Ignore the Forecast

The Home Correspondence audio has arrived!

2011-11-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

Finally here: http://thehomecorrespondence.blogspot.com/ ... more uploads to come daily.

Attempting to Escape London

2011-09-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

As the weather turns, I am looking for a last escape from the city this summer. It has been a long season of being outdoors and spending the last few weeks under roofs instead of canvas has become claustrophobic. I am hopefully heading to the lovely Gather event in Cornwall this weekend with The Tree of Lost Things. The event will be celebrating Resurgence Magazine's 45th anniversary. It seems I spend a lot of time looking for ways out of the city and not being in command of my own set of wheels makes this not a little tricky when your travelling with wonderous (but bulky) instillation art. If anyone can help with a journey down this Thursday 22nd or friday 23rd then get in touch- ekirstyh@gmail.com. I shall reward you with a bespoke piece of performance artsy wonder.

In other news, I am creating a website of my own work. I believe this will make me into a real person. It takes something virtual to justify the actual these days apparently. Oh, I'm sorry I seem to have mistaken this blog for a scene from The Matrix. Ehem. Link to that will be up here shortly.

Home from Home

2011-08-01T06:58:00.001-07:00

The Home Correspondence was a huge success at Cambridge Folk Festival. We have nearly 100 recordings of people speaking their letters home- these will be compiled into an online archive in the next week or so (once I have the clever gadget that will convert old-school cassette to wizzy mp3s) and I shall pop the link to that here when its ready. This archive will grow with following contributions to the project in the future (we are already part of Parabola Arts Centre's Autumn Programme). We have hundreds of pins in our maps where people have marked their true home.

As ever, the audience at Cambridge Folk Fest were lovely and receptive to something a bit different in the programme and it was such a supportive environment to start something very exciting.

Thank you to everyone who contributed. Also, massive thanks to Anya Tavkar, Will Emsworth, Helen Preddy and James Owen - The Home Correspondents. I have never enjoyed camping meals and waiting for a kettle to boil more than with this lot. We certainly made a Home from Home.

The Home Correspondence Pics

2011-08-01T04:24:00.000-07:00

Off Adventuring...

2011-07-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

I've just put the finishing touches on the map of the world we are taking to Cambridge Folk Festival for The Home Correspondence. We leave tomorrow ('we' being the delightful Helen Preddy and the equally smashing James Owen) in a van full of the entire contents of my bedroom which is usefully providing most of the set for the project. Very excited to be premiering a new piece of work in such a lovely, supportive environment. The piece will hopefully draw together some of the strands of my musings on Home over he past year and a half and will hopefully be an opportunity to collect lots of stories of home from the audience at the festival. I am also very excited about wearing a jumpsuit all weekend.

Here are some pics of the signage I've been making in the garden of my new (and relatively permanent) Home...

Tree of Smee

2011-07-18T02:36:00.000-07:00

Something I made for someone named Smee.

More Neverhome Pictures

2011-05-02T10:16:00.001-07:00

Thimble Gifts

2011-05-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

Lovely piece by Lyn Gardner about the things left behind as reminders of a performance (she mentions Neverhome, where I gave each audience member a thimble as they left): http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/may/02/theatre-shows-that-haunt-us

I love to give people things, gentle echoes of ephemeral moments. Maybe when they touch their gift, they’ll recall something they felt or thought because of a piece of work. I like to think this extends the experience for as long as they keep the object. A particularly pertinent object can change the tone of a piece of work once you have stepped out the door, can be a bitter-sweet epilogue or a whispered question of oneself. Unfortunately, as with the thimbles in Neverhome, cost sometimes gets in the way of giving something to everyone. I put some of my own money into buying 250 thimbles for the One-on-One fest as I felt it was important. Multiply the cost of any small object by 250 and it suddenly becomes a costly element of a production. But for the joy and surprise tiny, tangible pieces of a fleeting moment can bring when bestowed, it is worth the expense. It may only be a thimble but it is also a lot more.

The Home Frequency

2011-05-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

We are creating a new piece for Cambridge Folk Festival. I am the lead creator and Allegra is producing it. It is called The Home Frequency. Sort of an amalgamation of my ponderings about home over the past few months as well as some new bits in a new travelling/instillation format. Helen Preddy, who came with us to Secret Garden Party last year, is coming and someone new -we don’t know who that will be yet but we do know they are lovely and have a vehicle. On the topic of this mysterious new person… is it you?

We need a new member of the Ignore the Forecast’s extended family to be part of the Home Frequency project. You need to be free between Wednesday 27^th July and Monday 1^st August, you need to have a vehicle (preferably a large car or van) and you need to be wonderful. Does this sound like you??? There is a small fee to cover expenses and of course a ticket to the festival. The Piece itself will involve talking to festival goers about home, so you should like people. And you should like getting stuck in, maybe getting wet and muddy, camping, making do and mending and, er, folk music. If this sounds like you (why haven’t we met already???) then contact me at ekirstyh@gmail.com.

Home: Found

2011-05-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

The theme of home in my work is hard to disguise and at times it did feel all too relevant that I had 218 intimate encounters with strangers (most of the time), making a temporary home with each of them whilst still being homeless myself. But now I have found somewhere to live and over a year of nomadism is coming to an end. I think the hardest thing about the last year has been not having a base in which to work from, nowhere to spread out sketches, make things and stay up late researching and reading. Nowhere to nest in. I am a nester. There have been brilliant parts; Old Chapel Farm, late nights talking to friends before sleeping on their sofas or in their beds. New places, new parts of London, living by the river, Christmas in Cornwall and learning to play spoons (which has since become more popular than I could have ever anticipated), freedom, falling asleep in parks (during the day – even though I have been technically homeless I am lucky that I have always had a roof over my head at night thanks to supportive and tolerant friends and family) and a summer of back-to-back festivals. But now I realise I can have all these adventures but with a home to come back to, and maybe that fact in itself will lead me to being even more adventurous. It reminds me of the verse we wrote on the hillside on the farm a year ago… “How happy are the birds, they come and go as they please; to the mountains, to the seas and home again with out rebuke.” Here’s to that.

Neverhome Pictures - taken by Jemima Yong

2011-05-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

The News...

2011-05-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

Well, there has been a lot between last time and this time. Here are the headlines…

Allegra opened here first season at the Parabola Arts Centre. It’s a brilliant season of exciting work including the sob-inducing Love Letters Straight From Your Heart by Uninvited Guests, Debbie Pearson’s Like You Were Before, Crocosmia by Little Bulb and a small something called The Tree of Lost Things – see outstanding programming! More info and tickets here: http://www.parabolaartscentre.co.uk

I became Head of Detail at BAC which involves looking at all the small things in the building – corners, skirting boards, dusts, tassels – and some of the big things too – walls, furniture, lampposts – and thinking up ways t o make everything look like it belongs in one loved and cared for place. A bit like an in-house interior/exterior designer only a lot more interesting and a lot more complicated.

I also created an instillation to celebrate BAC’s 30^th Birthday The commission was off the back of The Tree of Lost Things. I invited audience, alumni, staff, patrons and everyone in between to write postcards home to me at BAC to create a growing instillation of memories and journeys from the last 30 (or more) years. It has been lovely to read so many memories – some of which span 100 years of the building’s history. It will be up for a little while yet in BAC’s foyer so pop along and write me a postcard if you wish to be part of this incredible document. Pictures coming soon.

Final headline for now: I won a commission to create a bedroom and a piece of one-on-one theatre for BAC’s One on One Festival last month (if you’re getting the impression that I haven’t left the building in the past few months, then you’re right). It had to be based on a bedroom scene from literature. I created a room based on the Lost Boys den in Neverland, but they all decided to grow up and I was left behind. 218 one-on-one performances in 2 weeks. It was a marathon, but an amazing experience. The piece was about true homes and I invited the audience to recall theirs and to be part of my family. I now have an album of family members, their memories, and their preferences of imaginary tea (my personal favorite was rosehip and chamomile with water from Niagara Falls (thanks brother Neil). It ended up getting quite a lot of press: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/article-23934844-your-place-or-mine.do and an interview on BBC London which was a bit surreal. Lyn Gardner seemed to like it as well: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/apr/01/one-on-one-festival-review Hurrah. The room will remain pretty much as I designed it, along with 5 others by David Rosenberg, Melanie Wilson, Ray Lee, Kazuko Hoki and The Campinglis Bell-Halls. Artists will be able to stay in residence at BAC and be inspired by bedrooms created for them by other artists. It’s an honor to be part of this legacy for the building. Pictures on their way.

Wedding Album: Part 2

2011-05-02T06:17:00.000-07:00

Wedding Album: Part 1 - photos by James Allan

2011-05-02T04:46:00.001-07:00

Wedding, Home, 2011, Cake

2011-01-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

It has been a while. It has been a really long while. I am sorry.

So what's happened? Well quite a lot really. Allegra got married to David Jubb at BAC. That was quite exciting. And I designed the wedding. Which was quite exciting. And mental hard work. It basically involved dressing the whole of the old town hall, including the GRAND HALL - which is, ehem, grand. On top of that creating beautiful table settings for 400 people. But I think it went pretty well in the end. Sleeping is overrated. Pictures to follow soon, with the bride's permission.

The wedding has been described as 'the HELLO wedding of experimental theatre' which I think is about right. There were performances from Uninvited Guests (which I think was responsible for the vast amount of weeping before the ceremony had even begun) and Little Bulb Theatre. There was a bay tree (my fault), singing on the roof, Vivienne Westwood dresses everywhere and two people doing something amazing. There were also two other people doing something unmentionable in the Bee's Knees Room.

My favourite pre-wedding mayhem moment was spending a day loading an entire bay tree into a van with the delightful Sam and Daisy. At one point I was buried inside the van with all the branches mustering every ounce of dignity I had (which is negligible at the best of times) not to pee my pants with laughter. Daisy Gibbs is a very funny woman. The other highlight was playing 'guess my job' whilst driving round South London. If you can't work out how to play it from the title then you don't deserve the joy.

So now it is 2011 and there is a whole year of fun to plan. I already have my eye on a horse chestnut tree I'd like to move from it's current position to the other side of London. I think I'd like to fill this year with more smashing people, interesting spaces, festivals, beautiful things and music. Oh and cake. there was not enough cake in 2010.

I'm also making a new piece of work at the moment. It is about home. Having not had a home for 10 months, I think I'm in quite a good place to be objective. I want to call it 'The Home Service' but most people I have mentioned it to seem to think that sounds rude. More on this soon....

ooh and...

2010-09-04T06:26:00.000-07:00

Just remembered that we are on the Cambridge Folk Festival pod cast, http://www.cambridgefolkfestival.co.uk/interact/podcast.php. Click on Thursday and we are about 7 minutes in, just after Stornoway (which is a lovely place to be).

Music and Libraries

2010-09-04T04:39:00.000-07:00

Just found this whilst browsing around for photos of The Tree of Lost Things on the interweb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjuosRo-LeE. Nice to know we've inspired at least one creative soul. If anyone else has written a song about the Tree then send us a tape and we'll start an official chart of Lost Music.

In other news, Allegra and I have been plotting exciting next steps for the Tree, we want to turn it into a Library of Lost Things. We've been thinking about libraries, databases, due dates and all things involving logical order (this has been particularly challenging for me as I have a interesting skill of creating chaos if left unattended in any area for more than 3 minuets). Allegra loves libraries, I love the idea of libraries. I have always wanted to be one of those people who seek sanctuary amongst the books, the hush and the cataloguing systems. But I am just too loud and too messy. I am terrified of breaking the peace by tripping over my own feet, knocking over a display of 'Recommended Reads' then cackling loudly at my own clod-footedness. This has happened before. But maybe The Library of Lost Things will be a compromise between ordered quiet and chaos. The filing system itself will have to be pretty esoteric given the subject matter. We will be using categories such as 'Love', 'Opportunity', 'Underwear' and 'Time'. How do you file the Opportunities section? From the biggest to the smallest? How about Love? By the name of the loved one? Or by the kind of love? All sorts of interesting and essentially answer-less questions to chew over in the coming weeks.

We have over 5,000 labels and will hopefully have double that when I come to spend some consolidated time sorting them all in the new year. I am actually really looking forward to this process. When running the tree, we don't get the chance to read all the new contributions, only those that are logged in the Ledger of Lost Things. It will be lovely to spend some time getting a feel for overall trends as well as individual losses - at least it will be lovely for the first 1,000 or so, then I will start to go loopy.

Secret Garden Party pics

2010-08-03T03:21:00.000-07:00

I lost....

2010-07-31T05:38:00.001-07:00

- Posted on the go using BlogPress

Location:Cam Folk Fest

Hat and girl

2010-07-31T05:36:00.001-07:00

- Posted on the go using BlogPress

Location:Cam Folk Fest

I lost my fire engine

2010-07-31T05:33:00.001-07:00

- Posted on the go using BlogPress

Location:Cam Folk Fest

Tree of Lost Things

2010-07-31T05:31:00.001-07:00

- Posted on the go using BlogPress

Location:Cam Folk Fest

Stuff and Signage

2010-07-13T01:33:00.000-07:00

What do Ben and Kirsty like to do untill 1:30am on a Monday night? Well, dear readers, we like to make beautiful signs and get excited about aging effects. There was a particularly good moment at about quarter to one when we discovered that painting very watered-down white paint over the top of a coffee-stained and varnished surface looks quite cool (the varnish must still be wet). This is the finished product of our labours. Beautiful typography by Mr. Farrell, filling in the lines and any weird splashes of coffee by me. The dappled areas on the tree and bird are copperleaf - another moment of surface-decoration-induced-ecstasy.

Secret Garden Party Festival are sending a runner to collect all our bits for The Tree of Lost Things this morning (hence the spurt to make the sign). Its a strange feeling to be handing over all our bits and not to have to worry about packing them into the car with four people and a load of camping stuff (it is a small car). A large part of theatre making seems to involve lugging weird shit all over the country, and not driving means I have developed secret muscles, an innate sense of whether something will fit on a bus and a feeling of foreboding whenever someone says the words 'cant we just take it on the tube?'. Consequentially, my two top 'characteristics' to look for in a potential partner have become; 'can drive' and 'has a van'. Romantic huh?

Photo Gremlins

2010-07-13T01:16:00.001-07:00

Having some issues getting the bulk of photos taken off a memory card which apparently ceases to exist when plugged into a computer. So here a the few I have found for the moment... W

We lost the wine bottle for the shadow show dress rehearsal so thought a petrol can could add a different angle to the story, practicing fishing for the moon, us, wine, and the lamb about to be pit roasted by Kevin (right) and Rodger (the WWOOFer).

Endings and Beginnings

2010-06-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Writing this from stifling London. The bright lights and loud noises are startling and it is bizarre seeing more people than sheep in a day. The final night at Old Chapel Farm began with me ringing the old church bell to call the merrymakers inside. From here we began to tell our story and lead around 70 people over the site for an evening of poetry, shadow puppetry, instillation and original music amongst other things. There were definitely some hairy moments; particularly being upstaged by a pooing dove in the barn on my part and there was a particular issue with timing in general - apparently 70 people don't move that quickly as a whole. BUT, there were also moments of pure joy and amazement; the full moon rising over the far hillside just as everyone left the chapel after the final chapter was particularly magical.
After the performance itself was over, the evening rolled on in true festive fashion. Kevin pit roasted a lamb which was apparently delicious, the musicians played on into the early hours (Cornelius the mandolin player even got on his bike and cycled home at 5am!) and Gary told some of his traditional stories by firelight. Bella and I fell asleep in a field at one point and I apparently fell off the bench after a bit too much whiskey. There was singing round the campfire, led by the beautiful Orla (who also wrote a song especially for the show) and I ate the best sweet potato of my life (and there have been some good-uns). Bella and I even managed to run a workshop the next morning despite the horrific hang-over beasts that were smashing around inside our heads. We even fitted in a trip to the swimming hole with the other women WWOOFers before the journey home.
I think the real highlight of the whole evening was getting the chance to meet the local community and hear what they had to say about what we'd done and hear their stories in return for ours. There is such a wealth of story there and I cant wait to return to find out more. The story we created was born out of the location and the reasons for celebrating the time of year. I for one have a desire to create a piece of work that finds story from the inside out of the community. This trial residency seems to have lifted some threads which are ready to be teased out and drawn together into a richer, more complex and more human piece of work. All thoughts are to the future now... I think we've started something rather exciting.

Feathers and Fleece

2010-06-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

We are sitting drinking tea on the terrace. Bella is making a wreath for the Sun (played by Chris the Adventurer) and Shane is showing Andy Warren the recorder player our amazing words on the landscape. Kevin just walked passed with a barrel of elderflower champagne which is apparently ‘really fizzy’. Everything seems to be in place. We decided against another run through today. Maybe that was a bad decision but it feels like it might just run out our energy before tonight. We sort of know what we’re all doing anyway.

I promised I wouldn’t say this aloud but it looks like the weather is holding. At some point I shall stop making outdoor theatre but the plus points are too tantalising.

Bella is now decorating the wreath with pheasant feathers. We have decided Chris will be shirtless. And sombre faced. He will be slowly unwrapped from his binding to the massive monolith in the middle of the garden. The Blindman will unravel the chrysalis made from very thin sheep fleece (used for keeping the vegetables warm on frosty nights). This is the part where we stray into the realm of performance art/pagan ritual- not sure how it will be received in rural Wales but we thought it was worth the risk. It will at least give everyone something to talk about, or a reason to chase us out of town. We shall see…

One of my favourite bits....

2010-06-26T08:46:00.001-07:00

This is seen from the dovehouse before I slam the window and tell the story of the Moon's inability to commit. The quote is a 17th Century welsh proverb.

Farm Life

2010-06-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

Some photos from the farm; sunrise on the longest day, the yurt we are sleeping in (now refered to as 'The Ranch' by Shane), me walking to the swimming hole, swinging in in the woods.

Moon Magic

2010-06-25T12:21:00.000-07:00

We have just stumbled our way thorough a 'walk through' with Kevin Fran and the WWOOFers . It was quite exposing but there were definitely moments of magic. And moments of total farce. Its amazing how quickly things can come together after a fist run and some feedback. We've already re-jigged the sticky moments to work better. One good thing is that the story seemed to come across well and that's the point really.

We had a wonderful moment of collective compromise in the pond earlier. Shane and I were trying to submerge our giant balloon moon under a rock-anchored tarpaulin so that it could magically be pulled free by the man fishing for the moon and rise up to the surface to every one's amazement. This was harder than we anticipated... whilst I stood on the pontoon in my underwear looking into the murky leach filled depths of the pond below, contemplating how little I wanted to dive in and sink the balloon moon (Shane had already stated he could not go in because he 'is recovering from the flu'), who should walk by but Chris the valiant WWOOFer. He dived in with aplomb on our behalf but proceeded to loose both the tarp and the bricks to weigh it down almost immediately in the 6foot depth of water. His struggle ended in failure, apparently it's quite hard to pull a balloon down under so much water, let alone cover it with a tarp and bricks. We came up with a much better way of the moon appearing which involves Shane drop kicking it out into the pond whilst everyone is looking the other way at the Gypsy puppeteers. No swimming required.

Bella and I went down to the stream for a sunset dip last night, slightly pissed on honeysuckle wine. We walked home up the valley through a tunnel of trees, found a glowworm to guide our way and watched the moonlight illuminate the valley around us. Sickening isn't it? It is a privilege to be making work in such an incredibly romantic place with such inspiring people, but hopefully we are paying for it in sweat and stress as zero hour approaches. We ticked off lots on the mega list today which feels good. Perhaps we should burn the beast when we are done, though that amount of paper may be better used mulching the onions

What the Hell is Going to Happen - the List

2010-06-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

As promised, the mother of all lists.

Lists

2010-06-24T11:38:00.001-07:00

Today began with a mother of all lists. There are cross references for locations, props, costume and people involved at various stages (video to follow). When something is covered, it gets circled. Simple. We are crunching on through and some lovely moments have been devised.
I personally had some fun developing the character of the flighty moon who tells her side of the story from a cage in the dove barn. I think I found it easier once I identified the aspects of her that are in me; not being a natural performer I think she has turned out alot like Kirsty As The Moon who enjoys the falling in love more than the earth-bound reality. I also get to reference this Florence song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPLrqKrnYts which makes me happy. I countered this dramaturgical genius with some very shonky dancing with Gary under the Rhododendron tree, but hopefully people will be looking at the beautiful setting and Gary's perfect poise more than my two left feet at that point.

Shane has cooked dinner with Abraham tonight. Abraham has never cooked before but has the most amazing smiley face we have ever seen. He is volunteering here on the farm as a WWOOFER (volunteer through an organisation called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) along with Pauline from France, Yvonne from Switzerland, Alex from the US and Rachael and Chris from the UK. Its an amazingly varied bunch and they are all up for helping with the performance (we didn't really give them a choice about that). Chris will even be mummified and re-born as the Sun at the end of the piece. What a joy to have such a smashingly enthusiastic bunch of people to work with! Fran and Kevin had about 100 WWOOFers come trough the farm last year and they are vital to the running of the place and loads of other similar projects over the world.

Allegra visited last night and this morning and gave us some of her ever brilliant advice. It was invaluable to have an outside opinion from someone who is familiar with performance practice. She also had a few inspirational pep talks up her sleeve (as ever) which I would be lost without. Thanks for that.

Off to drink a bit more honeysuckle wine and to tackle how the blind man will fish the moon out of the pond. We have a giant white baloon and a digereedoo to hand to acomplish the task....

Lovers' Music

2010-06-23T02:35:00.001-07:00

Peter Timmins (on fiddle) and Andy Warren (on recorder) are local musicians who came round for the evening and played us some music. We thought this would work wonderfully for the lovers who nearly kiss under the rhodedendron tree. Or possibly to lead the audience from there to the pond where the old man fishes for the moon.

Exploring the Barn for Bird-Moon Lady Encounter

2010-06-23T01:44:00.000-07:00

This is us going for a wander in the barn, where the doves live. Thinking of putting me in the cage construction on the wall above the shit-filled bathtub. The Moon is a flighty thing and easily flustered.

Questions Questions

2010-06-23T01:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a day of questions; who is this man? Why do they say that? What’s the point of that bit? What’s happening again? When’s dinner? It was a long day with some sticky moments but we now seem to have arrived at a story and a journey. We walked it thorough with Kevin, Fran and some local musicians who came up for the evening and it felt like an important moment.
We are telling the story of a man, blinded by the light of his son, the Sun. The man shows us his memories and we see how he fell in love with the Moon when she fell into a lake. She gives birth to a Sun but we all know the Sun and Moon cannot share the same sky and she leaves the man with their brilliant child. The man cannot bear to look at his beautiful child as he reminds him of his true love too much. The man kills the sun, but as he is a star and now a dying star, he bursts in to a supernova of light, blinding his father as a last act of justice. But there will be other Suns as other men fall in love with other Moons and the sky and the wheel of the year turns again.
So that’s the nub of it. There are 14 locations, poetry, song, puppetry, a bird/moon woman in the dove barn, an eggspert hatching new life in the kitchen, a wake in the cellar, shadow-play snogging in the tree house and words written on the landscape in flour. We will cover life, death, celestial orbs, love so painful it leads to murder, murder so poetic it might be myth, hope, loss, memory and mourning, flighty lovers and the beauty of the Sun and Moon rising. We have four days, four players and no budget. Challenge Anneka has been blown out of the water.
So we will keep asking questions and questioning our selves because that’s how you make work and move forward. One question we shall not be asking is; can we do it? It’s better not to ponder that one too long, lest we give the wrong answer.

1st day at Old Chapel Farm

2010-06-21T11:36:00.001-07:00

Today we woke at 4:30am to see the sunrise. I was the official wake up call for the rest of the company who are here; Bella, Gary and Shane. It was worth the curses and the sight of Gary stumbling about in a sleeping bag. Violently pink sky over the hillside that slowly diffused through orange and gold on this the longest day of the year. We are staying in a beautiful Mongolian yurt in a sheep field next to the farmhouse. We had to chase the sheep out from under the raised platform on which it rests before settling down for the night.

We have been brainstorming since then, mostly fuelled on the inspiring places on site and tea. We have been playing with shadow puppets in the tree house, fishing a moon from the pond and comic strip bull fight (where the bulls are played by lambs in capes). We have also watched chicks hatch and tried the nettle beer (which is lovely after a few glasses).

Today has been a day of quantity; we have documented ideas all over the farm and have too much material already, but this feels like a good place to be. It’s too early to be editing , right now we want a messy mass of material which we can fish the best bits from. A story is starting to emerge from the chaos but it will take a bit of eking out.

This will be something different for the area and the audience and we are having to think carefully already about how far we push the weirdness. Can we expect people to follow a blind man by a spool of yarn reeling out from his back with their eye closed? Can we be sure they will want to have an intimate encounter with a man in a bathtub full of rose petals? Probably not. But that’s not to say we’re going to shy away from pushing a few expectations. If what we create is compelling and entertaining then we can get away with the off bath tub brief encounter. So that’s the challenge.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking, walking round the site and scrawling our ideas on a massive roll of mulching paper (used to cover the space between the 3000 onions planted in the top garden earlier in the year – as Fran says: “If you can see earth, weeds can see light.”). Somewhere we found time for picnic lunch on the lawn with salad and strawberries from the polytunnel- funny how we fitted that in! After supper, we are heading out to look at light. How it changes over the course of the evening and how this will affect the ideas we’ve had. We’ll be playing with torches, candles and lanterns and making shadow puppets. We shall also be drinking a few bottles of wine in the tree house, maybe to watch the sunset from there and end the longest day in the tree tops looking out over the vast stage we have to play in.

Lucifer

2010-05-20T04:14:00.000-07:00

I have just been told that there are 40 people buried under the chapel in which we will be based during the residency. There was also the story of Lucifer the Jackdaw who turned up on 06/06/06. He knocked on the door, so the family let him in. He then sat at the dining table for a week, refusing to move until eventually he snapped out of it and began to behave in a more civilised manner. I have no doubt we will have some difficulty in deciding which stories to tell here. I think the trick will be to reach a common theme and work from there; weaving in anecdotes and moments along the way.

The wind turbine has stopped moving. I spent the morning planting sweet peas and a bird just flew into the window.

P.S. Excuse the out-of-sync font on this post, some blogging gremlins are preventing me from towing the company style.

Sheep and opportunity..

2010-05-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

I am writing this from a beautiful 17th century farm house in mid wales. I can safely say I have seen more sheep than people in the last weeks I have been here. The nearest town is an hour's walk away, the wind turbine is currently generating energy for the house and this afternoon I am going to be picking a huge bucket of dandelions with which to make wine. This pioneering small holding is owned by Fran and Kevin Blockley (www.oldchapelfarm.org). They are artists, archaeologists as well as small holders and a host of other things. I am volunteering here to learn about sustainable living and building a community as well as getting some perspective on London life. Well, that's what I intended to do. What has actually happened is I have ended up planning a trial residency for performance makers and mini-festival in June.

Fran and Kevin are eager for their amazing site (encompassing the farm house, an 1820s chapel with church yard, sheep fields, ponds, 16 acres of woodland, an 18th century barn, yurts, a bus with a turf roof and a tree house) to be used as a place for artists of all sorts to make work in. This lead to discussions about my interest in creating a home for performance makers; a place that people can cook together, work together, drink together in a sustainable environment and generally call 'home' at least whilst making a piece of work.

The trial will take the form of a week long residency (based in the Chapel) for up to 7 theatre makers/artists/performers from London and elsewhere in partnership with local musicians. The first day's work will begin at dawn on the Summer Solstice (21st June) and end at sunset with a sharing of what we have created. This will inspire the rest of the week's work, like a huge brainstorm of ideas feeding and electrifying the project.

The week will culminate in a one-night festival for up to 50 local people (though this number keeps growing!). Everyone will bring food and drink for Midsummer feasting and the 'resident company' will curate a night of storytelling and music all across the farm. I have no idea what form this will take (that is for the week of workshopping to decide) but what ever happens it will probably be celebratory, unique and totally chaotic.

We will document the process throughout the week here and with video blogs so stay posted for that. Really very excited about this. The opportunity to make work with some smashing people in a beautiful, welcoming space is rare and tantalising and who knows where it may lead...

Witch in the Woods update

2010-04-09T04:23:00.001-07:00

We have just finished two days of workshopping Witch in the Woods at BAC. Exciting to get our new people all together for some concentrated time. I drew a most excellent map of the site, we thought about the rules of the game, the world of the woods and individual characters... Now we are all off to do research on everything form extremism to e-harmony. First hunt on the 1st May!!

Allegra x

Tree of Lost Things at London Word Festival

2010-04-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Alex Muller who took the amazing pictures below... see more pictures from the London Word Festival on his website: http://www.alexmullerphotography.com/

Tree of Lost Things at London Word Festival

2010-04-09T02:44:00.000-07:00

London Word Festival - Photos

2010-04-01T06:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all who came and made it such an excellent night in a beautiful venue...here's a few dodgy pics taken with my sub-standard camera. We should soon have a link to the photos taken by a very talented photographer...

London Word Festival

2010-01-21T03:34:00.000-08:00

It's a wee while away yet but best to get these things in the diary early; The Tree of Lost Things will be at The Art of Storytelling as part of The London Word Festival on the 31st March. The night will be held at Shoreditch Church with performances from Terry Saunders, Matthew Robbins and more to be announced. Hurrah.

More info here: http://www.londonwordfestival.com/?p=1278

There's lots of other lovely stuff happening during the festival so check out the rest of the programme too.

To The Lighthouse

2010-01-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

For my first post on our lovely Ignore The Forecast blog, I'm going to take a leaf out of the equally lovely Allegra's book - incidentally, I was fortunate enough to admire her extensive collection of novellas whilst housesitting her abode with Kirsty, where I made a lifelong friend in Jet the cat.

I'd been meaning to read Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse for quite some time, mainly thanks to the Patrick Wolf song of the same name, and and also because I'm in love with the imagery of lighthouses. I'm halfway through so far, and although I'm finding the style and language quite hardgoing in places, I've already been captured by a few quotes that I've decided to share here.

'Indeed, he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream.'

'And that's the end', she said, and she saw in his eyes, as the interest of the story died away in them, something else take its place; something wondering, pale, like the reflection of a light; which at once made him gaze and marvel. Turning, she looked across the bay, and there, sure enough, coming regularly across the waves first two quick strokes and then one long steady stroke, was the light of the Lighthouse. It had been lit...
...he kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the Lighthouse tomorrow; and she thought, he will remember that all his life.'

How we lose things

2009-12-16T03:25:00.000-08:00

I just read The Mark on the Wall, a short story by Virginia Woolf. Here is an extract about Lost Things:

"To show the very little control of our possessions we have - what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization - let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses - what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble - three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ - all gone, and jewels too. Opals and Emeralds, they lie about the roots of turnips. What scraping paring affair is it to be sure! The wonder is that I;ve any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour - landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heals inn the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a racehorse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard..."

Big Brother Bash - Pictures

2009-12-12T03:44:00.000-08:00

Technology

2009-12-12T02:37:00.000-08:00

Until recently, most of our props list have looked something like this:

marbles
labels
ink
rubber stamp
Ledger of Lost Things
felt-tip pens

But now we can add 'lectern' to the list. Yes, Ignore the Forecast has its very own lectern. Made for us by the brilliant Cath Bates (one of BAC's Production Managers) for the Big Brother Bash gala night. We now have something suitably grandiose on which to place the Ledger of lost Things. Hurrah! Plus, its made out of old floor boards from BAC's Grand Hall! Over 100 years of tea dances, weddings, funerals, rallies and even a mass food fight have graced across those boards. Maybe they will breathe some inspiration into the labels that people write whilst leaning on the lectern.

Our tech lists looked like this:

blu-tack
string

We hadn't really strayed into the realms of technological wizardry, perhaps because we hadn't yet found a wizard. Until the other night, when the equally brilliant Jeremy Walker (the other one of BAC's Production Managers) rigged up a pulley system to allow people to tie a label onto a string and then have it winched up - washing line style- to the ceiling of BAC's grand foyer space. In the absence of a tree branches to attach labels to, this piece of techno-magic brought some extra joy to the act of adding a label to the collection (plus its really fun!). Some may think this sounds more cassette tape player than spanking new ipod in the technology scale (on which a stick and a dustbin lid is at the bottom and the Hadron Collider is at the top) but we think simple is beautiful (and we like cassette tapes).

If you want to see these major new characters in The Tree of Lost Things story - you can! The instillation will be staying up until January 17th! Time enough to get along to BAC and add a loss of your own.

Tree of Lost Things at BAC (again)

2009-12-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

We have just spent a day installing The Tree of Lost Things at BAC; this time in the marvelous foyer space in preparation for the fundraising gala night on the 10th Dec. The labels are now tumbling out of the skylight like a papery growth of ivy, reaching all the way across the marble staircases to the opium den below (pictures to follow if you don't believe us!). Hopefully the instillation should stay up for a while after the big night so pop along and add your losses if you have the opportunity in the next few days.

People have already been reading the labels and contributing to The Tree. It's lovely to see every body's reactions to the piece. It has become a repository for fragments of story; at times, sad, mournful, flippant, funny, ridiculous and occasionally shocking. One thing that comes across more than any other when reading the labels is people's capacity to be hopeful in the face of loss. At Latitude, a woman wrote "I lost my left boob, but gained my life after cancer". People are inherently hopeful and many have used The Tree to express this through their own stories of defiance in the face of adversity. What a brilliant thing to fall out of the skylight!

There are witches in these woods

2009-12-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

Allegra and Kirsty are developing a new piece of work. It’s called ‘Witch in the Woods’ (working title). It involves hunting in an area of woodland to find the witches hiding there, before the witches find you. We have created a world in which the game takes place, a world where modern day technology and war tactics meet medieval superstition. The game plays on peoples’ fears – hunting alone in the dark woods – but also their perception of truth and superstition.

Research has mostly involved running around in the woods at night with walkie-talkies and torches. We have taken the concept of wide games beyond 'activity time' at christian camp and team building exercises on corporate residentials.

There will be opportunities to be involved in the development of this piece in the coming month - if you are brave enough...

The Tree of Lost Things at BAC

2009-12-09T03:46:00.000-08:00

The Tree of Lost Things was programmed at BAC (Battersea Arts Centre) as part of its season of playful, participatory theatre in November. We brought the labels we collected at Latitude and made a 'tree' in the cafe. We think it looked beautiful! (photos by Jemima Yong)

Tree of Lost Things - Pictures

2009-12-09T03:14:00.001-08:00

The Tree of Lost Things at Latitude

2009-12-09T03:02:00.001-08:00

In the Summer, we premiered The Tree of Lost Things at Latitude Festival. We asked people to write something they had lost on a luggage label and tie it to the incredible beech tree that we called home for four days. Over the festival, we collected tales of lost love, opportunity, toys, people, weight, car keys, inhibition, virginity, tent pegs, shoes, marbles, wedding rings and pets amongst other things. We were blown away by the positive response we received from festival goers and how generously so people contributed to the piece.