Creating The Monster - Collaboration

My fingers have been itching to wax-lyrical blog-style about all we've been doing lately, but in doing all we've been doing I have just been, I think, more busy than I have ever been before.

We've been working solidly for two weeks now, re-structuring, re-writing, and creating our latest version of Dr Frankenstein's Monster, played by the multi-talent performer Aled Wyn-Thomas, who really has entered the fold of Tin Shed like a duck to water and has made us see elements of our piece in a wholly new light. This, I feel, is why collaboration is so important.

We've been making puppets, filming shadow sequences, creating electrocution devices, mastering the art of mime and fighting alot! We've explored ideas and minor moments in so much more depth than we ever did before, we've made decisions we perhaps would never have been encouraged to make without someone new introducing us to an outsiders opinion and ideas. I think artists sometimes have to remember that we should never close the door to other peoples ideas, they so important for stirring up the waters. They're the spoon in our tea, if you will.

The show is looking GREAT. I have never been so happy with it. It has depth, humour, rad fight sequences (choreographed by our go-to-genius-fight director Chris Hall), it has dark human matters at it's heart, and a hilarious, loud, frantic, German Expressionist, potty mouthed grotesqueness in it's stomach, but it's also full of beautifully-haunting images and sequences inspired by Mary Shelley's text. We've described it like a punch in the face followed by a beautiful whisper that makes us question how humans can be cruel, how humans can be passionate and how fundamentally we all desperately need someone to save us from loneliness.

Here are some images from the studio...





 

 
 
 

For details on how you can get and see Dr Frankenstein's Travelling Freak Show! click the link!

http://www.tinshedtheatrecompany.com/#!frankensteinfreakshow/cjvj

Danke Schon,

Mucho,

Cliffers.

Tin Shed Theatre Co.

A Childish Act...

  The past week we've been putting-back-together a show we toured around Welsh primary schools last year called Star Pupil. A dream-like game show in which the contestant (an 11 year old) must complete tasks and challenges in order to learn everything they'll need to know about going to secondary school.

  When developing work for a younger audience it can sometimes be hard to re-align your approach so it works for the 11-year-old mind. It's no mean feat, and in coming up with material we sit around with coffee in mugs, our legs crossed and/or folded, pencils and pens in our mouths, note books on our laps, twiddling with our chins and/or facial hair asking ourselves: "What are the kids into these days?"

  Never has asking one simple question made me feel so old, and in reflecting upon all the ideas that asking that question might produce, it unwittingly defines exactly how out of touch with our childhood we have allowed ourselves to become. We think back to what it was like to be a kid, like peering into an abandoned house through one of it's grime covered windows. I remember dressing up a lot and the smell of the floor. It dawned on us all that we'd maybe become so distant we might not be able to ever feel the way we felt back then again.

  I'd had enough. I didn't want to feel old or distant from my childhood, none of us did, so we played with wool, and having just been jilted by experiencing the distance from right now to back then, we tried to claw a little back by acting like kids again, albeit, giant, hairy kids, but kids non the less.

This is what we made: THE WALL OF WOOL

 

 I don't know who said it, but I like it: "You have to grow old, but you don't have to grow up" I think we should all remember that sometimes.

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No linkage today...

Mucho,

Justin