Devon- over and out!

It's been a while since we last posted and here come the reasons why- 14 shows, 10 days of rehearsals, 4 days of frantic rewriting, more phone call than we care to count, workshops, lost cast members, new cast members, over a thousand miles of driving, too many cakes and one near miss with a pack of wild boar. But, by way of an apology, here is a Devon round up, with a few gems of newly acquired touring advice dotted through.

Our Devon tour with Beaford Arts and Villages in Action was an absolute blast and we were overwhelmed by our welcome in the various communities. Here is Chloe at our 'stall' at Dolton Coffee morning, one of the BEST attended coffee mornings in the country (we have no figures to support this, but we reckon it's probably true). Here we got to meet four generations of the same family who all live in the village, whilst eating more scones than was strictly necessary. We used these community gatherings as a way to get to know our audience, and it meant that we could create a completely relevant and up to date daily report.

 Now this was our first rural tour, and we have learned a HUGE amount about what this means in reality. It means lovely people, lots of tea and biscuits, and often proper sit down meals with desserts. But it ALSO means adapting in a few short hours to every different space. Lizzy and Tim, our tour producer and tour manager, did an absolutely sterling job of ensuring that we knew as much as possible about potential issues and pitfalls, but no amount of prep seemed to ensure a completely smooth ride. Luckily we were always supported by the venue promoters in each location, here pictured attempting to create a blackout on the biggest window in the world using domestic baby black out blinds. It also saw the intrepid Chloe tinfoiling windows on a roof twenty minutes before the audience arrived!


*** RURAL TOURING TIP NUMBER 1 ***
Need to create a blackout? All you need is tinfoil and a water sprayer. Slightly damp tinfoil sticks directly to the windows, stays up as long as you need it to, and then comes down without leaving any marks when the show is over. Special thanks to Chris Jones for this particular lifesaving tip. You can have that one for free.


 We also performed at a couple of less rural venues- firstly, to a miniscule but high quality calibre audience at Outpost in Plymouth (who, again, promised a black out without mentioning the very large skylight).

***RURAL TOURING TIP NUMBER TWO ****
You can never check on the possibility of a blackout enough times. It doesn't matter if a venue has ticked it on a form, told you in an email or confirmed it over the phone. Ask, and ask again. Then ask that one last time that may risk the promoter thinking that you've lost it. Then top it off with one last check. Because I can't tell you the number of times that a blackout (which was central to the visuals in our show) was promised, and then turned out to be COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE. There, you can have that one for free too.

It's always tricky to know how a show designed specially for rural audiences and for their immediate surroundings will go down when transferred to somewhere altogether more neutral. The show relies on a sense of shared belonging, of ownership of the space and on the potential for that community to join together to create something magical/bonkers together for the space of the show.

If we're honest, we were particularly nervous going into the Exeter College show- we were concerned that they were completely the wrong audience for what we'd made, but we also knew the value of local theatre companies (especially, from our point of view, all female theatre companies) bringing work in for the students to experience, evaluate and hopefully be a little inspired by. We also weren't quite certain how to tap into that 'community'- it's a far more sprawling and vast one, and possibly a little less accessible for a bunch of middle aged actors. What places were important to them? What were their shared reference points? The diversity of the college and the students is one of it's strengths, so how do we find those areas where their interests cross over? How do we make the show speak to them?

Turns out our worries were unfounded and we relished the challenge of 're-pitching' the show. There's nothing like the thought of a slightly more 'dangerous' audience to help you interrogate the weak points of your shows. in fact, in the few hours we had to tech and dress the show at the college, we made changes to the workings and delivery of the show that we then kept for the remainder of the tour. So it was a really valuable (if slightly stressful) exercise. And it was very interesting trying to get the information together for a successful daily report too. We didn't get to speak to the students themselves before the show but we did manage to find some gems with the lecturers, office and support staff that really resonated with the students- some inspired spontaneous applause!

All in all, it was one of our most enjoyable performances, as we found that, despite our assumptions to the contrary, the students were the most generous audience we could have wished for. It was a true privilege to perform for/with them, topped off by the opportunity to go back the next day to run a workshop for the performing arts students. Again, what a cracking crew- so ready and willing to throw themselves into the silliness to find some magic. We were able to feed in some of the new material that we'd gathered for The Lost Tales of Gloucestershire, so the workshop was equally helpful for the students and for us. We posed a challenge to stage one of our new stories (The Hayrick) from the barest of bones of a story, and the vignettes that the students came up with were cracking. We were very open about the fact that they would inform our devising process, and I have no doubts that the little bright sparks that ignited in that drama studio found their way into our new show. So thank you, Exeter College- we couldn't have done it without you.

Whilst all this was happening, our designer, Ruth Webb, was busy working away behind the scenes developing ideas for our new stories. The one we were all most excited/terrified about was 'The Bears'- a story that divides communities to this day. We knew we wanted it to be powerful, but also sensitive. We also knew that it needed to be beautiful, so that we were giving back something of value to the people of The Pludds. Together with Ruth, we had hit upon the idea of the story coming out of the pages of a book, like a magical pop up story. The story was so important as a story, so we felt that it's 'story-ness' (not a word) needed to be captured in the aesthetic. Ruth created a truly astonishing set of pop up books and cut out characters, that we then set about lighting in various ways to show how a story can be manipulated and changed. Ruth also made Chloe some cracking mutton chops, which you can see being fitted in the above photo. Such is the variety of working on a touring show.

*** RURAL TOURING TIP NUMBER THREE ****
Work with Ruth Webb if at all possible. Just because she's brilliant.

More to come from us soon with news of the Gloucestershire leg of our tour and stay tuned for more half baked pieces of advice from the Theatre Rush archive of idiocy.