Matthew Austin
Arts and CultureResidence at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol
Residence, the artist-led organisation I’m part of, has been upping it’s game recently. That game, incidentally, is to provide social, rehearsal and office space for us as artists making theatre, live art and performance. At the moment, we share a cruddy office space in central Bristol. We’re in the CID unit of the old Bridewell Police Station in Broadmead. It’s dark, damp and cold, and we’ve realised that if we don’t up sticks soon the whole organisation could fold. So we’re on the lookout for a new space. We’ve looked at a couple of spaces, and the prospects are exciting.
And as part of this new lease of life, we’re also holding our first public event at the Tobacco Factory this autumn. From Friday 11th to Saturday 12th September, Residence will be moving in to the Tobacco Factory and calling it home. We’ll be hosting drinks, dinner and then a breakfast to recover the morning after the night before. Between the food and the friendly chat there will be discussion and debate about theatre, work-in-progress showings, open rehearsals and the opportunity to meet other theatre-makers and audiences. So this is just an advance warning that that’s coming up. There’s loads of other stuff happening that weekend, including Lone Twin’s Speeches project in Bath, commissioned by ICIA, and Take Art’s Made in Somerset.
Ontroerend Goed: Under the Influence
Having provided me with two of my all time theatre highs over the last twelve months in Once and for All We’re Going to Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen and The Smile Off Your Face, I’m looking forward to Ontroerend Goed’s new show Under the Influence, commissioned by the Drum in Plymouth. I’m going to see it tomorrow night, despite Lyn Gardner’s not-so-great review in The Guardian.
A big list of things to do for Mayfest 2009
I’m sitting in the cafe at Bristol Old Vic with a very long list of things to do – very long. Mayfest 2009 opens in about 3 weeks, and there’s still an awful lot to get done.
But it’s going to be great – we’re really pleased with the programme this year – there are more shows, more things to do, more international work and a lot more fun around the edges. It’s going to be completely knackering.
Highlights? The Master Chaynjis/Lexie Mountain Boys at the Launch Party, Ontroerend Goed’s The Smile Off Your Face, imitating the dog’s Kellerman, Chris Goode, Skutr, Stan’s Cafe and so the list goes on….
Have a look through the programme here and book some tickets! We need to get a lot of people to come and see stuff, and we promise it will be well worth it!
If you do see stuff, please let us know what you think by emailing info@mayfestbristol.co.uk or posting on the Noticeboard on theatrebristol.net
Mayfest 2009 Programme
The Mayfest 2009 programme is now online here: www.mayfestbristol.co.uk. It’s going to be a corker…
Action Hero: Watch Me Fall / Simone Kenyon & Neil Callaghan
Action Hero (fellow Residence Artists) are showing their new work Watch Me Fall at Arnolfini next weekend in a double bill with Simone Kenyon and Neil Callaghan, who are performing To Begin Where I Am… Mokado. I’m really looking forward to this – judging by the works-in-progress I’ve seen of Watch Me Fall it should be bloody brilliant.
I‘m going over in a barrel. I’m leaving the cannon, hitting the ramp at 90mph and clearing ten double-decker buses. I might fall. I might break my body into several pieces, but then I’ll dust myself off and do it all over again.
Also, Lyn Gardner wrote a blog yesterday about real physical exertion in theatre which mentions Watch Me Fall.

Hauser: I Made You a Submarine
I’m off to see Hauser this weekend (on Valentine’s Day – how romantic, although everyone does get a free glass of rose!).
I Made You a Submarine is the new piece by hauser, and is conceived and directed by Swen Steinhauser from Deer Park. Should be well worth catching. Here’s the blurb:
I Made You a Submarine is a wonderful, surreal story that begins with Billy The Kid’s dying friend Charley Bowdre and ends by the seaside with a lobster, a mermaid, a sailor, Napoleon Bonaparte and the mysterious arrival of a submarine.
The performance takes its starting point from the plot by Johnston, a smuggler, to rescue Napoleon from the prison island of St. Helena by submarine. From here on it unfolds as a poetic reflection on ambition and failure, action and immobility, life and death. It propels the viewer from the vast dry landscapes of the American Wild West to the endless horizon of the sea, and the tightly enclosed space of the submarine with its mysterious potential for underwater travel.
This new multi-layered piece, conceived and directed by Swen Steinhauser (formerly Deer Park), uses movement, fragments of text, audio-visual images and atmospheres to construct a world in which ideas, landscapes, forces and sensations float and circulate.
“Johnston, a bold smuggler, thought of carrying off Bonaparte by means of a submarine vessel” The Memoirs of Chateaubriand
“The soul is an underwater creature” Alexander Kluge
Tickets: £9/£7 concession
Box Office: 01225 386777
Email: iciainfo[at]bath.ac.uk
www.bath.ac.uk/icia
Jerome Bell: 27 Performances at Sadler’s Wells
Off to London next week to see Jerome Bell’s 27 Performances – an hour long talk where Bell muses on his own influences, what inspires him to make theatre by looking back on performances he has seen. I’ve never seen his work before, so I’m very much looking forward to it. In fact, I’m pretty impressed by Sadler’s Wells’ programme at the moment – Xavier Leroy, Jerome Bell, Hofesh Schechter. It’s a feast!





