Some blogs to check out

Thought I'd draw your attention to some blogs of some performers that I've come across. They seem pretty interesting and you should check them out...

http://www.orgonpoquelin.blogspot.com/
http://www.jacqueslemime.blogspot.com/
www.renard-letartuffe2009.blogspot.com

Keep an eye on them...

Edinburgh 2009 continued...

Just a little update as to the status of Belt Up's 'The Tartuffe' and 'The Trial' this coming festival...

Tartuffe and the Trial now have full casts and venue and time slots. Both of these shows will be performed in Belt Up's 'The Squat' in C soco. The space is going to be in a burned out, warehouse type building, hopefully all safe but everything is fire damaged so it has a really beautiful aesthetic going on.

The Tartuffe will be performed at 20.50 everyday from the 5 - 31st August. The Trial is being adapted from the Kafka by Dominic J Allen and is being performed the same days as Tart at 23.30 so look out for both of them!

Those of you who saw Tartuffe last year, expect more of the same but bigger, better and funnier! Trial is going to be a nightmarish experience so watch out for that one.

It's all getting very exciting now, rehearsals are underway and tickets go on sale from June so buy quickly!

Edinburgh Festival 2009

Preparations are now underway for Belt Up's work at the festival this year. Here are the plans so far....

On the 18th and 19th of August we will be part of the Edinburgh International Festival as part of our award from last year. At the moment we're working towards a short devised piece called 'Léasspell' which is Anglo-Saxon for fable - it's going to take an archetype from literature and follow it through English culture from Anglo-Saxon to modern day, via Chaucer, Shakespeare etc. It's going to be performed as part of the EIF's 'Behind the Scenes' programme in the form of a work in progress workshop. Very much in embryonic stages but a nice chance to experiment.

Across the majority of the festival we will be playing with another experimental show based on the myth of Persephone. This is attached to the Forest Fringe and will run durationally across the month. It's not going to be a conventional theatre piece at all and the 'audience' may find themselves stumbling upon snippets of scenes without them realising. There wont be any set times or tickets and every day will be completely different so it's looking to be quite a borad piece to experiment with. Keep your eyes peeled!

Finally with Belt Up we are doing two shows in C-Soco. The first being my adaptation of 'The Tartuffe' and the second being Dom's adaptation of Franz Kafka's 'The Trial'. Last year we had our own venue, a dilapidated burlesque lounge called 'The Red Room' but this year we're going to the other end of the spectrum with a burnt out attic. The shows are going to be very much audience led so don't expect a comfortable ride!

I'm also writing an adaptation of 'Doctor Faustus' but I still haven't checked my inbox for details on this!


That's all for now! More info coming soon...

Writing

This here is the second post of this here, my blog

The reason why this blog has come into existence is mainly due to me losing steam whilst writing. As I'm neglecting this writing to write this post at the moment, I thought it only fair to say a little bit about what I'm working on currently...

Firstly, I've been playing around with what is essentially my first wholly original play, 'Ark'. It's going well and is on the fourth draft, I'm probably going to do another one before sending it out to the world and his wife in the hopes that someone is interested in producing it. It's a post-apocalyptic play set in a bunker but that's all I can really say as the main driving force is the stuff you do or don't know so I wouldn't want to spoil anything - this is of course hoping that somewhere wants to put it on and there be something to not be spoiled. I've sent it to a few friends and relatives and the feedback's been quite good - my Nana noted two pages where the 'f-word' was overly used but apart from that they seemed to like it.

Simultaneously I've been working on an adaptation of 'Doctor Faustus' to be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe at some point in some venue I'm not sure of, I don't know when or where it will be but I'm assured it will happen and be directed by Kate Shenton - I'll post full details when I root them out of my overly filled email inbox. It's going well and becoming a meta-theatrical burlesque show run by the seven sins all talking in a hybrid language of modern English and 'thieve's cant' which has been quite fun to play with - let's me say horrendously offensive things that only a few people will decipher. It needs a bit more work though and is one of the things I'm neglecting most by writing this post.

Finally, I'm working on the third version of my adaptation of Moliere's, Le Tartuffe. The first version was produced at the York Universtiy Drama Barn in 2007. The second was highly remixed and plunged into an immersive, audience responsive style for Belt Up's 'The Red Room' at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe. This version is feeding off of last year's version but changing the setting to an abandoned, burnt out attic - it will work from the same meta-theatrical world as the 2008 version (at some point I'll explain Tartuffe and Belt Up's style but it's getting late now) but I'm expecting a lot of the text will be completely revised. This version's very much in its infancy though so I'll no doubt be posting more on it later.

So, basically they are the three things I'm working on currently and should probably get back to...

The First Post

This here is the first post of this here, my blog.

That is all.