A break...

Above, the 'man of grass' image from Angus - Weaver of Grass, with Mel Deans and Jordanna O'Neill. 

Yesterday's return shows (we played there at the Festival Fringe) at Edinburgh's Scottish Storytelling Centre are over, and Mark, Mel, Jonny and Jordanna - the four members of the touring team - now have a few days well deserved break. These last shows were part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival (SMHAFF) and our next few shows too, starting at Eden Court One Touch Centre in Inverness on Saturday12th will also be part of the festival.

Mark Whitaker messaged me to say that the matinee show yesterday was almost full, and the evening show was sold out. He also mentioned that, briefly, the mains supply to our backstage computer got knocked and disconnected during the evening show. Given this controls our sound and video it can have a pretty big impact on the performance - still Mark said that they (the cast) 'covered well' and all was quickly back under control. Something to try to avoid, certainly, but I do have sympathy as I've seen the size of the backstage area at the SSC - less than one metre width to change and move about in, and given that the performers are sometimes moving about backstage wearing masks and suits of woven grass, it's so easy to catch a cable or one of the other hazards lurking behind the set. Mark went on to say the feedback was excellent, and I've now just read the Comments Book and I'm amazed, delighted and humbled by what people are saying about the show. 

Worth pointing out too that 17th-19th October, Thursday to Saturday, will be the last opportunity to see our show this year in Scotland, when we're at Paisley Art Centre and there's a jamboree of events centred around Angus MacPhee - Joanne B  Kaar, Roger Hutchinson are involved with workshops, book signings, and more including a showing of Nick Higgins film 'Hidden Gifts'. Sounds like an amazing end to our Scottish tour; click the link to find out more from the Weaving Musical Threads site - Angus in Paisley, which also includes information about additional venues for Angus-related events.

Welcome to Mairi

We can now announce the full team who will take the Angus MacPhee - Weaver of Grass show out on tour in July. The last member of the team to be confirmed is Mairi Morrison, well known in Scotland as an actor and tv-presenter, but also increasingly as a singer, both solo and with Alisdair Roberts. 

Mairi comes from Bragar on the Isle of Lewis, one of the furthermost parts of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, and is a native Gaelic speaker. We are delighted to have such a talented musician and actor in the team - Mairi astonished us with the perfection of her audition pieces when we went up to Glasgow a couple of months ago. Listen (and watch) a sample of Mairi singing on You Tube here:

Mairi joins Jonny Quick and Mark Whitaker, long-standing performers with Horse +Bamboo. Both have a lot of mask and puppetry experience, and last toured together  in Deep Time Cabaret and Little Leap Forward.  They are joined by Frances Merriman, a performer who also worked with us on Little Leap Forward, veil and Red Riding Hood.

Image for the poster

We had a great yesterday. It was the day Joanne B Kaar finally met up with us at the Horse + Bamboo workshop in Rossendale, having travelled down from Caithness. Mark Whitaker and Jonny Quick were also around, along with the H+B team, so we had a very concentrated day covering everything we could possibly think of that involved Joanne.  

One main objective was to try out the masks on Mark and Jonny (who will play Angus in the show), with the intention to find an image that we could use as a poster image - given real urgency by the fact that tomorrow is the deadline for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme.

We looked at Jonny as a young Angus, as he might have been before going off to the Second World War:

The highlight was unveiling the swallow-tail coat and the 'sunburst' hat that Joanne has recently made, and Mark wearing them as the older Angus. We spent a long time photographing this - feeling it was the right image for the poster - and Christina Eddowes, our technical wunderkind added projected background of grass taken on Uist. The results were stunning:

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'

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.