FROM OUR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR - SUMMER SHOWS FROM CHALON

Our next events at Bell Square feature 2 wonderful companies from France – Le Grand Jeté and (the fabulously named) Collectif Fearless Rabbits.

I love chatting with people at Bell Square, talking about the shows and what everybody thought about them.

A question I’m regularly asked is, ‘Where do you find all these shows?’ Most of the shows, I will have seen at festivals. There are hundreds of festivals of outdoor arts and performance all over the world, but especially in Europe. Each festival has its own strengths and specialisms, of course, and there are certain ones that are particularly good for the type of shows we present at Bell Square.

There are, however, a couple of huge festivals of outdoor arts which programmers looking for shows for their own locations will visit regularly. ‘Fira Tarrega’ in Spain and ‘Chalon Dans La Rue’ in France are the hypermarkets of outdoor performance.

Chalon is a very small city in Eastern France. Every year, its festival, Chalon Dans La Rue – or Chalon in the Street – offers 5 days of outdoor performance. The festival tries to create a dialogue between artists, the city and the public about what is going on in the world. Typically, 150 companies will take part, turning this small city into a monumental stage. There will be 1000 performances running from 8.00 in the morning through to 3.00 the following morning. It’s a crazy schedule but you certainly see plenty of shows!

As the middle and south of France sweltered in a blistering heatwave last year, the 2023 festival was one I won’t forget. Rushing around the city from one show to the next seemed demanding enough – but think of the dancers and circus artists performing in 40 degrees!

There were many, many wonderful shows and you will see some of them at Bell Square in the years to come. Two of them, you will see this month. Both have dance at their heart but that is where the similarity ends.

On Saturday 3 August, Le Grand Jete bring their show, Repliques. Two dancer-acrobats are propelled around a circular stage, initially competing with or imitating each other but gradually realising that they can do so much more if they work together.  It’s a fun, engaging show by 2 excellent performers. As I sat in a park in Chalon last year – yes, in 40 degrees – I thought that our audiences at Bell Square would love this. You can thank me on Saturday.

And on Saturday 17 August, Collectif Fearless Rabbits perform R.L.M. – or Rapid Life Movement. A solo male dancer performs inside an open cube structure, avoiding the ever-present danger of fast-moving metal shards. The piece is a response to the terror attacks at the Bataclan theatre and other sites in Paris in 2015. It looks at how a place can seem dangerous and deadly on one day and then calm and spiritual on another.  The artist describes making the piece as a catharsis after the horror of the attacks. However, it also offers the public a possibility for meditation on the transformation of the place, not least because of the ghosts who will always remain there. This is a striking, powerful and emotional performance – not to be missed.

Come and join us for both of these very different shows from last year’s edition of Chalon Dans La Rue!

Le Grand Jete perform twice, at 1.00 pm and again at 3.00 pm, on Saturday 3 August.

Collectif Fearless Rabbits also perform twice, at 3.00 pm and again at 7.00 pm, on Saturday 17 August.

Look forward to seeing you there!

From our Artistic Director: Never Work with Animals!

In the depths of winter, the Bell Square events take a break.  On these cold, dark February days, my mind often wanders back to the balmy days of summer when we were out on the Square, remembering some of the shows, having chats with the audience, and working with some truly lovely artists. And it also wanders back sometimes to the little things that, just occasionally, didn’t go quite to plan….

Never work with animals… ‘Never work with animals’ is good, sage advice for anyone working in the arts.  It is a lesson which should be absorbed as soon as possible by anyone starting out in the arts.  Whenever I have digressed from this advice, it has always ended badly.  A donkey falling off the stage into the orchestra pit.  A bat flying loose above the audience.  Diana Rigg, playing Cleopatra, wrestling with a hot and feisty snake as she prepared to thrust the ‘asp to her bosom’.  I could write a book on this topic, never mind a blog post.

This sage advice, though, never mentioned animals in the audience.  When we’re not at Bell Square, we all work at Watermans, the arts centre in Brentford.  In a venue, only highly trained and perfectly behaved guide dogs or assistance dogs generally come to events.  (There are odd exceptions, of course.)

But out at Bell Square, things are different.   Alongside the audience gathered for the event, passers-by often stop to watch what’s going on.  And sometimes furry passers-by stop to watch, too…

Dogs There have been many dogs at Bell Square events over the years – large, small, young and a bit giddy, some old and just glad of a lie-down at the side of the Square whilst their owner watches a show.  Some join in with a few barks when the audience cheers a circus artist for an impressive performance.  But none has put a foot wrong - or a paw.

Cats Cats.  I know cats.  And I know they have their own minds.  Four years of regular events have proven to me that cats do not like outdoor arts – there is never a cat in the audience.  Alternatively, there are no cats in Hounslow town centre.  Only once did a confident black cat turn the corner onto the Square, hesitate barely a second, then stroll nonchalantly across the performance space – whilst the actors just had to wait.

And others…. But it’s not just cats and dogs.  Hounslow is way more interesting than that.  The blue and yellow macaw, often seen on the shoulder of its owner walking around the town centre, has been to events sometimes, watching intently.  And thankfully silently.

Not all our furry and feathered friends are quite so welcome, however.  At the opposite end of the avian spectrum, pigeons make a nuisance of themselves in most urban arts venues.  Pigeons alone would fill a chapter in that book I could write.  Pigeons just walking straight through the front doors of the venue and up to the bar – regularly.  That was in Manchester.  Pigeons moving into the roof space and setting up an instant colony.  And creating the most shocking and appalling sight of my entire life when I went up to see what was making ‘that strange noise’ above the ceiling.  That was also in Manchester.  They are particularly bad pigeons up there.

At Bell Square, the local pigeons have generally not been much trouble. There was just one occasion, when a performer, as part of the show, threw handfuls of rice all over the Square.  And within seconds, every pigeon in Hounslow descended, en masse, Hitchcock-style, over the audience and the Square.  I suppose you could say we brought that (s$*t) on ourselves.

When I write that book, though, I’m sure it will only be Bell Square that has produced a ferret.  It was on a lead.  It came up to the edge of the performance space calmly, quietly, creating no fuss at all.  The show was about to start and a hush had fallen over the audience.  The music had started and the quietly enigmatic dancers of Akademi had walked onto the performance space to begin their show, Sufi Zen.  Yes, a show about Zen.  As the small, creamy coloured weasel paused to watch, a palpable wave of anxiety spread through the audience.  All focus on the dancers was lost, and the first person to scream unleashed an unimaginable cacophony of horror and fear from the assembled crowd.  The ferret, and its owner, sensing their presence was unwelcome, shuffled off up the High Street.  After some time, a suitable calm prevailed and the show could begin…again.

What next? So, Hounslow, who else are you going to bring to the shows this year?  There must be some rabbits out there who might like circus?

A VIEW FROM BELL SQUARE'S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: STREET GAMES FROM BARCELONA

Guixot de 8 is a Spanish company that make street games.  Using recycled materials, they make original games in their workshop in Barcelona.  They pack the games into a van and go wherever they are invited.  They then set up the games in the street and play with anyone who wants to try their hand.

Guixot de 8, led by creative force Joan Rovira, have been making street games since 1991.  They have been to 30 countries in all 5 continents.  Joan says they have made about 300 games which has given new life to about 10 tons of scrap!

Guixot de 8

Spain has a deep-rooted love of games in the street.  These are usually well-known, popular games – and also ‘cucan

a’ which involve endless variations of climbing up, or along. a greasy pole in celebration of different festivals and other special occasions in small towns across Spain!  But Guixot de 8 were the first to create sets of original games and turn them into a street show.

Since then, many more companies dedicated to street games have emerged – Tombs Creatius, Toc de Fusta, Itinerània, Katakrak and others.  Talking with Joan, he explains that the best companies have developed their own style such as games made of wood, or traditional games made in giant versions for the street.

I have seen many of these street games in different places and they are always a magnet for children and adults alike.  It is lovely for anyone, and perhaps especially an adult, to stop and play in the street with other people.  It is genuine fun, completely absorbing.  And easy to find that you have been very happily distracted from whatever else you may have been doing!

Guixot de 8

There is something timeless about these street games.  They are not new, shiny, the latest thing, not digital, not even electric.  Each one is carefully made by hand and is quite beautiful and special, based on simple physical and mechanical principles.  I asked Joan why, in a time when people have access to so many digital games, he thinks people find these hand-made street games so appealing.

Joan Rovira:  ‘I think it’s because they are an alternative to screen games.  I think that playing with simple physics is attractive.  Physics has a poetry that captivates you.  Also, the games seem easy but they are not!  It makes people keep trying, over and over again.  When playing the games, people are all children – just of different heights!’

One of the things I love about these games is that you just start playing them with people you don’t know.  They are so much larger than the games you might have at home, so they contain an implicit invitation to play with them as a community.

Joan says that they often create a very trusting relationship between people.  ‘Sometimes, someone takes a person’s bag, and then passes it to another person to keep, whilst the owner is playing.  This is a bit unthinkable in current times, but it has happened many times’. 

‘People also learn from each other – passing on what they have learned from the person playing before.  People give each other advice and applaud those who succeed.  People will chase after a ball that has fallen out of the game for others’.

‘People laugh together, people smile, people think.’

Cia Katakrak

So often at Bell Square, people say the events bring people together and make them feel connected to others in their community.

Let’s take our public space and play games together!  See you on Saturday, 4 November!

Guixot de 8 bring their Street Games to Bell Square on Saturday 4 November from 10.00 am - 1.00 pm, and again from 2.00 – 5.00 pm.

An view from Bell Square's Artistic Director: Cia Ignifuga in London for the first time

Across Europe, there are many festivals of outdoor arts.  One of the biggest and most spectacular is Fira Tàrrega.  Every September, this tiny Catalan town in Northern Spain plays host to an extraordinary array of outdoor theatre, dance and circus.  With roots dating back to the 1930s, Fira Tàrrega attracts thousands of artists, audiences and programmers from across the world.  The annual trip to Tàrrega feels like a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of outdoor arts.

Over four days, the festival presents hundreds of performances by artists from across Spain, Europe and beyond.  I go to Tàrrega to look for some of the best shows for Bell Square for the following year.  It is impossible to see everything, so I always arrive with a rigorous schedule that fills every waking moment with the most interesting looking shows!

A couple of years ago, when I arrived in Tàrrega, I asked Jordi Duran, the Artistic Director of the festival, for his top 3 recommendations of shows to see at the festival that year.  One of them was A House Is Not A Home – a new show being performed for the first time by a young theatre company called Companyia Ignífuga.  It wasn’t on my list but it was a great recommendation!

On 23 September, Cia Ignífuga brings A House Is Not A Home to Bell Square.  The company and the play on which their show is based will not be familiar to most people in London, so I hope some background information will be interesting alongside seeing the show.

CIA. IGNÍFUGA   Who are Cia Ignífuga? In English, they are Fireproof Theatre! The company started in Barcelona in 2011. At the Institut del Teatre, the university of performing arts in Barcelona, a group came together around a shared vision of what theatre should be, at this early point - this still rather disorientated point - of the 21st century.

This group of young theatre makers and actors want to make shows that comment on our contemporary lives.  And they want our experience as audiences, when we see their shows, to be emotional as well as intellectual.

A HOUSE IS NOT A HOMEA House Is Not A Home is Cia Ignífuga’s third show together.  It is based on Interior, a play by a Flemish writer, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949).  Maeterlinck is remembered and recognised principally for his early plays, written in his late 20s and early 30s.  Interior was one of these notable works, written in 1894 when he was only 32.

Most of Maeterlinck’s work is written in a way that stirs the reader’s own feelings, stimulating their own imagination, and this comes through strongly in Cia Ignífuga’s adaptation of Maeterlinck’s play.  Maeterlinck wrote what he called ‘modern tragedy’ and believed that people are powerless against the forces of fate, that we are all pushed and pulled by circumstances beyond our control. 

A House Is Not A Home is a very simple story.  Friends and family start to arrive at a house for a dinner party.  The group are laughing and enjoying themselves, whilst they wait for the last guest to arrive.  It gets quite late and still the guest has not arrived.

A car then arrives at the house, unnoticed by the residents inside.  The two people inside the car have come with bad news. They can see the people inside the house, in high spirits, and argue about how they can break the bad news to them.  How can they disrupt this happy occasion?  The show then centres on this tension between the anxiety of the people outside the house, and the happiness and innocence of the people inside - and how, with a few words, their sense of security will be shattered.

It was partly Cia Ignífuga’s presentation of the piece that attracted me to this show.  Going to see it one night at the festival, I walked along a dark lane away from Tàrrega’s town centre to an even darker, muddy field.  In the field stood a ‘small house’.  The living room lights were on and we could see the inhabitant of the house preparing for her guests to arrive.

A few rows of chairs were set out for the audience a little way away from the house.  We were all given headphones through which we would hear the conversations inside the house and inside the car.  It is a slightly unsettling experience, voyeuristic. You can hear every word that they say, but you are outside in the dark.  They can’t see you, watching.   

The show demands from us a degree of self-reflection.  It reminds us of those moments, when we walk past our neighbour’s house at night and, protected by darkness, feel a temptation, almost a compulsion, to look into their home, to look into their lives, just for a moment as we pass by.

The show does create a certain degree of discomfort.  Laughing, Jordi had said, “It will be one of the most disturbing pieces in the festival this year!”  The conversation through headphones is close to you, you feel almost inside the show.  But you are also at a distance.  You are safe, it’s not you that this is happening to. But it could be you. This could happen to any one of us.

Come and see something different – and support this great young company!  This is their first international performance outside Spain.

A House Is Not A Home is at Bell Square on Saturday 23 September 2017.  There are 2 performances – at 7.30 pm and 9.15 pm.  The show lasts approximately 1 hour. Please arrive at least 20 minutes in advance to pick up your headphones and be instructed on how to use them.

A View from Bell Square's Artistic Director: Silence comes to London

Intro When Teatr Biuro Podróży premiered their new show, Silence, in 2016, I did wonder what to expect.  It was described as a sequel to their earlier show, Carmen Funebre – or Funeral Song.  Carmen Funebre was a show about the impact of war on civilians as the former Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s.  It was a mighty piece of theatre, uncompromising and searing in its impact.  It is also known as one of the most legendary pieces of outdoor arts ever made.  So, would this sequel live up to its predecessor’s reputation?  Like most people that night, as the show came to an end, I was left stunned, in silence.  As the company took their bows at the end of the performance, it was some moments before the silence gave way to applause.  The intensity of those few moments have stayed with me ever since.

As this wonderful show comes to Bell Square on 9 September, you may like to know a little of the background of Teatr Biuro Podróży and Silence.

The company This famed Polish outdoor theatre company was set up by Paweł Szkotak with a group of young and passionate actors in Poznan in 1988.  Since then, they have created 14 different theatre productions, and performed over a thousand times for audiences in 50 different countries.  They have always been determined to make theatre in a different way to accepted traditions, and to make that theatre for people who don’t normally go to well-known theatre institutions.  They care about people and the stories of their lives.  Teatr Biuro Podróży’s shows are social, political and powerful.

The company emerged onto the scene as civil resistance in Poland demonstrated the people’s demand for change and led to the end of communist rule in the summer of 1989.  The new company came up with the name Biuro Podróży, which means Travel Agency.  In a country behind the Iron Curtain, very few people were able to obtain passports.  As the rest could travel only in their imagination, the ironically-named Teatr Biuro Podróży offered an ‘escape’ through theatre.

The group’s most famous piece, Carmen Funebre, was made in 1993-94.  As the Balkans Wars raged, just south of Poland, and the former Yugoslavia broke up, 4 million people were displaced in the 10 years from 1991-2001.  Carmen Funebre was based on interviews with victims of the wars and specifically explored the impact of war on civilians.  This seminal theatre production continues to tour the world today.

Silence In Silence, the sequel to Carmen Funebre, the company returns to the story of refugees and migrants caught up in the spiral of war.  Directed by its founder, Paweł Szkotak, the show uses physical theatre, overwhelming music, and the highly visual effects of fire, and tyrants towering on stilts, to tell the story of people again trapped in the turmoil of war.  In the context of carnage and cleansing in the Middle East, Teatr Biuro Podróży tell the fate of refugees caught up in the mass exodus to Europe, looking for a safer place.

In Silence, the situation is seen from the viewpoint of someone living in a besieged city, a city destroyed by bombs.  Someone who, a few years ago, could never have imagined that they would one day become a refugee. Children are represented through life size puppets – the innocent witnesses of the death of loved ones, and the victims of exile and starvation.  Silence asks that, for a moment, we put ourselves in their world.

Teatr Biuro Podróży present Silence at Bell Square on Saturday 9 September 2017 at 8.00 pm.  The show lasts 50 minutes. For full listing and video trailer click here.