Learning to fly

Last week Metta Theatre ventured in the unknown and not a little terrifying territories of dance theatre and contemporary circus as we spent a few days developing a piece that might hopefully see the light of day in April/May 2011 - a devised physical piece inspired by Jeanette Winterson's Sexing The Cherry called Points of Light.

Where to start - where did we start - well I know very little about contemporary circus and probably even less about dance (in any formal proper way) so I started as I start everything just by jumping in with a spirit of wonder and a childlike grin. So far so good.

Metta likes...Shadow

WarHorse, Oliver Theatre 2007, photography Simon Annand 

Shadows are great - here at Metta we love a bit of moody and dramatic lighting  - and also the (in our opinions) under-exploited medium of shadow puppetry too. Will is always fond of dark lighting (?!) - or perhaps more accurately using shadow/being very directional in his lighting. But the queen of shadowy lighting (who is actually known in the business as 'The queen of darkness') is Paule Constable whose brilliance/darkness can currently be seen in lots of shows (War Horse in town, Danton's Death at the National, the Blasted that just closed at the Lyric, Hammersmith). In a similar vein I like to think of Will as the prince of darkness - not in an evil way! (Also he looks a bit like Paule).

Metta likes...Reviews

Well ok, we do have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them of course, they are there to criticise us after all - and we certainly prefer them when they're glowing!

The Guardian Theatre Blog

I guess there are two parts to this discussion. The first part is the simpler one - reviews are a great way to get the word out about a show - people read reviews in places that they wouldn't have seen our advertising, so we can reach a wider group of people to tell them that the show is on. And a review of course gives a lot more detail than an advert would, and it's not biased because it's not been written by us! The second part of the discussion is perhaps more interesting though - reviews are a vital part of the feedback we get about a show.

Metta likes... Horror

In all honesty, I don’t think that we’ll be getting out the rubber gloves and mixing up the vats of blood for any of our shows just yet. However, lately I’ve been working with Theatre of the Damned on their production of Grand Guignol, which opened at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden yesterday, and it's got me properly thinking about horror theatre for the first time.

As a genre it often treads a fine line between the terrifying and the farcical, and I have a real respect for the skill it takes to balance that line – one misjudged decision by an actor or a director and the audience are lost, one laugh from one member of the audience and the atmosphere can be shattered for everyone. I can think of few types of theatre which are quite so fragile - it's not for the faint-hearted in any respect!

Metta likes...Puppets

I blogged a few weeks ago about Handspring's wonderful Or You Could Kiss Me - which features wonderful almost life-size wooden puppet men. But it seems like there's a lot of it about at the moment - puppetry that is. Last week I worked on some research and development for Aerial Choreographer/Director Layla Rosa's new show Beneath My Feet, which will be featuring puppets as well as circus. That was a great (as in large but also wonderful) challenge because the tempo of puppetry and the tempo of circus are somewhat at odds with one-another - you can't ask an aerialist to hang from a rope for 5 minutes, while it cuts into their skin and their arms turn to jelly, in order to give time for a puppet to slowly swim across the stage.

Also I'm just about to open a show at Theatre 503 called The Prophets and the Puppets (which I've directed as part of their Coalition Festival), which stars a marionette operated by one of this country's greatest puppeteers Ronnie Le Drew (most famous for his role as Zippy in Rainbow).

Metta likes... Intimacy

Great as it is to see large scale epics, with giant sweeping sets and dozens of actors (Marianne Elliott's Women Beware Women at the National was a brilliant example of this type of theatre), there is something truly magical about an intimate theatre experience. We love theatre that is so close that you can see the dust and smell the sweat.

Last week I saw Saturn Returns at the Finborough. It had a great script and fantastic performances, but one of the things that lent it real power was the close proximity of the audience to the action. The story was a deeply personal one, showing the same man at three different stages in is life at three different crisis points with three different women. Much of the script was the personal reflections of the main character, much of the action was his memories.

#ManWithTheFlower

Because it's winter, and grey and gloomy and miserable, we're cheering people up by giving away another set of tickets to our current show, The Man with the Flower in his Mouth.

Just tweet a picture of yourself with a flower in your mouth using hashtag #ManWithTheFlower by noon on Tuesday 30th November. Our 5 favourite pictures will be notified via Twitter by 4pm on the Tuesday and offered a ticket to any performance before the end of the run.

Anyone can take part - all you need is a picture of yourself with a flower of some sort. Real, wooden, paper, whatever and wherever you like!

“It’s an enthralling hour in New Cross” * * * * WhatsOnStage

“this delightful production is another reminder that this is a company to watch.” Spectator

“The setting is inspired, blending theatre with everyday life in a disconcerting mix” Londonist

Metta likes... Detail

I love seeing really close attention to detail in a production.

Peter Gill

I've just seen Over Gardens Out by Peter Gill Riverside Studios, directed by Sam Brown, and it's a production that demonstrates what I like just perfectly. Sam and his designer, Annemarie Woods, have paid attention to the detail both in the visual world they are showing us - Annemarie's costumes and set were wonderfully in-period, managing to locate the production in time and place perfectly and yet in a beautifully simple and uncluttered way - and also into the action as well.

Metta likes...Hamlets

Loren O'Dair
Photograph Anna Hmmersley

This week Hamlets. Metta likes Hamlet in general - the play and the character - having done our own all-female version back in 2007, (also I assisted on Tim Carroll's production for The Factory) and in the last two weeks I've seen another two productions - the UK tour mounted by Icarus Theatre Collective, starring Metta regular Loren O'Dair, and the National Theatre production (though not with Mr Kinnear).

Interestingly though I saw both these shows at a point at which they weren't quite ready for public consumption - the Icarus production was a dress rehearsal and the National production was the understudy run.

Responding to a site

Samuel Collings | Photograph William Reynolds

So our latest production - Luigi Pirandello's The Man With the Flower in His Mouth - takes place within a café. I mean not only is the action (such as it is) set in a café but we're also staging it in one - the beautiful and intimate (recently opened) London Particular on the New Cross Road. And in fact this is our second foray into site responsiveness this year (I won't dare to call it site-specific because for the purists out there site-specific is itself a very 'specific' term) after our commission from the V&A museum to create a performance (which became for us a bit of an experiment in dance theatre) in one of their Spiral Booths.

Metta likes... Production values

This week, we like high production values.

Well, we always like high production values, but lets think a little about what that means. What we often mean is a slick and highly polished production - the sort of thing that looks expensive to achieve, the kind of professionalism you expect to see at the National or in the West End for example, but is that the only meaning?

Metta likes... Site specific theatre

This week - site specific theatre!

I have to admit that I still sometimes get lost in the terminology here. We have site specific, site sympathetic and then site responsive. Since the vagaries of the term is not an original gripe, I'll brush over it and quickly define what I'm talking about. What Metta really like at the moment is theatre performed where it is set.

Metta likes...men

Between the three of us (me, Heather & Will) we see at least five different shows a week so in the spirit of celebrating all the great art out there (not just the stuff we make) we have decided to have a weekly round-up of great things that we want to share with the world.

I'll kick off with Out of Joint's production of The Big Fellah - running at the Lyric Hammersmith til Oct 16th and then on tour til mid November.

Revivals

Abrahm & Isaac | Photograph William Reynolds

So this time last week we were busily reviving our Southbank show - Waiting (the verbatim piece about British Muslim women whose husbands were held without trial in Guantanamo and Belmarsh), which went fantastically well and sold out again (hurrah!), but has got me thinking about revivals. Because as well as Waiting we have also revived this year Abraham & Isaac (one of our puppet operas, well technically one of Benjamin Britten's Canticles, that we premièred last year at the Grimeborn Festival, Arcola) and Journey of The Magi (another Britten canticle we scratched and hatched back in Feb/March at the Little Angel Theatre & Shunt vaults - before they closed alas!!!) both of which we combined in the show Canticles at The Little Angel in April. And in terms of future revivals of course we're desperate to bring back Otieno next year.

The Essentials

Will and I have just got back from watching Aftermath in the Old Vic Tunnels - a verbatim piece about civilian fallout from the Iraq invasions. So apart from prompting immediate comparisons with Waiting - our verbatim piece about the civilian fallout from the war on terror in this country - and the comparisons are striking, it prompted a very heated discussion on the tube about the essentialness of art.

Finding the form

For the last 4 years I've been adapting Jeanette Winterson's beautiful and magical (I won't call it magical realism because I know she doesn't like that tag) novel Sexing The Cherry for the stage. Which makes it sound like a long and arduous task - artistically speaking it was actually one of the easiest or should I say most pleasurable/fluid things I've done. The hard part is getting it on. Several 'important' theatre people have read it now and they all say the same thing - it's very beautiful but it's not a play. And it's not, but neither am I prepared to make it one and sacrifice/compromise the mode of presentation - which is story-telling - by converting it into action and dialogue.

Directing dance and randomness

So last weekend we ventured into the unknown and not a little terrifying territory of contemporary dance with our latest piece 12 Dancing Princesses (an extract from the Jeanette Winterson novel Sexing the Cherry that I've been adapting for the last four years). Adapting Shakespeare/mounting a new play about Zimbabwe in just over 9 weeks we can do, surprisingly easily it turns out, but directing dance...well.

Theatre/Baby Metaphors

So I often think that creating a show is in some ways like creating a baby - with the writer being the father who after the initial effort has to some extent sit back and let the director-mother get on with it (which is perhaps pretty telling of how I like to work with writers).

Food and Theatre

Heather (Metta's Exec Producer and also Producer of Otieno) is always mocking me because I insist every Metta board meeting revolves around food, whether it be eggs benedict or sausage sandwiches at our breakfast meetings, soup with home-made bread at our lunch meetings and casseroles & stews at our dinner meetings. Anyone who knows me even a little knows a) I'm a big eater and b) I get a bit bored talking business for too long. So is the food simply a ploy to keep me in the room? Until Monday I would have rather sheepishly conceded that was probably the case but I'm beginning to realise food and Metta Theatre are actually far more inextricably linked.

Otieno Rehearsals

It's day three and so far only one tantrum from the writer (which bearing in mind he's also the lead actor, sound designer and as of this morning fight director!!! is pretty good going.) But as a director who works predominantly with dead writers I'm more used to fighting with actors! Luckily he is one of those too, and the tantrum consisted of a few minutes of silent mutterings and then a big hug and copious apologies. Though he was only trying to preserve the integrity of the play - which is always something worth fighting for.

Canticle Rehearsals

So this is a busy week - when is it ever not - rehearsing the Canticles for our Little Angel show, getting together the video together for last week's extract of Cocteau in the Underworld at the Royal Opera House (it's going to be used in a lecture on technology in opera or some such) and a million and one meetings for Otieno. Excitingly we're having a read-through of Otieno this afternoon - not that we have a full cast yet, but it will be great to hear the thing read aloud, even if not by the same actors who'll actually be in it. And our stage manager's been out this morning raiding a major props store for Otieno.

Prima donna

A quick update from behind my production desk - we all work as freelancers too, so as well as working on Otieno I'm also designing video projections for Prima Donna at Sadlers Wells this week.
It's a new opera by Rufus Wainwright, directed by Tim Albery, which premiered at the Manchester International Festival last summer.

Otieno auditions going very well...

This time a week ago we were still recovering from the huge success of our Southbank show Waiting when suddenly Southwark Playhouse ring offering us a 3 week slot in May.

we're a company!

Metta Theatre Limited - We've just incorporated as an official company, limited by guarantee! Our board of directors are: Will Reynolds, Poppy Burton-Morgan, Ben White, Mairi Brewis and Hether Doole.