We are currently making two new Bandstand Audio Experiences for the bandstand in West Park, Wolverhampton. We are working with our commissioning partners Black Country Touring to develop and promote these new works.

I’m Katherine Maxwell-Cook, and I’ll be writing the story and the text for the experiences. One will be for a solo listener/participant/audience member, and one will be written for a pair to experience together.

I’ve been looking at old black and white photographs of the bandstand in West Park and trying to imagine what it was like to be there in a bygone era. The Black Country website (http://blackcountryhistory.org/) is an amazing resource of historical pictures, pamphlets and articles from the region. It looks like the actual layout of the park hasn’t changed much since it was originally landscaped in the 1880s.

But a photo of the bandstand from 1994 looks rather miserable and decrepit in comparison to the restored glory in which it now stands, with its red and white striped pillars like old Victorian sweets along with the refurbished roof and floor. How it looked and was used in 1948 when part of our story is set, still remains somewhat of a mystery.

Questions I am asking…

What was it like in the park after World War II when much of it had been turned into allotments for the war effort? Were bands playing on the bandstand during this time?

How will the male and female sides of the story differ?

What effect did the war have on the relationship between the man and the woman?

What is it about the bandstand that is so alluring, even today?

I enjoyed reading this description of the Black Country from the mid nineteenth century, ‘The appearance of the country around Wolverhampton and Bilston is strange in the extreme. For miles and miles the eye ranges over wide-spreading masses of black rubbish, hills on hills of shale, and mashed and muddled coal dust, extracted from beneath and masking, as it were, the whole face of nature.” (http://www.localhistory.scit.wlv.ac.uk/articles/Parks/Parks.htm)

It reminded me of the importance of public parks in the industrial heartlands; even in the last century they were weekend sanctuaries; an opportunity to stroll on the green grass, go boating or picnic under the sheltering trees. Somehow I’ll try to weave this sense of escape into the stories I’m writing.

Katherine Maxwell-Cook

Lucy brought a couple of devising exercises with her which gave structure to two hour-and-a-half improvathons. It was doing the first of these that made me feel like I was in Forced Entertainment – we set up three runways with ‘stages’ at the ends, where only one could be occupied at a time. As another person starts performing in one of the other ‘stages’ this ejects the person currently performing. Lots in common with Forced Ent’s show ‘And on the Thousandth Night’ in structure really. Both exercises generated some poignant imagery, interesting characters and situations, and entertaining juxtapositions of material.

We also started researching and playing a variety of parlour games.  The next challenge will be to get these games working, and get them to help us with our storytelling. We’re also thinking a lot about transitioning between our two worlds: 1. very present and ‘now’ and about the Avon party; and 2. a collection of magic realist dreams/images. We’ve thought of a few ‘means by which’ we could transition, so that’s really helpful, and we’ll now look to create a ‘getable’ language around these that can become part of the language and aesthetic of the show.

We now have funding confirmed from Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts for this project, and are under the wing of mac in Birmingham and rehearsing in their building.

We also had our first session with our mentor Alex Kelly from Third Angel. This was a good provocation for us to develop some bits and bobs to show him, to introduce him to our thoughts and ideas. We got him playing some Avon Party Games, gave him a moisturising hand treatment (he’s a good sport) and filled him in on our ideas around the structure of the audience experience. Alex introduced us to a couple of exercises which we played then, and have modified and played since – which have helped us to access and generate stories.

In the last few weeks we’ve explored conventional story structures, created a kind of ‘wheel of experience’ for the audience, come up with ideas for our central character’s back-story, researched compulsive hoarding and made character notes from this, and moved into exploring writing our own fairy-type stories. We’ve been using an ‘automatic writing’ technique where we write non-stop for 10 minutes on a theme, which helps us not to censor what we produce. In case you weren’t aware, Reese Witherspoon is the international face of Avon, and as a result she features heavily in our tales and fantasies – I mean who wouldn’t aspire to be Reese? She’s stunningly beautiful and yet approachable like the girl next door. Its only a matter of time till you crack too…

As an artist making work, it seems pretty essential, but it’s so hard to know how to filter the stuff people say.  Everyone has some kind of agenda, a different aesthetic preference.

We got a whole range of snippets of written feedback following 10 minutes of extracts from Avon Calling at First Bite a couple of weeks ago.  Inevitably the negative ones sear themselves onto my retina, whilst the positive ones float in and out and get forgotten about.  I decided to put all the text into Wordle, and the result I think paints a more positive picture than is correct – since it breaks up sentences and just shows single words.

So here is the wordle, and a couple of my favourite bits of feedback.  And just so you know, I do read the feedback, and the negative stuff does hurt my feelings, but the positive stuff has the power to make me want to keep going and make more work and make it better.

“This evening was billed as ‘the region’s most daring theatre…” well if this is one of the “most daring” then heaven help us!”

“very pleasantly tickled by the whole concept”

“Confused… apathetic.. Maybe disgruntled at best.”

“My favourite I adore this piece! Moving Touching Thought provoking – would love to see it develop”

What
AVON AND ME is a web project to collect personal memories and stories about Avon cosmetics.

How
Stories can be shared by filling in the web form on avonandme.co.uk, by emailing story@avonandme.co.uk or by tagging photos, video, audio or tweets on the web (Twitter, Flickr, Audioboo, Delicious, Technorati). Your story can be short, long, funny, sad, touching, embarrassing – all are welcome.

Who
AVON AND ME is run by The Other Way Works, an experimental theatre company based in Birmingham, UK.
The Other Way Works creates daring and remarkable theatre that draws the audience into the very heart of the experience.

Why
We are currently developing a theatre production entitled ‘Avon Calling‘. Every time we told anyone about the project, they would launch straight into a little anecdote about Avon – their mum used to be the Avon lady, or their auntie, or their first lipstick was from Avon. Often these stories were personal, about family members, about childhood. It seems that Avon is embedded deep in our lives and memories.

We created AVON AND ME so we can share all of these stories with each other. Share your story now – see ‘How‘ above for tips.

The Other Way Works’ latest work Avon Calling explores the eternal triangle of mother, daughter and… Avon cosmetics. Drawing vividly on personal source material Louise Platt reveals to the audience her mother’s world of shiny new products and multicoloured bottles gathering dust on cupboard tops. An intimate and comic portrait of a woman, a mother, an Ex-Avon Lady.

Avon Calling (In development, 30 minutes of material) as part of ‘It Came From Pilot’
Warwick Arts Centre
Thursday 8th October 2009 19:45 £7.50/£5
Book Tickets through Warwick Arts Centre
Buy Online or call the Box Office: 024 7652 4524

Avon Calling has been commissioned by PILOT Nights / Warwick Arts Centre. Funded by Arts Council England

Some of you may have seen some early ideas for Avon Calling at our performance at Pilot back in March 09.  We’re pleased to announce that Avon Calling has been selected by Pilot to be part of their double-bill ‘It Came From Pilot’ at Warwick Arts Centre on 8th October 2009.  It will remain a one-woman show, co-written and performed by Louise Platt.  We’ll be rehearsing throughout August and September.

Back to what we’ve been up to so far this summer…

We started July with a performance at Pilot at the A.E. Harris Factory space (which we called ‘Spool’).  It involved using live sound looping to create evocative soundscapes. We started work on the show at 10am on the Monday, and performed it on the Thursday night. It seemed to go down well, and the current MD of the A.E. Harris factory gave it the thumbs up (despite the comic depiction of a fictional member of his staff!)

The culmination of our project at Colmore Infant & Nursery School in Kings Heath took place on Friday 10th July, as part of a day of celebrations marking the school’s Centenary. Artistic Director Katie Day has been working with parents at the school since March, as part of a Bright Space project investigating the school’s history.  Everything came together on the day, and a dedicated handful of parents performed in a 10 minute ‘WW2 Air Raid Shelter Experience’ for every class at the school – 13 performances in all.  We seem to have captured the children’s imaginations – as later on that same day one child presented us with a drawing of everyone inside the shelter, and we overheard playground games at breaktime involving sirens and running to the shelter!

Take a look at the Education section of our website for information about our other participatory projects.

We started work on the show at 10am on Monday, and will perform it on Thursday night – guerilla site-responsive theatre!

Come and see Toni Midlane and Vimal Korpal perform, with Mark Day on sound & music, scenography input from Xristina Penna, research by Nix Wood, and directed by Katie Day.

Click here for more info.

Click here for directions to the venue.

We’ll be trying out our site-specific boot-camp idea ‘One Week Works’.  Five artists will arrive on Monday, work together ‘responding to the space’, and perform what we’ve made on Thursday evening as part of the Pilot event.  As you can see, that’s not even a full week – but we’re never afraid of a challenge!

Our composer Mark Day is already confirmed in the line-up of artists, so expect some audio treats as part of our offering.

Here are a few pics of our little corner of the factory.