Metta likes...Intensity

This week I started rehearsals for a non-Metta show - a new production of Barrie Keeffe's Gotcha, which is on at Riverside Studios (from March 1st-19th). It's quite a departure for me as it's just a play, I don't mean JUST a play - but I mean there's no puppets, circus or video projection craziness. It's just four people in one room, over one day. And it's brilliant, and will hopefully be a searing and visceral production which packs a real emotional punch (it's only day three of rehearsals but as everyone knows I'm an optimist). But it got me thinking about intensity...

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...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).