favourites in my mind

HAYWARD GALLERY
Southbank Centre
23 June - 6 September 2009

Keith Tyson
LOCKED OUT OF EDEN (2009)
Viewing the Children Playing in the Garden
from the Safety of My Cerebral Fortress (detail)
Photo: Roger Wooldridge

Charles Avery
UNTITLED (Eternity Chamber) detail (2007)
Photo: Blaise Adilon

Chiharu Shiota
AFTER THE DREAM (2009)

Charles Avery
UNTITLED (Bejewelled Hare) (2009)

Yayoi Kusama
DOTS OBSESSION (2009)

Efharisto

our final day

Jack Speckleton as Spiro

Yildiz Hussein as The Rose Beetle Man

Janette Froud as The Tyrolean Lady / Mrs Durrell

William Howell-Jackson as Gerald Durrell

Daniel Austin as A.S.M., Runner and Social Secretary

Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Stories

six 15-minute alfresco dramatisations by Daniel Austin

25 June - 25 July 2009

Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

A Jersey Arts Centre production funded by Jersey Tourism

• 27 performance days
  
• 158 performances
  
• 3,712 attendances

two world premieres in six days

Photo: Jon Guegan / DURRELL DAY: 12 July 2009

Photo: Bruce Liron / ONE MILLION TINY PLAYS

gallery of tiny plays

Crowns: Romance



Play # 51: Diamonds



Play # 19: Droning



Play # 85: Festival Sex / Festival Tent



Crowns



Play # 3: Car Crash



Play # 31: Thong!



Play # 7: Yes!



Play # 55: Office Do



Play # 40: NHS



Play # 29: Jungle Bra



Crowns: Cornish Boys

ONE MILLION TINY PLAYS ABOUT BRITAIN
by Craig Taylor
Jersey Arts Centre youtheatre

Dress Rehearsal: Tuesday 30 June 2009
Liberation Bus Station: 21.00 hrs

Photography by Bruce Liron

the next world premiere

ONE MILLION TINY PLAYS ABOUT BRITAIN
by Craig Taylor

TODAY: SUNDAY

58 tiny plays to coordinate
18 actors - 2 of whom are in the other premiere play - to install
Crowns Band to integrate
2 buses to sort
Music to rehearse

And the following to create:

• train stations


• restaurants


• offices


• classrooms


• theatres


• parks


• fairgrounds


• airports


• supermarkets


• hospitals


• surgeries


• hairdressers


• bars

ALL AT LIBERATION BUS STATION !

And in just 9 hours - minus an hour for lunch - so that's just 8 hours!

Technical Rehearsals are a wonder: creative and v. exciting...

conservation-fringe

Photo: Bruce Liron

With 512 people attending over the first three days, My Family and Other Stories has proved to be a tiny experiment in theatre, alfresco, storytelling and keeper-acting.

It is almost conservation-fringe.

This was perhaps crystalised yesterday when we met Rebecca from Sydney, the research and conservation director from Taronga Conservation Society, Australia. She was on a trip with her husband who had been a keeper at Durrell in the very early seventies.

http://www.taronga.org.au/

Rebecca saw five of the pieces and was intrigued at how honest, uncomplicated, 21st. century, and keeper-like, our storytellers were.

She thought Janette, Yildiz, Jack and William had created an incredible ensemble and, like me, was impressed - not that anything is about contriving impressiveness - at everyone's ability to communicate the conservation elements in a hugely accessible way with theatre.

Theatre is certainly a force.

An exciting conversation thus ensued about exclusivity and inclusivity in arts and business and how the two can co-exist simultaneously. Though, of course, the latter is preferred...

A grey, cloudy start to the day, which might have necessitated going indoors, but we went with the weather forecast and remained outside to be sun-drenched instead.

'Sunshine!'

The pieces were hugely relaxed, fluid, had settled a little more - with some poignant new improvised moments - and were even more confident.

This shift in gear created something quite engaging and dynamic in the inside/outside storytelling arena at Durrell.

http://www.durrell.org

But from one world premiere last week to another this week...