choreography makes his solo a harrowing and poignant experience, with such impressive contrasts in his movement patterns that it is impossible not to be affected. The stark final image of the word ‘bang’ written across his bare back defies cliché, perhaps reluctantly admitting the futility of war, especially in this attempt to justify to a mother that her son’s death was not in vain.

Concluding the evening, and certainly worth the wait, was Tom Jackson-Greaves, runner up in the 2011 New Adventures Choreography Award, performing his own Vanity Fowl. Originally commissioned and produced for the award by Re:Bourne, Vanity Fowl offers a simple narrative: a man’s desire to belong. From commonplace to grace to disgrace, we follow the story of this insecure young man as he is frequently humiliated, aided by a clever film projection directed by Miles Langley. Though the solo has had to be scaled down from Sadler’s Wells’s stage for this intimate venue, Greaves still ensures the audience are thoroughly entertained, with an alluring and somewhat intense charm surrounding his dynamic flair and utter commitment to his performance.

Although it is still early days for Cloud Dance Sundays, the first performance gives much to be excited about for the future.

Cloud Dance Sundays is a new monthly fixture. For more information and tickets for future events, see www.cloud-dance-sundays.com

Photo: Tom Jackson-Greaves.

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My foray into the industry has recently seen me encounter the most dreaded of all events: the audition. Now, there are two common types of auditions – the ‘individual monologues’ one and the ‘workshop’ one. Having gone straight to university from school, I had previously avoided the stress and powerlessness that comes with the drama school audition process. As a result I had mixed emotions of excitement and trepidation at the prospect.

So I went to my first ever (and only, for this year) drama school audition. I had stress dreams beforehand, a particularly disturbing one being about a house where everyone was killing each other (serves me right for preparing a Philip Ridley monologue), but woke up feeling good. I got to the audition venue about half an hour early, well worth doing as it allows you to settle in to your surroundings and focus. I then spent the next half an hour talking to current students and auditionees about their lives.

It is bizarre when you step into the audition room. The two members of my panel were very nice but undeniably detached, saying “Hi Liam, nice to meet you, what are you going to do for us today? Great, if you can stand behind the line, there are chairs and tables behind you if you need them. Start when you’re ready” – and that is it. It is all a bit impersonal, but the amount of auditionees means that their militant efficiency is understandable. Surprisingly though, I really enjoyed it. All that build-up and I still left the room smiling. A brief interview with some standard questions followed, and was equally painless. One audition down, one to go…

I was then (un)lucky enough to have the auditions for my theatre group’s Edinburgh rep season the day after. This was taken in the form of a workshop audition and was an incredibly different experience. I love workshop auditions because you have a sufficient amount of time to really showcase your abilities. Preliminary one-on-one auditions are fine, but it always feels like you are trying to stick a label on your forehead and brand yourself. In this workshop audition I knew that one of the directors was familiar with how I worked, so it really gave me some scope to, as he would say, “throw down”.

I learned a great lesson from this. I just got a letter saying that they were unable to offer me a place at the drama school I had applied to. I was, of course, somewhat disappointed; but as an actor, every rejection tells you so much more than an acceptance. I also got cast in a lead part for Edinburgh.

The difference between the two was that with the drama school audition I just wanted to get through it, to play it safe and not mess up. In the workshop audition I was perfectly willing to mess up and make a fool of myself, because taking risks is so important in this industry. I will probably reapply for the same single drama school course next year; but there are other ways to make tracks too. As it is, I am really excited for next year – I think it will be good to spend a year seeing what progress I can make in the industry.

Image: Today at Conway Hall

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As I’m sure you’ll know, music within the theatre had an integral part to play in responding to the death of Margaret Thatcher. The decision to keep the anti-Tory retaliation ‘Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher’ in a performance of Billy Elliot in the West End on the evening of her passing was put down to an audience vote. I’m sure that the performance of the number that night was a clear manifestation of what the musicologist Nicholas Cook termed “negotiating cultural identity”. A song that is lyrically sardonic, with jive-like beats and major key melodies and harmonies lending an ironic twist, being sung by young and old: a poignant symbol of Thatcher’s impact on countless generations. The bitter humour makes it understandable why the audience chose to keep the song in. Furthermore, the story is being told not on behalf of a whole nation, but from a particular sector of society: workers involved in the 1984–85 miners’ strike, affecting the British coal industry.

But perhaps the agenda is more subtle. In his book State of the Nation, Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington argues that “it seemed apt that the musical should become the dominant form of the 1980s since it represented Thatcherism in action: what it celebrated was the triumph of individualism and profitability.” It appears reasonable then that these values are not only embodied by the ‘song-and-dance’ templates, poster, ticket agency or hotel advertising, or even the goal-driven narratives, but also the architecture of the music. For instance, I see the score of Cats as producing order out of chaos, opening with uneasy, fugue-like passages which are resolved in ‘Memory’ – Grizabella’s desire to recommence a new life – and finally concluded in a triumphant orchestral and chorale-like wall of sound as she is the chosen feline to take the ‘Journey to the Heaviside Layer’. Les Miserables, without a doubt, takes on a similar structure: the gritty minor toil of the prisoners’ opening chorus, followed by an overwhelming range of numbers varying in mood and genre as Jean Valjean searches for the man inside himself. The climactic ‘One Day More’ and ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ are permeated with the idealism of living for tomorrow, for the future, enhanced by the simple yet soaring melodic phrases. And while the gospel-infused ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’ from Starlight Express sings the praises of steam-powered engines, there is undeniably a secondary message of the ability to achieve your destiny.

Of course, this is not the case with all musical theatre pieces. It would be a generalisation and historically inaccurate to frame every number within Thatcherist beliefs. Nevertheless, in light of recent events, it is fair to say that music has an extraordinary capacity to be able to say whatever you want it to, whether politically implicit or explicit.

Image: Billy Elliot

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The evening opens with Rodolf Sirera’s short play The Audition. It tells the story of a famous actor who is invited to the house of an admirer, a Marquis. All is not what it seems, however, and through a series of mind-games, deceits and tense exchanges, the meeting turns into a risky theatrical experiment. The Marquis contends that theatre should not be fiction or artifice, but should in fact be a truthful emotional experience, with both the audience and actor really feeling. The Marquis puts these theories to the test, using his guest as an unwitting subject, and soon the twisted experiment becomes a matter of life and death.

Sirera’s play twists and turns until the audience no longer know what the truth is. It is a thrilling exploration of what theatre is and could be. The actors did not always seem to be entirely comfortable with the text, occasionally stumbling over lines. That said, both Tom Marshall as the underhand, manipulative Marquis and Corin Stuart as the famous actor give convincing performances. John London’s translation is commendable for making the dialogue feel so natural in a different language from the original.

In London, this play doesn’t feel hugely controversial in the context of the experimental work of companies like Punchdrunk and You Me Bum Bum Train. That said, it articulates well an ongoing theatrical debate about ‘truth’. Yet it is also a somewhat safe production, which seems unfortunate considering the content of the play talks about breaking conventions and transgressing established forms.

None of that in the second of the two plays though. Esteve Soler’s Against Democracy presents seven sketches inspired by the French genre of Grand Guignol. The sketches are linked by the themes of consumerism, capitalism, inevitability and power, and the thought that capitalism is incompatible with democracy. They are individually brilliant and collectively profound. The sketches range from a married couple caught in a spider’s web, as the woman gives birth to a huge spider that proceeds to consume them, to a portrayal of a tyrant who has destroyed an entire city on a whim. Production designer Robin Jackson has done well to making seven rapidly-changing sets mainly out of cardboard and Jordi Pérez’s lighting, although simple, is very intelligent. This trash aesthetic is very effective in what becomes a stark, haunting vision of the near future.

Clare Fraenkel plays a variety of wives, girlfriends and barmaids, giving a great performance. Lee Ranns is also strong, while Mark Knightley brings a good helping of humour, even if his characters are a little too mannered at times. Mike Buck’s translation is praiseworthy: Against Democracy is universally relevant and bitingly critical of governments around the world. At times tongue-in-cheek and at times brimming with real frustration and anger, it is political theatre at its best.

Silvia Ayguadé’s productions are fiercely inventive; both are intriguing and fantastically entertaining. It is wonderful and admirable that Ayguadé is giving London the opportunity to experience theatre from another culture. You don’t want to miss out.

The Audition and Against Democracy are playing at the Arcola Theatre until Saturday 25 May. For more information and tickets, see the Arcola Theatre website.

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Bianco’s audience enters the Big Top stationed on Hove Lawns into a lively atmosphere. Performers clamber over a scaffold made of an interconnected aerial rig – which the show reveals to be a genius piece of design – covered in gauze. We encircle the excitedly shouting performers and, as the lights go down, the gauze drops and we are invited into this extraordinary circus show.

A live band accompanies Bianco adding to the electric atmosphere that fills the space with every act of aerial, juggling, tightrope (in heels!) … I could go on and on. This show is highly charged, immensely skilled and powerful but it’s just too long. At two hours and 20 minutes, including an interval, I found myself leaving with neck ache and a significant lapse in concentration. There’s only so much ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘aah-ing’ a person can do, a limit to the level of unconnected, equally spectacular and skilled circus acts you can take before your focus starts to wane.

I headed into the interval after a stunningly beautiful and emotionally charged straps performance feeling elated and inspired. This act demonstrated how circus can take its audience somewhere, tell a story and really make them feel. To stick with having no over-arching story the show may have benefitted from ending here, with a tribute to the beauty and power of circus art. However, I think to add some sense of narrative would elevate a show such as this to something phenomenal.

To its credit, NoFit State does toy with an element of story. Narration at the opening mentions the setting as a travellers’ camp at night, and something about this being the night the elephant came. At least I think that’s what they said. Such narration happens sporadically throughout and performers occasionally speak during acts, they are wearing microphones but it’s challenging to make out anything that is said.

Despite its lack of coherent story, however, Bianco is spectacular in every regard. Go and you will find yourself marvelling at the skill and sheer strength of every act, whilst enjoying the immersive environment created by the fantastically designed and engineered set, sound and lighting. This is a well put together, if lengthy, show and a great night out – I just think with more presence allowed to story it could be something even more dazzling. This is a Brighton Fringe experience not to be missed.

Bianco is playing Brighton Fringe until 1 June. For more information and tickets, see the Brighton Fringe website. Photography by David Levene.

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We’re Going on a Bear Hunt follows a family who, in the spirit of adventure, traverse many different types of terrain in search of a bear. On finally finding one asleep in a cave, they wake it, so that in anger it chases them back home via exactly the same route (across the various different landscapes) they came from. The use of everyday materials to create the various different landscapes the family cross is extremely effective. For example, blue gauze is strung up across the stage and is back-lit to signify a lake, and the apron of the stage is covered in brown hessian sacks to create the impression of muddy ground.

Julia Jeulin and Lyndie Wright have made the ‘family’ of puppets with extreme care. Their faces are smooth and expressive, allowing for any emotion to be ascribed according to the voice and posture the puppeteers give them. In search of the bear, the family pushes their way through long grass, trudges through mud, swims across a river and battles through a snowstorm. The fact that their movements seem almost human is proof of the puppeteers’ talent. The company’s co-ordination in ensuring that all of the puppets are operated simultaneously has been precision engineered, evidence that everyone has worked extremely hard on this show.

As very few words used in the performance outside Michael Rosen’s poem, the audio of the production is lifted by the cast’s performance of live music. In an original score, composed by Barb Jungr, the highlights include a jazzy number describing the ‘squelchy’ sensation of walking through mud, and a melancholic tune about the loneliness of the eldest daughter, as she is lost and alone in a forest

The company are extremely talented, as not only are they excellent puppeteers and musicians, but also excellent performers, exemplified in the moments when they emerge from behind the stage. Their boldness and vibrancy as a collective is perfect for engaging with the younger members of the audience, interacting with the classic ‘he’s behind you’ sketch, and bringing the huge bear puppet into the aisles to menacingly roar at the audience. In the flesh, the performers are just as gleeful as the puppets they manipulate, exuding the same childlike energy. As an adult watching the show, it was extremely uplifting to see other adults completely losing their inhibitions and relishing in the fact they can behave like children again. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is the perfect first outing to the theatre for a young child and is also extremely enjoyable watching for adults.

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is running at the Little Angel Theatre until 21 July 2013. For more information and tickets, see the Little Angel Theatre website.

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The confusing part is that although Once is an Irish film and the musical’s creative team is largely Anglo-Irish, the musical had its workshop and world premiere in New York at the Off-Broadway theatre The New York Theater Workshop. Due to its success, the show transferred to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre on Broadway, where it has been playing for over a year. It was also very successful at the 2012 Tony Awards, winning best musical, best book of a musical, best actor in a musical, best direction of a musical, best scene design, best orchestration, best sound design and best lighting design.

It is sad that such a successful and different show, with its use of actor-musicians and minimal set, had to start life in New York. London has small off-West End theatres but not in the same way New York has off-Broadway and even off-off-Broadway. It was perhaps for the best it got to be nurtured at the Theater Workshop which has also helped develop the musical Rent and premier work from playwrights such as Tony Kushner. I am unsure if we could have created such a loveable show here in the UK or if we had if it would have been taken to the hearts of Broadway as it has been on being transferred.

However it has now been taken to our hearts in London, too, and the UK production opened last month at the Phoenix Theatre. Interestingly with a lead actor, Declan Bennett, who is a British performer but spent the past seven years working in New York on shows such as American Idiot. He originally auditioned for the role of Guy on Broadway before being asked to take the role in London. The British connection is being deepened in New York currently as two British performers Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who’s Rory) and Joanna Christie (Equus opposite Daniel Radcliffe) have just opened as the new lead characters.

Once is one of those musicals that seems to come along every so often and just dismisses what a musical has to be. It is not a loud megamusical and neither is it a traditional musical comedy, as some of the creative team have been quoted as saying “it is a show that celebrates music”, which is perhaps why it excites me so much.

Image: Once The Musical at the Phoenix Theatre

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As small scale tours go, despite taking a few scheduled days off here and there, it’s been pretty intense. The hour-long rollercoaster ride – featuring the likes of a troll queen (her bark is as scary as her bite), a handsome king (a proper fittie!) and a ‘wayward’ daughter – goes by quicker than you can say Team Claws. Our stage manager deserves particular kudos for adapting so adeptly to each space.

It’s not all been plain sailing. Just as us actors inevitably evolve ourselves and our characters through the journey of the tour, the layout and technical capabilities of each theatre contribute to that process. There’s nothing a missing stage manager, scant lighting rigs and a vandalised truck will do to dent our spirits! Fortunately we’re all extremely proud of Claws, as is evidenced by the combined volume of sweat seen when we return to the stage for our encores.

Speaking of encores, I’m reminded of the post-show talk that I, Ffion, Paul and Joe conducted with the wonderfully receptive residents of Norwich Playhouse. Did you know there are only 30 or so palantypists in the world? Perhaps more importantly, would you like to know what one is? She sits, hidden in the wings (so as to hear the action as well as possible without distracting) and, similar to a captioner, renders approximately two hundred words per minute onto a keyboard which converts its phonetic chords onto a computer and then onto the caption screen for your pleasure. I admired her all the more after being asked about a particular puppet I operate in the show. The question belonged to a young man who must certainly have been skimming the minimum age limit for TGWTIC. I was explaining to him the challenges I face when playing both sisters simultaneously and opted to describe it as a “head-messer-upper”. Ms Palantypist, I never did catch your name, and barely glimpsed your shrouded figure sandwiched between two black flats… but I dedicate this article to you!

Tomorrow is my day off and I sit here writing this wondering how I shall fill it. Will I take a stroll to my local Tesco (to cook food that can actually be eaten off a plate) and, without thinking, start heaving heavy boxes from its loading bay? Will fellow tube passengers avoid my eyes when my hands start puppeteering the air? In truth, I’ll probably just silence my phone and sleep until the police sirens and honking horns of South East London wake me. Tunbridge Wells, you were a lovely audience but the devil lives there and he bought the mattress for the hotel room I stayed in last night.

See you on the road, folks!

Image credit: Patrick Baldwin

The Girl with the Iron Claws is currently touring. Visit The Wrong Crowd’s website for dates and ticket information.

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There are certain things that we expect from vampires: they must drink blood, fear light, be immortal and be killed by a stake through the heart. However, new elaborations are gathering like cobwebs as we replace their cloaks with leather jackets and bring them into the modern day. Cuddles, a vampire tale by Joseph Wilde, foregrounds the agonising vulnerability these rules can cause, by making its vampire a 13-year-old girl, unable to leave her windowless room and utterly dependent on her older sister, for blood and love alike.

The premise is straight out of the nastier kind of fairytale, narrated like a campfire ghost story by upended torchlight. Eve is the unexpected child who landed in her father’s bed, following her longed and wished for older sister Tabby – her sister is cast as a princess and she as a monster, who must be hidden away in darkness pierced only by the odd ray of guilty affection. The dynamics of this two-hander are never allowed to stay simple, though. Rendah Haywood as the older sister, Tabby, shifts from being a princess to a ball-breaking business woman to a gauche woman making her first forays into dating. She manages to find all the slick, sit-com-style laughs in her monologues of city life, but there’s still a vulnerability to her that leaches out through the cracks in her patent and polyester armour. Carla Langley couldn’t be more convincing as a snarling, feral, blood-soaked child, raised by the Brothers Grimm rather than wolves.

With no vampiric glamour, she’s an earthy, filthy thing, trapped like a pale white grub in a cocoon of her sister’s fierce rules, governing even how the pair are allowed to cuddle. Wilde’s writing gives the sisters complex, layered monologues and dialogues that point at the different layers of reality they’re living in, exploiting their vastly different experiences for maximum ironic effect. Eve inhabits a twisted Enid Blyton world of Monopoly, jam sandwiches and fantasy stories that are just as real to her as those that Tabby brings back from the world outside, and the strange middle ground the pair find to talk in is agonising and hilarious in turn. Pablo Baz’s lighting design is refreshingly flexible, breaking up the single room’s moods into different shades of fantasy and reality.

A lot of this play is genuinely, brutally shocking – these magical sisters aren’t Charmed or charming, and the piece is more of an exploration of the abuser-abused dynamic than of the vampire myth. Although the horrifying revelations are evenly spaced and punctuated with lashings of black humour, the atmosphere can feel grindingly bleak. A swifter pace in the second half could help bring out the elements of farce layered through the story, particularly in Tabby’s disastrous dating life. Still, Cuddles impressively transforms the most stylish of scary stories into something rough, grubby and grotesquely hilarious – this vampire’s draught of blood never looked less like red wine.

Cuddles is playing at Ovalhouse Theatre until 1 June. For more information and tickets, see the Ovalhouse Theatre website.

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