The wonderful Tree of Codes is coming to Denmark.
It'll be at the Musikhuset, Aarhus from April 27th to May 1st - the last date an extra show added because of the overwhelming demand for tickets - following on from its appearances in Paris and London earlier in the year.
Recently published articles by Rob include:
Four pieces in LSi:
Tools from Beyond, looking at a website that makes sure you're paying as little as possible when fuelling your car.
Plus a column in The Stage, remembering Ken Bennett-Hunter, who passed away at the end of March, and from that commenting that we really should work to record the memories of those who helped establish and then shape our industry, before it's too late.
Rob is delighted to have been chosen to light much of the opening rep season of shows at the new Storyhouse theatre in Chester.
Storyhouse is a conversion of the abandoned 1930s Odeon cinema by architects Bennetts Associates, incorporating a theatre, a studio theatre, a cinema, and a library together with wonderful foyers spaces in what was the original cinema auditorium. The main theatre has a very particular trick: for most of the year it will operate as a proscenium arch theatre facing three levels of seating, perfect for receiving incoming tours. But for Storyhouse's own shows, it converts to a wonderfully intimate thrust stage, of the kind familiar to anyone who has visited the summer seasons of outdoor theatre at Chester’s Grovesnor Park Open Air Theatre over the last few years. The team behind Grovesnor Park are now running Storyhouse, and in fact three of the shows that open indoors at Storyhouse will later transfer outdoors to the park over the summer.
Rob has been involved with Storyhouse for the last three years, helping to oversee the technical planning for the theatre alongside theatre consultants Charcoalblue, and identifying the range of lighting fixtures and control systems needed to best deal with the theatre’s dual nature, before working with the theatre’s technical team to create the final shopping list of lighting equipment for the venue. As he says, “that probably then makes me the perfect choice to light the opening season of shows, since on the one hand I have a deep hypothetical knowledge of the theatre from years of staring at drawings of it, and on the other if I'm not happy with the equipment stock the theatre has the only person I can complain to is me!”
In the opening season, Rob will light The Beggar’s Opera and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both directed by Storyhouse’s Artistic Director, Alex Clifton, and Alice In Wonderland, directed by Derek Bond. All three productions are designed by Jess Curtis.
The opening performance, of Beggar’s Opera, takes place on Thursday 11th May; it then plays in rep with the other shows and the season's fourth production, Julius Caesar.
Rob, together with his wife Mary Halliday (props supervisor on shows including An American in Paris and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), spent the weekend in Batley, near Leeds, running workshops on lighting, props and life backstage as part of the audition and interview day for the creation of the Batley & Spen Youth Theatre and their first production, the Les Miserables School Edition.
The production is being staged to commemorate the life of local MP Jo Cox, the area’s local MP until her tragic death; Les Miserables was her favourite musical.
The day saw local young people interested in working backstage on the show learning about light, lighting and its power to shape performance from Rob, including an interactive session experimenting with hand-held lights and colour to see this in action live, and then learning about scenery, props and how in theatre even the most obvious things are often not quite what they actually seem from Mary. A sugar-glass bottle gave a dramatic example of this...
“I grew up in a youth theatre, and went on to spend number of years working on production of Les Mis around the world,” comments Rob. “This weekend was a perfect combination of those two worlds, and it was great to be there with a bunch of people interested, excited and hugely enthusiastic about spending their summer creating a show.”
The Batley & Spen Youth Theatre’s production of Les Miserables will run during August 2017.
Tree of Codes; Photographer: Joel Chester Fildes
Tree of Codes is now at Sadler's Wells, this week only - final London performance on Friday, March 11th.
It's wonderful. Go see it.
Tree of Codes, the acclaimed dance show created at the Manchester Festival in 2015 which has subsequently played at the Park Avenue Armory in New York and the Garnier Opera in Paris, reaches London next week, opening at Sadler’s Wells on Saturday March 4th.
Articles are like buses: because of deadlines and print schedules, articles that seem like they were written months apart can suddenly all appear at the same time in a great big flurry.
The latest arrivals:
