Friday 31 July 2009

And Tigers Mingle 3


Just back from a planning meeting with Sajida and Tracy at Wightwick Manor, where we have been tying up some loose ends before we start working down there on Monday.

The weather has introduced some problems.

The idea is that the artists will be creating new work in response to the house, and that they will be visible to the public whilst the work is being created. But there is a serious issue of space. The rooms in the house are of a homely size and the house is tightly timetabled when it is open with guided tours, so we won't be able to work in there. There is the Malthouse, which is a good place to work, but it has some restrictions on it because of prior bookings and is a little out of the way.

The idea we came up with in the early part of this year was to have a small marquee in the garden. What could be lovelier than working in the beautiful gardens of the house in the balmy summer days of August? We would be rehearsing on the lawns, we would have passers by stopping and chatting and contributing their feelings about the house and the work, perfect.

Well it sounded perfect in April, it's looking less perfect when you consider it has rained on 13 of the last 15 days here - and the forecast is for more of the same.

A tent is looking less appealing...

Monday 27 July 2009

And Tigers Mingle 2


We are starting to distribute the publicity for the show now. It's a staged process, because one of the aims of the project is to attract a diverse cross section of people to the performances, drawing in new black and asian audiences to the shows.

The photo shoot was interesting, as it was the first time that Sonia and Richard had met. Luckily the photographer Anand Chhabra, had worked with them both in the past and was a good link.

We had the same difficulty we always have doing these things - you have to do the photo shoot in advance for publicity purposes, but as you haven't started the work you don't really know what it is you're trying to depict.

Full information about times and such can be found on the Black Country Touring home page in the article about "And Tigers Mingle"

Thursday 23 July 2009

And Tigers Mingle

Black Country Touring was invited by the National Trust to produce a project as part of "This is Britain" their project for the creation of new art in NT spaces.

We were invited to work in Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton, which is a beautiful 19th century Arts and Crafts house. It's not massive, like a lot of NT houses, but a bit smaller and the rooms more homely (that said, it's still a lot grander than my Smethwick terrace).

We in turn approached Sonia Sabri and Richard Grant aka Dreadlock Alien, a Kathak dancer and a performance poet, to work with us on using their arts and different cultural backgrounds to interpret the site in a new way.

The performance we are going to make is called "and tigers mingle" - the title is taken from some lines of poetry written on the walls of the great parlour.


We're going to be working through a series of rooms on the ground floor and trying to find a way of bringing together the two different artforms, the house (as it is, its history and what people say about it now) into some kind of short performance.

We've got two weeks to create a thirty minute "performance" tour. At this stage the challenge seems exciting and stimulating - I think when we are 8 days into the project it might seem a bit more intimidating.