And have a peek at the review of Avon Calling in The Guardian here.

Or check out the feature about the show in The Independent here.

The show has been picking up some great press and online attention. Check out our review on A Younger Theatre’s website and The Guardian’s Theatre Blog on our Press Page.

This weekend’s shows are part of CPT’s Sprint Festival, and next weekend we’re being hosted by artsdepot. Click here for further info and links to book.

The tour continues from March, heading to London (CPT’s Sprint Festival & artsdepot), Oxford Playhouse, Harrogate Theatre, and ending at Wales Millenium Centre’s Blysh Festival in July.

Further dates & locations in May & June are also about to be announced.

Click here for more info about dates and booking

We’ll be performing just 3 times on 23rd, 24th & 25th August at 7pm. With just 10 places for each show do book tickets early to avoid disappointment.

Click here to view the e-flyer with info about booking

Click here to view the video trailer

Seeking ‘Audience Members’ for film of Avon Calling

• Are you interested in the work of The Other Way Works?
• Do you have a background in acting?
• Are you free this Sunday afternoon from 12-6pm (26th June)?

Then we’d love it if you could join us as we film Avon Calling, in the starring role of one of six ‘audience members’.

We’ve just finished a successful run of Avon Calling in association with mac Birmingham. Our next job is to create a film of the piece that we will use to promote the show to encourage future bookings.

As you may know, Avon Calling is a show performed in audience members’ own homes, in their lounge, and takes the form of an Avon Party. Its very participatory.

In order to properly reflect this, we need an ‘audience’ of six people to appear in our film of the piece – and this is where you come in. We have found from past experience that when it comes to filming, our audience members need to have the ability to act – you’ll need to act surprised, or amused etc even on the third or fourth take!

It would be great if you were able to spend the afternoon with us on Sunday 26th June to be in the film. You’d also get to see most of the show, as it gets filmed. And we’ll all go out for a curry (on us) afterwards to say thanks.

Details:
Sunday 26 June (this Sunday)
12pm – 6pm
House on Stirchley/Kings Heath border, Birmingham
Wear what you’d wear to go to a friends house for an night with friends

If you would like to take part, please email info@theotherwayworks.co.uk ASAP.

Many thanks in advance.

Katie Day, Artistic Director, The Other Way Works
www.theotherwayworks.co.uk

“A thought – provoking performance and a lovely evening with friends in the comfort of my own home.”

What more could you ask for, eh?!

We are also really pleased to have SOLD OUT the entire run in collaboration with mac.

Avon Calling is now on sale through mac Birmingham. 9 out of the 10 performances have already been booked, so get in quick to avoid disappointment.

For further info click here, or to go straight to mac’s website page click here.

View the e-flyer here.

Ding dong!

For further info click here, or to go straight to mac’s website page click here.

Ding dong!

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…