Jane Packman

A Thousand Shards Of Glass

2011-12-15T12:49:00.008Z

Over summer and autumn I have been evaluating and plotting...

There are a number of projects in the pipeline. The most imminent is a development to production of A Thousand Shards Of Glass - first worked on back in 2008 during a brief R&D, it was a project with much promise that we are looking forward to completing.

A Thousand Shards Of Glass - is a devised piece in which the audience become complicit in an adventure.

The artistic team is:
Lucy Ellinson - Performer
Ben Pacey - Writer and Lighting Design
Lewis Gibson - Original Composition and Sound Design
Jane Packman - Director

We are working with the thriller genre as a guide, so Ben and I will be doing lots of reading for inspiration over the festive season. The physical form of the production is likely to remain similar to the 2008 version: 30 audience members sat in a circle. I am imagining the piece as a performance/installation crop circle - something that springs up and then vanishes in different settings - but that keeps a very distinctive physical form.

I'll try to post more about it in the new year. In the meantime, just to say that the first performances are at Theatre In The Mill (Bradford) on the 23rd, 24th and 25th February 2012.

Photograph by Chris Keenan.

Workshops and Reviews

2011-02-21T10:30:00.006Z

On Saturday I ran a Devising Masterclass for an enthusiastic and talented group of attendees. We focused on techniques I use in the early stages of devising: exploring atmosphere and doing creative exercises which inhibit self-editing. In the final part of the workshop we walked around mac to watch the different ideas that each member of the group had come up with. It was an exhilerating and humbling experience, which really made me appreciate human creativity.

This week is the final week of the installation and performances of The Woods at mac. There are two remaining workshops if you'd like to get involved: Sally is running an Expressive Transfer Workshop on Tuesday (link) and Polly and Jo are running their weekend workshop Into The Woods.

We've had some great online reviews over the past few weeks. The latest is from Total Theatre: "The Woods is a courageous piece, a gasp of cold air."

Opening week The Woods

2011-02-08T13:10:00.010Z

We've now done a week of performances of The Woods, and the installation has been open for just over a week. I am really pleased with both aspects of the project. The performance has a guide age of 14+, but it's been really great to see small children loving the installation and the novelty of being allowed to sit on the bed, pick things up and explore. People's responses to the installation have been positive, strong and immediate.

It's harder to tell with the performance how it is going as it is not the type of show that people necessarily want to respond to immediately. Instead people's feedback has drip-fed back to me, perhaps a day or two days after watching it, and their reactions have been positive and engaged. The performance is a delicate beast, which we are getting better at taming. When the show works well it has its own rhythm: stemming from the work as a whole, rather than from individual performances. The flow of peaks and troughs really holds you as an audience member.

It has also been great to have new audiences along - to have unfamiliar faces amongst the crowd - particularly those who've discovered the installation by mistake and been curious enough to stay for the performance. Audiences were smaller than we'd like for the first week despite lots of publicity, but I am hopeful that it will gain momentum.

The Woods production week

2011-01-16T11:33:00.007Z

The 1st floor gallery space at mac is rapidly transforming into perhaps it's most epic installation to date. The Woods opens as an installation on 29th January, and the performance begins with two previews on 27th and 28th January.

We are very fortunate to be working with Silas and his exhibitions team who are building Barney's monumental design, and Lizzie and her performance tech crew to help install our relatively complex lighting and sound requirements.

Over the last two months I have been travelling a fair bit and talking on the phone a lot to the seven people who make up the artistic team for The Woods. The process has been very unusual as there have been so few times when all the team have been able to get together, so I've been the the conduit to communicate everyone's ideas. This has been exhausting in comparisson to just sitting in a room with everyone for two weeks (which hasn't been possible as everyone on the teams has been so busy). Next week when we all get together I'll see if this work has paid off. I think it will.

This is the artistic team:

Performers and co-authors: Chris Gunter, Greg Hobbs, Sara Kewly
Designer (set, props costume): Barney George
Lighting Designer, writer and co-author: Ben Pacey
Sound and Original Composition: Lewis Gibson
Editor, writer and co-author: Katherine Maxwell-Cook
Director, editor and co-author: Jane Packman

I am also working again with the brilliant Chris Keenan who is taking photos of the piece and documenting it.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-04T11:23:00.001Z

Happy New Year!

Things have been busy. We took Treasured - A Secret Journey to Theatre In The Mill, Bradford, in December, which is Treasured's first outing since it's inception in June. I was very lucky that all the original performers were able to do the show, and it was facinating to see how quickly the stories re-emerged.

We had great audience responses, and made it there and back safely in spite of the snow. At the same time we have been making the new show, The Woods, which has added challenge of being both an installation and performance. Exciting stuff, but lots of production decisions to be made in a short space of time. The team worked really well to get all the big orders through before Christmas. More to follow...

Treasured Coverage

2010-11-08T23:31:00.001Z

Chris Keenan's beautiful photo of Sam, a publicity shot we took earlier in the year for Treasured - A Secret Journey, is the lead image on Lyn Gardner's Guardian blog today.

I really appreciated that Lyn was able to see Treasured at mac this summer - as she argues in the blog post, national coverage can be a real boost to an emerging company. Thanks Lyn!

By the way, if you missed her review of Treasured when it came out, there's a link here.

Vote for us on Invisible City

2010-07-21T14:20:00.006+01:00

Creative Republic are running a project called Invisible City, which seeks to raise awareness of the creative scene in Birmingham, which does often feel pretty invisible.

Both Treasured - A Secret Journey and Jane Packman Company itself have been nominated. And you can vote for us!

It took me ages to work out how to vote, but it turns out you just click on the little stars! Here's the links -

www.creativebirmingham.com/content/treasured-secret-journey

www.creativebirmingham.com/content/jane-packman-company

Whilst you're there, do have a look at all the other great creative and cultural work coming out of Birmingham, and vote for your favourites... or nominate other projects and people.

Reviews for Treasured - A Secret Journey

2010-06-23T09:53:00.008+01:00

It is a good, but very strange feeling to finally get a review:

www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jun/13/treasured-review.

When Katie and I were co-directors of TOWW we spent a long time trying but failing to get reviewers along to see the work. It is great to feel that things are getting slightly less London-centric.

Here are a couple of the nicest bits from Lyn Gardner of the Guardian:

"It's over in a twinkling, but the effect lingers."

"A deft and imaginative experience from a new company with great potential."

We've also had an amazing response from our audiences, and some incredibly beautiful words written in our comments book. Here are two of the many:

"Every step was captivating"

"Struggling to find words, but will try... amazing, breathtaking, emotional, sensitive."

And so into the final week...

Production weeks Treasured

2010-06-08T17:26:00.004+01:00

Today I am sitting at home in bed drinking honey and lemon and nursing the usual post production cold, before the first day of Treasured - A Secret Journey at mac.

We had a great production week last week, ending with a day of preview performances on Friday, very long hours, and an awful lot got done, so thanks to the production team for the effort and to the performers for being on form when we needed them.

There is always more you can do, but I am very pleased with the finished show - it feels very much like what I was trying to get to.

Musings on life and The Woods

2010-04-25T14:54:00.006+01:00

Over the last two weeks I've been doing some work on The Woods with Louise Platt and Graeme Rose. I want to make some headway on the shape of the piece before coming back to work with the performers in August/September to make the finished show. One of the things I really miss from not being in The Other Way Works are the conversations in preparation to devising - it seems that my brain needs conversations to go that extra mile.

Anyway thanks to Graeme and Lou for some productive sessions and for listening to me jabbering and being able to jabber back.

Here is a bit of what I've found:

I started making The Woods around the same time I left The Other Way Works. During the last two years my sister has married, my Grandma has died, I have started making my own work with other artists, and four friends have had babies - it has been a time of things passing as well as renewal. And thanks to realising this I think I'm finally discovering the heart of the show: It's about losing something and letting it go - about the death of something and how to live with it not being there anymore.
It may sound kind of gloomy, but my take on it is that there's beauty as well as sadness to existence, and I hope the performance can touch on aspects of both. Remember the Golden syrup tin with the dead lion and bees "out of the strong came forth sweetness" - you get the picture?

Here is my manifesto for The Woods:

We want the audience to be a crowd, a force, and to feel like they matter.
We want to make an enticing installation that can be explored in the daytime as well as holding the night-time performance.
We want to develop the role of the performers as presenters of the action.
We want to be influenced by the savagery of Arcade Fire and Nick Cave's Murder Ballads.
We want the directness of Brecht and the tenderness of Jane Campion.

City of Culture Blog

2010-04-25T14:47:00.006+01:00

This is a blog I wrote for the Birmingham City of Culture bid, see blog.birminghamculture.org

"I'm in the midst of making a performance called Treasured - A Secret Journey, which has been commissioned by mac, as part of their re-opening season.

I've just got back from an an exciting meeting with two of my collaborators - designer Becky Hurst and lighting designer Ben Pacey - in which we've been developing the set design for the performance.

We were working in the brand-new Foyle Studio at mac, one of two spaces which the performance will use, which we'll have temporarily transformed by the time our audiences see it in June.

Treasured - A Secret Journey is a unique sensory performance for one person at a time, which invites you to venture into your imagination.

At the heart of the experience are three extraordinary pieces of sculptural jewellery, each commissioned for the project from West-Midlands based jewellers. During the performance, you (the audience) get the chance to wear one of the pieces, and discover the treasured secret which it holds..."

Positivity resolution

2010-03-28T13:22:00.002+01:00

This week I started a new part time job at mac, there is lots of training and organisation to be done before we open to the public on 1st May. My colleagues and I have been on a course called Train the Trainer - about making and delivering training to your team. At the end of the week I received praise on my training course - how refreshing to just be told that you do something well!

For the last two years I have been making work-in-progresses and taking critical feedback to progress my work - this has entirely been sought, but being given such straight-forward and positive commendation in my new job got me thinking about how much criticism we receive and expect to be able to take as artists.

I have always believed very strongly in constructive criticism and debate, and have always heavily analysed my own and others works. I'm now wondering if perhaps we all need a bit more of a boost rather than a critiquing. Most theatre artists analyise their work quite thoroughly themselves - perhaps my "I enjoyed this but..." approach isn't actually needed.

And so to test this out, I resolve for the next six months to give all my positive feedback on work, but not my negative (unless explicitly asked for), I will apply this across all art forms, even when I go to the cinema I will aim to highlight what I liked. I may get bored of not negatively critiquing, or maybe I will find a new and positive way of influencing how work develops. Whatever the outcome I am looking forward to supporting fellow makers and telling them what I DID like. I'll let you know how it goes...

Treasured final devising week

2010-03-28T12:56:00.004+01:00

The last week of Treasured devising went well. At the end of the week we had the full team together for the first time, which was really exciting, good to hear all the ideas and have such expertise to work with.
We ended the week by showing the designers as full a performance as we could for each piece of jewellery. We also showed it to three members of mac staff. They all seemed to have a good time, which feels really positive.

The next stage is getting the design in place, so I'm really looking forward to seeing and hearing some of the ideas we've spoken about being made a reality.

Becky, Ben and Lewis found a really neat solution to our "how should we facilitate the end of the performance debate", there is a lovely little window seat outside the rooms we are using, which we are going to make into an area that the audience member can sit in for 15 minutes or so after the experience. The window seat will have elements of the show still in it, but also a view out over the courtyard of mac - hopefully aiding the transition out of our experience and into the rest of their day.

Jake's Post

2010-03-22T21:27:00.004Z

Here's Jake's post, from the end of the first week:

Rehearsing in the soon to re-open MAC has been a trip down memory lane as well as an exciting glimpse of the future. The spacious, airy Randle and English studios were where I made my first professional show in the UK, with Stan's Cafe in 1997, and it's great to be back. The anticipation of the new programme of work is buzzing around the venue and I'm glad to be a part of that with Jane and the rest of the Treasured crew.

It's been a fair while since I devised with a group of entirely new collaborators, and although I've known Jane and Sam for some time it's throwing up some welcome reminders on how to keep a devising process fresh, enjoyable and productive. In terms of content, working on a piece of intimate theatre once again has helped me re-evaluate my thoughts on this type of work. The commissioned pieces of jewellery that form the centrepiece of the work are truly stunning, and along with the stories inspired by them we have a rich seam to mine for material.

I'm looking forward to finding out how next weeks group of collaborators inform the process...

Natalie's post – Thursday 11th March 2010

2010-03-11T23:39:00.003Z

I have asked my performers each to write a post about our work during these two weeks. Natalie Wilson is first:

"What a treasure Treasured has turned out to be! After all four of us (Sam, Jake, Jane and I) had been run ragged by our involvement in Bite Size last weekend, Treasured came as a welcome relief! Away from all the stresses and strains of busy get-ins and get-outs the beautiful MAC rehearsal room has been an oasis of calm. In our sunlit haven we have been whiling away the hours giving each other massages, stepping on each others feet and doing ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’. There has been some hard work in between Sam’s tasty Banoffee Pie and Jake’s Kippers though; we’ve been busy working on three rather special stories.

Helped by the three beautiful pieces of jewellery and Jane’s expert eye, Sam, Jake and I have been exercising our imaginations like Mr Motivator on Redbull as we build on bringing the stories to life. So far it been an exciting, intriguing and satisfying process and with another week to go, and the prospect of a real audience to work with tomorrow, things are about to get even more interesting. I’m certainly looking forward to another week by the water!"

Treasured team announced and CIB

2010-03-04T11:11:00.004Z

I have spent much of the last week writing copy and working with Ben to produce marketing materials. I keep having to remind myself that I'm doing this for two shows – and that's why it feels like so much! The postcard flyer for Treasured is well under way and I'm very excited by Ben's simple but very satisfying image and font for The Woods marketing.

The rest of my time is spent in preparation for TSJ devising which starts next week for two weeks. I'm working with a really great team of people:

Performers: Sam Fox (of Kindle), Jake Oldershaw (of Untied Artists), Natalie Wilson (of Needle and Thread), Louise Platt (of The Other Way Works).
Design team: Rebecca Hurst (set, costume, props), Lewis Gibson (music and sound), Ben Pacey (lighting).
Joanna Carr (of Untied Artists) is going to Produce and Chris Keenan (of Prime Objective) is on hand to do publicity photography/filming and documentation.

At lunch today Ben and I popped into the Created In Birmingham shop – situated in the heart of the Bull Ring and entirely dedicated to art made in Brum. It is going to be a wonderful thing - lots of opportunities for everyone, and a chance for the arts to infiltrate the consumer driven centre of Birmingham and give it some soul, perhaps. I'm going to have a good think about what I can offer to the enterprise.

I'm just on my way back from a sharing by Little Wonder of their new performance We Live by the Light of the TV at Norden Farm Arts Centre in Maidenhead. The show is about anti-social behaviour; Katherine and Sara (of Little Wonder) live on an estate in King Cross – an area of high social deprivation, and are very into community spirit and giving back. Even at such an early stage of development the show is a fascinating mix of personal experience, social comment and characterisation. Most impressively it manages not to preach. It will be fascinating to see how teenagers and those who are really exposed to anti-social behaviour in their area react to it.

The Woods development at mac

2010-02-13T17:20:00.003Z

Last week we had the pleasure of being the first artists to work in the new mac building in Birmingham's Cannon Hill Park. Although the whole centre doesn't open to the public until 1st May we spent a week christening the making/rehearsal spaces at mac.

We felt very priviledged - what an incredible building!

Working with Sara Kewly, Greg Hobbs and Chris Gunter our aims were to make headway with the narrative (which was quite muddled in our outdoor showing in November), to work out if the show could work as an indoor show, and to make a 20 minute extract for BiteSize.
Quite a lot to try and achieve, but as a group of theatre makers we all like knuckling down, so by the end of the week we have concluded that: it can work indoors, we have a much stronger shaped show with clear intentions for each character that play through, and we've made our extract.

On Friday afternoon we showed the extract to 8 members of mac staff. Even in a very light rehearsal room with no design, the performacne has a very palpable atmosphere and drive. I'm really looking forward to seeing it on the stage at Warwick when we can use some theatre lighting to ramp up the atmosphere.

You can see the extract of The Woods on 6th March as part of the BiteSize Festival

Treasured in The Guardian

2010-02-08T22:41:00.001Z

We appeared in Lyn Gardner's What to see blog on 5th February see www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/feb/05/what-to-see-theatre

Work in progress showings for Treasured

2010-02-07T22:36:00.002Z

The showings went really well - thanks to all those who came and for your great feedback. Strangely and rather beautifully, all audience members seemed to emerge through the door and go striaght to writing their feedback before talking to anyone. This makes me think that some contemplative/creative time and space should be built in to the end of the show.

Here are some samples of feedback

On feelings:
Calm, contemplative, peaceful. I felt as if nothing was expected of me yet my presence was of real importance.

On objects used:
I loved the fact that things didn't match – that there was an accumulation. There is something very lovely about the “home-made” feel to the show; simple chopping board and knife, non-uniformed teapots. The organic materials and glass materials suit the aesthetic of the production more than the plastic. Dim lighting lovely. I want to hear the full story.

Overall:
I very much liked the first place. The low lighting and spacing of the objects (chairs etc.) was perfect. Non – threatening. The flower opening was a great time and space to reflect without feeling threatened, The poems helped me dream a bit. Tea was great – definite calming effect.

One of the things I was most pleased with in the performance was finding a level of trust with audience members, and maintaining it. In her opening introductions to the performance Lou says "there are no tricks here" this is a vital part in allowing people to be at ease, but crucially then must be followed through in the rest of the piece. Lou doesn't play a character, but she is instrumental in setting up and holding the atmosphere of the space. I really like the honesty of this, and that the performance is still fascinating to watch - ritualistic, slow, building in momentum - despite not being "acted" per se.

Next time we work on Treasured (at mac) the team will grow to encompass 9 people, including our designers; set and costume, lighting, sound. It's great to have finally re-visited the first room (now very different from the 2006 version with The Other Way Works), and I have seen for the first time the potential of the full show - very exciting!

The set up

2010-02-05T22:35:00.000Z

This morning Katherine and I look over the stories for the Ivy and the Helmet. These are much more developed, but have been through a rather hard and fast edit by me at WAC and need a bit of re-working and TLC. I am reminded how bonkers both the jewellery and their stores are – otherworldly, magnificent and emotional. Looking forward to developing the stories further in March.

Lou arrived at lunch time, and this afternoon we have a great time taking all the furniture from our dressing room, to the theatre. This week the first room needs to house three audience members at a time, in June it will be one and sometimes maybe two.
They have some great things in the dressing room – 3 very different chairs and a rusty old metal chest. I have brought fairy lights and some lanterns with me. The end result looks great - a circular space focused around the tea chest.

Up in Bradford

2010-02-04T22:32:00.000Z

Katherine and I arrive in the dark. The next day is so misty it is hard to discover what Bradford is actually like, but we get a warm welcome at The Mill. Which is a lovely theatre and space – quiet and contained – so perfect for developing work in.

Until Lou arrives on Friday Katherine and I are looking at the stories for the second room. In our 2008 week-long development at WAC we generated three stories – one for each piece. However I was only guessing at what they needed to contain, so one was less successful and we put it to one side for that set of performances. Now we come back to it, its the Ruff by Mikaela Lyons, and is also perhaps the most complicated bit of jewellery thematicly – it is made of concertinaed paper maps made into an Elizabethan neck ruff, with threads of pearls hanging off it.

The piece has always been associated with the sea and questing/journeying/discovering. The character has always been a Queen. Katherine and I read over previous work on it, and spend the early afternoon thrashing out a structure. Then I give Katherine a time constraint and leave her to it. The time constraint is designed to stop the urge to edit, which for many of us cramps creative writing before it's even started. Later Katherine and I will come back to it, I'll edit it down, we'll make adjustments and she will re-write it slower with more precision and greater critiquing.

Treasured process blog

2010-02-01T19:04:00.000Z

This year I am going to be using my blog as a diary of my devising processes. This means that those working on the project but not in the devising room can keep up to date with the work, I can also review my working patterns, and hopefully some of what I write will be interesting for general reading.

This week I'm working on Treasured with Louise Platt, focusing on the first room in the performance which has been called at various times: the chill-out space, the relaxation room and the sanctuary, but yesterday was named the preparation room. I haven't worked on making this space since 2006 with TOWW, but both Lou and I seem to have a very strong impulse about what its about.
Lou's initial list concerned with the atmosphere and feeling of the room was this:
Simplicity, calm, intriguing, non-threatening, care, attention, weathered, depth, present.
Lou notes that it is a much harder thing to make an unthreatening place than a threatening one – but that is what we want to do.

I am very keen that the preparation room is a place of slowly unfolding action, with its own momentum, so that you don't feel like it will stop when the audience member leaves the room. The action of the space overall is choosing – this is where you choose what jewellery you will wear and therefore which story you'll be part of. Lou also identified it as the start of “a call to action” as you would see within a hero quest story.

We identified the most important aspects of the audiences time in the preparation room as:

Welcome – introduce performer and space, take their coat.

Connection – start making connections between audience member, this space, the performer using the making of tea. Also (this may be subliminal at this stage) to the other space, connecting to the jewellery, the space of the story room, the people (performers) in the story room, the story of the jewellery.

Choosing – knowing you are choosing your piece of jewellery (it is not a trick). Choosing not through seeing the jewellery directly but things connected with it, using the senses to do this.
Having chosen the ball is set in motion for the next stage of the performance (taking place in the story room).

Contribution – the audience member is given something to take with them which is used in the story, this may be something that they come up with or may just be an object.

Anticipation – a brief amount of time anticipating the experience.

Entering the next space – we think that one of the performers from the story room may come in and take you there. The two rooms should work together as a whole and the connections between them remain fluid.

We also spent some time looking at tea. I have bought some flowering tea and watching the process of that unfolding was fascinating. However Lou points out that the taste and look are very specific to China. In fact with all teas it seems they are closely related to place. Short of becoming tea experts and making our own, tomorrow we are going to try using a green tea infusion (from the flowering tea) to make the basis of a Moroccan mint tea.

Christmas Party

2009-12-13T18:11:00.006Z

On Saturday we had a fantastic time at AE Harris (Stan's Cafe's warehouse space) where we joined other theatre makers and friends for a Christmas party. Kindle had done an amazing job of not only dressing as food - cheese, carrot, ham and caviar - but also hiring a bouncy castle.

The stimulus of bouncing up and down, and hanging out with a great bunch of people led us into the early hours. I got my first "fat lip" in years, and learned that bouncy castles are the way forward, and that AE Harris is the space to watch.

The Woods - Trailer

2009-12-12T23:49:00.013Z

I've just been working with Chris Keenan to make this trailer for The Woods. I'm making the show for night time performances, but we knew we had to film it fast, so went for a daylight shoot. We had limited time to film and edit, but I've really enjoyed working with these contraints: with theatre there's a tendency to keep working on a piece forever, so it's been good to have a finite amount of material to shape.

Thanks to Chris Keenan, who filmed and edited with me, and Epic 45 for the music.

To see this clip, you'll need at up-to-date version of Flash player. If you're having trouble, click here for advice on this from Vimeo.

Time in the woods

2008-10-06T10:38:00.010+01:00

On Thursday, in the darkness and a light drizzle twenty-nine people moved around Highbury Park, guided by torches for a performance of The Woods Project.
Thanks to those who came along to watch the work to date, it was great to see how it worked with an audience.

I was really pleased with where we got to in this development time, which was funded by Arts Council England and Experiment Grow. Having had a day playing in the woods at the Clent Hills we worked in Highbury for four days in the run up to a work in progress performance.

One of the best parts of working in Highbury is finding unique places to perform sections of the work; up a tree, in the eucalyptus grove, in the beech wood, along the long line of conifers. Having walked around it for days the park feels a bit like home, and everyone working on the project seems to have adopted a "favourite place".

One of the major challenges in working ourtdoors is the weather. We were very lucky, although the weather turned much colder in the past week, we were blessed with sunshine for much of the time, along with one damatic hail shower. There is something satisfying in making an outdoor performance with the idea that it can take place in most weather conditions. It's kind of necessary in England where the forecast can change day to day and also perhaps reflects a very English stoicism that I admire. The woods are beautiful in a very different way in the rain; the raindrops on the leaves, and the appreciation you get from being able to shelter under a tree and watch sheets of rain wash across the open spaces.

In the run up to the performance quite a lot of people have asked me what the performance is about, the truth is I'm still discovering, it seems to be about a number of things. I'm eagerly awaiting the feedback from our audience to see what they think, but one of the key things for me is expressed in a quote I discovered in a book about new nature writing:

"We've got to reconnect ourselves to our environment and fellow species in every way we can, every chance we have. In my thinking, it is the tradition of the false notion of separation [between the environment/nature and humans] that has caused us so many problems and led to so much environmental degradation. I believe that it is our great challenge in the twenty-first century to remake the connection. I think our lives depend on it."

Lydia Peelle (quoted in the Editor's letter, The New Nature Writing, Granta Magazine)

Ben Pacey (writer and lighting designer) and I read a lot in the run up to our work on the piece. I think elements of that have trickled through. There is huge comfort and hope to be found in nature writing, and I think a simplicity and truth that seems to be lacking in much of the world. Here is a reading list in case you're interested:

Book
Wildwood A Journey Through Trees - Roger Deakin
Waterlog - Roger Deakin
The New Nature Writing - Grant 102 (selection of authors)
Wild An Elemental Journey- Jay Griffiths
Findings - Kathleen Jamie
The Wild Places - Robert Macfarlane

Film
Into The Wild - director Sean Penn

For those who haven't seen it yet the performance is set in the Autumn, so it seems likely that a further development to complete the work will happen in late summer/autumn 2009. Please get in touch if you would like to find out more.

The Woods Project 2008 Performance

2008-08-22T11:23:00.008+01:00

October 2nd - come and join us in Highbury Park Birmingham for a showing of our work so far on The Woods Project. Here are the details:

The Woods Project (work in progress performance)
Location: Highbury Park
Date: Thursday 2nd October
Time: 7pm
Please email me to book a place

The Woods Project (working title) is a promenade performance in the woods at nightfall. Guided by torchlight, the audience encounter characters who are themselves journeying through the woods. Merging myth and the everyday, the performance explores the regenerative and destructive powers of nature through personal stories

The quest for the perfect form

2008-07-09T14:50:00.006+01:00

I have been writing about audiences for an evaluation, which has got me thinking, so here are some ideas for the future:

One thing I have never ceased to be fascinated by is the audience; it’s varying size, how they are addressed and treated during the performance and what role they take. Being an audience member so much in the past year has refreshed my perspective on what is most exciting or rewarding as an audience member.

Have largely been obsessed with experimenting with small audience numbers or one-to-one performance during my time at The Other Way Works it was great to be reminded of the force and excitement that large audiences create. Watching Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (which had a cast of 36 as well as audience of over 1,000) it was wonderful to feel the palpable fizzle of energy wave back through the audience to reach me. I think most people there were on the edge of their seats, and you could feel it.

At the same time there is still something remarkable about a performer making eye contact with you, and involving you personally in the moment. I enjoyed the points in The Other Way Works' recent show Black Tonic where, having watched the action unobserved, the audience member was then made involved by the performer making eye contact with them.

For me, what would be really exciting is to merge these two practices, to have a smaller audience merge into a larger one; to have moments of direct contact between the audience and the performers, but also to have a shift where the audience can be surprised and inspired by being a mass of audience in celebration.

Maybe the closest I have seen to mixing these two worlds is Punchdrunk’s work, which usually has several points when the audience is directed to gather and to watch a dance or a final reckoning. The company usually tries to have one to one moments as well, but these are few and far between and most of the very large audience don’t get to take part in them. What I am interested in experimenting with is perhaps a guided version of this, with the audience traveling in small packs where individual interaction is possible, before converging with everyone for a performance designed to be viewed en masse. I will be looking to start experimenting with this in my Woods Project, coming up in September.

A Thousand Shards of Glass

2008-06-01T13:45:00.012+01:00

We made it!

A Thousand Shards of Glass (as we finally called the performance) was seen at WAC yesterday. Thanks to all those who came.

I'll post more photos soon.

Bite Size in May

2008-04-14T10:21:00.008+01:00

I'm working on a new show that will be part of a West Midlands theatre festival, "Bite Size", on May 31st at Warwick Arts Centre. I'm really excited to be part of the day of events, which is the first festival of its kind in the region - certainly since I've been here. See www.warwickartscentre.co.uk for the festival line up.

Our piece (as yet untitled) is a 20 minute monologue for a small audience. I'm really pleased to be working closely with Ben Pacey again as writer and lighting designer, and also with two new collaborators; Matt Rogers (composer) and Jessica Parfitt (performer). Here is the publicity blurb about it:

There's thirty-one of us. And I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of falling. I'm afraid of the dark.

I'm afraid that you're concealing something – there – in your heart.

An exploration of fear and hope… and the joy of holding on, even though it hurts.

A creative week

2008-02-18T18:55:00.015Z

Last week was an intensive creative week for me, leading to 26 individual work in progress performances of Treasured -A Secret Journey. As ever, there was too much to do in the time frame, but I enjoyed a really focused week with my five collaborators - Ben, Katherine, Louise, Sam and Gareth.
Having worked mostly in non-theatre "found" spaces it was a pleasure to be surrounded by good facilities and knowledgeable theatre people at Warwick Arts Centre.
Our aim was to write and perform three stories, one to go with each piece of jewellery, and each making a complete show in itself. In fact in the end we only completed two, but this was still more than enough work in the time frame.
We had enthusiastic audiences who engaged with the work in a inspiring way; all reacting in their own unique way to their individual performance.
There are still lots of questions to be challenged before the piece is complete (probably in Spring 09), but I'm really chuffed with the way we've started.

The stories have a real fairytale quality to them, which I love. Here are the opening sentences for two of them:

There was a girl who grew up in her Grandmother's house. A house made from warm wood and staircases - staircases that twisted and turned and reached for the stars.
- Arms piece

It has been the longest of summers. The days burnt into each other and the nights made only the briefest of appearances. Deep in the heart of the palace the old, frail King lay breathing his last breaths, coughing and groaning.
- Head piece

Unearthing

2008-02-07T13:54:00.002Z

Digging through a folder of past documentation I came across these two pieces of writing by Katherine in 2006. I particularly like the ivy design on one of them which is reminscent of one of the pieces of jewellery, made by Louise Bryan. The second is a poem which made it into the peformance last time.

Drama Therapist insight

2008-02-07T13:47:00.001Z

I'm working with Drama Therapist Louise Platt on Treasured - A Secret Journey, we had a great meeting last Friday at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath where I quizzed her on the shape of the audiences journey through the piece. Here's a diagram I drew which may, or may not explain some of our discoveries.

Good news from the Arts Council

2008-01-08T20:25:00.001Z

I've recently had the good news that my ACE application for Treasured - A Secret Journey was successful. I feel very grateful for this pot of money to cover the artists wages for the project, especially when a lot of the arts news is about the recent cuts to some organisations.
Here is the bit of writing I included as part of my proposal:

A land I've forgotten the name of. The rain falls endlessly.

A million trees. A million trees with a million flowers.

Each flower lives for a million days. I dream a million times.

One night, I set out, the fire buring, the kettle on.

Text from Treasured development 2006

Treasured - A Secret Journey

2007-12-11T21:16:00.002Z

There will be work-in-progress performances at Warwick Arts Centre, on 15-16 February 2008. There are only 26 places available (the performance is for one person at a time, and lasts 20 minutes) so book now! Full details here.

A Journey Through Trees

2007-10-09T22:55:00.006+01:00

A very productive and fun weekend of work in the woods, with a secret performance on Sunday to about 20 people. We're calling the performance the Woods Project until an appropriate title emerges. The format is full of potential - a night time walk where snatches of performance are seen and characters encountered en route. Best of all is that the real sights and sounds of nature merge with our created world - an effect which is both surreal and beautiful.

The woods are certainly the most awe inspiring set I've ever worked with! It'll probably be next autumn before we do more work on this piece, so here are are some great pictures by Chris Keenan to be going on with...

Dark Room beginings

2007-09-09T22:36:00.001+01:00

Back in April 2006 Ben Pacey showed me some writing from his time in the Dark Room with Mapping 4D, it consisted of beautiful poetic monologues written to be performed in the woods.

The Dark Room is an amazing project, run by Ed Collier and Paul Warwick, where devising theatre companies are teamed with a writer for a weeks residency at The Hurst in Shopshire.

I was lucky enough to go there with The Other Way Works (which I was then Co -Artistic Director of) in March 2007, to work with Clare Duffy. We had a wonderfully liberating time and I realised that my love of nature and theatre could perhaps be be brought together. Ben and I are planning to develop his initial ideas, using the wooded areas of the park behind my house as a setting. We're going to do a mini performance at dusk through the woods to try put some ideas - fingers crossed for good weather!