Friday 29 July 2016

Actors Assemble - From The Mouths Of The Gods



Friends. We're on the hunt for some help with an experiment. 

This summer we have three shows playing up at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

Snakes & Giants at Summerhall - a brand new show. A Common Man returns to C Venues. 

And then there's FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE GODS.

FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE GODS is a show about Freewill, Determinism and Kissing. It's a show which should be performed by 1 actor and 1 audience member picked from the crowd. It's a show which should be as unlikely as possible, or probable. 

So, as part of the probability of the show, we're opening an invitation for up to 26 actors to come and perform the show with an audience member. 1 actor per performance, and 1 audience member picked from the assembles crowd. From the 3rd - 29th Aug (not 15th).

Now, there are some things to chat through. But the whole thing will take up maybe 1hr45 of your time between 4.15pm-6pm. The show is 1hr and you'll need minimal prep before hand. However, you will need to be able to site read, welcome an audience and be nice and friendly. You'll need to be able to work with the rhythm of a text. You will receive a set of instructions and a sealed script. The show is all performed in a studio theatre. 

And then there's the kissing...we'll talk about that. But you'll need to be over 18. 

We've never done this before. We make a lot of interactive work, but this pushes at the next level for us. 

If you want to chat, or are interested in performing the piece then please get in touch. Drop Holly a line on holly@theflanagancollective.com

And, just to be clear, we'd be asking you to volunteer that 1hr45mins of your time. If no-one fancies it, then we have 4 actors who will rotate across the performances. So it's not something we're relying on, but something we think could be rather exciting to play with. 

Let us know if you fancy it. Let us know what sort of performer you are and what you've been up to. And let us know what you're busy with up at the Fringe. 

Maybe we'll chat soon. 

Cheers now!

Monday 18 July 2016

SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER TIME - EDINBURGH FRINGE 2016



IT'S NEARLY EDINBURGH FRINGE O'CLOCK

It’s the 18th July 2016. And we are in a rehearsal room at York Theatre Royal in our first day of rehearsal for SNAKES & GIANTS.

We’re back with our wonderful friends at Summerhall from the 3rd – 27th August. SNAKES & GIANTS is a show about landscape and building and losing and millions of years and fleeting moments. It’s exciting. It’s full of excellent sound and soul music. It’s full of movement and singing and dancing. And it’s uplifting. And it’s sad.

It’s 4 years since we were in exactly the same rehearsal room making BEULAH, a folk musical about William Blake. Similarly, a show which is about so much stuff and also about 2 people. And the feeling was the same – exciting and scary. The feeling of pushing at something and feeling like we’re breaking some new ground in what we make and how we make it. We’ve never played a whole lot with movement and dance before. And this is the first show we’ve ever made to be performed in a theatre space.

But that’s not all. We’re also up in Edinburgh with our excellent old friends at C Venues, where we first started working in 2007. We’re bringing back Dominic Allen’s brilliant show A COMMON MAN: THE BRIDGE THAT TOM BUILT. A story about the revolutionary, world changing man, Thomas Paine. We produced Dom’s show in 2013 and, as our world gets darker and harder, the show gets more and more relevant. It’s about refusing to accept the status quo, about inciting revolution, and about understanding things from history. And Dom is sheer, sheer joy to watch. He was last in The Crucible with Tom Morris at Bristol Old Vic, then he was in Aus with us and is currently out on tour with Les Enfant Terribles. 

In Australia at the beginning of this year we met a mathematician called Tom Smith. And he inspired a play. FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE GODS is about freewill and determinism and kissing. It’s performed by an actor and an audience member each day. So the pair in the story will never be the same twice. It’s a big experiment in storytelling and maths and, we hope, a month long journey of meeting excellent people we’d never have met otherwise.

So, these two weeks between now and opening these three shows will move fast. Probably too fast. But we can’t wait. Because a good summer in Edinburgh is one of the greatest joys.

And then we take the shows to more new friends at The Bikeshed.

And then we take the shows to great old friends at Greenwich Theatre.

And we couldn’t be happier!

See you on the way…


Holly, Hannah, Veronica, Dom, Joe, Joanne, Alex, Alex and Jim.