Hansel and Gretel and Past Half Remembered

After wrestling with fake snow, tree trunks and blowing up hundreds of balloons, sadly, the first show I worked on during my work placement with NIE has come to an end at the Key Theatre in Peterborough. However, we will be back at the Key in May with North North North so we look forward to working with them again. Hansel and Gretel has been great and I have been able to work closely with Cat and Sarah, the Producer and Assistant Producer, which has given me a real insight into what it takes to make a show happen. Hopefully the show will be back at the end of the year, so watch this space!

So onto the next show! We are very excited about our first ever appearance in Wales and one night in Reading with award winning Past Half Remembered. The show will start in Reading on the 26th March at the South Street Arts Centre and then travel over to Cardiff to the Sherman Cymru Theatre for the 27th- 28th March. Ticket are available and it looks to be a brilliant show.

Katie White

Hansel and Gretel shows and art installation

We've had a brilliant time in Peterborough with Hansel and Gretel playing at the Key Theatre this February half term. Here are some of the audience responses to the show: Alongside the production, we have been working in collaboration with Metal, Vivacity and artist Robyn Woolston to create an artwork in response to the show. Robyn has worked in 3 local Primary schools (The Beeches, Hampton Vale and St Thomas More) to help generate the material, and ran craft workshops over each performance day at the Key Theatre. The result was a beautiful installation picking up key words and phrases from the show, and bringing the forest into the Key Theatre foyer:


 


Thanks so much to the Key Theatre, Vivacity and Metal and the audiences in Peterborough for making this a really special week!

Cat Moore - UK Producer

Hansel and Gretel in Peterborough

We have been working on projects in Peterborough for many years now in collaboration with Vivacity. This has included our site specific show Tales from the Middle of Town co-produced with Eastern Angles which transformed a former Waterstone's store in Queensgate shopping centre and was a walkabout show using young people as our co-creators,with the material generated through storytelling workshops in 12 Primary schools.

 

 We are really pleased to be back in the City this week with family show Hansel and Gretel which performed to family audiences at The Junction (Cambridge)in 2011 and has just returned from a seven week sell-out run at the Tobacco Factory Theatre (Bristol). This is the first time we have played the show outside of a christmas season, and we opened yesterday at the Key Theatre to very excitable half-term audiences.

 We have four more performances to take place and had some great responses from audiences so far:

"a wonderful, funny show, that I would have been very sorry to miss" Juliet Lee Catch it while you can! Cat Moore, Producer

Four star review from The Guardian for Hansel & Gretel

“A folksy affair, done with just the right touch of nastiness and warm-hearted playfulness… much to enjoy for all members of the family”★★★★ Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

We have had a brilliant time making and playing Hansel & Gretel to thousands of school children and families throughout the run so far at The Junction, Cambridge.

On a bumper show day of 3 shows to packed audiences, Director of Hansel & Gretel, Alex Byrne reflects on the experience:

We have been thrilled at the amount of newspaper coverage for the show, and really chuffed at a four star review in The Guardian for Hansel & Gretel:

For the full review, please click here

Guardian theatre tips - Hansel & Gretel

We were really pleased to be mention in Lyn Gardner's tips for The Guardian on shows to see in the week coming up, and an image from the show for Hansel & Gretel:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage

Can't wait until we open on Wednesday 7th in Cambridge!

Final rehearsals for Hansel & Gretel (UK)

We did a run through of the show today - its shaping up to be a great show, but still needs a bit of editing to make it around 60 minutes running time. A few shots below from the run through:

Hansel & Gretel with their Father (and Stepmother)

Hansel collecting pebbles to find their way home

Explaining the plan to Gretel....

Finding their way back home

In the Witch's House

Hansel being fattened up to be eaten!

Design meeting for Hansel & Gretel

Today we had a design meeting with Steffi who is designing the set and costumes for the show.

We also had a look at the next version of the puppets of Hansel and Gretel that we will be using for some parts of the show and I think they look really good.

Steffi had made a small set model working on our ideas about trees and branches in a forest. We also talked about some ways of using projections as part of the set.

Things are really moving on now, we also talked a lot about costumes and how the design will be used to tell the story....

More soon - the show is getting closer and closer, and tickets are selling fast!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad by Alex Byrne

Location:Cambridge

Hansel & Gretel: set design

Alex met with Steffi today (our set designer and one of the performers in Hansel & Gretel performing this Christmas at The Junction) to talk in detail about ideas for the set design. We will transform the theatre into a forest so we are currently talking to local tree surgeons about using bits of cut-off branches in our set. Steffi has also been working on some beautiful puppets which we use in the show:

Here they are in our office at The Junction, Cambridge with a head still to be added to little Hansel!

Hansel and Gretel in London

We had a workshop this week in London with Alex, Carly Davis and a bunch of great performers at St Mary's University College London. We have four confirmed cast members for Hansel and Gretel (the family Christmas show at The Junction, Cambridge this year), but are looking to find a fifth performer.We explored some of the songs from the show and played some improvisation games together.

Say cheese!

Last week we had a great time in the UK doing a photoshoot in Cambridge with two actors from the Christmas show we are co-producing with The Junction theatre.

We borrowed loads of different costumes from Classworks Theatre Hire, and Rew and Steffi (who is also the set designer for the show) spent a morning dressing up and playing about with them to get different shots to promote the show.

Photographer: Christa Holka

More Hansel and more Gretel...

Back into BAC today for more Hansel and Gretel madness. We have been working on lots of music using some simple tunes and motifs for the show. We have also been writing some lyrics which is really entertaining and a new thing for me. I keep thinking about the age range for the show and if the story is too scary – terrible things happen in the story – famine and cannibalism and death. We have been trying to have fun with these and keep then playful, to make sure that we explore them in a playful and questioning way.

We worked on the story and how to tell it trying to find out what we thought was important in the story.

Some lyrics for the story

Birds came down out of the trees and the bushes

And they ate up all of the crumbs

(that Hansel had dropped)

And when they woke from their sleep

They were lost in the forest

The way home had been devoured

(by the birds from the first verse)

Unai’s hungry Witch was very funny and scary as was his description of her hideous appearance…

Starting new work at BAC

Today was the first of a few days of development work at BAC in London. We were starting work on our new Christmas show based on Hansel and Gretel. It's a bit weirs to start working on a 'Christmas Show' in April but this is just the first workshop stage. The finished show will be on at the Junction in Cambridge in December of this year.

We have just started working on some ideas and messing around a bit. We spent a lot of time talking about the story and what it means and how nasty it is...
We also spent some time just playing around with some games and costumes. I have worked with Carly and Unai before but this is the first time that Steffi has worked for NIE - she was very very funny today.

Unai found out that the floor was not that clean.