This weekend, I was a guest at the launch of a new collaboration between the China based GengXing Culture Development Company, Ginger.cat, and the UK based Big Foot Arts Education. Big Foot …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:01AMHere I was watching the style of archaic, combative, misogynistic, blinkered, self-serving power politics which have helped to bring this country and the USA to a terrifying position of ungo…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMI read an article on 18 January in the Evening Standard where Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, talked at Davos of the “crisis of the middle class”, exploring where current Brexit and …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:00AMThere’s a creakiness which pervades my creative bones at the start of the New Year. A time to catch up on emails, read a load of assignment submissions from producers, re-arrange the diary…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:00AMHelping people - particularly theatremakers - set goals is my job. No, it isn’t…My job is helping people, including myself, achieve desires (to use David Whyte’s preferred word), ambit…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:30AMFirstly may I wish you, dear reader, the most harmonious, peaceful festive season you could wish for – and a new year which puts a spring in your step, and a spark in your creative spi…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:00AMThe challenge for anyone creating a business model for an under 99-seat theatre in a town with a plethora of creative things to do, is to give the space a very special feel, a unique voice t…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:00AMI loved the Michael Webborn and Daniel Finn musical when I saw it premiere at the Landor last year and whilst we wait patiently for a cast recording (I asked Santa again and I have been a go…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:00PMHope and Despair flowed this week, and we have reminders of other global game-changers with the anniversary of Kristallnacht (despair), the Fall of the Berlin Wall (hope), Armistice Day (hop…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 01:05PMLast term I sat in a rehearsal room led by one student as they began a “meet and greet”. A circle of chairs with a group of individuals who were gathered to get to know each other and th…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:30AMThose who read my blogs will know that I am near despair to see what a Grady can do to help 1500 young people who are literally packaged in containers awaiting dispatch, with no water or foo…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:24PMI’m on a posh train, can’t find my seat, standing in floods of tears, too tired to walk the ten coaches or so to find my place. That feels a fitting end to a week where I have been in Ca…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:01AMFor 100+ volunteers in the warehouse a few miles from the Jungle camp, it is business as usual (as I first type this on Day 2 of the evictions). My colleagues and I spent a day sorting donat…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:10PMI sometimes wonder how anyone makes sense of my artistic taste and my direction of travel. This last week has been a particularly rich menu and by the end of this blog I may have found a com…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:25AMIt’s gone ubiquitously mainstream. And don’t anyone say it’s “the War Horse effect”. The passion for puppetry across the industry has been growing rapidly for at least twenty years…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:16PMInspired by the universe, the ether, the zeitgeist, or a re-awakening of the earlier me, my “outlook” is changing and I am exploring new locations and new neighbours. It’s a queer worl…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 04:40AMToday’s blog is brought to you in association with my autumn diary – I suppose it should be subtitle Lett’s Do It. (For those of a younger disposition, Letts make the old paper things …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 09:20AMToday is my final day at the Festival this year and I have had the chance to see the sell-out Greater Belfast at the Traverse – a poetic storytelling music gig which reminded me of Stu and…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 08:35AMThe challenge for anyone writing a show for young children is to find a way to give some additional depth or delight for the accompanying adults – be they parents, teachers or grannies. Ch…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:35AMMatt, the Monkey Poet, is a massive energy across the international spoken word touring scene, and this year he has programmed 80 shows within the Free Fringe. He has decided to use his Tues…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 12:35PMI had a lovely morning exploring how The Space operates, and exploring the ways forward for an emerging music producer. I keep being delighted to understand the welcoming way in which the or…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:06AMSaturday was my first full day at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe – the largest networking, drinking and arts event in the world. I began with my first set of Surgeries – a chance to …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:30AMI have just spent three days in and around the Jungle in Calais, and there are two preceding blogs circulating which look at the work of the Refugee Community Kitchen and Jungle Books. These…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:51AMMany hundreds of volunteers go to work in Calais, filling the hostels and Airbnb, giving the bus drivers a good full load on historically very quiet routes, and finding their ways around the…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 07:50AMFor the last few days I have been in France peeling and chopping, mixing and moving, driving and carrying vegetables. I have been one of the 150+ volunteers working in and around a warehouse…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:45PMLast weekend I had the honour to facilitate a conference which grew from the broad theme of Clothing Optional Theatre under a working question of “How do we choose to reveal our bodies thr…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 02:05PMThis week my daughter and her partner started six months volunteering in Calais to offer their skills in the kitchen, the warehouse, and the community of refugees. This gives me hope of the …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:36AMThis week I joined a discussion with Andy Barnes of Perfect Pitch exploring his 10-year journey in the development of new writing of Musical Theatre. He has been knee-deep in the opening of …
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 10:47AMI’ve been reading a lot recently about the challenges young people face with the crazy education system we have developed in this, and most other Western countries. I am inspired by the wr…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 06:42AMI work in a business where I network a lot, end up standing on stage making announcements, and (as I type this) preparing to lead a workshop for two hours with a group of Newcastle-based cre…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 11:19AMWhen asked what is my favourite moment in the journey from page to stage, I usually say the moment when the house lights go down on the very first performance and there is a silent buzz of e…
SOURCE: mytheatremates.com at 05:38AM
