Archive for April, 2008
links for 2008-04-15
April 15th, 2008 • links
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“If this is just a way of marketing for the four venues, then fine, but if it turns into more than that, then that would be a great shame in the context of the Fringe as a whole.”
tinderbox
April 15th, 2008 • theatre
Lucy Kirkwood (another Edinburgh alumna) has a new play at the Bush Theatre in London starting later this month:
TINDERBOX a revenge comedy
by Lucy Kirkwood
23 April – 24 MaySometime in the 21st Century, England is dissolving into the sea. Amidst the chaos, one man clings to his traditional British values and his love of meat. For Londoner Saul Everard, his butchers shop is an empire that he will do anything to preserve, including moving it to Bradford.
An outlaw Scottish artist swims Hadrian’s channel and seeks refuge in Saul’s shop. There’s rioting on the streets and the police are onto him but Saul’s meaty little empire may be the last place to seek sanctuary…
Fast, wild and farcically funny Lucy Kirkwood’s first full-length play plunges you into a disturbing vision of a dystopian future.
I saw quite a bit of Lucy’s early writing as a student and got to know her through the theatre/comedy circuit, and there’s a reason she got snapped up by an agent as soon as she graduated: she’s very, very good. I’m going to try my best to get down south to see it: if you’re in London, you’ve no excuse not to.
links for 2008-04-13
April 13th, 2008 • links
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Chapter 11 from Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene, credited with coining the term “memes.”
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Susan Blackmore’s book, The Meme Machine, on Google Books: “Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection.”
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The ideas I’ve been wildly speculating about for the last few months, given the semblance of order and condensed into a lunchtime seminar.
links for 2008-04-09
April 9th, 2008 • links
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Speedy, cutting and occasionally obscene gaming reviews from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw.
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A free web service that “quickly and easily allows anyone with a camera to broadcast to the world.”
forest fringe still programming shows?
April 9th, 2008 • theatre
Alongside an enviably long list of current projects, Andy Field mentions that the Forest Fringe is still looking for people with good (read: interesting, adventurous, delicate, experimental, risky) ideas for the festival in August. As he’s previously explained at length, the Forest Fringe is intended to be a space for low to no-risk experimentation:
We’re not going to be part of the official fringe. We’re not going to charge artists anything to perform. All shows are going to be ‘pay what you can’.
We’re going to have to a wonderful mix of established fringe veterans and younger artists who’ve never performed at the venue before. No one is going to have more than a couple of performances. Everyone is going to have ample rehearsal time.
Everyone is going to be asked to give some of their time back to the place, either by staffing the bar or Front of House or by mentoring a younger artist – just spending a couple of hours watching their show and then talking to them about it.
Fringe veterans may immediately recgonise the irony of the idea of the “official fringe” - and how quickly performers and companies internalise and rationalise the artistic and financial commitments that go with it.
While I have a few questions about the rationale of staging this particular philosophy in Edinburgh in August solely during the festival season - is this just about the contrast? - I’m up for anything that offers an alternative to the “speed-dating equivalent of theatre” that marks many Fringe experiences.
rehearsing utopia and planning disaster
April 9th, 2008 • research, theatre
Back in the UK and working on a research seminar for next week - Rehearsing Utopia and Planning Disaster: new directions in collaborative performance. If anything at all, I give good title.
If you’re around Glasgow next week on Tuesday, give me a shout. I should (in time) be putting chunks of my presentation up here, though I’m caught between the traditional need to protect my publishable research and my web 2.0 desire to get everything into the public domain where the argument can continue as soon as possible.
