The home straight

I arrived back from a short but refreshing break in France and Portugal to find an opened package on my desk. Joanne B Kaar had sent me the grass boots she has made for our show. These are to be worn by Angus at the same time as the swallow-tail coat and sunburst hat (see previous blogs); more on this here. 

Alison, helped by Vanessa Card and Christina Eddowes, had been busy all week. Down in our theatre space the cloth-work for the set is beginning to take shape. Alison told me it was all taking her longer than she expected, and she still has a few days work to complete the job. However, she has prepared the cloth surfaces on the wheeled flats and so I've been able to start painting these. They are mobile flat screens that can be turned to create the garden of Craig Dunain, and this will allow a sudden transition from the pale colours of the island scenes to the colourful garden in which Angus started his weaving project.

No word from Daniella Orsini, our animator, or Loz Kaye, the Musical Director, who should be beginning to start their parts of the Angus jigsaw, and I'll need to follow these up. In fact there's any number of things that urgently need to be got underway - the Gaelic voiceovers, and the translations, for starters. 

Finally, I had a helpful email from Roger Hutchinson, who tells me (see the previous post) that there are photographs of Neil, Angus's father. Fortunately my mask isn't too different from the photograph Roger showed me, although my mask has a moustache, whereas Neil, in the photo, is clean-shaven. However the prominent moustache is an excellent way to identify Neil as he moves from being represented by a foot-high puppet to a masked performer so I'm inclined to keep it in, strict accuracy notwithstanding!

Momentum

Details from Joanne B Kaar, of the swallow-tail dress grass jacket she is working on in Caithness. For more go to her own blog (click here) - but for us working in Lancashire it continues to be an inspiration that as well as our own work on the production, which is gathering real momentum, there's such tremendous work being created for 'Angus' right up at the top of Scotland. Thanks Joanne!


We've had a week of detailed work - looking at various aspects of the script in the context of the rough stage. We've been able to do this in our performance space - Tuesday we looked at the video and film work; Wednesday the music with Loz Kaye, and yesterday Mark Whitaker helped us look at the puppetry sections. 


In the course of doing this research and development a lot has been learned, and this morning I've re-written the script to include all the new detail and ideas from these three days of work. The next thing is to go through the script with Alison and create a making list - puppets, masks, props etc that we'll need to make over the next few months.

Mark Whitaker working with a prototype puppet for 'Angus'

Angus's gift

The week in the Uists has been very, very good. I always felt that it would be a useful venture for us, but what I didn't realise was just how important it would be. Important in a number of ways – firstly, a key stage in developing a theatre show about Angus McPhee; but also important for doing something altogether more fundamental – reminding us, when it comes to the crunch, of what actually matters.

To work in the (publicly subsidised) arts right now can be frustrating. Matters of funding, of management, of income generation, of negotiations with the Arts Council, of service and contract agreements, sit so visibly on the surface of our day to day work life that it often feels as if the real substance of our work – the creative vision and all the work that springs from it – is totally squashed by the these considerations, and that the sheer weight of emails, budgets, meetings, audience analyses and suchlike dominate and take precedence over the relatively straightforward matter of creating work which communicates and explores ideas with grace, in the process entertains, and then brings people together meaningfully.

Loz Kaye described this well in his guest blog on Monday – and reminded us that we are dealing with a man who needed his art for his survival. We were told that Angus felt that the system had crucified him, and we saw how his grass weaving grew from his deep need to reconnect himself with the culture and place from which he came, and from which his life was so abruptly severed.

The meetings we've had with people here who are working to sustain the rich Gaelic and Celtic culture of the islands have been extremely stimulating. Honesty and integrity has shone through. South Uist, where Angus was brought up and where he died, has a population of about 1800 people spread over a large area. In this context an art centre, or a centre of learning, can be seen clearly for what it is – as an essential and necessary part of the community, maintaining and sustaining and developing the history and heritage of the people. On these islands the creativity of the community shines out – most particularly in the musical heritage, but also in the wealth of fine artists and craftspeople and their studios that dot the landscape.

Back in Lancashire the landscape is very different of course, and the view is more complex – shops, traffic on the roads, business of all sorts - all this and much more obscures the picture. But at heart the same human needs remain – places where we can meet together with meaning; opportunities to create and express our anxieties and uncertainties, as well as celebrate who we are individually and collectively. Having got considerably closer to Angus this week, I'm humbled that this humblest of men can still manage to give me something very important to take back home to our own community and place in Rossendale, reminding us of the real urgency and importance of what we're trying to do as artists.

Masks and puppets underway...

  

ABOVE: The young Angus (covered in cling-film); the old Angus (covered in furniture polish) - both waiting for papier-mache; putting the paper layers on the young Angus; and experimenting with rush shadow puppets.

Alison favours cling-film whereas I prefer furniture polish as a release agent over the clay model. On a more detailed mask such as the older head and face, furniture polish allows more detail, as there's always the danger that cling-film will 'fill in' the small lines and holes in the model. 

By the end of the day I had managed 3 layers of paper - with luck I should have all 5 on by the end of tomorrows sessions. The remainder of the day will be a catch-up with Loz Kaye, the MD for 'Angus' and perhaps an opportunity for the first detailed discussion about musical ideas for the production.

Planning our work

Now that I'm able to plan things in a little more detail, I've had another discussion with Chris Spears about the use of Berneray Community Hall in May. We're trying to arrive at a fee for hiring the space for a week. The hall committee meet in a few weeks time, and I hope that we can come to some agreement at that time.

Berneray map: Wikitravel Image Repository Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 1.0.

The hall is at Borve (Borgh) to the NNE of Loch Bhuirgh, numbered 3 on the map above (if you can read it), and Chris lives on the edge of the Loch. Everything is very close by, a short walk away, and it may well be that when we get to having visitors they will stay at the hostel at East Beach (no.6).

The plan is that I travel up and work with Chris to create a rough version of the set, accompanied by Loz Kaye, the Musical Director on the production, who will work with musicians from Lews Castle College Learning Centre on Benbecula. By the end of the week we will be joined by other artists and performers working on the show - Alison Duddle, my colleague and co-director at Horse + Bamboo Theatre; Mark Whitaker, a puppeteer who we hope will be in the final show; and Joanne B Kaar, who will be making the woven costumes and other performing objects for the production. We'll have some of the masks and puppets to work with; possibly even some film material, so we should be able to achieve a lot in a few days of workshopping. 

View across to Berneray harbour; with seals. 

We could easily do this work at our base in Lancashire but it makes real sense to do it on the islands. First it will introduce some our cast to the Outer Hebrides; it will also be far easier for Chris, who lives on Berneray and Joanne, who lives way north on the mainland (near Dunnet by Thurso in Caithness), and the musicians, to meet up with the rest of us here. 

Most importantly we're able to cross the various causeways and visit the place on North Uist where Angus was born and lived until he went away to fight in the Second World War (and, of course, to where he returned after 50 years away). 

Finally I want the set to have a strongly organic feel - not to be a rigid structure of painted theatre flats and screens, but to use local materials to help create a framework where wires or ropes tensioned by heavy rocks can support cloth screens. This will take experiment and probably some  beach-combing, but it's certainly something best done in this island environment. 

The current plan

Angus McPhee drinking coffee at Uist House, the care home on South Uist where he lived after returning to the island after his long, long stay at Craig Dunain psychiatric hospital near Inverness. From Joyce Laing's book 'Weaver of Grass' (photo: Tim Neat).

The plan: Once our current shows are up and running, Alison and I will start working on 'Angus'. Between now and May we'll each find at least a months work to spend on the show - probably masks and puppets will be the first things we make. Some of the puppets required are complex - in particular a set of marionettes for the scene when the young Angus sets off to join the Lovat Scouts at the outset of the war. These I imagine will be carved in wood, and possibly by Alison who has got into wood-carving in a big way over the past year and more... Meanwhile, I'll probably start by creating a series of masks of Angus McPhee himself; masks that represent Angus at different stages of his life.

The plan is to then for us to take these to the Outer Hebrides early this summer, along with our musical director, Loz Kaye, and using Berneray Community Hall as a base for a short time, to start developing the staging for the show and beginning to look at how the different formal elements - the masks and puppets, song, music, film, woven pieces - might all come and work together. At this point we'll meet up with some of the other artists working on the development of the piece - Chris Spears and Joanne B Kaar. I'll also continue with this work throughout the summer months.

Helen and Esther will meantime be working on raising the funding to enable us to continue the work. By April 2012 we'll put together a more formal presentation at Taigh Chearsabhagh of our work in progress as a public exhibition. At this point the Foyle Foundation grant runs out and we'll  

Then the final making period will start at our base in Rossendale in preparation for a tour from July to September 2012. This happening will depend on how successful Helen has been in raising funding support to allow us to finish the making and then to undertake rehearsals. The final part of the funding jigsaw is in the organising and selling of the tour itself, and this is where Esther's work is crucial, and will need to start before we're too long into 2011.