Creative Midlands West |
- writingwestmids: FF for future plans #FuturePoetsFest, @WritingEM , @Young_Readers @happytoread @capitalplays @tpwestmidlands @NineArchesPress
- The Arts Council Henry Moore Collection takes up residence at Leamington Spa Art Gallery
- Not sure how people feel about funding and opportunities from Sky but...http://www.skyartsignition.co.uk/
- Kindle talk about The Furies in London’s Undergound
- The Danny Howes work we are exhibiting can be seen on the artists website - take...
- This is a great interview in Radar Magazine with Danny Howes. Danny's work can b...
- An interesting & disturbing story for any artists with an on-line presence
| Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:01 AM PST writingwestmids: FF for future plans #FuturePoetsFest, @WritingEM , @Young_Readers @happytoread @capitalplays @tpwestmidlands @NineArchesPress |
| The Arts Council Henry Moore Collection takes up residence at Leamington Spa Art Gallery Posted: 23 Feb 2012 04:00 PM PST The Arts Council Collection of Henry Moore's works is currently on display at Leamington Spa Art Gallery as part of tour that displays them together for the first time. |
| Posted: 24 Feb 2012 02:17 AM PST Not sure how people feel about funding and opportunities from Sky but...http://www.skyartsignition.co.uk/ |
| Kindle talk about The Furies in London’s Undergound Posted: 24 Feb 2012 05:08 AM PST Kindle Theatre take THE FURIES to VAULT Festival, London. Since we started in 2005 we seem to have thrived off some kind of horror or another, whether that be a story that informs the content of a project – blasphemy, cannibalism, murder, or whether that be an actual part of the making process; we went through a phase of using an excessive amount of fake blood and stained lots of things: the herringbone tiles of a church floor, a ceiling and various articles of clothing and costume. (We do always repair our recklessness)
After 7 years it seems we've graduated from the use of the fake stuff to actual blood, sweat and tears of taking our first touring project THE FURIES to London. Of course we've not done it alone. Collaboration is a massive part of how we work and we're indebted to those who have encouraged, coerced and worked with us along the way. THE FURIES in London is part of a larger independent festival called VAULT produced by Heritage Arts who we met when we took EAT YOUR HEART OUT to London last year for Ideas Tap's Coming Up Festival. Once again we find ourselves at home not in the hospitable warmth of a theatre with cushioned seating, sprung floor, readily available power – not unheard of in our modern time; but rather a filthy, damp, dripping tunnel under Waterloo which has been locked up for 8 years. These are ideal conditions for pleurisy and THE FURIES.
We're certainly no strangers to post-industrial spaces, our first solo project the glasshouse, 2006 was a temporary installation on the 7th floor of Chance Brother's Glass Works, Smethwick, where we spent two weeks clearing the vast space of literally tons of computer equipment before installing a temporary exhibition. We followed that by working in cavernous Birmingham churches, the deep underground of Iron Ore mines, Clearwell Caves and the most recently the well loved A.E Harris. For VAULT we've been hugely supported by the West Midlands theatre community and beyond. We've had help with everything from producer support, steel deck and lighting, to cabling, rigging, hand-made treads and general good will towards the project. We are very grateful for this support and we hope that we are doing our region proud by presenting our particular brand of Birmingham-born theatre-making in the UK capital. Sam and Graeme have been project-managing THE FURIES, sourcing equipment, pulling together our marketing, talking with the creative team, all in a relatively short space of time. Following a two day period of re-rehearsal at mac in late January, a huge articulated lorry chaperoned by Tim and Martin from Heritage rumbled into the city and into cannon hill park to collect the necessary FURIES equipment for it's safe delivery to London. The following week, a straining dehumidifier was airing our tunnel and Road-Runner Rigging had installed a spidery erection of aluminium from which to hang the lights of Ben's design. Graeme looked like a wild man when we arrived, slightly paler and with wider eyes. There was no time for a cup of tea or the usual social pleasantries, it was: get your sleeves rolled up we have draping to hang followed by a series of run throughs to get familiar with the acoustics and uneven floor. I invite you to imagine it. A humid, dark tunnel, a channel of water running along the muddy floor and walls that give off a strange creamy matter. There is the intermittent rumble and screech of trains above you, high vaulted ceiling and grafitti on the walls that look like a kind of primitive cave art from something that had been deliberately locked in there for years. When we first made a site visit back in December last year the door creaked opened and we squinted into the blackness, real dark black, carbon black. With a little torch we could make out the lake on the floor and as we moved inside, eventually getting to a back wall we discovered a second arch – just the right height for a subterranean creature to creep in and out of. If you have read the book 'The House of Leaves' or seen the film 'CREEP' then this space felt like the perfect setting. The further we got from the door the more I wanted to get out. So it was dark and wet and then Bungle pointed out the massive issue of the four second sound delay that created an echo so profound that it distorted any kind of normal speech into an eerie, inaudible blur. So… the drapes, kindly loaned by Stan's Cafe were configured into two funnel shapes either end to dampen the sound, that, and once audience are inside has sorted any sound nightmare we may previously have feared.
THE FURIES has gone through a couple of phases to reach full development. From a thirty minute work-in-progress showing at mac birmingham in April 2011, an award-winning performance at BE Festival for a big audience of over two hundred, to tests at Forest Fringe, Edinburgh and The Basement, Brighton. In October 2011 we finished work on it and the hour long piece was presented again at mac as part of Supersonic Festival and it is this finished version that we present at VAULT. It's been very different at VAULT because it's a longer run – four shows a week over three weeks and the space is very unique. The length of the run is the most significant difference. At the heart of the work is the voice and this is based on an expressive vocal technique borrowed and developed from Roy Hart Theatre. In January 2011 when we started working, Margaret Pikes a founder member of Roy Hart Theatre worked with us to examine how the technique related to each of our voices. Sam had done some work with Margaret so Emily and I were doing lots of learning of how to use the entire body not just the 'head voice' as a focus for sound. Having this focus and technique has proved valuable for us a performers and the work we did with Margaret encouraged us not just our head resonator to affect sounds but rather the entire body, from out feet, to bellies to chests. It is very physical work and the sound created can be very powerful and wild.
It would seem THE FURIES has created the most talk about our work in our short time as a company and this, I suspect, is to do with the subject matter, how we have chosen to present it and also where we find ourselves as a company seven years in. Our team is vital to the work. This includes Margaret, Jill, Ben, Bungle, Phill and Russell as musicians but it's also the first time we have worked with a male director – Graeme who has proved a fantastic interrogator of the work, also someone who is sensitive and musical and someone who can give us a kick when we need it. This project came from exploring horror on stage. Two years ago China Plate invited us to The Darkroom (where we had to repaint a ceiling after spitting on it with fake blood) and we worked with writer Rob Ritchie to examine this topic. From this came a short vocal score of the sound of fury. When we make our work we always start by 'doing' – an important legacy from when we started out under the direction of Carran Waterfield, Triangle. We play and practice in the rehearsal room and it became clear during the inital research and development period that what we were looking at was closely related to the Greek myth of Clytemnestra in the first part of Aeschylus' epic triology The Oresteia. In this part of the myth Clytemnestra avenges the slaughter of her own family by murdering her second husband, Agamemnon and his mistress Cassandra. We have borrowed THE FURIES, also know as THE FATES or THE EUMENIDES from a later part of The Oresteia and it is through them that Clytemnestra's story is enacted. In our version they are a ensemble of female energy and they enable Clytemnestra to get to the place where she can carry out the ultimate act of revenge. So, in our own way we adapted the story so as to present it in the way we wanted to and this we have done in a truly theatrical way: a garish rock gig that borrows stylistically from our native regions heritage for Heavy Metal with influences of glam rock, punk, and opera. It is conjured by three very distinct characters. These characters are all peculiar to the each of us and they represent vital elemental energies from the myth. On one level THE FURIES can be read as a three piece girl band, on another it can be read as ritual where the performers occupy multiple roles to serve the story, it can be read as a gig or as a piece of theatre or a theatrical-gig. It depends on what you as audience choose to focus on. I think in this way it's why we've had such a variety of responses to the work. We've never explicitly used the term feminist to talk about the work, and this is perhaps a topic for another article, but some people have choosen this word to talk about the work. Some audience experience it as wild, chaotic catharsis and some people leave outraged and irritated by its ambiguity, peculiar sound – and those reactions are provoked by the work and personal to each audience member. There is no one answer, the work is a provocation and we hope it engages people in discussion / debate/ nodding and maybe even crowd surfing one day.
We hope you will come and see it when it tours this year – although this may be your only opportunity to see it in a filthy tunnels in London. It's on until Sunday 26th February, 9pm – 10pm, tickets available through www.vaultfestival.com
Written by Olivia, Kindle Theatre.         |
| The Danny Howes work we are exhibiting can be seen on the artists website - take... Posted: 24 Feb 2012 02:39 AM PST The Danny Howes work we are exhibiting can be seen on the artists website - take a look!  : NEW PAINTINGS www.dannyhowes.com |
| This is a great interview in Radar Magazine with Danny Howes. Danny's work can b... Posted: 24 Feb 2012 02:17 AM PST This is a great interview in Radar Magazine with Danny Howes. Danny's work can be seen in our group exhibition 'Locality' which opens next week! November's Radar Magazine online | The Radar Magazine www.theradarmagazine.co.uk |
| An interesting & disturbing story for any artists with an on-line presence Posted: 24 Feb 2012 02:08 AM PST An interesting & disturbing story for any artists with an on-line presence  Book By Its Cover » A Sad Story- MUST READ www.book-by-its-cover.com I wanted to take a break today from usual book posting to share something that happened to my friend, artist Lauren Nassef (the first artist I will be publishing as part of the BBIC press series). Yesterday she was alerted by someone who follows her blog that a graduate student from Falmouth Univers... |
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