Sunday, November 16, 2008

eek, it's been such a long time
well i've done lots in the last year, check out my installation project "Jean's Houses" on my website - http://www.cherrytruluck.co.uk/jean/jeanshouses.html and also the "Calling Home" project on the activelayers website - http://www.activelayers.net - We formed activelayers after "The Old Hotel" so that James, Suzon, Liz and I could keep collaborating on our internet performances.

I have some new projects in the offing, will try to blog more often in future!

cx

Friday, September 07, 2007

its a whole new world...

hooooooray! the old hotel is done and dusted. Part 3 is officially the final chapter.

I have to start a new diary now as I hadn't planned anything beyond 5th September, except my little trip to Seville next weekend (whoopee!).

Am so relieved and pleased. We had a little technical hitch, which meant the on-site audience didnt see as much of the webcam as i would have liked, but apart from that it was great. Carolyn did a wonderful job as Fee on site - "concentrated and totally believable" was one of the many positive comments on her performance. Suzon, James and Liz ran the on-line performance very smoothly - with top marks to Liz for some especially beautiful drawing. Mark - who helped me direct the on-site bit was an absolute dream from start to finish, keeping me calm and helping carolyn to really push her performance to a level i couldn't have managed on my own.

On-line, we broke the record for Upstage, with 35 audience members. They were logging in from dubai, USA, spain, australia, new zealand, england, poland, the netherlands and belgium!

On-site we had a lovely time, we were at capacity with 20 people and the wine was flowing, thanks to our accomplished compere Gareth.

thanks to all who took part, audience, performers, and every other kind of support. I pulled in so many favours for this show - I hope you all know how grateful I am - Suzon, James, Liz, Carolyn, Gareth, Lizzie, Jack, Witek, Steve, Philly, David and Jane, Mark W, Mark S, my Dad, Helen, Vicky, Karla, Doug, Vedran, Beni and Selwyn.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

ugh

no site, no actor, no time, rapidly running out of ideas and optimism.

ho hum

i might just leave the country

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

another long gap in my blogging, i'm getting very lax. well, i suppose the research paper was a good excuse - congratulations VLP bods on getting those done!

just the final show in september to go!

its the final push now and it looks like it might be uphill all the way. I still don't have confirmation on my site (hopefully part of an art/performance festival in an old timber yard in peckham) and i've lost my actor, not a great start - but we will prevail!

I would like to make this one much more simple and contemplative, leaving the audience more room to make their mark. I wish i had time to explore some more software and stuff - would really like to do something with the Nintendo Wii, it's my latest nerdy obsession. But I will have to work with what i know for september or else there will just be too many unknowns. Still, I think the simplicity of upstage has its own appeal and i like that it riles the techno-junkies with its general clunkiness. Just need to work on the graphics and not trying to do too much.

hmmm... then there is the documentation space in college. i really want it to be something interesting - am excited about the possibilities, but need to think hard about what i want to represent of myself since most people who see it won't see my show.

Saturday, July 07, 2007




WOOOO WE DID IT

Well, 'the old hotel part II' went without hitch (almost). I am so relieved. we had a power cut on site just before the show, then the webcam wasn't working, but it all came good with seconds to spare. Suzon, James and Liz did their bit online very smoothly, they kept to the time limit and worked all the elements on stage as if it was the easiest thing in the world (this was the first time we had got through the script with a technical failure!). Jonny (on site) interacted with both the webcam and the projected image and confidently drew the onsite audience into the weird world we had created on upstage, whilst also grounding in the site (the work was site-specific). I couldnt have asked for more.

Of course there were so many things i could have improved on - the presentation on site, the amount of rehearsal jonny was able to have with proper working webcam (none!), parts of the script etc etc.. would also have been great to have someone experienced to help me direct the show (in particular to help jonny with improvisation and interaction - i did my best but he pretty much had to work it out on his own - what do i know about acting? Saying that though, I think he did an amazing job, but would have been less stressful for him with proper direction.) HOWEVER time, money and friendly directors with nothing better to do were not on my side, so I think we did pretty well. Was very exciting to be back on the building site, not knowing from one day to the next which rooms would have floors, ceilings, windows etc. The guys were still working on site this morning and had to down tools for half an hour so the show would be audible! Fun fun.

Will try to write a more objective analysis when i have a bit more distance and will also give a link to the film of the show which will be uploaded to my website shortly. In the meantime, here's some pics of rehearsals.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

PLEASE COME TO THIS SHOW!

Saturday is virtually sold out, but if you can possibly make it on wednesday thursday or friday nights please do! it's a great show, talented bunch of students and i am really proud of the design.


Friday, May 18, 2007

collaborating and writing

the rehearsals for 'the old hotel' are getting very exciting, although at the moment we are still devising rather than really rehearsing. We have decided to have just one actor in the site, telling stories one-on-one to audience members, whilst the performers online act as ghosts or memories for those stories. We are focussing one story in particular which was devised by Jonny during the perforamnce at 'Sitelines210407', which was about a relationship which focussed around visits to seedy old hotels and eventually deteriorated. jonny made the story really interesting by talking about the hotel rooms as if they were a character - perhaps his lover - in the story.

suzon has been producing some fantastic graphics which allow us to do some really exciting stuff wth the webcam, with the 'subject' in different positions in relation to the camera, coming up close, moving further away disappearing behind 'walls' and re-appearing in windows. During the performance, the camera will be on the actor and he (and the on-site audience) will be able to respond to the online performance as it will be projected onto a wall in the site. We need to work out how what the actor is saying will be fed into upstage, as there is no sound element with the webcam bit.

my paper is well underway, a couple of thousand words to go. I feel like it is a bit muddled and less coherent than last time, so am looking forward to getting to the end so i can go back through and organise it better. Although I felt very restricted by last time's 5000 word limit - and even make a habit of compaining that 10,000 is too short (what a geek) - am finding it tough to expand without waffling, having packed what i felt were my most important ideas into the smaller word count for last time. Have tried re-structuring and hope when i read back through it will be ok... hmmm...