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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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
Good morning all! Firstly, a huge apology on the delay of our blog posts, it’s been a manic time for us with a mixture of different things in the pipeline that are coming to fruition, so I’ve been swept up in the whirlwind of it all and thus focusing on the paper trail that the whirlwind has scattered everywhere. But now, WE’RE BACK! So here is the BIG update! Arts Council Funding Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, People, Players and Peasants alike: WE GOT OUR ARTS COUNCIL FUNDING!!! We applied for funding to proceed with Phase 2 of Reynard the Fox; developing the show into an indoor version that is fit for rural touring venues. Alongside running New Landscapes in March, we returned to the rehearsal space ourselves to refresh Reynard and extend the length of the performance, playing with the script and characters and set. This also saw the return of our outside eye, the wonderful Niki McCretton from Stuff and Nonsense Theatre, who spent a few days with us to help explore the intentions of our characters and tighten all the nuts and bolts. Niki McCretton and our friend Maria joining us for our dress rehearsal The end result was a […]
Finally the Winter weather is starting to drift off and the Sunshine is upon us! This week saw us introducing Gareth into the mix, who has been away on other projects. Now, he’ll be leading Group A and I’ll be leading Group B, though we’ll be together during crossover sections and then next term we’ll be cracking on with everyone together…53 people in one room, it’s going to be fun! So we began the week by designating characters for people to begin creating and continue researching. We’ve a good balance of circus performers now: bearded ladies, strong-men, contortionists, electrodes, and so on! I’m excited to see what material they generate with these characters and what costumes they pull together. Following this, we had an hour with all students together in the space where we sang through our La La song and then introduced the oldest English song to ever be scribed: Sumer Is Icumen In. We taught the song and rehearsed the melody and will return to it later. It’s always great playing with songs when there’s a chorus of 53! Then on Tuesday and Thursday’s sessions we returned to Acrobatics! The intention this time was not only to introduce […]
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 […]
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