Little Red Robin Hood

I have spent a fair amount of the last two weeks writing music and creating sound effects for Garlic Theatre's new show. I have composed most of the music for the previous four Garlic shows but Iklooshar, one half of the 'husband-and-wife' company, was keen to score this one by herself. My role has been to take up any slack and advise on technical matters and, in the event, very little of my work made it onto the final performance CD.

Little Red Robin Hood sees the merry band turning up to a performance of Robin Hood only to discover that there has been an administrative cock-up. In fact they must perform Little Red Riding Hood. Various shenanigans ensue as the scheming Sheriff of Nottingham, now recast as the Bid Bad Wolf, sees an opportunity to win Maid Marian for himself. Unknown to any of the group, the real Wolf has other ideas.

The play's dress rehearsal took place yesterday afternoon in front of an invited audience at Norwich Puppet Theatre. Having watched the various scenes being worked and re-worked over and over, I was looking forward to seeing the finished article without directorial interruptions. However, through some mis-communication between the director and me, I arrived an hour late and just as everyone was leaving.

But all is not lost. It is playing at a local primary school on Tuesday morning so I can go an catch it then when it has 'bedded in' a little. And as it's just out along some country lanes I'm looking forward to getting there on my trusty bicycle.

Edinburgh

Firstly, apologies for the picture. I took it on a walk along Salisbury Crags one afternoon and the view looks more or less north-west towards Calton Hill and I'm looking into the light. And the picture isn't really 'tourist' Edinburgh. What you see in the foreground is the Scottish Parliament and it is the modern face of Scotland. It's a 'new-build' and was beset with problems, not least of which was the cost which soared from an original estimate of £40 million to a cool £440 million. Another time I might take a closer look. It lay outside the Festival bubble that I inhabited almost exclusively for the three weeks I spent in the city.

After an afternoon performance of The Chalk Giants in Norwich we dismantled the set and packed it into the back of the Puppet Theatre's long white van. Tim, the lighting engineer, and I drove through the night, arriving at dawn and managed a couple of hours' sleep before our technical rehearsal began at 9am. The rest of the company arrived by car an hour behind us.

The two technicians provided by the venue, and who alternated over the course of the next three weeks, had obviously been instructed to be strict with the visiting companies. Although we had negotiated an extended get-in, only 15 minutes was allowed in which to strike our set and vacate the auditorium. As we did this the next act had to get their set past us on the narrow stairs and onto the stage as our 15 minute get-out coincided with their 15 minute get-in. We were given a solemn warning that fines, at the rate of £10 for each minute would be meted out to companies that took longer than the time alotted to clear the stage.

We quickly established a highly efficient routine but there is no doubt that our elaborate set, including a fair amount of technical equipment, suffered as a result of the time constraints. However our technicians, John and Neil, thawed considerably over the course of the run, taking a keen interest and becoming very helpful. They also had the lighting cues, which Tim had given them before hopping on a flight back to Norwich, off pat from the outset. And we became so adept at striking the set that 15 minutes seemed overly generous.

Even so, I had little time to think about photography. But here's a rare shot of Steve setting up for Pinocchio. The toy theatre belongs to the Chalk Giants set and is there so we can pre-set the lights as that show played straight after.

September's free music game

This one is called Biddly Biddly Bop and I got it from an actor friend called Lucy. I usually post a game at the beginning of each month but various factors contributed to a delay this time around. It's an excellent back-to-school activity or workshop icebreaker. Enjoy.

Good vibrations?

I played at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts earlier today, a building designed by Sir Norman Foster on the UEA campus to house the Sainsbury art collection. The jazz/klezmer trio of which I am a part is not especially loud but we do amplify ourselves. And I remember playing here in a nine-piece salsa band some years ago which certainly packed a punch.

It occurred to me that future generations may be shocked at the damage our noise has done to the molecular structures of the works on display, some of which are thousands of years old. I completed an archaeology degree at a time when the practice of leaving parts of a site untouched (so that scholars as yet unborn could one day apply techniques that would make ours appear crude by comparison) was still a recent development. It was symptomatic of a new humility in science: the idea that although we may be at the cutting edge of knowledge we may not yet be the finished article.

I love playing at SCVA but will do so henceforth with a slight feeling of unease. But I notice the venue never seems to hire any operatic sopranos so maybe they're way ahead of me on this. Should I ask to see their risk assessment paperwork or keep schtum and be grateful for the gig?

August's free music game

If you have yet to visit my website you may be unaware that there it hosts a number of music games that are free to use and require no special equipment, knowledge or training. And every month, in addition to that, I post a 'for one month only' game. This month's is a listening game. It is called Detective 2 and is a development of Detective which is on the free music games page.

And this may be the last post for a while as I'm off to the Edinburgh Fringe with The Chalk Giants (pictured) about which much has been written already. Enjoy your summer.

The Chalk Giants

I must have spent the last four weeks or so on this show but it has been well worth it. It opened last Saturday but the four of us closest to it, meaning the two actors, the director and myself, have continued re-working it in the light of audience response. I was down at the theatre yesterday painting a screen to hide the projector from the auditorium, having my two-tiered work top measured for curtains and black felt table tops, and labelling cables and equipment to make the technical gear easier and quicker to set up. I also did some work on a puppet stand, hastily knocked up with hammer and pins in the lunch break immediately prior to the dress rehearsal, to make it more road-worthy.

The photo is back-stage at an early stage of development. We only use one overhead projector now but it is still a technically ambitious production combining live video feed, shadow play, animation, pre-recorded footage on DVD, live action and, of course, puppetry . And then there's live and pre-recorded music supplied by your humble scribe. We use tie-clip radio mics to allow the actors to be heard when they are behind the projection screens. They also allow me to put a 'giant' effect on voices as required. The scariness of this means the show has a '5 years and over' age rating.

I know I am very biased but I can't recommend the show strongly enough. We have three more Norwich shows before heading to the Edinburgh Fringe next week where we'll be playing at Zoo Roxy on Roxburgh Place at 11.40am each day from August 6th to 23rd. And if you're a real puppet junkie I'll be accompanying Pinocchio on my clarinet at 10.30am in the same venue on each of those days.

I haven't told you what the show is about. Well, think Jack and the Beanstalk meets Jack the Giant Slayer but from the giants' perspective. But that's only half the story...

The Road Movie

I'm currently collaborating on a new puppet show called The Chalk Giants. It's to to be premiered next weekend at Norwich Puppet Theatre where it will run for just over a week before we take it up to the Edinburgh Fringe early in August. Without giving too much away we are incorporating moving images taken at key points along the chalk escarpment that forms the geological divide between the south-east of England and the rest of the country. We began by filming on the beach at Hunstanton in Norfolk a week ago last Thursday. The chalk cliffs there have a spectacular pink seam running through them which caught the sun very well. In case you are wondering at the way the chalk has separated itself by colour I can tell you that it is down to human intervention. One Michael Joseph Kennedy, an Irish accented denizen of the town, has spent the last fifteen years shoring up the sea defences by piling rocks from the beach against the base of the cliff. The colour scheme is his doing.

It takes about 80 minutes to get to Hunstanton from Norwich, whichever route you take. However, this was nothing compared to the next day's odyssey.



I set off a little before 6am to collect Kevin the cameraman and off we drove to our first port of call. Sally, one half of Indefinite Articles, lives just outside Cambridge by Grantchester Meadows, immortalised in song by Pink Floyd. I couldn't resist a quick look and found it just as peaceful as the song suggests. At 7.30am I saw one jogger and no one else.



Next stop was Buckingham for breakfast and I took a picture of the famous gaol. And then on to do some filming at Uffington White Horse, south-west of Oxford. It was a bakingly hot day and we wore black for the shots but the location and the views it provided were worth the effort. There is are other white horses in England, made by cutting away the top soil to reveal the chalk beneath, but the one at Uffington, thought to be about 3,000 years old is both the oldest and finest. It is highly stylised, its lines full of movement.



Next we took what was to be a short detour for a drive by shot of Stonehenge. A wrong turn, a pause for lunch and one of those traffic jams on the A303 where people get out of their cars to stretch their legs meant it took somewhat longer than we had hoped. I was driving so no picture. However, the light was poor and the famous landmark was not looking its best. I remember going for picnics there as a child - free parking, hardly any visitors and the stones, the fallen ones at least, were great for climbing on. Now it resembles a military compound.



Finally we made it to our goal, the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. Here we met up with Steve, the other half of Indefinite Articles, who had been in Stratford directing a puppet for the Royal Shakespeare Company's rehearsals of A Winter's Tale ("Exit, pursued by a bear...")

The Cerne Abbas giant may be a relative newcomer, the first historical reference dating from 1694 and no real evidence to demonstrate greater antiquity. One theory suggests it was carved to poke fun at Oliver Cromwell during the protectorate. He is very well endowed - a giant in every sense - and another theory explains this as being the result of a Victorian re-cuttting which accidentally (?!) extened his member by incorporating his navel.

We performed for several takes using the hillside on which it stands as a backdrop but didn't climb the hill to peer over the fence that guards it. Instead we retired to the Royal Oak in the village for a well earned pint of Badger and the best pub food I've eaten in years.




The drive back was not quite as long but it was 2.30am by the time I parked up back in Norwich. Still, it's great to get out and about from time to time. And now to work on the music for the show.