A heads up about Wales Millennium Centre’s Blysh Festival which runs between 17 and 26 July and which I’m doing some work for.  It looks brilliant, and marks a new strand of programming for the Centre – cabaret, carnival and circus.

You can see the full programme here. You can also download the rather lovely brochure from that page too.

My highlights are definitely Bourgeoise and Maurice,  Camille O’Sullivan and The Secret Carnival.  There’s also loads of free stuff happnening in around the Centre.

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.

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.

Sus by Barrie Keefe

I’m doing a little bit of work for Splice Productions, promoting their show SUS by Barrie Keefe.

It’s a really interesting piece of work, particularly pertinent for our times.  Set on election night in 1979 on the eve of Thatcher’s Conservative government getting into power, it follows Delroy who is pulled into a police station under the notorious ‘Sus’ laws, on suspicion of murdering his wife.  These laws, where anyone could be arrested on suspicion of being about to commit a crime were repealed following the riots in St Pauls, Brixton and Toxteth, but of course now we have Stop and Search, which seems to have replaced Sus as a means of fighting knife crime and terrorism.  The number of black people stopped has risen by 322%, the number of Asian people by 277% and the number of white people by 185% to very little positive effect.

It’s being staged at the Bridewell Island complex, where Residence, Artspace Lifespace and the Long Arm Gallery are based and where we staged Stan’s Cafe’s Of All the People in All the World during this year’s Mayfest.  Even more interesting is that Bridewell is an ex-police station (Residence are in the old CID unit).

Splice are also inviting local DJs and MCs to respond to the play and the contemporary issues it raises and it’s got music by some of the most important artists of the time, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and The Specials.

Splice Productions
Sus by Barrie Keefe

with Huss Garbyia, Bob Gwilym and Jack Wharrier
Bridewell Island
15th – 26th July, 8pm
Saturdays 6pm & 9pm
Booking: 0117 9299008
www.bristolticketshop.co.uk

I’ve finally emerged from Mayfest  – highlights The Smile Off Your Face, Kellerman, Chris Goode and John Moran for me – and am beginning to engage with the real world again.

So here’s what’s happening over the next few months for me:

Marketing for Splice Productions’ SUS by Barry Keefe at Bridewell Island 15th – 26th July
Marketing for Blysh festival at Wales Millenium Centre 17th – 26th July
Work on The Special Guests‘ new show Something Got a Hold of Me
Plus some work for the ICIA in Bath. More info soon

In the meantime, I saw the incredible Back to Back Theatre yesterday in Broadmead, Bristol.  Small Metal Objects is a very, very brilliant piece of theatre.  I’m also booking a ticket for the Secret Garden Party in July. Fun. Fun. Fun.

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

The Mayfest 2009 programme is now online here: www.mayfestbristol.co.uk.  It’s going to be a corker…

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.

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

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!