Ham House Diaries - Meeting the bell ringers

This has been a strange week for me. All my plans seem to have gone completely out of the window, possibly after a fleeting visit from my mum on Tuesday. Maybe I slipped back into the mentality of, its OK i can do it tomorrow! Oops.. but this week I'm back to my recently quite organised self. Getting things done and trying to fit it all in!

So an update on how its all been going:

Briony and i had a meeting with the chairman of the Middlesex County Association of Bell Ringers where we discussed the project and what their involvement if any could be. It began with Stephen (the chairman) giving us a brief history of his club and church bell ringing. His suggestion of getting a hand-bell team together for the event sounded great and when we discussed what the day would entail, he was very happy to be involved and thought that they could fit in wonderfully. He explained to us that as they would need to be able to hear each other it would probably work better for them if they could play in the grounds, rather than in the procession. I think this is better as it is important for the group to be comfortable and to be showing what they do to the best of their ability. Whilst we would love them to all be in the procession, i think that we need to accept that it won't always be possible and compromises will need to be made. We discovered that the ringers also have a kids group, which is fantastic and we agreed that perhaps they could take part in the procession. Stephen told us that he hoped that the event would encourage people to 'have a go' and take bell ringing up- i think that this is a fantastic idea. The whole idea of the event is to celebrate the community and bring people closer as a community who share something - Ham House! If it showcases the best of the local area and encourages people who wouldn't normally get involved to do just that then i will be really proud of what we have achieved.

Its All Kicking Off....

We are now 4 weeks in to our final semester at St Mary's and its been a bit of a baptism of fire!! Last semester i was only taking DIC, Dissertation and Physical Approaches to Playtext and so i was working hard but a more comfortable pace! This semester i actually haven't stopped and I'm sure its the same for everyone else, with 5 modules including my dissertation and Drama in the Community.

We are underway in our planning for Ham House's 400th Birthday celebrations this coming May - setting up working teams and beginning to contact community groups. Our plan is to have all the groups come together in a procession that will begin at Ham Common and will walk up to the south gates of the house. We walked the proposed route of the procession 2 weeks ago and it seems perfect! The common is directly behind the house down a straight avenue all the way to the common which will hopefully work as a great meeting place for the groups and for the community to see everyone gathering together.

The meetings have been going well, although there has been a few people missing in the last couple of weeks. Thursdays meetings will now be given to the creative team to teach us what they have been doing with Tina. Last week we learnt how to make masks which we can possibly do in workshops with children so that they can wear them in the procession. Claudia filmed the meeting and interviewed us so that we can have an archived process of the whole project.

Everyone has been given a group to contact so we will hopefully have a broad range of groups participating in the event. A good thing about the project is that people will gain awareness of the different community groups in their area and therefore hopefully come together more as a community and borough. For the younger generation to gain an interest and knowledge of Ham House and the National Trust would be really fantastic as well.

Zoe mentioned that one of the landlady's of the pubs in Ham said that they didn't feel that the house was a part of the community. It didn't seem to do anything that showed that it was a part of Ham. This is exactly the reason that the National Trust want to do have this party and from the work that we did with Spiral, it is something that i would love to be able to achieve. I hope that we can give the people of Ham and the surrounding areas something that they can really be proud of and help them to really celebrate having the house in their community. It would be really great if the party was just the beginning, and that the community begin to take a much bigger role in the future of the house and supported each other.

Spiral Theatre Project - Bielva 2009

So on the 13th December we set off to Spain on what would prove to be one of the most rewarding weeks for all of us.

We arrived at Santander Airport and were met by Spiral - Chris, Carol and Marta (and Carols mum). Chris is english but has lived in Spain for over 10 years, he is a theatre director and writer, Carol is a journalist and Marta is an archeologist. They were immediately welcoming and were really enthusiastic about us being there.

On the way to the villlage Chris told us all about the project and also about the way that theatre works in Spain.

Spain is split into different regions and each has its own government. There is a main government in Madrid. The regional governments are responsible for looking after health, education, culture etc and the spanish are very protective over their cultural heritage, they have laws that protect things like paintings from being bought or sold and leaving the country. Banks and Building Societies in Spain put a proportion of their profits into foundations which fund arts centres in each town. Companies/organisations have to put in a bid in order to do a theatre project and so a lot of time and effort goes into the preparation and deliverance of each project by Spiral.

Bielva is a small village right in the mountains about 40 minutes from Santander. It was beautiful! We arrived at the house where we would be staying to find that Chris, Carol and Marta had prepared a huge meal for us. That night we all got to know each other over food, wine and traditional spanish sweeties!!!

The days in Spain are much longer than they are here as they work in the mornings untill around 2pm and then have a big meal and a siesta for a couple of hours. Work starts again at around 5/6pm and continue until 10pm. Our mornings consisted of a series of workshops where we were told all about the work of Spiral and why they work the way that they do. We also learnt a lot about the history of spain and the cultural policy. In the evenings we would attend the rehearsals with the company and the villagers.

We met the villagers on the Monday night during their rehearsal. They knew that we were coming and when we walked in they were so friendly, there were kisses all round!!!!

The project really did involve the whole community. The oldest performer was 80 and the youngest 8, some of the villagers helped during the process but did not want to perform. Whole families performed, Yolanda and her son Cesar and daughter Virginia, Lola, her son and his wife and 2 daughters all performed. Not many of the village spoke english, only the younger ones who were learning at school and all the rehearsals were conducted in Spanish. Chris would translate everything for us, however some of the older participants became quite self conscious if we laughed at what he told us, thinking that we were laughing at them rather than with them.

The play was completely devised by the villagers and Spiral, the names, the story all the lines came out of improvisations and games. Chris told us that they had discovered the relationships between the characters through hot seating. They had created the whole thing and as Chris told us, when the lines were typed up and given to them, they suddenly found it harder to say. They didnt feel that it was their words any more, they didnt belong to them now that they were in print. It was then that we started to see how much this play meant to Bielva and how connected it was to their own history and heritage.

The play was called 'Una comida para llegara de Fausto' A meal for the arrival of Fausto and was about a man (Fausto) returning home to his village 50 years after leaving to seek his fortune. He returns rich and with a plan to build a ski centre in the mountains near the village in order to bring money, jobs and prosperity to the villagers. However Fausto finds that when he left, his girlfriend was pregnant and gave their son away. The first part of the play is set days before his return and the villagers are all gossiping about why he might be coming back and what he will do with his money. The centre piece of the show is a huge dinner they have to celebrate Fausto's return! All the food was freshly prepared for the performance and the process of setting the table and bringing out all the food was part of the play. In real life, 50 years ago many people left their villages and set off to 'The Americas' to seek their fortunes and we were told that there was a plan to build a ski station in some of the neighbouring villages and so the play was very much embedded in the villagers own lives.

During the week we began to really get to know everyone in the village and each other. The villagers were so welcoming to us, they invited us to mass on the last day and Nuco who played Fausto, took us on a tour of the village, telling us all about its history. Yolanda delivered fresh bread every morning and also gave us 36 eggs!!!! The younger villagers seemed really happy that we were there, especially Cesar, Isabel and Zaira who invited us out with them and came over for breakfast on our last day.

The performance took place in a bar that had no heating and was decorated with some very strange cartoons! We covered the whole space with white material which completely transformed the room. It was a surprise for the cast who were all so happy when they saw it. Once there were a few lights in place, it began to look like a performance space, which was a completely new experiance for them. It was a really nice feeling to take a familiar place for them and transform it into something completely different.

As we had experiance of technical theatre, our roles for the performance were front of house, stage management, lighting and sound and everyone worked really hard to pull off 2 great shows. The audience were locals, friends and family of the cast and had never seen something like this before and they all seemed to really enjoy it.

As a thankyou to Spiral, we cooked a big 'traditional' roast dinner for the 14 of us! Very difficult when the electricity cuts out if you turn on more than a light!! We also wrote them a song 'The Twelve Days of Spiral'! After the shows, the cast gave the food that they had used for the meal to us as a thank you for helping them. Their was a party with singing and dancing and spontaneous bagpipe performances from the audience!! We wrote another song to say a huge thank you to the village. 'Thankyou Bielva' was definitely a group collaboration between all 9 of us and we performed it to them at the 'aftershow party'. Carol translated it into Spanish so that the villagers could understand!

It was such a fantastic week and a huge learning experiance for me. It was great to share the experiance with the 2nd years who were all lovely and really enthusiastic. We spent many evenings drinking sangria around the fire!!! I hope that we will have the opportnity to work with them more this semester as they have a lot of ideas and skills that we can hopefully utilise and vise versa. I have learnt so much about the power of community theatre work and i would love to work more with Spiral in the future!!

Christmas Event Take 1

This weekend we began our first weekend of storytelling events at Ham House. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but i was confident that the event was organised well and that we were equipped enough to work with whoever and whatever came our way.

Saturday:
The first hour was quite slow with only a couple of families through the door but as the afternoon progressed more and more came in to enjoy the fun. My first couple of stories i felt were quite energetic as they were fresh but i didn't feel as though i really got into it until the afternoon when we had told it a few times. We would only be telling the story to 3 or 4 children at a time but each story was different which i really enjoyed. We adapted it to the age of the children; one of the stories we told to a baby who obviously didn't understand the story but could enjoy the pictures so we focused more on them and on our facial expressions.

When we were on a break from our stories, i went to encourage children to listen to other people's stories and to see what was happening around the house. I tried to get the children into stories so that people had audiences. Jayne, Jess and Emily were really good at getting the children into the house as they stayed in character all the time.
The roaming stories worked quite well as they were unexpected. There was a really nice moment when Laura told her story to some parents whilst they were quing for balloons. When she ran off the child wanted to know what she said but the parents played along and told her it was a secret. She had to find Laura if she wanted to know. This was really lovely as it encouraged the children to go off and explore the rooms to find stories.

Sunday
Sunday worked a little more smoothly i felt as we had got into the swing of it and knew what sort of thing to expect. However we had a lot more people come into the house. The first hour on Saturday was quite quiet but on Sunday there were a lot more people and they seemed to be a lot more willing to explore and get involved. We had decided that we weren't really going to schedule breaks as on Saturday we found that it was better to have people interacting with the families and encouraging them to listen to stories. There were also times that we found that we needed more stories on. I felt that this worked better as the children got to know all the characters before we told our stories and therefore they were a lot more engaged.
In our story, we encouraged the children to go and meet the other characters and we interacted more with them by asking them what else they had heard and what they wanted for Christmas. Siobhan's character was the elf who looked after the reindeer and she never came out of it. After our story she would give the children a task to ask Mrs Claus for some new gloves. This was nice as it gave the children a sense of involvement and linked the stories together. They would come back and tell us that they had asked her and tell us things about the other stories.

I really enjoyed the weekend and i thought that we did very well as a new company. We may have had a few hiccups before, but on the day everyone worked really hard to make sure that the families enjoyed themselves and the stories had audiences and energy. I feel that i learnt a lot about what works when telling children a story, in as much that its not always about what you are saying but about how you say it and how engaged you are. The story might not be very interesting but as long as you are invested in it then the children will enjoy it. Having props helped a lot as it gave the children a visual focus, but we also let them use their imagination which i feel kept them engaged and interested. When i was watching the other stories i noticed this too, especially with the elves. They had so much energy and involved the children all the way through even after they had finished the story.

I'm really looking forward to next weekend. We will have some different stories which will keep the event fresh and therefore the energy and enthusiasm will continue. The event will probably be better than this weekend as we have changed some things because of seeing what worked and what didn't. Just as Sunday was better than Saturday, we are learning from each event. With a play, we wouldn't have been able to change very much and it would have been more or less the same each time. What is good about the storytelling events is that we are learning all the time and have the ability to analyse the event and change and adapt as we go along.
I'm hoping the rest of the weekends go as well! We should all be very proud of ourselves.
Well done everyone!!!

Anish Kapoor

I haven't blogged for a while so a have a few things to catch up on. Last Sunday myself and Sophie took a trip into central to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. The que was huge, this exhibition has been on since September and is still drawing huge crowds which tells you how popular he is. Outside in the courtyard was a beautiful steel sculpture called Tall Tree and The Eye which consists of lots of globes of mirrored steel. They reflect everything around them in every direction which is quite a strange experience. It seems as though the globes are floating freely and unattached to each other and i was intrigued at how something so simple could throw up so many different interpretations. This was just the beginning of a truly amazing exhibition. Each sculpture gave me so many ideas and i took a lot of different meanings. It really inspired me to create performance work. The most memorable pieces were Svayambh and Shooting into the Corner. Svayambh was a huge block of red wax that moved incredibly slowly through 5 rooms. It was difficult to tell if it was even moving at some points and it takes an hour and a half for the block to reach the end and back. As the block moves through the rooms it squeezes throught the doorways and is then moulded into their shape. It was really interesting to watch this process even though it took a long time, i didnt find myself getting bored at all.
Shooting into the Corner is the most famous work of the exhibition. Sophie is working on a performance inspired by it for her creative collaboration performance. A canon fires a block of red wax into a blank white corner every 20 minutes.
The anticipation of waiting for the canon to go off was probably more powerful and affecting than when it actually did go off. A man sits with his back to the audience and every 2o minutes he walks to the canon, takes a cylinder of wax from the shelves and places it in the canon. He turns on the gas and then waits. This is probably the most tense that i have been. I knew it was about to go off so i was bracing myself for the bang. When it did go off the wax missed the wall so it did feel like a bit of an anti climax, however when we left we both found ourselves feeling really emotional. I honestly never thought that a piece of art could affect me so much. The canon is a symbol of destruction but their is something quite theraputic in watching something so clean like the white wall get destroyed or messed up. I think that we have all been in a situation where we have wanted to throw something and we find a sense of release from that. This piece really captured that feeling and it was definitely worth the long wait. I would recommend this exhibition to everyone, you will definitely come out having been moved in some way.

Christmas Stories

Friday was our first opportunity to work in the basement where the Christmas event will take place. It gave me a real sense of how the whole event will take shape and I'm looking forward to the dress rehearsal on Friday when we will hear all the stories and see what will be happening and when. I'm really looking forward to the event now and seeing the rooms full of people and the stories in full swing.

I am working with Siobhan and Emily on The Bear Who Found Christmas, which will take place in the long corridor by the stairs. We felt that this was a great space as the story is set in an old toy shop. Children will often play and create their own worlds in all sorts of weird and wonderful places that we just wouldn't think of, and i feel that the use of the corridor brings this out. Stories can be told anywhere, as long as you really believe that the chair you are sitting on, for example, is a mountain then the children will believe it too. They love to use their imagination and these stories will give them the opportunity to do this.

I was reading an article about children's theatre in Time Out which spoke about the way that the majority of children's theatre is big and loud and colourful, but actually young children are very good at seeing the beauty in small, subtle things. They are often a lot better at it than us, and many new shows have worked with this principle in mind, such as Katie Mitchell's Cat in the Hat at the National. I think that we should think about this in terms of our Christmas stories. We don't have the option of using huge amounts of props, set, costumes etc, but i don't think that it will matter. As long as we fully invest in each story and really create an atmosphere then the children will do the rest themselves.

Ghost Tour

On Thursday we were given a ghost tour at Ham House. I thought it was brilliant and really fascinating. Although we have had other tours of the house and had been told a lot of the history of it, i felt as though we were really given an insight into how Elizabeth and her family lived .... (and died!!)
Some of the rooms i hadn't seen before, and although I'm not sure whether i believe in ghosts or not ... i definitely felt a chill in the chapel! The 2 guides who took the tour were funny and clearly very passionate about the house and its history. Their anecdotes really helped to set the scene and made the tour very accessible to all ages.
If we are going to start to try and 'revamp' some of the tours then i think we should look at this one as a good starting point. It's definitely important to make the visitors connect to the material, just like a theatre audience. If you are just telling them facts then it becomes quite boring and they lose interest. Stories or bits of gossip are quite funny and mean that the visitors can start to remember that these were real people. They aren't just paintings on the wall, but actually lived, breathed, laughed and cried here and i think that appeals to all ages.
Its so much more interesting when you try to imagine how they lived and what they did in the house.
Another good example of this was on the behind the scenes tour when we were shown the graffiti on the window. A young servant at the house called John McFarland had fallen in love with another girl called Emily, but they couldn't be together as she was already engaged to someone else. He had scratched her name on a window and then committed suicide. This isn't shown to visitors of the house, which is a shame as i felt that it brought the house to life for me.
The Christmas stories are a great chance for us to do this. It will bring people to the house who may not have been before and will hopefully encourage them to come back.