Larkin About’ Design Diary #1

Last Wednesday the Larkin’ About & Manchester Histories Festival project kicked off with a meeting of the companies involved and some of Larkin’ About’s special agents.

We introduced ourselves and our ideas, got our heads round what pervasive gaming is really all about then dived into some practical tasks. We explored game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics by creating some mini-games with only a few minutes to prepare and a handful of props. Thankfully, we’ll have a lot more in the way of time and props to work with on the day.

Trying out some game mechanics

We left the session with some homework: think what game mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics will suit your idea. Mine is the Peterloo Massacre, so on Sunday I took a trip down to the People’s History Museum with PygmyKing (a.k.a cartoonist on the ascendency, Robert Brown) for some inspiration.

Nothing to see here...

I’ve already been researching the topic with the help of The Casualties of Peterloo by Professor Michael Bush but it was good to see some real life examples of the weapons and symbolic items that were used (there definitely won’t be any actual weapons in my game, in case you were going to ask).

Anticlockwise from top left: pike, Cap of Liberty, constable's truncheon, cavalry soldier's sabre

We spent a couple of hours wandering around the exhibits, which cover a good few decades, including more recent political events.

Nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah

Take a wander down if you have a lazy afternoon spare – it’s free, after all. You have only yourself and your apathy to blame if you don’t.

New Year, New Work With Larkin’ About

I’ve been having some time off from the blog – but I’m back with a bang! 2012 looks set to be a busy year for me, as I’m pleased to announce an upcoming collaboration between myself, Larkin’ About and Manchester Library Theatre for the Manchester Histories Festival in March.

I’ll be creating a pervasive game for the festival, focusing on an aspect of Manchester’s varied, vital and surprising history. I’ll share more details of the programme as they come together, but for an introduction to pervasive gaming, you could do much worse than taking a look at Larkin’ About’s website.

Mother’s Ruin Yuletide Ding-A-Ling!

One little gig on Friday, a veto on Bollox the same night and I’ve still landed myself with a cold. What a wuss!

The gig in question, Mother’s Ruin Yuletide Ding-A-Ling with Marcus Reeves and Lorraine Bowen was a blast. The Contact Theatre’s atrium and bar was packed out to watch the lithesome Timberlina down a shot of something alcoholic in a yoga pose; Marcus Reeves bring his maniacal Singing Christmas Tree to life and Lorraine Bowen perform her marvellous 10 minute operetta Love In The Laundrette.

It was a busy gig for me. In the first part of the evening, I had Marcus and Tim assist me in my recreation of the flying scene from The Snowman. Like the gigs in Bradford and Leeds, it got a great reception. One punter remarked, ‘(The Snowman) is something that’s burned into the consciousness of anyone under the age of 45,’ and it’s a moment of pure silliness and relative innocence, which helps give it a broad appeal, I think.

Marcus and Tim take flight

Chris Fitzsimmons and I normally host our Well Arty Revue (or W.A.R. for short) – a Manchester-centric cabaret within a cabaret – together. However, this particular evening my partner in crime and entertainment was having a tooth extracted in Huddersfield (he’s OK now) so I flew solo for the first time.

This W.A.R was host to three great performers: Puppetual Motion, Garth Williams and Jackie Hagan, all of whom have done turns at previous Bucket Cabarets and put in great routines. I also performed a re-jigged version of my ‘No Surprises’ parody about gift-giving customs.  It went OK although I was reminded of the importance of being spontaneous where possible, as once again, the unscripted, unplanned elements seemed to get the best reactions. Or maybe people were stunned by the cynicism…

My final stint of the evening was my cameo in Lorraine’s Love In The Laundrette. It was a privilege and a pleasure to perform alongside her and Alasdaire (sp?) – two very accomplished and fun-loving performers. It was also a chance to indulge in some attempted Gilbert & Sullivan-style vibrato, which I don’t do nearly enough. They were both kind and patient enough to pose for this badly-lit photograph (one for the Christmas list: a new digital camera).

I got some good advice from both Timberlina and Lorraine after the show, which is more for my own contemplation than publication – but I feel that 2012 should hold some interesting and rewarding challenges.

The next Mother’s Ruin is Mother’s Ruin’s Theatrical Spectacular on 10th February 2012 – get tickets!

Walking In the Air with Matthew Bellwood and Rachel Dean

I’m pleased to say the Christmas cabarets in Bradford and Leeds went very well. It’s been a pleasure to work with Rachel Dean and Matthew Bellwood over the past couple of weeks, and we pulled an evening together that was by turns touching, funny, strange and a little dark.

The audience participation parts went well too. Our recreation of the flying scene from The Snowman seemed to elicit laughs and ‘aaahhhs’ by equal measure. I doubt it would have been quite as effective without Matthew’s marvellous snowman outfit, which you should be able to see below.

Matthew’s kindly lent me the outfit to run the routine again at tomorrow evening’s Mother’s Ruin Yuletide Ding-A-Ling, with performances from Marcus Reeves and Lorraine Bowen (who I’ve also got a walk-on part with that night). I’d like to learn to make better costumes. My own efforts aren’t bad but could be improved with a bit of practice. Perhaps a way to spend the Christmas holiday!

A Christmas Cabaret with Matthew Bellwood and Rachel Dean

I will be emceeing at this upcoming, festive-themed cabaret. It promises to be a very enjoyable night, and the perfect antidote to obligatory office party shenanigans. Read on!

Tickets:

• Friday 9th December ’11 – A Christmas Cabaret at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford
• Saturday 10th December ’11 – A Christmas Cabaret at Seven Arts, Chapel Allerton, Leeds

Organ Freeman at Off With Their Heads, Bonfire Spectacular!

On Bonfire Night, I found myself at Off With Their Heads at Islington Mill watching one of the gnarliest musical peformances of recent memory. I’m not in the habit of referring to things as ‘gnarly’ but if there’s one band deserving of the epithet, Organ Freeman could be it.

Borrowed from Organ Freeman's Facebook page. Hope that's OK?

I’m a big fan of immersive performances: ones where the line between the audience and the performer is blurred, both spatially and figuratively. I have been ever since I saw Jean Genet bouncing up and down on a stage wearing tit-tape and squirting the audience with water pistols in a pub in Leeds a few years back.  In my own performances, one of the most enjoyable things can be wandering into the audience’s space and seeing what happens.

If you get a chance to see Organ Freeman, do. They combine live drumming with hyper electronic backings, blend pop hits into their own original numbers and dance like they’ve got ants in their pants. They also drenched themselves in an avalanche of talcum powder, launched illuminated balloons into the audience and menaced the audience with their fleshy pincers to an instructional dance called The Wirral Crab, which you can view below.

They’re playing at the next Off With Their Heads at Islington Mill on Saturday 10th December.

Or you can check them out by visiting the Organ Freeman Facebook Page.

‘Don’t Cancel Christmas’ by Huge Grant (a.k.a Gareth Cutter)

Joy to the world! I’ve been working on a Christmas song and have posted it online just in time for the festive season.

You can listen to ‘Don’t Cancel Christmas‘ by Huge Grant (that’s me) over at Bandcamp and even download it for 49p it if you’re into the old commodity trade thing.

Things are going to be getting very Christmassy round here as I have a few gigs lined up in December. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Fun fact: the Huge Grant moniker has been in retirement for the past few years. I first came up with it when I was 17 for a stint in a short-lived Fall covers band called Matt Black and The Suicide Bummers. We played a pub in Bridgenorth, Shropshire and were asked never to return.

Afterwards I had a brief stab at a synth-pop career but it never really took off. I decided to exhume this alter ego because I want to end up like Hugh Grant in the film About A Boy: living off the royalties of a much despised Christmas cash-in.

Post Mortem: Studio Salford Embryo 68 – Chris & Gaz’s Improv

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. A week ago last Friday, Chris Fitzsimmons and I did a little semi-improvised turn at Studio Salford’s Embryo vol. 68, which was sparsely attended but warmly received (i.e. people laughed which was the intention).

We wisely decided to scale back the extent of the improvisation, instead choosing the frame it within a ‘horror story’ format. It would take a while to explain exactly what we did but suffice to say it involved me trying to get one up on Chris, making use of some lessons in ‘character status’ from Keith Johnstone’s book, Impro, and audience interaction, which always throws up interesting things.

One of the unique things about Embryo is they encourage audience feedback. People have the opportunity to write their thoughts down about the acts, safe in the knowledge that it will be anonymous unless they decide otherwise. So you can be fairly sure you get an honest opinion. We got a good mix. Some people really enjoyed it and wanted to see more, other people weren’t sure what was going on. It seems that unless you signpost certain things to an audience clearly at the beginning (i.e. this will be a semi-improvised performance), people can apply the wrong expectations. Obvious I suppose; anyone who’s been to a show and wondered to themselves, ‘Should I laugh at this?’ will know the discomfort it can cause.

At KofE shows, we’ve never really said to the audience, ‘By all means, join in with the songs if you feel like it.’ It’s not my responsibility to make a decision like that within this group but I have sometimes wondered how it would change the nature of the response. When you leave the audience the figure it out for themselves, do you get a more authentic response? Is it a bit of a cop-out to give the audience cues about how they should respond? If you were to ask me now, I would probably say ‘yes’ to both. It puts the onus on the performer to leave them in no doubt as to how to react – which is no bad thing if it drives you to work on the nuance and accuracy of your performance.

Chris and I didn’t get on stage and say, ‘You can laugh at this’. Instead, I tried to make it clear that they could at the beginning by walking on stage and exaggerating my posture and movements to an extent where it couldn’t be taken seriously. While he was waiting for me to come on stage, Chris looked at his watch and pulled a face at the audience (I hadn’t said to him I’d take a minute to get ready, so he probably was thinking ‘Where the chuff is he?’) After that, it was just a case of coming up with funny things to keep the audience laughing.

For a first go at improv in a theatre setting, it wasn’t the most inventive but I felt the relationship between Chris and I was dynamic enough to keep the audience entertained. The one unscripted moment I was most pleased with was when we had our audience volunteer on stage. I was supposed to be using him as the subject for a terrible transformation. Chris had picked one of the stockiest guys in the room. There was a table on the stage and without really thinking, I looked at the volunteer and said, ‘I want you to… lie on the table!’ The table was small enough for this to be a ludicrous request. It sounds pretty limp on the page but the laughter was belly-laughter. For me, it was the one really good intuitive moment I experienced.

Next time, I will have to try and push my ‘unreasonable requests’ a little further as there was one genuine cry of disappointment from the audience when I decided to let the volunteer off the hook. To be honest, audience members can be an easy diversion – it would probably be more challenging for Chris and I to throw them at each other. Something to remember for next time.

Manchester Theatre Maker’s Creative Lunch – Oct 2011

I mentioned I recently attended a Manchester Theatre Maker’s Creative Lunch. Let me tell you about it in a little more detail.

Part networking event, part focus group, these sessions have been set up to bring together those who would be involved in new theatre in the north west: writers, performers, whatever. Two have taken place and more are planned.

Eventually, it will have a social network of its own, supported by Cornerhouse and Manchester Library Theatre. This appears to be one of the first initiatives of their recent collaborative partnership, but the online network side is still being developed and is quite a while away. For now, the groups are just trying to find out what participants want to get out of it.

Lowri Evans helps to facilitate the group and we all have a little sticky label with our name on. We sit in a circle and share with the group what we do to break the ice. It seems like a normal networking session.

The content is very specific to theatre and contemporary performance: discussions range from personal experience with arts funding applications to attitudes towards social media. We brainstorm what our ideal social network would contain and out of these debates, a picture emerges.

Many of us want a way to gain more autonomy and authority. We want it to be a network that attracts attention from the industry. We want it to be one that allows us to share information and advice that will be of use to each other.

I wonder how this network will sit alongside or collaborate with others that already exist, like PANDA for example (I’ve trialled PANDA’s membership and receive the newsletters; I can’t say I’ve had any direct benefit from it, but maybe i’m just not at a stage to use it to its full advantage). I hope that with a large enough group, and one sufficiently invested in the project, this network could prove ‘stickier’ for active members because it’s something the participants have shaped.

It’s an ambitious project but one that I think Manchester would benefit from greatly at the moment, especially since we’re two venues down with the permanent closure of Greenroom and its support networks, and the temporary closure of The Library Theatre.

Future Creative Lunches are planned for  Saturday November 12th (find out more)

Clowns, Shows, And Lunches

I went to a Manchester Theatre Maker’s Creative Lunch on Saturday at Cornerhouse, which was very interesting, and which I hope to write about in some depth later.

However, I’m off out and about going to see Action Hero’s Front Man in Leeds tonight and Cabaret Boom Boom in Sheffield on Friday, so don’t expect to hear much from me for now.

In the absence of my ever-entertaining opinions, I highly recommend you follow this blog from Clown Lab UK, The Gaulier Express, where Mark Winstanley is writing about his experiences training with master clowning teacher, Philipe Gaulier. Excellent reading for anyone interested in the art of being silly for laughs.