At last - The Tomb of Spirits

All the rewrites and timing alterations are complete and 'The Tomb of Spirits' opens at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge at 2pm today.  Here are some photos from the last rehearsal I attended, which featured half a dozen or so students coming in to photograph the proceedings.

The three cues are all very long, the third over16 minutes, but I will post an extract or two in the near future.

Teaching and performance commitments in Norfolk make it impossible to attend but I shall be thinking of Sally Brown, Anthony Best and director Steve Tiplady at two o'clock this afternoon.

The Tomb of Spirits

Another show for the Fitzwilliam Museum is coming together nicely. Last Friday I went over to Cambridge to see how The Tomb of Spirits was developing and to discuss the audio requirements. The exhibition which runs alongside the show is of Han dynasty tomb goods from two tombs: a minor king and an emperor's brother.

Since I got back I've been recording dew drops falling into a jade bowl, entombed to make sure the deceased did not go thirsty in the afterlife. Not having a jade bowl to hand I tried a singing bowl and a pyrex dish before settling on an IKEA soup bowl. The challenge is to get the quiet drips recorded above the 'noise floor', the background hiss of the recording gear.

There will be plenty of scope for bamboo flute, dulcimer and Chinese percussion. A search for Chinese music on YouTube yielded some disappointingly cheesy results until I remembered The Guo Brothers who set the bar very high. If I can recreate even a flavour of what they have done I shall be very happy.

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Last Wednesday all the museums in Cambridge stayed open late for an event called Twilight at the Museums. The lights were switched off and children issued with torches in order to see the exhibits in a new light. All except at the Fitzwilliam where torches were distributed but the lights remained resolutely on. The institution remains nervous after the high profile shattering of two Qing dynasty vases by a hapless visitor a few years ago.

The brightness of the lights made the recital of Jabberwocky a challenge. Indefinite Articles had opted to illustrate the Lewis Carol poem with projected sand drawings and shadow play. My role was to set the scene with music and provide an illustrative, and entirely improvised, soundscape between the verses.

The six performances were very well received and no one commented on the reduced impact caused by light falling on the screen. As is often the case with live theatre, I imagine that everyone assumed this was how it was meant to be. And many people watched the show more than once. Having seen it from inside the gallery they came round to the staircase to see it from the other side. Here they could observe Steve, Sally and our vorpal swordsman and 'beamish boy' achieve the effects.

The screen was hung in the doorway at the top of the stairs that lead up from the grand entrance. The landing provided our 'back-stage' area while I soaked up the limelight in the gallery where I could respond to the images.