This morning I start with a cup of tea – stirred with a spoon that had stirred coffee yesterday… I can taste the two not quite mixing.
It is a disturbing off-kilter start to the day.
My friend and colleague Tanya Harrison (Titch)
http://bit.ly/1ipxDrD Production Manager at the National Theatre in London could always tell when a spoon or cup had not been 100% washed after being used for coffee. She liked her tea pure! “ I can taste the bloody coffee!”
She worked with me on our national tour of Egusi Soup
She came on as an Assistant Stage Manager, but ended up being defacto Production Manager. The Production Manager we had employed was a nice guy but had some disorganised thinking and one thing you cannot be is disorganised in production management – time is money and disorganised is a waste of both. Tanya is in her mid –twenties but looks about 15 (!) she is tiny ,.. in fact she is known by everyone as Titch.
To say she was a powerhouse would be an understatement.. never judge a book by its cover etc.. Tanya was a master carpenter, strategic thinker, list-a-holic who after ten minutes would have any hardened crew of techies running around doing anything for her. She was without doubt the best Production Stage Manager I have ever met. Reason… she was talented – really good with tools, worked to plans, worked to timetables and lists and never let them get out of hand and most importantly she was a plain talking people-person who saw solutions not problems…and infected this feeling in everyone. If you worked with Tanya you had a job to do and you better do it and do it well or else … no tea for you!
Today I was supposed to be going to see a dance rehearsal for one of the choreographers on the Meyerhold course but it has been cancelled so I have a chance to plan and plot other projects…
I am seriously interested in us bringing our play bloominauschwitz to Moscow. Bloom is a new play by Richard Fredman which we developed for Hotbed last year and are working on again in advance of touring next year. It is a one man show featuring my colleague Patrick Morris. It tells the story of Leopold Bloom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Bloom
Ripped from the pages of Joyce’s Ulysses to project forward in history. It is a brilliant play and performance, which we are hoping to tour nationally and internationally…
Performances on 12th July 2014 in Cambridge
http://www.junction.co.uk/artist/6499
here’s a snapshot video of the production as a work in progress:
So I explore some possibilities. For Moscow for 2015 production of bloom.
I have to make it happen. It is important that I use my new contacts and networks to get our work seen here. I think between The Meyerhold and Moscow Arts Theatre School we can get this done. However the space I would love to get the show is the brilliant Gogol Centre –
This a really inspiring space that broke the old Reparatory Theatre model to produce work that is fresh and dynamic.
The Gogol Center hosts four resident companies — Serebrennikov’s Seventh Studio, the Dialogue Dance Company, originally from Kostroma; Vladimir Pankov’s SounDrama ensemble; and the so-called Gogol Maly, or Little, Drama Theater, comprising actors from the old Gogol Theatre troupe.
Serebrennikov: http://bit.ly/1ljteFV
The theatre scene in Russia is changing and this type of space is doing great things. However there are also some disturbing developments with new rules coming into place which are essentially censorship including banning certain words, sex acts etc. More on this when I have more information.
The Theatre leaders at Meyerhold were telling me how challenging this was going to be and how depressing…
Back in the USSR..?
Chai anyone?
Paul Bourne on tour 