Father Red's box of tricks!

Well hello there gorgeous Redettes.

Hoping you all had a very merry christmas indeed! Blimey, I can't believe it's all over and the new year is almost upon us. What a busy year I have planned! The ever so charming (if akwardly obese) grey haired chappy was incredibly generous to me this christmas and has laden my little red haired arms with lots of street theatre goodies to keep me busy in the year ahead. How exciting!

I was thrilled to find a spinning plate in my christmas stocking, a skill which took me the majority of boxing day to master and yet a days worth of not practicing to lose! Hey ho, I'm sure I'll remember how I did it at some point. Along with this I have been trying my hand at my wonderful glow in the dark poi and was entertaining the masses with them on christmas evening on our front lawn. Alright, mainly just my family and a nosy boy from across the road. They all sat eagerly awaiting me to clonk myself around the noggin with them as the poi were brought to a grinding halt. I seem to be VERY good at this 'trick', performing it repeatedly as I'm sure my siblings will confirm. Suffice to say I enter the new year with a few less braincells than I had before the festive season...ouch!

I was over the moon to receive some lovely latex adornments for my face including 4 sets of false teeth and half of an... (ahem) larger ladies face which puts me in mind of a certain mask-based comedy programme. As of yet I cant talk with these glorious bits and pieces on but am going to work around using them in a street arts performance in the future, so watch this space!

My favourite of all the false teeth!

I was also incredibly lucky to receive a new teeny-tiny-techno-phobe-friendly camcorder too which I plan to use for recording Well Red comedy sketches and popping online in the future for people to get a flavour for the work I can create. This is a project I am really looking forward to.

The odd bit of free time (around working) I have been spending catching up on my juggling and other circus skills- skills in which I am determined to master in the coming months so by next christmas I have a fantastic one woman show ;) There is however, so much to learn and do and I feel like I still have to play 'catch up' with my glorious second year peers who already banked the skills I am learning when they were in their first year. However, onward and upward, must prevail and all that...those clubs won't juggle themselves.....oh, now theres an idea!

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone! May it be filled with success and love and warm fuzzy feelings of greatness.

x x x

Losing my street arts virginity...ohh er missus!

The corporate puppeteer

Well, it's been a crazy week for the street arts gang and I. It's the last week of uni before the festive season and we have been cracking out street performances like ITV cracks out manufactured pop acts! 

Inspector and driver of the very funny 'Tour Bus'

On Monday we managed to distract a few christmas shoppers from the hustle and bustle of lunch hour in a local shopping centre with two twenty minute performances. My group's work was based on a political intervention regarding capitalist society and the great corporate machine whilst the other group based their piece on authority and power...(I know, bit heavy for yuletide shows huh?). As my first taste of perfoming on the street, I must say that I was less than relaxed when we were making our way to the site. I was worried that I would be the somewhat weaker member of the group as everyone else has had previous street performing experience whereas I have only ever done black box style performances. That said, I absolutely loved it! It feels far more rewarding to earn your audiences attention and far more like they are taking notice of what you have to say than if they were nodding off in a theatre seat, nose well immersed in their expensive glass of Pinot Grigio. Although it was only my first stab and I obviously have alot to learn, the fact that we gathered and subsequently maintained an audience reception was simply wonderful especially at this time of year and not within the safety of an advertised street arts festival.

Authority figure gets a good dusting off from Boris!

Doll face happily leaves ransom notes with 'power' quotes around the centre for passers by.

The university campus performances that took place today were equally as fun and I feel we managed to break the boundaries a bit more than Monday. The girls and I had great fun dressing as grotesque yet vein, 'popular girl' types whilst we wore controversial signs and created grotesque poses and sounds in our walkabout / installation piece. Sadly I couldn't take a photo of this but I can confirm that my monobrow was divine and that peanut butter makes for an excellent vomit looky-likey!! Yum.  

The boys on the other hand gave a sterling comic walkabout with their tour bus which I thoroughly enjoyed and was an excellent example of the high quality work we are trying to create on the course. As we pottered about in their little cardboard bus and waved at lecturers and students enjoying their Wednesday morning powerpoint presentations, I had an overwhelming sense of feeling very lucky. Today marked the end of my first semester on the course and I couldn't be more thrilled with the work we are encouraged to produce, the way we are taught to make our practice a success and the opportunity to be educated about our busioness too.

Last week a friend asked me what course I was doing and he looked confused as he said 'So, what are you planning to do with that afterwards then? Because you wouldn't want to work on the street, would you..'.
At the time I just smiled and muttered something under my breath about probably working in the theatre again. Regrettably, and I am not sure why, but I felt almost embarrased to say that was exactly what I was intending on doing. I think people often associate street arts with grime, poverty and scratch performance that has little or no quality.
Well, this week has just confirmed to me that this is certainly not the case and if he asked me again I would have no problem in telling him otherwise! Yes, that is exactly the plan actually. Nothing could be closer to the plan in fact. And I firmly believe that street performing is the way forward and it just might be all thats left when the arts funding fecal matter really hits the fan, a lesson this week that (on a personal level) has rung only too true. So yes, yes I am going to perform on the street so you can put that in your buskers hat and smoke it! Maybe I'll tell him when I see him next...and then follow it with a cheery Merry Christmas.

Right, *gets off high horse* I'm off to write some comedy for a set at The Railway tommorrow night. Rest assured, it will be much more cheery than this although I cant promise it will be funny ;)

Adieu for now my lovelies x x x