Bob Frith's VEIL BLOG NOVEMBER 2007

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30.11

It’s been a good week. Katherina arrived to put in 4 extra days work – getting as much of the costume finished as possible. Emma Byron was joined by Rosie Mclachan and together they’ve scrimmed the stage rostra, and helped Alison create a series of sculpted refugee children for the end of the first Act.

Rachel Mander is coming to the end of the carpentry work, and welding supports for the archaeologist’s tent and other armatures. Faliha Kadhim returned and rerecorded the Arabic texts, including the longer poetic pieces. It’s a great team working together now; the feel of the workshop is very focused. I’ve been looking at casting and figuring out the logistics of costume changes within our provisional timing. I’ve also been working on two masks, meaning there are only 3 more to be made before we’ve the full complement.

The print has arrived from the printers too - boxes of flyers and posters. It's beginning to look like Veil is going to happen!

26.11

On Sunday afternoon we opened The Boo to the public to check out progress on the theatre space and on Veil. A good number of people came too, and we doubled the number of intended guided tours from 2 to 4. It was also a good excuse to get the workspace clear before we launch into the final four weeks of making for Veil. Photographs above and below...  

 

23.11

Faliha Kadhim visited today. She recorded the Arabic voiceovers for Veil. These punctuate the story, and are repeated in English so underlining the image of twin sisters that runs throughout. The language, to my ears, is exceptionally beautiful; rhythmic and evocative – Faliha has also added a short ballad, something we can use during one of the final scenes, when the threads of the story begin to pull together. 

Loz Kaye writes-

Today Faliha and one of her sons came by the Boo to do recording of the arabic versions of the voice-overs we plan to use in the show. The first part of the process was translating Bob's words in to arabic, and the text was adjusted several times as we worked. We decided to leave the last, and longest text to next week as it requires a poetic rhythm and Faliha wanted to consider it more. After warning people in the workshop (the sound of footsteps above and sanding of the set sometimes intrude into the music room) we set to work. I had set up the mixer and levels already so there were not really any technical problems. The curious thing was for me working with a language I don't know at all. I can coach people through English - and indeed I've worked with songs in Swedish, Lithuanian and Norwegian, but this was a first. Faliha had a natural instinct for it, once we had got her to slow down a beautiful rich and melodic voice emerged. As Bob commented, it was everything we could have expected and more. In the course of working one of the texts suggested an Iraqi lullaby, which we included in the recording session. Once we were finished I played the morning's work back to Alison and Bob. We were all enthused and strangely moved  - it is amazing how an engaging voice can communicate across language barriers. I feel like taking it in as an example for my students at Salford University.

In the afternoon the music of the Iraqi lullaby reasserted itself. I ended up making a harmonic setting of it, building layer by layer weaving Faliha's voice together with various piano, organ and percussion sounds. I wrestled a bit with the keyboard in the music room, the sustain pedal is somewhat unreliable. But I ended up with the beginnings of a piece which could be the still heart of Act 2.

I now feel like I am in my stride with music for 'Veil'. The off and on nature of the project has taken its toll. Some of my first work on it is now months ago, and almost seems a bit unfamiliar. After all, I have written music for everything from a mythological epic featuring singing stalactites to an Ayckbourn play in the intervening time. Even unearthing the right files from the laptop can be a bit of a struggle. However I have had a good week, sampling Saddam Hussain era Iraqi pop, worrying away at rhythm loops, thinking about waterfall sounds, recording trumpet melodies. There is a lot to do, as ever. But I feel like I am back on track. I am particularly pleased with the texture that is emerging; the laptop is becoming more like an instrument than a glorified tape recorder. So, onwards to the other side of the veil...

17.11

We had a farewell evening for Natasha last night. It was lovely; good to see so many people come together to see her off after 8 years at H+B. Tash starts work at Oldham Coliseum on Monday.

Earlier in the day I met with Kathy (Kim, now of Thingumajig, but a stalwart performer for many years at H+B and a past Tour Manager), Tess Hills (Tour Manager for Veil), Richard Hall and Julie Parker (Veil Technical Manager) to look over the rehearsal and tour schedules to discuss travel, get-in and get-out times; accommodation needs - and so on. This took most of the day as it needed to be detailed enough to assess the hours worked each week. The complexity of the touring plans are compounded by the fact that our normal touring transport – a Mercedes Vario we bought 4 years ago - has been rendered all but useless by changes to legislation with regard to vehicle weight limits and driving licenses. All very complicated, but the end result is that we’ll need to use two lighter vehicles in order to comply with changes to the law. The Mercedes cost over £40,000 and 4 years on we’re told its worth less than £8,000. Makes my worries about a £1,500 overspend on the production seem trivial.

Anyway, it’s clear that the tour is going to be full-on - again. All the changes I’ve made to the way we approach the production aspects of touring have made almost no impact on the total hours worked per day. Until we’re able to book our shows for more than one night at a time the relentless schedule of travel, get-in, show, get-out, travel…is going to remain a reality for the touring company.  

In the middle of these meetings I went down to make tea and coffee and returned to find Emma (Byron – working with us as a helper) sitting in the meeting room, arm held above her head, with the team around her using towels to staunch the flow of blood pumping from her hand. Emma had been working on a puppet when the modelling knife slipped and plunged into her hand. Natasha spent her last day at H+B sitting in A&E while Emma had two stitches.

 

10.11

Technical workshopping is finished for now. It has been very, very useful. I’ve reworked the script in line with our discoveries over the past two weeks. Yesterday we reassigned the making jobs still to be done, and reassessed who we’ll need to help Alison and myself finish these jobs by Christmas. Christmas - because rehearsals start almost as soon as we return to work in January.

We also went through the technical requirements with Julie. The budget remains a big problem – it’s hard to see how we can avoid overspending. It’s interesting (or perhaps just simply obvious) to find that the two areas that are under most financial pressure are the production materials and technical budgets – the two budgets that had to be most severely pruned by Rose and myself when our first applications for grant aid were rejected and we were advised by the Arts Council that we had to trim budgets.

When we suggest trimming other budgets – marketing, for example - we are told that that wouldn’t be acceptable because the ‘rule of thumb’ is that marketing costs for a production should be 10% of production costs, and to go below that would suggest an unprofessional attitude that might work against a grant application. With this sort of ‘one size fits all’ thinking the budgets that inevitably suffer are those most directly associated with making the production – performers, rehearsal times, production materials.

When Horse + Bamboo started in the late 1970’s we toured with up to 14 performers. By the late 80’s it settled down to touring with 9 performers. Once we got to the Arts Council reforms of the mid 90’s it was reduced to 5 or 6, but we retained 3 full-time arts workers. Now, in 2007, we find it hard to tour with 5, and we employ less than 2 full-time arts workers. In the future we’re planning tours with 3 performers. Let me make this clear that this isn’t because we’re receiving less support from the Arts Council. Far from it, we’ve been reasonably supported - it’s just that the emphasis has changed massively from the direct creation of work to the managing, administration, marketing and auditing of that work. All of this has had real benefits, but the bottom line is that it’s harder than ever to find the resources to create the shows in the first place.

Still, grumbling aside this has been an exciting period. Seeing the first filmed images on the stage; hearing the first versions of some of Loz’s music; watching a performer wearing a black abaya moving across the ochre stage with the first stage lights on them; beginning to see how the story will unfold among the stage elements…just fabulous. Right now, it’s all promise.

7.11

Today we worked through the story with Loz trying to work out timings so he can begin to compose within some sort of a time frame. Of course this is fraught with problems and we accept that it's likely to be flawed. Still, it's the best way we have of working out the shape of a composed sound track before rehearsal. We worked through, section by section, taking six hours over things. Adding up the totals it came to precisely my early estimates - 55 minutes first Act, and 45 minutes second Act.

We spent some of the time analysing the structure of scenes - another useful process. Some sections remains unclear, and we now have two months to think these through in more detail.

Yesterday and the day before we worked with Erik on the film and video images. The biggest issues were with the animated sections, in particular when there's the temptation to use cgi instead of stop-frame, largely because of the cost. Vanessa (Card) has made a beautiful arabic shadow-puppet house, the starting point of the Vision sequences, but when we start animating this - Parminder Kaur (Pam) will do that - even opening a door may mean as many as 30 hand-cut shadow images. Our budget only allows for a weeks work each for Vanessa and Pam.

2.11

After three days of technical workshopping on Veil I’m beginning to wonder why we’ve never done it this way before. Each day we've discovered things that will make a real impact on the production.

The main discoveries have been about the story telling (the need for a completely new scene, albeit a short one); technical considerations (days spent on building a special hidden ‘trap’ inside the main block of rostra were unnecessary – the hiding can be done very simply behind the structure); and about the internal logic of the narrative (a new twist to ending the first Act).

Richard Owen spent a day going through lighting; Loz joined us on Friday to start looking at (and listening to) some of the musical elements. The rest of the time Alison, Julie and I explored the actual stage space and story structure that we’ve been building in our minds – with Katherina popping down from the sewing room from time to time to add her comments. On Monday Richard is back again, with Erik looking at film and projections.

This workshopping has also revealed how differently Alison and I go about things. I like structure; working things through on a narrative level, sorting through connections and nuances of meaning, and devising within that framework; Alison keeps things much looser – a general idea or feeling often based around one potentially striking theatrical moment that gets ‘found’ during rehearsal. It’s actually a great combination, most of the time. Structure but with room for discovery. It means a constant dialogue, occasionally tense, about the best way to develop the story.  

In the background lurks the budget. Each time we discover something that needs to be remade a cash register goes off somewhere in the back of my head. The materials budget for Veil is now very, very tight indeed. The wisdom of all those cuts made in order to make our bid to the Arts Council acceptable comes back to haunt me.

One other very good thing - we've now got a cast!                   

 

 

READ AN INTERVIEW WITH BOB FRITH ABOUT VEIL HERE.

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CONTACT BOB FRITH bob@horseandbamboo.org