collaborative response etc.

CONGRATULATIONS to you all on a mammoth effort. I was so impressed by Eleven:Fifty-seven (by the way why was it called that?). It was beautiful, truly, The little room and the dangly chairs and the trees... and the PUPPETS, which were sooo fantastic. The costumes were great, nice and subtle but lovely, and very in tune with the overall design. All in all, you never would have guessed there were so many people involved, the design was very coherent.
I thought Magda's role was wonderful and tied the whole thing together, she was also very good at shepherding us all around - although perhaps this didn't need to be quite so military at times!? The projections looked really professional, my only criticism is that perhaps they were sometimes used unnecessarily (or maybe it was just that the content was too obvious?). There was a lot going on in a pretty short time period and it did cross my mind that some of it was there just because members of the group had the relevant skill-sets, but nonetheless, it didn't seem disjointed or confusing. it goes without saying that the actors were great, and I particularly enjoyed it when they managed to get the audience moving without having to herd us, this was a lot to do with the lighting as well, which was very good. I wasn't always completely taken in by the text - but i think this was mostly improvised, perhaps just needed more rehearsal time (i know this was limited). thought the most powerful bit was mr north's moment of quiet at his mothers grave. particularly loved the (very eerie) child puppet with spooky twins controlling it!
I'm only being critical because it wouldn't be very useful for me to just flatter you all, but I really did thoroughly enjoy the show and am looking forward to seeing what everyone does next!

so much to think about at the moment.
first of all the play at richmond, which (although doug hated it!) went really well. It was definitely my most conventional set to date, but that said it was probably about as unconventional as that play could cope with. Kirstie and I got loads of positive responses about the design and an exciting offer of potential work to look at which i'm thrilled about.
secondly, my own stuff. am thinking about a few themes at the moment which came out of my workshop. i was really inspired by rich's suggestions on my blog and have started thinking about random meetings between strangers and conflicts between the drama of theatre and everyday life. I have also been looking more at the way people present themselves and tell their own stories through the internet. i've become a real myspace addict in the process. i had a really interesting conversation with my friend mel about how long someone could continue to 'live' in cyberspace after they had died for real, assuming no-one knew...
i'm also organising a site for my next mini-project and i am so excited about it. don't want to give the game away so am not going to give too many details, but lots of possibilities for projection and playing with scale again... now to bring all this together much more coherently than i managed last time!
finally i have been working on my paper which is becoming much more focussed and looking at myspace as a kind of theatre and perhaps this idea of virtual life and death. am really getting back into theatre after a while in the wilderness. it's just a name after all and doesn't mean my work has to be restricted... i think i've been disallowing myself to have fun and that is officially going to stop right now!