FAO Rhiannon and Andrea

Hey guys!

Hope you are having an awesome week!
Just been speaking to Steve about my costume for Shui Ta for the photo shoot and he suggested I wear a bowler hat - which is a great idea.
However...! I do not have the privilege of owning my own bowler hat, so wondered if any of you beautiful people happen to have a spare bowler hat kicking about your homes?!
Also wondered if you have any ideas on this because a bowler hat makes an appearance later on in the play...

So if you guys, or anyone else in the cast, has a bowler hat I can use for the photo shoot lemme know, or leave a message on the blog.

Thankyou so much!
See you Friday... :) Laura

Model Box Meeting

I knocked up a model box for a meeting in MG1.36 at 12.00 today, Friday. Those present: Zi, Tom, Jon, Rob and Steve. It lasted about 40 mins. And much was discussed. Perhaps Zi or Tom could do a little report of the main things we discussed and would be working on. I'd just earlier done a few pix of the model box. Here is one to show the rough idea. More details later. To add to this post, either of you, go to the 'dashboard and click on the name, ShenTe at Jackson's lane etc and you get a list of the posts. Then you click edit - and you can add stuff.

Have a nice weekend everyone...

PHOTO-SHOOT CASTING

OK, guys, I've made an executive decision. Nothing to do with the casting for the show itself, but I'm going to give you all 'parts' to play in the photo-shoot.

Shen Te/Geisha Girl: Leah
Sun/Pilot: Tomasz
Young Prostitute: Zihannah
Mrs Shin - Rhiannon
Shui Ta/Masked Man: Laura Whale
Mi Tzu/Grasping Landlady: Tamara
Carpenter/Drunk: Mike
Mr Shu Fu/Demon Barber: Sile
Limping Man: Huseyin
Wang the Waterman: Andrea
Policeman: Kharis if available.

I want you to go along to the costume cupboard (I had a look in there today), raid your own wardrobes and beg steal and borrow. Kharis and Tamara are currently negotiating the day of the shoot next week so talk to them and alert them NOW about any problems you have with availability.

I want you to use your imaginations and HAVE FUN!!! But remember, we're hoping to model it on the Mamaloucos Image...
Leah will hopefully have a suggestion of kimono - ideally in white or red with a white geisha face. I'd also like some bare flesh, probably from Sun, the Limping Man and maybe the Prostitute.

Think European - apart from Shen Te - with principally blacks and dark greys, tatty suits, hobnail boots, ripped white shirts. Almost like a Threepenny Szechuan. Raggedy. Tramps. Battered top hats. Inside out umbrellas, holes in their socks... etc etc RAIN. If there is colour it might be in little splashes. A wilted flower in someone's buttonhole. Reference to the play in there. I noticed, for example, that there's a dolly in the props/costume cupboard. I'd definitely like Leah to be cradling that...

I have a police hat... We'll need something like, maybe, a big belted overcoat for the policeman...

We need at least five (probably broken) umbrellas.

We will need some cigars. Cigarettes. A smoke machine I hope from Jon...

So, get started.

Brecht Team Strip

Ok, guys, you've got to visit the following:

Philosophy Football Website

Particularly as they feature their own Bertholt Brecht Football strip (see above). And in case you're looking at this on a small computer screen, I reproduce the text:

"Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it." Bertolt Brecht

Flying Jacket

WANTED: ONE FLYING JACKET SIMILAR TO THE ONE IN THE PICTURE (OR COULD BE BROWN). BUT SHOULD BE OLDER AND MORE DISTRESSED LOOKING. LIKE ME. NEEDED FOR ACTOR/S PLAYING SUN. JACKET (AND YANG) MUST LOOK SEXY. KINDLY PASS ON LEADS TO THE COSTUME DEPARTEMENT. I THANK YOU.

Xu Bing Tobacco Project

I was researching Tobacco Leaves when I came across this:

Xu Bing's Exhibition in Szechuan

It would seem that Szechuan is a tobacco growing area of China! Not a lot of people know that! And that some years after the Communist takeover, in 1952 BAT (The British American Tobacco Company) was nationalised by the Government. Of course BAT still exists - and is now back in Asia big time trying to sell millions of cigarettes to pre-cancerous teenagers...

Is Xu Bing's work some kind of reflection on Colonialism and ownership? It's difficult to say from this site, but the tobacco-Szechuan syncronicity is spooky!

Nobuyoshi Araki Exhibition at the Barbican

Just this morning heard about this exhibition at the Barbican. This is an introduction I've just got from the website:

Nobuyoshi Araki is arguably Japan’s greatest living photographer – and certainly its most controversial.

This is the first major exhibition of Araki’s work to be held in London, and is the most comprehensive overview of his prolific career. With over 4,000 images on display, the show reflects Araki’s extraordinary breadth of work – from the shocking to the sublime – and includes new work never previously seen.

Influenced by Shunga, the erotic art of the Edo period (1603 – 1867), as well as the glossy imagery of contemporary culture, much of Araki’s work confronts taboo subjects such as sex, nudity and death head on. Subjects range from poetic scenes of old Tokyo, to sensual close-ups of exotic flowers and erotic photographs of kimono-clad women bound in rope.

Covering over forty years, this exhibition showcases the extraordinary talent of one of the most charismatic and prolific photographers working today.

Araki at the Barbican

Araki Images on the Artnet site

Anne Willett

Have also now spoken to Anne Willett, John's widow. She's made great progress with the Paul Dessau music. She has spoken to Henschel Verlag and Zurkampf Verlag in Germany today and we should be getting word of the rights and the actual score (plus CD) within days.

Obviously, because she is talking to them, the cost of the rights may be at a fair rate, bearing in mind out limited budget. I certainly hope so.

I also think it's a must to invite Anne to come and talk to us for an hour or so. Just chatting over the phone just now, she's got some great stories about her and John going over to Berlin in the early 1950's to meet Brecht, Helena Weigel and the Berliner Ensemble...

I've suggested a date really early on in the rehearsal period. Maybe even the afternoon of the 6th February. She's getting back to me.

She also said that a guy called Tom Kuhn is doing a lecture, early in Feb about Brecht. He's taken over John Willett's role as Brecth-Promoter-in-Chief, English Branch (hand-picked by John before he died). Anne is getting back to me about where and when this lecture is.

Tamara and Kharis also note that by making a link with The Goethe Institute and/or the Austrian Institute with regard to such events, we may also be able to boost substantially our audiences....

Contact Sheet

Thanks to Huseyin for getting the contact sheet out within an hour of end of our first day of rehearsals. This has enabled me to set up the blog and invite everyone onto it. So, you should be reading this, all of you, by the weekend. Any problems to register yourself in as a User, just let me know.

Once you're in, take some time to have a play and find out how one or two things work. Posting a picture from your desktop is really simple, either a picture you've loaded onto your computer, or one that you've got from Google Images...

It's also possible to add a voice-blog from a telephone...

Have an explore. This may be a useful way of us keeping in touch...

First Post

OK. Here is the blog. And here is the first photograph. What's it got to do with Good People, or Szechuan, or anything, you may ask? But WE know, don't we?