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

NZ SCRIPT CROSSES FINISH LINE

Hi All

The Nelson script is finished. I'd like to say a big thanks to Jamie for sticking with us through the difficult NZ exam period (exams unfortunately are more important than scripts!) and for coming out the other end with a complete script from what began as a patchwork of ideas back in July.

If you've had a chance to read our script you may have noticed that it is a touch long. Somehow it has become epic in scale but we are proud of our words and the world of the play we've developed is a wordy one. However you are more than welcome to cut what doesn't work for you and replace scenes with the action contained within the dialogue.

If you get a chance have a watch of Jamie's interview where he describes the process that has led to our story. It has been a fascinating and experimental one. A huge amount of learning has occurred for us during it from young people learning about developing narrative to me learning about letting go!

I'm not sure how we came to tell a story about an orphan, a new girl, European settlers, suitcases, time travel, Maori heritage and the impact defining moments can have on our future but this is where the theme 'Strangers' has taken us.

I've enjoyed reading your scripts and am brimming with ideas for pulling them together from sending the characters from our play into the scrapyard looking for each other to Gwen stomping into the middle of our opening waiata(song) looking for her flip flop!

It would be great to hear your ideas so start posting them up here and get commenting on others!

We are reading and casting all the scripts next week so watch this space to find out who is playing who!

I'd like to finish by congratulating the Nelson group for all your enthusiasm, creativity and for being so open to new ideas and so unprecious with your own. Its been difficult to stay as focused as I'd know you'd all have liked during exams but hopefully now that's over you can give this your all and let the script amalgamation ideas pour forth!

Bye for now,

Sarah

FILMING IN SUNNY NELSON!

We've just spent a tiring but brilliant day filming in sunny Nelson. The group decided to shoot a rehearsal film of the parallel run away journeys of our 2 central characters. Percival in the 1890's and Julie in 2007. The shoot was inspired by the film Run Lola Run... and was a lot of fun!

Day 2 in the Pensioners Hall...

Woah, What a day we had in Wales today!

Only day 2 of rehearsals and so much to think about! Criw Cymru (Wales Criw) were all ready to Skype NZ before 8 am this morning and the film crew were making a documentary of us at the same time. (FOR DETAILS SEE COMMENT BOX ON LAST POST) We all had tea and toast (some with honey..!) and then made our way down to rehearsal for 10am.

After singing with the NZ team we were all in the mood for more songs during warmup and were very pleased when Alex the designer and Roger and Elin joined in the funky chicken, penguin AND banana songs!!! Then we did a cool memory focus game using place names and Welsh surnames in the circle (Sars- the fruit/country game) We managed to get into a really good two beat rhythmn by the ned and I think its something we can come back to as it really evoked the patterns and sing song nature of the Welsh language and accents.

We then discussed film ideas in the circle and John told the filmmakers about the narration style hitchhiker guide to brynaman. During our creative conversations we've developed some cracking ideas around surrealism, monty python-esque randomness and lots of fun I feel!

Loads of food for thought to mull over till Friday when we develop the ideas futher with Roger.

In the afternoon Alex ran a design workshop and showed us loads of really cool masks and puppets to give us a sense of where we really can take our ideas especially regarding the themes of journeys, masks as strangers and loads of other things! We discussed what NZ had told us about their play in the morning and thought about Slough's ideas too and looked at places we could set our play - how to create "Brynaman" and ensure we tell the audience our really important story and share it. Ideas for the screen varied greatly - which is always best at the start - from laundry on a washing line to a pathway leading upstage and splitting the screen in two. So many variations on this and other ideas that there's just not enough time to share them all...Aaaargh!

So there's a taster for those who weren't there and a reminder for those who were ;)

To complete the session we listened to the intro of Dylan Thomas' "Under Milkwood" and relaxed and lulled with a cup of tea ready for a day of devising, acting and creative writing tomorrow....SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!! I've got to choose a new smiley...

Peri xxx Cool.

Strangers Connecting!

Hi Wales Strangers/Hi NZ Strangers

Heres the skype agenda for today:

Sarah to open skype in NZ.

Welsh group hi/NZ group hi.
Each group member introduce themselves.

• What our plays are about
• Nelson to ask Wales about talking stick convention. Plus respond with own ideas
• Wales to ask Nelson about suitcase convenion. Plus respond with ideas
• Share ideas for using masks.
• The friend song- to be taught by Peri with support from Welsh group.
• Discuss refugee song
• Ideas for connecting and disconnecting gestures
• Discuss using the blogg more effectively.

Welsh group goodbye/NZ group goodbye

Hope that is ok

C U SOON!

Sarah- Director NZ

Hullooooooo

Hey I'm Becky, from the Nelson, NZ Strangers team thingy ... I'm sitting here with everyone at the moment and waiting for more people to arrive to do script development stuff so I thought I'd post my first blog thing on this! So hello! Here I am! I'll write more later when i have more time :)