Animal Characterisation – The Fabularium

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 […]

The BIG Update

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 […]

Mar 11

by Gareth Price-Baghurst in News 0 comments tags: Acrobatics, Animal Characterisation, Coventry, Coventry University, Ministry of Silly Walks, New Landscapes, outdoor theatre, Second Year, Singing, The Fabularium, theatre, Theatre Students

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 […]