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Nightwalks, Talks and Live Art.

Greetings all, hope you’re enjoying the cooling down of the weather and the reddening of the trees. Autumn always gets me excited, not just because I can make crumbles and gravy dinners with more than usual impunity, or because it means the approach of my birthday, but also because it feels like the beginning of new endeavours. School years, university; Autumn makes me want to purchase stationary. And in the spirit of new endeavours, I have three very exciting things to tell you about…

One: I will this Saturday (25th September) be performing a piece of Live Art in Stoke Newington Airport’s Live Art Speedating as part of Fierce, Birmingham’s Interrobang. Lots of words there that might not make sense to everyone. Go look at the poster, and check out this video, for more on what it’s all about…

Two: I shall also be talking at the Coventry Pecha Kucha on the 12th of October on Theatre in the Age of the First Person. 20 slides of 20 seconds each. See here for more info. Other talks, too, I’m particularly intrigued by the ‘safe sex with robots’ one.

And three: I’m very excited to announce a new soundwalk! Nightwalk; a guided walk through the light and dark of York will be happening on Wednesday 27th & Friday 30th October at 7pm. The event will be free, and is happening as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York festivals. I’m especially thrilled because this will be my first collaboration with real music-making people, the brilliant Lantern Music. Hopefully it will mark the beginning of a beautiful collaborative relationship. The site for the piece is http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com – do share it, and join/invite people to the Facebook Event. And follow me and @umbrellaproject on Twitter for whisperings from the writing process.

So there you go, lots of exciting things to lead me up to the beginning of November, and the prospect of launching a very exciting country-wide project come next Spring… but you’ll have to wait to hear about that.

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The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You

The Smell of Rain Reminds me of You

Base image shared on Flickr via a (remix) Creative Commons License by AnitaKHart. Shameless Helvetica added by me.

So, if you’ve been following me on Twitter over the past week or so you will have seen that I have been a) collecting stories and b) seeding the #rainreminds hashtag. What’s it all about? Well, I’m delighted to announce that I have a piece of work in the Hazard Festival, next Saturday at 5pm.

The dedicated mini-site can be found at http://rainreminds.tumblr.com/ where there are links to the location and facebook event, and a nice big old Share Button. Please do!

The piece will be somewhere between stealth performance, soundwalk, and flashmob, will involve up to 100 umbrellas, and will take place in the middle of Manchester. Full instructions, and an mp3 to download and bring with you will be released 24 hours prior to the event, so if you’re interested, do sign up to the Facebook event so I can send a nice reminder out when I release it.

The hashtag for the event is #rainreminds, and over the past week or so I’ve been collecting stories, voices, and sounds from people all over the internet. These will either be used directly in, or help to inspire the 10 minute long piece, which I will be writing up until Tuesday, recording and editing until Thursday, and then releasing at 5pm on Friday with accompanying instructions in advance of Saturday.

In the meantime you can have a read of (or add to) some of the awesome stories coming into http://rainonmy.tumblr.com – and if you want to be credited make sure you leave your name in the *body* of the submission (if you missed that in the submission guidelines and you do want crediting, drop me an email or @ on twitter). Also, follow the  #rainreminds hashtag for trials, tribulations, and exclamations in the writing/recording journey.

So, see you in Manchester, and spread the word.

Hurrah!