Le Tour de France - On the road again!

John, Sarah and Ken Patterson - the original team from 'Sans Frontières' - have been green screen filming in Newcastle University's Culture Lab as part of the digitalisation of our show Le Tour de France.

A recent successful bid to the Esmé Fairbairn Foundation has resulted in an award which gives the go-ahead for TSF to revisit this much loved show, an adventure involving our detectives being caught up in the Tour de France bicycle race. The original show toured to schools and venues for lively school groups of 8-11 year olds and family audiences.

The hope is to re-film scenes originally played on stage to align with extensive film footage from France which also featured in the show. At present we are investigating doing this via the blue/green screen process where actions filmed in front of such a screen can be superimposed on other background film.

Initial fears of Sarah's costume sporting a green too similar to the glowing back screen against which we would film were allayed in the technical sessions there. We have been very lucky to enlist the sevices of local film maker Christo Wallers from The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle, to sidestep such technical obstacles.

We spent two days filming one section of the show which included the Panneaux song based on French road signs, performed on our quirky trio of bikes: racer, unicycle and scooter! Other scenes saw Le Fantôme Cycliste's dastardly plan to stop us with a jar of tacks thrown in our bicycles' way!

The finished film will include interactive media with French language and cultural themes embedded in a cliff hanging adventure to save the yellow jerseys of Le Tour de France.

Vive Le Tour de France!!

Les Aventures de Lapin

Back on the road

After a spring tour, the Lapin team is on the road again. Some last minute design interventions from Alison Ashton have meant we have a terrific (in the true sense of the word) mask/head of Zobolak the Zombie for our cemetery scene! Scary, but not too much. Kids enjoy being scared after all. Alison made it overnight, using all her skills and experience of working with Welfare State International, the maverick leaders of community art and theatricality, now sadly disbanded. Yet they leave their mark in fine and bravely designed work from its many disciples across the UK and beyond.

The cast are full of beans and give performances truly inspired and physical in a pleasing and engaging manner. Despite being more years older than them than I care to reveal, I join them in those mind bending, body bending antics, playing Monsieur Cheval. Ken Patterson's lovely charming music gives a real flavour of the relaxed Caribbean, with also some crazy lyrics around the world of bananas. You can hear and see it on YouTube.

The show feels very complete and has a lively colourful look to it which should transform the most prosaic school hall or canteen.

Crikey another fab show! Enjoy!

Here's the Lapin tourists at Stonehenge. Watch out English Heritage - Rabbit loose among the stones!

Lipsynch in Quebec City, Canada 3-5th June 2011

Lipsynch is appearing at the Festival du Carrefour International de Théâtre. Its Director, Marie Gignac, was an early collaborator in our creative team. We are to play three consecutive days, amounting to three 12-hour days, never before achieved so there is a buzz of interest as to whether we can last the pace.

We play in an ice hockey arena in a suburb of the city on the edge of town. Even the driver can't find it to begin with. The technicians joke that it is Opera à Vanier, which might equate to Brixton, Castlemilk or Longbenton. The vast interior of the hockey pitch and bucket seats has been transformed into our usual theatre dimensions set in a black box of curtains. The dressing rooms are the real thing: they have a whiff of adrenalin, sweat and shouting coaches. Rick gives us his version of a typical pep talk to get us into gear.

Strange to return to QC after three years touring when so much time was spent devising Lipsynch here with the team in Robert's La Caserne, his ex-fire station where research and development from film to opera still goes on. It's also ten years since Robert invited Sarah and I to see the space and mentioned the possibility of us being in a show he called 'Lipsynch'.

Thomas Michelle Marie:

Hans Piesbergen has just finished filming in Quebec his segment - 'Thomas' - of the projected film of Lipsynch. We look forward to seeing footage of some of the shots on Robert's computer. The film maker Pedro Pires, who had his film Danse Macabre at Newcastle's Film & Media Festival, has a fine eye for composition, tone and atmosphere and makes our actors from 'Thomas', 'Marie' and 'Michelle' look fabulous. This is no Hollywood stuff. The characters look grainy, real and moving. Another episode 'Michelle' will be shown in Berlin as part of a Court Metrage festival and later all three excerpts (including 'Marie') will be presented as one film.

Show well received with full houses of 750 odd each night. We receive news we will definitely play Melbourne next summer. Great news, but sad not to see the team now for another year.

That's all for now. I'll be touring with Les Aventures de Lapin later in the month, having taken over from Jack Burton. More of that later!

John

THE NORTH!!!

We are back in the north!! I love it!!

On friday Deb and I drove up to Manchester from Oxford, while Emily and Mark went south to London. I had a lovely weekend with an old friend, reminiscing, drinking and watching football! As we were leaving Macclesfield to head to Leeds on Monday, we stopped to fill up on diesel and check tyre pressures. A routine check turned into a longer delay, as I discovered a broken seal on one of the tyre valves. I had been looking at the tyre earlier in the day, thinking it looked rather flat, so it was a good thing I heard the sound of air after pumping it up! I did a quick(ish) tyre change, which the cast were most impressed with, and then we continued on to Leeds. The following morning, while workshops were being run, I located a tyre repair company close by and had a replacement valve put on, so now we are all good!

After performing in Leeds, we drove to Ingleton, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Dales, and Emily, Mark and I took the opportunity to walk up a big hill and enjoy some spectacular late afternoon views. It was breathtaking up there, and I intend to visit more summits, as I believe it good for the mind!!

Just two more days before I get back to my house, which I have missed quite sorely at points for the last 5 weeks...YOUPIII!!!

jack

SUN!!!

Having an excellent week so far, enjoying the sun whilst doing get ins and outs of lovely schools! Enjoyed some fine private school dinners, including a very tasty coq au vin at st swithums in winchester. Its Marks birthday tomorrow!! We have the morning off, so are going to brunch in Oxford before driving to our school for (hopefully) another sunny get in and out! Honestly, it was bloody gorgeous today!!

jack

Brighton Rocks!!

Hi all,

another week has passed...

last week we enjoyed shows in Woking, Eversley, Tunbridge Wells, Brighton, Caterham and Horsham. On Wednesday the school we were meant to be performing at in Brighton had a power cut, which meant a welcome but dissapointing day off!! I spent the day recording the sounds of Brighton's seafront, while the cast shopped, walked and caught up on sleep! We did a show in a great school in Caterham on friday, where I spied a very good future venue for TSF's small scale theatre shows such as La Pelota Magica. There were plenty of overhead LX bars and a very nice stage and raked seating. Earlier on in the week, we were refused entry to a staffroom in a primary school and had to wait around in the hall while teas and coffees were brought to us! Pretty odd visitor service if you ask me!!

We've just done or first show this week, which went very well. We're returning to the same school after lunch for a show to their year 5s and 6s...

jack

Les Aventures de Lapin - Tour

So, the night before our preview show at Hexham Middle School, we packed the show into the van and I drove home. Soon after leaving I realised something was wrong with the van...a loss of power meant it took me an hour and a half to get home. The show went well on friday, with lots of the people who had helped to make it coming to see it. I was slightly preoccupied by the van and the impending tour, for which I still needed to get a number of things sorted in the office. The van was taken to our mechanic Brian, who could only attempt an exploratory fix job in the short space of time he had to work with it. I spent the rest of the day sorting out petty cash and other necessaries for the weeks on the road.

On Sunday we met in Hexham before driving up through the borders to Galashiels for 3 shows over 2 days. The drive back took a very long time, as the problem with the van reoccurred. We drove it (slowly) to a Mercedes dealership in Longbenton to have it repaired. There we picked up a replacement hire vehicle, which was slightly smaller inside than our van. Somehow we managed to transfer the show into this smaller Vito, and I had to drive my own car to the venues while we used the van, as we were using some of the seat space for the set. The next week passed with a lot of good shows, great audiences and enthusiastic teachers, who really enjoyed the colourful and energetic nature of the show. We all settled into our parts well and the get ins and outs became really quick, which always makes me happy!

After exactly a week, the office received news that the problem with the company van had been solved and we drove to Longbenton to pick it up and transfer the set once again. I was glad to be back in it, as there is a lot more room for the set and ourselves and we could use the roofbox to transport our luggage instead of my car! We spent the rest of the week touring in the original van around the north east before we broke up for half term. I used this break in the tour to arrange some repair meetings with Alison, as a few props and costumes were already looking a little sorry for themselves and I took some of the more simple jobs home with me.

I drove down to Tunbridge Wells over the weekend to stay with a friend, before meeting the cast in Croydon and travelling to our first venue in Kent. That was the beginning of this week, in which we have since been based in Croydon, performing around the south west of London. Today we had a very interesting show in Kensington in a tiny hall. The get in involved a lift that could only be opened by the secretary, a front door that had to be closed when said secretary was not standing by it, and a £10 fee for parking! The show was squashed but the audience really loved it and sung along enthusiastically throughout.

I'll try and post again more frequently during the coming weeks, the tour is becoming more relaxed by the day...

Til then

Jack

Les Aventures de Lapin - Production weeks

In early December, Mark Hanly, Deb Pugh, Emily Grant and myself came together to create a new show for primary children under the direction and guidance of John and Sarah. We worked with material from the caribbean, specifically the Anansi style stories of the trickster Lapin. In these stories, Lapin plays many tricks and pranks upon a wide range of characters, mainly other animals, such as Elephant, Tiger, Horse, Whale etc etc. We spent a week turning a chosen few of these stories into a rough piece of theatre, before breaking up for christmas. We returned in January to rehearse with a beautiful set made by Alison Ashton, puppets made by Elena Miller, props sourced and made by myself and Alison and infectious songs written by Ken Patterson. John had updated the script and we spent a further two weeks rehearsing, gradually bringing the show up to scratch for a preview performance at Hexham Middle School on the Friday of the second week.