Firebird Theatre Sponsored Walk: Photographs

On Sunday 16th August, Firebird Theatre did a sponsored walk to raise funds for Prospero, Duke of Milan (to be performed at Bristol Old Vic on 14th November) and also to celebrate

25 years of performing in the professional theatre. Formerly known as the Portway Players, members of the company met in 1985 at the Portway Day Centre, a social services resource and activity centre based in Shirehampton (five founder members still work with Firebird). In 1990 the Portway Players made their debut performance at the Bristol Old Vic. In 2005 The Portway Players changed its name to Firebird Theatre and became an Independent Theatre Company. 25 years on from their very first show at the Old Vic, Yellow Sun, Red Moon, Firebird is now an associate company of Bristol Old Vic and this is where we meet and work every Monday.

 

The route we chose for our walk had a symbolic significance for us because it mirrors the journey made by the Portway Players to become Firebird Theatre. It started in Woodwell Rd not far from the site of the old Portway Centre in St Bernard's Rd., Shirehampton and ended at Bristol Old Vic in King Street, Bristol.

The walkers posing in Woodwell Rd before the walk begins.

The start of the walk - crossing the Portway (A4)

 The walk - coming to an end!

Arriving at Bristol Old Vic

Sian and Marilyn arriving in King Street from the SS Great Britain

Penny, Kip and Ed arriving in King Street

Collecting certificates and getting stuck-in to the buffet and drinks laid on for us at Bristol Old Vic.
A big thank you to everyone at Bristol Old Vic for their support

The end of the walk - we're at Bristol Old Vic.

The first Steve Knight Memorial Workshop, April 20th 2015

On April 20th we had our first workshop in memory of Steve Knight. The workshop was led by Joêl Daniel, a dancer and choreographer. Thanks to everyone who donated money to the Memorial Workshop Fund, we nearly have enough for four other workshops in Steve's memory.

We would also like to thank, as always, Bristol Old Vic for letting us use the Clore Studio for this workshop.

This felt like a great workshop to do in memory of Steve because it was all about movement, which felt like a celebration of what Steve loved doing with Firebird: dancing and making strong movements on stage. 



Joel working with us in the Clore Studio at Bristol Old Vic with the shoaling exercise

Joêl got us working in lots of different ways: we looked at how we moved together, as a group. This was called shoaling with different people taking the lead and the rest of us following. We walked together, using different movements, small movements to a rhythm, in a sequence, and keeping pace as a group.

Joêl helped us to explore a canon of repeated movements, clapping/rhythms to help us keep to a pace and making journeys together: fast and slow.

We worked on different levels and from chairs as well; we explored positioning on stage and focus.

We all liked working with Joêl and would like to work with him again on our new work. We liked the warm up he gave us and the way he explained things. He included everyone in the workshop, getting us to move one at a time and then altogether.

We liked the fact that Joêl asked us about Steve; we told him about Steve's shadow dance from The Nine Lessons Of Caliban and he asked us about Steve's movements and got us to try to remember them by doing them.

We liked the way he got us to move towards different fixed points in the rehearsal room.

There were difficult bits too - it was difficult to count and make up different moves that we had to remember... remembering moves was hard.

We had never really done a workshop like this before and it was a great thing to do - it will help us to look at how we move on stage. We would like to work with Joêl again. We would also like to see him dance when he next performs in Bristol. In the meantime, we are excited to receive a copy of White Caps on DVD from Joêl, a performance by the Dance Company that he used to work with called Champloo. We will be watching this next week and finally, Joêl's website goes live next week, it is: www.joeldaniel.co.uk

   

     

 

Ann Pugh, Artist and Film maker

Ann Pugh, artist and film maker

26^th September 1955 – 25^th February 2015

 

It is with great sadness that we let people know that our dear friend and colleague, Ann, passed away on Wednesday 25^th February after a short illness.

Ann, who worked with Redweather Productions, made all the wonderful films on The Firebird website and also developed the use of projections in our performances.

Ann made nine films for Firebird: six short films which show the development of The Breadhorse in 2013; two films of The Lying Doctors, 1998, and a documentary film in 2007. These films were always just right – always saying more about our work than anything else could. Her interview style and what she did with a camera is recognized as outstanding by many people, locally, nationally and internationally, not least ourselves. When she made films for us, she made us feel relaxed, she knew what we wanted to say and she would support us to say it: she got our message out and we know that whatever we said was as important to Ann as it was to us.

Ann also brought something very special and artistic to three of our productions in particular; she made projections of artwork made by Carol Chilcott, company artist, photographs and film for The Tempest, Nine Lessons of Caliban and The Breadhorse. These were projected during the performances along with the words that were spoken in the show. This made our work stronger and also acted as an access tool for audiences. She also made sound recordings for performances, particularly for The Tempest and Nine Lessons.

Ann has been in our lives for a long time and has supported us to do some amazing work; she has also been instrumental in making important things happen for us. Ann enabled us to develop some very powerful work which we could not have done without her. She made the film of The Lying Doctors over 15 years ago, which is still incredibly strong today.

Many people know of Ann’s strengths as an amazing filmmaker who has captured and recorded very important moments on film for many organizations. She also did so much more, not least for Firebird Theatre and our sister organization, Artists First, of which she was Chair of Trustees and a brilliant fundraiser. Ann was fun, calming, a real team player, unassuming, a blower of trumpets for other people – not her own, she got on with things, she was a doer and she certainly did for us.

Out of good working relationships, friendships grow and Ann was a wonderful, strong, generous friend to us and she will be missed, more than words can say.

Our love and thoughts are with Ann’s family: Frank, Ruby and Ben.

Please click on this link for Ann’s films of The Breadhorse

http://www.firebird-theatre.co.uk/performances.html#breadhorse

Please click on this link for Ann’s short documentary film about Firebird

http://www.firebird-theatre.co.uk/about.html

Please click on this link for Ann’s film of The Lying Doctors

http://www.firebird-theatre.co.uk/performances.html#lyingdoctors

 

 

The final episodes of Prospero, Duke of Milan

On Monday 24^th November we are performing the last two episodes (3 & 4) of Prospero, Duke of Milan.

 

Prospero tries to read his books but gets interrupted all the time; he asks
his brother Antonio to help him do his job, to manage the state of Milan. 

 

We have found this work very exciting and it will be great to get feedback from the Schools and everyone else that has been involved. MAYK will be putting together an evaluation report and we look forward to discussing how we might improve and develop our work around relaxed performances in the future. We will post the Report on our website when it is completed.

 

Antonio ends up doing Prospero's job all the time, he gets ambitious
and wants to become the Duke of Milan - he wears the symbols of power.

It has also been good to work with new people to make this happen: Jenny Sherlock, stage manager; Jenny, Hal and Robel from Made in Bristol and Lydia who is helping us explore how we work with volunteers.

He starts to put together his own army, a treacherous army - they plot and whisper
and  plan to get rid of  Prospero and Miranda so that Antonio will be Duke of Milan.

 

It is also good to work closely with Bristol Old Vic: Christine and Aidan, Lucy and members of the Outreach Department.

Antonio's treacherous army

 Big thanks to everyone who has helped us develop this work.

 

The treacherous army put Prospero and Miranda into a
rotten butt of boat and cast them out to sea. 

The boat did not sink and Prospero and Miranda
did not drown - what happens next? Please see
William Shakespeare's The Tempest! 

Prospero, Duke of Milan, Episode 2

This Monday morning (10th November), Firebird performed the first episode of Prospero, Duke of Milan in the Basement at Bristol Old Vic. We welcomed students and teachers from Briarwood and New Fosseway Schools. Unfortunately, Kingsweston School could not join us.

We were really pleased to find out that the students from New Fosseway are studying The Tempest as part of their timetable at school, so Prospero is perfect timing from their point of view. It will be very interesting to find out if the performances helped them with their schoolwork.

Students and teachers will contribute to the evaluation report that MAYK will put together after the performances. We think we will learn masses from doing this work.

The performances were made special by the support of Lydia and Made In Bristol volunteers, Robel, Hal and Jenny who took on the roles of ushers and ice cream attendants - Marshfield ice creams went down very well!

It was great to work with Paul again. He took a group photo of the audience for our Access and Resource pack. He also filmed some of the performance.

Next week is Episode 2, when we will introduce Prospero's family: his daughter Miranda and his brother, Antonio. Also we will show Prospero's love of books.

Here are some more of Paul's wonderful photographs from Episode 2.
                                                   

Prospero, the father, with daughter Miranda



Miranda is represented by a child's Christening gown
















Sharlie uses simple techniques to animate the Christening gown and her voice brings Miranda to life.

Prospero loves his family - he loves his books, too!



Antonio: My brother feels his library is dukedom enough.

 

Prospero, Duke of Milan

On Monday 10^th November, we begin our relaxed performances for local schools: Briarwood, Kingsweston and New Fosseway. Throughout November we will be posting more wonderful photographs taken by Paul Blakemeore http://www.paulblakemore.co.uk/ .

There will be 4 performances in all, played out every Monday morning in November in the Basement Theatre at Bristol Old Vic. Each performance is an episode (there are four in all) of Prospero, Duke of Milan. The story has been specifically devised by Firebird Theatre for our audience.

Prospero, Duke of Milan

Working with young people has always been important to Firebird and over the years, we have planned and delivered workshops for schools. These have tended to be 'one-offs' and over the last 3 years we have been trying out different ways of working in a more developmental way with schools,  in particular Briarwood School.  Last year, students from Briarwood and Kingsweston Schools performed on stage with Firebird for The Breadhorse in the Studio at Bristol Old Vic. From the feedback we received and in partnership with Briarwood School and Bristol Old Vic, we decided our next project should be about devising work for disabled children and young people who would like to visit the theatre as audience members.

 

Prospero's Guards

We think Prospero, Duke of Milan is suitable for any audience (mainstream included) and that was our intention from the outset – we did not want to devise anything that was patronising in any way. We chose to look at the back story in The Tempest because we knew the material well (The Tempest, 2010, The Nine Lessons of Caliban, 2012) and felt we could present an element of The Tempest story, using occasional Shakespearean language, in a powerful and meaningful way.

 

The Ministers of the Government of the Duke of Milan

Firebird have used repetition and tableaux; very simple costume and props to create the story of Prospero. Each episode is between 10 – 15 minutes long. Working with Paul Blakemore, we have also produced an Access and Education Pack for the teachers to use with their students, prior to them coming to Bristol Old Vic on the 10th. The pack is very visual and introduces the whole experience of visiting the theatre from arriving at the front entrance, to entering the performance space, the people they will meet (Ushers) to the performance itself.

"Applause, please!"

Bristol Old Vic is working with us to make the whole experience of visiting the theatre an enjoyable one - relaxed and welcoming.

We are also working with:

MAYK our producers; they will also evaluate the project.

Clementine Greeley, costume design and maker

Volunteers Lydia Spry (Firebird volunteer), Robel Yoseph, Jenny Davis and Hallam Kelly from Made In Bristol BOV, who will welcome the students at the entrance to the theatre and act as very theatrical ice cream attendants during performance intervals!

A big thanks to Marshfield Ice Creams; they have sponsored the performances by providing ice creams for all intervals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Firebird Theatre Newsletter, May 2014

The year is passing quickly and we thought it was about time we put together another newsletter to let you know what we have been doing since we were last in touch.

Please feel free to contact us if you want to know more and we will do our best to answer your questions and give you the information you need.

News

We are currently concentrating on devising work for performances for disabled students from local schools. We are working in partnership with BOV with this project. We are also talking to teaching staff at Briarwood School for advice and help with planning. The performances will be an introduction to the theatre for children and young people who have not visited before and will be presented in the Basement at Bristol Old Vic. We will include photos of the work we are doing towards these performances throughout this letter.



Playing with The Tempest

 We are looking at The Tempest again – this time Prospero’s story when he was Duke of Milan, before the story of The Tempest begins. We feel we know the story well and it is great to revisit it and think about it again. The idea is to present the story over four Monday mornings in the autumn term as four developing episodes. Our aim is to make the story as clear as possible and introduce students to the whole experience of visiting the theatre and watching a play. We will use things like costume, props and lighting to help tell the story and for young people to discover how Firebird uses these conventions. We also hope to design learning resources for the students to use in the classroom.

We have also worked with Jack Drewry again. Jack worked with us in The Breadhorse last year. Jack joined us in-between two visits he made to Asia and Australia touring We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.

The Looking Ahead Training Conference for medical professionals at Bristol Royal Infirmary on February 24^th. We performed an extract from The Breadhorse and gave a short presentation and took questions from the floor. We thought it was a good event to do and enjoyed doing it. We asked the delegates questions and got lots of answers, here are a few:

What did you learn from Firebird’s performance and presentation this afternoon?

They all become like one voice as a group

Thought provoking

(How important it is) Working together, team work.

What did you understand from the performance?

The importance of equality

Excellent role models

How we should treat each other with respect and dignity

What did it make you feel?

Mixture of happiness and sadness

Uplifted, happy that you are trying to change people’s thinking

Challenged, happy, sad, inspired.

What did it make you think?

(We should) Always try to understand each other.

What a fantastic theatre company

About how we treat each other

Miranda, Prospero's 3 year old daughter

                                                  

                                               

Workshops for new people

We have also run four workshops for people who have expressed an interest in finding out more about Firebird. There have been 10 people who will have done a workshop with us (our last one is on 19^th May), more people than we thought. It is very difficult to make decisions about who we can support and how: our resources are very limited. We have decided that we will invite some people back to work with us for a longer period, say 6 weeks, before making decisions about what happens next.

Propero's enemies

We met with members of Made in Bristol (M in B) at the Bristol Old Vic on 31^st January and heard about what they were doing. They also taught us some warm-up games that we have been using in our workshops for new people. Some of us went to see The Tinderbox in April, this was performed by the Young Company at BOV and some of the M in B people were also involved – we really enjoyed it, thought it was excellent work and used lots of storytelling techniques.

After The Tinderbox, we also attended the performance made for fundraising Gala at Bristol Old Vic, which was smashing and very funny: a lovely afternoon and evening.

Prospero's work load!

In April, a small group of us visited Briarwood School to see a performance of Jack in the Beanstalk. It was great to meet the students and teachers we had worked with before again and to meet new students. The performance was great fun and we appreciated being invited to see it.

Derby-based Theatre Company, Hubbub Theatre, have been successful with their funding application. Congratulations to them. This means they could afford to pay Firebird to do a workshop for them, they have asked if we could do it on 28^th August. 

Prospero's soldiers

Trustees’ news

Currently, Brian Davis from the Company is attending and observing Trustee meetings. Brian is interested in becoming a trustee and this is part of the process of finding out more about how the Trustees work together and being voted on board.

The Stephen Knight Memorial Workshop Fund

We have recently written a brief for a choreographer to work with us for the first workshop in memory of Steve. Please see the brief below, if you are interested in knowing more. This decision was made by all the actors in Firebird Theatre. Mayk, Matthew and Kate, are going to help put us in touch with possible workshop leaders. We have not ruled out workshops with our patron Kathryn Hunter or other actors we love working with but these will be planned for later on. 

Funding and donations

Our Business Plan is now at the stage where everyone is looking at it to agree it. We are very pleased with it and want to say a big thank you to Katie Keeler and Theatre Bristol for their work on this. The plan is to use it to try get long-term funding. This will take the worry away of having to think about fundraising all the time. It will also help us to describe what we do, who we are and what we need funding for. Once the Plan has been agreed we will post it on our website for people to look at.

We are pleased to welcome Antigoni Messaritaki and Jane Edwards Reynolds to our Friends and Supporters Scheme.

We also received donations from two people and will seek their permission to include their names in the next newsletter.

Please feel free to help Firebird by encouraging people to join the Scheme; small regular donations can make all the difference to Firebird and help us plan our finances in a better way. People can find more information about joining the Scheme, or supporting Firebird with a ‘one-off’ donation by going onto our website: http://www.firebird-theatre.co.uk/supportus.pdf. Alternatively contact us by post or telephone, see contact details below

Coming up!

28^th August Workshop with Hubbub Theatre

October 14^th Creative Minds South West: a conference to be held at @Bristol to look at how we measure quality in art, performance and film made by disabled people with learning difficulties. Firebird and sister organisation, Artists First, will be taking part in the conference, alongside other groups and organisations based in the south west, including the Misfits and Openstorytellers. Please visit www.creativemindsproject.org.uk for more information

Workshop brief

For the Steve Knight Memorial Workshop Fund, we have £350 to pay someone to run a day’s workshop for us.

Workshop length: 2 hours in the morning (10.30 – 12.30) LUNCH 12.30 - 1.30 2 hours in the afternoon (1.30 – 3.30pm) to include tea and coffee breaks

What we would like the workshop to cover:

Moving together as a group (the ensemble) – group movements and individual movement

Touch, e.g. Holly with Sarah

Creating focus on stage

Symmetry and asymmetry

Pace on stage: slow and fast- changing pace, creating energy

Sign and gesture, e.g. drinking, eating

Positioning on stage; height, spacing

Ways of helping us not to fidget on stage – when we are on stage and the focus is not on us (e.g. sitting on side of stage in 9 Lessons)

Basic dance moves: remembering some of us have mobility problems and one of us is a wheelchair user

Creating ritual, e.g. the placing of the shells in the 9 Lessons

Making shapes with our bodies, e.g. making the horse

Exits and entrances

We can give examples and explanations if our list is not clear. If you are interested in running a workshop for us, please email or write to us telling us a bit about yourself and send us a workshop plan. We do not expect anything long, a couple of paragraphs would do but we would like you to be clear about how you would work with us. Thank you.

Firebird Theatre Ltd . Registered in England and Wales No. 5728116
Registered office: 5 Dial Hill Road, Clevedon, North Somerset BS21 7HJ
Registered main Charity Number: 1115658 www.firebird-theatre.com