Sinbad, Alice and Two New Additions

Well, lots has happened since we were last here talking to you.
We opened Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor with Unity Theatre, another successful joint production offering an alternative Christmas show. A big well done to the cast and crew of this fabulous production! If you haven't caught it yet, you have until 21st January - so get a wiggle on!

We also launched a number of Alice in Wonderland-themed charcters upon unsuspecting Christmas shoppers. The Curious Garden, produced by City Central Bid, featured a number of Hope Street performers including the Mad Hatter and March Hare, the White Rabbit and of course, Alice herself.

The characters braved cold temperatures, sleet and rain and high winds (that sent them scuttling indoors one cold and blustery night) to amuse and entertain (and occasionally scare) adults and children alike...









We’ve got a busy year ahead so there's no time to let off steam as we gear ourselves up for the Emerging Artists Programme of 2012. This will be another exciting year when we recruit trainee performers, designers, film makers, a trainee director, production manager and other roles besides! This company of emerging artists will come together to work with a number of exciting lead artists to create innovative and dynamic performances across the city of Liverpool.

Past productions have included Colour Chart (right)

in partnership with Tate Liverpool and Innovasion, (below) produced with Liverpool Biennial.

Details of this years' programme are still being finalised so we can't let the cat out of the bag but rest assured, it promises to be bigger and better than ever! Applications will open later this spring so keep your peepers peeled for more information.








But before the Emerging Artists' Programme begins we are pleased to announce some exciting Workshops and Masterclasses for all experience levels. The Workshops will take place in February and March - keep an eye on our website and Facebook page for dates and further information.
Companies and artists leading workshops include: Desperate Men, Gemma Bodinetz and Complicite.

In other news....Hope Street is delighted to welcome two new members of staff. Well, one new and one returning! Ann Farrar joins us as our new Creative Producer and will lead on development and delivery of the Emerging Artists' Programme. Annemarie Martin rejoins Hope Street as our Business Development Manager and will be hunting out new and exciting opportunities for us!

So roll on 2012 - may it be our biggest and best year yet!

Hope Street has turned into a convalescent home - we're all in recovery from the roller-coaster month that was September.

As if Alice Through the Winter Gardens in Blackpool wasn't enough, we did the Hope Street Feast at the same time! The fabulous Helen Statman and Trevor Stuart concocted a fantastic array of bizarre characters and scenarios with which to entertain and disturb audience members on Sunday 18th September. Which was also the day that Alice closed in Blackpool and the get out commenced...

On that day, I dragged myself out of bed at 05.00 looking, and feeling, like Worzel Gummidge. After competing for a taxi with people still making their way home from the night before, I arrived at Hope Street still looking like Worzel except that Worzel is better dressed. This situation didn't last long however, as while carrying a box of paint up the steps into Hope Street, the lid came off a pot and red paint poured all over me and down my leg and puddled on the floor. Peter sped off to get a bucket of water which I thought he was going to throw over me but luckily he threw it over the paint on the pavement instead. I spent an undignified few minutes stripping in the costume cupboard to peel off paint-sodden clothes before borrowing jeans from Grace (thanks Grace) to make it though the day.

After traipsing up and down Hope Street for four hours, marvelling at all the performances, Peter and I hopped in the van and sped up north to Blackpool to catch the last Alice shows. Then I suddenly realised I had lost my phone. For the fourth time this year and the second time in a week. After some skilled detective work (ringing it repeatedly while retracing my steps) it turned up on the floor of the van. Huh. After the show came down we started on the get out that night, taking out tech equipment and packing up (really sweaty) costumes until midnight. Well deserved drinks were had by the tech team back at the hotel (the cast were at the Flying Handbag nightclub until the very small hours) before bed sometime after 01.00am. Though looking at the state of us all, we may have technically been asleep before that.

The Alice shows were wonderful and audience response has been incredible. Sneak previews at audience feedback show that people were thrilled not only by the unique theatrical experience but by the spectacular venue and the chance to see spaces they didn't know existed! It's been a privilege to produce this piece of theatre. It's been hard work and fast-paced but the results are something that Hope Street and all involved can be justly proud of. We've loved working in a space as magical as the Winter Gardens and I was glad to go back there this week to collect the giant tea pot. We'd forgotten just how big it was - it only just squeezes through double doors. When it's in three pieces... Did you know that the tea cosy that covers the pot was hand knitted?! I know! Amazing.

Thanks to all the artists and performers who worked so hard to make the show a reality and to the partners and the staff at the Winter Gardens - and to the audiences who came and enthused about what they saw!

So it's good bye from us to the Winter Gardens and to Blackpool - for the time being. Alice is over for now but will not be forgotten.

I am off to boil wash my jeans to get that paint out....

The End Of Liam's Adventures In Archiving

how I found it

how I left it


Has it been six months already? Time seems to have no meaning in the tiny archive room I call home. But yes, my contract is up and sadly I must now move on to pastures new. I have had some surprisingly difficult jobs in my life, from my time spent entertaining and enduring the constant barrage of board children as a play worker, to a bizarre twist of events that saw me spending time as a professional wrestler (I swear that did happen). But the time spent organizing the archives of Hope Street has left a greater impression on me that any.

I don’t think we need to go over the near dementia the box after box and photo after photo and SCAN AFTER SCAN drove me too. And I have already wrote about the process of what I did here so before I go I’d like to discuses why I did it.

The Hope Street archives go back years and they don’t just cover the companies work but most all theatre in Liverpool and some outside. I’ve seen reviews in magazines and filers from touring productions dating far back as the 80s and I wish I had a few more months so I could up load them all because they really do display how different the industry has become, but alas I don’t, so I used my time too show how much Hope Street has changed.

Just noting the charge in the aesthetic of the flyers knowing all we know now about graphic design and visual theory you can see the grate leaps we have taken in our approach to promoting shows.

1995

2010



Looking over reviews you see how Hope Street productions start of as blurbs then over time become full page articles full of praise. There is a full rich history to how Hope Street got this far and it plays out through the news clippings and reviews we now (thanks to me) we have chronically stored so you can read the tale of Hope Street like a book.


The photos too depict a massive change in the production and performance of plays. You can map out the early begins of physical theatre from the suspition of its beginnings to its grand artist form it is today looking at the news coverage it received and what it became.

1990

2009


The thousands of pictures of performance also depict the escalation of high concept in theatre, even in children’s pieces. Through the photos we see the rise in artistic expression and the push of conceptions as to what theatre should be. From instillations to street theatre the archives show that Hope Street has found new and exciting ways to bring theatre to people over the years and leave them with not just another play but something memorable.

the sordid shanty of silkbeard - a pirate musical massacre!


Look back over all these performances, community projects and events I proud to have made the memories of them more accessible and hope that in doing so everyone who has even been through Hope Street can too look back with fondness at some of the memories they helped create.

That’s it for me, I’m off to live the glamorise life of a struggling writer, before I do I would like to thank the staff of Hope Street for in all honesty making this the best and most enjoyable job I ever had and hope you all continue on as well you have all these years.

Now, on with the show.

Liam

1992: Tom Thumb and The Frog Prince

Tom Thumb
A Christmas Panto in collaboration with “the right size” and “unity theatre” the show was directed by Peter Ward and preformed by a seven piece cast.

The Frog Prince
An adaptation of the original brothers Grimm fairytale by Tracy Aston that ran from the 4th of December to the 19. Preformed at Unity Theatre by the Hope Street Actors Centre

adventures in archiving: with Liam

It was some six months ago that I set about sorting through more than twenty years of Hope Street Ltd materials. Box after box after box of news cuttings, photos, fliers and everything in between, all gathered in no particular order and scattered all across the building. And that was just the press - the videos and DVDs were a nightmare all of their own. But, as with any task, once I took a step back and planned out what I needed to do it seemed a bit less daunting.

First step was to empty each box and see what was hidden inside. Securing a large space, I spread the contents of each box out on the floor and put everything into three different piles: photos, press, fliers. Once they were all gathered together I put them into their own labelled boxes and stored them somewhere to the side so I could tackle them one by one.

I started with the press cuttings thinking that, since they where dated anyway, half my job was already done for me. Placing the cuttings into a ring binder I was able to make the first historical reference book for the company, the first entry being 1988 and at present the last 2010. Now we have two folders where all the press cuttings from over the years are kept in order and tabbed out by year so we can look up any show from any year when needed.

Working with the fliers was my first real headache. Most promotion flyers produced over the years don’t have the year the show took place in, just the month and the day. I worked out what I could and placed those flyers in a ring binder - the rest of them (and there was a whole lot) I had to email around a list of to see if anyone could place the date they took place and for the ones that fell through the cracks I re-read the whole press cutting collection once more to see if and when they where mentioned and copied the date from the article. It was a long job but when it was over we had a three folder collection of fliers and scans of each for are on the online network.

The photos where definitely a two man job. Amongst the hundreds and hundreds of old pictures I discovered, only a handful were labelled, and some weren’t even grouped together any more. So we were left with a box of random photos covering the last twenty-two years of Hope Street's history. Luckily, Peter has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Hope Street's past shows so he was able to identify all of them and I could then store them in date order. The other big part of the photo job was getting them all online. I found odd CDs while cleaning out the office where all the files where kept so had to check them all to see if they contained any photos. I copied the ones I found over to the hard drive and began scanning in the older photos so now we have hard copies and an electronic collection which we upload samples from each week.

I don’t know if all that sounded like a lot of work, but trust me - it was. And I didn’t have time to stop and take a breath before starting on the last stop on my six month adventure in the Hope Street archives - the videos. Imagine spending months scanning and collecting things, clearing one big mess into one tidy little space then, when you start feeling all good about yourself, you find a bag full of mini DV tapes. At least seventy of them....

And that’s where we are now. I have to check EVERY type there is to see what is on them as some bright sparks over the years thought there was no need to label them! But they're all checked now and we know where everything is and I’m currently working on editing the tapes down so we can upload bits of them for you all to see.

So what have I learnt over the course of my time at Hope Street? Label your tapes and keep stuff organised! Otherwise, some poor sap will spend hours of warm sunny days stuck in a tiny office sorting it all out!

Hope Street Limited is dedicated to
the development of artists, artforms and arts in the community.


"A national pioneer keenly aware of the value of the vast resources on its doorstep."
Total Theatre, Winter 2007.

This award-winning organisation has been central to the development of physical theatre, carnival arts, participatory arts, young people’s theatre, international arts and cross art form collaboration.


Many former apprentices of hope street ltd have established award-winning companies, including Tmesis Theatre, Spike Theatre, Big Wow, Random Acts of Wildness, Suitcase Ensemble and Ullaloom.


Our community engagement programmes aim to combat social exclusion and raise the standard and expectation of community arts.