Third Angel

**UPDATE** 600 People continues to tour in autumn 2019: Bedford, Harrogate, Huddersfield and Colchester. Tour dates here.

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I’ve just finished listening to Episode 5 of 13 Minutes to the Moon: The Fourth Astronaut. It’s all about the development of the Apollo Spacecraft’s Command and Service Module’s on-board computer – and the software that it ran in order to be able to land on the moon.

In our show 600 People, I recall talking to astrophycisist Dr Simon Goodwin about whether or not he thinks human beings “will ever get to Mars?” In his response  - back in 2006 - Simon talked about the cost of space exploration, and how it always pays for itself through the boost that it gives the economy, and also about the benefit of “technological trickle down”. I use this as an opportunity to make a gag about spaceships and frying pans, but The Fourth Astronaut really demonstrates Simon’s point – explaining that the Apollo 11 mission saw in the dawn of digital/domestic computing, with the need for much lighter weight integrated circuits.

One of the things I’m most enjoying about 13 Minutes to the Moon is the way it frames the importance of the Apollo missions as being more than just Apollo 11, achieved by more than just the men who got to walk on the moon. A whole bunch of people, many of them in their early 20s, “these kids”, taking on this huge ambition and responsibility. At one point someone says (something like), “We didn’t know we couldn’t do it, so we just went ahead and did it.”

There are loads of new interviews with these team members, and in The Fourth Astronaut it is particularly great to hear Elaine Denniston and Margaret Hamilton talking about their roles. At one point Hamilton is talking about the difference between knowing a code language, and actually being able to write code that works. Just because you can write English, she observes, doesn’t mean they’d give you a job writing novels.

I’m guessing that 13 Minutes to the Moon is timed to conclude in the week of the 50th Anniversary of the first moon landings themselves, and of course there’s a lot of of other anniversary-related stuff out there at the moment – indeed, we’re performing 600 People at A Future Fantastic Festival and Latitude Festival as tie-in events.

If you’re interested in this area, my two top recommendations are Andrew Smith’s Moondust and Jed Mercurio’s Ascent. Smith’s Moondust is a telling of his own quest to meet all of the surviving humans who had walked on the moon. Formally, of course, this reportage/documentary approach, interweaving the story of the research task with the story he uncovered, is right up my street. But added to that it is surprising, insightful, entertaining and moving. Mercurio’s Ascent is the other side of the coin, a fictional exploration of the idea of the ‘phantom cosmonaut’. Written with relentless, elegantly spare prose, it manages to evoke the power of  the human desire to get up, get away, get out there. I found it incredibly moving. Both highly recommended.

Our friend and board member Adrian Friedli has been keeping his eye out for this stuff for us, too. He’s leant me the current issue of Frieze which has nice space-related articles by artist Katie Paterson and novelist Lucy Ives, along with Gil Scott-Heron’s (brilliant) debut album, Small Talk at 125th & Lenox, that includes the poem Whitey On The Moon; recorded in 1970, Heron eloquently questions just who is benefiting from investment in space exploration.

What I got most excited about, though, was Adrian’s copy of the December 1969 National Geographic, which is a Moon Landings special. It includes loads of beautiful photographs, articles which of course are ‘look what we just did’, rather than retrospective: the events described don’t yet have the wider cultural significance they will go on to achieve. But to me, looking at it now, and perhaps this is partly down to the 1960s colour saturation of the photographs, partly because many of the images are so familiar, and maybe because it includes a flexidisc (a flexidisc!) of Sounds Of The Space Age: From Sputnik To Lunar Landing – it still feels nostalgic. As with 13 Minutes to the Moon, it’s the human aspect that I’m drawn to. The fact that these remarkable things are being done by ordinary people. (Of course, as you might have heard us say before, everything is done by ordinary people).

One article, called Man Walks On Another World, includes a transcript of the recording that is the basis for 13 Minutes to the Moon, but continues it to follow Armstrong and Aldrin on to the moon’s surface. I love the moment when, after he steps down, the second human being on the lunar surface, Aldrin turns to close the Command & Service Module door:

    ALDRIN: Now I want to back up and partially close the hatch. Making sure not to lock it.

Is he making a gag here, or just thinking aloud? It’s hard to tell from a transcript. Either way, his companion replies:

    ARMSTRONG: A particularly good thought.

As someone who regularly pops back to check that the front door is locked, I love the practicality of this moment.

When I told ex-spacecraft engineer Katie Sparks that I was writing this blogpost, she sent me a link to this video, saying, “I think you’ll enjoy the humanity”:

One of the things I love about touring 600 People is the conversations it inspires afterwards. I met Katie after she came to see the show in York a couple of years ago. If you’ve seen 600 People, you’ll know that whilst I might be fascinated by the Apollo Missions, the space programme that captured my heart is Voyager. The Voyager programme forms forms the narrative ‘brackets’ around 600 People, and was also the inspiration for our earlier show 9 Billion Miles From Home (the making of which is detailed in this lecture/blogpost, Testing The Hypothesis).

Katie introduced herself after the show, saying that she ‘used to work in the space industry’. As we talked, it became apparent that she was actually part of the team who built the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Spacecraft(!). Again, if you’ve seen the show, you’ll know that the Rosetta’s Philae Lander touching down on Comet 67/P Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014 is a turning point in the narrative. What was really gratifying for me was that Katie said that one of the things she liked about the show was that it captured the enthusiasm and passion of people who work in space science.

Last year I was lucky enough to be invited to talk at a ‘TaPRA Performance & Science Working Group Interim Event’ at Jodrell Bank. It was a thrill just to be there and see the scale of the Lovell telescope for a start. It was a day of fascinating conversation about science-related performance, with a focus, inevitably, on space exploration. There were people there who knew much more about the territory than me. The specific theme of the day was Seeing the Unseen – and the discussion was about how (performance in collaboration with) science can enable us to see things at a scale, or distance, or time, that we can’t “see” everyday. But we also talked about what it allows us to see on an emotional level.

My provocation was called Performing science: how does it make you feel?

In Third Angel we’ve always said that we make work about the things that fascinate us or bother us. The stuff your brain returns to when its meant to be thinking about something else. That might be personal relationships and domestic details, or it might be circadian rhythms, timezones, cartography or the fact that the Voyager spacecraft are, you know, actually out there, right now, almost incomprehensible distances from the human beings who built them. We explore these ideas through conversations and collaborations with specialists and experts in their fields: psychologists, cartographers, astrophysicists. Our aim with these projects is to make something that responds to the emotional, human impact that their research has. 

One of the things I mentioned was something Prof. Simon Goodwin (he’s Dr Simon Goodwin in 600 People because he wasn’t a Professor when I first met him) said to me that has stayed with me. I think maybe it was in an after-show discussion after an early performance of the first version of the show. He said that it had struck him that scientists, on the whole, go into their field of study because they are passionate about it. Fascinated, curious, inquisitive… and they care about it too. But the more they train and study their field, the more they are encouraged (or at least can feel like they are) to be dispassionate about their findings – to appear to be more objective. I have to say, in our conversations Simon always seems passionate and enthusiastic about whatever he’s explaining to me.

I had also written to Katie to ask if she could expand on what she had said to me after the show. She wrote back:

Until July last year, I worked as an engineer - my only job in this field was in the space industry.

Which sounds amazingly glamorous, until you realise that the technicians are the folk in the awesome clean room suits who are actually seeing the things, and that being an engineer means attending meetings and writing reports - so much like 99% of any other “professional” job.

It may be surprising to find out that designing spacecraft is hard. And I mean, really hard. Not just because of the tech and what we’re trying to do, but actually, because of timescales and budgets and getting all the right people together from all of everywhere. Somewhere in all of that, it can be easy to lose sight of the bit where you’re working on something that’s going to space. I need to say that again, because that’s the bit that’s magic: you’re working on something that’s going to space.

If you’re lucky, you’ll work on telecommunications and satellite navigation systems, which means your sentence ends up as:

    “I’m working on something that’s going to space and it will change the lives of millions of people across the whole world.”

(But even this is actually not my favourite version).

If you’re lucky, you’ll work on something that’s going to do things that can’t be done on Earth, chasing dreams of where it all began, what else is out there and how does it all work?  In that case, your sentence ends up as:

     “I’m working on something that’s going to space and it’s going to help us understand a little bit more and see all of everything else in some other new way.”

As a sciency type, this is my favourite.

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I’m looking forward to taking 600 People out again in July. It’s a treat to get to be part of this conversation. In Sheffield A Future Fantastic Festival at Theatre Deli is all about imagining where we (homo sapiens) go next. At Latitude I’m looking forward to catching up with Unlimited Theatre’s Space Shed, Footprint’s Signals and checking out this whole host of space themed activity. If you’re coming along to any of these gigs, please do say hello afterwards.

Next week I’ll be attending the Memory Studies Association’s Annual Conference in Madrid, as part of the Performance and Memory Working Group. Memory as a theme and tool has been woven into Third Angel’s work from the start, so I’m looking forward to hearing wider thematic discussion of this area.

I’ll be running a workshop there on Tuesday 25th June, titled Mechanisms For Remembering. This is how we’ve described it:

How do we remember? How do we find and tell memories? How might memories become performance?

A workshop demonstrating techniques designed to allow participants to access memories, and draw on those memories to tell their own stories, in a safe space, and without feeling the pressure of coming up with ‘good material.’ Exercises that allow participants to be both an expert in their own experience, and also be ‘put on the spot’ and so re-discover memories that are not just the stories we always tell.

The workshop draws on exercises developed for the creation of a number of Third Angel shows, in particular Senseless (1998), Where From Here (2000), The Lad Lit Project (2005). These performances all draw on personal memories and, to a greater or lesser extent, reflect on the nature of memory, and how we re-tell memories of the past as a way of constructing our identities in the present. 

If you’re at the Conference, the workshop is free to attend. You don’t need to have any performance experience - it will be very much conversation led.
Mechanisms For Remembering
1-3pm, 25 June
Complutense University
Building A, Hall, Floor 2. 

You can just turn up on the day, or contact me to reserve a place.

We’ve just launched BOOST, our funded mentoring scheme for 2019, offering time, space, money and expertise for artists and companies making contemporary theatre and live art. There are two main strands: Artistic Practice and Producing Your Own Work.

Some of you might have applied to TAMS (Third Angel’s Mentoring Scheme) in previous years; BOOST is replacing this and one major difference this year is that there are two separate application forms for the Artistic Practice and Producing. You can apply for both, but to make the schemes as bespoke as possible we need to ask you different questions for each.

For BOOST Your Artistic Practice we are looking for four artists or companies who devise their own work and create theatre or live art. We can support you through three days of Rachael or Alex’s time as a mentor, be that as an outside eye, dramaturg or co-deviser, a week’s rehearsal space with our partners Sheffield Theatres in either the Lyceum Theatre or the Crucible rehearsal rooms, and a fee. 

We want to support artists to make the work they want to make, and we want to work with them to find the best way of doing this on an individual basis. However, we’ve also been doing this a while now, so we also want to support projects that can make use of our experience and expertise. So, over the last few years, this is what we’ve learned about applying to the scheme:

• Apply with the show or project you really want to make next - don’t try to come up with something to ‘fit’ the scheme.
• We are looking for projects that are created primarily through devising. That isn’t to say the shows can’t have text or can’t be written.
• We’re looking for projects that are ready to use a rehearsal room, to try out writing with performers, to start to improvise text, or to start to find the physical score of the work or the frame of the show.
• We’re interested in supporting projects at any stage of their development, except the very start. If you still need to go and do the research (interview members of the community, meet a scientist, spend a week in the library/on the internet), then you’re not quite ready to apply this year.
• We are looking for work that we feel we can contribute to in some way and be useful; work where a meaningful dialogue can take place between us and the mentee.
• We’re interested in fiction, autobiography, documentary, verbatim, task-based, visually-led performance and live art. We run devising processes that utilise rule-based exercises to enable performers to create material for shows so they have ownership of, and investment in, that material in performance. Processes that involve devising, task-based improvisation, discussion, writing, making more material than will be used in the final show and editing. We would like to share this approach with you, but also remix and refine it so that it works for your project.
• We can’t provide extra performers or actors, although we can sometimes help you find workshop participants if that would be useful.
• If you would like to share some of your work at the end of the week we can facilitate that, but it is not a requirement of the scheme.

To apply for BOOST Your Artistic Practice, click here for the application pack. 

BOOST Your Producing is a free two-day workshop providing production and career-focused information and support, including company structures, financial management and budgeting, funding, working with venues, professional development opportunities. It aims to support artists and companies who find themselves needing, or desiring, to produce their own shows, projects, tours. This is where our expertise and experience lies – all of our work is produced in-house. We have an Executive Producer, Hilary Foster, who leads on this, and all members of the team are involved in producing projects to a greater or lesser extent. So these two days are aimed at artists/companies in a similar position, rather than freelance producers who want to work with multiple artists (though they might find them interesting and useful). BOOST Your Producing is designed primarily, but not exclusively, at those at the beginning of their theatre making professional lives.

If you’d like to BOOST Your Producing, here’s the application form.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Third Angel’s paid internship programme is one of my favourite things of all we’ve been able to do since becoming a National Portfolio Organisation in 2015. It’s also one of the most bittersweet. We routinely get 40+ applications from passionate, articulate, capable people wanting to get into arts admin and producing, and we can only hire one. As a very small team, we get to know our intern really well, see them challenged by some things, excel at others, learn, grow, gain confidence in themselves and their abilities, discover love for things they never thought they’d enjoy, which is all SO brilliant to be part of. And then, after 18 months, we have to say goodbye and start all over again! 

And it’s that time again. We’re delighted to be able to introduce you to our wonderful 2019-20 intern Sam Turner. 

I’m Sam, and I’m delighted to introduce myself as Third Angel’s fourth Intern.

I’ve followed Third Angel’s work since moving to Sheffield in 2014 and I’ve greatly valued volunteering with the company to support my development as a theatre-maker; I’ve got stuck into various creative projects and roles – from stage management to painting a giant map of the world.

A little about me:

I’ve enjoyed making a range of creative work in Sheffield’s diverse art scene and involving myself with theatres, festivals and artists. I enjoy contemporary performance, supporting fun projects and encouraging others to engage with creativity. I love logistics, creative discussion and drinking a lot of coffee in the process. I’ve supported new writing and produced work for venues and festivals across the country – from Edinburgh to an outdoor production at a beer festival in rural Suffolk.

Since graduating in English and Theatre last July, I have enjoyed working hard as Theatre Deli’s Front of House Manager and managing creative projects freelance; my last endeavour was an immersive production of A Christmas Carol which included a two-course meal.

The Administration and Production Internship appealed to me for offering an opportunity to develop my skills and confidence within arts management – a rare opening. I’m looking forward to working with a small (but mighty) team to support important creative work and develop a multitude of skills. I’m thankful for the opportunity to find my pathway and pursue my career ambitions, with support from the Third Angel team. Working with Sarah has given me an insight into the attributes I can develop and has revealed how integral the Intern role is to Third Angel’s smooth running. I feel ready for the challenge and I wish Sarah the very best with her next adventure.

I’ve enjoyed my first few weeks in the office and I’m looking forward to undertaking many exciting challenges over the next eighteen months. I’ll be working part-time hours with Third Angel and I’m actively looking for other interesting projects to engage with, in Sheffield and beyond.”

And now to bid a very fond farewell to the equally marvellous Sarah Webb, who’s seen us through some exciting and challenging times, in particular shouldering big responsibilities on our large-scale show with young people, Inherited Cites, and taking our free workshop programme Future Makers to new heights. And we wish her all the very best for the future, which we know will be stellar. 

“Well, that was a busy 18 months. I might need another 18 to attempt to summarise them. This has been an internship of blood (don’t worry, just paper cuts and the like), sweat, tears and laughter - and I wouldn’t change a thing! The experience has been a highly active springboard to developing new (and underused) skills, and ultimately setting me up for the next step in arts management. And now that’s what I’m about to do. The time has come for me to (reluctantly) leave the Third Angel team, but lucky me, I’m moving over to yet another great arts organisation. I’ll soon be starting as Unlimited Theatre’s General and Finance Administrator. On top of this, I’ll also be working with Harland Works on an exciting new project, and if that wasn’t enough, I’m lending a hand on the opening tour of S.H.E.D. this summer!

Before I go, I just want to say the BIGGEST thank you to Third Angel for welcoming me to the family. What sets this internship out from the rest (though there’s not many out there for aspiring arts managers) is the amount of time and energy that that each member of the team invested into ensuring my time with them was as varied, enlightening, rewarding and challenging as possible. I’m eternally grateful and vow to make it worth their while! I hope they don’t miss the sound of me crunching away on packs of crisps in the office too much…”

Nope, nothing in my eye, probably just early hayfever…

Hilary

Back in January we did an interview with Keir Shields at Sheffield Theatres, to discuss The Department of Distractions and other Third Angel projects. The Department arrives at Theatre Royal Plymouth next week, 24 - 27 April.

Big thanks to Keir for making this. Here it is:

The Administration & Production intern has become an essential part of the Third Angel machinery. We established this role in 2015 in response to the fact that there were a growing number of development opportunities for aspiring artists and performers, but very few paid opportunities for the next generation of arts managers to hone their skills. The initiative has been so successful that we are now looking to recruit our fourth intern and we’re keen to hear from anyone in the early stages of their arts management career about how this opportunity could help them achieve their aims.

The Administration & Production Assistant (to give them their proper title) works with our General Manager and Executive Producer on every aspect of running a small touring theatre company, from office management to marketing, from creative learning workshops to tour logistics, and everything in between. You’ll spend most of your time at the company office in Sheffield, but there will also be occasional opportunities to assist in the delivery of workshops, work with the creative team in rehearsal, and visit productions on the road.

We want you to leave us as prepared as possible to fly solo as an administrator or assistant producer, so we’ll agree a training schedule with you to build your skills and anticipate your future needs around business management, fundraising, marketing and project management.

This is what Sarah Webb, our current intern, has to say about the position:

“I’m Sarah, and I’m the lucky individual who was chosen to become Third Angel’s Admin & Production Assistant back in Summer 2017. This blog post would have reached you all sooner, but they’ve kept me busy. I’m the third round of the internship scheme; you might say I’m the ‘Third Angel’ (har har), though I’ve had two stellar predecessors, Liz & Ellie, who set the bar high for me and have moved on to pursue exciting careers.

“I clearly remember writing my application for the post and passionately thanking Third Angel for offering such a valuable and rare opportunity for young professionals to explore arts administration and production within a thriving company – fast forward to my last few months with the team and my thankfulness is through the roof. At the core, Third Angel is a small theatre company with just five employees (I’m the only full-time member of staff), but you wouldn’t guess that by looking at the number of projects we’re working on at any one time. Working in a small team makes for a rich experience and I’ve gained and developed an unbelievable multitude of skills. For those of you looking to find out what a normal day in the office might look like, I hate to burst that balloon, but there’s no such thing. Every day is different, and I am continuously working on new and exciting challenges. The next intern will have a completely different experience to me and that’s what makes this opportunity so exciting.”

There are two changes with this round of the internship, firstly we have extended the length of the post to 18 months to enable the postholder to experience a full annual business cycle and get opportunity to do some tasks more than once. Secondly, we’re currently advertising the post as 4 days per week, but we are actively seeking funding to extend this to full time (35 hours per week). The post is paid at Living Wage Foundation rates.

If you’re considering an application, here’s a few helpful tips to get you started:

• Remember that we have had over 60 applications on previous occasions, anyone who cannot show that they meet EVERY ONE of the essential criteria is very unlikely to be shortlisted.
• Make sure you have taken time to tell us HOW you meet each one of the points of the essential criteria, and as many of the desirable criteria you can – give examples. Don’t assume that this will be obvious to us from reading your employment or education history, make it absolutely clear. However, there is no need to write pages and pages – bullet points and concise sentences are much more effective, especially when we have lots of applications to look at.
• Where we have asked for specific experience, we mean this in the broadest sense, not just employment experience. You could use examples from your hobbies, voluntary work, social life, family or school / college / university to demonstrate that you understand what skills are likely to be needed and have dipped your toe in.
• Attention to detail is important, as it is our first indication that you have got what it takes to do the job! Use a spell check, make sure you have completed ALL the required forms, follow the instructions to the letter!

The closing date for applications is 2pm on Friday 1st February and interviews will be held on Tuesday 19th February. Unfortunately, we’re unable to be flexible on the interview date so please ensure you would be able to attend on that date. We’re hoping that the new intern would be able to start with us in the last week of March to allow handover whilst Sarah is still with us.

You can download the application pack here. If you have any questions please email us on mail@thirdangel.co.uk or if it would be helpful to have an informal chat you can call us on 0114 274 4974 and ask for Laura (our General Manager) or Hilary (Executive Producer).