A Conspiracy Of Clowns

And that, as they say, is that. Another closing night, we’re pleased to say another standing ovation, and now Pictures 0f You rests until June and the NAF.

It’s been a great 2 week return season – we fell agonisingly short of our ambitious audience target, but audience turnout and response has been awesome.  What’s really great has been people returning 3 or 4 times, and still enthusing. Love it when a show touches the audience in such a way.

Without hardly missing a beat, we turn to QUACK! for Out the Box, then 2 brand new pieces in April/May. Whoo hoo! The year unfolds magnificently…

Unbelievably, we are down to the last few shows of Pictures of You at the Baxter.  These 2 weeks seem to have flown by.

It’s been so awesome to have a return season – another first for us. Back when we were planning it, we all felt that 2 weeks would be enough, but by the evidence of things now, we’re starting to wish we’d made that 3. The buzz is back, the word is out, and audiences have been streaming through the doors. Our “Tuesday is Twos-day 2 for 1 special” has been particularly successful – seems everyone loves a special, and it looks set to become an institution for us.

Reviews have been good too – we thought we wouldn’t get any this year cos of a media blitz last year, but come they have.

The Writing Studio said: "If you’re looking for a magical visual experience that flirts just at the edge of reason, you’re in for a treat. Ready…engage right brain hemisphere…go!" 

The Citizen said: "a remarkable theatre experience: unnerving,funny and poignant."  

Artslink called it "phenomenal". 

Bizcommunity said: "…this is a show that you have to watch if you have only a the tiniest bit of respect for the performing arts." 

And Cape Times said: "the actors perform with the stilted gestures of arthritic robots…vapid staginess…typicality, stock situation and allusion: they suggest a director who doesn’t observe people and uses style to not get real."

Heh. At least it can’t be said that we don’t provoke a reaction!

Ends this Saturday at the Baxter Golden Arrow Studio. This will be the last of Pictures of You in Cape Town for no doubt a long time, so we’re going all out to end in conspiracy stylee!

Vluit-vluit doe storie’s uit!  Yep – Pictures of You gets 2 nods for the 2009 Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards: firstly, Janni Younge (who seems to be an awards magnet right now – rock on!) is nominated in the category for Best Props and/or Puppetry Design for the masks, and Rob Murray is nominated for Best Lighting Design.  We’re pretty stoked, as you can imagine, here at Conspiracy HQ, and look forward to the swanky gala affair on 21 March at the Baxter Theatre.  Keep ‘em crossed!

And, if that’s not enough, Janni is also nominated in the same category of Best Props and/or Puppetry Design for the masks for QUACK! and for the puppets in The Tempest. Seems like its her category this year!  How cool is that?  And how cool is it that visual theatre is finally getting the attention it deserves? Right on Fleur du Cap, and right on cape Town!

For a full list of all the nominations, check here at Artslink. Congratulations all for a bumper year and see y’all at the Awards Evening.

And…we’re up! All official like! So official that we even had Helen Zille, the Western Cape premier, her entourage (think that’s the first time we’ve hosted bodyguards…I mean, executive security…now what did they think of the show?!), some members of parliament, members of the consulate, all FTH:K’s executive committee/advisory board, and development committee in the house. (It’s awesome having these kinda VIPs around – everyone’s so blasé, like: “oh Helen Zille, yeah,  big deal”…but come the night, and everyone’s suddenly muscling in on photos and chatting up a storm. It’s great. You gotta love humans some days. We might be kak at too many things, but delicate, fragile, heart-warming humanity will always out.)

Liez and Dorian responded with a great show for the expectant audience – still shaving time off, and getting slicker and smoother every performance without losing the gritty heart that has always been at the core of Pictures. And then all mingle-mingle, wine-quaff, snack-chow, kak-pratery…and plans and conspiracies tiptoed into the night. Love it.

Actually, I don’t always love it. Openings can be quite hard work. But, like Tink said, this one is slightly different, because it’s a return season I guess. It’s not a new show, or new cast or anything, but a “back by popular demand”. So there were many new and different people at the opening, as the usual suspects have already seen it once or twice. And that gave it an interesting dynamic. And we had a blast!

Anyhoo, we’re up, on the planks, open, charting our course for the stars again.

Thanks to all who came to watch for the first, second, third or fourth time…you guys rock!

Unbelievably already, we only have 9 shows left. Madness!

So, we return to the Baxter with Pictures of You.  The upstairs foyer is in renovation, as it is turned into a rehearsal room – which is good for the Baxter. Makes for an interesting front of house as it gives a real buzz going into the theatre with a bit of backlog as opposed to how it used to be with everyone milling about. Always a good thing to have a buzz going in.

Had a weird get-in/preview – we kept tripping the lights for some reason. High voltage? Static electricity overload? Are the nerves or excitement getting too much? Not really nervous…we’ve done Pictures so many times now, the nerves are the nerves of getting ready for an audience, not the “omigod omigod are we ready?!” type.

Isolated the electrical problem to damaged wire connections, just before we opened the house. Previews have gone well – finding our rhythms onstage, chopping time off the show again. It’s become a tight, pretty slick ship now…quite some distance from the scruffy beastie we began with.

And so it’s onwards and upwards to the opening…

With just under a week to go before returning by popular demand to the Baxter, we have a number of awesome ticket prices, as well as a fantastic special offer for readers of this blog.

A quick run-down of the pricing structure -

• Mondays: Baxter Mondays (light meal + show) = R60
• Tuesdays: “Twos-days” – 2 tickets for the price of 1 = R75 (for two tickets)
• Wed-Thurs: R75
• Fri-Sat: R95

There are also discounts for block bookings, disability concessions, the Deaf, pensioners, students and scholars.

But…to cap it all off, we have an incredible deal for readers of this blog!  That’s right – for a measly R50, you get a ticket for any performance, other than the Monday and Tuesday specials…that’s a saving of up to 48% on the weekends.  Crazy! 

How do you organise this?  Easy.  Just contact the Baxter Box Office, and quote the code “CONSPIRACY OF CLOWNS’ et voila!  You are the happy owner of one of the hottest tickets in town! 

Pictures of You, 1-13 February at 20h15 nightly.  Don’t miss it!

Welcome to 2010 everybody, and apologies for the radio silence – the conspiracy has been resting, lying low, dreaming their dreamy little dreams…

This is gonna be a year to remember – there’s a great feeling about 2010 all round, and we are excited and buzzing with nervous energy!  Keep an eye on this blog ‘cos there’s some excellent news and special offers coming your way real soon.

But to kick start the year, we are overjoyed to welcome a new member to the  conspiracy…drum roll…introducing the dynamic and awesome Ms Emile Starke! A young theatre maker/designer/performer extraordinaire, Emilie is most welcome to the conspiracy and we are rubbing our hands together excitedly as we anticipate huge things from her and with her.  Read her profile here.

OK, keep an eye out for the next few days…there’s a cool special offer for Pictures of You coming your way.

Enjoy it guys.  2010…it’s gonna be a rush!

Wow!  How flippen awesome is this?  Janni Younge, our mask and puppet designer for Pictures of You and QUACK! has just been awarded the highly prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award for Theatre! That’s an amazing honour for her, and we are delighted at her recognition as a major rising star in the industry, as much as we are stoked to have collaborated with her over the last few years.

We first met Janni in 2003 when we were working for Community Arts Project (CAP) and  she was recently back from her training in France. Even then her obvious talent and passion for visual theatre and puppetry were evident.  In 2004 she designed and built us shadow puppets for our show Imbew’embi: The Bad Seed which we then developed further with her in 2005 as a professional show.  We watched her start rising through the creation of her own company Sogo Theatre and works like Elise’s Adventures in Congoland and Violet Rose Bite, as well as the initiation of the enormously popular Out the Box Festival, and designing for and working with Handspring Puppet Company, Magnet Theatre, and the Baxter’s production of The Tempest, among others.

We would have to wait until 2008 before we could book her to work with us again on Pictures of You and then came (and the developed version still upcoming) of QUACK!  It has always been a pleasure and a privilege.

Congratulations Janni – this is an enormous achievement for you and an inspiration for visual theatre makers everywhere.  May the following year be a bumper one for you and you achieve everything you so richly deserve. 

Beeg love from The Conspiracy and all of us at FTH:K!

For the press release of all winners, click here.

So round here we’re gearing up to go the this year’s Witness Hilton Arts Festival in KZN.  We’ve enjoyed good successes at Hilton over the years, with shows like Water Pockets, GUMBO, and last year’s associated The Dog’s Bollocks. 

This year, the giant-killing Pictures of You is pulled out of its resting and back on a plane, with great excitement and anticipation.  We have 3 shows at the festival:

• Friday 18 September 13h30
• Saturday 19 September 12h30 – already SOLD OUT
• Sunday 20 September 10h00

All you good folk in KZN – come on down!  This is finally your chance to get to see Pictures on your home turf.

There’s quite an interesting line-up too, with Greig Coetzee coming out of theatre hibernation to revive his classics: White Men with Weapons, The Blue Period of Milton van der Spuy, and Johnnie Boskak is feeling funny. There’s also Kickstart’s Wit that I missed at NAF this year and apparently kicks ass with the sublime Clare Mortimer heading that one up.  Jenine Collecott’s High Diving is also on, which is awesome ‘cos I also missed that at NAF and it was regarded by many as the jewel of the festival.  What else?  Nick Pauling and Scott Sparrow journey with us from Cape Town with Zoo Story.  Why so little Cape Town stuff there this year?  Hmmm.  That’s not great.  There’s the deliciously obscene sounding Molly Bloom, with Jennifer Steyn headlining the adaptation of the last chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Also apparently a gem.  Oh oh oh, and a new piece by Sylvaine Strike – Pregnant Pause.  That’s always a treat and a look forward to, and good to have her back making theatre!  And lastly, the intriguing sounding Mariner’s Tale – a short ride through the classic poem told with puppets, mime, masks, music…in its own tent.  Sounds a bit like the delightful Alchemist’s Heart created by Jaqueline Dommisse and Peter Hayes a few year’s back.  But hey – intriguing nevertheless.

Will keep our adventures all up to date from here, the Conspiracy HQ.

Need to get this all down before Festival slips completely out of frame…it has that tendency to do that – a huge intense build up, the explosion of the 10 days itself, and joy or frustration at how it all went, then it gets psychologically packed away until the whole cycle starts again next year.  Believe it or not, we are trying to learn./  It might not seem that way sometimes, but we are.

These not really in an order, more how they came to me:

The Good:

1. Pictures of You – yes, because it was the highest grossing theatre  production on the Fringe, but also because Liezl and Dorian took a step into the sublime.  The show was good before, and we’ thought we’d reached some kind of plateau…but at festival it got better.  And proved not only the strength of the Fringe and independence, but sticking to one’s guns, following one’s heart, “and in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.
2. Tony Lankester – CEO of the festival.  This guy is smart, he’s funny, he’s passionate, and he gives a shit.  Not only to artists as business people but to people as human beings.  True, he has his detractors (see below), but he learns and grows from things.  See here for another take on this.
3. Cape Town Edge – now having done 3 years, it has settled into the Fringe make-up, and this year was bigger, brighter, bolder, with a line-up of new shows and Festival returns in a programme for all tastes.  Furthermore, we had an equipment upgrade (a computerised board!), a venue upgrade (FOH bar and black drape surround – practically a real theatre), and this year we rocked out with selling sushi in the tent.  There will be more on Cape Town edge soon.  Strangely, every year we hear about other groups doing similarly, but this has yet to emerge properly.  Except for the New Joburg Underground…who knows anything about the New Joburg Underground?
4. The “Hands On! Masks Off!” initiative and “The Remix Laboratory” initiative.  Both programmes jam-packed with networking meetings, workshops, cultural events, sharings, learnings and experiences.  Kudos to Ismail Mohamed, Kate Axe Davies, and everybody who participated, organised, or assisted in their operation.  At times there was almost too much, particularly for this tired moegoe who (have I mentioned this already?) didn’t get a lot of time off to see/do stuff.
5. The Famished Road directed by Helen Iskander and produced by Fresco Theatre Company on the Main.  I couldn’t see many, but this was my show of Festival.  Based on Ben Okri’s book and other writings, the show is a magical visual feast.  Surprisingly wordy for the approach taken, and not perfect yet, but it is brand new, and I am sure it just continued to get better and better as it settled and was tweaked.  I hope it has a long life on South African stages.  It deserves to.  Fresco is doing stuff with such grace and polish that it is inspirational for us scruffy little clowns.

The Bad:

1. The divide of Grahamstown – Brett Bailey used it expertly in his piece Blood Diamonds by all accounts, and it’s always been there, but for some reason this year it was just a lot more evident.  Part of that was the Village Green moving up into the University, and really showing the racial divide: from Church Square to the township black, from Church Square to top residences white.  OK, that’s a gross generalisation, but you see where I’m going.  This poses a real quandry for theatre makers, because on the one hand you just want to go to Grahamstown and show your art, and watch art, and talk art and catch up and jol…but you can’t escape the poverty and desperation of the Eastern Cape and the Frontier that hasn’t been solved.  So what does one do?
2. The Village Green moving – now this actually didn’t impact hugely on us…it’s been a good 5 or 6 years since I combed the stalls looking for those 2 or 3 awesome things you could only get in Grahamstown, and you looked forward to each year.  But there was quite an ugly situation with traders in Fiddler’s green feeling neglected and passed over for the professionalism or elitism of the new Village Green up on the Great Field.  At one point, there were bubblings of an inverse Xenophobia with Northern African traders threatening to march on the Green and rip it to shreds.  Kudos to Lankester and co for handling the situation as well as they did, as well as freely admitting their miscalculation and taking immediate steps to solve the situation, which did happen and many traders relocated to Church Square.  But it divided the town all over again, with one prominent theatre maker (OK, really drunk at the Long Table) haranguing on and on about it.  Elements of truth, sure, but we have to face it – things are changing. 
3. Fascist guards at Village Green – true, I’ll admit that the situation was potentially getting tense (refer to #2 above), but to bar a group of actors in masks with flyers from the Green with an AK47?  Hmmm.  Tony Lankester again to the rescue!  But then we got barred from the tents another day because we couldn’t be identitfied and might potentially thieve the latest line of winter woolies from Scandinavia.  Did I mention I didn’t get to see much theatre?  There was a lot of logistics and organising and ranting going on. 
4. Boycott #1 – being threatened by a group of directors who accuse the Makana Municipality of sabotaging their Festival and causing loss of income due to their ripping down of posters etc from street signs, traffic lights and so on.  Check here for the Dispatch article, and another blog report here.  Now it’s true that this did happen – I was lucky in seeing them remove our Pictures banner (apparently not allowed on traffic lights - fair enough, same as anywhere else) and had to chase them down to retrieve said banner, but c’mon - some posters being pulled = severe loss of income = boycott?  I dunno about that one, hey.  Everybody knows posters don’t do much other than create a presence and pull maybe a small percentage of your audience in.  Sure, it’s lekker to see theatre makers standing up for themselves and drawing a line in the sand, but this present situation borders on the divisive again, in a time where we need more than ever to be pulling together.  Is it the municipality’s fault?  Are the directors overreacting?
5. Boycott #2 – this is one that goes even further, as it picks out individuals and has a really nasty edge to it.  There’s this “figure” called James Norton, not his/her real name (it would be so much better if they just came out into the open), who is calling on all artists and crafters to boycott the festival, sack Lankester, and basically turn the clock back 15 years or so to what the festival used to be.  I’m serious.  I first thought this was a joke, or an elaborate publicity prank, but apparently not.  Check out the Facebook group here.  It’s like an ironic backwards version of “Hot Fuzz”.

And an Ugli point of view:

Well, I think it’s all been said really.  Both in this blog, and on others like Meganshead and Artsblog.  Festival is changing, and has been so for the last few years.  This year was a big jump forward, and who knows how 2010 will truly pan out. 

But it’s changing and we need to change with it.  It’s still the national  arts festival, it still is hugely (if at times overly) ambitious, and things like the Fringe remain fiercely independent and democratic. 

It’s getting harder and harder to make a buck, but that’s true throughout the entire industry.  Even having the highest grossing theatre production on the Fringe doesn’t mean that we’re now retiring.  It means we actually have a few coins to jangle in our pockets, but we haven’t suddenly become rich.  More than anything, it has given us an enormous opportunity that we need to take full advantage of.  And that, for me, is the saving grace of festival – it’s an opportunity.  Perhaps the greatest one in the country, because for 10 days the serious theatre and arts lovers conjoin in a small town on one of the faultlines of South Africa.  It’s not perfect.  It’s grubby and messy and fractured and we have a real love/hate relationship with it.  But that’s OK.  Like any relationship, it needs work.  It needs support, and it needs to give us support.

We need to be more serious, without losing our senses of humour.  We need to get together more, find a way of working together, collaborate, join a collective, work in partnership with the Festival offices, work in partnership with businesses and funders and sponsors and patrons, we need to get organised, we need to evolve.  If we actually give a shit about it all.  And we do.  we all do.  We all should.

Because, in the end, “the love we take is equal to the love we make”.  Hit it.