Complexity v Simplicity

Metal Harvest could be the most complex show I've ever done.  It could be one of the simplest*.  It's undecided.  It could go either way at this stage.
The script - or my spoken script anyway - barring some shifting here and there, is set and I'm running the text (verbal and physical) each day looking for detail.  Looking for new ways in.  But then there's the other elements.  Sound, projection, light.  And they're all completely up for grabs.  I've started sketching out a rough storyboard for the projection - most of it would be very simple - textures, a few pictures, text.  But it might be too much.  I might cut it all on the tech run.  Sound should decide itself very soon.
I've just finished recording a section of text with Richard Fawcett, who's performing the music and doing some acting in the piece.  This, Richard and Google translate assure me, is a section in German, which I simultaneously translate into English. Except we might also have the text projected and the words spoken recorded and played separately at the same time.  Getting the balance between the different sources is going to be tricky to get right.
Or I could strip it back and do much less.  It's a difficult call at the moment.
The other problem I face is technical - getting the imagery to do what I want it to do, when time starts getting tight.  It's a little over a month to go and I'm very unsure which delivery system is the best to use.
And don't get me started on the set...
These open source paranoid musings are, I should add, a fairly traditional part of creating a show.  With a month to go, it's going well.  I just want the show to be amazing.  And we will get only ONE chance to get it right.

*To be fair, I doubt I'm going to get any simpler than Fantasy Terrorist League (2005) where I stood still for 40 minutes before doing two actions.

Milk Bottle Productions Presents...

Metal Harvest

Written and performed by Robert Crighton and Richard Fawcett

“This is the story of a shell...” Throughout the First World War the armaments created passed through many hands – from those in the mines and factories who made them, to those who transported the boxes and those who fired the guns.  This is the story of one shell, the story of those who touched it and whose lives were changed by it.  Told in words, music, image and song, Metal Harvest is the latest work from award-winning theatre producer Robert Crighton, made in collaboration with musician Richard Fawcett. 

Performing on Thursday 29^th October at 7.30pm

Tickets: £9 (Friends £8)

The Quay Theatre, Sudbury

Box Office: 01787 374 745
Book Online: www.quaytheatre.org.uk

Shall I Be Mother?

I was asked in the bar the other month: "Would Metal Harvest be suitable for my mother?"
I couldn't answer the question.  I said the reason was, I won't know until I do a run on Sunday.  That wasn't untrue, but it was a bit disingenuous.  We had a good run of the show on Sunday afternoon, the first proper run of the first half with something like the final script and music cues, it answered questions about the show I hadn't had a chance to when running it by myself.  It didn't answer the question: "Would Metal Harvest be suitable for my mother?"
There are some clear indicators about suitability of shows for mothers.  Language is one - and at this point in terms of explicit language of the rude four or so letter variety the frequency is low and probably getting lower.  So, borderline.  But I don't like / am formally opposed to putting up warnings on things saying: "BE WARNED: this show contains three uses of the word BELGIUM!" - "This show Contains Mild Peril and three references to incontinent border collies - partly because people tend to sit there with a mental scorecard waiting for the chance to shout HOUSE! but mostly because there is something dangerously reductive in protecting people from things.  If the show is good it will be because the use of a swear word or similarly provocative language/image will have an effect - if the audience is waiting for that effect, having been pre-warned precisely what to expect, then frankly, fuck this for a game of soldiers.  I don't believe in mollycoddling children, so adults really have no excuse.
I think my problem is what we're talking about here isn't about suitability, or whether it's right for someone, etc. - it's that we treat culture as a product.  We buy into it.  We look at the labels, see if we think it fits us and we spend our money accordingly.  The question isn't - is this suitable for someone's mother - the question is, is this marketed for someone's mother.  Because, perhaps the best people to see a show like this are the people who wouldn't think they should.  Because that is far more interesting and far more valuable.  If we only consume entertainment based on what we like then we will never see things that might challenge us.
This raises the question - should we lie to audiences about the content of our shows?  I have form, or sort of.  I didn't set out consciously to lie about a play, but I suspect my subconscious did.  It is a painful process, but can be remarkably effective.  I've never seen a post show bar so humming with discourse after a show as when the audience thought they were coming to a harmless comedy.  The fatal flaw there was that I mislead the cast as well, and that didn't end well.
Not that Metal Harvest works on this principle.  It's a pre-paid ticketed event and so I feel some obligation to the consumer not to break the pact.  But, whether it's suitable for your mother?  Who can say?  Even if you aren't someone's mother and wish to book, ticket information is below.

In other news, I've just finished recording a second series of our audio comedy The Museum of Tat with my good friend Michael Fouldes - there'll be five episodes released daily from 5th to the 9th October from midday.  Here's the very silly, completely unhelpful teaser trailer.

Milk Bottle Productions Presents...

Metal Harvest

Written and performed by Robert Crighton and Richard Fawcett

“This is the story of a shell...” Throughout the First World War the armaments created passed through many hands – from those in the mines and factories who made them, to those who transported the boxes and those who fired the guns.  This is the story of one shell, the story of those who touched it and whose lives were changed by it.  Told in words, music, image and song, Metal Harvest is the latest work from award-winning theatre producer Robert Crighton, made in collaboration with musician Richard Fawcett. 

Performing on Thursday 29^th October at 7.30pm

Tickets: £9 (Friends £8)

The Quay Theatre, Sudbury

Box Office: 01787 374 745
Book Online: www.quaytheatre.org.uk

Metal Harvest

My next project is a show called Metal Harvest.  I've been working on it for over eighteen months on and off and it's starting to get there.  It was supposed to have premiered exactly a year ago, (as part of my artist residency at the Quay) on the anniversary of the entry of Britain into the First World War - but a series of complications got in the way of that.  However, the delay has not been without its advantages, it's a more developed piece than it would have been and, I suspect, a better one.
It's the story of a shell - one shell - and the effect it has on the lives it touches.  It's also about cliché and the dangers of stereotypes and the tropes that amass around something as big as the Great War.  It's very easy for a show to fall into familiar patterns, to reaffirm easy assumptions about what four years of history is.  So far I've created the first half, which is all storytelling, music and images.  The second half is going to be something quite different, but will be a secret for the time being.  To myself chiefly.
I'm working once again with Richard Fawcett who's creating and performing the music, as he has for a couple of my shows in the past.  He's being terribly patient with me, as I've delayed any kind of a detailed script for many, many months as other projects have got very much in the way.
I'm hoping that the performance at the Quay Theatre will be filmed, so that I can post it online - so even those who can't make the show (isn't solid state geography a bugger) will be able to catch something of it. Those who can catch it - booking is now open, details below.

Milk Bottle Productions Presents...

Metal Harvest

Written and performed by Robert Crighton and Richard Fawcett

“This is the story of a shell...” Throughout the First World War the armaments created passed through many hands – from those in the mines and factories who made them, to those who transported the boxes and those who fired the guns.  This is the story of one shell, the story of those who touched it and whose lives were changed by it.  Told in words, music, image and song, Metal Harvest is the latest work from award-winning theatre producer Robert Crighton, made in collaboration with musician Richard Fawcett. 

Performing on Thursday 29^th October at 7.30pm

Tickets: £9 (Friends £8)

The Quay Theatre, Sudbury

Box Office: 01787 374 745
Book Online: www.quaytheatre.org.uk

Why So Quiet?

I'm trying to write a play - normal service will resume shortly.

Frequently Asked Questions

In any long run you start hearing a lot of the same questions from the audience. There have been three frequent flyers for Everyman and they are as follows.
Question 1. How much is it?
See previous blog post.

Question 2. How do you learn all those lines?
This is a commonplace for actors, but it's particularly true of storytellers where the word count is in thousands and, in my personal repertoire, tens of thousands. Always one must bite ones tongue and not say, "it's my job".  I have considered printing business cards with a stock answer, but that might be a bit passive aggressive.

Question 3. Have you ever thought of performing in a church?
"Well, yes.  Yes I have.  In fact, I'm performing at one on Sunday.  See, it's on the tour schedule."
Again, I don't say this, it's a passive aggressive response to a reasonable question and the answer is interesting.

I haven't had much luck getting into churches or persuading church goers to see Everyman.  There is a history to such things of course - churches historically don't like drama.  It's a long bias, set up by the early Roman church, and it runs deep, even in a modern ministry.  There is a reason that even the early mystery plays and moralities were banished from the church; they were a distraction from the central purpose of the ministry, tainted by association with the pre-Christian pagan theatre.  This is compounded by the fact that modern Christianity has changed since medieval times and so even a Christian text can be considered suspect because it teaches things that have since fallen by the wayside.  Some people are openly suspicious and occasionally actively hostile to a dramatic performance in a church - the suspicion being that a heathen such as myself would present a mocking form of the play in their sacred space.  (This isn't actually an unreasonable suspicion - I have form.)  Were I a congregant this might not be a barrier, the audience for the shows being reassured that I followed at least one branch of Christian thinking and would play with a straight bat.

But, ask my questioners, there are shows in churches all the time.  Yes, I reply, but even though churches are often used for performance, it is almost always music.  Music is safer and there is a long tradition of music in churches; even if it isn't liturgical, it is in sympathy with the space.

Acoustically churches are not great for drama - a solo voice can carry, but the cut and thrust of dialogue gets lost in the echo.  Also, more importantly, the line of sight is terrible, so you're compromised on what people can actually see.  When I performed at St Mary's Church, Chilton, I was okay because it's fairly small.  (I also got to deliver God's speech from the pulpit, which felt delightfully naughty - I suspect I might have made a good vicar.)
Ideally Everyman shouldn't be seen in a church at all - a small chapel perhaps, but not a church.  I am always looking for a 'sacred' space, i.e. a space with atmosphere - which most village halls sadly do not have.  I first performed my version of Everyman in the Guildhall in Lavenham, which has the weight of history behind it.  When I performed the show at the Quay Theatre I spent hours trying to make the room I was using different, unfamiliar, in some sense atmospheric.  I have attempted similar with all the other spaces I've performed at, with greater or lesser success.

Despite the difficulties of performing in church spaces I have offered the show to them, sometimes just as part of a round robin, sometimes via direct intersession.  The result has been a blank.  No interest.  The only spaces where these plays are welcome are, ironically, secular, or in the case of St Mary's Church, infrequently used (though still consecrated) and that came about by a round about kind of route.  De-consecrated or seldom used churches and chapels are always more accommodating because, though they used to function as such, they are not longer as sacred a space as they used to be.  Only by the action of actor, text and audience (priest, liturgy, congregation) will a 'sacred' atmosphere appear - the similarity between the ritual of the liturgy and the ritual of theatre is a commonplace.

A sense of the sacred is abstract; a space isn't inherently sacred, it can have greater potential to act as a sacred space, but sacredness, as it were, is an active thing.  Like the tree falling in the forest, if no one is there to hear it, it doesn't make a sound - there's only a vibration in the air.  Without people inhabiting it, a space is just a place.  We make it something special.  And that's what I try to do with my show, if only for an hour or so.
It looks like Everyman will pop up again every so often, here and there.  Maybe more churches will get in touch, maybe I'll find more spaces with an air of the sacred - we shall see.

After Everyman - Thank You

Twenty shows, a little over a month, and a lot of Good and Bad Deeds - thus ends the tale of The Summoning of Everyman.  I'm not saying I won't perform it again, but I won't take it on tour again in this way and not for a while.  I've learnt a lot of good lessons about how to do a tour like this and that means the next touring show - Metal Harvest - will be a leaner, meaner, performance machine.  Well, sort of.

Special Thanks to Jacqueline Cooper Clark - who acted as FOH and has been tirelessly posting about the show online - Belinda Hasler, Phil & Rachel Hope, Bryan Thurlow, Jennifer Davis; Mark Saberton for the gift of shirts as well as other kindnesses; Fiona Dinning for continued support to project Milk Bottle and all the fabulous people who run village halls across Suffolk and Essex, many of whom have gone out of their way to promote the show and make me feel welcome.  Apologies if I've missed anyone out!

I'll finish archiving the shirt of Bad Deeds and the last of the Good Deeds next week.

Stisted Village Hall - the final venue.

The interior - lit by the demonic glow of overhead wall heaters

Me and my shadow at Boxted and Hartest

St Mary's Church Chilton... twas a little chilly.

Steeple Bumpstead - pity I didn't need the stage for this show...

Price Elasticity of Pay-What-You-Want

"The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live."  Samuel Johnson.

I've still to sit down and crunch the numbers properly, but Pay-What-You-Want is an odd beast.  We all know about price elasticity based on demand - the more people want something the more they are willing to pay, working in ratio with the supply of goods on offer.
Pay-What-You-Want doesn't work that way - partly because the supply/demand side is a done deal.  If you've got into the show, you've got into the show - there's no pre-bargaining over price.  So you pay what you want to pay afterwards.  And that's where things get interesting.
We live in a consumer society.  We know the price of everything - we value things in part because of the price.  If it costs a lot of money it must be worth that money, rather than the other way round.  So Pay-What-You-Want confuses people.  Here's a not untypical conversation.

AUDIENT:  So, how much is it?
ME:  It's Pay-What-You-Want.
AUDIENT:  So, how much is that?
ME:  Whatever you want.
AUDIENT:  So, five pounds... ten pounds?
ME:  It's whatever you want to give.
AUDIENT:  Yes, but how much is that?  I mean, how much do people usually pay?

And so on.  I don't give an advised price, because that seems to defeat the purpose - I might as well just say give me x and sell tickets.
Often people try to pay upfront.

AUDIENT:  Right, so you'll want money now?
ME:  No, after the show, when you can judge how much you think the show deserves.
AUDIENT:  Right.  Are you sure?

Yes, yes I am.  Partly because I'm confident that this show is a good 'un and that people are generally nice.  This has backfired only once, not because people stopped being nice but when a show went down... shall we say the reaction was mixed.  On that occasion I took half what I would normally take.  The part of me that has grown up in this consumer world was more hurt by this than the rather less black and white feedback after the show.
So, having done this one show for x number of performances, what is the average return?  To get down to brass tacks.  Well, it varies and it doesn't.  Individually the audience gives wildly different amounts of money - from a couple of quid, up to thirty/forty pounds in one instance.  However, the total take at the end of most shows is fairly consistent - regardless of the size of the house.
Everyman is a show designed for small audiences, it functions better when the house is small - but I always worry that this means I won't hit my budgeted return.  In this, I am proved relatively safe thanks to what I will call Price Elasticity of Audience Size.  I.e. The smaller the audience, the more they give.  Whether it's because they feel that I might be out of pocket because they are fewer, or because the show is more effective (both at times are true) the smaller audience almost always gives more.  If for the former reason then I feel bad, because they're giving money in the false understanding that I haven't budgeted for a low turn out (I have - all my shows are budgeted on the assumption that next to no one will turn up) or that they feel embarrassed in some way (again, a false position because the show functions best when there are fewer in the audience).
But they give, and I am thankful, because it does make a difference.
What is sadder is not that the smaller audience gives more for the wrong reasons, it's that the bigger audience gives demonstrably less for possibly even worse ones.  The show isn't necessarily much better or worse from their end (my preferences are my own) but they give less.  I maybe doing my audiences down but I suspect this is because the audience makes a calculation.  "There are more people, so he's getting enough money from them, so I don't need to give so much."
Both calculations are understandable, but they're also quite depressing - because the point of Pay-What-You-Want it's not about group-think haggling over price, it's about giving what you can afford, what you think the show is worth and what you want.  But I fear audiences are not giving what they want, they're reacting to the group, thinking about what everyone else is giving, treating the art on offer not as one person giving to another, but as a reaction to a marketplace - as if they were assessing share price in the stock market.  Are we all so infected with the consumer mindset that we can't disengage from it after an hour with a morality play?
Not all my shows are Pay-What-You-Want.  After 18 plus months playing with the format I've decided to use it for my solo work only.  Partly this is pragmatic - when hiring/working with others we do need a better baseline to work with and Pay-What-You-Want (though stable enough return wise from the audience) can be hit by bad weather conditions and failure to turn up even when seats are reserved.  The payment of a ticket in advance means a budget can be properly assessed and payments balanced as we go along, based on reliable data.
But my solo work will remain largely Pay-What-You-Want because I can - because I only need to pay myself and my expenses - and I'll continue trying to forge connections with my audience, one-to-one, so that they are free to give WHAT THEY WANT, rather than WHAT THEY THINK EVERYONE ELSE IS.

Then again, I could just be being really patronising and the bigger audiences just thought I was shit.

The final performance of The Summoning of Everyman is tonight in Stisted Village Hall - www.milkbottleproductions.co.uk for details.