A new micro project emerged from its chrysalis this Sunday the 29th as part of Brighton’s wonderful White Night celebrations. A co-production between Stillpoint, Emma Kilbey and the Nightingale Theatre, the Department of Unreliable Memoirs is an intimate encounter for one audience member. It invites you into a little world of shifting memory, secret lives and mischief.

In celebration of the lifting of the Ban on Dubious Facts, The Dept of Unreliable Memoirs has recently reopened its Brighton bureau! Make an appointment with our helpful hostesses to retrieve a half forgotten moment, from a past you may well have had.

We had a wonderful night, chock full of appointments, with many rediscoveries and much hysterical laughter as the clock ticked towards 2am.

If you missed us this time, do keep an eye out, because we will be back with a whole host of fresh memories to revive for you and next time maybe even a momento for you to take home!

Many people who helped us make our newest piece of work over the past few months didn’t get properly thanked, as the Brighton Festival free sheet didn’t make it into the hands of the audiences. Please accept our sincere apologies. It was not our doing and in order to rectify this and remind you how grateful we are for your contribution, your names are listed here. Also, posted below, an electronic version of the missing sheet you can read, download, or print off and fashion your own origami swan, fortune teller game, or paper aeroplane.

So BIG thanks to:
Geoff Hense, Emma Kilbey, Lucy Moore, Ella Thompson, Emma Roberts, Wendy Houstoun, Lucinka Eisler, Steven Brett, Kate Gower and the team at the Nightingale Theatre, Laura Chrostowski, Tanya Peters and all at the Brighton Festival, Arts Council England, The Brighton and Hove City Council, Driftwood productions, Foz Foster, Greg Allum, Toby Amies, Tim Crouch, Lisa Wolfe, Sean Phillips, Matt Blackman, Dr.Bramwell and all at Stitch Collective.

Brighton Festival Platform Performances Freesheet

A Busy Week
Found some days to work with the mercurial and magical Wendy Houstoun last week thanks to the Nightingale’s excellent mentoring program. Started haltingly. An inertia bourn on my part out of a shyness and admiration for Wendy’s body of work and pedigree as well as an uncertainty about quite which language we might share.

A night of terror followed fearing that it might all be broken beyond repair.

Then a waking to realise it was indeed broken and what a relief, because it meant there was now space to re-imagine, re-configure and put it back together again very differently. break free of the structure that was chaining it down.

So we began on the second day (with Wendy) breathing air and light into the re-configured material and it all began to feel alive again. Blessed relief!

I’ve learnt a lot about how I don’t want to work this time around.

A bit about the Tyranny of Story
Normally, I tackle story last: I find some nuggets to develop whilst turning a deliberately blind eye to how it will all fit together eventually (but trusting that eventually it will). I choose this because I want to work unconsciously for as long as possible. Wrangling these nuggets into some kind of linearity towards the end of my process is always a bit full on and terrifying but if I pull it off, it gives a pleasing depth and texture and creates a fluency between the abstract and the literal passages, it also allows and creates space for the audience which i like very much.

This time, however, following some well meaning advice and an idea that i might be able to save myself the stress of the full on / terrifying end bit, I thought i’d attempt to work anti-intuitively and tackle story first.

What I’ve learnt is that it is much harder (for me) to incorporate accident and play in this way. The story arch can become a rod for your back. a kind of monster who’s linearity sucks all your creative impulses into it. You have to feed and feed, or risk losing the plot, figuratively and literally. Whilst this discipline is alright for some, I’ve learnt that it ain’t right for me. And it has been a relief to reclaim that. Wendy’s pulling apart has been a necessary dismemberment and for that I am very grateful!

We also tech-ed The Growing Room in the Pavilion space 1 month before the impending first performance. Hair-raising to say the least and the first time i’ve needed to make lighting decisions so far in advance of a finalised piece! Over the two allocated days Geoff Hense and I probably had about 4 hours sleep between us. Got there in the end. Let it be known that Geoff Hense is a bloody star.

Then last night had the pleasure of getting some photos done with the talented and singular Toby Amies

We’re in Oxford this week with Steal Compass, Drive North, Disappear at Grove House!
Will be interesting to see how black wool reads on white washed walls!

Wednesday & Thursday 4th & 5th of May.
You can buy tickets here.
Do come if you are in the vicinity!

Acting Skills for Everyday Life 2
A follow on course for Acting Skills for Everyday Life
A special treat for those who did Acting Skills For Everyday Life 1 and want more. Also open to everyone. This course is more a continuation than an ‘advanced’ course. Please note, these classes are not about becoming an actor, but about opening up, learning some applicable skills, having fun and growing in creative confidence.

We’re aiming to offer 4 of these babies a year. Woop!

TICKETS DISAPPEARING!
The third part of our trilogy, The Growing Room, at the Brighton Pavilion on the 25th of May is nearly sold out! Please get your tickets very soon if don’t want to miss it.

Seats still available for the first two pieces, The Art of Catastrophe and Steal Compass, Drive North, Disappear. Go here to book or call the Dome Box Office on +44(0)1273 709709 for tickets to all three shows.

Be warned, the beautiful Nightingale who is playing host to our first two pieces, is perfectly formed but tiny, so please keep an eye on tickets, for they will wooosh!… disappear!

WORKSHOP POSTPONED
The Body and It’s Stories Performance Workshop has been postponed to the 18th of June. Please visit the education page for more details.

STEAL COMPASS, DRIVE NORTH, DISAPPEAR COMING TO THE NUFFIELD SOUTHHAMPTON & GROVE HOUSE, OXFORD
We’re taking Martin and his sensitive ego along with nearly half a kilometre of fairy lights to The Nuffield in two weeks time. If you know anyone in Southampton who might enjoy a dark and funny insight into a modern man’s private life, please send them here!

Then on the 4th and 5th of May we are taking Martin and his fairy lights out again for a very special couple of gigs in Graham Green’s old home, Grove House in Oxford. The wonderful old building we will be performing in, used to be used to be home to Green’s wife’s collection of hundreds of Victorian china dolls, but has now been reclaimed by Poly and Rose as an intimate and unique venue. We’re really excited to be bringing the piece to this unusual space.

Bella Todd’s theatre blog in the Guardian last week flags up some local produce exploring the relationship between drawing, theatre and audience engagement. Sue MacLaine’s re-imagining of Henrietta Morais’s life set in front of an audience armed with sketchpads and pencils this May as part of the Brighton Artists Open Houses. Local drawing legend Jake Spicer’s new work, Tim Crouch’s England and our very own Steal Compass… all get a mention

We showed 40 minutes of the emerging work last week, to a small, but attentive audience.

A very strange beast the ‘work in progress showing’. For both the audience and the performer. The rules of engagement are not always clear and the functionality of the thing often subsumes the possibility of transcendance (or even satisfaction!) emerging for either party. There is perhaps a kind of gladiatorial fascination with the guts of a thing being exposed and for the maker, a surrender to unknowing and nakedness; a kind of consensual sado-masochism if you will. It always sets up very useful questions and investigations though, so a good thing definitely.

Back in the beloved Nightingale space again this week working with Lucinka Eisler.

Investigating more deeply some of the information that emerged from the showing on the 8th February. A discovery that it is the mother’s story after all and a decision to interview more 15 year olds.

We’ve been discussing the phenomenon of being a teenager in an era where all these online social networks require you to present a public face 24 hours a day and how different that must be from the era we grew up in. What it must be to be projecting a self to some unknown & unquantifiable public, well before you have any sophisticated independent notion of who you are. We talked about this in terms of female sexuality: Girls enjoying the feeling of power they receive from arresting the male gaze, but having no real sense of how volatile the elements are that they are invoking. We discussed the phenomenon of grooming; men harvesting underage girls using these networks.

We are interested in our character, Carla treading a very dangerous line in relation to this material, so that in entering her world, the audience is not presented with any easy moral get out clause.

hmm good times.

The showing was ultimately super informative, affirming and provocative in equal measure and exactly the kick in the pants we needed at exactly the right time. We are very grateful.

We are currently developing all three solo works into a Triptych that will be staged over three consecutive weeks in three different venues during the Brighton Festival 2011. Our newest piece, The Growing Room, is currently in development with the Brighton Festival and The Nightingale Theatre and will premiere at the Brighton Festival on the 25th of May 2011 as part of the Platform program of performances.