HOODWINK
PROGRAMME OF WORK TO DATE:
Indoor, Outdoor and Site Specific
Shows:
THE RIVER IS REVOLTING!
A site specific show created and performed in June 2007.
Specially commissioned by Salisbury Festival, as part of the Living River project, performed at Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury.
The River Is Revolting! brought out the wildness of the river, with sheep running amok, monster dragonflies being spawned, and giant hogweed advancing.
A programme of participatory work with primary school children led to the making of swarms of dragonflies which made an appearance at the end of each show.
PLEASURE GARDEN
Touring Summer 2006 onwards
Created by Hoodwink, commissioned by Stockton International Riverside Festival and Henley Festival
Pleasure Garden is an intimate performance in a formal garden. Audiences glimpse the innocent moments of Adam's first bite of the apple, through love letters and peacocks to the thunderous age of steam. Groups are escorted into the garden for approximately 15 minutes for bees, blossom, extravagant characters and elegant comedy.
SHEER FOLLY
Touring Autumn
2005
Created by
HOODWINK. Commissioned by Salisbury Arts Centre
One rain drenched night a
woman climbs a tower and finds 'The Lost Pinnacle', the answer to true love and
happiness. Then she drops it, and a man finds it at his feet. Sheer Folly is the
tale of how they find each other. A timeless search for love, the obstacles in
its path, the blunders of passion, and the folly of the human
heart.
"Fools rush in where wise men never go
But wise men never fall
in love
So how are they to know....."
Ricky Nelson
Sheer Folly
allows the audience to consider their own idiocy and the bittersweet moments of
weakness or silliness that make or break our lives. Enduring problems of love
are bought together with fragments of foolish architecture, and HOODWINK's eye
for absurd, brutal and comic social etiquette.
A fantastical theatrical
excursion into a worls where the sensibilities of Brief Encounter meet the
vibrancy of The Wizard of Oz. HOODWINK create a sensual world of heightened
emotion, music, light and extraordinary set and props.
Sheer Folly will
last approximately 75 minutes. There will be no interval.
The show is
suitable for anyone 12 years and over.
Sheer Folly will be particularly
enjoyed by anyone who has ever been, actually is, or would like to be at some
point, in love.
4D An Adventure In Time - February - April 2003. Touring October
& November 2003
An interactive promenade performance for the
newly refurbished Poole Arts Centre to show off the new building. Through
history, art, myth, fact and fiction an exploration of how we measure our lives,
from a beating heart to the atomic clock, the moments that change us, the
significant dates and the wasted hours.
Artists involved:
Joint
Artistic Directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam Gent
Andrew Cromie -
Performer
Kate Adams - Performer
Matthew Lawrenson - Performer
Josh
Elwell - Performer
Kelsey Michael - Composer
Neil Robson - Maker
Karen
McKeown - Costume
GASTRONOMIC
Funded by
Southern Arts, Salisbury District Council and Salisbury Arts
Centre.
National and European Outdoor Summer Tour 2001/2/3.
An
elaborate outdoor theatrical feast featuring flies in the soup, exploding fish,
runaway puddings and a table that literally walks off in disgust. Elegance and
etiquette rapidly transcend into an epic finale of custard pies, slapstick
comedy, song, dance and fantastical visual theatre. Tremendous fun for all
ages.
Artists invovlved:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland
and Adam Gent.
Andrew Cromie - performer/deviser.
Andy Plant -
designer/maker.
Neil Robson - designer/maker.
Kate Adams -
performer/musician.
Karen McKeown - designer/maker.
TABLE ETIQUETTE .
"a practical and social guide from Birth to Death"
Funded by
Southern Arts and Salisbury District Council.
Site specific promenade
performance made for Salisbury Arts Centre. Spring 2001.
A unique
sensory journey around the building as it had never been seen before, featuring
lessons in table manners, tea dances, bread making, first love in an apple room,
banquets, song, visual splendour and food.
Artists working with
HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent.
Andrew Cromie performer/deviser.
Lehla Eldridge
performer/deviser.
Amanda Hadingue performer/musician.
Adam Tedder
performer/musician.
Kate Smith performer.
Neil Robson
designer/maker.
SHORE
LEAVE
Funded by
Portsmouth City Arts and Southern Arts for The Year of The Artist.
A two
week residency in a beach hut on Southsea sea front. August
2000.
Working on a theme of things lost and found on the beach, three
different performances were created and performed:
The Man Who Makes the
Pebbles on the Beach. A short intimate performance for two audience members
at a time inside the beach hut
Frogmen and Beachcombers. Two sets of
characters in costume, who either combed the beach and unearthed buried objects
or strolled along the promenade and serenaded holidaymakers with a song written
for Southsea.
The Beach Hut. A thirty minute show with audience seated
in deckchairs. A comedy with original music and fantastic visuals featuring one
man's evening stroll along the beach interrupted by unexpected and often cruel
characters exploding out of the beach hut, including a fisherman buried in the
pebbles and a tango dancing siren who leads him into the arms of beachcombers on
a mission to unearth hundreds of black balloons from under the
pebbles.
Artists working with HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors
Stephanie Jalland and Adam Gent.
Andrew Cromie performer/deviser.
Chris
Talman performer/musician.
Sandra Osborne performer/musician.
David Hadden
performer/musician.
HOTBED
Funded by
Southern Arts and Portsmouth City Arts.
National outdoor summer tour
1999/2000.
A magical myth of creation featuring comedy, original
music, dangerous bees, sizzling tangos, outrageous weather, hungry snails and
growing sunflowers in an epic meeting of shoot and soil.
Artists working with
HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent.
Andrew Cromie performer/deviser.
Lou Glandfield
composer/musician.
Jason Payne electrician/maker.
'PARADISE.
Funded by
Southern Arts, Portsmouth City Council and Pegasus Theatre supported by the
National Lottery through the Arts Council of England.
National indoor
tour, Autumn and Spring 1998/99.
A sinister, comic tale of greed
avarice and earth with water features, pyrotechnics and peas as a garden was
literally created indoors as we delved into gardening and desire, inspired by a
true story of misplaced inheritance and contested wills.
Artists working with
HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent.
Andrew Cromie performer/deviser.
James Holmes
composer/musician.
'PARADISE PHOTOGRAPHERS'
Commissioned
by Portsmouth City Arts August 1998.
An explosively interactive
outdoor performance project. Two photographers 'in search of paradise' roamed
Portsmouth and Southsea sea fronts interviewing the public and recording their
ideas on what paradise really is, in exchange for a photograph produced there
and then of themselves, 'In Portsmouth, In Paradise'.
Artists working with
HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent.
PISCIS
FORTUNATAS.
National and
European outdoor summer tour 1997 and 1998.
An explosive success at
home and abroad, a chaotic comedy with surreal illusion, bizarre special
effects, stunning costumes, original music and spectacular pyrotechnics as two
hapless clairvoyants try to tell the fortune of a member of the audience with
the never-before-tested, mind reading hat.
Artists working with
HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent.
James Holmes composer/musician.
'HOODWINK, the show.'
Funded by
Southern Arts.
National indoor tour Autumn 1997, including The British
Festival of Visual Theatre.
Who tells the fortune of the fortune teller?
A surreal comedy with illusion, fantastical visual effects and original music in
a behind the scenes look at the lives of three travelling fortune
tellers.
Artists working with HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors
Stephanie Jalland and Adam Gent.
Andrew Cromie performer/deviser.
Bryan
Tweddle designer/maker.
James Holmes composer/musician.
HOODWINK in the ROUND TOWER.
Commissioned by Portsmouth City Arts for The Round Tower, Portsmouth,
August 1997.
A theatrical, interactive installation and reinterpretation
of the seaside fortune teller.
The inside of the Round Tower was transformed
into a site of rare astrological significance as visitors' fortunes were told in
exchange for a personal object that was petrified before their eyes and left on
display.
Artists working with HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors
Stephanie Jalland and Adam Gent.
Bryan Tweddle designer/maker.
James
Holmes composer/musician.
Participatory Projects
Hoodwink's
Winter Wonderland Disco Christmas
2005
Hoodwink worked with children to make costumes and a
short performance to be presented during a Winter Wonderland Disco. Everyone
from toddlers to grandparents came and danced, played games, had festive
refreshments, and of course visited King Winter to make a wish
for the new year.
Telling the Time -
October - December 2002
Funded by Southern and South East Arts and
Lightouse, Poole's Centre for the Arts
Telling the Time focused on groups
and individuals for whom time had taken on a particular significance, creatively
exploring their experiences to create an archive of memories, stories, ideas and
images connected with time. The participants included expectant mothers,
pensioners, and with particular significance to the location of Poole, people
whose lives are determined by the movement of the tides such as ferry workers,
fishermen, coast guards as well as other community groups across the age range.
The residency enabled the community to participate in, shape, influence and own
two new major professional pieces of work by bringing their own ideas, language
and creativity to the creative process of HOODWINK, that resulted in an
original and inventive performance and a fantastical animated speaking clock.
Artists involved
Joint Artistic Directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent
Andy Plant - Sculptor/clockmaker.
September 2001 - July 2002. SHOUT
Funded by
Southern Arts and The Friends of The Henley Festival.
Over one school
year HOODWINK have run devising theatre workshops in primary, secondary
and special needs schools and a remand centre for young offenders, all in the
Henley area, working with in total, 800 young people. For the final summer term
40 pupils from one secondary and two primary schools have been selected to
create a short outdoor show to be performed at The Henley Festival Family Fun
Day on July 15th.
Artists involved with HOODWINK:
Joint artistic
directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam Gent.
Andrew Cromie workshop
leader/performer.
Josh Elwell workshop leader/performer.
Neil Robson
designer/maker.
September 2001 - May
2002. Forged and Gorged.
A
celebratory combined arts project based at Westwood St Thomas' School, Bemerton
Heath, Salisbury.
Funded by Southern Arts, Salisbury District Council,
Barclays New Futures Award.
Over four months HOODWINK and artist
blacksmith Melissa Cole worked with over three hundred local people, from
toddlers to senior citizens and including teaching and non teaching staff and
pupils from Westwood St Thomas' School. Through creative workshops, interviews
and chats they explored the triumphs and disasters in the kitchens of Bemerton
Heath.
The collection of stories, memories, poems, thoughts, drawings, top
tips and recipes were collated into a free book to celebrate cooks and home
cooking and the essential but often unnoticed part they play in our lives. This
book was distributed to all participants and 2000 people across the
community.
The same material was used to inspire a free show created by
HOODWINK, that took place on December 14th 2001 on Bemerton Heath. 14 school
pupils, teachers and non teaching staff took part as performers as well as many
staff and local people participating in other roles, such as stewards, security
and general organisational help.
The show began outdoors on a wide open grass
area opposite the local chip shop - and featured a 15 foot high cake built on to
a van, incorporating sound, light, pyrotechnics and performers.
The maximum
capacity audience to this free event, of 160 people, then processed along a road
to the school site where the rest of the performance took place inside a marquee
after everyone had been given a free portion of chips. The show centred around a
cake baking contest between two chefs and involved song, dance, lots of visual
spectacle and cakes - and many of the true stories gathered through the
participatory work. The audience was made up of project participants, school
pupils and staff and local residents.
Artist blacksmith Melissa Cole worked
with participants on both practical forging workshops and on the design of a
community sculpture. This sculpture, a 4m high three tier cake, along with
several produced by pupils at the school will be unveiled at the end of May
2002. This event will also feature performance by 20 pupils from Westwood St
Thomas'School - following the model led by HOODWINK in December.
HOODWINK will advise at the start and end of their devising
process.
Artists involved with HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors
Stephanie Jalland and Adam Gent.
Melissa Cole artist blacksmith.
Andrew
Cromie performer/deviser.
Josh Elwell performer/deviser.
Amanda Hadingue
performer/deviser/musician.
Jane Quy performer/deviser.
Bryan Tweddle
designer/maker.
April -November 2000
APPETITE.
Funded by Southern Arts and Salisbury Health Care NHS
Trust.
An eleven week residency at Salisbury District Hospital in
consultation with ArtCare, APPETITE was a creative exploration into the role of
food in our lives, the unique relationship we each have to it, the cultural,
social and individual differences and similarities that define
it.
HOODWINK led a series of workshops, ward visits and open surgeries
targeting staff from the Department of Dietetics, Medical Photography and
patients. Participants creatively explored their thoughts, memories,
associations and professional assumptions about food through a variety of
media:
The Department of Dietetics created a 'vending machine'
that was on display in the main entrance to the hospital for two weeks. Four
dieticians and the department secretary were each responsible for a tier which
displayed four items of food or related objects accompanied by text. The text
was a related memory, fact, nutritional information and description.
The
Department of Medical Photography created postcards that were
distributed free of charge to every department of the hospital. Four
photographers were given a creative brief to select and photograph an image
related to their likes or dislikes of food. These photographs were accompanied
by a short caption or title and produced into postcards.
Patients and other
hospital staff were interviewed and recorded talking about their memories of
food, their likes and dislikes, associations etc. All of this material inspired
the creation of a short film and a live performance.
The Waiting Room, a
short film shot in the hospital waiting room and played there on a video
player over a couple of days to patients waiting for appointments to outpatient
clinics. A comedy without words, featuring original music and three characters
eating unexpected and outrageous food.
The Tea Trolley, a ten minute
show with song and dance that toured wards, restaurants and other spaces
throughout the hospital and featured three performers and a tea trolley that
produced a fountain of tea over a pyramid of tea cups.
Artists involved with
HOODWINK:
Joint artistic directors Stephanie Jalland and Adam
Gent.
Lehla Eldridge performer/deviser.
Adam Tedder
performer/musician.
Daniel Luscombe film editor.
Neil Robson
designer/maker.
TANTALUS
Portsmouth
Girls High School. May 2000.
A 4 day performance project with 20 girls
aged 13- 14 years, culminating in a public performance.
Exploring themes and
ideas for APPETITE and TABLE ETIQUETTE.
GERMINATION
Portsmouth Girls High
School. May 1999.
A 4 day performance project with 20 girls aged 13-14
years, culminating in a public performance. Exploring ideas and themes for
HOTBED.
'A SLICE OF
PARADISE'
Funded by Portsmouth City Council. August 1998.
A 3 day
theatrical installation project with young people aged 13+ at Portsmouth Arts
Centre.
Each participant created their own 'slice of paradise' - included
set, costume, sound, food, effects. Performed to the public on the last
day.
'STREETS'
Funded by
Swindon Borough Council. August 1998
Creation of an outdoor, visual
theatre performance with Sixth Sense Youth Theatre, for public performance at
Swindon Street Theatre Festival. A 7 day project with twenty young people aged
12-18 years.
FOOLING in the
FOYER.
Salisbury Playhouse, February 1998.
Creation of a promenade
performance over 3 days with children aged 9-12 years.