What a week!

This week feels like the beginning of the second stage of working on the show. Up until now progress has been quite measured and straightforward– Bob (Frith) has built the basics of the set, I have made around half of the masks and puppets, Loz (Kaye) has created music for parts of the show, Steff (Lee) is making animatics – rough versions of the animation, and Esther (Ferry-Kennington) has the tour pretty well booked. But this week things cranked up a notch or two.

Firstly, Esther, Jonny, Mark (Whitaker) and I had a tour meeting. It’s a really sweet tour, and great to have runs at both the Royal Exchange Studio and at the Egg in Bath. But there are a few stretches in there where they have long work days and long drives – over all it seems do-able, but we haven’t yet cracked the nut of staying for multiple gigs in each venue.

Jonny is drawing up tech plans incorporating each of the venues we are visiting, so that we can be sure before we arrive of how the show will sit in each space, and of any difficulties we might encounter. With this show, and especially on the harder parts of the tour, we really need to make sure the get in time is as low as possible. We’ve had a look, too, at the projectors, and have found that the one that we originally bought for Company of Angels 7 years ago is perfect for the job – it’s such a relief not to have to worry about sourcing a new one. It works within the minimum focal length we can allow for backstage projections – in the smallest space we will have 3.40m behind the screen to the back wall, and this just fits snugly. Not having to hang the projector from the rig and work out new focal distances for each venue will cut back the get-in problems we had on Veil tremendously. Now Bob and Steff have the hard job of working out how to get the proportions of the animation and film sections to match…and to be projected on the side.

Not having to buy or hire a projector is a huge relief, especially as we’ve had to shave a big chunk off the materials budget for the show. We had an emergency board meeting on Tuesday to discuss the income shortfall – whilst the tour is pretty full-on, we have less long runs than we had hoped for. This means more travel days, more time taking down and rebuilding the set, and less actual paid gigs. The cast work harder, the travel costs go up, and the income goes down. So a compromise has had to be reached in order to ensure that the tour can go ahead without the stability of the company being threatened. A third of the materials budget and a good chunk from both the tour and marketing budgets have been cut, so we’ll just have to do more of the specialist work in-house – the early publicity shots, the print design, and more of the making for the show. But the great thing was that the board were completely sensitive to the needs of the production, and didn’t want us to cut anything that we felt would undermine the quality of the show. It’s great to have that support.

I’m also busy programming the puppet festival for the Boo, our venue, and the deadline for that is fast approaching, so I’m a bit desk-bound. I really can’t wait for a stretch of time working on the masks and puppets – I think Swallow, Little Leap Forward’s sister will be the next mask I’ll make. So far I have all the children - Blue, Little Little, Little Leap Forward, and two versions of his mother. I haven’t quite worked out what style they will be painted in, if at all, but I think I’ll put that decision off until they are all made.