Because without stories... where would we be?

That is the final line of our show, The Lost Tales, and a few weeks ago we performed the show for (perhaps) the final time. So it is high time for a round up of the project- oh, the places we've been!

We are currently knee deep in our Arts Council Evaluation, a process which can, if we're honest, feel a bit like a school assignment. There's a real sense of duty, of trying to get it right and also of being as honest as you can possibly be, for fear of the teachers discovering that you might have stretched the truth a little bit. You need to look back, with slight trepidation, at what you promised, all those months ago in your Arts Council Application, all those 'we will engage this hard to reach audience' and 'we will develop our relationships with these artists' and see how far you drifted from the mark. You have to include facts and figures, weigh the value of your project against audience numbers and website analytics and demographics and, to be frank, it can all feel a little bit bleurgh.

But do you now what? I'm actually having a bloody lovely time. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about this sprawling beast of a project, and I promise you I won't slip into Arts Council Evaluation speak too many times.

What we set out to do
We wanted to create a performance event that would bring a community together for one night, to laugh, to celebrate the stories that surround them and to be joyously creative. To throw caution to the wind for one night only, in between the village hall announcements pre show and the raffle at the end, and to discover... something about themselves as a community. To leave aside divisions or village politics and to make something anarchic and magical together, that could be talked about and enjoyed for weeks, months or even years to come. So, we created a narrative framework, based around our Story Exchange walkabout characters Martha and Freddie, and created their world a bit- a world where the characters work tirelessly to uncover, share and save the stories of villages from county to county, a rag tag crew of vagabonds, pushing their barrow thanklessly through the night to perform their tasks. Tasks which, to the wider world, seem utterly pointless and ridiculous. Find a story, tell it, and keep a little something of it so that it isn't forgotten again.

We also knew that we wanted to create a story telling show that was GENUINELY relevant to it's audience. I think I had seen a lot of storytelling shows that seem to follow a really predictable pattern and I really didn't want to make that kind of show. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is we were avoiding, but I certainly knew that we needed to make something that spoke to audiences NOW. So, not just dredging up dusty old tales from the past, told again and again, in ye olde English dialect. Not just holding up these 'traditional' stories as the only ones with any value. And we also knew that we didn't want to find our stories through Google.

What we did

So we set out on field trips across the counties we would be visiting, visiting as many villages that we were going to take the show to as possible, as many as would have us. And they told us the stories. Over countless cups of tea and tupperwares of homemade cakes, we were regaled with tale after tale, some as old as the hills and some from last Tuesday. Some anecdotally brief and some sprawlingly intricate. And we scribbled them down, each and every one, and wove as many of them as we could into our show.

Chloe manning our stall at a village hall event in Dolton

Our structure allowed us to carry three main tales from each county, and these needed to be the major players. They needed to have a good narrative arc, have the possibility for some cracking characters, and they also needed to serve a purpose within the show- they precipitate developments between the two characters. So that helped choose between the hundreds of stories we had heard. But then there was also space for a song from each county and, within the framework of our 'daily report' around 8 briefer stories from each individual village. This allowed us to be relevant to the whole county BUT, most importantly, to the actual village community that we were sharing the space with each night. I loved delivering the daily report. We had wanted to surprise people, to give them this gift of shared knowledge, to say 'hey, your story, your village event, your anecdote, your local news, all that is important enough to make it onto this stage'. It felt respectful. We didn't want to just perform a play and hope they liked it. We wanted to animate something of theirs. To polish up something that they may not have known was special, and to place it, all shiny and silly and wonderful, on the stage for everyone to see.


The show opens with a monologue from Martha that was written to resemble the opening of any village hall meeting. We really wanted these frayed edges to the evening, and the flexibility in our script to respond directly to a community. So rather than 'turn your phones off' and 'quiet please' we were able to compliment the village hall committee on some lovely handmade curtains, announce the details of the raffle that would follow the show or, as we were asked to in one particular village, welcome a new family to the community.

One of our audience volunteers

Near the end of the show, when Martha and Freddie have hit crisis point and are on the point of giving up, an audience member stands up and delivers an amazingly ridiculous 'you're not going to give up, are you?' speech with the Braveheart soundtrack swelling around them. We wrote this in when our third performer left at short notice- her character had brought about the change at this important point in the show and we couldn't make the play make sense without it. When we were first frantically rewriting the show to be a two hander (we had about two days to make it work) we were exasperated, and felt that we were never going to be able to get back the magic that we had found at this point when there were three of us. But boy oh boy am I glad we had to turn to an audience member for this moment. I can't think of anything more moving and fascinating to watch than a non performer fully committing to something on stage. Every speech at every village was so vulnerable, so genuine and so different that I couldn't fail to be moved. It was at once completely hilarious and tear jerkingly beautiful and I wouldn't have gone back to having a third performer do that speech for the world.

Another amazing audience volunteer

The show ends with the creation of a brand new story, made on the spot with the whole audience- the story of now. This was, invariably, hilarious and COMPLETELY out of hand, and very, very live. This is my favourite place to be as an actor. I love the possibility present in that anarchy- it feels dangerous and brilliant all at once. Often these stories would start a little creakily as the audience begin to make tentative suggestions. At the start of this process (which is fully embedded in the
narrative of the show- we have to make this story or something TERRIBLE will happen), audience members try to get it right. They make safe suggestions as to the time and place of the setting. But with each titter, with each knowing laugh, as we guide them towards places that mean something to them, the story begins to take off- inhibitions are thrown off and things start getting wonderfully rowdy. Audience members join in, heroes of the community are 'volunteered' and those that have never dreamed of setting foot on the stage are cajoled (in a good natured way) into ridiculous wigs and compromising situations, to the true delight of the whole room. And this story is completely created by the community- so each is unique. I contains all the quirks and humour and geography of that place. It will often weave in current affairs with historical figures and it ALWAYS goes to unexpected places.

So when the show ends, and the raffle is won, and whilst Chloe and I start gently packing away our
gear, we can hear the delighted buzz of stories. People telling their versions of ones we have just told, people congratulating each other on their turn on the stage, people telling the latest gossip, people planting the seeds of new stories to be told for years to come.. on and on into the night. WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO. And that feels so, so wonderful.

The end
And all of the above is quite possibly why I'm finding it hard to admit to myself that this project might be over. Don't get me wrong, we have been very ready for this to be over! It has lasted so much longer than first planned, because of THREE babies arriving and us needing to stretch out the project, and Chloe and I feel a burning desire to work on something different- there are a few things already bubbling away. And we really don't want to be defined by this funny little Story Exchange world, which arrived quite by accident and has dominated our creative work for so much longer than we could ever have expected. But I also think that perhaps our funny little Lost Tales show has more to say, for more communities, especially in this mixed up world of fake news and suspicion and relentless bloody elections. So, you know, it ain't over til it's over.

Because, without stories, without our unique and marvellous stories, where would we be?

I shudder to think, don't you?

We swapped babies for this photo

Best Laid Plans...

Dear Theatre Rush supporters (wherever you may be),

This is Katie, writing.........
And this is Chloe, interjecting! 
We'd like to start with a deep, big, heartfelt apology. Because, unfortunately, we are having to postpone the Wiltshire leg of our Lost Tales tour. Anyone who knows me will know I don't give up easily. She's stubborn. Thanks Chloe. You're welcome. But after having exhausted all the options, we feel that this is the best way forward. We have been so lucky that our rural touring partner, Pound Arts, and the lovely promoters have met this news with understanding and empathy, and we are still very excited about bringing the show to Wiltshire in the very near future. But for now, allow us to explain...

First, some facts about artistic projects.

1) You have to plan ahead. Really far ahead. In order to secure funding to research, write, rehearse, book and tour this show, we started the planning over a year ago. 

2) It's a bit of a lottery. After an application to the Arts Council has gone in, you have to wait 6 weeks to find out if it's been successful. If it has, you're all systems go. If not, it's back to the drawing board to rewrite the application and start the six week waiting game again. 

3) You have to try to look into the future. Nobody knows what is around the corner but you have to plan to the best of your ability and take a few risks along the way.

Secondly, a few facts about trying for a baby.

1) You have to plan ahead. Really far ahead. But you also can't plan too far ahead because, you know, it might not happen for years.

2) It's a bit of a lottery. Sometimes it happens straight away. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. And each time you've got to wait about six weeks to find out the answer, and then it's back to the drawing board. It's a waiting game.

3) You have to try to look into the future. You can't just sit and twiddle your thumbs. Plans have to be made. Jobs have to continue. Especially if you're self employed and you create your own work. 

Hopefully you can see the dilemma? Well it wasn't particularly subtle... The original plan was baby first, project later. But fate didn't get the memo and, instead, the two things happened at the same time. In fact, a grand total of three Theatre Rush babies have been born during the 'Lost Tales' project, so it's been a busy couple of years. Especially for Chloe, who has been left holding the baby, as it were, whilst the rest if us were holding our actual babies. 

But anyway, there we were, with a tour booked and a baby on the way, so we did our best fortune telling and decided that by three months I would be able to finish writing the play and by five months, I could be combination feeding the baby so I would be able to do a bit of performing. But it seems little human beings don't follow plans. So last week I found myself with an ill five month old baby, who can't take a bottle, who doesn't like to be put down, who wakes up to feed all night long, who sleeps with me in bed and who won't settle for anyone else. I haven't slept in weeks, my birth recovery was slow, and I often can't string sentences of more than three words together.

And this is where I stepped in. I could see Katie was struggling, and the practical conversations about how we were a) going to rehearse and b) going to perform  a tour with a five month old were getting more and more complicated. 

But also, and this is perhaps the most important thing for us as a company, we weren't going to be able to give you the show you deserve. We want to give you our best, not a foggy, under-rehearsed, sleep deprived attempt with a baby wailing from the wings. We want to do it, and you, justice, so we knew that the only way forward was to postpone for a short while. THE SHOW IS WRITTEN and we are so excited about bringing it to you in the New Year.

We promise to keep in touch and to let you know when we'll be rescheduling the show. We're also more than happy to answer any questions. Also, there are smaller, local elements of this project that still will be going ahead, as they are close to home and predominantly led by me, allowing Katie to baby juggle. 

And, just in case you were wondering who had caused all this kerfuffle, allow us to introduce the monster of the moment, Henry Ray. All I can say is, it's lucky he's cute....

And just in case you were wondering how I found the time to write this...

Like Chalk and Cheese

So, there has been a rather large, baby shaped gap in our blogging. Sorry about that. But it's high time we checked back in as we prepare for our final (probably) instalment of The Lost Tales for the forseeable future- WILTSHIRE!

Just to set the scene, I am typing this in the dark, to the sound of white noise (which has, since February, become the soundtrack to my life) with a miniature human sleeping (a little fitfully) beside me. I spend a lot of time in the dark with white noise and fitful mini humans these days. But bloomin' heck, those mini humans are cute.

Anyway, Chloe and I have been hard at work finalising and developing our new stories for our Wiltshire run and along the way we have been picking up many a delightful nugget of wisdom. And my favourite so far is the idea that the division of Wiltshire into North and South may well be where the phrase 'like Chalk and Cheese' come from, with the predominance of chalk on one side (of the A303!) and cheese as the main commodity emerging from the other. Who knew?

Chalk and Cheese has also sprung to mind a few times whilst trying to balance the two warring sides of my life right now, too. On one side my passions and my energy for my creative work, writing the new show, and on the other, Henry. Like chalk and cheese they have such different needs, and one can be a BIG distraction from the other. Chloe and I did manage to get the three new stories pretty well plotted the other day, but we had to do it with the mini beast lying on the bed right next to us. Could you concentrate with this gurgling away at you?!

Don't worry though, people of Wiltshire. Work continues apace, and we hope that you are going to love the stories we've chosen. There are a few classics in there, but we'll be giving them our Theatre Rush twist and adding a good old dose of silliness.  Our designer has the briefs so we may well share a few glimpses of the props when we get hold of them.

But for now, I must sign out. The ocean waves are a-crashing (white noise), the sun is a-setting (I go to bed at 8pm these days- rock and roll) and the mini human is a-murbling (he had his jabs today- this may well be the only sleeping he does tonight) and I must hit the hay.

More than just Moonrakers

Recently we started work on researching our last county for The Lost Tales tour- land of standing stones, mist and rainbows, white horses and chalk downs, Wiltshire.

Something we've found on our little forays about the country, both for this project and our walkabout act, is that landscapes really do change as you cross this small island of ours. And Wiltshire was no exception. In fact, it felt that as we passed the 'Welcome to Wiltshire sign', someone pressed a big button and turned the dial to 'classic Wiltshire landscape'. Almost immediately we were chasing cloud shadows across huge, undulating chalk downlands under a sprawling winter sky. It looked REALLY Wiltshire-y. Which probably sounds like a stupidly obvious statement, but hey, I'm really very pregnant right now and that's probably the best you can hope for in this particular post.

First stop was the charming village of Colleton Kingston, where we were welcomed into a well established coffee morning that was well supplied with cake (so well supplied, in fact, that our lemon drizzle returned home intact, much to my daughter's delight). Now here come a few more over generalised statements- you have been warned. Wiltshire is an interesting place, in that it is so very different from the other counties we have visited. Devon seems defined by sea and moor, Gloucestershire by the forest and the rivers that carve up the landscape and the people. In both counties, we were never short of opinions from locals on what defined them as a people, as a county. Geographically, there was a strong sense of otherness  and uniqueness. In Wiltshire, though, this wasn't so apparent. Instead, it felt that this was a county with more blurred borders. Surrounded by other counties on all sides, there was less of that definitive character, and more of a sense of being part of the whole. A few stories we were told shamelessly crossed the borders into Somerset or Hampshire- that would NEVER have happened in Devon!

Even the tale that purports to define Wiltshire folk as a collective, The Moonraker's, holds no great importance in the culture of the people we spoke to. Unlike 'The Bears', which is still so potent and sensitive a story in Gloucestershire, the villagers that we met seemed ambivalent about this story which either casts them as wily smugglers or simpletons, depending on which version you encounter. So even their relationship to stories themselves felt different. Maybe the openness of the landscape and the proximity to other counties created an openness in the way that stories were shared, and passed on and mixed together. 

As with all generalisations, however, there are exceptions to the rule. And here is a big one. Wiltshire IS divided. But not by anything cultural or geographical. No, Wiltshire is divided by... the A303. That great road of roads. Maybe it's naive to say that this isn't cultural or geographical, because the road holds such a powerful position in the county. It slices up Wiltshire into North and South, a boundary that reared it's head in a number of the stories that we were told during our time there. And it has almost mythical status. There's even a whole book written about it. It is similarly the bane of locals lives during Solstice and the lifeblood of the county, connecting village inhabitants to the big cities at it's either end. According to some residents, this is what allows the villages to stay alive, this access to work that allows them to remain in the villages that they call home.

And then there is the biggy. The place that jumps to mind first when considering the county, and certainly the first image that jumped out in our internet research. Stonehenge. We were expecting to be snowed under with stories from this iconic place. We felt certain that stories lurked amongst it's stones. But not, it seems, for the local people in Colleton Kingston and Kingston Deverill. In fact, despite us driving past it TWICE in our short trip (we were pretty excited about this), nobody even mentioned it and we had to crowbar the subject into conversation. The feeling amongst the folk that we talked to was pretty unanimous- it isn't really for them. One resident told us that she only ever goes there when she has friends or family staying from abroad. That, as a place, it holds no great significance in their lives. Mostly it means traffic. Traffic jams and tourists and new road plans and 'that place you drive past on the way to work'. 

It may be a bit of a challenge piecing together this next iteration of the play. For one, I've got to go and have a baby, which by necessity is going to create a small hiatus in creativity. But also, the stories that we uncovered were less of your robust, told-and-told-again, beginning-middle-end type stories. They felt a little more ephemeral, a bit harder to pin down, much like our experience of Wiltshire itself. So the process of drawing out the main three tales feels a bit less straightforward than, say, Gloucestershire, where the three tales pretty much wrote themselves. But then, all the best things come out of a challenge I find. So, watch this space. And maybe take a little trip to Wiltshire while you're waiting? It's blooming beautiful.

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester... Theatre Rush didn't

But we did go to GloucesterSHIRE, and here are a selection of mini stories, thoughts and notable events from our travels.

1) We did the bears
We were scared. We knew it was important to do and we were aiming to give the story back. To give it gentle new life without trying to own it as ours. We wanted to do the opposite of what the story had become notorious for- it had been stolen from the villages themselves and sharpened into a serious insult. One resident remembered a time when their cottage had been graffitied with ‘Who Killed the Bears’ just when they'd moved to the village. This was normal and expected. So our performance at the Pludds was the one we were most nervous about. We really didn’t want to offend anyone, and it felt important to attempt it. And if we're honest, we had been hearing a lot of opinions at the other villages. People were always very quick to warn us about 'The Foresters', and how they'd hate us doing the story, and how they were glad we were on wheels to make a quick getaway. And we're ashamed to say that this gossip was starting to work on us. It got under our skin a little bit, and the stories that were being woven amongst the company were of inevitable failure. If someone had given us a ticket to not do the show, we probably would have taken it.

Fast forward to the night of the show. We had met the lovely, lovely promoter who had filled us with tea and confidence, and the chair of Air in G was there too to show support. So far, so good. But we still hadn't met the audience. In fact, no tickets had been pre sold. As we hid backstage, we were both imagining a row or two of stony faces. But as the pre show minutes ticked by, we could hear more and more of a buzz gathering in the foyer. We even heard happy laughter and boisterous good humour. But these were foresters! Foresters are suspicious and stern. Foresters don't laugh... do they?

We feel pretty silly that we were so caught up in the rumours before we got here. Because this was a marvellous audience. In fact, of all our shows, right across the two counties, this one turned out to be our hands down favourite. It was a total riot for the first hour. But then we came to The Bears....

There was an audible gasp/groan when we tentatively hinted at the story we might do next. And this was followed by intense silence, punctuated only with intakes of breath. We reached the end and the silence remained. But it was a respectful silence. None booed. None left the room. Sure, there was no applause, which we used to get sometimes after each story. But the silence had changed, and it was something like a slightly reluctant acceptance. Afterwards a lot of people came up to us. Some just wanted to talk about the bears story- how they know the story, how it had been used against them and what they had heard. And some came to tell us that they approved of our version. the compliment was never given lightly, or with ease, but perhaps the fact that it felt hard won made it all the more special.

Plus on the way home, we nearly ran over some wild boar. So a pretty brilliant night had by all.

2) Three became two

Another rather notable event was when our third performer, Rachel, was unable to continue for health reasons, leaving Chloe and I a duo at short notice. Our first thoughts were that we had to cancel- we had no time to rehearse anyone in. But this project has been such a labour of love, and while we discussed the practicalities over the phone, both of us were secretly, almost subconsciously exploring another option. That we go on and do what we can. 

I remembered a performance I had seen of The Reduced Shakespeare Company when I was a teenager. During the chaotic first scene, one of the actors left the stage for a costume change… and never came back on. After a brief pause, the other actors went to check and then came out asking if there was a doctor in the house. The long and short of it was that the first actor had broken his leg backstage and was unable to continue. We were all told that we would be receiving a refund there and then. But the the remaining two actors offered to attempt to carry on. It would be bonkers, they said, and it would make even less sense than before, and it would probably be rubbish, but if we were up for sticking around, they were up for giving it a go. The audience erupted in cheers, nobody left, and I have never forgotten that moment, or how impressed I was with the show they created. It felt even more special than the polished three person performance that we should have been seeing. Buoyed by this, we decided we had nothing to lose (other than a bit of sleep and a few hundred extra calories), and we made the offer. All three remaining villages accepted and so it was all systems go.

We worked out we had about an hour to go over the script together, so I made a stab at rewriting it for two and found that generally it was quite straight forward. In some places we had to cut speech altogether. In other places it could be reassigned to other characters. Dramaturgically it was a pretty interesting exercise. In fact, I’d recommend doing it in the writing process for any new play- it helps you properly assess how involved each character is in any part of the play, and how ‘valuable’ you have made them. So essentially, cut a character and see what happens and you get to know your own play a whole lot better. Other things were impossible to get around, so we hit upon the idea of involving the audience where we couldn’t practically do without a third actor. Why not? They were there, they were a resource, and we couldn’t do it without them. This threw up number of wonderful moments in the play, and one in particular that worked so well that we couldn’t believe we hadn’t written it that way in the first place. 

Our first stand in Gertie

Our stand in Gertie for The Pludds

Essentially, the character of Gertie has a cracking, Braveheart style final speech to attempt to bring The Story Exchange back together when it's in danger of falling apart. Narratively it just couldn’t be cut. But when you give that speech on a piece of paper to an audience member who stands up just as Freddie is about to leave the hall, then the speech really starts to make sense. And the performances, mostly completely unrehearsed (although one fantastic volunteer from the Found in the Forest youth theatre came in totally off book, putting Chloe and I to shame!), the performances were raw and breath taking. I found a few times that I just couldn’t act when it was happening, I was so moved by their willingness to just go for it. And the meaning sang through, and now I can’t wait to play those in the remaining venues on our tour this summer. From an awful crisis (nobody EVER wants to cancel a show), we were forced to find solutions that absolutely sang. Had we been clever we would have thought of them in the first place, but fate has been our friend.

3) We got to know stuff

For us, perhaps one of the unexpected wonderful things to have come out of the tour has been our new found knowledge about certain parts of the county. It’s not necessarily immediately useful information- I certainly couldn’t direct you anywhere, or tell you what the main industries are or where you could find the nearest Tesco’s. But gradually our tour, a bit like a gigantic join the dots, started to come together and then unravel to reveal hidden gems. I know that if I ever drive near Kempley in the Spring that I would suggest a detour to see the famous Wild Daffodil bloom, so famous that people come from all over Europe in tour buses to see it. Or I could tell you that Stroud is the place where the fabric gets made for snooker tables and tennis balls. And I could tell you that there was once a pot bellied pig called Baldrick who used to roam the lanes of Clifford’s Mesne, and who was sadly lost in the foot and mouth epidemic. And these were just the first that sprang to mind, I didn’t think particularly hard to recall these. What a wonderful thing, to leave with such beautiful, peculiar and particular knowledge about places that make barely a dot on the road map. 

4) Lizzy had a baby

In amongst the chaos, our wonderful Producer, Lizzy, gave birth to an equally wonderful baby girl, Willow. She is 100% cute. And, much as we have missed Lizzy on this bit of the tour, we've been very happy to welcome our new Tour Manager, Tim Bland, to the team. Theatre Rush (alongside Katie's waistline) is expanding and that can only be a good thing. Exciting times.

5) We saw the show working 

In Kempley (you remember, the daffodil place) we witnessed the show working in a way that we had hoped might happen, but probably didn't truly believe would happen. Our hosts here were just fantastic, and the village felt so vibrant and alive. Roy wanted to welcome a new family to the village, as this would be the first village hall even they had attended. Normally he would make a speech himself, but as our show starts with a speech anyway, we convinced him to allow us to work that information into our opening spiel. So, the family were introduced and welcomed by name, which was already a lovely use of the show as a vehicle for community cohesion.

But then things went further, as the father ended up being an intrinsic part of the show during one of our sections of audience interaction. He gave a fantastic, silly and VERY funny performance (if memory served it may have involved an exotic dance) to absolutely rapturous applause. And his children had a wail of a time watching their father doing all manner of wonderfully silly things. That particular evening's events ended with a raffle, which we got to watch from the back of the hall, and I found it all profoundly moving. As the new family won a prize, and everyone cheered, and then they left to a good natured chorus of congratulations and good humoured teasing (and everyone knew their names) I thought, ‘what an amazing way to enter a village’. With mirth and good humour and laughter. Those first awkward conversations all dealt with, a shared experience helping to break any ice that may have lay between them. It was a result none of us could have foreseen, but one that will stick with me for a long time. 

6) We're looking to the future

And the future holds some pretty big challenges for the company. We have the next stage of our project, taking in Wiltshire and the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton. But we also have another company baby on the way, AND Chloe's ongoing project on water, and a curated residency at The Bike Shed. So, for the next year or so, Theatre Rush will be boldly setting off charting the choppy waters of being an artist/parent and, although we are daunted, we are also pretty darn excited. We're thinking we may have one or two things to say about this balancing act, so do keep reading, and also get in touch if you have any experiences you could share. 

But for now, onwards warrior women, and let's have some fun.

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.

Batley, you ain't 'alf beautiful

It took us eight hours (and a lot of emergency lunging) to get two pregnant (and one very patient) Story Exchangers up to West Yorkshire for our final walkabout outing of the summer. (On the upside we did get through eight episodes of Serial). It felt like the end of an era, as next time we do a gig there will be two mini Story Exchangers causing havoc about the place! But Batley, you beaut, you didn't disappoint. Everyone was SO friendly and up for a bit of fun and we had a lovely day. The weather weren't half bad either!

So here is our Story for Batley, written one word at a time by festival visitors, starting with a pork pie and ending up with a flying pig. It might have had something to do with the nearby pulled pork stand....

A STORY FOR BATLEY

Exciting, beautiful Amy was very nervous, swimming and eating a Pork Pie! She courageously bit into a wasp, which was crunchy. Spiderman Ahmed was flying high towards the sky. He saw Amy jumping onto a skyscraper and clapped. Amy smiled evilly as she jumped through the hole and fell, then died and woke up in a different family in China, and fell asleep.

Morning began and she went to see the Sausage Hills in Disneyland, they were really crackers! After a dinner party, bizarre things happened. The characters started to do a play and dance, drumming frantically and jumping!!

Singing cat jumped out of the door and got scared by a scarecrow. Unfortunately a scorpion scuttled through the distance. but Mozart played music and it calmed everybody down. 

The pig has fleas and he is going to scratch them all out. They flew away to call bigger friends... who were mean friends. All of a sudden the pig at the flies. He ate so many flies he started to fly, so then he remembered a girl called Amy and knew she went to China. So then the pig went to China to find her.

To be continued.............