Our Grants for the Arts application has been successful, our operetta for curious children and their grown-ups will definitely go ahead next summer – We are all absolutely thrilled!

Well done Miranda on the successful bid!

Watch this space for updates, and bring on June 2012!

Unfortunately, due to their availability, two members of the original cast will not be able to tour with us again – Boo!

Although we will miss them greatly, this means that we are now in need of two brilliant performers to join the team – an excellent opportunity I’m sure you’ll agree!

We are looking for:

A SOPRANO or MEZZO SOPRANO to play the role of the FIXING KITCHEN NURSE and also many other ensemble roles. An excellent pianist with strong acting ability is essential.

A COUNTER TENOR, TENOR, BARITONE or BASS to play the role of THE MAN. An excellent actor/singer is required as a charismatic and quirky narrator. THE MAN can be of any age, old or young. A strong singing voice, a high level of musicality and a good rapport with a young audience is essential.

FULL CASTING INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND HERE

Following our successful inclusion in the Arts Council’s national portfolio and with support from the John Fell Foundation, Theatre Hullabaloo will be redeveloping our fantastic gothic operetta, My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, for national venue touring in the summer 2012.

The show will be directed by Nina Hajiyianni and is in association with Action Transport Theatre.

My Mother Told Me Not to Stare is currently booking and we have very limited dates available in June 2012, please contact Miranda on 01325 352 004 or miranda@theatrehullabaloo.org.uk for details.

So, funding permitting (nail-bitingly we await the 29th March), we will be putting Our Mother back on the road in the summer of 2012.

A little something to whet your appetite!

Read the review here

Yesterday we did a show in the Rose Theatre in Ormskirk. I’ve never been to Ormskirk but the University where the theatre was seemed very nice (especially the lovely open plan cafe with gallery and comfy sofas). The theatre is super – just right for this show as it isn’t too big and the stage space doesn’t have ‘flies’ (wings and a space above the stage with lights) so when we sing our sound goes straight out into the audience without being lost.

We had a great audience yesterday too with a nice mixture of adults and children. I was particularly glad that my first entrance as the wicked nurse got a guffaw/ chuckle from a man sitting far back on the left (who I later learned was composer Patrick Dunley?). It sounded as if he just simply couldn’t stop himself. He obviously has a very sick sense of humour!). He is supposed to be scared!!! My own father, on seeing the show, said he found it deeply scary and that “it was all too much” for him – sorry dad. If you haven’t seen it yet, I have a mask with slanty eyes, spectacles and pronounced cheeks and a huge, foam bouffant hair-do. I lay the red lipstick on thick too, resulting in, what I hope, is a sinister and nightmarish effect.

My favourite bit is singing about boiling little children in a pot – it’s odd, but I always notice the children on the front row taking a peculiar delight in this. I like that I can pull the music around about for dramatic effect and sometimes I don’t even sing everything but speak/sing it to make it sound even more scary. That feels nice because I don’t have to worry about making a beautiful sound all the time. In fact, for this role, beautiful voices need not apply! It helps that I’ve sung a piece called Pierrot Lunaire by Schoenberg many times as the dramatic declamation that is required is similar for both pieces.

Eleanor

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing I like more than the exhilaration of rehearsing a new show, the final lead-up to preview and then creeping into the back of an auditorium to share that first performance with a room packed with young people, heads all focussed intently forward watching a story unfold. But I also like the quiet that comes afterwards, when I can return to my desk and to my emails and to gazing out of the window contemplating the show that is now on the road and the next one which is still just a genesis of disparate ideas.

Today as I gaze out of the window I feel very pleased that a few hundred miles away our brave and beautiful opera, My Mother Told Me Not to Stare, is being performed to teenagers in Chester and at the same time more than 5,000 miles away across an ocean, dancers in Toronto are beginning rehearsals with our artists and will soon be performing FIVE to children and families there.

On face value, the two shows could not be more different – My Mother Told Me Not to Stare is a rich, gothic operetta with puppets, projection, instrumentalists, poetry and a story that is sung. It is a fairytale world with a sincere message about the way that the adult world treats children. It is also a ‘proper trip to the theatre’, in two acts with an interval in which one should eat sweets. In contrast, FIVE is a contemporary dance installation for Early Years with no words, dancers who suck lemons and chase each other with toilet brushes, a space through which you promenade.

But perhaps these two pieces of theatre have more in common than we think? Certainly, listening to children at Washington Arts Centre in the interval of My Mother last week trying to emulate the operatic voices they had heard reminded me of the letters we had received from parents who had spied their four year olds trying contemporary dance moves by launching themselves from sofas following performances of FIVE. Both pieces have been described as ‘high art’ for children, both pieces have been taken to the hearts and imaginations of young people and both pieces generate anxiety amongst grown-ups because they are unusual and so demand that their audience trusts us to take them on a journey – trust that children give willingly, some adults a little more cautiously because contemporary opera is challenging to the ears or there is no plush velvet seat in the darkness in which to hide.  

But I’m thrilled that they come and share this special experience with their children and I’m thrilled that children are so full of braveness and curiosity that they seize these opportunities, however unusual, and laugh and fidget and groan and sing in all the places they should and shouldn’t. Best of all that they know that this magic is for them.

Tomorrow my thoughts will turn to girl pirates and a little boy called Tom who goes on an adventure to find some treasure and ends up disguising his ship with an upside down house. I have great faith in children to come on this adventure with us too.

Miranda

Find more information about FIVE and The Night Pirates on Theatre Hullabaloo’s website.

It’s been fascinating being out with the show for the first 2 weeks of its inaugural tour. It does take an audience to see what you have got and we are learning more and more about this extraordinary production day by day.

Words like brave, laudable and ground breaking abound and at the same time confirmation that the show is a little too long and in some places under rehearsed. Not surprising given the length and breadth of the production (a very full 2 acts) as well as a première of a new operatic work.

“A brave attempt to make what is essentially high art accessible to children” Nick Turner, The Cumberland News, 25th February 2010

What’s so exciting is that this project does bravely go where others simply have not gone before and audiences are in awe. It is NOT a traditional opera, a musical, a new play, or a puppet show or a show for children. It is all of these things and none of them – a genuine expedition into the unknown. If we as a sector want quality ‘high art’ for children that is different to our usual tried and tested forms then work like this needs to be given opportunity to try and then try some more.

One colleague who saw the show last week commented that he had seen another show for young audiences that day and had seen that type of show a thousand times before. This one he had never seen. He also questioned the narrative structure of the production, which raises interesting debate about the operatic form compared to that of a play. This discussion is healthy, interesting and thought provoking. It underpins our attempt to offer children a different kind of ‘non linear’ theatrical experience.

Teachers ferrying in their children from school have both been thrilled and baffled by the production.  One teacher instructed her class to ‘not laugh’ during the 2^nd act as the show was ‘serious’.  Some adults can’t work out whether they are allowed to laugh even through the humor is obvious – it is OPERA after all and a tale about disappearing children… the children giggle, gasp and shout out things when compelled too. With no self consciousness. Which is as it should be.

The ambiguity and mix of humor and tragedy bound by experimental music make the production unclassifiable and also surprising  – a very good thing in theatre.

The children leave exercising their newfound operatic voices, mimicking what they have heard, amid exclamations that it was BRILL and they could watch it all day. 

Nina

Rehearsals have come to an end and the show is out on the road. We have performed twice at Darlington Arts Centre at the weekend, yesterday we performed at the Crypt in Middlesbrough Town Hall and tonight we are off to Theatre by the Lake in Keswick. Remember to check out our tour schedule to find a show near you.

In the meantime, here are some production shots by photographer Sylvia Selzer to whet your appetites