Thursday 31 December 2009

thank you, thimbles




They sit together on the side of the bed...

WENDY: I shall give you a kiss if you like?

PETER: Thank you. (He holds out his hand)

WENDY: (aghast) Don't you know what a kiss is?

PETER: I shall know when you give it me.

Tuesday 29 December 2009

aspects of neverland

















Designer: Victoria Spearing
Lighting: Alan Valentine

Monday 28 December 2009

underground den






Designer: Victoria Spearing
Lighting: Alan Valentine

Saturday 26 December 2009

eclectic mix



National Theatre: Olivier
NATION by Terry Pratchett
Adapted for the stage by Mark Ravenhill

Director: Melly Still
Set Design: Melly Still with Mark Friend
Costume Design: Dinah Collin
Lighting Design: Paul Anderson
Projection Design: Jon Driscoll & Gemma Carrington
Composer: Adrian Sutton
Music Director: Martin Lowe
Fights: Paul Benzing

Great parallels here with NEVERLAND:
  • Island Stories 
  • Creation Myths
  • Disappearing Worlds
  • Dolphins & Mermaids
  • Sharks & Crocodiles
  • Burial Rites & Death
  • Rhymes & Song
  • Ritual & Ceremony
  • Art & Play
Photo: Johan Persson
Emily Taaffe as Daphne in NATION

Shaftesbury Theatre

Director: Jack O'Brien
Choreography: Jerry Mitchell
Music: Marc Shaiman
Lyrics: Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman
Book: Mark O'Donnell & Thomas Meehan
Set Design: David Rockwell
Costume Design: William Ivey Long
Lighting Design: Kenneth Posner
Sound Design: Steve C. Kennedy
Wigs & Hair Design: Paul Huntley
Producers: Stage Entertainment UK Ltd

The structure and construction of Musical Theatre: wow!
Great fun...

Go see: Chloe Hart as Tracy Turnblad...



NEVERLAND again:


Photo: © 2003 Columbia Pictures Industries

Thought it worth a 'retrospective' cross-reference with our production of PETER PAN at South Hill Park, Bracknell: it was!

Photo: © 1984 Columbia Pictures Industries

Re-visitng the 1980's, sixth form friends, reminiscences and the films we went back to the cinema to see a dozen times..


Image: © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Did everyone see this on the last day of the
UNITED NATIONS
Climate Change Conference
7 - 18 December 2009 ?

A preview at the summit might have proved useful...


james cameron











Images: © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 


GO SEE IT

Friday 25 December 2009

'balance is key'




The market stall - and the snow - three days ago...

HAPPY EASTER | MERRY CHRISTMAS | SHALOM



Thursday 24 December 2009

'better learn balance'



Noriyuki "Pat" Morita | Mr Miyagi | The Karate Kid | 1984


sand the floor
wax on wax off
paint the fence - up down
paint the house - side to side

look eye
always look eye

called crane technique

first learn stand
then learn fly

nature rule

danielson

Wednesday 23 December 2009

galileo galilei



Image: The Sun | © NASA

G A L I L E O (Scene I)

"Walls and spheres and immobility! For two thousand years people have believed that the sun and all the stars of heaven rotate around mankind. Pope, cardinals, princes, professors, captains, merchants, fishwives and schoolkids thought they were sitting motionless inside this crystal sphere. But now we are breaking out of it, Andrea, at full speed. Because the old days are over and this is a new time. For the last hundred years mankind has seemed to be expecting something.

Our cities are cramped, and so are men's minds. Superstition and the plague. But now the word is 'that's how things are, but they won't stay like that'. Because everything is in motion, my friend."



Image: Jupiter's Four Satellites (Moons) | © TRACE

G A L I L E O (Scene 4)

"Truth is born of the times, not of authority. Our ignorance is limitless: let us lop one cubic millimeter off it. We try to be clever now that we at least have a chance of being just a little less stupid? I have had the unimaginable luck to get my hands on a new instrument that lets us observe one tiny corner of the universe a little, but not all that much, more exactly. Make use of it."

Bertolt Brecht's
LIFE OF GALILEO
Translated by John Willett
(London: Methuen, 1955/1980/1986)

in preparation for...

Tuesday 22 December 2009

people were out walking today: talking












the first image
is the centre piece
from the stained-glass window
of St. George's Church
long furlong drive
the britwell estate
slough
where my parents were married in '65

the church was demolished a couple of years ago
2003 i think
and my sister asked for Jesus's head panel

there was a whole body
but that got bulldozed

the glass is embedded in concrete

the concrete reminds me of the national theatre...

someone should have had the vision
to have preserved this 1950's building
the architecture
as an arts space
place
a theatre

or at least to have preserved the stained-glass panels:
the art space

DURING DEMOLITION


JUST BEFORE DEMOLITION



JESUS!



but it is good
that people are walking in the snow
and talking
today

Sunday 20 December 2009

tracking: in the valley




As I sit here in the valley
all the heart has gone out of me.


I threw a stone at the blue grouse*
on the side of the mountain.



It hit her, and she flew off.
I re-wove the rotten fish-basket,


fixed it up for use again in the
foothills. But, sick at heart,


I have cut it to pieces. While
I was weaving another, a bat* flew


right at me. I will not do what
it orders, the small moth-spirit


that flew at me here in the valley.
Right here in the valley,



all the heart has gone out of me.



IN THE VALLEY
Tsimshian Tribe

Native American Songs and Poems
Edited by Brian Swann
(New York: Dover Publications, 1996)

* the blue grouse is probably the woman the man has sent away
* when a bat hits someone it means that person is about to die

in preparation for
THE BLANKET PLAY
2010