Festival Previews Video Blog

Today we extend a warm welcome to Katya Kopotun who is the Assistant Director of the Arkhangelsk Youth Theatre Group from northern Russia. Not knowing where Arkhangelsk is, I found that the town and port of Arkhangelsk lies 1133 Kms north of Moscow on the banks of the Northern Dvina River as it extends into the White Sea.

This delightful musical theatre group were recently at the Avignon Festival & Cies le OFF performing in the beautiful plaza outside the Hotel Mercure, Pont d’Avignon. They were with The Garage International who introduce international non-French artists to the Avignon Festival. So let’s speak with Katya to learn more about her and this exciting new Russian Youth Theatre Group which we hope to see lots more of…

1. What inspired you to pursue a career in directing?

I’m an Assistant to the Art Director of the Russian Arkhangelsk Youth Theatre and it’s a real pleasure to work in the arts environment. You are always at the center of all art events in the city and you communicate with some very interesting people. I am so happy to be working with the Russian Arkhangelsk Youth Theatre.

2. What is your show about and what should the Public expect from your show?

We have many different performances, it’s mostly drama but I think that the public expects from our performances good emotions, discovering Russian art and Russian direction of the performances.

3. What is your favorite Festival or Fringe and why?

I have not not worked at many festivals, so it’s difficult for me to answer this question with any authority. I know many artists from Russia and around the world who think the Avignon Festival is the best.

4. What’s your best advice for aspiring artists and performers on the Festival and Fringe circuit?

Performing and directing at Festivals outside your own country is a wonderful experience and each artist should try it at least once in his or her life.

5. What is your funniest and also, your worst experience assisting in the production of your show?

Working in a group and in a new countries provides many funny experiences.

6. As you travel performing at different Festivals, where is your favorite place to vacation and why?

France and Poland, because the Russian Arkhangelsk Youth Theatre have a lot of friends there. The weather is also fine during the summer so it’s a good place to vacation. We have lots of marvelous memories of these two countries as this was the first time the Russian Arkhangelsk Youth Theatre visited Poland and France.

7. Who is the person you most admire and why?

I can’t answer this question.

8. What is the best tip you have ever been given?

The best tip ever been given..well..about 100 Euros!

9. What is the best book you have read and why do you like it?

“Master and Marguerite” by Mikhail Bulgakov. You should read it at least twice (much better if 3-4 times) and you will understand a lot and you will like it very much!

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

If I can change something in the world, I think I will change something in the mind of parents that they have never ides to leave their own children.

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Check out more information about the Avignon Festival and The Garage International at:

Le Off - Avignon

Around Avignon with The Garage International

Today we interview the immensely talented designer and illustrator, Sam Wyer from the most successful show at this year’s 2008 Edinburgh Fringe, ‘The Terrible Infants’. A show based on a series of twisted children’s stories full of imaginative puppetry, live music, storytelling and physical theatre. I finally managed to get along to see The Terrible Infants, and indeed what a show! Sam’s creations are utterly charming and the characters are so alive in themselves!

They are on from the 7th to 25th August at 2.20 pm daily at the Underbelly Pasture in Bristo Square. So let’s chat with Sam…

1. What inspired you to become a designer?

I’m fascinated by the art of storytelling; to lift things into the physical, beyond the spoken word, off the page, without eliminating the opportunity for imagination to flourish - this is a real challenge, but one which really pulls my strings.

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

The Terrible Infants is a deliciously dark cabaret style show, composed of a collection of morality tales created by Oliver Lansley and myself about a variety of vice-ridden children and their various comeuppances. It’s mad, macabre and musical, but it’s fun, fun, fun. This year’s audiences can expect new costumes puppets and a very special new character, delectably voiced by the gorgeously honey-throated Dame Judi Dench!

3. What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

It would probably be the night a show I had designed was performed at the National Theatre in London. At the curtain call all fifteen young actors tore out from the wings, delirious with elation and starry eyed, raced up and over a platform which collapsed under the collective weight shattering two on-set televisions hurtling them across the stage and launching an actor into the orchestra pit. Still, it was the National!

4. What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

The Flow Festival in Stourport on Severn - it was bedlam with a budget. Three hundred performers, two languages, a canal basin for a stage, giant fish, dancing in the streets, and a ship that transmogrifies into the devil.

5. What’s your best advice for aspiring designers in your theatrical medium?

Create… opportunities, constraints, problems, solutions, friends, enemies. Just keep creating!

6. What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

My Grandpa once told me ‘You can’t steer a stationary ship.’ I think it was a metaphor, but it’s true in practice, I tried!

7. Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

To have a Drama and Llama farm in Aguilar del Rio de Alhama.

8. What are the best books you have read and why do you like them?

Louis De Bernieres’ South American trilogy, The War of Don Emmanuels Netherparts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. They are sprawling, unsuccinct, brutal, beautiful and wrench you from hardship to hilarity page by page.

I also read an incredible short story recently called Light Is Like Water by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I suppose I like theatre for the same reasons, its magical realism, the world from a different perspective.

9. Who do you most admire and why?

My family, in the order of things their unique brand of anarchy seems sane and wonderful!

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

That we as a society give more than a passing shit about people around us, especially those we don’t yet know. Pull our heads out of the sand, or our free papers, look one another in the face, and listen.

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You can check out more interviews from The Terrible Infants:

James Seager 10 Questions

Oliver Lansley’s 10 Questions

Oliver Lansley talks about Promoting The Terrible Infants

Today we interview the actress, Chloe Fain who plays the passionate Princess Eboli, the Lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth de Valois (who becomes Queen of Spain). This is a one of the more meaty roles in Schiller’s intriguing romantic tragedy set in 16th Century Spain.

It is said that Don Carlos is one of those memorable plays one should see in one’s lifetime, so nows your chance! It is on at C Cubed from Sunday 17th August to Saturday 23rd August at 5.55pm in the early evening. So let’s chat with Chloe Faine and learn lots more….

1. What inspired you to become an actress?

I avoided becoming an actor for years and years – it was a bit like being in the closet. Inappropriate bits of dramatic behaviour would pop out when I wasn’t concentrating on pretending to be normal. I got to my late twenties and thought ‘Oh Feck it – I’ll have a go and if I don’t like it I can always stop.” I liked it.

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show?

Don Carlos is a weird play – it’s an exploration of a fictional ’situation’ between King Phillip of Spain and his son, Carlos and Carlos’ friend Rodrigo who is fighting to free Flanders from the carnage of the Inquisition. I think ultimately it’s a polemic on freedom of speech dressed up as a thriller and a love story by turns to keep it accessible to Schiller’s audiences. The constraints of working in the festival have meant that a lot of the polemic is omitted leaving you with the thriller and a lot of snogging. Nick, who plays Rodrigo, has to get across a lot of politics in a few relatively short scenes but I think we manage to stay true to Schiller’s original intentions.

3. What is your favourite festival or fringe?

To date it’s always been Edinburgh – my first job when I left college (except from one I got sacked from for refusing to pole-dance in the interval) was in a play up here.

4. What’s your best advice for aspiring performers on the festival circuit?

Muck about with the audience – they’re really close to you and probably on your side so take advantage of that and see what works and what doesn’t.

5. What is your funniest experience and also your worst experience performing or attending a festival?

Funniest was this play I was in where there was an announcement that the world was ending. We’d spend 45 odd minutes building to this huge emotional climax, then there was a radio announcement and then a long silence as we all took it in – it was meant to be very poignant, thought provoking etc. Unfortunately, one actor who was on all fours when the announcement came, got about 20 seconds into the silence before letting rip with the loudest fart I have ever heard. The four cast members spent the rest of the play with tears rolling down our faces, completely incapable of getting another line out for laughing.

6. As you travel performing, where is your favourite place to vacation/chill out and why?

I can chill out just about anywhere – benefit of spending a year travelling Ireland in a transit van.

7. Who is the person you most admire and why?

I admire anyone ugly who makes it as an actor. The uglier the better – we need to see people from all the spectrum but if you’re a bit wonky looking it can be very hard to get going…

8. What is the best tip you have ever been given?

Never ever work with a director you don’t like. I haven’t always abided by that as a rule and I’ve always, always wished I had.

9. What is the best book you have read and why do you like it?

Lords of Misrule by Charlie Fisher – it’s this mental caper involving humans and deities. I want to play one of the leads when they make it into a film.

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

I would have people recognise just how amazingly lucky we all are.

Today we interview Rebecca Smith, Director of Don Carlos from SEDOS, the Stockbrokers’ own in-house Drama Society. Returning to Edinburgh this year, SEDOS are playing Schiller’s romantic tragedy, an intense drama about flawed personalities, the blindness of love, the tyranny of power and the championing of Spain’s oppressed peoples. A highly challenging play but not a show to miss!

Don Carlos is on at C Cubed, Venue 50 from Sunday 17th to Saturday 23rd August at 5.55 pm daily. So let’s speak with Rebecca to learn more about her and their play, Don Carlos…

1. What inspired you to become a Director?

I think after spending years looking after the money and helping other directors achieve their visions as the producer of countless shows I began to build up a clear idea of what I thought about interesting and engaging theatre. I love truly theatrical productions such as Complicite’s work and the recent Brief Encounter. Seeing some really awesome professional theatre recently such as Cheek By Jowl’s Troillus and Cressida and the National Theatre’s Blackwatch has helped shape the kind of stuff I’d like to create.

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show?

Don Carlos is Schiller’s classic tale of love, treachery, passions and murder set in the court of King Philip of Spain at the time of the Inquisition. We’ve been lucky enough to secure Mike Poulton’s brilliant new pacey adaption, the version I saw at Wynhams a few years back that made me want to do the show in the first place. I hope our audiences will be enthralled by 90 minutes of thrilling dramatic theatre, directed with an engaging and creative vision.

3. What is your favourite festival or fringe?

Edinburgh simply can’t be matched in terms of atmosphere. This will be my fourth year up here and I hope to continue to come for many years.

In terms of other festivals I finally made it to Glastonbury this year, not exactly the same thing but the comedy tent was excellent and I’d really like to see it become more of a ‘thing’ there..

4. What’s your best advice for aspiring performers on the festival circuit?

As a director my advice to other directors would be to think very carefully about your choice of show. Don’t forget the sheer size of the fringe and work as hard as you can and as long as you can in advance to work on promotion to get those people to come and see you…. The competition for those bums is huge!!

5. What is your funniest experience and also your worst experience performing or attending a festival?

Funniest experience was watching Jason Byrne last year. He was hilarious but watching my friend trying not to have a hernia laughing was even more so… Worst experience was catching a horrific cold one year about 2 days in and having to miss a whole day of fun recovering….

6. As you travel performing, where is your favourite place to vacation/chill out and why?

My parents cottage in North Yorkshire is one of the most beautiful and relaxing places I know. And as it is en route back from Edinburgh, if the perfect stop off venue to recuperate after the madness, sleep and give your liver a rest.

7. Who is the person you most admire and why?

Elizabeth I. The ultimate woman in a man’s world. The Golden Age!

8. What is the best tip you have ever been given?

Putting ice cubes in your gravy gets rid of the fat…

9. What is the best book you have read and why do you like it?

Katherine by Anya Seyton, beautifully written and full of love romance and easily accessible history! Perfect!

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

Homeless people break my heart. I’d love to find the means to give everyone a place they could call home.

In the spotlight today we welcome, Vanessa B. Baylen, creator of the show, Death By Chocolate”. Showing at the Zoo Southside venue throughout the duration of the Fringe Festival, Death By Chocolate is an interactive murder mystery plus lots of lovely jubbly chocolate! Vanessa’s show was sold out at this year’s Adelaide Fringe and last years 2007 Melbourne Fringe, so let’s learn more about Vanessa and her show….

1. What inspired you to become a creative artist, and writer?

I’ve always had a passion for the arts. It’s not in my blood, or anything, but I’ve always been creative. Unlike others, I was fortunate to be encouraged to follow my passion, do what I love, and so I’ve always pursued a career in the arts. I’m a Jill of all creative trades and I enjoy dabbling across everything. Starting my own company, creating my own genre of show and doing all the roles to make that happen – keeps me busy and happy (or happy and busy…?)

2. What is your show about and what should the public expect from your show at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe?

“Death By Chocolate” is an interactive murder mystery with chocolate tasting. Audiences should expect to be flung head first into a truly interactive experience. They will be challenged, mentally stimulated, have fun, meet people, and eat chocolate. All our audience members become detectives who are briefed on the chocolate-crime and have the remaining time to try and solve it. They can interview the suspects, decode the clues, sample the chocolate… anything is possible. There is no stage, no separation of actor and audience, and they may become fully immersed in the show.

3. What are your funniest and worst experiences performing in front of an audience?

We have a character who is a total asshole – we’ve had audiences who actually cheer him on. They actually said “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen”. Funniest? It was pretty awesome when a passing policewoman came into the show and thought some of the action was real.

4. What was the last Fringe or Festival you performed at and what was it like?

We performed in Adelaide in 2008 (Feb-Mar). It was hot. As in, record-heat- wave hot. Besides that: it was awesome – had a great cast and crew and miss them terribly.

5. What’s your best advice for aspiring performers in your theatrical medium?

You have to put in much more work than anyone will ever give you credit for. You have to face/ignore close-minded people who won’t understand you. You have to have a lot of discipline and drive and be a self starter. And, after surviving all of that, you’ll find yourself in the most lucrative of positions: spending all your time doing what you love doing. And that’s worth it.

6. Are there any dreams or goals that you have yet to fulfill?

Of course!

7. What is the best advice you have ever been given? And did you follow it?

To believe in myself more, and, I’m trying.

8. What is the best book or books you have read and why do you like them?

Last year I decided to be risky and actually have a favourite author: Richard Bach. I like his novels because they’re about life, lessons, people, and hope. More related to the show, I’d highly recommend curling up with Graeme Base’s “The Eleventh Hour” (a picture book). Finally, once I publish my novel (“Sara Mist”) I’d highly recommend you read that

9. Who is the person you most admire and why?

Living or dead? I suppose I most admire the inner strength and resilience my mom had. The guts to fight for what she believed in. A big enough heart to handle child-me. The honesty to self-assess. And an open mindedness to whatever was thrown her way.

10. If you could change one thing about the world what would it be?

There are the practical answers and the idyllic ones. I suppose at the end of the day I’d leave it be – faults remind us to appreciate the rest. Or… maybe make people more tolerant of each other. And make customs change the rules so my pets could travel with me.