Lights, Sound and Magic

Well, well, well. Exciting times indeed.

We’re just over five days away from opening and there’s a lovely buzz around the place. The Lighting and Sound Design are looking absolutely spectacular, thanks to the incredibly talented Ben Hughes and Kylie Morris. This final shot of adrenalin to the show. bringing all the pieces together is incredibly exciting. We can’t wait to share this show with you!

We’re 4 days away from closing fundbreak. If you haven’t pledged your support already, hop on to http://www.fundbreak.com.au and throw us some change. You’ll be rewarded generously for your support and we truly, truly appreciate it. Please help keep Independent art alive!!

Don’t forget you can book tickets through www.metroarts.com.au for the Brisbane season, or go to www.empiretheatre.com.au for the Toowoomba season.

Spread the word peeps! Tell your friends about the show. I genuinely believe this piece is really something special. Everytime I see it I find new layers in Dan’s performance, or Trav’s direction, and now that we have the technical elements, the whole  piece is singing magically. Can’t wait for you to see.

Speak to you very shortly.

Love, Dave

 

Spring Time for Furious Angels

Ok, So we are at the top of week three, 14 days till opening night, everything is all right, no really it is! Rehearsals are going very well, this play is like a never ending well of history that Dan, Andrea and myself keep falling down. ‘Wanker’. I feel we have only touched on the greater beast that this text is, but I suppose that is always the feeling you have when working with new works of this nature… I hope it is. Dan is travelling along well, but we are both physically and mentally wrecked after each day, but at least the brain is getting a good work out. The over all shape of the piece is coming together nicely, Ben our Lighting Designer has been in rehearsals and we have been chatting about the lighting plans for the show and I can’t wait to get into the theatre to see them. When you have only one actor you better hope he is lit properly and Ben’s experience helps me rest at ease. I have also being talking to Kylie Morris and she is cracking away on the sound design and it will be amazing as usual. It’s all happening and all coming together. From Hitler to Shakespeare to Gandhi to Tony Abbot this play is going to be a hell of a ride.

 

Peace Trav

It’s all happening..

How To Be Happy was a hoot last night! It was so nice to see everyone and thanks to those who came for supporting us and Furious Angels. If you missed How To Be Happy but would still like to support Furious Angels, please head to www.fundbreak.com.au where you can donate as little as a $1 or as much as you want really, we’re not fussy. There are some rewards too so check it out.

Tickets are on sale for our Brisbane season of Furious Angels and our posters and flyers are hitting streets this week. It’s such an exciting time with costumes and set underway, rehearsals starting tomorrow and Dan (our beautiful actor) in Brisbane, here to bring Furious Angels to life on stage. It feels like there is no time at all between now and opening night and my to do list seems to mock me by pretending to be the size of a phone book. No wait, it’s not pretending, there’s just that much to do. Producing is a gig I would never have assumed would take this much multi-tasking!! Speaking of which there are several things I’d still like to get done tonight so off I pop..

If you’d like to get in early and book your tickets, please call 07 3002 7100 or head to www.metroarts.com.au.

Take care,

Carley

Making us happy

1 week out from rehearsals. Eeeee!!!!

There’s a whole happening. Let me start by telling you about ‘How To Be Happy’, which you can RSVP to here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158948230787996&ref=mf

‘How to Be Happy’ was a fundraiser we did in Toowoomba a couple of months back. Because ‘Furious Angels’ is so huge artistically, Travis and I wanted to muck around with the form of the one man show before we lept into the deep end. So, I wrote and performed in a show that is basically about my personal struggle with depression, and Trav directed it. It turned out to be a success that we didn’t anticipate, and we’re replicating the whole thing in Brisbane this Sunday.

Obviously, it’s a very personal project for me and something that I’m quite proud of. It was something that Trav and I did in a very relaxed fashion, and I suppose, sometimes, that’s where the best stuff comes from. So, look: $5 at the door, Metro Arts Studio Level 2, Sunday the 3rd of October, 6pm. It’ll be amazing. And you’ll be helping us out, because, at the end of the day, it’s a fundraiser.

But – I understand if you can’t come. But don’t let that stop you from helping us out. Right now, you can go to http://www.fundbreak.com.au/beta/index.php/archive/index/63/description/0/0 and support us with as little as a dollar. Fundbreak is a great initiative and a way of supporting our artists. If you help us out, there are all kind of rewards swinging your way.

So! Hope to see you at How to Be Happy, if not, hope to see your name at Fundbreak.

Love ya lots,

Dave

7 weeks to go…

um – won’t lie – slightly peeing my pants.

We’ve got everything under control, but things are definitely starting to heat up. The idea of a ‘weekly’ production meeting is more like a lynch pin to hold the daily phone conversations we’re now having trying to get this smoking baby up. It’s exciting times, no doubt about it.

Perhaps the most exciting (and glamorous), is the recent film shoot we did for a promo for the show. Safe to say, we were a bunch of giggling idiots. Our many many thanks need to go to Craig Wilkinson who, let’s face it, is a friggin’ AV genius/God. He’s put together a piece for us that has well surpassed all our expectations and…you’ll be able to see it VERY soon.

In other news, we’ve got an absolutely stellar fundraiser coming up that should be a lot of fun. ‘How to Be Happy’ is another one-man show that’s basically me experimenting with the form. It also allows me to perform – something I haven’t done in ages. We’ve already done it up in Toowoomba where it was a rousing and gratifying success. So, my friends, if you’re in the Brisbane area on Sunday the 3rd of October, at 6pm come along to Metro Arts and see it. $5 entry means you’re supporting ‘Furious Angels’, and it’s probably the cheapest ticket to a show you’re going to get all year. Seriously, I’m really excited about performing it. It’s become a small favourite for me.

The blog’ll get busier – and you’ll hear loads more about the promo video soon. Spread the word about ‘How to Be Happy’!

Love,

Dave

P.S. Hope you’re well. Your hair looks great today.

P.P.S. ‘How to Be Happy’ is, basically, my story through depression. I don’t have the answers, but I’m trying to start a conversation. For all my other black dog sufferers, I’d love for you to come along and have a chat.

Supporters are just the best…

Furious Angels is lucky enough to have a series of people and organisations who are generously supporting the production. This blog is to acknowledge and thank them.

Metro Arts are a major stakeholder in the independent arts scene in Brisbane. Through programs like Allies and in our case, Independents, Metro helps independent theatre makers present and promote their work offering a range of intensives, advice, marketing and publicity expertise and huge savings on space and presenting the production.

Empire Theatre in Toowoomba along with the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) are providing Furious Angels with the resources and support to bring the production to the Empire’s Church theatre in November 2010 following the Metro Arts season. The vast majority of creatives on Furious Angels are graduates and advocates for USQ which is an institution with an unparalleled level of support for alumni in their creative endeavors.

Quality Lifestyle Support and Marist College Ashgrove are two incredibly important supporters of Furious Angels. Contacts that our actor Daniel Mulvihill introduced us to have led to amazing and generous monetary support of our project. Thanks to Robyn, John and Wayne for being the people who may not make art but see the value in it and are willing to support those who wish to create experiences to move and to entertain.

David, the writer of Furious Angels is a part of the 2010 inaugural intake of JUMP mentees. An initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts, JUMP is a national mentoring program for young and emerging artists that has facilitated David’s mentorship with playwright and broadcaster, Michael Gurr. Michael’s support of David has meant a great deal to the creative development of Furious Angels by challenging and supporting the writing of the work.

Our group of creative people joining the production include the talented Daniel Mulvihill as our actor, Kylie Morris as Composer/Sound Designer, Ben Hughes Lighting Designer, Barb Kerr Costume Builder, Andrea Corish Stage Manager and Ben Stewart on Set Construction. We are very lucky to have such talented individuals contributing their time and skills to make Furious Angels the quality production we all envision it to be.

There will be more updates, tweets, pictures, blogs and fundraisers coming up as we near the opening of the show on November 3 so stay tuned.

Carley Commens, CoProducer/Designer

…something is coming…

Depite this seemingly empty blog, believe me, stuff’s been happening. But only in an annoying, ‘we can’t publicly share details yet’ kind of way. But watch out because SOON we’ll be starting the publicity machine up for real. Woot!

I CAN tell you that the Creative Development is now just over a fortnight away. This script NEEDS creative development like humans need air. Because of the way we’re working on this, it’s become a really collaborative process. While I’m still a ‘writer’ the script has now been influenced by our collective dreams of the set, the music, and the direction. So getting together as a team to work on it will be fruitful.

A ten day development means a chance for myself, Trav, (director) and Dan (actor) to band together and nut this thing out: solving story issues and the plethora of staging challenges that come with a one-man (but five character) show.

We’ll have plenty of help. I’m thrilled to say that I’ve been accepted into the JUMP prgoram: a national mentoring program for young artists facilitated by Youth Arts Queensland and supported by the Australia Council. This means our development (and my skills) will be helped along by esteemed playwright and broadcaster Michael Gurr, who I’m REALLY very excited to be working with. We’ll be supervised by an adult. Good idea.

As you may have heard also, there’s a fund-raiser coming up in Toowoomba in about a fortnight’s time. We’ll have more details, videos, and lovely things about that in the coming week. If you haven’t already, go to the Facebook event ‘How To Be Happy’ and if you can make it, attend. We’d love for you to be there. Invite all your friends. Should be great.

But, enough about us, how are you?

Bridging the gap

There’s a certain something that happens once your first draft has been read. It leaves your hands, purified and somehow impossibly perfect. There’s some part of your egoic, twisted artistic mind that thinks: ‘There. Done. Surely there’s not much else to be done…is there?’

And then, a few weeks later, it comes back to you, having been passed around amoungst friends, sages, intellectuals, actors, directors and dramaturgs, like a filthy whore. You’re a father that has let his little girl out for her adolescent romp and she has come back a full-breasted, slightly scarred, in need of an STD-check, woman.

And you have no option, NONE, because you are her father and you LOVE her, but to take her back in, give her a decent hot shower, clean clothes, and some resemblance of dignity so that when she finally wears the white gown on the big day no one snorts with laughter at the tramp in the dress.

It’s part of the process. You accept it. And in many ways, I’m looking forward to the transformation: the advice that I’ve been given is wonderful so there’s nothing stopping me from making this into a really great piece of work. Except the work.

Different to the first initial struggles and bursts of creativity that get you through the first draft, the re-writes are a completely different feel. It’s hard yakka. It’s a slog. It like winding up a hose that’s twisted and bent in freezing cold weather: the kinks, deceptively simple, can take ages to iron out.

But, never fear, because I can tell what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: ‘Boy, I wish there was some way I could help the production. But what can I do?’

Ahhh, my friend, those answers very soon, very very soon. You bet your bum you can help out. And you can have a ball while you do it. Standby for those details very soon.

In the meantime, I’ve got to brush my sullied daughter’s hair and lecture her on the virtues of safe sex, and counsel her on how to be complete, whole, cohesive, funny, moving and overall likeable human being.

The First Reading

It’s amazing what words can do when they are lifted off the page and presented for you by an actor. They shift and become something else, a story that your imagination can’t help but put together in your mind within a place and a space, gauge it within a time and a bricolage of your own experiences and memories and before you know it, the world of the work begins, breathing life into the 12 point calibri text. The narrative becomes a play and your mind does exactly that. Play. I can’t wait to put Furious Angels on stage. I’m Carley, one third of the producing party putting Furious Angels together for the Metro Arts Independents 2010. This is my first blog for the production and I hope to keep in touch regularly.

We had our first reading with a young actor, Matthew Walsh, stepping in for Daniel Mulvihill (who will perform in the Metro Arts season in November). It was a treat to have Matthew on board and his enthusiasm and participation is something that we were fortunate enough to have at this stage of producing the work. I had read the play myself the night before and had forged my questions and kudos but after hearing Matthew bring to life Georgia and Dizzy and Will (my absolute favourite character) I had a whole new list of queries for Dave and an even longer list of congratulations. The work is great and it is only going to get better, I understand that draft two is up and away and I am looking forward to the next reading.

The reading itself was a small affair and took about an hour. Sitting around my small 70′s dining table with fans blaring and iced tea by the gallon, were Travis, David, Matthew, myself and production genius Stephen.  Afterwards we had a debrief and feedback session. It had been a while since I had done this sort of thing – pulled apart a text and examined it, look at how I felt because of it and tried to imagine it technically in production. It was like exhaling, easy and natural. It was incredibly cathartic and exciting to talk with these smart men about their thoughts in relation to this work. I had a small moment where I made a mental note to text my undergraduate mentor/lecturer/friend Janet and thank her for teaching me to critically think so I could participate and challenge this work and these creatives, to hold my own and hopefully contribute to building a great new theatre experience for all of you, our readers. And come November, our audience.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Tomorrow is important for the project because it represents the first creative deadline. By noon tomorrow I’ll have sent a second draft of the play to Carley, co-producer and awesome dramaturg. She’s going to photocopy it, and then, on Sunday, the production company will sit down and read it together for the very first time.

These casual readings have become a ritual for any work that I do these days and progress from the wonderfully pleasant to the underpant-dirtying anxious.

In one way, I look forward to them. And I must say, I’m looking forward to this one. For no other reason than they’re usually casual affairs, there’s food, a small group of dedicated individuals, and a few laughs. Also, it’s just wonderful, BLISS, to be able to sit around and not have the play exist purely in my head. It’s a weird birthing process in which it, with great relief, becomes external to me. Other people now see it, sense it, know it, and so have their own interpretations, and I can finally discuss it with them. It is a wonderful relief.

I have to say, this is the most professional one I’ve done in quite a while, seeing as the show’s future is already decided and everybody at the meeting will be having an important role in the production.True, the outline and story has already been set out in detail, but there’s the unmistakable pressure that one feels….at this stage, the show is in my hands. I can’t wait to get rid of it so other people can screw up.

That sounds cynical, and I try to refrain from my artist insecurities while writing the blog, but the truth of the matter is that (and I think you’ll find this as other people blog from the company too) this process of theatre-making is so stupidly horrendously one of constant self-reflection and critique. No doubt about it, an artist is her/his own enemy.

Is the play good enough? Deep down, as a draft, some part of me goes…’yes, it’ll do.’ But the drive to do better and more over-rides this. Which is why I’m excited, and not underpants-dirtying anxious about Sunday, because I’m part of a very intelligent group of people that also want to make this an outstanding show.

If you’re very good, you may even get a blog from someone else in the production team after Sunday – YAY!!!

Love, Dave

P.S. Hi to all the new facebook fans! Almost to 100. If we get to 100 by Sunday you can have my….everlasting LOVE! Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter too @f_angels_metro