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
