Check out the new videos we’re making in our trailer for our production at the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2010.
Under Milk Wood
5
Sep 10
Sucking strawberries on a wall
Between rehearsals we’ve been squeezing shoots in. Looking to use more video than last time, which was audio-heavy to be sure. Editing all day yesterday and started to go stir crazy. Here’s a snippet:
15
Aug 10
Miniature stories
Experimenting with miniatures for the new conception of Milk Wood, continuing on from our topographical map of a set in Sidetrack with little lit houses on the floor. This video from 2005 was my first of many trials where I combined improvisation and autobiographical storytelling in a composite of miniatures.
25
Jun 10
A tasty bit for your eyes and ears
Here’s a teaser. Turn up your speakers!
We have music written for the show by Emily Irvine and Joseph Littlefield, which you can hear throughout the trailer.
13
Jun 10
Sunday afternoon
Long rehearsal yesterday – 14 straight hours with Zoe. Not sick of each other yet. Having a lovely Sunday off, reading the bad Sunday paper, drinking bad coffee, watching bad TV. Have been thinking about the three-year gap that would have meant not being able to produce Under Milk Wood, thanks to the Free Trade Agreement in 2005. Had it been signed in 2002, we wouldn’t have been able to experiment with Dylan Thomas’ writing until 2023 without raising considerably more funds for royalties payable to an estate.
8
May 10
Rehearsing in Sidetrack and bullet point update
Ah, first day of rehearsing in the theatre over. Remarkable early mark. Will post the photos we took for the poster soon. Emily Irvine has been whipping up tunes for the new incarnations of Thomas’ songs. Little projections being made of little men walking all over Zoe. Lamps between legs. Scaling ladders and scrambling in straight-jackets.
28
Apr 10
Learning lines
So last week, Zoe came up to the mountains house to learn lines for three days straight. After waking up a couple of times, both of us dreaming of nothing but milk wood words, she’s pretty much got it down.
Down at Mini Ha Ha:
22
Apr 10
Polly scrubs the floor
The Reverend Eli Jenkins, busy on his morning calls, stops outside the Welfare Hall to hear Polly Garter as she scrubs the floors for the Mothers’ Union Dance to-night.
Listen to the audio:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
22
Apr 10
Nogood Boyo in the Dinghy
Fishermen grumble to their nets. Nogood Boyo goes out in the dinghy _Zanzibar_, ships the oars, drifts slowly in the dab-filled bay, and, lying on his back in the unbaled water, among crabs’ legs and tangled lines, looks up at the spring sky.
NOGOOD BOYO (Softly, lazily)
I don’t know who’s up there and I don’t care.
Listen to the audio:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
11
Feb 10
Maps for 2010
Hello 2010. It’s already February, holy crap. To welcome in the newish year, some video from our workshops. I’ve been experimenting (as you’ll know if you’ve been following along) with cartography extensively. Paintings blend with high res maps scans from old Welsh tour guides (read most bizarre and invigorating extracts below). Also been playing with dust/dusk – see below. And finally, Bessie Bighead (even though she was looking all the time) – beloved amongst her beloved cows.
22
Dec 09
homogenised
It’s been some time between posts for me. In one moment, detailed in the prior UMW post, everything’s gone on milky overload. How simple it is to swap water for milk, Nat. Creamy, sticky, sweety, pasteurised goodness. Thinking about how the elixir of life would meld (and seep) into the scabby wooden floors of our potential venue. Very well, I believe. Building the scale (and not-to-scale) model of the village Nat and I sketched out across the floor and even up the walls – Zoe meandering in and out of trees, shoreline and town pump. Lots of textures and tones coming out in my brain now. Milky water dregs and curdled cream and blue cheese. Coagulation and renin in a gullet.
In the beginning I wanted her to climb out of a pile of suffocating white ash and dust, now I’d settle for a teacup of warm milk. I’ll give you a snorkle, Zoe? Yes?
29
Aug 09
Layering children’s voices
A wonderful day of hardcore audio, Zoe and I channeling the delights of bullying children for Gwennie’s song and arguably the most superior narration in the work. Found old footage of mid-20th century Welsh children playing: girl with girls, boys with boys. Hop, skip and jump, rolling wheels down cobbled streets, manic dancing in circles, swinging off ropes in the town park. Will post audio soon.
28
Jul 09
Cucumber and hooves
I can’t believe we’ve yet to tackle Gossamer.
SECOND VOICE
Gossamer Beynon high-heels out of school The sun hums down through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of her heart and buzzes in the honey there and couches and kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast. Eyes run from the trees and windows of the street, steaming ‘Gossamer,’ and strip her to the nipples and the bees. She blazes naked past the Sailors Arms, the only woman on the Dai-Adamed earth. Sinbad Sailors places on
her thighs still dewdamp from the first mangrowing cockcrow garden his reverent goat-bearded hands.
GOSSAMER BEYNON
I don’t care if he is common,
SECOND VOICE
she whispers to her salad-day deep self,
GOSSAMER BEYNON
I want to gobble him up. I don’t care if he does drop his
aitches,
SECOND VOICE
she tells the stripped and mother-of-the-world big-beamed and Eve-hipped spring of her self,
GOSSAMER BEYNON
so long as he’s all cucumber and hooves.
26
Jul 09
Weeks in
Breaking through to our third or fourth weeks of workshops. We have, in some form or other, tackled the primary characters that have always drawn us in, which is more or less an unrelenting challenge in a text with 60-odd characters. Trading skills and lessons, we’ve been rolling around with the cat for days in the doona-slash-ocean of the town’s dreams.
Some of the images rolling along with us are shown below, all of them stolen from the magical suitcase Zoe delivered to my bedroom.
16
Jul 09
Bible on her knees, toddling baby at her feet
-
-
- Ward Lock’s Red Guide
-
- Cader Idris walking tour
-
- Aberystwyth
-
- Map
The Ward Lock Red Guide – Southern section of North Wales
Continuing to appreciate the differences in tone and attitude to the Welsh landscape from within and without its borders. The above excerpt has been instrumental in kicking off our workshops, and more or less a product of Wales. Ms Hemans herself emigrated from Liverpool to Wales.
I LAY on that rock where the storms have their dwelling,
The birthplace of phantoms, the home of the oloud;
Around it for ever deep music is swelling,
The voice of the mountain-wind, solemn and loud.
‘Twas a midnight of shadows all fitfully streaming,
Of wild waves and breezes, that mingled their moan;
Of dim shrouded stars, as from gulfs faintly gleaming;
And I met the dread gloom of its grandeur alone.
the weather, giants, the reaper, the mourner, etc…
————————————————————-
Chapter IV: A Welsh Market-Town from “PEEPS AT MANY LANDS: WALES”, by M WILMOT-BUXTON, 1911.
“[We should] visit Corwen or any other Welsh market-town on a Sunday to see the most striking characteristics of the people. The streets are nearly deserted, and a strange stillness broods over the place. At the open door of some of the cottages an aged woman sits with a Welsh Bible on her knees, and keeps an eye upon the toddling baby at her feet. Everyone else has vanished, and not until a burst of melody sounds from the plainly-built chapels which occur so frequently on the highways and within the township, is their whereabouts revealed. Such singing it is, too ! It has been said that the Welsh people sing naturally in parts, and certainly it seems as though nothing but years of training would produce such a result with English choirs, not to speak of a whole congregation, as is the case in Wales. In perfect time and tune the beautiful old Welsh melodies ring forth, and we begin to realize what a large part this hymn-singing and fiery enthusiastic preaching plays in the daily life of this emotional and deeply religious people.
REV. ELI JENKINS
Praise the Lord! We are a musical nation.
“At every corner stand groups of farmers, talking eagerly with hands and shoulders as much as with lips, and with that curious rise and fall of the voice which, they tell us, is the secret of Welsh oratory.
“Meantime the market-women have spread out their goods poultry, butter, eggs, and flowers on the market-stalls in a picturesque fashion enough. Many of the women themselves are worth the attention of an artist, with their strong brown faces, black crisp hair, and very dark blue eyes,” put in with a smutty finger,” as someone has well described them.”
11
Jul 09
All the town is dusk, and ceremonial dust
[somewhat tremulous (modest, excitable) beginnings of video concepts for the time of dusk in the town]