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Wednesday, 2 November 2022

Watching the Detectives (again)

I’m really pleased to have a set of ‘artists pages’ in the latest edition of the journal Performance Research: Undercover (Volume 26, Issue 8)

Watching the Detectives is a case file, documenting our research into The Department of Distractions, through the show of the same name, its forerunner O Grande Livro dos Pequenos Detalhes (The Great Book of Tiny Details) and the sequel play-at-home-game, The Distraction Agents(It takes its name of course from both the Elvis Costello song, and a previous blogpost about The Department of Distractions).

Particular thanks to Fraser Stevens and James Harding for commissioning the piece, and to Becci Curtis for sterling support as always. And thanks to the support of Leeds Beckett University,Watching the Detectives is available as a free download here.

The final run of The Distraction Agents is available now, to play yourself or send as a gift! Click here for more information.


Wednesday, 15 January 2020

Staging The Wreckage

Chris Thorpe and I have a new article in the journal Performance Research: Staging The Wreckage. It’s a lovely volume, and includes contributions from friends and colleagues including Rhiannon Jones, Michael Pinchbeck and Bridget Escolme. Edited by Gianna Bouchard and Patrick Duggan, the volume explores ways of, and reasons for, staging different forms of wreckage.


As soon as I saw the call for contributions, I knew I wanted to submit something about Parts For Machines That Do Things, our 2008 show about air-crash investigation.

Chris and I had an email conversation about the fragmentary making process of the show, and then I assembled the six pages as a collage of model plane parts, our email conversation and extracts of Chris’ text for the show. The final version is published as “A Piece Of Metal: Parts Of Third Angel’s Parts For Machines That Do Things”. I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out. 

You can download a pdf of the article (for free for the first 50 people) here.

In making the pages we generated more material than we had space for, of course. Here are a couple of extra images that I liked that we didn’t use, along with a brief extract from mine and Chris’ email correspondence.


ALEX: I remember that we just talked a lot to start with. We made a long list of things that the show was about.

CHRIS: I remember I used to be terrified of flying. And then I read a book about air-crash investigation. And it cured me. I remember the terror switched to awe at the complexity of the planes and the global systems that operated them.


CHRIS: We knew the thing we were re/constructing was a show, but there was no original version of it (that had smashed into the ground, or landed on water, or suddenly and violently depressurised) to work towards. And we could always make new wreckage to fill any holes that appeared. 

ALEX: After a week in our studio in Sheffield, we did a couple of work-in-progress showings with BAC, in Edinburgh and London. Each time we presented a different selection and order, picking a different route through our constructed debris. 


Big thanks to Gianna and Patrick for commissioning the piece.

Tuesday, 1 October 2019

THERE’S A ROOM Book Launch

This month, which marks the 24th anniversary of our first performance, Testcard, we are delighted to be publishing There’s A Room: Three Performance Texts by Third Angel with the brilliant folk at Oberon Books.

Early on in our career we talked more about writing down than about writing. The durational and installation works were represented as lists of instructions – if they were written down at all. Texts for the theatre pieces were assembled from improvisations, transcriptions of film dialogue found texts and conversations with audiences. We didn’t really think of them as scripts, or about other people performing them.

That probably changed with Where From Here, which we made with Jerry Killick in 2000. We’ve talked in the past about this show being a ‘coming of age’ show for Third Angel, and certainly it toured more extensively than anything we had made before. Several times in the touring life of the show Alex stepped in for Jerry when he wasn’t available. Even though the show was made and presented using a substantial amount of autobiographical improvisation, we found that Alex borrowed most of Jerry’s material and only added his own material in the final scene. At some point there was a conversation about other people performing it, and after the touring was finished, Rachael and Jerry wrote down their improvised sections (the rooms and the stories in them, if you know the show) and we added in the written speeches and made a script. There were a couple of conversations about publishing it, but it never quite happened.

Since then writing has become a more deliberate aspect of our process, and even in the more devised shows, printed scripts/texts are created for dramaturgical and technical purposes – for cueing the shows and for surtitling international gigs.

From the Introduction: There’s A Room
“Who’s in the room?” This is the question we ask ourselves about each project. It means, who is making this show? Who is in the room in which the work is getting made? Whose voices, whose expertise, whose experience is being brought together to tell this story with us?

When we started talking to Oberon about publishing some of the shows, a couple of years ago, we realised that a ‘complete works’ volume was not financially viable, and that we had to make a first choice of what we want to publish in this collection. We were interested in collecting shows that were created through exploratory, collaborative devising processes, and had resulted in scripts that could be performed by other artists and companies. With that in mind it was clear that the other two texts should be Presumption, made with Chris Thorpe, and What I Heard About the World, made with Chris and our Portuguese friends at mala voadora. These are the shows that have either been performed by another company (Presumption, The ECC, Brussels, 2012/13) or people have asked about the performance rights.

So we’ve gone back to the touring scripts, updated whilst on the road as the shows evolved, and added in some stage directions on top of the Stage Management notes, expanded some of our performer short-hand to make a few things clearer. We’ve written new introductory essays to explain the devising process of each show, and some more background about the company. We’re looking forward to it being out in the world.

The title of this collection also refers to the situation of each show, and the concerns of the work. Each takes place in a particular room – in which the audience are acknowledged to a greater or lesser extent. In each piece the lives of the people in the room together are affected by events in the world beyond its walls. Events they have taken part in, events they have heard about, events they have imagined. Taken chronologically, the three shows turn their attention outward, from the intensity of personal relationships and our domestic lives, to the overwhelming number of stories and events taking place in the world beyond.

We’re launching the book on 14th October 2019 at the Off The Shelf Festival in Sheffield, at 7pm, at Sheffield Hallam University’s Performance Lab on Arundel Gate. Rachael and Alex will be in conversation with writer and critic Lyn Gardner*, and we’ll be reading a few selections from each show. We’d love you to join us – tickets are available here.

After the launch There’s A Room will be available to buy from Oberon Books or directly from us.

**

Thanks to everyone at Oberon for pulling this together. Cover design above by Konstantinos Vasdekis. Photograph of Rachael Walton in Where From Here by Rob Hardy. Publication supported by Leeds Beckett University.

*Update: we’re sorry to learn that Lyn has had to clear her diary to deal with a family emergency. Chris Thorpe was scheduled to be with us for the event anyway, and will now help lead discussions. We wish Lyn the very best and thank Chris for stepping up. 

Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Staging Loss



My grandad travelled to Cape Wrath on Tuesday 20th September 1988, and in 2011, the 20th September was again going to fall on a Tuesday. This felt too good a coincidence to miss, so I booked my journey for exactly the same dates.
8 hours by coach to Inverness.
5½ hours by (mini)bus to Durness; the 804, the longest stopping bus route in Britain.
Overnight in a hostel.
A 2 mile walk to the ferry point.
20 minutes in an 8-person boat across the Kyle of Durness.
30 minutes by minibus to the Cape Wrath lighthouse. 
It was only having got there that I realised, to my own surprise, that this journey was, of course, an act of remembrance. I decided that I would go and drink a shot of his favourite whisky for him. I don’t like whisky, and I don’t know very much about it. But I do know that his favourite whisky was Famous Grouse, so that’s what I drank.

**

This is an extract from “Cheers Grandad! Third Angel’s Cape Wrath and The Lad Lit Project as Acts of Remembrance”, a chapter I have contributed to the beautiful publication, STAGING LOSS: Performance as Commemoration, edited by our good friends Michael Pinchbeck and Andrew Westerside. We’re delighted to be included in such a great line up of artists and contributors.

The book has grown out of a symposium of the same name, hosted at the University of Lincoln last year. It was a day of really interesting, and often very moving, presentations. I’m looking forward to reading them as chapters… The book is out now from Palgrave Macmillan. More details here.


There's lots more information about making and touring Third Angel projects 2008-2017 on our original blog, and 2017-2023 on the blog on this site.