Archive for the ‘Now you see it’ Category

A show that never was and two (UG)gly samaritans

Monday, September 22nd, 2008
(UG)gly, the brilliant show that replaced ours

(UG)gly, the brilliant show that replaced ours at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival

Øystein in email-conversation with Adrian Gillott

After the letter exchange between David Overend and myself arranged by INSTED (see right hand menu), exchanging thoughts and ideas through letters has fascinated me. It’s very stimulating putting your thoughts down in letters, and getting thorough and intelligent responses to it. Your ideas feel like they matter, and that is a very satisfying feeling.

Here is a slightly shortened version of an email conversation between myself and Adrian Gillot of TheSamePerson who stood in for us on short notice when we were hindered from going to the Amsterdam Fringe:

Subject: URGENT from Oystein, can you help us?!‏

From: Øystein
Sent: 25 August 2008 13:34:26

Hi Adrian,

Philip and I have got into an unfortunate situation… As you know, we were going to perform at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival. But then Philip decided to fall down a flight of stairs and damage his leg, so now we’ve had to cancel. Very disappointing for us, but also for the festival who have now got four nights available in one of their best venues. So… we thought we’d ask you if you and Anna wanted to go with UG(gly) instead?

(…)

All the best,

Øystein

From: Adrian
Sent: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:48:08 +0100

Hey Øystein,

Thanks for thinking about us! It would be very cool if Anna and I could take UG(gly) to Amsterdam.

But how terrible for you guys. I’m so sorry to hear about Philip and his leg. Argh! Why do these things happen at such terrible times?

Thank you!

Best,
Adrian.

From: Øystein
Sent: 29 August 2008 09:50:21

Hear you’re going! Great stuff! Have an amazing festival! :)

Best, Øystein and Pip

From: Adrian
Sent: 29 August 2008 10:29:51

Yes, it looks like we’re going…

It’s a bit scary because we haven’t looked at the show since June but it is going to be really exciting. I can’t believe that we are profiting from your misfortune, though; that seems really harsh. I hope that Pip’s leg gets better really soon. And, you know, I am really curious about your show…

Best,

Adrian.
‏

From: Øystein
Sent: 30 August 2008 10:07:01

Well, it was supposed to be about failure. So I reckon this was probably the best way to fulfill that aim… ;-P

Ø.

The two (UG)gly samaritans, here in blue

The two (UG)gly samaritans, here in blue

From: Adrian
Sent: 09 September 2008 20:06:04

Dear Øystein and Pip,

This is just to say thank you so much for recommending us to Anneke
for the Fringe. It is really such a shame that you were not able to go
because it was a beautiful theatre and the people were so wonderful
(you have already met some of them, I think) but your loss was very
much our gain and we are extremely grateful. It was a wonderful few
days and an invaluable opportunity for Anna and I to play the show in
front of audiences of total strangers; and Dutch to boot.

Anneke was very disappointed that you guys were not there – after
Hamlet Machine (which she kept telling us about) she was really
excited to see what you were doing. I think she is expecting to see
you next year…

You must also tell Anna and I when you are performing in this country.

I am really curious about the show we were replacing. In fact, some of
the best people we had in the audience were just people who had been
searching on line and had picked your show as something out of the
ordinary to do with their Sunday evening (they said that they hardly
ever go to the theatre); they made do with ours but yours obviously
has something about it. Oh and there was the actor (whose name I have
forgotten) who picked your show as part of his Saturday evening
‘route’. In some ways it felt as though we were wearing somebody
else’s perfume! Now we want to know what it smells like in the right
place.

All the best,
Adrian (and Anna).

From: Øystein
Sent: 16 September 2008 17:10:01

Dear Adrian and Anna,

Well, thanks for helping us out! It was brilliant for us to be able to recommend a good show rather than just disappearing and leaving the festival in a trick situation… We’re glad you enjoyed playing there, and that you had a good reception!

Hearing about all the people who had randomly discovered our show, or had been eagerly anticipating it is rather weird, sitting here in little Sidcup…

We’ll definitely go to the Amsterdam Fringe next year. And perhaps you will too, if this year’s ad hoc performance was a success?

It doesn’t seem like Now You See It will surface again, at least not for a while. After interrupting and calling off rehearsals and performances this time we feel like the moment has passed for that particular show. But, we’re up to our neck in other plans and ideas instead. You can see the first ten minutes of Now You See It on our YouTube page, if you haven’t done that already. There were a number of further ideas known only to me and Pip (both or one of us) which the world will never know. In combination with what we already had and the what the blurb promised, I’m sure it would have been a very intriguing show. Now, it’s the show that never was. An idea which does have a certain romantic, mystical or even eery quality to it.

We have our next performance in November, and you should come and see it if you can! Its a very different kind of show to Now You See It, its called Norway.Today and is a piece of drama where video is essential to the story, and we use live feed video projection a lot. Its on at Southwark Playhouse as part of the Theatre Café Festival arranged by Company of Angels.

Best wishes,

Øystein and Pip

(PS. Can I use this email-conversation as an entry for our blog? I liked your perfume-analogy and my “show that never was”)
From: Adrian
Sent: 17 September 2008 23:34:43

Dear Øystein,

I’ll just reply to you quickly – otherwise I won’t get to reply for a
week or more.

So:

I watched the Now You See It video. I think it’s a shame that you are
not continuing to work on that because I think there is something very
promising about the place you started from. Maybe you can cannibalize it for new shows.

Please feel free to use the e-mail conversation. I assert no ownership.

Hope to see you in November.

Best, best,
Adrian.
For more info about TheSamePerson have a look at their webpage: http://www.thesameperson.com
(and make sure you watch their funny and weird little videos!)

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Break a Leg

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Our rehearsals of Now You See It; Now You Don’t have been inconveniently, annoyingly and abruptly interrupted by Philip taking the well-wishing of our friends a little too seriously.
Break a leg, they said. And so he did.

Well. It’s probably not quite broken. It’s not removed at the hip. It’s not crushed and jelly-like. It doesn’t even have white bits of bone sticking out. So in that sense, the whole business is disappointingly un-dramatic. But the doctors say Pip’s leg is fractured and that he should rest for a while and not use it. So we have been forced to quit rehearsals and cancel the project.
This means we are not going to Amsterdam, not previewing in Oslo, not visiting the Ukraine, not currently planning another Rome-trip and not going to get the opportunity to take this particular project any further. Which is sad, of course. But life goes on and all that.

Then. When the cloud of disappointment had subsided, the thick layers of irony hit us. Like a slap in the face with a big fish.

Here we embark on a journey trying to make a show about failure. And fail.
We make a show about clowns. And Pip performs the perfect act of slapstick on the staircase outside where we’re rehearsing.
We set about creating a slippery landscape of tricks and fiction and end up physically slipping up.

In fact, we called our show Now You See It; Now You Don’t. And for a long time we could see it looming in the distance. Unclear, slightly out of focus maybe, but full of promise and bright colours and joke shop props and touring plans. Now, we can’t see it anymore. The show is off radar, it has entered the Bermuda triangle of theatre only reappearing like a ghost of memory – like the Flying Dutchman, perhaps, its journey interrupted, but its trajectory forever Amsterdam-bound… (How’s that for a syrupy analogy?)

We were making a show about what we laugh at and why, how we make something un-funny, funny. And it is with all this in mind that we suspect that this whole situation might in fact be a perfectly legitimate laughing matter. It is funny that this whole thing went tits up. Or leg down, as the case may be. We are waiting for the pain to recede – or, Pip is, I’m fit as a fiddle to be frank, waiting for the aftermath of cancellations to quieten down before we make our mind up about this. The laugh-worthy-ness of our current unfortune – does it deserve a five star rating or a meagre two?

But in the end I guess it is to be expected. Not Philip falling down stairs, of course (Well, maybe that too…). What I mean is: When you have the nerve to call your company Imploding Fictions… Perhaps it is only natural that in between the projects where a show successfully implodes the fiction of fake drama, or implodes the audience’s expectations of fiction, or implodes theatre’s fictional frame, or reveals a self-imploded fiction, or implodes the lies of reality and exposes the fiction of truth, now and again a project comes along and simply pops politely, in an imploding fashion, not unlike a balloon bumping unexpectedly into a needle – and folds up. Exactly in the way we imploders expect fictions to behave.

This particular project has – like the aforementioned balloon – popped. Retracted to its own crumpled, wrinkly shape, its true face revealed. It is not a pretty face. It used to be big, red and shiny (if perhaps a little bloated). Now it’s small, raisin-like and a little wet. (Yes, Pip, I’m talking about you again. Oh my god, is that blood? Nurse! Nurse!)

I’m writing from Pip’s bedside at the Norwegian A&E, anticipating a big bill handed over to me with a polite smile by a pretty nurse. (I hate people who smile politely and look distractingly attractive whilst they rip you off.)
- Pip, have you got your E111 with you? Your E111, the European health service… card… thingy… Bugger. Well I’m not paying, you’re the one who fell!?! It’s your fault that it has all stalled, isn’t it? I’m still standing!

But, come to think of it, perhaps I shouldn’t be quite as smug about the whole thing. After all, I was the one who pushed him.

- Øystein

 

PS. Thanks to all the people who have believed in this project; INSTED, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and the Norwegian Dance and Theatre Centre, the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, International Publishers Forum in Lviv, the Norwegian Church in London, the Acting Department of the Film and TV-academy at the Nordic Institute for Stage and Studio in Oslo and of course our eminent producer Michael H. Sciarrone! We will be back with renewed strength before you know it… (After all, we aren’t broken. Only fractured.)

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