Lucy Nicholls

I directed the students of Birmingham Theatre School’s Open Access course in Ian Wooldridge’s adaptation of George Orwell’s classic, Animal Farm. Which was, with the student’s commitment, an undeniable success!

The final production, performed at Matthew Bolton College, was of a very high standard and the effort and focus the students applied was outstanding. A fully deserved ‘well done’ to all!

This was a fantastic experience, to be able to direct one of my favourite stories, by one of my favourite authors was truly excellent. I’ve been hoping to find a group appropriate to perform this allegoric fable for a long time, and the Open Access students were just right for taking on the complexities of it’s political significance and performing it with irony and insight. It’s a story that is still relevant today and will forever continue to be so.

Using the Aberfan disaster of 1966 as a stimulus I worked with Birmingham Theatre School’s Open Access students to facilitate and direct a short devised piece. The students focused on the aspect of personal tragedy and the disaster’s effect on the community. The final production drew from research, poetry, photographs and testaments about a terrible event that affected so many lives within the welsh mining town of Aberfan.

The students did an excellent job of dealing with the subject matter maturely and with tact.

I was luckly enough  to perform in a short, conceptual, piece devised by James Yarker in response to a commission by Unlimited Theatre for their Mixtape project. Working with Stan’s Cafe in on any project in a breath of fresh air and always a learning curve.  Come Together was performed as part of Pilot Night, a platform for new theatre work.

Pilot Night is great opportunity for companies and groups to perform and ‘road-test’ new theatre pieces, held in Birmingham, it always attracts a good turn-out and a lively audience.  I would highly recommend checking it out.

Last week saw the end of the Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company’s production Of All The People In All The World, I’m quite sad, but all good things must come to an end… (If you missed it then the piece is continuing to tour internationally so there is still an chance to catch it again.)

It was such a great production to work on and a fantastic opportunity for me to work with artists much more experienced than myself. As a performer in the production the research aspect was excellent, I loved being able to investigate topics of interest and comment on them through the medium of the piece. I have never before been in, or probably ever seen, something so conceptual and ‘high-brow’ in its nature be so accessible to everyone - children, teenagers, adults, those with experience of the arts and those without. For me, this has made Of All The People In All The World very close to the ‘holy grail’ of performance art! I think it definitely ticks all the necessary boxes in terms of aesthetic presentation, accessibility and being an emotionally engaging production.

Anyway, I’ve now started my new tutor group at Birmingham Theatre School, they are a loveley bunch and we’ll soon be working toward a devised production before Christmas.

Another great night by project X! Digital dystopia was the theme of this Project X event, the first one I’ve been involved with but one of the many successes created by PXP. I collaborated with four other artists and the fantastic costume maker Deborah Mingham to create and perform a devised instillation.

Here’s what the website says:

Returning to a new incarnation of our “Omnimedia Experience” format, we cordially invited the Citizens of the Future to join us on a journey through a Digital Dystopia.

Concerned that the UK has no less than 20% of the worlds CCTV cameras?  Worried for the well being of nation addicted to Television?  We took our largest audience yet on an experiential journey through some of the darker aspects of modern life so find out if it does all turn out in the end.

Continuing our practice of birthing new spaces, we occupied BUSK - a wonderful new venue in Birmingham City Centre dressing the main room with our usual three stages and some superb modular set design.

A smaller room offered a chilled selection of beats, bleeps and glitches and our Object X crew produced an amazing array of weird and wonderful pieces to enjoy - interactive toys for the curious!

A very positive review indeed! The show will be running for two more weeks yet and is well worth a visit.

I’ve been very excited today, with a fantastic review of All The People In All The World in the Guardian and some beautiful photographs by their photographer. There is a review in The Times to come, as well as several that have been out already, including one in the Birmingham Post last week. Its been a very exciting few weeks and now the show is open to the audience the installation has really come alive. Investigating new thematic groupings and building narratives with statistics as part of the performance and continual development of the show (you’ll have to see it for that to make sense, I think) makes me look forward to performing every day.

Also, Project X was a brilliant success, I really enjoyed performing and the small area I was involved in, but all credit goes to those who organised and managed the rehearsal, set-up and running of the production - well done (you know who you are)! There is a nice piece on Channel 4’s website and the Project X Presents website has some great photos of everyone’s fantastic effort.

This is Radio Rice which

“lets you listen in live to the soundtrack of the Stan’s Cafe show Of All The People In All The World. During the show the performers use a microphone connected to the loudspeakers in the venue (known as the Tannoy) to tell the audience about developments in the show.”

Check out TheRiceShow for more information and photographs of the production.

I’ve had some very exciting news! As of Monday I will be working for Stan’s Cafe on their Birmingham production Of All The People In All The World! I am extremely happy, this is a wonderful opportunity to work with an established company with a great reputation! I will be posting more details in due course!

I’ve resently got involved in Project X Presents, a brillant group of creative people in Birmingham who describe PxP as a …

“UK based collective of creatives who produce one off multi-media interactive performance experiences. Using 3 stages allows a seamless flow of multi-genre entertainment including musicians, comedians, VJs, DJs, performers and installations. As one reviewer put it, Project X Presents events are “quite simply - like nothing else out there”.”

I’m very excited about it, the theme for this performance is Digital Dystopia, its been very imaginatively approached and i think it’s going to be an excellent piece. Myself and some other artists will be performing with some intergrated, instillation-style physical theatre and hopefully amazing costumes courtesy of Deborah Mingham. They’ll be so much happening, including music, visuals, comedy and instillation, it’s also a really great night-out within club enviroment. The next performance will take place on Saturday 13th September, with more details to follow soon, I’ll keep you informed…

Finished with the War was screened at the Patrick Centre last month and I’m pleased to announce that everything went to plan and the film received a lot of positive feedback. I’ll be uploading a small section of the film for you to have a look at soon, once I’ve decided which bit to choose! The project is still ongoing, I’m continuing to look for screening opportunities and myself and my collaborators also decided to create a shorter, condensed, 5 minute version from the 12 minute piece that’s already finished.

I feel really lucky to of had the opportunity to create a film and to of worked with such talented and interesting people, the whole experience has been a massive learning curve. Thank you Arts Council!

I wanted share the following section of text, it was really the starting point for the theme and research of Finished with the War, specifically that the project was named after its title. I have read this letter so many times and its sentiment still really resonates with me, I have also been particularly interested in how it could be interpreted as relevant to other wars, namely that of the current Iraq war. For more information on Sassoon and his relationship to Wilfred Owen I highly recommend Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy of novels, three books that investigate WW1and its associated shell-shock through an engaging and insightful narrative. The passage below is a transcript of the letter Sassoon wrote which was printed in the London Times after being read out in Parliament, complete with original spelling mistakes!

Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration

Lt. Siegfried Sassoon

3rd Batt: Royal Welsh Fusiliers

July, 1917.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of agression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not have enough imagination to realise.

We have now finished what i can only describe as a ‘gruelling’ filming schedule early Saturday morning and we are now entering the editing and post-production phase of the project. I think this might be the most intense and all-consuming project I have ever been involved in! Rehearsing during the day and filming all night, the dancers were very accommodating and put up with long days (and nights) and very little sleep.

These are two still taken from the film to give you an idea of what’s to come….

Here are the details of Finished with the War’s first screening: Thursday 10th July at the Patrick Centre, which is within the Birmingham Hippodrome. There’s going to be other performances there too from choreographers across the West Midlands, it’s sure to be a very entertaining night!

Today I have had some excellent news, Finished with the War is now officially Arts Council funded! Having made an application to the Arts Council six weeks ago and today I got the result I’ve had my fingers crossed for. I can now pay myself, Marc Reck who is composing the music, Liam d’Authreau who is filming and editing the piece and the three dancers who all thoroughly deserve it! Also the lighting, camera equipment and costume will now be of a much higher standard. Yay!

I have now completed my contract for this academic year with Birmingham Theatre School lecturing the Movement for Actors and Physical Theatre module.
I was really pleased with the students’ end of year show The Seven Ages of Man; the piece was devised by the group themselves in response to stimuli and task based instructions. The work initially had the original stimulus of ‘metamorphosis’, as a group we discussed what this meant and how this could be physically interpreted. From the idea of people ‘metaphosing’ we came to the famous speech from Shakespeare’s As You Like It ‘The Seven Ages of Man’.

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

— Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

The group produced an imaginative interpretation of the text and created something quite abstract and stylised. Devising work is always nerve-raking, and quite often confusing, for actors whose experience is rooted in traditional, conventional theatrical practice. But the group performed to high standard and I was very proud of the physically and emotionally expressive performance quality they applied to the final performance. The whole process was really organic and it was wonderful to see how imaginative a group of adults with little, or no, devising experience can be within the right environment.

I’ve just completed a series of workshops run by Tracey Street using Anthony Howell’s devising technique. These workshops were delivered very skillfully by Tracey and have made accessing this imaginative technique possible. It has been so enjoyable to learn something completely different and have someone teaching me for a change too! It has reminded me of the value of continuous professional development and how essential it is to keep engaged in creative play, however old you are! The imagination is such a wonderful thing, it’s very liberating to let it take-over every once in a while and enjoy its creations.

“Taking the theory of primary and secondary colours as his model, Anthony Howell posits three primaries of action and shows how these may be mixed to obtain a secondary range of actions.”

This a quote from a description of Anthony Howell’s book The Analysis of Performance: A Guide to its Theory and Practice. It references the devising technique he has created, a technique using certain ‘rules’ made out of only three main concepts, the three ‘primaries’ as he calls them. The content of his devising process is a bit too complicated to go into here, but I’ll just say that I’ll be using it shortly, no doubt, and that he’s certainly a name I’ll be looking out for in the future.

A big “thank you” to Tracey for her time and generosity in delivering such a comprehensive series of professional workshops!

The flyer for New Vibes came out just last week - very nice indeed. Finished with the War is steadily moving forward and having now recruited three really excellent dancers I’m feeling quite excited about starting my research and development period at the end of the month. I’ve got so much to sort out and organise, it’s a bit overwhelming, but I always enjoy a challenge!

The International Dance Festival Birmingham has been really excellent and will hopefully really put Birmingham on the map in terms of dance. I attended a very informative workshop ran by Lucy Cash at DanceXchange through South East Dance, it covered various techniques and showed a lot of examples of dance on film, which is always useful as these can often be quite obscure and difficult to track-down. The workshop was a good prompt into getting me thinking about Finished with the War, my dance on film project, and familiarising myself with the practice of using a camera again.

B1 Labyrinths is no more; we had our final performance yesterday, so much for keeping track of the progress!
I really enjoyed the whole experience, although I definitely had the most surreal theatre related experiences of my life, it seems rehearsing and performing the middle of Birmingham town centre involves many encounters with its (very) weird and wonderful residents!
The whole process has thrown up so many questions for me about the nature of site-specific performance and the relationship between not only the audience and the performer but also the general public and the performer. I imagine for the average Saturday-shopper seeing a person in gorilla costume wondering around town or someone chucking cold water over themselves must appear very bizarre indeed.
I feel really chuffed to have taken part and I’ve met some great, really interesting and creative people, thank you Needless Allies!