A Conspiracy Of Clowns

 AUDITION NOTICE: Performer-Manipulator

Written by Lara Foot, and developed in collaboration with Leila Henriques, Brian Webber, and Joss Levine, Womb Tide was first performed to high acclaim in 1996.

At its heart, Womb Tide is an unconventional love story. Told through the memory of a child, Womb Tide is at once deeply moving, funny, dark, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive. Set in the mid to late twentieth century South Africa, it follows an eccentric and somewhat dysfunctional family through a story of love, loss and hope, and paints an impressionistic portrait of the complexities of family life.

More than just simply a remounting, Womb Tide is a complete overhaul of the original story, given FTH:K’s approach to creating fresh, startling, visually accessible work. Featuring a stellar crew of collaborators, Womb Tide is a paean to love and perseverance and a tour de force of visual and physical storytelling.

Directed by Rob Murray

Design by Craig Leo, Leila Anderson, and Emilie Starke

Sound Design by James Webb and Brydon Bolton

AUDITIONS (in the form of a workshop) will be held:

Date: Wednesday 28 April 2010

Venue: Arts Admin Theatre, Corner of Wesley and Milton Road, Observatory, Cape Town

Time: 09h00-12h00 (please arrive 08h30 to register)

We are casting for the character of the KID. In the play, the KID injects a chaotic energy into the lives of his mother and father that binds the family together closely. Participants need to be able to play both young and old, exhibit a youthful energy and the spirit of a clown. Participants should have experience of working within an ensemble-based, devised theatre process. Physical performance skill (mime/clown/physical theatre/movement) is a must, and experience in puppet manipulation a bonus, though not necessary.

Dress comfortably for a physical performance/puppet manipulation workshop.

Rehearsal Dates: May/June 2010

Performance Dates:

• 22 June – 7 July 2010 (National Arts Festival & National Schools’ Festival)
• 22 August – 27 September 2010 (Market Theatre, JHB)
• 28 September – 3 October 2010 (Aardklop, TBC)
• 8 November – 4 December 2010 (Baxter Theatre, Cape Town)

For more information, or to book your place, please contact Tanya Surtees on 021-448-2838 or email tink@fthk.co.za and send through an updated CV by Monday 26 April 2010.

And with that, we finally open at The Intimate Theatre!  It’s been a hectic last few weeks, but now the stuff is done, and the show can now settle and find itself properly and we can truly test our progress and process.

The collaborators on the project have been stellar – truly amazing artists all of them.  What has been so great is their openness to continue developing and changing their initial designs as the show has morphed and changed.  So huge love and thanks to Janni Younge (masks), Leila Anderson (costumes – pictured above with the cast), Jesse Kramer (set and props), and James Webb and Brydon Bolton.  These guys rock, and the strange fantastical world of QUACK! would be nothing without them.

Last night kicked ass!  We had a full house of great people, members, funders, press, and long time supporters.  Leila designed a number of installations for the outside patio and foyer of The Intimate, and it set the mood for a great evening.

And the show?  Well, it’s finding its feet, and settling into its rhythms.  The cast is being fantastic and trying new stuff all the time, and one can’t wish for more than that.  It’s a challenging work – not so much in terms of its content, but its approach.  Like people say – it’s hard work watching the full show with no dialogue.  And it is.  We know that.  It’s hard work putting the whole thing together with no dialogue and so on.  But it’s a pretty unique and different experience all round.

Needless to say there’s room for improvement – there always is in this kind of work.  And the strength of ensemble work is also sometime its weakness – a number of storylines that try thread together and sometimes do, sometimes don’t.  Each show is a walk on a very thin tightrope, and some nights one’s on one side, the next on the other.  The tiniest thing can make or break it.

But that’s the thrill, that’s the challenge, that’s the life we choose to lead.

So here’s to the next week and a half, and may it rock as much as the first few shows have!

It’s a week of announcements, clearly.  Not only does Megan announce the imminent arrival of Noah of Cape Town, but at FTH:K we are proud to announce our latest venture – QUACK!

It is simply an exceptional team: on the performance front is Liezl de Kock (Pictures of You and GUMBO), Lysander Barends (GUMBO and Ek Roep vir Jou Vanaand), Taryn Bennett (Frogs and Dr Collinger’s Funeral Service), and Marlon Snyders (GUMBO and Ek Roep vir Jou Vanaand).  Masks are by Janni Younge who designed and made our excellent masks for Pictures of You).  Set and props are by Jesse Kramer (of Koos Sas, Ghoema!, The Kramer and Pieterson Songbook fame).  Costumes are by Leila Anderson (BeLongings and Isabella).  And the sound design is by the award-winning James Webb (of Pictures of You, Rump Steak, Orpheus, and…ooh, just about everything else).

And the whole shebang is produced by FTH:K which means that the hottest up and coming theatre manager, Tanya Surtees, is behind it all.

Yes. Stop right there. Read back and let those names wash over you again. Those are like your director’s wet dream, and I am the lucky, lucky director.

So what is QUACK!?

From the makers of Pictures of You and GUMBO comes a new venture into the unknown.

So many lies, so little time…welcome to the shadowy, clown noir world of QUACK!

In a world where everything is for sale, and nothing has any value anymore, an ambitious drifter, addicted to quick scams, dreams up his definitive deceit - his masterpiece of mendacity.  Enlisting the aid of his long-suffering partner, a quiet and melancholic woman, he sets his plan in action.

But lies have the habit of consuming the liar.  And karma is sometimes waiting just around the corner.  And then there are the ghosts and victims of a million failed scams and past misdeeds…

In a thrilling blend of physical and visual performance, infused with their signature approach to creating accessible, non-verbal performance, QUACK! is FTH:K upping the ante and boldly leaping out of the frying pan and into the pyre.

It’s a battle for the soul of humankind.  It’s a visceral, visual bombardment of the senses.

Listen with your eyes!

Step right up!

QUACK! drops 2 July 2009 in Gatstad.  Capetonians, hang onto your dominoes – you have a sneak preview that you’ll hear about in a little bit right here.

Set your clocks.  Set your minds.  Ssh!  Don’t say a word…tell a soul…the clowns are coming…

It’s been an interesting few weeks of getting back into rehearsal and chipping away at the show again and that’s included going right back to the source.  I was chatting to Zane about it this week too, and again it struck me what a long, convoluted journey we’ve been on.  That’s really one of the joys and major frustrations with the devised work we do – sometimes the process meanders along, and you don’t have a clue where it’s going, and other times it sits in the doldrums and you start prostrating yourself for some kinda wind for the sails.

Anyhoo, Pictures of You all started back in 2007.  We were touring GUMBO all over the country and spending a lot of time away from home, and dealing with that slightly displaced alienation you always get on tours.  Me and Liez had been talking for yonks about working in masks, and it was weirdly suddenly in the air – we bumped into Ellis Pearson in Johannesburg, who treated us to a sneak preview of his half-mask show for schools, and Aldo Brincat was around doing Arney at Kalk Bay. at some point.  So we plotted vaguely about incorporating masks into some work we did…y’know – sometime in the future.

The future came a lot closer when at National Arts Festival that year, the bare bones of a story fell out of the sky.  Was it a dream?  I can’t remember.  It would suit the show, but I skiem I’d be making it up if I said that for sure.  But for some reason, a scene from Battle of the Sexes popped into my head.

Now in this, Peter Sellers is quite creepy as he plays Mr Martin – a mild mannered Scot clerk who, taking umbrage at the hostilities of a brash American woman (Constance Cummings) hired to investigate inefficiency at the firm, decides to murder her.  The scene in question is inspired, with Sellers at his best in his half-hearted attempts to kill her, and always just being foiled.  This all takes place in a kitchen and involves, amongst other things, ice scrapers, carving knives, and a whisk (you’ll just have to see it).

It’s not the best Sellers film, by a long shot.  But the scene is great.  Really funny and pretty dark.  And for some reason, the action of trying to kill one’s spouse stuck.  Let’s not get too analytic here – I was a few months away from getting married, but not for a second a I suggesting anything that you’re reading between the lines.  Nor am I condoning domestic violence.

What interested me was the question: what would drive a seemingly mild-mannered man to the point of murdering his spouse?  What extreme crisis of character or identity would lead him to such lengths?

At the same time as all of this, I’d been reading up on male identity, midlife crises, self-actualisation, and so on for another project.  So everything was simmering away merrily, and at Grahamstown came this seed of a story: a husband and wife’s marriage is perfect on the surface, but underneath is a broiling mess of unfulfilled desire.  He starts dreaming wildly, and in his dreams he meets a Dream Creature.  She entices him more and more to visit her, and eventually he is hooked.  Addicted.  Can’t get enough of her.  So he cooks up a plan (or is coerced) to swap his wife for the creature, by killing her, thus opening the portal for dream-real exchange (some dodgy quantum physics there, I know…very Vurt, very Pan’s Labyrinth, very very David Lynch: Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, etc…did I ever say I was a shameless borrower?).

Thus began a battle for their souls, and a clash between the real and dreaming worlds.  Pretty obscure.  Slightly abstract.  And we figured that maybe not to so many people’s taste.  Especially when funders started saying “no”.  But through this process of development, we had succoured the services of 2 other main collaborators: James Webb for sound design and Janni Younge for visual design and creation.

We also had a title - “Of Quiet Desperation”, from that awesome quote by Thoreau: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

This was the original mock-up of the poster.  Notice how originally Liez and I were going to play the parts, and Tanya was down to direct.  We had also ambitiously marked March as our premiere.  (Boy, was that quickly gonna change!)

But what we had to start with was a cool, creepy, dark, slightly comic, very surreal, and all round disturbing glimpse into human behaviour under pressure.  It was certainly something build on.

Stay tuned for the next instalment…

Pictures of You is a surreal story of undying love and brooding desire, told in a mesmerising and unusual visual manner.

At first sight, Frank and Janet’s marriage is the picture of perfection – neat, ordered, and respectable.  But underneath lies a deeper truth – one of buried secrets, suppressed memories, and repressed desires that begin leaking out when Frank starts to dream.

An absorbing narrative, fascinating full character masks, magic realism, arresting imagery, puppetry, and an imaginative soundscape explode in a total theatrical feast for the senses.

“mesmerising…riveting” (Adrienne Sichel, The Star)

“beautiful… really brilliant” (Natalie Sineke, www.24.com)

“emotionally intense…Must-see, gripping theatre” (CUE)

“…’n aangrypende stukkie lewe…” ( Mariana Malan, Die Burger)

“…a spectacular dreamscape…utterly fresh and beautifully executed” (Marelise van der Merwe, AnimationXchange)

Devised and directed by Rob Murray.  Featuring two hot, up and coming performers, Liezl de Kock and Dorian Burstein.  Masks and puppets by Janni Younge.  And sound design by the award-winning James Webb.

This is the show that plays next week at Suidoosterfees, and opens in 14 days time at the Baxter.  Book now, already!

Over the next couple of weeks, on this blog we’re going to be giving you an exclusive peek into the “making of” the show.  That’s right - think of this as your cyber backstage pass, as we peel away the layers and give you a glimpse into the ups and the downs of this particular rollercoaster of a process.  It’s been a pretty wild time…