theatre two point oh #

two point xhosa

2008-12-15T22:27:00.004Z

Apparently ttpo# got a shout out all the way over in South Africa earlier in the month at the Higher Education as a Social Space Conference. Many thanks to Angela Brew for mentioning us favourably in her keynote speech.

Thanks to Physio 2.0 for the above photo.

Added Slidecast to the ttpo# LTEA Presentation

2008-11-14T18:13:00.002Z

theatre two point oh # @ LTEA 2008

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: of university)

Evaluation via Skype

2008-10-01T19:15:00.006+01:00

Having now graduated from University, both Laura and I have been busy moving down the M1 to our new abodes in London... but still with the final evaluation of ttpo# to complete. Now that the dust has settled we're entering the final stages of the project and have been putting together the final evaluation report and case study - drawing upon a focus group with participants held in June and a reflective interview of Laura and me from August. It was probably apt that the latter was conducted by Jamie over Skype, using the excellent plugin Callgraph to record the conversation for transcription.

Although I can't say it was a conscious choice to take some time out before completing the project, it has been good to get some perspective and to be able to take a fresh look at what has (and hasn't) been achieved. Some of the things said by participants have been really insightful - interestingly many of them seemed to think that with a normal academic module (or with a "normal" theatre play) you get told what to do a lot more. Other comments were slightly more... philosophical... ("it was led by dreams").

What was good was that for most of the transcript the group doesn't mention either Laura or my name - we hope that this indicates that they really did feel ownership over the project, and didn't think of this as being somehow "ours". This said, there was one slightly worrying reference to us as "mummy and daddy".

I was particularly glad to see that most thought that, despite being incredibly time-intensive, it had not adversely impacted on their studies or exams. In fact some felt the opposite, and it certainly seems this way given some of the excellent results many of the graduates received. Most seem keen to want to continue their involvement with theatre, and there seems to be a consensus that it was a very worthwhile experience.

As a final note for this post, I'm also finally getting round to converting all the hours of video recordings to avi - ready to edit into the DVD we promised! We should also be able to upload the video to these here pages, so at this rate we may be finished by Christmas...

Presenting ttpo#

2008-06-26T13:04:00.011+01:00

Today Laura and I presented at the LTEA* Conference 2008: Inquiry in a Networked World. You can check out the slideshow of our paper at slidecast.

Theatre in (Higher) Education

2008-06-25T11:00:00.003+01:00

With one foot in ttpo# and the other as CILASS Student Ambassador for French I went along to the Languages of the Wider Word CETL in London a couple of weeks ago for a day conference on Drama in Language Learning. Check out my post on the CILASS Student Blog for more info.

Evaluation, Evaluation, Evaluation...

2008-06-12T12:06:00.003+01:00

The production is now entering its final stages: the performances are all done, the budgets are completed and everyone involved has been hard at work with essays, exams, and finally a chance to let their hair down.

However, now that we've all got a little bit of time to breathe, now that we have a bit of perspective on the project, it's time to start evaluating the whole process; as well as producing a case study and a final report, we have already run a focus group with many of our participants, and myself and Laura will be disseminating information about the project at several conferences, starting tomorrow with the Drama and Language Learning Day at the Languages of the Wider World CETL at SOAS/UCL.

We're also attending the Student Network Conference on Monday and Tuesday in Plynouth, and then presenting at the Learning Through Enquiry Alliance Conference 2008 at the end of the month back in Sheffield.

I'll also be posting more about the production and uploading podcasts and video over the next few weeks, now that I finally have my life back!

Two down, Two to go...

2008-05-09T15:08:00.002+01:00

Well we're half way through the performances and have received some positive feedback. Things have been rather busy as you can imagine, so for now I'll just leave you with a seven minute interview on yesterday's Howard Pressman show on BBC Radio Sheffield - fast forward 2h45m in to check it out...

Surveillance Trailer

2008-04-25T01:11:00.001+01:00

Many thanks to the genius that is Ben Marshall.

The Posters Have Landed...

2008-04-23T21:58:00.001+01:00

IC Squared

2008-04-03T19:44:00.005+01:00

Both today and yesterday I met up with Laura, Rob NJ and Matt to talk about the direction of the script - we were attempting to define the core plotlines and to concretise (yes, it is a word Laura!) what we have already created. Today we were joined by Jenny - we hadn't intentionally excluded anyone, it just so happened that as a sub-grouping we had bumped into each other in the IC* and decided to have these two informal meetings. It has to be said that the smaller group size probably did allow us to accomplish a little more than we would have done in a larger (albeit better organised) meeting.

We constructed a timeline of the main plot using index cards*, and created a kind of family tree of (principal) characters. We're going to have to cast fairly soon, as the play will open in five weeks (well, five weeks yesterday in fact), and we're now aiming to finish the script within a week. At the same time we took the opportunity to pilfer some food from some kind of conference in Colab 1 - apparently it's to do with a magazine that coincidentally features an article called something along the lines of "Video Recording Theatre for Education", which could be quite interesting...

Anyway, as previously mentioned there will be nine of us heading down to stay at mine tomorrow in order to get up bright and early and visit the V&A "Collaborators" exhibition, a word which has unfortunately become rather negative in my mind of late as I'm still "hard at work" on an essay on Sartre and Vichy France. This has however focussed my mind onto ideas of memory, particularly collective memory, and potentially how subjective memory is challenged by the increase in data collection and video recording in our society. Can't get away from relating everything to this bloody play! :)

Dancing with the Camera

2008-04-01T18:19:00.008+01:00

It's practically the end of the Easter Holidays, and not a single post during all this "time off" when I should have had lots of time to tell you about NSDF, the Surveillance Studies Network Seminar Series, and our plans to visit the V&A's Collaborators: UK Design for Performance exhibition. Of course it's only now that I have an essay in for Monday that I've decided to get blogging (ttpo#'s very own Matt Kendrick has written 25 pages of script instead of his), but for this post I'll just limit it to the SSN Seminar as it has just happened and I've actually got a chance to remember most of it.

Before I start writing about today's events, I should probably give a bit of background. I haven't yet mentioned Professor Clive Norris, who is head of Sociology at Sheffield and uncoincidentally a founder member of the Surveillance Studies Network. I contacted him in January to ask to meet him and discuss the project, which we did the following week. We had a really interesting discussion in which he brought me up to speed with the emerging field of surveillance studies and suggested that we might perform a work in progress of the piece at the conference going on this week. In the end we realised that this was going to be too tight a time-scale, but he ended up inviting me to the first installment of the aforementioned seminar series which I duly attended today.

Feeling slightly like an impostor (I'm an undergraduate of French Studies, almost everyone else in the room was a published academic in the field), it was soon apparent just how useful the experience would be - the first speaker was John McGrath, Artistic Director at Manchester's Contact Theatre and author of Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space, who began by talking about a show by New York theatre company The Builders Assocation and their piece Super Vision. Checking out the trailer and the production photos, as a show it looks absolutely amazing, and its interesting to note that like our show (so far), the plot consists of three intertwining stories. Various online reviews do seem to indicate that the show had nothing particularly new to say about internet privacy or data security and that the piece is overwhelmed by its use of media, but boy is it pretty!

John talked about surveillance space (a notion he developed in the aforementioned book) and hyperexposure, and talked about the essential disconnect of surveillance, in particular talking about sound - any voice recording is always more suggesting of what is missing and is open to (mis)reading by the listener. He also talked about the way we send contradictory profiles into the datasphere, the idea that most of us these days have multiple data selves rather than us having a fixed "self" - your Facebook self probably has much cooler taste in music than you do, for example.

In the discussion after his talk I asked him (in a rather awkward manner - was in dire need of a coffee) about the experience of the actor in plays such as Super Vision - his answer was that acting on stage using cameras/projector screens requires great discipline, much like that of a dancer. The way in which the performer needs to position themself to be seen both live and as a projected image requires an awareness of space and well-rehearsed physical movement. This was valuable stuff, as the ttpo# lot haven't yet had to act with a script, let alone a camera pointing in their face.

Other talkers were no less interesting - Gareth Palmer had some very interesting things to say about reality/lifestyle television and its ambition to transform. In our devising sessions we have developed a scene examining (female) body-image, and it was interesting to hear him highlight the body as subject of the (male) gaze, as this is something we have been discussing in our workshops. Mike Nellis talked about electronic tagging, discussing public and tabloid opinion, prohibition v. inhibition, and the evolution of the idea from a 1960s patent through a Spiderman cartoon to the present day. Hille Koskela talked particularly about the "hijacking" of surveillance through webcams and cameraphones, beginning with a Youtube video of two security guards beating a man in East Helsinki. The resulting discussion gave all participants lots to think about - the authorship of the video, the failure of the camera operator to intervene and the ethics of recording someone without them knowing.

I've got a feeling this post is getting a little dry so I'll leave it there, but next time I'll be talking about NSDF, our Dragon's Den-style pitch to Head of Theatre Development at the Arts Council, and possibly a little bit about the V&A exhibition, but I should probably get back to some Henri Rousso and his "organisation de l'oubli"...

End of Term Report

2008-03-13T23:01:00.004Z

Being, as we are, a University project, ttpo# now faces two weeks without workshops, and given how we have been struggling to link together the different improvised scenes today's workshop given by Justin Audibert couldn't have come at a better time. Justin is currently assistant directing up at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds where he has most recently been working on the well-received The Grouch. He came in tonight for the second of our professional-led workshops (thanks to funding from CILASS), and after a jumping, clapping warmup that would be the envy of even the most energetic gospel choir, he truly kick-started the proverbial loom, encouraging the group to improvise a string of five scenes: if you'll excuse further metaphoricalising, he's shown us how to water and fertilise the seeds we've sown.

I also found myself pushed to explore the full technological limits of our rehearsal space, linking up a DV cam to the lecturn PC. This meant we could not only record most of the rest of the proceedings (video coming soon...), but project live video onto the wall as well.

As I have previously mentioned we are at the end of the spring term and now half-way through the second semester. Time is therefore not on our side, and of the seven weeks we have left, only five of them will see us physically meeting up as a group.

We'll therefore be switching to collaborative online software, namely Google Docs, and concentrate on using our Facebook Groups to develop our ideas and plan the roadmap to performance.

If I was to give the collective a grade for the term, I'd say we've just about pulled a last minute 2.1 out of the bag, but we have a lot of work ahead of us if we're going to realise our ambitions for this project.

Some of us are off to the National Student Drama Festival (NSDF) next week, so will be posting from the glamorous beaches of Scarborough to a screen near you before you know it...

Who are the watchers?

2008-03-11T14:21:00.010Z

I've now put together a preview poster (see right) - we're probably going to use this as the basis for a collaborative design for the final publicity campaign, and maybe use the camera stencil for some t-shirts for those involved.

Some people have commented that on first glance it looks like a gun (but that this is a not necessarily a bad thing), while others say it a looks lot like a Hard-Fi album cover - I say it just looks like one of the standard posters warning people that they are on CCTV. I don't know how much these notices blend into the background these days; despite being bright yellow it is only been since I've been involved with this project that I've started noticing them again - their ubiquity has more or less meant that our brains ignore them.

After a couple of workshops it now seems that at least part of the focus of the piece will be on an operator working in a CCTV control room. We have this idea of him facing the audience, sat at a workstation on a raised section of the theatre (known as the baptistry - the theatre we'll be using is a converted church) with what he sees projected onto a screen suspended above his head. But who exactly are these anonymous people who sit watching us?

Red Road (2006) portrays quite normal, down to earth people, far from any 'type' we might imagine: a busybody or voyeur. I imagine there must be some kind of vetting procedure, obviously including a CRB check, but the skills requirements suggested by this Local Government Careers website only the following:

- excellent eyesight,
- strong powers of concentration,
- to be able to react quickly and calmly in an emergency,
- good communication skills,
- to be discreet - confidentiality is very important, they must never discuss what they see on their monitors with outsiders,
- to be able to work without supervision.

I was interested in seeing what these people might be like, so searched for a group on Facebook this morning. Sure enough, I found CCTV Operator's club; with about 18 members it can hardly be described as fully representative, especially considering the skewed demographics of social networks, but there were only three women to the fifteen male members. What I noticed this morning was that among the related groups section (which lists the top 5 groups members have in common) was that as well as I WORK IN THE BULLRING (presumably one of the main nodes of the group invited their colleagues at the Birmingham shopping centre), was a group called Bloody Women! - mysteriously now deleted. Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot this morning so you'll have to accept this on trust, but I may well have a cache saved on my home computer to upload.

UPDATE: seems to have reappeared to you'll be able to see for yourself...

The group was not quite as misogynistic as you might imagine; it seemed to be several young men talking about how they always seem to end up in the "friend zone", although the description did mention oestrogen and madness in the same sentence.

Is there a certain motivation among young men who are "unlucky in love" towards this job? As a woman, would it worry you if a large number of CCTV operators were men? There has been a lot written on the relationship of gender to surveillance, and given this finding perhaps this is an area we should explore.

The Audition Workshops

2008-02-20T14:35:00.005Z

I'm writing from the lectern in CILASS 7 where we are currently holding the first of our two "audition" workshops - having had difficulties persuading students to overcome any fears they have about being involved in our project, we felt we needed to use the word "audition" as a way of encouraging new people to get involved. We weren't looking to eliminate people, just see how different people fit in to the group dynamic. You can see some of the stuff we got up to in the video below...

Many thanks to Dan Balla for being the guest leader for the first workshop - and giving us a lot of ideas for the second, including "Autocue Improv"... more on this later!

Workshop Auditions

2008-02-17T20:37:00.004Z

This Wednesday we will be holding workshop auditions for the performers for Surveillance, which if you missed it is the title of the final piece we will be performing.

It needs to be stressed that with this project the journey is far more important than the destination, and that being involved with ttpo# will be an opportunity to be part of a pioneering student-led IBL project, after our successful grant application that will allow us to bring in professional experience and take our work to conferences, festivals and across the world-wide web.

We're looking for a mix of creatively-minded undergraduate students of all levels of experience with theatre to work on researching and devising a show exploring the implications of increased surveillance at all levels of modern society, focussing in particular on the effects on both the watcher and the watched. As an official project of CILASS, (Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences), we will be blending professional-led workshops with devising sessions, discussion forums, video shoots, hands-on technical training, and a collaborative online organisational system; this will be a huge opportunity for anyone interested in theatre, sociology, collaborative research, and improving their research and information skills.

We will be running two sessions (open only to members of the University) on Wednesday 20th February 2008: 2pm-4pm and 5pm to 7pm (14:00-16:00 & 17:00-19:00). Anyone interested in joining the project need only attend one session. There is a chance we may be oversubscribed, or that you may not be able to make either session. If this is the case, either contact us by email/text/phone, or let us know in the comments and we'll get in contact ASAP.

Please wear comfortable clothing (and clean socks!), and make sure you bring your U-card to access the building.

So, to sum up...

Location: CILASS 7 (Level One of the Information Commons)
Day: Wednesday 20th February 2008
Session One: 2pm - 4pm
Session Two: 5pm - 7pm

Facebook Event Page

theatre two point oh # presents: "Surveillance"

2008-01-28T19:35:00.001Z

A belated Happy New Year and welcome to any new visitors to the site. We've got plenty of news to update you about, which we'll try and do in dribs and drabs over the next few days.

The ttpo# team is now coming together, having brought on board a brand new stage manager, Sarah, who will be gracing these pages with her thoughts as soon as her assessments are out the way (should be next week)

We've also submitted a funding application to CILASS at the University of Sheffield with a view to becoming a fully integrated CILASS project - we'll let you know the results of this as soon as we know in a couple of weeks' time, and more about what this entails in the next few days.

It also seems that we've now committed to a title for the play, simply "Surveillance". It came to the point where publicity/marketing-wise we had too many deadlines approaching, and it doesn't restrict us too much with where we want to go with the play. For those of you that are new to these pages, we're going to be investigating the implications of increased surveillance in our society, whether through closed-circuit television, DNA databasing, RFID chips, or any other technological development, so hopefully this title works for you!

Falling behind...

2007-12-22T03:20:00.001Z

How did we get so behind with the blog?

Well anyway, here's a quick photo from the last workshop to give you an idea of what we got up to. We'll be fully writing this up in the next few days, but you'll have to forgive me for putting my course before keeping the blog up to date :)

Anyway, just to let you all know that we'll be putting on many more workshops on in the new year that will be open to all shef students, so watch this space for details.

Launch Workshop Tomorrow! (Wed 12th Dec)

2007-12-11T19:15:00.000Z

Shit me things have been busy recently! Sorry to anybody who's been waiting eagerly for news, especially about when we're getting started. Things have been happening, but due to a hectic schedule and the fact that it's just me blogging at the moment (though this will soon change) I haven't kept things up to date on here (slapped wrist!).

First and foremost, then, details of the workshop...

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Time: 4:00pm - 6:00pm / 16:00 - 18:00
Location: CILASS, Information Commons, 44 Leavygreave Road, Sheffield

Only 24 places available, first come, first serve. We're looking to recruit our entire team (cast and crew) as early as possible, so all participants will be invited to get involved with the show in some way, shape or form. That said, there are no strings attached, so don't be afraid to come along even if you don't want to commit!

Now for what you need to bring:

- Comfortable clothing (and clean socks!)
- Your U-card (so you can get into the building - sorry to non-students!)
- Digital Recording Devices (laptops, cameras, camcorders, mp3 players/recorders); N.B. any equipment you bring is at your own risk.
- A random item of costume (in the broadest sense)
- A mask, a prop, or some kind of unbreakable object
- We'll also be asking you to fill in a couple of forms, so make sure you know your contact details, and bring your measurements if you happen to know them.

Facebook Event Listing

We're also running one next week (at a slightly different time), so check the event listing for more details of number two.

Other than this, I have been meeting up with various directors, performers, and lecturers, have seen performances at the RSC and at the Capital Centre (another CETL, a bit like CILASS), and have been to a "Network Event"(!). Will write up all of this and more, but for now hope to see some of you tomorrow!

Preview Workshop

2007-11-28T12:48:00.000Z

Right so we've been off the radar for a short while, but things have been slowly ticking over. I've spoken to a lot of people and been absorbing as much advice and as many ideas as possible. We've had really positive responses from a variety of theatre practioners around Sheffield, and I'm looking forward to meeting several of them with a view to setting up some externally-led workshops in the new year.

But, to return to the main point of this post, I just wanted to quickly (and rather lastminutedly) let you all know that we are doing a 'preview' workshop today at 3pm, just to test out Collaboratory 2 (our swanky new rehearsal space). This will just be an initial session with a limited number of people to test out the space, to try out some of the games and techniques we'll be using, and to plan for the series of workshops we'll be running between now and Xmas. Don't panic if you want to be involved and can't make it today or have found out about it too late, it is more for the benefit of planning (and for Kieron's TV spot) than anything else.

Once the workshops start up for real, they will probably run weekly, taking place every Wednesday, and we're hoping to supplement these meetings in the IC with one or two workshops out in the residences. If you'd like to take part today, please come along to the Information Commons Café - meet us at the back (on or near the sofas) at 14:45, to head up to the space for 3pm.

Coffee & (CC)TV

2007-11-18T21:42:00.001Z

05_10_23_016
Mise en ligne par antiwhat

Today I had an informal meeting in The Interval with the previously mentioned Kieron Bryan. I've made an mp3 recording that I'm planning on editing down and posting up as soon as I've handed in the essay I'm currently working on, but will briefly go through some of the things we talked about (before getting back to the mountainous pile of books and depressingly slow-rising word-count in front of me).

Kieron is making a short, news-style TV piece as part of his broadcast journalism MA, and would like to do a feature on theatre two point oh #, focussing on our first workshop. This is something I'll have to devote more time to in a later post, but we're planning on holding the first of a series of workshops from next weekend. First of all though, we have to wait for confirmation from specific venues, and I can't really organise any of the other elements until my piece of assessed work has decided to finish itself and be handed in; we will be giving at least 48 hours notice though, and it won't matter if those wishing to be involved can't make it along to the first public workshop - there will be plenty more!

Back to our conversation; we talked more about the production, the workshops, the selection method, and a lot of stuff I haven't yet gone into on here (yet!) and agreed that it would be great for Kieron to continue documenting the process as it progresses to its culmination, producing a short documentary at the end to be released on Al Gore's Current TV.

We talked about some of the concepts that might be explored and I suppose it's at this point that I might as well reveal one of the core themes for the initial workshops: surveillance. Given that the whole creative process will be viewable through (selected) video clips, images, and audio recordings, the spread of CCTV and being watched anonymously, could be quite an intriguing idea with which to spark off improvisation and creation.

Anyway, you won't hear from me now until a certain 3,000 words are written, printed out, and safely in the posession of the Dept. of French, but please let us know what you think about the possibilities for the workshops, and watch this space.

Brand new widget - add it to your Facebook, Blog, Myspace, etc.

2007-11-16T10:40:00.001Z

theatre two point oh #Widgetbox

Coming Together

2007-11-15T16:20:00.000Z

The last couple of days have seen a few developments, and some very promising links are starting to emerge. First of all, I've been contacted by Kieron Bryan, who's currently doing an MA in Broadcast Journalism; he's going to be producing a 2 minute TV spot, featuring some of the initial meetings and workshops, and an outline of the project and who's involved. He's also expressed an interest in continuing to document the process, so I'm definitely looking forward to chatting with him and upping the ante regarding documenting what we're doing.

I also had a meeting today with both Laura and Mark Morely , currently part of the core team for the aforementioned CILASS. It felt like a really positive meeting, and it was really good to see such an initially positive response from the group. This is not to say that they can necessarily help us out to the fullest extent (there are a lot of complicated issues that come into play, won't bore you with them here), but it seems like there's a real will to see what they can do, and so we'll have to see what comes of this. At any rate, it was good to hear more positive feedback and more ideas - such as to start recording even these early meetings as mp3s or even on video.

I then moved on with Laura to meet with Jamie Wood, another member of the team, as I'm going to apply to become a member of the Student Ambassador Network for my Department. We also had a little time to discuss ttpo# and it was really good to hear Laura able to condense my waffled cluster of ideas down into a meaningful series of concise statements...

A little screen has popped up on this PC telling me I've only got 5 more mins, so I better leave it there, but I will leave you with this:

"Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand." Courtesy of thirteen.org

The ball starts rolling...

2007-11-12T19:12:00.000Z

"A collective is not the negation of the individuals of which it's composed. It would be dangerous to think that a collective can exist without eyes, without mouths, without hands." - Ariane Mnouchkine (interview, Théâtre/Public)

I've had a really productive day so far - had a really good meeting with Scott and Reuben at the Drama Studio, and a nice, relaxed, informal meeting with Laura Jenkins who is currently Stage Manager for The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus and (more importantly concerning t2.0#) Student Coordinator for CILASS. I also made real inroads into a piece of work due in for next Monday on, quelle surprise, collective creation and the Théâtre du Soleil, which was a bit of a two birds, one stone choice of essay, taking into account the fact that the work of this company is one of the major influences for this project (thanks to Danielle for nudging me into make this clear!).

Anyway, for those of you who don't know, the Drama Studio is managed by the aforementioned Scott and Reuben, who generally let companies get up to whatever the hell they want on stage and in rehearsals (as long as it's legal and safe).

The meeting felt pretty good as there were very few 'no's and a lot of good ideas/feedback coming from both of them. Given that they see things from a very different angle from your usual theatre-types, and, particularly in Reuben's case, with the advantage of a great deal of experience behind them, they are essential both in terms of their knowledge of the workings of the theatre and in finding the holes in what you're suggesting; they are able to point out potential problems that would otherwise have escaped under the radar, then suggest work-arounds that again would never have occurred to you in a million years.

This meeting was swiftly followed by a quick panini at Lunch Stop (pancetta and braised pear on wholemeal, possibly the most middle-class toastie this side of Islington), then off to the I.C. for an informal chat with Laura.

One of the aims of this project (and there are, unapologetically, a fair few) is educational in nature: encouraging interdisciplinary knowledge transfer (e.g. between students taking theatre modules with the School of English, and those such as myself taking the final-year theatre module within the Department of French), and using the rehearsal process to put into practice ideas from a variety of different academic disciplines.

This, to me, fits in rather well with the process of Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL), for which the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL - acronyms galore in this post!) just happens to be at the University of Sheffield. The thought occurred to me a while ago: why not approach CILASS (the Centre for IbL in the Arts and Social Sciences for those who aren't sick of initialisms) regarding use of facilities and/or funding? I made initial contact with them a little before the proposals, and mentioned a little about this in our official proposal document (read it here - excuse the fact that it was written in the early hours the morning last Thursday) - this then caught Laura's eye and she very kindly got in contact to let me know a little more of what to expect.

Further to our chat today it looks like we'll have a proper meeting with the dudes from CILASS, and I hope we'll be able to make use of some of the facilities available.We may also look at applying for funding, but it doesn't initially look like this project falls into any of the usual categories. Coincidentally though, immediately after chatting to Laura I bumped into a friend who works at the Alumni Foundation, from whom we might be applying for a seperate grant, but we'll have to see as it looks like the deadline for applications was Friday. Typical!

Anyway, I'd better get back to my essay as I find it always helps when you finish reading the actual primary text...

Success.

2007-11-10T00:33:00.000Z

Ok, so here starts theatre two point oh. We've now been officially selected to take a slot at the University of Sheffield Drama Studio, although we're still not sure exactly when (but probably either the week 8 slot (Wed 23rd to Sat 26th April 2008) or, as I'm starting to think more likely, the slot for week 10 (Wed 7th to Sat 10th May 2008). Of course I could be completely wrong and they'll have chosen to give us the beginning of February, but that would just be a tiny bit sadistic.

So who is "they"? Well, this project is a development within Sheffield University Theatre Company, aka suTCo. We aim to be a collective within the wider company, but in a way that'll include as many people as possible from both inside and outside. This is a big part of what we aim to do with this project, to involve the audience, the people who will come to see this production, from right now.

This means that you, the potential audience (because even if you can't make the final performance, you'll be able to watch it on t'internet when it's all completed), will be able to see what we're getting up to in rehearsals, and both comment on what we're doing, and tell us what we should be doing. You can give us new ideas, and comment on our what we're doing already, all through the medium of this wonderful thing we like to call the web.

These are the first of hopefully many, many posts, and as soon as we have added new people to the collective you'll be hearing from more people than just "us" (in truth there is currently just me, Tom Szekeres, at present).

Right well anyway, I'm going to finish my first proper text-based post with a little quote, that gives you some hint of where the inspiration for all of this comes from...

"The director has already achieved the greatest degree of power he has ever had in history. And our aim is to move beyond that situation by creating a form of theatre where it will be possible for everyone to collaborate without there being directors, technicians, and so on, in the old sense." - Ariane Mnouchkine, June 1991

Sound.

The Proposal

2007-11-07T15:16:00.000Z

Our suTCo proposal. Wish us luck.