To the Sea!

Today, the Proto-type caravan makes its away across Yorkshire to the seaside of Scarborough. We will be in residence at the School of Art and New Media at the University of Hull, Scarborough for two weeks. During that time, we'll be working with 30 students exploring what it means to be lost, especially in a place that seems to be at the end of the earth. Using some of the structures from our summer school, but in a very different way, we'll provoke the students to think about making work in relation to site and then translate that work into a theatre. Looking forward to meeting the students and seeing what we can make together. But first I need to pack!

Besides preparing for Scarborough, we've had a busy year so far. We premiered Third Person (redux) to overwhelmingly positive response (phew) a week and a half ago at the Nuffield Theatre. Check out the pics below.




The premiere of Third Person (redux) has meant that our lovely intern Jenny is now finished with her internship. We'll miss her but are hoping to find ways of helping her build on what she's learned with us. I just went to Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester's Northern Quarter yesterday to listen to an audio piece that her company have made. The piece is called Chatter (great name) - check it out and you'll leave wanting a cuddle and a Sunday Roast!

We have also just returned from Bristol where we performed Virtuoso (working title) at the Wickham Theatre on the Bristol University campus. Always nice visiting Bristol and the Wickham. Such a nice team of people. Had a relatively full house and a good post-show chat. We have also been busy this year with a lot of behind-the-scenes activity... soon we'll have fancy DVDs of Whisper and Virtuoso (working title) for sale and we are also working on a book in conjunction with the Nuffield Theatre Lancaster about our Sunday Lunch Club programme. Add to that a fancy new administrator (Lisa, who will blog here soon) and a new room in which to store our equipment at the Storey Creative Industries Centre (thus returning our office to an office...not a storeroom). I've also been busy working on booking the autumn tour of Third Person (redux), so hopefully in the next few months we'll be able to announce some of the confirmed dates. In the meantime, you can catch it at the Greenroom in Manchester on 19 March. I'll head to the NRLA on the 20th and 21st March with Gillian - look for us if you are going to be there. Perhaps most exciting of all, we are now members of IETM which means I'll be heading to the plenary session in Berlin this April to do some mega networking. I'll also get a chance to see work by Gob Squad, Sasha Waltz, Rimini Protokol and Rene Pollesch. Looking forward to that.

After our residency in Scarborough, we'll start work on a new piece called cityEscape. It takes the city as its canvas and is a two-week long performance intervention. We're excited to leave behind the theatre for a while and spend some time developing locative / distributed performance. In early summer we'll do a test of it on the campus at Lancaster University. We'll post more about it as it develops.

Gay Paree

This weekend, I took a short trip to Paris to see some work in the Festival d'Automne and to try and conquer Paris for Proto-type. Although I can report that Paris is still French and not flying the flag of Proto yet, it was a fantastic trip filled with croissants, cafe creme and just a little bit of brouilly / cote du rhone...

One of the main purposes of the trip was to see Young Jean Lee's The Shipment which was playing in a Paris suburb at a theatre called the Theatre Genneviellers. My good friend Mikeah (and frequent Proto-type collaborator) is in the show, and he kindly arranged a ticket for me. It was good to see the piece as there has been a lot of hype about it and I know its touring everywhere. Interesting to see the kind of work that makes an impact internationally. The Shipment is structured in three parts (with no intermission): the first is basically a minstrel show updated to the current context of the performance space, the second is a sort of 'after school special' kind of parable performed in an obviously over-the-top robotic fashion, and the third is a domestic drama set in an upper-middle class apartment (presumably in New York). The performers were fantastic -some really detailed and energising performances from all of them in different ways. There were also a few stand out moments, like one section which included a beautiful song in three-part harmony. I left feeling somewhat puzzled though by some of the writing and the direction in general. I was really not sure how to respond to the material - was it meant to be lampooning something in the first half or just doing a stand-up comedy/minstrel performance? Was the third part meant to be a kitchen sink drama? It felt like it was veering into the realm of soap opera but I couldn't see any commentary on the form. The first half was meant to offend, I think, but I couldn't tell where the commentary was there either. The middle part seemed an attempt to inject a bit of playfulness / stylisation into the piece but, again, wasn't sure if I was meant to care about these people or what they were saying really... And the link between the parts didn't exist in any strong way for me. Its puzzling because Young Jean is probably my favourite contemporary writer - she has written work that has absolutely blown me away in the past. Not sure why I was left so puzzled this time. I'm sure I just need to digest it a bit more because most of the people whose opinion I trust have said such good things about the piece. Need to see it again I think.

A lot of my experience of Paris this time around was centred on some of the street culture of the city. I filmed these high-school age boys doing a dance called Tecktonic while having a meeting at the Palais de Tokyo. It is a crazy, jerky, arm based dance that is a derivative of vogueing but as if you are on speed or are a robot. I found it mesmerising and could have spent all day watching them go at it. Some real attitude in the form. I love, as my friend Ben said, that on the streets of Paris the big craze is dancing (not gun fighting, stabbing or spitting as in other cities I've lived in/live in).

I also kept seeing some lovely street art in the Marais where I was staying. Here are a few snaps from my phone:






I particularly like that last one. Something very endearing about seeing an 'olde worlde' man in black and white on the side of a building. Its like he is peaking through time to visit us. These bits of art served as my markers in my walks around the city; navigation points that helped me find my way home each night.

I left Paris wondering about what Europe means.... England and France could not be more different, although something about the cultures of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands feel very related. I wonder if England is really in europe at all culturally. I think the English could learn a lot from the European approach to cafe culture and food, and certainly to the arts in general. I was literally bombarded by high quality art work everywhere I went in Paris that seemed to be well-supported and well-attended. What is England doing wrong that the arts are so poorly attended and valued? Maybe we all need to eat more croissants?

Summer School Photos

For anyone who is interested, we have been posting images from the Proto-type Summer School on our Flickr page. Check it out by clicking the image below.

Hilarious Poster

Just wanted to share this ridiculous poster that I saw when we were down at the Exeter Phoenix doing Whisper.
It is for 'professional wrestling. Nicki and I came across it at the taxi office on our way out. We were kicking ourselves that we couldn't stay to catch it. Some really scrawny men on the poster (and one or two beasts). Would have been good fun. I have a soft spot for 'pro' wrestling. Or 'wrastling' as it was known where I grew up.

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.