Upper Crumble is Coming to Life

Bek Palmer – Designer

This stage of the production is a really exciting one to be at for me as the designer as, although we are just about to begin rehearsals, the design of the show is nearing completion. 

All the elements are beginning to come together and I can see everything that was a drawing or a model become reality.  Of course, many things will alter as the performers discover things about the world they inhabit but in essence, Upper Crumble now exists.

 

 

 

 

Visual Inspiration Detail from Sophia’s \Bubbles by Mark Ryden

For me, the design process began way back in May 2009 when I met Fin, Nina, Martyn, Miranda and a group of performers for an initial R&D week to explore the play.  Often when I start to design a show, it can take a while for an initial idea to take hold but once you have the core of the story and a simple idea all of the other design details such as colours, costumes, period, fall into place. 

Having a group of heads to delve into the play and most importantly the writer there, (you can’t ask Shakespeare what he was thinking when he wrote that line!) really helped me respond immediately. The play is about a boy’s journey to adulthood.  We began talking about how a young child’s world is rather small, revolving around them and their immediate surroundings but as they grow up it rapidly expands and opens up.

The opera is about a world , Bobby’s world –  Upper Crumble, until he discovers Australia.  This got me thinking about worlds, globes, spheres, bubbles and things encapsulated within them, like a ship in a bottle, which inspired the initial idea of the boy in a bubble.

Early Set Design Ideas

We also talked about who we thought the narrator was, why was he telling this story?  What did he look like and why?  Many great ideas and questions were bought up but we did realise he was an outsider; looking into the world of the story he was telling and in some ways manipulating it.  Fin’s beautiful writing in the opening where the Narrator describes Bobby’s delivery to Upper Crumble by a stork particularly inspired me. 

I envisaged he would be holding something that he could illustrate his tale within.  From this and the earlier concept of encapsulated worlds came my vision for Upper Crumble in a snow globe.  That was on the very first day.  Many initial ideas morph and are sometimes surpassed by others but those two images stayed with me and can be seen in the final designs. 

Everything else fell into place around them…well, mostly!

 

 

 

Bek

Are Children Really Afraid of the Dark?

Nina Hajiyianni – Director

Who’s the scariest…the Wicked Witch from Oz or the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? This is what I was mulling as I sat on the train down to London for a block of pre- rehearsal rehearsals (rehearsals before the proper ones!)

People have been quick to point out that we should be careful with this show, that children may not ‘cope’ with where this dark, unusual pathway leads them but I think the thing that is the biggest concern for some (children’s anxiety) is actually the productions greatest offer. (Opera aside that is, that’s a whole other scary issue)

I think our ‘villain’ is scarier than both the Wicked Witch and the Child-Catcher (both scared me when I was young) not because of any effect or gratuitous shocking but because the playful and compelling words, the emotive quality of the music and the space to imagine what is unseen, all adds up to something meaningful. And frightening.

The show’s premise is that if a child does something wrong – they ‘disappear’ and in the telling of this story, we really are taking the emotional complexity of children seriously (something rarely done in children’s theatre. Or opera for that matter!)

Finding emotional ‘truth’ in a fully operatic production has always been the aim because in a story about how unfair life is to children, the themes deserve to be taken seriously. We are digging deep into this subject and make no apology.

As Bruno Bettelheim says in his book ‘The Uses of Enchantment, The Meaning and Importance of fairytales’:

‘…an element of threat is crucial to the fairytale – a threat to the hero’s physical or moral existence!  (but then) The hero is rewarded and the evil person meets his well deserved fate thus satisfying the child’s need for justice to prevail.

How else can a child hope that justice will be done to him, who so often feels unfairly treated?

Nina

Post R&D Week Reflection

Miranda Thain, Creative Producer

It’s always strange to come out the other side of a intense rehearsal week which can often feel oddly dreamlike, but our first week of the split rehearsal for My Mother Told Me Not to Stare was the strangest, not least because it crash-landed into Christmas and I think it’s only now that we’re all coming round! Some might say that creating an opera for children that comes from a new play, written by people on opposite sides of the world, with musicians who sing and play and act and puppets and projection and a theme of children who are disappeared, was more than a little ambitious (or crazy, I prefer ambitious), so this was a week of testing and test we did.

The performers sang and played, Bek fitted costumes, Mike set sound cues, Martyn unlocked the riddles of the music, we met the puppets, Shaun tried out projections and Nina and I often turned to each other open-mouthed when we saw or heard a moment of brilliance – and there were many! But there are also things that didn’t quite work and so we’re glad that we have a split rehearsal period giving us all the physical and mental space to fathom them out.

The week started well with news from the Foyle Foundation that they will support the project with £20,000 additional funding which means we can achieve all our ambitions for 2010 in terms of educational programme, community performances and additional artistic resources. The Foundation’s support, plus the response from venues, is so fantastic because this is an important piece of work for young audiences, but not an easy one and certainly not an easy one to sell. On Saturday, we ended our week well when a delegation from Action Transport Theatre arrived to share our Open Rehearsal. We finally saw a very rough outline of our opera and it felt good to share it with such supportive colleagues and friends who asked pertinent questions and gave good advice.

T.S. Eliot wrote “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”. We know we have a lot of work to do, but we also know that we are working on something very special.

Miranda

Photos from R&D Week in December 2009, taken by Sylvia Selzer

Touring in the Spring

At Theatre Hullabaloo and Action Transport Theatre, we are all extremely excited about out Spring touring production of My Mother Told Me Not To Stare, a deliciously dark operetta for children and their grown ups.

A hugely talented and award winning creative team have come together to create a brilliant piece of art for children and their families to enjoy.