The Stage on Machines For Living, click here to read the full review
Trailer for Machines For Living by Let Slip
Machines For Living artwork by Christina Hardinge
Finally…
Into rehearsals for Machines For Living. It came into being as a scratch in October 2011 and after seven more months of research and preparation we’re in the rehearsal room at last.
The research process has been a joy. A week spent in the library at The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), afternoons spent watching documentary films and, best of all, interviews with residents of tower blocks and architects.
Now we’re spending our days making the show at the wonderful Blue Elephant Theatre, where Machines For Living will open on 22 May.
Click here for more about the show or here to see photos of our rehearsals.
We’ll be unveiling poster artwork and our video trailer very soon!
Last week we were lucky enough to meet Paul Bird, author of the Single Aspect blog (here) which scrutinises housing design and policy in the UK.
Single Aspect has been a brilliant resource during our research and it was a delight to finally meet Paul. This is a particularly interesting article he wrote about Kate Macintosh’s Dawson’s Heights building in Dulwich.
I’m off to visit Dawson’s Heights this afternoon because on Thursday, we’re going to meet Kate in person. (And we’re mildly hysterical with excitement!)
Paul also put us onto this brilliant video. Watch out for the excellent clown moment at 2:08!
Two exciting shows in London this week!
Let Slip’s newest recruit Nicole Pschetz has created a new show with her company Energinmotion, titled Where The Nights Are Blue And Electric.
It plays at The Resistance Gallery in Bethnall Green on Thursday and Friday this week. Check out Energinmotion’s blog here and the flyer for the show here.
Meanwhile, Let Slip’s very own Frode Gjerlow performs with Superbolt, along with our former Lecoq classmates Simon Maeder and Maria Askew.
Their new show Piatto Finale is on at Petersham Playhouse this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Click here for more details
Estates: An Intimate History by Lynsey Hanley
This is a bit technical but it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve discovered whilst researching our new show Machines For Living.
In February this year, Boris Jonson offered a site in Mile End to the East London Community Land Trust rather than three rival commercial developers.
A Community Land Trust buys land, builds on it and sells the properties for the value of the building, ie. the bricks and mortar but not the land. Typically, this brings the price down by around 50%.
The only condition is that if you want to sell your property in the future, you have to do so for an equivalent proportion of the market rate to the one you bought it at.
The Local Authority retains ownership of the lnd via the CLT and is able to use it to guarantee affordable housing for future generations.
Nothing short of revolutionary, in my opinion. Read more about it in The Guardian: ‘A Revolution In Social Housing’ (Feb 2012) and ‘All About Community Land Trusts’ (March 2007).
Congratulations to the East London Community Land Trust and thanks again to Dave Smith, who met with me a few weeks ago. (ELCLT website here)
The best quote I found in the RIBA library
Delighted to read this interview with Stuart Cox from The Blue Elephant Theatre, in which he talks about the wide-ranging and vital work BET do with young people in Southwark.
India and I were lucky enough to work on the Speak Out! Forum Theatre project he discusses at the start of the article. It really was a brilliant experience and we were lucky to work with such a fantastic group of young people.
Find out more about BET’s Community & Education work on the Participation page of their website.
Just read an article, published in The Queitus a few days ago, about Trellick Tower (below) and its use in Damon Albarn’s music videos.
Do click here for the full article, and keep your eyes peeled for Trellick in the three music videos below.
In its short lifetime, the Tower has been held up as an example of modernism’s beauty and aesthetic abhorrence. It’s been synonymous with crime, rape, drug addiction and murder, and been reborn as a trendy place to live.
You can follow this journey through the 3 videos below. And then, for good measure, watch David Guetta turn Peckham’s Aylesbury Estate (round the corner from The Blue Elephant Theatre) into a jungle gym of high-camp free-running.
Thanks to Jamie Barras for photo above.
We’re knee-deep in research this week, for our new show Machines For Living. Our copy of new independent film Utopia London was hand-delivered yesterday and we’re looking forward to cracking open to popcorn and watching it this afternoon!
Trailer looks fantastic. Can’t wait to meet film-maker Tom Cordell for an interview later this week. Find out more about his project here.
Utopia London documentary trailer from utopialondon on Vimeo.
A couple of weeks ago, we were delighted to welcome Nicole Pschetz into our ensemble.
Nicole moved to the UK from Brazil in 2003 and trained at the International School of Corporeal Mime in London (see their excellent website here). Since then she’s toured shows all over Europe, with Theatre de L’Ange Fou and her own company Energinmotion (Facebook group here).
She’s a fantastic presence in the rehearsal room and we’re proud to be working with her. You can see some of her work in the videos below.
Keep your eyes peeled for a brand new Let Slip website and Machines For Living video trailer coming soon!
God bless the internet. This weekend I discovered Azonto, a style of music and dancing from Ghana.
I love the music. And I’m fascinating by the dancing. There’s very little information online but apparently this is a modern take on an old form of Ghanian dancing, in which the movements are based on household chores like ironing and washing.
Which made me think, there’s an Azonto comic-dance-theatre piece to made!
Check it out in these videos. Not much footwork but big extensions of knees and elbows and a compulsory big smile.
If you like the music, go seek You Kill Me by Sarkodie, You Go dance by Akexi Bees and Yenko Nkoaa by Eduwoji.
After I posted the video for William Kentridge’s take on The Nose, my friend George at Clout Theatre showed me this short film by Andrei Khrzhanovsky, with music by Alfred Schnittke. It’s like Magritte meeting those Letterland videos I watched as a child.
Clout have been working on a piece inspired by Daniil Kharms’ short stories, called How A Man Crumbled. Their delightful trailer is below and you can look forward to the show premiering soon. I saw a work-in-progress a few weeks ago and it looks incredible.
Further reading:
Stock your brain with Russian absurdity by wallowing in The Overcoat (Gogol), Bobok (Dostoevsky), The Snowstorm (Tolstoy) and The Old Woman (Kharms).
How a Man Crumbled Teaser from Clout Theatre on Vimeo.
