SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER TIME - EDINBURGH FRINGE 2016

IT'S NEARLY EDINBURGH FRINGE O'CLOCK

It’s the 18^th July 2016. And we are in a rehearsal room at York Theatre Royal in our first day of rehearsal for SNAKES & GIANTS.

We’re back with our wonderful friends at Summerhall from the 3^rd – 27^th August. SNAKES & GIANTS is a show about landscape and building and losing and millions of years and fleeting moments. It’s exciting. It’s full of excellent sound and soul music. It’s full of movement and singing and dancing. And it’s uplifting. And it’s sad.

It’s 4 years since we were in exactly the same rehearsal room making BEULAH, a folk musical about William Blake. Similarly, a show which is about so much stuff and also about 2 people. And the feeling was the same – exciting and scary. The feeling of pushing at something and feeling like we’re breaking some new ground in what we make and how we make it. We’ve never played a whole lot with movement and dance before. And this is the first show we’ve ever made to be performed in a theatre space.

But that’s not all. We’re also up in Edinburgh with our excellent old friends at C Venues, where we first started working in 2007. We’re bringing back Dominic Allen’s brilliant show A COMMON MAN: THE BRIDGE THAT TOM BUILT. A story about the revolutionary, world changing man, Thomas Paine. We produced Dom’s show in 2013 and, as our world gets darker and harder, the show gets more and more relevant. It’s about refusing to accept the status quo, about inciting revolution, and about understanding things from history. And Dom is sheer, sheer joy to watch. He was last in The Crucible with Tom Morris at Bristol Old Vic, then he was in Aus with us and is currently out on tour with Les Enfant Terribles. 

In Australia at the beginning of this year we met a mathematician called Tom Smith. And he inspired a play. FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE GODS is about freewill and determinism and kissing. It’s performed by an actor and an audience member each day. So the pair in the story will never be the same twice. It’s a big experiment in storytelling and maths and, we hope, a month long journey of meeting excellent people we’d never have met otherwise.

So, these two weeks between now and opening these three shows will move fast. Probably too fast. But we can’t wait. Because a good summer in Edinburgh is one of the greatest joys.

And then we take the shows to more new friends at The Bikeshed.

And then we take the shows to great old friends at Greenwich Theatre.

And we couldn’t be happier!

See you on the way…

Holly, Hannah, Veronica, Dom, Joe, Joanne, Alex, Alex and Jim.

What Now? An Offer Of Doing

It's 8am on the morning our country and has been sold down the river by ignorance and hate a divisive fear-mongering right-wing politics.

I've been awake for just an hour and the rest of our future seems to be stretching out like a bleak road looking bleaker by the minute. Our glorious and peaceful democracy has failed us. 

I, like millons of us, am not a politician. But I, like millions of us, do not feel like I've had my say, like this referendum has represented my thoughts and hugely heartfelt feelings. 

I am, though, clear that there must be something we can DO. And that doing must be through community and generosity and kindness and open arms and all the wonderful stuff which bullshit shiny faced people like Farage and Boris seem to want to dissemble in favour of power and money and division.

So it's 8am. Here's something we can offer to the doing.

We have a show. It's called BABYLON. And, unfortunately, it's coming true. It's a show about right wing, divisive politics. It's a show about dividing and dissecting communities until they crumble. It's a show about slimy, shiny pricks like Johnson and Farage.

We produced it at the beginning of this year in Australia as a viscous cabaret full of beer and chicken wings and grotesque clowns. But it feels like an articulate and terrifyingly urgent show.

So we can offer that - that script or that show. If you want it, I can send it to you. If you want to do a version of it, a reading of it, a staging of it, a whatever-of-it then you can. If you want us to do it, then we'll damn well try. Just email me.

Now, an hour after waking up, that's what we can offer. Because I feel like we have to DO something or OFFER something. And we are a bunch of artists. So we can offer loud and angry and colourful art.

If you want to chat then drop me a line. 

alexander@theflanagancollective.com

'BABYLON is like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump taking over and running your country like a fascist cabaret'

- Adelaide Advertiser

THE TEMPEST / A Community Production / Auditions & Workshops

Performed 15th - 19th June / Rehearsal across May & June

We're pretty darn excited about this - our very first community show, Flanagan Collective style...

In September 2014 we moved home, out of our beautiful village of Coxwold where we held The Little Festival Of Everything, and in to a very beautiful converted 17th Century Watermill just down the road in Stillington, North Yorkshire. 

We moved here to make a number of things possible - to have more artists to come and stay with us, to have space to rehearse shows and, ultimately, to present work here too. So here's the first show we are making around the grounds of our beautiful Mill. 

THE TEMPEST will be a promenade production around ponds, trees and grassy knolls - full of live music, more than a little anarchy, and the odd moment of beauty. The show will be performed by three professional actors alongside a cast of community performers and musicians. And we want you to come and be a part of it. 

So, whether you're a dab hand at Shakespeare, or have never seen a show in your life, we'd love to meet you. We're after community actors, musicians, crew and any good souls who want to lend a helping hand in front of, or behind, the scenes. 

If you want to come and meet us, here's how. 

We are holding two open workshops -

MONDAY 2ND MAY / 6:30pm (2hrs) / Stillington Village Hall
TUESDAY 3RD MAY / 6:30pm (2hrs) / Stillington Village Hall

If you want to be in the cast and company, we'd love to see you here. This will be a group workshop where we'll play some games and talk a little more about the production and you can tell us how you'd like to be involved. You only need to come to one of these workshops. This is a great time to say hello too, if you'd like to be involved off stage too. 

If you'd like to auditions for a particular part in the cast, and would like a speaking role, then we'd love you to come and read too. We'll be doing this in small groups for a half hour session or so. Do get in touch if you'd like to audition and we'll find a good time for you to come - we'd love to meet you at one of the workshops as well. 

SAT 7TH MAY / Slots between 10am-5pm / Crayke Sports Hall
SUN 8TH MAY / Slots between 12pm-7pm / Stillington Village Hall

We can also offer a role as assistant director and assistant designer. If you think this could be something you're interested in, then get in touch and head down to one of the workshops. 

You can sign up for a workshop and / or an audition, and find out more about all these things by emailing Alex on alexander@theflanagancollective.com

This is a community production, so all these roles are voluntary but, we hope, very valuable. 

We look forward to hearing from you and meeting you soon. 

The Flanagans

-

The Flanagan Collective are associate company at York Theatre Royal. Their previous productions include Beulah, BABYLON, Sherlock Holmes: A Working Hypothesis and Fable. Their work tours nationally and internationally. They have just returned home to North Yorkshire following an award winning season in Adelaide.

The Tempest is directed by artistic director Alexander Wright. Alex's previous work includes The Great Gatsby at The Fleeting Arms, Romeo & Juliet for York International Shakespeare Festival with an international transfer, and as associate director on York Mystery Plays 2012 with York Theatre Royal, York Museums Trust and Riding Lights Theatre. 

Adelaide Fringe - A Cheap Australian Holiday

Since 2011 we have been making work in rural North Yorkshire in the UK, before that we were making other work with other folks. With each show we've made we have tried to try harder, to push our ideas further and to create work which simultaneously resonates with our local, regional and national communities - be they geographical or interest based.

We hope, as I'm sure all artists and makers do, that each show we create abstracts something of our world view, prompts a discussion on the here and now and asks things that we don't always think about in our day to day lives. Like hundreds of other independent theatre companies we work hard and keep trying to work harder. We aren't regularly funded and make most work by trying to be as innovative with our business models as we are with our theatre.

And the hard work is starting to get us somewhere. We regularly tour and run work across the UK. In October - with the help of so many wonderful people - we were able to take our show FABLE off-Broadway, to run our show and learn more about the New York arts industry. And right now I am sat typing in The Queens Theatre in Adelaide, where we are running three shows for 5 weeks as part of curated programme at the Adelaide Fringe Festival - the second biggest arts festival in the world.

The original BABYLON company in  2013

FABLE has been created over the last year or so. A show about how two people, from very different places, profoundly change each others lives. It was written after a chance encounter with a man called Blair in a pub in the Scottish Highlands. BABYLON started life in 2014 as a show to tour pubs and bars, a response to the growing right wing politics in the UK, and has since toured and played festivals. Now, though, it is a vicious cabaret - as the politics has got harder, so has the show. SHERLOCK is a show we made a few summers ago, playing in York and then touring. It's a new mystery woven from Conan Doyle's much loved stories - a show about the power in humility and the need to find answers ourselves rather than rely on the powers of others.  
So three shows which have been created over a number of years and in a few incarnations. We've picked them up, remade them, and flown them over 10,000 miles to Adelaide. Alex, Brian, Joe, Holly, Dom and Wilf; co-producing with Greenwich Theatre in London; presented by Joanne Hartstone in Adelaide. Years of work, months of planning and many many many thousands of pounds.

And more than that, actually, years and years of developing, playing, learning, thinking, making mistakes, making discoveries, meeting people, losing, winning, brain power, body power, being inspired and being down beat and getting more and more innovate as making independent art gets more and more difficult, making news shows, making other shows, returning to old ideas, developing and pushing. All of that, though, goes without saying.

So - a 1* review for BABYLON. This version of BABYLON is bonkers and political and loud and angry and 100% will not be everyone's cup of tea. But here is the first paragraph of our 1* review.

'I’ll preface this review by stating that I don’t think highly of audience participation shows. I think it’s tacky to ask people to pay for a ticket and then expect them to provide a great deal of the entertainment. I’m also tired of Brits who use our Fringe as an opportunity for a cheap holiday in the sun and expect to palm off second-rate entertainment. Now I’ve got that off my chest I’ll get down to business.'

Now, I object to that. It's belittling. Also we don't preface our shows with how hard it was to make, or how expensive it is, or that it costs over £20,000 / $40,000 to run this project. We just do the show we've made. Because that's our job. Our full time, professional job. A huge part of that job is to actively engage an audience - any good piece of art asks an audience to be a part of that, whether actively or passively. For us, actively asking an audience to be part of an experience is hugely important - not because we can't be bothered to do the bits we ask of the audience, but because art is about people, not just about the 4 of us saying the lines. Every piece of art should be about people and have people at the very centre. In our case, that centre is being part of the experience. Deliberately. 

Also it's Xenophobic.

I also object to this line.

'We were greeted at the entrance to the Red Queen by a man in a frockcoat, vest and Y-fronts. Yes, alarm bells rang. His cohorts were also wearing Y-fronts, even the girl, except for the man who had enough decorum to be sporting a full set of long johns.'

Because it's sexist.

Even The Girl. A Man. And even The Girl. Imagine - a girl in Y-Fronts. Not even a fully grown 27 year old woman who's a professional actor. Nope, The Girl. In Y-Fronts. In 2016. Whatever next? You never know, maybe next we might all start seeing gender as a spectrum and work on normalising our outmoded patriarchal binary opinions of Girls and Men.

The Girl?

A Man is Dominic Allen and The Girl is Holly Beasley-Garrigan. Dom plays Johnstone and Holly plays Jonson (soft J). Their names and characters are on the press release.

At least he liked Wilf's long johns.

The rest of the review I don't mind. They didn't like the show and that is okay. We got a glorious 5* review on the same day and we'd far rather divide opinion that be beige. The 5* review is nice - not just because it's 5* but because it actively draws a social and political parallel with the very recent cabinet shuffle in the Australian Government. We couldn't have planned for that. But that's one of the best things about art.

Joe and I (Alex) on the beach.

But we have spent years getting to this point. A point where we can create 3 shows in the UK to transfer to the other side of the world. That is no small undertaking as every international company will tell you at this festival. It's expensive and tiring and busy - but is exhilarating and gorgeous and welcoming and fulfilling. And, yes, on our day off we did go to the beach.

I would hate to think that anyone who reads Tony Busch's reviews will carry his prejudices - either about us Brits or about interactive theatre. We come here because Adelaide Fringe is a damn good festival and because it helps us make more work in the Southern Hemisphere. That's hard to do if we never leave North Yorkshire. We work damn hard. It's hot in Adelaide and it's winter in the UK. But I don't think us Brits should be blamed for the world's various climates and Adelaide's proximity to the sea.

If you would like to come see what we're up to have a look here - we'll hold our hands up to all and any debate, we ain't squeamish - and drop us a line, good or bad, on @FlanCol. And if you want to come to the beach with us on Monday, we'll be trying to play volleyball and getting sun burnt. We'll even have a beer with Tony Busch if he wants one.

Support the Adelaide Fringe, make friends, swim in the sea, imagine and create - because life is too short not to. Keep on rocking in the free world.

The Fleeting Arms - Over and Out

Do not underestimate the last nine months. 

Don't forget every good time had and hearty song sung. Don't drop the conversations you started. 

Bricks and mortar are just that - materials we build with. But a building is hollow without the life and soul which people bring. Every person who has set foot in The Fleeting Arms since the beginning of March is part of that life and soul. 

Sure - our doors are closed now. We're busy mopping and cleaning and clearing. Sure - that's a pretty hard job to do. But it doesn't undo anything. Because the superb community and the superb work which has happened in these rooms is purely made up of people. 

Space is hugely valuable, but only because it gives somewhere for us to gather - somewhere for us to make.

Do not tell yourself that it was lucky or that it was the right time and the right place - because people make luck and people invented times and places. So it's made by all of us. And, if ever anyone wants it to happen again, then we can make that happen. 

So, at some moment in the next few weeks, if you have set foot and shared The Fleeting Arms with us, then raise yourselves a little glass. A toast. 

Here to an amazing time. 

But here's to more amazing times to come. 

A very happy 2016 to all of you. You will smash it. 

A Beacon And Baton of Creative Community

This is how the front of The Fleeting Arms looks now. The windows covered up and the bigs eyes of Dr TJ Eckleberg staring out in to Gillygate - a street of independent traders in York City Centre, with a bus park at one end and the city walls at the other.  Behind the eyes is a three-hour theatre experience. 

This is new. Not just the eyes, but the whole thing. We are running The Great Gatsby across all three floors of The Fleeting Arms. It's a free form immersive piece of theatre where the audience pick their own routes around the show. It's full of big dances, cocktails, physical sequences - and it's also full of intimate moments, caught conversations, even a few scenes in a cupboard. As far as we know, nothing like this has happened in York before. 

The fact it is happening is not something we can take credit for. In many ways, we are sitting on the shoulders of communal giants. We have hitch-hiked a leg up from hundreds of people. We have hi-jacked something so strong and important. And, we hope, by doing it we will leave something worth hi-jacking by the next folks. 

Photo by Ben Porter

You see, The Great Gatsby only exists because The Fleeting Arms exists. 
The Fleeting Arms exists because the amazing cultural community in York exists. 
The amazing cultural community in York exists for so very many reasons. Indeed, the staging of the York Mystery Plays in the Minster next year is one of the biggest icons of York's incredible creative community. 

York is swathed and swaddled in history. We are hugged by our medieval walls, churches nestle down wonky alleyways and the walls of buildings lean in at impossible angles. We are a city full of hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But within the old stone and cobbled streets, there is a city that is reaching out its hands to mould the hundreds of years to come. Sometimes this is in big gestures. But sometimes this is small. For us, now, this is a brilliant bunch of people breathing life in to an empty pub. People who nine months ago said yes to a new bit of adventure. 

Sure - it's temporary. But we should celebrate that it has happened. Because each time something happens the simple truth is that it can never un-happen. And, so, when the next person comes along and says 'I want to set up a community arts pub' people don't look at them so strange. 

We owe The Great Gatsby to all of the people who have come before us. 

And - quite simply, quite humbly - we owe it to all the people who come to see the show. Not just because they are our audience in the last month of The Fleeting Arms, but because they are the audience for the risky show after The Great Gatsby. They are the audience who will now travel across the city, or drive in, or jump on a train to see a new piece of work. The people who buy a new outfit to dress up in, grab some dinner, book a hotel room - because of theatre, because of art, because back in February people agreed to throw their weight and creativity in to an empty building. 

The hundreds of years to come are not defined by what buildings we build or what policy we make. They are defined day to day by people. They are defined by people lighting beacons to move towards, or bonfire to gather round. They are defined by people passing the baton on. 

Photo by Chris Mackins

We have been the recipient of a pretty amazing baton. The Fleeting Arms is and has been of its moment. And it's a great moment. 

So in the last few weeks of The Fleeting Arms, we want everyone to come and celebrate with us - to build an audience who will be there, ready, for the next thing that has never happened before. We want to keep building, keep pushing, keep learning.

Come play. Come help pass the baton. 

To The Good, The Kind & The Inspiring - From The Humbled

The Real Blair - Veronica - Jim

I've told this story before, but on a dark night in November 2014 we stumbled in to a pub at the edge of Scotland and met a man called Blair. Since then we have created Fable, inspired by him and his home turf - a beautiful village called Ardfern. 

View From The High Line

In the last week of October, Fable was playing simultaneously in New York and touring the Highlands of Scotland. I am constantly and consistently flawed by the kindness, generosity, creativity and curiosity of people, of places and communities. To take our little show to the Soho Playhouse in New York, backed by the support and the money of so many people, is heart-swellingly amazing. To tour a show to some of the most beautiful places I have seen, to be welcomed in to people's homes, to sit and eat with strangers who so quickly become friends - that is heart-swellingly amazing. 


We hold ourselves open to adventure - but that doesn't account for everything. We have fallen in the path of some truly amazing people. And I genuinely can't sing the praises of Ardfern enough - as people and as a community they are truly truly inspirational. If ever you're passing, pop in. Halloween was something else in that little haven at the end of a lane. 

Jim and Veronica in Smoo Cave

But we would never have found that lane without folks like Lindsay Brown, Play Pieces, The Touring Network, National Rural Touring Forum, Scottish Mental Health Arts And Film Festival - there are lists of organisations we should thank. But in all those organisations are great people. Day after day after day, good people do brilliant things. 

It's easy to get angry at the world and to rail at the things we should rail at - and we should rail at them. But when on one side of the world Veronica, Jim and I are parading around a pitch black village, looking up at the milky way - and on the other side of the world Joe, Claire and Henry are finishing our first ever run Off-Broadway...these are the golden moments. And behind these golden moments are so many people, places and open arms that got us here. 

Claire at The Soho Playhouse

From dive bars to a genuinely terrifying haunted houses to being locked out of apartments to tours of award winning breweries in working mens clubs to feeling like your stood at the centre of the universe to feeling like you're stood at the edge of the world. This is one very special journey - our huge and genuine thanks to everyone who has pointed the way, held our hands, or walked a stretch with us.

There was a moment where Veronica's face was on three continents - in America, in the UK and in Australia. Because next we head off to Vault Festival in London and then we head to the Adelaide Fringe...long may the adventure continue. 

The following people are golden - this is not an exhaustive list...

Joe Hufton, Veronica Hare, Jim Harbourne, Brian Hook, Henry Bird, Claire Curtis Ward, Holly Beasley Garrigan, Dom Allen, Phil Grainger, David Jarman, Lindsay Brown, Jenny MacFie, The Loch Ness Brewery, Play Pieces, The Touring Network, Lucy Walsh, Blair Dunc, Kate and Darren at Soho Playhouse, Jame Haddrell and Greenwich Theatre, Scott Morfee, Joanne Hartstone and everyone who has hosted us, helped us or given us a leg up. 

Our view of Manhattan from our digs

With all our hearts, thank you. 

Some of our Audience in Ardfern - where the whole thing started.