A Conspiracy Of Clowns

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!

Masks in theatre and beyond from the Neutral mask to the Red Nose

A lecture-presentation with Giovanni Fusetti

This Friday, April 3rd, Baxter Theatre. Tickets on sale at the door - 50 bucks. 2-4pm.  It’s dirt cheap, it’s fascinating, the guy is indeed a master.  BE THERE.  It’s that simple.

Giovanni writes:

From shamanic rituals to contemporary carnival, masks have always been essential human expression. As sacred objects mask are connected with the mystery of shapeshifting and journeying into different realms of reality. Peoples in all continents and times have used masks to perform rituals and to connect with the world of spirits.

Masks are connected with the mystery of the human soul, with its multiples archetypes and powers. Carl Gustav Jung used the word masks to describe the different psychic personas that inhabits every human. The possibility of exploring the different powers is the gift of mask to consciousness.

In recent history, masks moved form ritual to theatre, and were already present in the first codified form of theatre, the Greek Tragedy. The actor is the master of shapeshifting, and masks are the ultimate tools of its transformation.

During this presentation the Italian theatre master and fool Giovanni Fusetti, will guide the audience into a journey of discovery of the world of masks. After an anthropological introduction the space will be brought to life with the Neutral Mask, the starting point of Physical Theatre training, as developed by Jacques Lecoq and Amleto Sartori. This mask reveals a state of calm and absence of conflict, bringing the body to a state of silence. Once the neutral state is reached, all stories can be told, like dramatic signs on a white page of silence.

The appearance of the first simple forms and dynamics are visible in the Larval Masks, which belongs to the Swiss carnival tradition. Expressive masks will present a growing complexity of lines, shapes and dramatic nuances.

Once the mouth is uncovered we enter the world of half masks, from Naïve Masks to Commedia dell’Arte Stock characters, both traditional and contemporary.

The final step is the smallest mask in the world: the Red Nose. The mask of sublime stupidity, which reveals the unique comic presence in every human being, based on his unique physical and emotional space and body. The clown is the poetical transposition of the unique silliness of every person.

(from www.giovannifusetti.com)

Those clowns, Sjaka and Yve, are at it again this weekend with the second workshop in their Saturday morning series.  This one’s on Status.  So get your bad self to Hiddingh Campus, Room 207 10am-12pm.  For more details, contact Sjaka on 0732558318.

Then…’tis only a measly 4 days to the onset of Giovanni’s workshop series.  We’re humming with excitement and anticipation down here – It’s gonna rock so wild!  As an added bonus, he’s giving a lecture-demonstration on “The Pedagogy of Giovanni Fusetti” on Friday 3rd April 2-4pm at the Baxter.  More details and to book your seat (I guess) through Yve 0741003013

Check this out to see what this guy’s all about, and what his Helikos School is offering: Helikos brochure (PDF)

And with that, the curtain comes down on our Baxter season.  Time really just flew. It did. Now comes the inevitable post-production blues, the tying up, the weird energy at 5pm where you start thinking to get ready for the theatre, only…you don’t have to…

We’re still sifting through the data and analysing it all. But first up, our run saw:

• 18 evening performances
• 1 matinee (for a Deaf school)
• 5 SOLD OUT shows (and a handful very full)
• 3 post-performance discussions
• 1 pre-performance discussion
• 1 opening night event
• 1 “mingles night” event (will follow up on that one soon…interesting)
• 1 Baxter Student VIP Club event
• over 1700 people
• an average of 94 poeple per night (not the best, but ceratinly not shocking)
• new audiences, returning audiences, growing audiences
• a critical slam-dunk
• tears, laughter, standing ovations, confusion, heated debate, fiery opinions, and a small amount of controversy

On top of all of this, the show shifted and changed, and we developed and tweaked it as we went.  By the end, we’d shaved 8 minutes off it, rearranged some scenes, and fiddled with other stuff.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege. Thanks to all who came and supported and chatted and cared and engaged us in conversation.

All those who missed it…not to worry, we’ll be back. Or very soon, we might just be in your neighbourhood. Watch this face for details…SSH!

It has been an exhausting 2 weeks, and it’s really hard to think we now only have 5 performances left!  Crazy.

Will write more about the promised process that got waylaid due to time demands and things, and will also talk more about what and how we did at the Baxter.

In the meantime, responses, comments, critiques, and raves keep flooding in, which is really great.  Zane Henry’s Argus review is here.  Brent Mersman’s review for the M&G is here.  Peter Tromp’s review for Next 48hOURS is here.  And Astrid Stark’s review for The Sunday Independent is here.  They’re all interesting reads.

5 more shows.  Tonight, as yesterday, sold out.  Tickets flying out the door fast.

What a trip!

It’s not on the 14th any more - we were going to host a Valentine Party, but then rethought the concept and went, what about a pre-valentine’s bash?  You get lucky, you might actually score a date for the day.

FTH:K believes that going to the theatre should be a social event. So, in preparation for the forthcoming Valentine’s Day, we’re hosting a Mingles Night on Thursday 12th Feb as a fun, innovative way to meet people.

Co-founder of FTH:K and organsier of the event, Tanya Surtees, says: “With sparkling wine from Distell, great theatre, speed dating and the chance to win some awesome prizes, the scene is set to maybe meet a mate! We are calling to all single people to come, have fun and meet people they otherwise might not have had the chance to meet. And to all couples we say, tell your single friends!”

Hang on. Speed dating?  Speed dating?!?! Ja, OK, but not the dodgy kind. This is FTH:K - your friendly neighbourhood innovative theatre company, after all. It’s speed dating with a twist. Of course. It’s gonna be a jol, basically.

The evening begins at 7pm with welcome drinks on arrival, followed by a range of ice-breaking games. The performance starts at 8.15pm and the evening continues after the show until 10h30.  And after that, well…hey - the rest is up to you guys.

Best thing - it’s no extra cost.  Tickets to Mingles Night at Pictures of You on Thursday 12 Feb are still only R65 and can be bought at Computicket or any Checkers/Shoprite store.

Styling!

We more or less survived the curse of second night. It always amazes me  - there’s such an energy output on opening night that it carries the show along with it on a rushing wave. And then second nights crash. Everyone knows it. We talk about it, devise strategies to deal with it, make vows and promises, warm up a little extra, focus profusely…then out we go, and crash! - it happens anyway.  Crazy.

So we didnt get off totally free. The show dragged its heels a bit, energy was definitely down, even in the lighting box I felt low. So we had a long detailed notes session afterwards, to nip little indulgences and habits before they blossom into something worse. And hopefully we can keep on our upward trajectory.

Responses coming in thick and fast - both good, and critical. Marianne Thamm wrote a very cool review here, which muses about silence and interpretation. We’ve had very moving and supportive feedback on how the show sticks in people’s minds and hearts. We’ve had highly critical responses from industry people who I guess work with masks differently. And we’ve had responses like one guy who really displiked the show, and wrote something like: “take away the actor’s words and expressions and what do they have left? It’s certainly not acting. All they did was stand up and sit down at various intervals…” It’s kind of both funny and scary at the same time.

But I think the best response so far has been from this married couple who, the day after watching Pictures of You, sat down and had a long loving conversation about their lives and their marriage. And actually used the show to analyse their situation. And apparently managed to feel closer to each other than they have in a long while.

That’s pretty cool.

Phew. Opening nights are exhausting - such a blast of adrenaline and nerves and people and catching up and schmoozing and hatching plans…no time to have much more than a glass of the wine sponsored so generously by Distell.

But what a great night. People were out in force and flying their support flag - we even had a few friends who happened to be in town from Joburg, heard we were opening, and managed to sweet talk their ways in. Thanks for all the support and well-wishing.

The show continues to grow - one of the best things about a season is the opportunity to really get into the meat of the performance, and Liezl and Dorian are starting to tuck in. Apart from a bizarre day yesterday when the puppet’s arm broke a few hours before the show, and then Dorian’s pants split, and then the puppet’s (her again!) neck wire snapped in the last scene…we were helluva lucky Janni was in the audience so she whisked her away to do emergency surgery today.

We’re getting the most interesting and detailed feedback. People are being very forthcoming with opinions and their interpretations, and that’s great. We wondered if the silence of the show builds up so much in the audience, that come the end, they have to talk immediately, specifically, and with much vigour. Pop! Just like that. Pop goes the word.

There’s a review clip of the show on Bizcommunity here, and Megan has blogged about the show again here, which is a rare honour.

Onward to the dreaded second night…