Long Overdue!

Aloha amigos! It's been a bit of a while but we've got some nice material from our ACE-funded W-I-P last month.

The trial of Goneril, in emergency lighting

Lear keeping counsel

Lear shedding responsibility, ready for a new life

The painful reality of Lear's new life

It was a well attended, well received show and we've had time to analyse the faults, follies, failures and triumphs of our King Lear and where it goes from here. These include but are not limited to;

1) We need a variety of modern and classic text - less reverence for the text overall, more personal ingenuity

2) More focused strike on the political issue, not broad attack on politics/politicans

3) We'll treat it more as an exploration of the toxicity of power on the human soul, citing relevant, focussed examples from contemporary society

4) Great tech; enhance, condense and restrain where appropriate to maximise potential power

5) Condense characters, reanalyse and focus our narrative, our plot

6) Restrain use of silence and darkness to maximise potential power

7) Restrain and selectively utilise live sound alteration

8) Restore magic of some over-exposed digital tech effects (i.e. handheld projector)

There's a few more but we're pretty happy we're on a good track, we've come far in a year and will go far yet. Aside from all this, our Illyria workshops are going great, with performance in a little over a month, our STAX group (Basingstoke) are performing admirably and creating themselves a captivating world that Dave and I are really looking forward to releasing! Keep up the great work guys! More updates on Lear revisions and the first phase of our new project.

DP

King Lear + Creation Space fortnight = work-in-progress!

Bonjour folks! And a hearty hello from Fat Cat and the Propaganda team. We've been markedly inactive here I know but we've just completed a 2 week R&D rehearsal process for the show at The Point in the wicked Creation Space. Lots of hard work poured in, fantastic performers, a great ensemble...I'm lost for words in my joy at the moment. Sufficed to say, it's looking really engaging and with the final tweaks to the A/V element, we'll have a powerful show on our hands.

Fool in the 'stocks' with Saddam Hussein

Lear & his uncompromising daughters

Our movement director James Moffat, working his magic!

Dave Orme (Director) & David Pearce (Producer)

Lear captivated by the Fool's spin

Broken Lear at his lowest, just before the storm

All pictures courtesy of Matt Bartram of MightyDrive

King Lear (W-i-P) will play at The Point, Eastleigh for one night only and will be followed by a Q&A session with the creative team. Tickets are £6 (£5 concession) and the event will last approximately 1.5 hours, starting at 7:30pm on Tuesday the 20th of September. Come along if you can, we'd love to hear all your feedback so we can develop this great show for a regional tour!

....it begins!!!!!

Hola folks! So begins day one of our process! The performers are arriving as I type and we are excited beyond belief. The Creation Space is naked and malleable, the directors feeling fervently energetic and the accomodation here at The Point is hospitable and conducive. Very exciting times indeed. Look out for plenty of process documentation and material from the next ten days of creation!

David

Followthe, Followthe, Followthe, Followthe....

Things are moving speedily along for the company and we just signed our contract with The Point for the September showcase. So exciting times. We've also got some workshops with STAX at Anvil Arts Basingstoke coming up in October, as well as supporting BlackEyed's regional tour of Oh What A Lovely War! with our educational workshops.

Aside from this, August is a month of audiovisual creation in preparation for the actors' arrival. Here is a sample of our David Arnold [specifically Metal Gear Solid] inspired music.


[NB: Link to be inserted asap]


David

Total Eclipse of the Lear

Greetings! Dave and I have spent the past week rehearsing feverishly in the main house at The Point trying to get a solid set design down as well as a rough idea of the kind of lighting tricks and shadowry that we as a company ever so love! But happily I can announce that we're...mostly there. Of course there'll be slight changes after the two week rehearsal period in August and September but I think it's gonna look really cool and eerie. And meaningful too!

This is a preview of what you can expect, courtesy apparently of Bonnie Tyler, Fat Cat and the company. We're lighting entrances and exits and it is producing a wonderful effect that is a great development on our B-movie aesthetic from the Terrorem sessions. We tested some explosive charges too which was not only terrific fun but bloody amazing to look at too. The best part is that all this seemingly superficial effect testing is brilliantly supported by the mood of our cut of Lear. Oooh! I can't wait! Meantime, Edinburgh is upon us all, and Dave and I are attending the fringe, leaving our deputy in charge...

Can't wait to see what he comes up with! Our good friends Milk Presents, The River People and ShadyJane are shaking their theatremakers up in Scotland for the Fringe festival and we urge you all to go and see their work. All deliciously talented and will have you roaring for more! [see end for details]

In other news, the company has been invited to take part in a series of guest post blog sessions at www.openshakespeare.org. Lucky enough to be set next to some delightful folks in the academic and professional fields, we're to discuss Shakespeare and the Internet, with some focus towards our e-approach to Lear. So we're dead excited for loads of reasons! Share your joy too on our twitter page and let us know about your own experiences with King Lear, with political theatre or with any of the issues that our Lear will highlight. Fat Cat would love to hear you mew @ PropagandaCo!

Milk Presents - Bluebeard
ShadyJane - Sailing On
The River People - Little Matter

David

Voting Poll closed! Future planning is the winner folks!

Your empire is over. How will you divide your kingdom?

According to resources. Plan now for future security.	60%
According to ethnic divides. Folk don't mix well with other folk.	5%
In three, then shake all cares of business from your age.	20%
Don a blindfold, grab a pen, then Picasso the shit out of it.	15%

King Lear in Genesis

Behold the mighty King Lear (in Terrorem) in all its glory. Because that's not conceited. Anyways folks, Fat Cat has forwarded us the beautiful photography work of Mr Matthew Bartram Esq of MightyDrive and we have popped 'em up here for you to all have a gander at. They're from our 19th of May 2011 showcase of King Lear, the prelude to our ACE funded R&D show in September. So put your feet up, rest easy in how good you've got it and watch in wonderment as you see the genesis of our aesthetic. In non-poncey terms, here follows how our touring show will look.

David

Lear & the world of yesteryear...

Well, it's been a busy while folks but Fat Cat has been working tireslessly at a typewriter with a bottomless glass of Pimms all month. He's been sending shite loads of emails direct from those metallic keys, but since they may not have got quite as far as intended, I've decided to write an update myself.

Anywho Dave and I recently got our Arts Council funding to do our R&D project King Lear in September. Pencil it in for the 20th of September at The Point, Eastleigh and we look forward to seeing all comers! Particularly those with big sacks of cash, a generous disposition and sycophantic tendencies.

Our angle is analysing power, state and control in the 21st century, highlighting a root cause of our current maladies lying in the ill thought out divisive acts of kingdom beyond world war 2, when various empires including our own fell into decay and ruin. The partition of India and Pakistan, the conflict in Libya and the interventions in Vietnam, South America and Afghanistan are of colossal contextual interest to us and will be explored by a plethora of physical and audiovisual means.

Above is a picture of India during the Raj when it was a colony of ours. You can see how much of a flashpoint the nation we now call Pakistan would become when Britain simply cut the nation loose without considering ethnic and spiritual differences of the new country. In effect the lynchpin of unity, albeit an unjust one (UK rule) was swept out from under their feet overnight. If only this was the sole instance of this in global history...


Sufficed to say that we will be making a big fat comment on the lack of forethought that our world leaders suffered from when they allowed the division of kingdoms, of neighbours, of empires, enemies and friends to be so utterly chaotic. We're drawing a distinct link between today's threat of guerilla doom and misguided decisions taken 70 years ago, as well as the clean up operation that involved the UK going into Korea and the US putting a bullet in Osama Bin Laden's face. Twice. And then burying him at sea according to Islamic tradition....IN OPPOSITE LAND!!! And the focal point geographically will be our current engagement/conflict/damn bloody war in Afghanistan.


Sorry, went off on one. Anyway, the text of Lear is massively cut, forming an abridged version of the show involving only 5 characters - Lear, Poor Tom, Fool, Goneril and Regan. Cordelia will be an idealogical fragment heard and seen in adverts and propaganda all displayed on an audiovisual basis. All the music will be created by us too, hopefully building a frighteningly immersive experience touching on the four dimensional. Any science whizzes, this is where you tune out and tell me space and time is not possible to represent on stage! But I'm talking about the sensory version. So yeah, very spine-tingley and haunting as well as powerfully damning and maybe offering a solution or two. 'Cos it ain't enough to complain, you gotta propose. Nobody likes a naysayer and the best cure for a bad idea is a good one.

We're gonna post some snaps from our three shows we've developed here at The Point, Eastleigh tomorrow
 so you can see the genesis of our work from when we started our association here, how far we've come since late 2010. It's a ways I'll tell you that now!

David

Stop doing Suzuki at me!!

This weekend was an unparalelled success for our progress with the piece in development. James Moffat, an alumnus of ours from Kent journeyed westward from Canterbury and joined us in the creation space for two days of non-stop action. Stopping at dusk of course for snacks and treats. The introduction of a talented and mostly competent movement director to our project worked well.

We're discovering with every rehearsal, more about our practice and our product. We're steering close to a visual opera aesthetic where the political/cultural/social etc etc message will be clearly highlighted with information and then hammered home through evokative imagery. In short, we're gonna make such a stirring AV siege that our audiences are gonna be on tentahooks at every step of the way, hopefully successfully deciphering what we have to say. That wasn't short at all. Ok, over to Fat Cat our spokesfeline for a bit o' brevity.

David



You're gonna be like WOW!!!! You won't know what hit you. All you'll know is that you gotta do something big to remedy the global malady. All power to the people! Anything left over to me.

Fat Cat

In Terrorem - Lear Rex

In Terrorem is latin for "in order to frighten." It is the title of both halves of our new show, the installation and the performance itself. Prospective audience can expect to see many an item of interest including a model town, a fiendishly edited and homemade simulator and a rather acerbic history of CCTV. Amongst many other things. Everything we do in this show is related to the contemporary practice of instilling fear of the shadows in the populace, for actions at home and abroad. It's all guided by the structure of King Lear and the aesthetic of the 1950s horror B-movie. So there's a lot going on. If you're Eastleigh-based look out for some guerilla mischief from us sharpish. Otherwise, we look forward to giving the Solent folk, just Itchen for some stimulation (a local pun - mwahaha!) a chunk of our inimitable propaganda. Vive La Gras Chat! Long live the Fat Cat!

We've also got plans in the works for our next show, currently titled Animal Schmarm, to get around those fiddly Orwell estate lawyers! Haha, I jest, but it's going to be us tackling the corporation-cum-state phenomenon of this decade. Shell, Nestle, McDonalds and Google - watch out! Our battle is looming!

David

Hush! There's goes a whizzbang!

And so we enter a new conflict. The new century is looking as turbulent as they come as the bombs fall on Gaddafi. The Colonel, or as The Sun calls him, Mad-Dog has been crushing rebellion in his country for well over a month now and finally a UN resolution passed two days ago to deal with the tyrant. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and Muammar Gaddafi is discovering how painful it is being left out in the cold in our global society...but so are his people. I really fear he will place civilians in harm's way during the coalition bombing raids. This proponent of state-sponsored terrorism is more than capable of such an evil act, and given his borderline insane state, we have to be really clear about our endgame, if it can be sol callously called.

So, we bomb again. We know only destruction as a remedy for destruction - it is sad that this is the only way, and I wonder how effective the blue helmets would have been in Libya rather than the stealth bombers. I don't believe this conflict has suspicious ambitions but I pray the outcome is clear and decisive. Gaddafi has to survive though, as martyrdom would ensue...ack, so many things to get lost in. I can only pray for the dust to settle here, even if as I think will happen, the country will divide into pro- and anti-Gaddafi. Either way, callous again as it is, our next production has some meat to devour - let's hope it gets you talking about things again.

David

Terror at 0 feet!!!!

Yes troops, that's right! Our terror knows no bounds. Our lives are dominated by this ominous threat of doom, always right around the corner. I was on a train to Penzance not 24 hours ago and decided to read some H.G.Wells on the advice of the delightful Matt Beames at The Point. What a fantastic read, I couldn't put it down! But the short of it is thus, a lovely apt quote for our next project, currently titled Helmand (B-Movie):

"Every shadow became something more than a shadow, became an ambush, every rustle became a threat. Invisible things seemed watching me."
(Wells, H.G; 1896; p41)

And I think if we take The Island of Dr Moreau as a good sample text, it seems that Terror, the theme that ties both exhibition and stage show together, along with mad science creates a nice relationship, a trackable narrative; without needing to distort the commentary to fit. In short, we're going down the mad scientist creates monster that turns on him tale. A classic tale that everyone knows, thanks in part to Mary Shelley. This means we'll be commenting way more about the western creation of the Taleban and Al Q'aeda as opposed to merely reflecting on events in Afghanistan there now. We reckon this resolves many concerns raised by our technically impressive but somewhat unreadable showing at The Point this past Wednesday. Thanks again to all who came and please submit feedback forms to us - otherwise we'll never be able to finish our rosetta stone! But progress is pleasing us. Gotta submit the Arts Council funding app now. Hearty times...moneymoneymoney!

David

Swap 'til you drop!

'Allo folks. It's been too long. Dead sorry, but here's an update for you all. Basically Dave and I have been slaving over a hot theatre-pot to cook up something that speaks important truths and is somewhat edible. So Lidocaine/Helmand B is developing nicely as installation and stage show. The latter piece is what we're showing at the swapshop at The Point on Wednesday the 9th of March...so in 5 days time! We did our stage design yesterday and it's looking like an old fashioned camera, a picture box. With a mix of shadow play, projection, subtitling, dubbing and techno-interaction with our audience, this is starting to look like the B-movie/Afghan abstraction we were always looking for, justifying our creative choices. In short, it's coming together. We still have a long way to go but the Swapshop is going to aid us in this.

So not really much creative progress, more just polishing what we already have. Our next step after the swapshop is to explore the war itself as this only really goes up to death number 1 in the War on Terror. There are many more deaths, sufficed to say. But we definately want to include more live audio mixing and music so this may well be our next port of call. Milk Presents and Commotion will also be showing their work and we are really excited about it!

David

Sometimes...

...you can't make it on your own - sorry Dave, I had to go there. To be frank today was the first time we had a detailed outside eye view on Helmand (a B-movie). Shona, Katharine (new members), Sacha and Sarah all had a glimpse at our current workings and offered crucial advice on our next steps. We really need to be careful of placing the audience in the right context, giving the tools for analysis and then taking them with us on a clearly mapped out journey. In short, and cutting the pretentious waffle, we need to let them know more about Afghanistan and then put our stamp on events. Today we saw that our work does not yet let enough audience members who don't know much about this distant land in to the work. It's impenetrable, it's a touch on the chaotic but with no stability, no knowledge to compare it to; well, dumbfounded as a reaction is probably the least of our concerns. Still, food for thought, and with an Afghanistan shaped Gobo on the way I suspect that an informative yet interesting preface to our movie credits will be the way forward. Forget, "Do you know what ISAF is up to?" - what about, "What is The Propaganda Company up to!?" Haha! I jest, but it is a serious concern. If we do have an argument about the war, how can people join the debate if they don't know enough about the subject? And what's the point of informing the audience if we don't take an angle? Brains...Om nom nom.

David

The Paper Trail...

...is tedious and extremely handy.

Well, this is swell...

We have been rehearsing almost certainly all day, and although extremely tired we are dropping the internet a further update before nomnoms and then the pub.

Today has been a series of film editing and sketching up a running order of our work in progress Helmand (B-Movie), with the credits and the opening film sequences complete we will now be crafting and refining the live elements for the first 15 minutes of our pretty little show...

For your interest, here are our rehearsal notes so far, they're not quite a script, but then that would be spoiling it now, wouldn't it?

Dave

So you can see we've hard at work, putting the nation's numerous tax pennies to good use. Although contrary to what Dave says, we have not been working hard but merely plagiarising to the max! I jest. In reality, as the above documents show, the show is really starting to take shape. Using the structures of Romero and Castle in their classic b-movies, we've managed to sculpt ourselves a warped narrative that the Afghan war bleeds into damn well. We realised today that technical logistics mean that instead of using an increasing amount of singular projections, it'd be better to take a leaf out of the Precarious (Anomie, 2009) book and just run a continuous DVD, so we'll time the show's physical action accordingly. Muchos relief.

Our research into horror, and particularly zombies or demonic creatures has led us neatly into the realms of video games. Resident Evil is providing much inspiration for motion as well as visuals. Just check out the inspired dialogue and movement from this opening section of the original 1996 Capcom game. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW5CzlypV5A&feature=related

The Taliban and zombies make for an interesting parallel when you read into this recent article on US activities in Helmand province, the setting for our performance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12241803

"Come on, come out come and play," said the Marine sniper.

He spoke as he looked through his telescopic sight at a Taliban "spotter" who had just jumped behind a wall some 800m away. The man was not armed but was talking into a radio.

"Got P-I-D [positive identification]," said the sniper. "Cleared to engage." There was the suppressed crack of a silenced sniper round. The man fell to the ground.

"Enemy KIA (killed in action). Doin' the dead man dance."

"Good shooting, bro," came the reply.

These quotes in particular are a fascinating parallel to the world of hunting down the undead in the Romero movie. And those of today of course. So yes, exciting progress fans and thanks heartily for reading.

David

The advent of a new decade...

...was actually last year, since the naughties began on the 1st of January 2000. But never mind, let this be the start of a new decade of peace and unity. But I fear we are far from it folks. Our piece currently in production, Lidocaine/ Helmand: A B-Movie is a bilateral exploration of state control and influence, at home and abroad. The former, an interactive installation allows the audience to play at being a state, designing CCTV networks and coming up with laws to post onto the community clock tower. It also aims to challenge polarised views of how to run a state, intimating how thin and elastic the lines between anarchy and totalitarianism are, and how our own government dances in and out. We'll do this in quite a few ways, from the interactivity to real stories of power misuse and underuse.

The latter meanwhile is a standard seeming show operating within the comfortable confines of conventional theatre...one I really believe to be outdated for our own aims. It is a sufficient disguise for the Afghanistan/Horror flick narrative tie that we'll put up for tasting. Our objective is to highlight that the Afghan war follows an age old narrative governed by its fractious history and one that regularly matches that of the familiar horror films of Vincent Price et al. And that regardless of the moral objection to the outbreak and continuation of the war, it cannot be won in a total fashion. In a colossal underestimation of the consequences and requirements of the post-war government, we do more than rally for good against evil. We explore how we made every facet of the show, from hero to antagonist to dilemma - all except the resolution of course. For this show we're going to use as many different kinds of theatre as possible in an attempt to forge a multi-format message, one that survives through them all to discover a universal performance language between audience member and performer. What sticks? What's going to echo? What'll last in the heart and mind?

Our desire is to reignite interest in politics and the exposition of truth given the wide array of deceptions, half-truths and cover-ups the last decade has brought us.

On a practical level, our rehearsal week in the Creation Space at The Point starts and it is such a good space to inspire creation. Already the beginnings of an opening sequence and several movements have been choreographed. This'll be heavy, it'll be light, it'll be total.