I AM PROPERLY STUPIDLY EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE A 10 DAY RUN OF A Conversation With… IN EDINBURGH THIS AUGUST AS PART OF THE NORTHERN STAGE AT ST. STEPHEN’S PROGRAMME. AAAAAAAH.
So here’s some of the reviews and tweets from this weekend’s premier of the current version of A Conversation With My Father. Sampled was ace, and I was performing amongst some pretty humblingly awesome company; I particularly loved see Laura Mugridge and Tom Adam’s Watery Journey… after it’s Performance in the Pub work in progress sharing, and also loved Molly Naylor’s My Robot Heart with music from the Middle Ones (totally in mind for a future PitP), Andy Field’s fizzling writing about the city in Zilla!, and Chris Thorpe doing his astonishing and gripping thing with There Has Possibly Been an Incident. Gutted to miss Melanie Wilson, Curious Directive, and Ross Sutherland due to having to do my own show. But on that – I was incredibly pleasantly surprised, and learnt a lot. Ridiculously low on time right now (hence no linking up the above, you can google, right?), but here’s some of the stuff I learnt/found interesting about performing ACW:
goodness me audiences are different
either that or I need to get more consistent in performance
apparently I can remember words, which is good.
sometimes the sort-of-funny things I write turn out to be VERY funny, and I need to structure the performance to balance that
This is an important story, that appears to be reasonably approachable
It makes people cry.
I don’t like making people cry. I want to find a way of (metaphorically) telling people ‘it’ll all be ok’ afterwards, but don’t think it will unless I also make people want to Do Something
I don’t think it’s up to me to tell people what that Something is.
people are really interested in all of the stuff I pack for a protest, and want it explaining. No one ever works out that the number for GBC LEGAL that I write on my arm (with the label) is for a lawyer, and why you do that.
I think there’s something in comparing the ritual of readying for protest for both protestor and police office
the sound recording I have of me and my dad is not very good at higher volumes. This is rubbish and I need to get someone who knows more than me to fix it.
I think I’ve found a ‘TED’ version of this story – performance lecture, but would like to explore how it possibly becomes more performance, or maybe more story.
As for the future of it, I’m hoping to get a producer or director on board somehow, and spend a week on it in a rehearsal room somewhen and somehow to work it up into a 50-60 minute solo show. And I might even have some photos to show you soon.
In the meantime I’ll leave you with some some self-congratulatory highlighting of positive reviews/tweets:
