We’ve hit the ground running in 2012.

In February Stillpoint begins work on a fourth full length piece of work with musician Nick Norton-Smith in beautiful Dartington. The weeks residency has been sponsored by Fuel. It is early days, but we are thinking we’d like to build a two hander around the idea of space travel, home and distance. How far can you travel before the connection gets too thin and return becomes impossible?

We’ve also been commissioned by Fuel to contribute some work to the Phenomenal People project in the WoW Festival at the Southbank Centre in March (9th – 11th). Stillpoint, along with 17 other artists will be making 10 minute pieces in response to women who inspire us. Contributing artists include Katie Mitchell, Nic Green, Lois Weaver and the incredible Peggy Shaw, Hannah Ringham, Victoria Mosely and many more. We feel very excited, a little bit scared and deeply grateful to have been invited to participate in this.

You can buy day passes to the festival here

Also coming up, the much anticipated return of The Growing Room in its first outing since The Brighton Festival 2011 and the Premiere of Triptych: Three Attempts at Love in London

THE GROWING ROOM
4th April: South Street, Reading.
Preview £5.
11th, 12th & 13th April: Nightingale Theatre, Brighton.
Premiere £8.50 / £6.50 tickets

TRIPTYCH: THREE ATTEMPTS AT LOVE
18th – 21st April: Camden People’s Theatre
Premiere £10 / £8 (check back here soon for tickets)

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 Freesheet

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.