Exciting things still going on...!

Hey everyone,

Just a quick post to update everyone on the world of Strangers - post Strangers in Brynaman.

The group are currently still meeting every week for physical theatre and devising workshops with Sarah and Peri at the Pensioners Hall and coming up with some FANTASTIC ideas and possibilities. We have now set a date for the "Our Square Mile" mini drama festival wich will take place at either the Aelwyd Hall or the Pensioners on Wednesday 23rd April . . . only 2 weeks away!!!

We're going to use the event as an opportunity to present our work to parents and friends during the evening and it will start at 7.30pm.

Its all about the way we feel about the area we live and work in and what Brynaman means to us...ITS GOING TO BE WELL COOL!!!

Looking forward to Tuesday, Guys. And if you're reading this in Wales and feel like you've been missing out - come and join us again - you're MORE than welcome!!!

Peri :)

THIS BLOG IS STILL ALIVE....HONEST!!!

Hey Strangers round the world,

Just been talking to Alex Griffiths about ideas for keeping the Strangers project going for a bit longer while Sarah Jones is here in Wales - HOORAY!!!! Sorry NZ that we've stolen her a for a little while.

Really good to see that Polly and Laura from the Welsh criw have been blogging while I was in Italy and that there is still life in this blog yet!!!

We all still need to get back together in the 3 countries to watch our films of the performances and have a kind of Strangers Finale Event in Wales - not sure how possible this is in Slough and NZ but where there's a will there's a way! And inventive ideas are always welcome here...! So get blogging everybody!!!!!

Alex tells me that some Wales Strangers have been discussing where we go from here and the idea is evolving about some street theatre opportunities to "spread the word of Strangers" so to speak, and more physical/dance ideas for the future. I'm sure that Sarah and I can come up with some exciting workshops and schedule some inventive programmes for you all to get involved in and make sure you have your say about and learn to lead yourselves through as well.

May I also add how proud I am of all the Strangers who were able to attend the Heritage Lottery "Your Square Mile" event on Saturday. The Dynamix Youth Consultation leaders were well impressed with your knowledge and understanding of heritage and how you obviously all gell so well as a group - "Everybody needs good Strangers"!!! I think oneof my favourite bits of the day was taking Barney the Puppet on a tourist guide of Brynaman. He's sooooo cute! As soon as I get the photos off Tashy's phone I'll post a pic on here - or maybe Tashy could do it quicker...? Race you Tash!

Anyway, really really sorry that Strangers had to be postponed to next Tuesday, but something good did come out of it...Alex and Peter attended a community meeting with me and Juliana about getting things going in the village and by the end of the meeting we were all discussing an exciting Lantern Parade of all the different groups with masks and music and lights and fire and circus!!!! Thats my kind of village event if ever I heard of one!!!

Also I just need to add a big congratulations to Peter and Alex for joining up on the Youth Council - YAY! You guys are some of the most motivated and positive young people I know...as well as all the rest of you strangers WORLDWIDE!!!

Right must sleep soon so Ciao for now!! Bella Pasta Bellissimo!!! Yay!!!!

Peri/

Morning Wales and Slough, Good evening Nelson

It is now Tuesday morning here beneath Y Mynydd Du and the sun is just rising. Three days after our performacnces in Wales, the land of song, and I am still excited by the buzz in the air around our achievements. Today I head west to the sea in Pembroke, where my actual roots really really are and take part in a Global Youth Networking Event where I have been specially invited to do a presentation on our project - Strangers across the Globe.

How cool are we?!? Very.

Tonight, however I shall return and meet with Criw Cymru for an evaluative debriefing session at the Pensioners Hall and I'm really excited about that too!

What have we really learnt from this project? We know how much fun it has been over the last 6 months but what will we actually take away with us? One thing I've learnt, asna I'm sure many others, is to simply write on a blog for the fist time in my life! I remember asking the Wales group in September whether anyone had ever used a webcam for a conversation with someone elsewhere and noboday in the room ever had. Now that seems strange as its so normal to us to get up at 8 in the morning and roll out of bed for tea and toast with Strangers Nelson!

I have also learnt that in Brynaman people really are "kind" like Stranger tells Gwen on the Mountain. So many volunteers pulled together on Friday and Saturday night - not to mention all the staff who had no choice!!! People were packing folders full with info on the project and selling programmes and collecting feedback forms and stopping some audience members from leaving at the interval when they thought it was the end! Jess from Siop Laria (the shop used in the Miming film!) was there and loved the line about the tic tac! Staff from the centre loved the show and all the local references, epecially "This is Brynaman Public Hall" - thank you Brian for allowing us to use the cinema for the film and supporting our ideas.

The whole of our play was founded on the cinema in Brynaman still being used today as in 1926 and I think that we should arrange an group outing to celebrate it soon! Even though some people have already started this trend with Elmo in Grouchland! ;)

Anyway, I think I should probably be getting ready to drive now and preparing my thoughts for the presentation but I really just wanted to say - Thank you to everyone and I'm really looking forward to seeing Criw Cymru tonight and Slough Massive on Thursday. Nelson, perhaps we can catch up on the webcam when Sarah's back in Wales - I'm sure we'll all be missing each other by then, won't we?!

Wish me presentation luck! xxx

Here we go Wales - Lets have fun!!!!

Hello everyone across the strangers globe,

This will have to be very quick!

This is a special message to you all but especially to the Wales Criw who are about to go up in 5 hours time.

BREAK LEGS!!! TYNNWCH COESAU!!!

Our play is such a beautiful thing and you've all worked extremely hard for 6 months - tonight is the fun bit we've all been waiting for and working so hard to bring together across the world. And guess what? Its not over yet as you get to play it all over again tomorrow AND you all get a copy of the show filmed by Roger and Paz to keep. And we're also going to do a mini performance of it in St Fagans in 2 weeks time...YAY!

Tonight, lets tell our wonderful stories loud and proud and show Ammanford that the Amman and Swansea Valley (and Pontarddulais!) youth here are extremely talented and amazing.

ENJOY THE SHOW!!!!

Peri xxx

The Tech is done...now onto the Welsh Dress(er..)

Hey Everyone,

Before I go to bed and dream of strangers and lights and suitcases and a huge wardrobe and masks and fog horns and Mr Sillar's HUMUNGOUS white rocker hairstyle, and cardboard recycled tubes and whistles and all my other favourite things, like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, I would like to post a short note.

I am incredibly excited about our project and our performances at the weekend.

The young people in Wales have given up (pretty much!) their entire half term holiday to dedicate their time, energy, enthusiasm and creative talents and to continue building up a truely magnificent youth theatre company with professionalism to be applauded.



This week is only halfway through but we have already achieved sooooo much.

The set and costumes are beautiful and practical and absolutely perfect to assist us in telling our magnificent stories from around the world. The miming in Brynaman film is AMAZING!!!! Sub real are our favourite film crew in the world and do excellent interviews as well as encouraging an appropriate amount of fun and games during break times including frisbee throwing in the park and bendy sword fighting - BUT NOT ON THE STAGE!!!!!!! The characters are growing larger than life by the minute and voices are getting louder as the days progress...thank heavens!!!!! And most of all, we have an incredibly beautiful and important story to tell that we created ourselves from 6 months of extremely hard work and a passion to pass it on to others.

Peri's grey hair is only growing at is normal rate, Natasha is building up her sound and lighting crew every day, Alex R is keeping the crew calm with coffee and the cast calm with a loud voice ;) We have discovered a saviour in Rhian, and Carrie's commitment and support is absolutley amazingly fabulous and we long to have them on board with all future productions!!!

The youth crew has dwindled slightly but India and Louisa are wicked and pulling the final seams together, literally.

This is a huge big massive shout out to all the strangers across the world - NZers break legs in 7 hours time! We in Wales will join you through the webcam at 8.45am here whilst we have our breakfast at the community centre and long to find out how your opening night goes....

Slough, now that this blog is easily accessible to all, please think of us whilst you bask in your wonderous extra 2 weeks!!!! We're only a teensy bit envious but soooo much more excited and we just can't wait to see Lizzie and Mikey and Dan on Friday and show them our version of your Slough Stories too.

Anyway, I really should probably go to sleep now as I need to get up bright and early for the NZ post show skype and then go great guns on the morning rehearsals pre Wales Dress.

NZers, we're all thinking of you as we go to sleep tonight and REALLY REALLY REALLY looking forward to talking to you after your show.


BREAK LEGS!!!!

Lots of Love from Peri xxx

Bonjour

Bonjour team.

We are just editing our practise films. We have also just read through the blogg and seen everybodies excellent scripts. We've started talking about staging the Welsh play and whether or not we will need to get good at Welsh accents! Sarah read some of your scripts out loud with a shocking Welsh accent. Have a look at the footage!

SLANG GRAFITTI WALL

HEY STRANGERS

Lets do that thing we discussed about having a slang off!!! Wales Criw, Slough Posse and NZers - use the comments box to express your favourite slang (not swear!) words and if we don't know what they mean we have to ask or guess in the comments box!!!

Lets do it!

Click on the comments box where I'll start the ball rolling...

PERI ;D

BRYNAMAN ROCKS!!

Hi All!

Peri here :) Just had to blog after our first day of intensive rehearsal week in half term in Wales.

Alex, Jacob, Haddy, Tess, Cadi and Sophie - you did some amazing research today and it will all be so worth it when we come to our creative writing this week.

Think about all the descriptive words we can try out to really evoke the atmosphere of the Amman Valley and be bold! Think of all that anthracite rock/coal (hard to light, then never goes out;)) which is very unique in the world and we are lucky enough to have some!

I learnt loads this morning, especially when you guys were all being fount-of-all-knowledge professors and also by watching Jon's video of the reality tv show "CoalHouse". It really made me think about life in 1920s Wales.

I've just been talking to the writer and director Jamie and Sarah in NZ and they're really interested in all the ideas we've come up with today. Looking forward to the early morning skype with NZ YPs. I'll pack the honey and toast now ;)

See Y'all

Hear me talk!

P.S. - click this little ghost of Brynaman!

RECAP...it gets you in the swing!

Hey everyone!

I've just spent the last 20 mins going through all the comments boxes and recapping over September posts as well. Its really good to recap as it reminds you how things are developing...and so far so good! The only way is up! And with the Slough half term next week and Wales half term the following week there's gonna be loads more stuff to blog soon!

Keep those comments going as well - its really cool when someone answers your post! lol

Hope everyone's having a funky weekend - Wales criw - get posting!!!! ;D

Peri

OUR CINEMA

Sitting in the balacony
Friday night the seats are busy
Or its Orange Wednesdays
81 years of films and people
Young and old, boys and girls
Courting, romance, weddings, families
Miners saving all their pennies
We remember days gone by
And thank them for the memories

PLEASE ADD MORE VERSES THROUGH THE COMMENT BOX

Interviewing the ladies of Brynaman about the cinema in days gone by

On Friday night, 4 of the Wales Strangers, along with Peri and Julianna, went to meet with a local Welsh language ladies group called Merched y Wawr (ladies of the dawn). They are really like the WI (Women's Institute) and bake cakes and make lots of tea and come together socially on trips and events.

We went to film an interview with the ladies about their experiences of Brynaman Cinema as research for writing our Wales script and found out about some interesting characters and what went on in the back seats! ;D

The biggest change for young people of the village from the old days to today was that there was youth club every night of the week with different chapels where the young people of the town between 14 ad 25 years would gather in groups of over 100! There was no need out hang about on the streets as there was always something to do. These days the youth club is only open on Monday nights and is currently closed for refurbishment until the new year :(

People would queue for the cinema for hours and whilst one audience came out of the doors after "first house" the queuers for "second house" would be in their way!

Two very interesting characters were Betty Ben Tips the usherette and a man who worked there called Phil who was big and could neither speak nor hear and all the young people would behave when he was around...Peter is going to look at writing a scene about them over the weekend ;) Nice one Pete!

The ladies also confirmed that there used to be operas at the Public Hall and Owain's nan used to play the piano at those events.

Another interesting thing was that if you were over 15 you had to pay more to come in so the girls would spend ages trying to "dress young" to look 14 or under to save money. These days young people tend to dress up older to try to get into 15 certificate films! Very ironic don't you think?!

There was loads more info we discovered but this is just a taster to give you an idea.

Diolch i pawb yn y Merched y Wawr am yr atgofion a diolch i'r pobl ifanc sy wedi neud y cyfweliad yn digwydd.

Martyn and Charlie's Interviews . . . Look closely - they are there!

Alex and Peter's Interviews after watching the Welsh play "Vortigern's Kingdom"

A cool moment Peri simply had to share...

Hey everyone,

Just got back from a most excellent Strangers Wales 3rd Tues night rehearsal and just invited some more of team Wales to join the blog!

While I was on here I suddenly had a thought that Strangers NZ may still be online through the webcam so I gave them a call and although the team had left I still got to chat with Sarah the director and Chris the Filmmaker as they packed things away.

Their skype with Slough sounds really cool and I hope as more people sign up to this blog we can all meet each other here as the project continues. I'm so glad we can use all these means to communicate - its opening up a whole new world!

Thank you team Wales for an awesome rehearsal - you are all stars! If you want to post some of your monologue/scripted scenes straight on here, thats cool.

Bye for now! Peri x

The final shot

Here is the Final shot of the rehearsal in Brynaman on Tuesday night.



"Very serious in the olden days.
All we need is the black and white.

Mae pawb yn edrych hen fashiwn iawn.
Du a gwyn a bydd en perffaith."

Old fashioned Photo shoot

In Brynaman we explored the idea of what takes place in the moments before a photgraph is taken and we're interested in using this in the performance since being inspired by Alex's family photos from the 1940s.