Upcoming - this was a summer of remarkable beginnings, and they continue to move me forward. '33 was the most challenging show that I've ever created, and it took all of my energy. That seems to have been rewarded in being accepted by the Jury at the New Orleans Theatre Festival (so I'm currently heading slowly down towards NoLa to perform the show for a Southern audience). And the Gladstone Theatre in Ottawa will be doing a three week run of the show in February and March. I'm considering if I should take it over to the Edinburgh or Brighton Festival next summer to shop it around in the UK.
Other beginnings - well, I'll be going into the studio in New Orleans to record the vocal tracks for the CD based around '33. Tentatively titled ‘Closing Night - Songs of resistance and revolution from the dying days of the Weimar Republic'.
I'm currently working on a collaboration with the lovely and irrepressible Melanie Gall, on an imagined concert of Jaques Brel and Edith Piaf. I think it'll be more or less us amusing ourselves (and hopefully audiences) with some of the greatest songs ever written.
The wonderful English performance poet Jem Rolls has been kicking some ideas around for exploring the period of 1918-28 in revolutionary Russia - the so called Russian Spring - when ideas and creativity exploded, before being crushed by Stalin.
And, of course, there is a new show to write. Hoping to push myself even further after '33. This time I'm curious about the other side of the Atlantic. I'm listening to a swath of music from the late 1920's and 30's in the US of A. I'm fascinated by the last vestiges of Vaudeville and the final heydays of the travelling Circus. And I'm curious about the crushing of the radical left in America, and how that destruction might have been one of the causes of the current monolithic 'one party' state that exists.
Nothing written yet - just a bunch of themes that fascinate - we'll see where they take me
Other beginnings - well, I'll be going into the studio in New Orleans to record the vocal tracks for the CD based around '33. Tentatively titled ‘Closing Night - Songs of resistance and revolution from the dying days of the Weimar Republic'.
I'm currently working on a collaboration with the lovely and irrepressible Melanie Gall, on an imagined concert of Jaques Brel and Edith Piaf. I think it'll be more or less us amusing ourselves (and hopefully audiences) with some of the greatest songs ever written.
The wonderful English performance poet Jem Rolls has been kicking some ideas around for exploring the period of 1918-28 in revolutionary Russia - the so called Russian Spring - when ideas and creativity exploded, before being crushed by Stalin.
And, of course, there is a new show to write. Hoping to push myself even further after '33. This time I'm curious about the other side of the Atlantic. I'm listening to a swath of music from the late 1920's and 30's in the US of A. I'm fascinated by the last vestiges of Vaudeville and the final heydays of the travelling Circus. And I'm curious about the crushing of the radical left in America, and how that destruction might have been one of the causes of the current monolithic 'one party' state that exists.
Nothing written yet - just a bunch of themes that fascinate - we'll see where they take me
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