Welcome
You will find at HOME (just clickety click but not yet) a sort of brief history of the company, what we do and a bit about Thanet (the isle on the sticky-out bit of Kent) where the company is based. If you want to write or ring or e mail us, you can do that by popping over to the CONTACT page. To find out about any of the shows that we have or are working on, I’ll put a few links at the end (otherwise you won’t get to read any of this bit with your whizzing here and there you flibberty-jibbets).
We also have a web-site, with a blog now mostly unused except for pointing people to here and there. And … oh, yes, there’s more, two other blogs to be precise. One, specifically for everything The Man in the Wide-Awake Hat: Pugin’s Gothic Adventures our production about AWN Pugin; architect, designer and theorist who built churches, cathedrals, changed the face of Britain and died at forty. And The Noggin the Nog Blog which is everything Noggin; a show that we co-produced with Third Party Productions based on the original BBC television children’s programme from Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin (Noggin, Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and more).
The Ice Dragon. The Sagas of Noggin the Nog.
Are you still here? Good. So, where are we now.
We are at the very beginning of a brand new project Utter Thanet. To find out more about this I’ll put a link at the end. Utter Thanet is about change. We aim to talk to a thousand people in our community about their fears and hopes, their loves and hates and about their attitudes, opinions and reactions to the changes that are happening around and to them. We aim to record the thoughts of as many people as possible and then to create a piece of verbatim/from real life testimony theatre about our community.
We have also, over the last year or so, toured The Sagas of Noggin the Nog (Edinburgh, Brighton, Buxton, Hull, to name but a few) and we started working on ‘I Have Lost Myself …’, a piece of theatre based on memory and Alzheimer’s disease. We performed a very early Work-In-Progress version at the Theatre Royal Margate as part of the Looping the Loop festival to see what interest there was and how we might make this particular piece of theatre. It was an exciting evening. There were a lot more people than we expected, many who care for a relative, and a very warm response for the show was received. Lots of questions (some that we could answer) and a huge amount of e mail traffic post performance. So … it seems there is a desire for this kind of show, and we are in the process of creating it at the moment. ‘I Have Lost Myself …’ will be available to tour sometime in 2018.
“Why so long”, I hear you shout, “a year to make a play?”
I Have Lost Myself …
Those of you who make shows will know what the process is and how long it can take. Those who don’t know … here is a little list (most of them have to be done in a particular order too). There is the small issue of a script to be written, research to be done, storyboarding to be completed, film (we use projection) to be created, a sound track to be designed and created, music to be written, puppets (a puppet of a brain and spinal column to be precise) to be designed and made, set, costumes, and a whole host of other creative things to be done and all of that happens a long time before we hit the rehearsal room.
Then we have partners in the project; people, companies and associations that are on board who know more about the science side of Alzheimer’s, the medical side, those who are more able than us to create workshop and training structures, those who work with people with dementia, those who work with new technology, sound designers, film-makers. They all have to be informed and kept up to speed with where we are at any given time. Once all of our partners are in place, I’ll put a list of them on here with contact details and links.
Frau Auguste Deter
And all of that has to run alongside the production side of the project. Raising money for a start (if you have a few extra quid that is littering your bank account, do send it over and we’ll look after it nicely for you), a tour to book, copy to be written, leaflets, posters, programmes to be designed and dispatched (the whole publicity package including copy for newspapers and other media in fact), social media to be ongoing, working with the venues so that they can achieve full-houses, accountancy, and on, and on … in order to make a project that has high production standards, can excite and intrigue people, can deliver all of the various facets without faltering, can fill an auditorium, can mean something for carers and those touched by Alzheimer’s, can create a space for people to discuss the issues, can produce high quality workshops and training, can put information into the hands of those who need it and can be a brilliant and thought provoking piece of performance, requires time, effort, professionalism, and even more time. So, although we are producing the play for 2018, the time is short (four letters in fact).
Well, almost a thousand words, so I’d better go and get on with some of the things I mentioned earlier. And by the way, Auguste Deter the lady in the image above, was the patient treated by Alois Alzheimer; he who gives his name to the disease.
A few links!
mischievous theatre 