The Fabularium

Time flies when you’re having fun!

Long time no speak! The last time we spoke like this our Badger and Fox were out in the beautiful Kew Garden’s over Christmas. Apologies that our first blog of the year is…6 months into it, but hey, good things come to those who wait, and we’ve got LOTS of things to tell you. Might want to grab a cuppa…and a biscuit. Or two. Where to start? #We spent a frivolous weekend in Newbury at the 101 Creation Space for the annual gathering of Outside Artists; a weekend of inspiration, creation and fun, a chance to recharge and re-connect, hosted by NASA UK – National Association of Street Artists. This was a chance to meet new friends, new collaborators, see new ideas and have a BIG feast too. We attended some inspiring workshops including Non-Verbal Communication, Writing an Artistic Manifesto, Lighting Design and Inclusion. Gareth has now been voted in to join the steering group for NASA UK. *insert party poppers and fireworks* which will allow him to implement change to large collection of outdoor artists e.g: connectivity and skill sharing. It also opens The Fabularium’s opportunities to connect with new people and events. He’s very excited to bring his […]

Dec 23

by Gareth Price-Baghurst in News 0 comments tags: ACE, Appetite Stoke, Arts Council England, Badger and Fox, Birmingham Hippodrome, Cabaret, Christmas At Kew, Christmas Lights, Christmas Lights Switch On, Circus Sideshows, City of Culture, Collaboration, Coventry, Coventry 2021, Coventry City of Culture, Coventry City of Culture 2021, Coventry University, Dante Cabaret, Deda Derby, Fabularium, Festival Hall, Firm Footings & Faulty Bearings, Gloucester Culture Trust, Grimbert the Badger, Just So Festival, Kew Gardens, Lincolnshire, Live & Local, Live Music, London, Market Rasen, Mongolia, New Music, New Show, Noctium, October Plenty, Offsite, Outdoor Arts, outdoor theatre, Recording, Recording Studio, Reynard the Fox, Siberia, Siberian Moon, Stage Show, Summer in Southside, Tales and Trails, Tenbury Wells, Thank you, The Badger and the Fox, The Big Feast, The Fabularium, The Hare and the Moon, The Town Band of Bremen, The Valley Evesham, theatre, theatre and professional practice, There Be Monsters!, Tin Type Trailer, touring, Tundra Tales, Walkabout, Wild Rumpus

Past, Present and Future – Final Blog of 2018

Hey everyone, welcome to the final Fabularium blog of 2018! As it’s the last blog of the year, I’m going to update you on what we’ve been up to recently, what we’ve achieved over this past year, and what our plans are for next year. Sound cool? Awesome! Then let’s get to it! What we’ve been up to recently This December has been pretty busy for us, we’ve been working on new things in the run up to Christmas, as well as a fun venture northwards with Reynard the Fox… Last Reynard performance of the year We had our final performance of Reynard the Fox this year up in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. We performed the indoor version of the show in the Festival Hall to a lovely, warm welcoming audience, and we were joined by the amazing Anna! Many thanks to Market Rasen Town Council and Live & Local for bringing us back up to Lincolnshire, and to our great audience! We had such a lovely evening performing, and it was a great way to end this year’s tour of Reynard the Fox. Though Reynard himself isn’t quite finished this year, because… Kew Gardens …he’s now in Kew […]

Goodnight, Dante Cabaret!

Well, that was a hell-of-a-production! (Apologies, there will be a few hellish puns, gotta get them out of the system.) 5 intense weeks of hard work and effort, song and dance, heavy metal, blood, gore, rude jokes, censorship, paint, saw dust, fabric, gaffer tape, van loading and unloading, lates nights and, of course, repeatedly shouting the band’s name out loud for comedic effect. Not to mention rehearsal, production and performance! It’s been a whirlwind and truly rushed past in the blink of an eye, but what a great time we’ve all had! Dante Cabaret had sellout run of 3 nights in The Box at Fargo Village, and has been one of our most ambitious shows to date. And we’ve absolutely loved it, and had an incredible team of 45 students that have been a pleasure to work with. Their effort, their dedication, their creations are commendable and amazing, so much talent, humour, discipline and strength. What a great bunch! We’ve thoroughly enjoyed this teaching experience, and hopefully the students have taken a lot away from it! It’s had some great lessons for us too, teaching us more about big indoor shows and how we manage ourselves in the step up in […]

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 […]

Sep 30

by Gareth Price-Baghurst in Uncategorized 0 comments tags: Autumn, Coventry University, Dementia, Evaluation, New Projects, Questionnaire, Reynard the Fox, students, Summer, teaching, The Fabularium, There Be Monsters!

We’ve got a question to ask. Actually, a few!

[smartslider3 slider=5] And just like that, Summer 2018 has come to an end. We would like to say (again!) a MASSIVE thank you to all our audiences that have managed to catch us on tour this year, whether that be Reynard the Fox, The Town Band on Bremen or the brand spanking new There Be Monsters! But before you all dive head first into your pumpkins and Halloween costumes…we would like to ask one more thing. Don’t worry, it’s not scary, we promise! Before we start our preparations for our 2019 tour and exciting projects for the winter (oooh! more about that soon) it would be absolutely wonderful if you could answer a few questions about the themes of There Be Monsters! This will help us evaluate the show but also extend our research by gathering audience perspectives. Please follow the link below to start the questionnaire. It should only take you 5mins! https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CTVFKJ6 Any information you can share with us is greatly appreciated thank you! Summer may be gone, but Autumn and Winter are bringing us new exciting projects to get stuck into. Our Autumn project starts on Monday. We will give you a clue, […]

There Be Monsters on the horizon!

The Big Blog Post Hello World! It’s been a little while… Apologies for the continued radio silence, we’ve been exceptionally busy, but if you’ve been tuning into our social media feeds then you’ll know just how crazy and exciting things have been recently! So, here is one of our infamous BIG UPDATES to give you an insight into what The Fabularium has been up to over the Summer. There Be Monsters! The biggest piece of news came a few months ago when we were fortunate enough to recieve Arts Council funding for our new Don Quixote-based promenade/walkabout performance There Be Monsters! We also recieved support from the wonderful people at the Birmingham Hippodrome, Deda Derby’s Offsite Programme, and Appetite Stoke. We spent June and July working with Jim and Matilda, two freelance actor-musicians we auditioned, to devise a new production that would promenade around the streets of Birmingham at Summer In Southside. This show was a step in a new direction for us, as we wanted to create a show away from the Animal Headpieces and exploring a roaming show, but still maintaining our key features of storytelling, live orignal music and mask work. On this show we also worked with Director […]

Jul 22

by Gareth Price-Baghurst in News 0 comments tags: company manager, Coventry University, future, Jessica Rowe, Just So Festival, learning and participation, management, Summer in Southside, The Fabularium, theatre and professional practice, touring, two become three

The best things in life are THREE!

Allow me to virtually introduce myself… I’m Jessica (Jes) the new co-company manager of The Fabularium *cue pyrotechnics and trumpet fanfare* I’ll be the one on the team (minus Lou, of course) without the unruly facial hair, but hey, I’ll try my best. – I’m absolutely thrilled to join Gareth, Josh and the team on this exciting journey into creating and help manage all things Fabularium. I have worked with the company since 2014, straight after graduating from Coventry University. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to tour with the company on their productions of ‘The Town Band of Bremen’, ‘Reynard the Fox’, ‘Carnival of Animals’ ‘Animalia’ at Just So Festival and currently our new show, ‘There Be Monsters!’ More about that soon…stay tuned! – In addition to all those wonderful adventures, I am also a freelance actress/facilitator and choreographer. I have been work-shopping in community settings and schools for the past year and am looking forward to seeing what The Fabularium can explore in the area of learning and participation. I have a passion for comedy, devising, dance, singing, a good roast dinner and not forgetting, my little doggie Maisie. – It’s been a […]

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 […]