The Good Things About Touring

Touring a show around the country is often much less glamorous than people assume. At its most simple, it works like this:

• Leave home, convinced something important has been forgotten
• Board train, sitting next to the person who doesn't understand the meaning of 'quiet coach'
• Arrive at destination, to be fleeced by a cab driver that's more than aware you're not local
• Arrive at hotel/B&B, to find complimentary biscuits already eaten by roommate
• Go to dinner
• Bed

And then there's the day of the shows themselves, which doesn't involve taking in the sights and sounds of whatever 'beautiful' (cough) location you're in. This involves sitting in a darkened room for most of the day, wondering whether or not there's sunlight outside, and if you'll ever see it again. But there are, occasionally, moments so joyful, so absolutely amazing that all of this fades into nothingness, and I'd like to share two of such moments with you here via the medium of photograph.

What you see below, I can assure you, is not a joke. This little nugget of genius exists outside of a hotel in Coventry (which I shouldn't mention by name). In fact, there are four of these beauties - two either side of the two (that's right, two) disabled spaces. The creator of these is either a) a complete and utter misogynistic buffoon, or b) a no-holds-barred comedy legend - there can be no in between here. Sadly, I imagine it's the former.


The second, which needs a much shorter introduction, could be one of the funniest/ugliest things I have ever witnessed. What you see below was presented to me at a coffee shop in Manchester this week, by a waitress who obviously knew the monstrosity that she was handing to me because she could barely hold the thing for laughing. I've come full circle now and think it's totally beautiful. You should too.

Fantastic Night in Manchester

We had a great night in Manchester on Thursday, performing Virtuoso (working title) to a full house of friendly faces at Greenroom. The tour has been great in general, but there was something very homey about performing at Greenroom. I think it has something to do with the good vibe in their bar after the show. There is nothing worse than being on tour at a venue that has no after show energy. Its a bit disheartening to exit the theatre and see everyone trailing away to other pastures. So - good job Greenroom!

Here are a few photos of the space as we were warming up and from the run of the show too.






It is amazing how much the lighting affects the way the space looks, isn't it? The top two photos look so much less inviting (and polished) when compared with the bottom two, I think.

We had to squeeze the space a bit to make the show fit. I think we trimmed about 3 feet off of the depth. Virtuoso (working title) is very technically precise, so the distance between each scenic item is measured to exact millimeters. We even have the spike tape for camera positions measured precisely. Em (our stage manager) made this intense series of drawings for the piece that not only shows how far apart each scenic item is, but also has a scene-by-scene breakdown of each camera position, complete with photographs of each camera shot. Its a lovely document. When we realize Greenroom did not have as much depth as we thought, Em and David (production manager) figured out the math of how to cut down the size of the space, and it looked fabulous. We raised the televisions off the ground a bit as well to help with sight-lines in the back rows. Still slightly obstructed, but it was the best we could do, really. Em and Daivd are two very sharp worker-bees. Nice to feel like everything will just appear as designed and planned on the road.

We have also found out that some new tour dates will be added for Virtuoso (working title) soon. We'll be in Bristol in February 2010 and in Crewe in October. We'll post the full details on our touring page once everything is firmed up. Now we are just getting ready to head down to Colchester for the last gig of this short spring tour. Be sad to be done, but really need a break, so probably not a bad thing. It will give us time to get prepared for our summer school, which is shaping up nicely. There is still a bit of time to apply if you are thinking about it but have yet to send your app in. Get on it! Also been pleased to see some interesting posts over at our Apologies blog. Submissions always welcome.

Welcome to our new public blog

This is the first post of Proto-type's Lab blog. On it we'll share thoughts from our process of creating work and anything else that comes up that we think the world in general might be interested in.

To get things started, I thought I would put up two photographs that a photographer named Imran Ali took of us while we were working on Virtuoso (working title) at the Bluecoat earlier this year. He shot a few candid photos of the company before and after our work in progress.

This first one is the pre-show circle that we always do before a performance. I love it (despite the giant bald patch it shows off!) because I'm always in the circle and don't get to see it from the outside. It reminds me of baseball, actually - when I was a kid playing baseball I remind we would huddle like this before every game.


This photo is Wes after the show in our post-show discussion. He had only bleached his hair two days before, I think, so it looks very yellow in this photo. What is great about this image is how you can see the exhaustion (and exhilaration) in Wes. It proves how much work performing the show actually is.


I will post more soon, and so will the rest of us. For now, this is a pictorial beginning.