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.