Live Briefs @ Coventry University – WEEK 3

  It’s been a BUSY week. The pressure was ON and with less than 2 weeks until opening night…. But the students are all rising to all the challenges and pulling out all the stops to get this production up and ready! The story line is being honed, the cabaret acts have been decided and being rehearsed throughout the week with major developments for production and make up, music is being written and rehearsed faster than you can imagine and marketing have been busy promoting this show like crazy! Check out Dante Cabaret Facebook and Instagram to follow live updates… Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dantecabaret18/     Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dantecabaret/   We also held an advanced Acro session to really push the students who wanted to develop that skill. We saw some amazing results in only a few hours and with boosted confidence the students began to combine tricks to start making a routine – The Boneyard Tumblers.   We also attempted a 4 part harmony version of ‘Allegri’ with the 30 performers, and with only an hour or so for the separate parts to practice, the first time we pulled all 4 sections together sounded quite spectacular and is now indeed being used in the […]

Live Briefs @ Coventry University – WEEK 2

How goes it folks!   Week 2 down, and it’s been another fun and adventurous one filled with construction, devising, improvising, clowning, singing and music, jamming, stilting, and general play!     So the Wagon has been built and setup ready for the students to explore and become familiar with. We’ve been setting various devising tasks throughout the week for them to produce scenes that they can present on the Wagon, and there’s been some great developments and creations! We also took some time to explore clowning and audience clocking, so that the group can embrace the engagement they will have with their audience during the shows.     One of our tasks was dishing out cabaret acts that we want to see in the show, and what the students came back with was wonderful! Amazing, entertaining, hilarious and downright dark humoured acts that had us in stitches as well as creeped out! They’ve really started hitting the nail on the head and produced some quality acts that will be fantastic for halloween! And so we’ve collected some together, asked for people to continue working on new ideas, and have a good handful of acts that we’re happy to start […]

Reynard the Fox 2017 Summer Tour!

Ladies and Gents, Boys and Girls, People, Players and Peasants alike, we present to you: That’s right! You can catch the wily trickster at any of these dates throughout July and August! Feel free to drop us a comment or message for any more details on these show dates. You can also check out what other performances we have in store across the Summer here. Joshua the Fox x

End of New Landscapes, Start of Animalia, and Summer in Southside

Good afternoon! We’re extremely busy as always; prepping for tour, working with students, doing charity bike rides, but let me break this down for you: New Landscapes So, sadly, the New Landscapes module has come to an end, and it drew to a close with an almighty BANG! The Cautionary Tales for Children Considering Ill Behaviour was a resounding success, with great audiences on both show days. Thank you to all who came to see the show, the students did a magnificent job and we can’t believe our time with them is over, but we couldn’t be prouder of what they have all achieved!       There are plenty of pictures and videos to see, just head to our social media pages to check them out (we took a lot of Boomerang videos on our Instagram, check them out! @TheFabularium) Animalia Rehearsals We got back in the rehearsal space this week with a group of Cov Uni theatre students and members of the Fabularium pool to prepare for our return to the Tales of Animalia at Just So Festival this Summer! We’re currently cycling through our repertoire, introducing the students to the animal characters, sheep, peasants, Cyclops and Trees, as well as rehearsing some […]

New Landscapes and Fabularium Tour Dates

Evening all! It’s been a busy two weeks since we last posted, we’re all full steam ahead for The Cautionary Tales next week! The students have been working brilliantly to pull the shows together, to sing harmoniously, and to tumble and roll (quite literally) in the acrobatic intro. As you can see below, they’re enjoying it too! Thursday is our last day to dress run the show inside and work out any last creases in the shows. Then, next week, we have an outdoor dress run on Tuesday, and then ITS SHOW DAY!!! We will be performing The Cautionary Tales: for children considering ill behaviour on Wednesday 31st May and Thursday 1st June, 12pm-2pm. To hear more about the event, visit the Facebook Event. We’ve also updated our tour dates page, check them out to see if we’re coming to a park/town/hall/school/theatre near you! Keep your eyes on our social media feeds to see how The Cautionary Tales go. Photos and posts to come! Happy Tuesday folks! Joshua the Fox x

New Landscapes Week 3 – Characters and Clocking

Ladies and Gents, Boys and Girls, People, Players and Peasants alike, we present: So we’ve just had week 3 and everyone has spent the past week researching into circus acts and specialities that you would’ve found at the stereotypical circus/carnival scene, such as stilt-walkers, jugglers, contortionists, escapologists, etc (this list goes on and on!). This is what our wall for ideas looks like so far: In my next post I shall pop up a picture of how it looks when the students have started pasting their ideas and research all over it! And so far some great ideas have already come to light, such as Chloe’s Barberibbit, a circus Barber that also happens to be a human sized frog (this had me laugh out loud in the rehearsal space, brilliant thinking!) So, to back up a little bit, this week began with discussing the characters you would find at a circus/carnival setting, and then everyone researching the characters they would like to embody for the entirety of the performance. This means performing walkabout in their character and then remaining as that character throughout the whole of the performance, and then in the show performing as that character playing another character…do you follow? This comes from […]

New Landscapes Week 2 – Acrobatics and Archetypes

Afternoon all! It’s been a fun second week with Coventry University 2nd year theatre students. We’ve been getting stuck into the physical side of outdoor performance, visiting basic and intermediate acrobatics and acro-balance, then looking at developing archetypes and stereotypes. The acro sessions, as always, were good fun with many people wanting to experiment and push boundaries. Already plenty of good rolls, cartwheels and handstands to show for it and I’m looking forward to see what comes together for the big acro piece at the start of the show! In the following session with each group they presented their scratch pieces that was assigned to them last week. The outcome was very exciting: 8 great short pieces of theatre with so much potential for an outdoor spectacle. Now that their parameters have been extended and they know these will be their pieces to present in the show I’m curious to see how they utilise the playing space and the audience. Then after a singing refresher we moved on to a technique that has had many names and the practitioner who taught it to me called it ‘The Ministry of Silly Walks’, reminiscent of the Monty Python sketches. I used this technique to develop […]