Notes for work-in-progress showing of Ko

These are the notes we'll be giving out as a handout for the scratch of Ko tomorrow, which explains a bit what our process and thinking has been so far:

For this play, we set out to write something that grappled with the ideas of legacy, posterity and memory: ‘what’, we wanted to ask ‘would survive of our grandparents- or our memories of them- a thousand years in the future?’

From the outset we have seen this play as a science fiction. There’s something about the space you find in… space that we hoped would allow us to get a real distance from things that are very close to us in order to perhaps see them with fresh, or impartial eyes.

Beyond that, we love the naivety and bravery of classic science fiction astronauts and wanted to tell a story of two of these characters coming up against an enemy even more dangerous than a mutant spider or an atomic blob… memory. Those Sci-Fi films, we think, have always been about beautifully simplifying our most profound fears, in order to overcome them (or at least pretend for a while that you can) - so why not place our anxiety of forgetting into a malevolent planet that our intrepid explorers can overcome too?

What you are going to see today is the end of our very first explorations of these ideas (and a few more besides), and what will, we hope, form the basis of the rest of the development of the play.

Captain Ko

Deep in rehearsals for (what's currently being called) 'Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice' at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol, as part of the SITE residency. SITE has been a fantastic way of getting started on the show, as we've been able to work with a dramaturge (Lu Kemp) and a designer (Katie Sykes) right from the beginning. We're doing a showing on friday at the brewery (not public though unfortunately) and hoping to pull together about 20 mins worth of ideas around the subjects of memory, amnesia, and deep space.

Vantastic

Over the last six months we spent over a grand on van hire. A grand! That's basically more than we each got paid. So, in preparation for the autumn tour we've taken the plunge and bought a lovely little three-seat citroen dispatch. And spent basically a grand (a grand!) on insuring it.

Incidentally, if you are ever insuring a van, be advised that the word 'theatre' anywhere near the word 'profession' causes the insurance broker to hang up pretty much instantly.

Spinning Film

Spinning pics

Some more photos of Spinning at MKIF on our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dancing-Brick/53419388545), but couldn't resist putting this one up here too, courtesy of chief Spinner Laura Power's iPhone...

Starting Ko

We're in Bristol at the moment starting, just starting, work on a whole new show.

We arrived on Sunday and installed ourselves in an amazing flat (see pics) literally above the tobacco factory.

On monday we watched The Green Slime, Journey to the Seventh Planet, Rocketship X-M and The First Men in the Moon to get us in the mood. We want to try to use the style of b-movie science fiction to get us to a place where we can talk about 'big' things like memory and reality. By moving way into the future, or an imagined future, we hope to look back to the recent past, and give these events a real... space.

Standing at the start of a whole new show is overwhelming. There are so many ideas, so many grand ambitions that today we just had to take a deep breath and make some space suits (overalls, wellies and silver duck tape). In many ways though, this is the most exciting part of making a show: when it can still go anywhere, when everything is still possible. And we both agree that with this one...

We want to make something big.
Something complex
Something bold and beautiful and stark and austere
Something where one of us can say: "Nothing on this planet is real. Someone has brought them to life. Some alien being we don't yet understand"

Spinning at MKIF

We've been performing Spinning at the Milton Keynes International Festival all week to lovely crowds. Here are some quick pictures. Hope to put some more up soon.