In a dark room with a lot of words and music

The last weeks are always like this …. though I swear every time that I will have the piece done and ready a month before, I end up in a dark room in the days before the opening with a lot of words and music trying to put them all together in the way that I imagined.





The Pig of Happiness is a reworking of a show I tried out last year at the London Fringe – The Barker’s Spiel …. however, extensive marketing research at the fringe revealed the title was impossible to pronounce for the average theatre goer… so changes were made. I thought this would be just a tiny tweak to the text and music, but it ended up being a total reworking of the piece.

So, the studio is full of paper – I work by sticking big sheets of brown paper all over the walls and then when I’m working on the show I can make notes with markers and stick ideas and images. It makes for a flexible way to work, but even I have to admit it sort of looks like I’m a crazy person living in a room, writing on the walls…



The Studio in mid rehearsal

at the moment there’s 12 songs and a ukulele and a concertina and an old casio and some backtracks and a bunch of text and old lights and costumes and a soft shoe shuffle and it all adds up to about an hour and forty five minutes — which is a problem since by the time I open in Ottawa on the 19th I have to have to cut it down to an hour….

it’ll be an interesting two weeks…. I’ll keep you updated on how it goes

you can see more of the work, and videos and listen to music at www.bremnerduthie.com