The Cricketers will be unleashed on the good folk of Warwick this Friday 15th May as part of the Great Warwickshire Show & Tell.
They’ll be in Market Square, Warwick outside the Shire Hall at the following times:
3pm – 3.20pm
5.05pm – 5.25pm
6.45pm – 7.05pm
Rain (unless torrential) will not stop play!
Applications are invited for an open audition for actors and actor/musicians with Talking Birds Theatre Company in Coventry. This is an opportunity to meet and work with the company in a relaxed group setting over the course of a day (11am-4pm), at the Shopfront Theatre in Coventry. We are not auditioning for specific roles, but rather identifying talented and versatile performers who the company can draw on for future projects (see www.talkingbirds.co.uk for examples of our previous work). We will also be inviting Artistic Directors from other regional companies to join us in the afternoon. Travel expenses and lunch will be provided.
To apply, please e-mail us at birdmail[at]talkingbirds.co.uk subject: Open Cast, with a resumé/CV of your experience to date (can include video/audio links), plus a short statement on why you would like to attend the workshop and what you would bring to working on a project with the company.
We particularly welcome applications from artists based in the Midlands, disabled artists and artists from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. This opportunity is aimed at emerging or established professionals rather than students, though those approaching graduation or postgrads will be considered. We will accept submissions through agents if they are accompanied by a personal statement from the individual.
Applicants of any age over 18 welcome.
Date of Workshop: Friday 5th June (Coventry)
Deadline for applications: 18th May (10am)
Date we will inform successful applicants: 22nd May
Telephone number for any queries: 024 7615 8330
Sometimes, something needs to be marked.
An anniversary.
The beginning of Spring.
A new job.
Successfully getting the lid off a stubborn jam jar…
And sometimes, the *only* way to mark something like this is with a fanfare.
Fortunately, Talking Birds is at hand to fill this uncomfortable gap.
» how?
1. Select whether you’d like your fanfare as an audio file, or as sheet music so you can play it yourself.
2. Select your instrumentation.
3. Tell us the occasion you want to mark.
4. We’ll agree a price for your chosen options.
5. Your fanfare will soon be winging it’s way to you.
6. Your occasion can be properly marked.
If you would like to commission a short fanfare, please get in touch via email.
The four-yearly national exhibition of stage design is currently on at Nottingham Trent University and, amid the impossibly grand designs for eye-wateringly large-scale productions, it features some small-scale gems including the white card model for the OakMobile (which was commissioned from Talking Birds by the National Trust in Birmingham in 2013) and Talking Birds’ Capsule, which was performed at Warwick Arts Centre in 2011. For more details of the exhibition, which is always worth visiting, see below:
The Society of British Theatre Designers’ National Exhibition 2015 in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum and Nottingham Trent University
14 – 31 January 2015
10am -5pm Monday to Saturday
The SBTD’s new national exhibition will open at Nottingham Trent University from 14 – 31 January 2015.
This major exhibition will showcase the work of more than 140 designers completed during the past four years.
New, emerging and established designers will be exhibiting their work, and the exhibition will celebrate the high quality of designs for a variety of theatre spaces, including the traditions of pantomime design, the ravishing visuals that transform many children’s books into stage spectaculars as well as the dance and opera designs by UK designers that are notable around the world. More details about the exhibition can be found here.
Selected work from this open exhibition will be shown at the next Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space from 17 – 28 June 2015, before taking up residency at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in London for six months from July 2015 and at a further galleries throughout the UK from March 2016.
You can now Listen Again to Ant&Cleo – the Musical! performed by Talking Birds with Orchestra of the Swan and the massed Elysian choirs of Bridgetown Primary, Bray’s and Welcombe Hills schools. The live audio stream of the Saturday performance is archived here. We’d love to know what you think of the ‘livestream’ and – if you saw it in the flesh – what you thought of the show, you can send us your review by clicking here.
If you haven’t got/can’t get a ticket for ANT&CLEO on Friday or Saturday – and let’s face it, they are now rarer than asp-venom antidote in Alexandria – FEAR NOT! We will be live streaming the audio so that you can listen in from the comfort of your sofa, via Mixlr.
** CLICK HERE TO ACCESS LIVE AUDIO STREAM **
Performances/Live Streams: FRIDAY 6.30pm & SATURDAY 2.30pm
You can access Mixlr via your browser, through our website or through the app (which you need to download in advance).
We’re entering the home straight on ANT&CLEO which shimmies into Stratford Artshouse this week and will be laid before a paying audience (that’s you, hopefully, but rest assured the tickets are very reasonably priced…) on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. There’s more info about the show and a link to box office here.
(Rumour has it that Saturday’s show is already sold out, but do check with box office in case there are any returns).
It’s been a busy summer for the company, with The Whale roving the land, making appearances at – amongst many other places and events – the Commonwealth Games, the RSC and the Royal Tall Ships Regatta. The OakMobile (the Whale’s leafy sibling) has been turning up in special places for the National Trust (with a final appearance at altitude atop the Clent Hills); and our new outdoor show The Cricketers causing sporting havoc outside the Birmingham Hippodrome as part of Summer at Southside. Our collaboration with the Centres for the History of Medicine in the UK and Ireland – A Malady of Migration – was performed in Coventry and Dublin; and The Q celebrated the art of queueing at one of the country’s top outdoor arts festivals – Mintfest, in Kendal.
If you’ve missed all that, there are a number of things you can do via the website, including an audio walk of Coventry – the first of our Trails of the Unexpected; a frankly silly Pirate Game; and an audio walk by a canal of your choosing. Visit www.talkingbirds.co.uk.
Meanwhile, Derek and Janet are working with our friends at Midlands Creative Projects and The Belgrade Theatre on The Hundred Years’ War – a new stage production which will give a fresh voice to war poetry from the last century. A national tour starts at the Belgrade Theatre on 31 October/1 November: see www.livepoetry.org for more dates around the UK.
Taking a more light-hearted look at conflict, our final event of the year is the premiere of Ant & Cleo – The Musical! Many of you voted for us and our partners Orchestra of the Swan in The People’s Millions, winning funding for the project. The production features 100 extraordinary young people drawn from two schools for children with special needs (Welcombe Hills and Brays) and Bridgetown Primary School, alongside the superb orchestral forces of the Swan and four brilliant soloists – Birds’ regulars Sam Fox of Kiln Theatre, Jake Oldershaw of Untied Artists and Louise Wayman return, and we’re delighted to welcome Themba Mvula to the ranks.
Hope to see you for this on the 7th-8th November, it’ll be epic.
We Are Casting for a BARITONE!
Singer/Actor – BARITIONE – for a part in Ant & Cleo – The Musical!
An Orchestra of the Swan / Talking Birds Theatre Co co-production
Versatile singer/actor for new family opera being performed with young people with Special Educational Needs alongside three other soloists and an 11-piece professional orchestra (Orchestra of the Swan) in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Person spec: strong baritone, music reader, versatile actor taking a number of comic roles, experience of working with young people including those with Special Needs an advantage (though not essential). DBS check will be required. Applications from disabled artists particularly welcomed.
Auditions: 2nd October in Coventry
Rehearsal/performance dates:
Dress & performances: 6th – 8th November (Stratford-upon-Avon)
Rehearsals: Oct dates tbc but proposed: 8th, 10th, 22nd; Nov 3rd & 4th
Fee: £141/day + travel
Please send a CV with a covering letter/statement (max 1 side A4) setting out why you are interested and suitable for this role to philippa [at] talkingbirds.co.uk using the subject header ‘Ant & Cleo baritone’ by Friday 26th September 2014.
Deadline 12pm Friday 26th Sept
The River Sherbourne, which runs culverted under Coventry city centre, has always been a bit of a draw to artists making work about the city. CityArcadia, Coventry Artspace’s new project space opened last night with a beautifully evocative piece by Kathryn Hawkins called [river] and featuring genuine drops of the Sherbourne. In times past, the route of the Sherbourne has been the inspiration for Talking Birds’ audio trail ‘CityScapes’, and several of our Artists in Waiting and Decathlon pieces to name but a few. More recently, we’ve returned to the river once more – and have this time been working with Ashley Brown (aka one half of previous FarGoSpace residents Ludic Rooms) on a phone-based way to explore the slightly shameful secret of the city’s relationship with its water.
The resulting piece: Trails of the Unexpected Vol 1 is now (softly) good to go, and we’re looking for people who find themselves in the middle of Coventry with their mobile and an hour or so to spare to have a go and then let us know what they think. It’s a bit of a treasure hunt – you have to follow picture clues which lead you to locations where you can then access, a fragment at a time, the river’s stories (which tread a fine line between the real and the fictional) via your mobile browser.
Although inspired and shaped by the river, the trail is perhaps really an invitation to look closely at the fabric of the city – in the way that no-one who lives here actually looks at it anymore: “This city has a slightly ambivalent relationship with water. It embraces it in the ‘right’ places and hides it in the ‘wrong’ places. Maybe that’s not so unusual. I couldn’t say. But this water, well, it doesn’t stay hidden, it oozes out of any holes it can find, up through the pores of this city whenever it gets the chance. And each time it escapes into the open, it brings out all the stories that it carries under the city with it…”
To find out more, including how to access the trail – have a look at the Trails of the Unexpected page of our website.
[This trail was originally presented at the 2014 conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research, themed “Theatre & Stratification”.]
The final outing for the OakMobile this year sees it climbing a big hill to look at the stars – and once there, and illuminated (gently so as not to interfere with the starlight) we’re hoping it may be mistaken for an eccentric observatory or perhaps a grounded UFO…
You’re welcome to join this stargazing event organised by the the National Trust and Birmingham Astronomical Society (and if you’re still under 11 and three quarters you can then tick stargazing off on your 50 Things list!) and bid the OakMobile farewell for another year!
Click here for event details – and remember to bring a picnic, wear stout shoes, dress up warmly and bring a torch!
It’s another busy summer for the company this year although, of course, we’re also trying to fit in a few trips to the seaside…
The Whale and the OakMobile are out and about throughout the next couple of months; the ideas we’ve been working on with the National Trust at Ickworth in Suffolk are developing nicely and we’ll continue to test bits and pieces out; there are also outings for The Cricketers and The Q at outdoor festivals in Birmingham and Kendal respectively; a few organisations are taking on and testing the Difference Engine; and we’re working towards our production of Ant&Cleo with Orchestra of the Swan.
What are your summer plans?
Words from the Birds 