Day One of our 30 day challenge

We've launched a 30 day challenge in celebration of our work in progress showing of People of the Eye at The Roundhouse Theatre.  

We've asked people to send us photos of themselves as children - the more embarrassing the better and we will post one a day till the 30th May! 

Here's day one! Tierra and her little sister Tene. Too cute!!!

Into week two - Monday 13th April

This was posted on 13/4/2015 on www.erinsiobhanh.com

It's Monday morning and we are about to embark on our second week of research and development. We created a lot of really interesting work last week, based on a foundation of experimentation and play. We are working from a script, which I have written, but it's a living, breathing, changing document that is providing us with a roadmap for the devising process rather than existing as a marker we must accurately represent. It's not Shakespeare, the writer is in the room, and trying different things is actively encouraged.

We are drawing on a mix of training and inspiration from viewpoints and butoh to Strasberg's method to movement sequences in films like Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. We are also lucky enough to have several hours of my family's home movies from when I was a baby up until age 8 or 9 to work with.

During our experimentation we touched on some very personal areas for the three main artists (Jennifer Bates, Sophie Stone and myself) as well as hopefully discovering some universal truths about family, disability, childbirth and motherhood, sibling relationships, and the innate kindness of humanity (particularly children) juxtaposed with the ability to be so destructive in a single moment with a single phrase. We talked about those hurtful things that stay with you always, even if a thousand other people have been complimentary. We discussed the tendency for the medical profession to want to offer a neat solution, a "fix" to make everything "normal", no matter how complex the situation. Our experiences intersect and create a tapestry, and are at times confronting and uncomfortable, and at others funny and sweet. This show is nothing if not honest, a series of stories which is at its core about living life in your own way making the best choices you can for the people you care about.

This week we're going to have a lot more people in the rehearsal room, with our videographer Gerry Maguire and our soundscape artist Emma Houston with us full time, our lighting designer Ollie Savage and in-house photographer David Monteith-Hodge with us nearer the end of the week, and some valuable feedback sought from other performers who are coming in as "outside eyes" - Stephen Collins, Nadia Nadarajah, David Sands and Tessa Parr. It's going to be a bit scary moving out of the comfort zone of mostly being just the three of us but this an important step before showing it to an audience on Friday!

Into Week One......#PeopleOfTheEye

Day one of rehearsals started with a long improvisation/Viewpoints exercise followed by the announcement that we would go straight into a stagger run (thanks Jen!) It felt like a real mess at times but we did find some magic moments amongst the rubble. A guided improvisation on the themes of the play in the afternoon led to a lot of really interesting discoveries about character and relationship.  

Battles in the rehearsal room

Sisterly love 

Someone (okay it was me) had decided that having a fundraiser the first night of rehearsals would be a good idea. So, sweaty, exhausted, battered and bruised; having rolled around the rehearsal space, wrestled, improvised, cried and all the other things you do when creating a play, we abandoned our rehearsal leggings; put on our sparkly fascinators, red lipstick and cocktail dresses; packed our bags full of bunting, fairy lights and raffle prizes and battled peak hour on the tube to get to Genesis Cinema.

Jen, Sophie and Erin all jazzed up

The evening was a resounding success, with a full event made up of D/deaf and hearing audience members. We were really lucky to have the opportunity show Ted Evans' film Retreat (and have him in attendance), alongside performances by Brian & Duffy and Stephen Collins who were representing Deafinitely Theatre (with Paula Garfield along to show support), alongside Confession and Small World provided by BSL Zone (with Maggie representing BSLBT in the audience). There were lots of other amazing people including many of my friends who are wonderful at constantly supporting my artistic endeavours with their presence.  

A great turnout!

You can see more pictures here on Facebook, thanks to David Monteith-Hodge (Photographise)

Erin Siobhan Hutching

Entering the eye of the storm......by Erin Siobhan Hutching

We're about to begin our two week research and development period for People of the Eye at LimeWharf Annex (thanks Limewharf!) with support from the Arts Council England (thanks Arts Council!) It was such a relief to receive this funding. We would have gone ahead without it, but apart from providing us with endorsement and reassurance that this is a necessary project built on solid artistic principles, it also means we can pay everyone properly. Which is a win. Because as everyone should know (but often doesn't), creating art is hard work that involves complete mental and emotional commitment and it provides benefits to society that are much more far-reaching than the immediate impact on the people that see that individual piece of art. And as such, artists deserve to be paid for their work.

The Arts Council England Logo

And the lovely artists we are paying for their work are now confirmed as well. Gerry Maguire from Pins and Needles Media will be creating video content including projected subtitles, Oliver Savidge is taking care of lighting design and general technical management, Emma Houston will be creating an evocative soundscape to go alongside Gerry's visuals, and David Monteith-Hodge will be photographing and filming the fundraiser, rehearsals and performances as well as filming audience feedback for documentation purposes, and generally helping me retain my sanity. And of course the lovely Jennifer Bates, who is back in town after ten days in Glasgow where we communicated constantly via every electronic media known to man, will be directing, and the lovely Sophie Stone, who I sadly haven't seen since our scratch in December but who has also been part of Facebook, Twitter and Email communications, will be devising and performing. I'm not doing much, just a bit of producing. And writing the script. And devising with Sophie and Jen. Oh and performing in the show.

Erin and Jen in a production meeting

We've undertaken to fundraise, in case we didn't get our grant, and also to demonstrate to ourselves and the Arts Council that we can! We're really excited about our fundraiser on Tuesday at Genesis Cinema which has kindly donated the really cool Bar Paragon (thanks Genesis!) for the event. We've got some really gorgeous Deaf and hearing volunteers to help out, some very cool films and performances, a sign language interpreter, and we're going to wear pretty dresses and sparkly fascinators so we hope there's a good turn out to make it all worthwhile! I really wanted to provide a forum for Deaf and hearing to interact, particularly for networking for arts practitioners. Deafinitely Theatre, Solar Bear Theatre Company, BSL Zone/BSLBT and Neath Films have all been really supportive to help us put on this event which has been hugely encouraging.

Bar Paragon at Genesis Cinema

I'm going to try and blog daily during the rehearsal process (except for Easter Sunday, as Jen has said I'm not allowed to do any work, so I just need to eat lots of chocolate on that day - I gave it up for Lent, so I'm totally okay with that plan), so have a little read if you're interested in the process. We've been speaking to the Guardian about contributing to their Disability series as well.

Erin Siobhan Hutching

www.erinsiobhanh.com

3rd April 2015

What a day! 

Massive production meeting and planning for our fantastic fundraiser in April. It's going to be brilliant. We're are just so lucky to be surrounded by such gorgeous people that really care about the company and the work. 

Seriously loving it!