Theatre Space in Italy

Have just returned from Umbria, where i was involved in a wonderful project creating the Rimondato Outdoor Stage... Alongside a group of architect students/graduates and their inspired teachers, we listened to and watched the space grow and grow. It was a real honour to be in amongst such fine down-to-earth creatives. In the end, we learned that if we considered that the spirit of the place, had called us, not the other way round, then we could feel a certain kind of relationship to the play, making it larger, older, more archaic than we had imagined. Architect = archeologist = archetype
 

The Quest For The Red Herring

Have just finished the script for part two of The Foolish Odyssey. It is called The Quest for the Red Herring, so expect a twist a turn and a false trail or three (and a pantomime fish!

The show is to debut in Lincoln in some woodlands and will include scenes in an actual labyrinth. Thereafter many dates around the place.

see www.theatrespace.co.uk/panto for more details

cut up 2

land and like stories, the seas are
to a violent
violent tempest that casts you adrift, crashing
Like stories, it is
casts you adrift,

Stories are a lot
warning, to a violent tempest
seas. Both can be
full of strange stories.

an eternity, never setting foot on land

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Sweet Magician CutUp one

the great open sea and the horizon.




The Sweet Magician

Far out at sea, thousands of the swell of the ocean is awesome, there is a
hidden there is a sense of being of time. Though the swell of thousands of
miles from land, there horizon.



there is a hidden stillness, beneath. the ocean is great and awesome, The Sweet
Magician

Far out See the great open sea Far out at sea, thousands awesome, there is a
hidden

Though the swell of the ocean being nowhere, of being out the empty, continuous
horizon.



The Sweet Magician

Far at sea, thousands of miles from of miles from land, there land, there is a
sense of being nowhere, of being out of being out of time. swell of the ocean
is the great open sea and the great and awesome, there is and awesome, there is
a empty, continuous horizon.



continuous horizon.



thousands of miles from land, there ocean is great and awesome,



open sea and the empty, continuous

Far out at sea, thousands

Far out at sea, thousands of being nowhere, of being of being out of time. Though
the swell of the ocean is

Far out at sea, thousands beneath. See the great open great open sea and the
Sweet Magician

Far out The Sweet Magician

Far out and awesome, there is a the empty, continuous horizon.



being out of time. Though the there is a sense of is a sense of being nowhere,
time. Though the swell of Though the swell of the ocean great and awesome,
there is a is a hidden stillness, beneath. there is a sense of beneath. See the
great open the swell of the ocean being out of time. Though the Sweet Magician

Far out at of the ocean is great and Far out at sea, thousands of

Far out at sea, thousands ocean is great and awesome, ocean is great and
awesome, swell of the ocean is great being nowhere, of being out of sea,
thousands of miles from land, of time. Though the swell of being nowhere, of
being out of ocean is great and awesome, there is a sense of a sense of being
nowhere, Sweet Magician

Far out swell of the ocean is great sense of being nowhere, of being great and
awesome, there is there is a hidden stillness, at sea, thousands of miles from
a hidden stillness, beneath. See time. Though the swell of the thousands of
miles from land, there of time. Though the swell of

Powered by ScribeFire.

Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding
Hood

Adapted by Simon Blakeman

1

Once upon a fairy tale, or so it has been said,

There lived a girl of purest heart, with a cloak of deepest
red.

She lived beside the ancient woods, where a wolf did hide

Who no-one ever seemed to catch, though many a man had
tried.

2

One day, her mother gave her a basketful of food

To take to her Old Granny, who lived in the heart of the
wood.

“Be sure to take the path that’s clear”, her mother made
her swear.

“The woods are deep and dark,” she said, “and the big, bad
wolf lives there.”

3

The girl, of course as we all know, strayed off the clear
way

And found herself in the deep, dark woods, just where we
cannot say.

“Hello there,” a voice did say, so rough and like a beast,

“A gentle child like you would make a rather splendid
feast.”

4

“I’m going to my Granny’s house to give her this fine
treat:

Some cakes, and fruit and apple juice and other things to
eat.”

“Well now child, your granny’s house? Yes, I know the
place.

I tell you what I’ll go there too. We’ll see who wins the
race.”

5

The wolf of course was swift of paw and knew the way to go

He came to granny’s house quite soon as she did sit and
sew.

Knock knock

“Come in dear, just lift the latch I’m so glad that you’re
here”

To her surprise it was not Red but the Wolf who did appear

6

He swallowed up the Granny whole and got into her bed

Dressed he was in Granny’s clothes from hairy toe to head

At last, along came Little Red who had ambled in the wood

(In spite of what her mother said and what she knew she
should)

7

She knocked upon her granny’s door with a heart so full of
cheer

“Come in dear, just lift the latch I’m so glad that you’re
here.”

“Granny, what big eyes you
have…”

“All the better to see you my
dear.”

“Granny, what big ears you
have…”

“All the better to hear you my
dear.”

“Granny, what big arms you
have…”

“All the better to hug you my
dear.”

“Granny, what big teeth you
have…”

“All the better to eat you my
dear.”

The Wolf, he jumped at Little Red with claws and teeth all
sharp

And Little Red she screamed a scream that shook the woods
apart

8

The scream it found the hearing ears of a woodsman with an
axe

Who ran to Granny’s house and saw muddy wolf-like tracks

With just one
swing of his mighty axe, the wolf let out a howl

And out popped Granny in one piece (and a smell that was
quite fowl)

9

The big, bad wolf did get away to live another day

No doubt he’ll take more care in what he chooses for his
prey.

And so our tale
is at an end, we hope you found it good

The strange adventures of a girl called Little Red Riding
Hood.

Powered by ScribeFire.

the curiosity engine 1

Here’s a quote from Hans
Christian Anderson’s novel The Improvisatore

One moonlit evening, on returning with my mother from a visit in Trastevere, we found a crowd in the Piazza di Trevi, listening to a man singing to a guitar- not songs like those which I had so often heard, but about things around him, of what we saw and heard, and we ourselves were in the song. My mother told me he was an improvisatore and Federigo, our artist lodger,
told me I should also improvise, for I was really a poet. And I tried it forthwith-singing about the food shop over the way, with its attractively set out window and the haggling customers. I gained much applause; and from this time forth I turned everything into song.

Hans Christian Andersen spent most of 1848 feeling sorry
for himself. It was not an unusual state for this hypersensitive hypochondriac,
with his conflicted sexuality and his tortured awareness of his own genius. He
had been flung into a gloom that January by the death of King Christian VIII of
Denmark, “whom I loved unspeakably”, and had been unable to shake himself out
of the depression.

The whole world knows that Hans Christian Andersen was
the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman, who through his own efforts and
the kindness of strangers raised himself from the gutter to become a great
poet.

Andersen himself called this
rags-to-riches story “the fairytale of my life”. But fairytale characters
are not always what they seem. At the end of Adam Oehlenschläger’s play Aladdin, a favourite of Andersen’s, it turns out that Aladdin is not the son of a poor tailor, but instead the son of an emir. Andersen’s childish imagination cast himself in the same scenario; he
was, he told his first school friend, a switched child of noble birth.

It is not an uncommon fantasy;
just the sort of thing to expect from a solitary and dreamy boy such as Hans Christian Andersen. But in Andersen’s case it is just possible that behind the consoling fantasy lies the naked truth.

Rumours about Andersen’s true
parentage have swirled around Denmark for a century or more. The most persistent, championed in books published there by Jens Jørgensen and Rolf Dorset, is that he was the illegitimate son of Countess Elise Ahlefeldt-Laurvig
by Crown Prince Christian Frederik, the future King Christian VIII. If true, it
was not just Andersen’s king who died that January, but also his father.

Themes:

§
Being switched at birth and being brought up unaware of
one’s ascendancy[1].

§
Learning to create spontaneously with the world around.
Making up stories/songs/plays in the moment.

---

[1] as·cend·an·cy–noun

the state of being in the ascendant; governing or controlling influence; domination.

Also,
as·cend·en·cy, as·cend·ance, as·cend·ence.

[Origin: 1705–15; ascend(ant) + -ancy]

—Synonyms primacy, predominance, command, sovereignty,
mastery, supremacy.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Apple of my I

An introduction to a story in honour of Apple Day. Can you work out how many varieties of apple are named here? (None are repeated).

The Apple of My I
By Simon Blakeman


It was a golden, delicious sunrise in July. Red
blaze like a rusty coat on a tiger, its redsleeves
an ambrosia beacon

Is this sundance of splendour some grove in Hawaii?
This Royal Gala of blushing golden fortune, the hightop sweet of the northern lights.
Seek-no-further, for this is an English Beauty.

Here, is Anna – Lady Williams – bathing in the Bess Pool of her Lakeland royal court. Her suntan is summer yellow, honeygold coppertone like a moore sweet Cleopatra, as she enjoys (in the buff), the Beauty of Bath Fallawater.

“As the nectar draws the bee, bring my one true love to me”

Now, here is Johnathan of the good land, the pioneer of liberty. The aroma of freedom a garland for his firm gold horse, transcendent crab.
Jonnee ‘Red’ Jonathan Laxton’s superb burgundy leathercoat, the sign of the grenadier, made him seem King Russett, as he rides through the parkland of the Garden Royale.

Soon, his discovery of the Lady, the hidden rose, will be a surprise for jonagold “vista bella”. Would Jonwin William’s pink pearl?…..

Powered by ScribeFire.