Closer Each Day Special

To help promote the juicy storyline of Fritz Hamburg's murder in Closer Each Day: The Improvised Soap Opera, I created this fun little poster. The show is tomorrow at The Wardorbe Theatre and should be mega good fun as always.

Pool Out Of The Pool

Last week I took part in Pool Out Of The Pool at Bristol Diving School, an interactive exhibition that invited the audience to take part in a new aquatic sport on-land by Megan Clark-Bagnall. The showpiece of the night was on a giant pool table marked out on the floor and 16 people wearing crash helmets decorated up to look like the different pool balls on a pool table. As two members of the public played pool on a real table with balls, we would replicate the movement of each ball by bouncing around our large replica table. It was a fun evening.

Arts Marketing Talk for Theatre Bristol

This afternoon I was invited by Theatre Bristol to talk about arts marketing, and particularly the role of social media in theatre marketing, at Pervasive Media Studios to an audience of international theatre makers as part of a Open Out Arts: Leonardo Project. I spoke for 15 minutes about the role and importance of social media in marketing a theatre company and production as part of a wider marketing strategy, including ideas on how to increase you audience online and techniques to engage with your online audience effectively, citing many examples. It was an interesting event that I would certainly consider doing again if asked.

Ablutions debut at Bristol Old Vic

After over a year of devising, workshoping, adapting, developing and rehearsing, Ablutions (the new production by FellSwoop Theatre on which I have been working as Creative Producer) finally debuted at Bristol Old Vic to three packed houses between 16-18 April. The piece is a dark, funny, heartbreaking and at times very bleak story of a bartender trapped in a downward spiral of drink, drugs and self-loathing in a grim dive bar in the back streets of Los Angeles - adapted from the novel by Patrick deWitt. The show features an original and live score, the beautiful and rhythmic language of the novel, and has a really gut-wrenching and captivating story at its heart. Working on this project has been a really wonderful journey and one I cannot wait to continue as we tour this summer and next spring.

Operating Wildbore

All this week I have been at The Wardrobe Theatre operating the lights and sound for the theatre's latest production called Wildbore, written by and starring Jesse Meadows. The show was a beautiful and heart-breaking look at a relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter and was staged very intimately in the round with the theatre really feeling like a living room. During the making of the show, I attended some R&D dates, was invited to several preview performances to give feedback and I also took a couple of production photos for the piece.

Closer Each Day at Bath Comedy Festival

Last Friday I travelled to Bath with Closer Each Day to take part in The Sitcom Trials as part of an event put on by Bath Comedy Festival at the Ring O Bells pub in Bath. Closer Each Day were the special guests at the end of the night and improvised a new sitcom based on an audience suggestion. The sitcom this time was called "The Royal Crescent Family" and followed as a super wealthy couple as they spied on working class folk through a telescope in their house.

Utterance - The Wardrobe Theatre choir

Recently I joined The Wardrobe Theatre's choir led by Verity Standen called Utterance. The group is a fantastic mix of young adults of various experience and abilities and I have been really enjoying rehearsing and performing together. Our first gig was last weekend at The Birdcage cafe and is was an amazing packed night that also saw Utterance collaborate live with the new folk band, Smash Bongiorno.

Ablutions Photoshoot and New Poster

On Monday 18th March the lovely people at Haus Bar allowed FellSwoop Theatre to invade the building for the morning to orcestrate a photoshoot for our upcoming production at Bristol Old Vic, Ablutions. Charley Murrell is an incredibly talented photographer and after a busy morning, she produced some really brilliant photos. The images were so good in fact that we decided to redesign the marketing for the entire show to incorporate them and so for the past week I have been designing a new promotial image for Ablutions. Here is the final result which I am extremely happy with and is already causing a stir around Bristol:

Final Ablutions Rehearsals

Team FellSwoop have just emerged squinting into the daylight after an intensive and thrilling 14 days of devising, adapting and rehearsing Ablutions in various spaces across Bristol. This was the final time we were all to be in the rehearsal room together before the show premiers at Bristol Old Vic (16-18 April) and we’ve seen the show evolve in many new and exciting ways with the aid of a mime artist, a lighting designer, an outside eye, and innumerable close friends and theatre makers who each gave really valuable feedback. It feels like Ablutions has finally settled on something that I and the company are really proud of and excited about and all that's left is to finally show it to people properly!

Tales From The Bar

Last Thursday 21st March, FellSwoop Theatre ran a lively night of music, storytelling, performance and fun at The Birdcage, a new cafe/bar in Bristol. The event was called Tales From The Bar and was a fundraising event for the company and also served to bang the drum and start building momentum for our new show Ablutions due to premier at Bristol Old Vic between 16-18 April.

During the night there were several performances from some fantastic musicians including Ichi, Guilty Party, James Graham, Frankey and Luxury Liner, a new country and western band made up of characters from Ablutions. The night's performance highlights included a Wild West happening from The Original Spinners as well as a few walkabout characters in the room (including myself as I played as a Las Vegas croupier) and a very memorable Blind Date spoof from Luxury Liner.

Dead Can Dance Music Video

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day at Weston-Super-Mare Helicopter Museum with a group of friends appearing as an extra in a proposed music video for Children Of The Sun by Dead Can Dance. The video was directed by Kai Murphy and can be viewed here:

Closer Each Day at Bristol Improv Festival 2013

Between 3rd and 10th March 2013, the Bristol Improv Network hosted their first Bristol Improv Festival at The Bierkeller Theatre. The week was a fantastic combination of local and national improv based performance and Closer Each Day was there in force! For the first time ever we performed an episode of The Improvised Soap Opera outside The Wardrobe Theatre and it was a real smash, with over 100 people in the audience. Closer Each Day also submitted a team to take part in the Improv Throwdown as part of the festival and placed 2nd out of eight teams at the end of the night! We got so excited about it all we even recorded a stylish trailer for the show starring Big Dick Johnson:

Programming Summer at The Wardrobe Theatre

For the past few weeks I have been working hard with my co-Directors at The Wardrobe Theatre to programme the rest of the venue's summer season May-August 2013. The full list of events is now available to view on The Wardrobe Theatre website but one particular highlight that has stood out is that once again the theatre will be taking part in Mayfest, Bristol's annual festival of contemporary theatre. After sending out a call for artists and meeting with MAYK, we have now programmed our second week of Mayfest at The Wardrobe that will see 7 new shows by emerging artists have their Bristol debuts at The Wardrobe Theatre between 20th-24th May 2013. Click here for details.

Interviewed for Closer Each Day by Bristol Improv Network

Last Tuesday evening Andy Yeoh of the Bristol Improv Network came along to perform alongside the regular cast of Closer Each Day in a special guest appearance. Whilst there, he also interview me and Andrew Kingston about Closer Each Day's upcoming show at the Bristol Improv Festival.

Here can read the full interview by clicking here.

Video Feature about The Wardrobe Theatre

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by two young film-makers called Matt and Ben as part of a video feature they were producing about The Wardrobe Theatre. The video is now ready to view below.

Weekend Retreat with FellSwoop Theatre

Last week the entire FellSwoop Theatre gang and I relocated to Dorchester for a couple of days to really focus and continue work on our new production (Ablutions, adapted from the novel by Patrick DeWitt, will premier at Bristol Old Vic in April). This weekend retreat was the first time the company had been in the same room together since rehearsals in December and it proved to be a fantastically productive weekend of work, company bonding and singing at the sky with trips to the countryside, the beach and...er... Oxford Playhouse. It was really useful to get everyone's head out of Bristol for a few days and just dedicate ourselves to Ablutions day and night. During our Dorset stay we managed to carry out a much need re-evaluation of the show, rewrite much of the Ablutions script, and even managed to compose a handful of country and western songs together. Yeehaw! This should all put us in very good stead for when we re-enter the rehearsal room in March.

Season 5 of The Improvised Soap Opera

The improvised theatre company I am currently Managing Director of, Closer Each Day, are about to start Season 5 of our fantastic Improvised Soap Opera at The Wardrobe Theatre. Every other Tueday at the venue between now and July, 12 or so actors will improvise a brilliant soap opera full of romance, tragedy, comedy and adventure as the community of the fictonal Newtown. This will be the longest season yet at 13 episodes and along the way, Closer Each Day will also be performing an episode of The Improvised Soap Opera as part of Bristol Improv Festival on 5th March at The Bierkeller Theatre. Can't wait!

Programming Spring 2013 at The Wardrobe Theatre

For the past few months I have been working really hard to programme The Wardrobe Theatre's Spring 2013 season and today the brochure was finally launched to share with everyone the terrific line-up of theatre, comedy and unique events we have coming up between January and May. We continue to support new and exciting theatre being created locally but for me, the highlights of the season are new work from Ed Rapley and Sedated By A Brick. I'm also very excited about another new venture for the theatre called Centre Spread; this will be a monthly night of topical theatre as local actors perform some scenes and sketches in direct response to items in the news that week. The first one will be on Monday 4th February. For the past few weeks I have also been working very closely with Ben Goodman to design the brochure for this season:

And here are a few posters I designed for the season: