Here’s an update of what we’ve been exploring as part of the development of our new production – Avon Calling…
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…
Avon Calling, In development, News, Productions post by katie.