Unlimited Theatre

Artistic Director's report
November 2011

 

Welcome back. It's been a while since we've been able to get together and A LOT has been made, done, achieved. So this report is going to take a very 'note' form with a lot of links to other places that will explain or have captured the things made, done, achieved.

Apologies for my commitment to the vernacular.

CHILDREN's MEDIA CONFERENCE

July 2011 I spoke on two panels at the Chidlren's Media Conference. One on Commercial vs Subsidised 'art' and another on New Frontiers In Storytelling. The links there will take you to reports/blogs on those sessions.

It went very well. I met good people. I've been invited to join (and accepted) the CMC's Advisory Committee so am meeting more, good people and very meaningfully extending our networks into broadcast/digital. All good.

SPACE CAMP

Space Camp happened at the Green Man Festival (where it didn't rain A DROP all weeekend!) and at the Science Museum (on the hottest day IN HISTORY) as part of the brilliant Player Festival. There are some excellent photos here, some of which were taken by Ed.

BRITISH COUNCIL TRADE FAIR, EDINBURGH

Ric, Clare and I represented Unlimited at the British Council's Performing Arts Showcase Trade Fair during the Edinburgh Festival. We met good people, distributed some lovely print designed by our new and brilliant regular designer Adam Milesunic.

Chris won a Fringe First at the festival for his show with Hannah Walker The Oh Fuck Moment - proper well deserved.

LOUISA's HALF MARATHON

Louisa ran a half marathon to raise money for the company and she was BRILLIANT. Completing in an outstanding 1hr50mins, she raised £635! Here she is at the end and here we all are being excited with her.

Congratulations, Lou and a MASSIVE thank you.

INTERNATIONAL ASTRONAUTICAL CONFERENCE

In October I delivered my paper at the IAC in Cape Town, which went brilliantly. There's a transcript of it here - it basically tells "the story so far" of our work with the Unlimited Space Agency.

It was a pretty extraordinary experience during which I met (well, stood very close to) Charles Bolden the head of NASA and played Moongolf in a space suit with Bill Nye the Director of the Planetary Society.

I also met the director of Scifest Africa who seems quite serious about bringing Ethics and Space Camp out to South Africa in March 2012 and Mission To Mars (!) in 2013. We shall see.

We were sponsored to the tune of £2500 by Ecclesiastical Insurance which covered all the costs of my trip. They were the category sponsors of the National Charity Award we won earlier this year.

GIANT & BEAR

We did a FANTASTIC week's development work on The Giant & The Bear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in October. It was one of the funnest, most brilliant weeks I've spent with Unlimited. Hard work but WELL worth it.

There are blogs here from me and here from Maddie (our Ballerina) on our website, a video of Chris singing a song wearing a bear head here, photos on our Flickr channel here and an account of the symposium that Clare and I spoke at here.

The project is now confirmed to happen in Leeds in the fist week of July 2012 and will be a co-production with the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Very VERY exciting.

OTHER STUFF

 

AWARDS

I appear to have failed to previously 'table' news of the series of briliant awards we've won this year - most recently the UKRC WISE Champion Award for organisations and individuals who have particularly inspired girls and young women into STEM education and related careers. We and Dr Gail Iles were joint winners with the Warwick School in Redhill.

All the awards are detailed with some pictures over on the UNSA website.

STFC

We've applied to the Science and Technology Facilities Council for a large grant (90k) to make the next, big online iteration of the SPace Agency. You can read/download the description of the project here.

BOOK APP

We're also going to be applying to the new ACE/BBC "The Space" project to make an interactive, illustrated BookApp for iPad/tablets inspired by The Giant & The Bear. It will focus on the behind-the-scenes backstory of The Bear & The Ballerina and iwll be illustrated by Holly Swain. If we aren't successful with that fund, we'll look to work with a publisher to get it made instead.

CODING FOR KIDS

I've become involved in this brilliant new project. I say involved, I'm at least in part responsible for it. Which is nice. I might have promised to send some stuff into space. But hey, we like a challenge, right?

NOISE

Chris, Clare and I are starting work on our next Planet-sized project "The Noise" next week. We'll be thinking/talking/imagining in the rather wonderful Leeds Library and are inviting our co-producers (Northern Stage and Sheffield Theatres) to join us for a cup of tea and a 'sharing' of where we're at at 3pm on Friday 2 December. You are, of course more than welcome to join us if you'd like to.

WE HIDE BEARS

We've also been commissioned to make a game for ARC in Stockton next year. It started as a small commission coming out of our residency there earlier this year and I have, predictably, sclaed and imgined it into another Asteroid sized project that I'll have to find time to make. ARC are very excited by it and we think there is great potential to tour or sell it on to other venues - not just theatres but museums, galleries, council buildings etc.

STARTING OUT

Emma and I have run a couple of 'Starting Out' sessions for students in York and Doncaster, which have gone very well. Great responses and feedback which we can share sometime if you'd like.

THAT'S ALL...

...for now, I think. Clare opened her play ANA in Canada last night. Chris is in Portugal writing a play for another company there. We're making plans for our Birthday Party on 17th December (are you coming?) and we move into the West Yorkshire Playhouse at the end of January 2012.

Exciting times.

REPORT ENDS

 

 

Artistic Director's report
May 2011

 

Hello Again, again.

Here’s what’s been happening since we last met on 17 February 2011.

IETM

I'm attended the IETM in Stockholm 14-17 April. It was expensive. And also extremely productive. I spent some quality time with Ed and Paul finding out about their future plans with Warwick Arts Centre and how we might be able to cross some streams. Also good chats with Matt Burman the producer for Norwich & Norfolk Festival about how we can do stuff with them too. My favourite thing was a 4 hour workshop with a musicologist/philosopher and a clinical psychologist/professional coach using Wagner's Ring as a metaphor for organisational change. Brilliant.

I also saw this:

 

THE GIANT & THE BEAR

We didn't get the tender with with Blackpool City Council for the project at the Winter Gardens. Which is actually a positive thing, it turns out. Due to having worked up a pretty awesome proposal of a collaboration between ourselves, Hide&Seek and Layla Rosa we've been sounding out potential partners to develop and make it with us. And it's pretty certain that...

...we'll be working with the West Yorkshire Playhouse to develop and 'playtest' the show through their new "Furnace" programme. As of this morning it's likely that we'll also be working with (and funded by) imove for the Yorkshire Cultural Olympiad to present the enormous beast in/around Quarry Hill. We still need more partners to bring this to confirmed fruition, but we feel pretty confident that we can sort that - possibly with Norwich & Norfolk Festival or another of the Without Walls festival partners. Maybe with Stockton International Riverside Festival who we met during our development week at ARC in Stockton...

ARC

Clare, Chris and I spent a brilliant week together at ARC in Stockton in May. I wrote a blog post about how and why we came to be doing that here

It was enormously productive. We made lots of things, had awesome discussions about how we make work, listened to music really loud, had one big argument and ate together every day. Ric joined us on the Friday having set us some questions to answer and he feels like he's come to a very clear understanding of what we want to achieve and make with/for the two big PLANET shows. So that's good.

As a result of making a game to play in the building called "Find & Kill Osama Bin Laden" (I know, I know) Annabel has subsequently offered us a commission to make a bespoke game for the building that can be played by audiences whenever they want. I filmed Chris's response to the exercise about responding to current events (for that is what it was)...

 

Clare wrote a great scene between President Obama and Josh from The West Wing which I'll post up on the blog when I get a chance. Chris and I perfromed it to ARC staff, American accents and all.

So that was all very good.

NATIONAL CHARITY AWARDS

We've been nominated in the Arts & Heritage category! This is a pretty big deal. There's only three organisations shortlisted from, apparently, a record number of entries. I was interviewed by a panel of 12 (!) earlier this month which went well

unDIGITAL

I've been introduced to and meeting loads of brilliant digital and broadcast peoples. As a result, two particularly exciting things are happening in the near future...

- I'm spending a day with Matt Locke and Anthony Lilley to discuss what and how we can do something brilliant together for tv and/or the internet. They are both brilliant, supersmart people with masses of connects and expereince in those industries.

- I've been invited to speak at two sessions for the Childrens Media Conference. One on "commercial theatre v arts" and another tiltled "New Frontiers in story telling". My fellow panellists are pretty extraordinary people so I feel massively privileged and excited to be there. As the person who suggested me for the New Frontiers panel said - "I want Unlimited to have a good story about Mission to Mars that you can present at the conference, as you'll be in front of the entire kids media industry..."

So again, all good.

We're also in the process of working up ideas/plans with Coney and Radiowaves for how we can translate The Astronautical Challenge for digital platforms e.g. iPad/Tablet apps.

COMING UP

Space Camp will be running at the Green Man Festival in August and at the Science Museum in October.

Emma and I will be running Starting Out at Mountview next week

I've been asked to speak at the International Astronautical Conference. Which I am totally cool about. I'VE BEEN ASKED TO SPEAK AT THE INTERNATIONAL ASTRONAUTICAL CONFERENCE!! IT'S IN SOUTH AFRICA AND HAS ASTRONAUTS AND STUFF!!! Like I say I'm totally cool about it. The title of my paper is "Artists and Scientists: Experimenting Together - Inspiring Children in Space and Science Using Art and Play". Just need to find someone to pay for me to go out there now...

While I'm there I'm also going to invite people to a session where we go on a walk and play some golf while we chat about space and stuff. I'll be doing this remotely with Tim Wright (as my virtual caddie) as part of his Moongolf project

 

THE OTHER STUFF

Mission To Mars finished in Newcastle.

Ethics has happened in Cambridge, Chipping Norton and (tomorrow) in Leeds.

A press release about our move into the West Yorkshire Playhouse went out form them yesterday.

Chris's play for Radio 4 was recorded in Brazil and is slated for broadcast on the Friday afternnon play slot and has completed his version of Robin Hood based on Rambo: First Blood written in iambic pentameter.

Clare wrote, directed, produced and had a massive success with her new show "Money: The Game Show" which was how she used the prize money for her Platform 18 Award - reviews here and here. We're hoping/intending to (re)produce it with The Arches in Glasgow for next year's Edinburgh Festival.

I went snowboarding.

REPORT ENDS

 

 

Artistic Director's report
January 2011

 

Hello Again.

Here’s what’s been happening since we last met on 16 December 2010.

MISSION TO MARS

Since I didn’t actually table a report at our last board meeting, I’m going to write up a pretty comprehensive overview of this extraordinary project here…

We opened Mission To Mars at the Polka Theatre on 2 October 2010. Given the scale of the production, this was no mean feat - the four weeks we had to rehearse and get the show up (including training one of the actors from scratch in aerial and building a spaceship on the Polka stage) was absolutely the minium amount of time we could have achieved this in. In honesty, I'd always considered the first week of performances to be the last week of rehearsals for the the actors so that by the time we got to the Launch Event on Friday 8 October we were really flying. To quote Tony's response to that evening's event from his twitter account:

"Absolutely awe-struck by #mission2mars from @untheatre and brilliant science folk. Go see, kids or not."

The Conversation that took place that evening was one of my favourites that I've had with the company. Brilliant scientists and educators in converstaion with inspired children after sharing an awesome show together and chaired by Polka's Artistic Director Jon Lloyd who described it as “one of the best evenings I’ve had in my time here.”

Thanks in particular to Alison Andrews for galvanising and structuring the event.

We played to thousands of children during that 5 week run in London and the critical resposne has been enormously positive. Reviews include:

The Guardian
whatsonstage.com
The Culture Vulture
British Theatre Guide

bit more lukewarm in the Yorkshire Evening Post and one so actually stupid in The Stage that I'm not going to link to it. Generally MASSIVLEY positive response - especially on twitter including:

"Didn't get chance to tweet over the weekend how much i loved @untheatre mission to mars and the real science talk afterwards." @ilovewestleeds

""Went on a Mission To Mars yesterday and was best space adventure ever! Absolutley loved it. Kids were very excited and want an @untheatre's #mission2mars set in the garden." @tanjageier

"Perfectly pitched little ones sci-fi " @MysterB

"Took kids to see fabulous @untheatre show Mission to Mars. A superlative spectacle that eschews all usual kids theatre cliches. A delight." @davidHallison

"Great to see @untheatre's #mission2mars at WYP today. Proper event-theatre for families. Fantastic visually, and, yes, surprisingly moving." @AlexanderKelly

"In 25 years time, an astronaut on mission to Mars will recall being inspired by a piece of Children's theatre by @untheatre. Exciting stuff." @cupofassam

"Mission to Mars from @untheatre is a wonderful weave of theatre & science for kids. Real adventure of a show." @beltuptheatre

The show has now toured to the Royal Theatre in Northampton, Curve in Leicester, West Yorkshire Playhouse and will finish this stage of its life in Newcastle next week. Massive thanks all round to cast, crew (in particular Ellie Carter), designers, fundraisers, touring partners, Gloria, Emma, Alison and Ric for making it happen.

here's the video that we 'bespoked' a verison of for all 2011 touring partners...

 

We went far beyond our original remit with this project - in addition to the show, we've also:

- run Space Camp (our game for families to play set on the Unlimited Space Agency space station) in all touring venues and accidentally established UNSA as a (nearly) real thing.

- run the extraordinary Astronautical Challenge for schools in London, Northampton, Leicester and Leeds, in the process recruiting 500 children to the Agency (we're producing a full report on this project later this year - the feedback is basically "Awesome!").

- run Post Show Conversations with the space scientists and other super cool people in London, Northampton and Leeds.

We filmed the show and the after show event in Leeds if anyone would like a copy/link when it's been edited. Just let me know and I'll notify you when it's done.

There are production photos that you can view online here and some pictures taken when Sebastien and Clare visited the Mars Yard at the National Space Centre here.

We’re enormously proud of this project which has has deeply informed our thinking and planning for the future and therefore our proposals to ACE for how we will work in the future.

Thank you from all of us to all of you for your support in helping us to make this happen.

NPO

This is on the agenda elsewhere but I just wanted to acknowledge this as a massively creative process that we went through as a team as well as an organisation. The three days that Clare, Chris and I spent away together in November (joined by Ric Watts towards the end) were enormously important. We're all enormously excited by the proposed programme and the prospect of making more extraordinary work together. Finger crossed Arts Council make smart decisions about the new portfolio...

WYP

As you know, we'll be moving in with the West Yorkshire Playhouse later this year to share resources - basically we'll have a new home for Unlimited to live, work and play in to include:
- dedicated office space
- access to space for development/rehearsal
- admin support where possible eg. processing Unlimited staff payroll
- production support where/when possible (e.g. marketing, set/costume making where there are no cash costs to the Playhouse)

Beyond the practicalities and value for money that this relationship provides we’re most excited by a commitment to actively support each other’s work, facilitating each of our ambitions as much as possible whenever and wherever we can. We expect to learn from each other, to do what we can to achieve more than we could on our own and together to become much more than the sum of our individual parts.

Ian Brown is "delighted to be developing a creative, supportive relationship between WYP and Unlimited which will broaden the scope of artistic endeavour of both organisations. The resulting new ideas and events created will provoke new conversations, push at boundaries and ultimately inspire our audiences."

Very exciting.