Unlimited Theatre

As discussed at the last board meeting in London, I'm intending to report more frequently on what we (and more specifically I) have been doing.

The intention is, with everyone being kept better informed of activity, we'll be closer as a company and you'll be better equppied to contribute to and advocate for all things Unlimited.

It's also been a good exercise for me personally, realising how much has actually been achieved. There's a fair bit that follows so I hope you'll forgive some of the 'note' form I've taken.

Since we last talked...

 

BIG BANG

At the beginning of October I completed a full, outline proposal for Big Bang - our commission from the Polka Theatre for a new play for about science for 7-11 year olds which will open there in September 2010 - you can read the proposal here.

I also went to Polka Theatre for the launch of their show about Darwin which is this year's version of what we'll be doing. If that makes sense. Ran in to Lyn Gardner of the Guardian and had a good chat about what we were doing there and work for children in general.

Met with Dr Gail Iles, who is one of our scientist collabrators on the project. Until recently she worked with the European Space Agency and now works training astronauts at the European Astronaut Training Centre. Cool job.

Beforfe meeting her, I went into my 5 year old's school and got questions from children that they wanted to ask her. You can see the results at our blog here.

I've subsequently tailored and sent proposals for collaboration to The Royal Observatory, National Science Museum and the British Science Festival.

Set up meeting with Traverse about possibility of opening the show with them at the Edinburgh Festival next August - meeting Dominic Hill with Clare next week. Also got a week pencilled with the West Yorkshire Playhouse to present the show there next November. Am intending (well, hoping) to send out proposals for co-producers/presenters for the show before Christmas.

Also had excellent meetings with Six To Start and Tassos Stevens of Coney about developing the Alternative Reality Games we're intending to create.

Prepared for devpt weeks with Chris and Clare - included finalising plan and (with Emma) budgets for Phase One of our schools project with Synergy/Radiowaves.

We then had two weeks of excellent development on the show:

WEEK 1
Clare, Jon and Alison from Radiowaves visited four primary schools in Leeds working with groups in Years 4, 5 and 6 (7-11 year olds) to find out what's exciting to them about the themes of the show and going into space. You can see some of the results of those visits as video created by the children on our "Big Bang" station here:

BIG BANG STATION

We were put in touch with two of those schools through Artforms (part of Leeds City Council) who are keen to partner with us on developing the project next year.

(in between Weeks 1 and 2, I randomly ran an all day workshop on the Sunday for teachers of devised theatre in Bridlington. Decent earner but only two people turned up. And it was in Bridlington.)

WEEK 2
Clare and Jon then spent a week talking about themes, characters and beginning to write scenes for our two characters who are on a mission into space. Also spent a day working with our designer Rhys Jarman (who designed The Moon The Moon) discussing and drawing some initial design ideas for the show. We talked a lot about how we can deal with gravity (or lack of) and as a result are going to play with helium, trampoline floors and counterweight flying systems in January.

<mixtape>

...you can see the proposal I've written for <mixtape> here
I wrote this for Development Lab (based at Theatre in the Mill at Bradford University) who have subsequently offered us £4500 and producing support towards making it happen in Leeds early summer 2010.

ALL THE OTHER STUFF

Attended Sci Tech conference in Brussels which while disappointing for the level of interesting presentations, met a couple of good people including a senior person at the Royal Society who was interested in maybe including "Ethics..." in their birthday events at the South Bank next year.

I've also been working with Emma to draw up proposals for Annual and Project budgets for 2010, which Emma will be sending through to you before Christmas for comments/approval.

Attended new Leeds "cultural destination" Temple Works launch event, for which we commissioned a new one-to-one <mixtape> piece from all-girl boyband North Star.

Attended Off The Shelf festival in Sheffield for Third Angel's <mixtape> piece which we commissioned and they also performed in Leeds.

Met again with new Crucible Theatre artistic director Dan Evans and confirmed our participation in their Forge festival of new/developing work next May. Don't know exactly what we'll do yet.

Ran a "Team Day" in Leeds to bring everyone up to speed with what we're hoping to achieve in the next 12 months and broadly how we'd like to approach doing that. Was a bit frustrating actually, as a week later Pamela announced that she would be leaving us again.

Subsequently worked with Emma to recruit new administrator Gloria Lindh, as you know from Louisa'e recent email. I like Gloria a lot and we'd already recruited her to work as a producer for our <mixtape> event in Leeds next year.

Ran a couple of days corporate training with Liz for CPP in York in personal impact and leadership.

Attended launch day and first session on "Insight" of Leadership Unleashed - the Cultural Leadership Programme I've been selected to participate in. Early experience leadds me to believe that this course is going to have a very positive impact on me personally and therefore Unlimited.

Saw Enron (over-rated) and The Author (brilliant) at the Royal Court, A Small Town Anywhere at BAC (messy genius), the new Slung Low vampire show at The Barbican (very unterrifying) and next week am off to see Katie Mitchell's take on Pains of Youth at the National.

Tonight Chris, Louisa, Gloria and I are attending the launch event for "The Dust Archive" which is a book Annie Lloyd has written about her twenty tears as director of Leeds Met Studio Theatre. Apparently Unlimited features very prominently in it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Bristol to meet the new programming team at the Old Vic and for a drink with the Chief Exec Emma Stenning.

I then head to Cardiff to meet with John McGrath, artistic director of the newly established National Theatre of Wales about possible future collaborations there.

On Friday Emma and I are running a day for students at the National Theatre on How To Run A Theatre Company.

Finally before Christmas....

- I'll be meeting with Emma for her end of (non financial) year appraisal - I wanted to catch up with her on how things had developed since her last one which was only six months ago but a lot has shifted and changed (positively) since then. We'll also discuss how best to manage her maternity leave and any recruitment we need to get started on.

- last meeting of the year will be lunch with Jon Lloyd (artistic director at Polka) and their Education/Schools officer to flesh out how we'd like to work with schools in their area next year.

Other...

...significant things that have happened that might be useful/interesting:
- Emma has secured and will teach the Arts Management module at London South Bank University again in the next semester. Is a good 'prestige' thing and pays some bills.
- Pamela has set up our 'portal' on Google Sites and Docs. A training day took place this week and I'm sure you'll all soon receive invitations to sign up so you can see essential company documents, as discussed at he last board meeting.

RANDOMLY...

Clare has just got back from Montreal where she's been writing a play with Stellar Quines. She's also taken a plunge and will be completing her Phd next year.

Chris wrote a section for and performed in Slung Low's "Beyond The Frontline" at the Lowry before spending a week in Brazil living in a favela as research for a new play he's writing for Radio 4.

I moved back into my house after 2 months living at my mother-in-laws, have ben invited to speak at this conference (bit scared) and had a birthday.

Right. Well. That's more than enough for now, I reckon.

I'd like to explore a way of publishing this somewhere so you can all comment on it. Google Wave might be an idea. In the meantime, please feel free to comment or get in touch via the usual means.

Hope and look forward to seeing some/all of you at some stage over the holiday periods.

Peace and love, JON.