5* Sunday

http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/edinburgh/E8831312738544/Vertigo.html

A lovely and very kind review of VERTIGO from WhatsOnStage. We are delighted and extremely grateful.

It came at the end of one the longest, most difficult and yet most exciting days of my life.

Saturday ended at 2am Sunday morning, with us all very damp, having spent the afternoon dashing about Edinburgh looking for last minute prop fixes. Three hours later my alarm went off, and we pack-horsed our way to the Bedlam for our 6am technical rehearsal. We had a lovely tech session with our brilliant technician Simon Perkins. I will be forever grateful to him for his incredible patience and generosity. Amother tech rehearsal followed, this time for Babolin's brilliant show 'To Avoid Precipice Cling To Rock', before a last minute props fix, flyering session, and then over to the Bedlam for first show.

I dont think we really expected to have an audience on our first Sunday, and were delighted and surprised to have such a wonderful audience in. We certainly didnt expext to have reviewers in on our first day, and never would have dreamed of being given such a lovely review on our first day. I am thrilled for several reasons. I am thrilled that our show resonated with that one person. I am also so grateful for getting an early review published. There are so many brilliant shows to choose from up here, and 5* on the flyer will hopefully really help us when it comes to inviting audiences in.

And finally, and I think most importantly, I hope that it might benefit next year's project, whatever that might end up being. If we can create a decent foundation for (Kindling)'s future projects, and attract a few more people's attention in preparation for next year's theatre makers, then that would be the best thing I can imagine having come out of this show.

In other news, last night's sleep was the most welcome I have ever recieved. This morning, I feel like I really am a part of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Tom

Vertigo on the East Coast Mainline

Having logged on here, the first thing I notice is the distinct shortage of blogs, for which I am utterly ashamed.  I am somewhere between York and Darlington, trundling through the Great British countryside and its steadily greying skies, and staring out of the window I am aware that this might be the first quiet, still hour I’ve had to myself since rehearsals began.  It feels a little strange that this peace and quiet comes the day before our show opens. The calm before the storm perhaps. No matter. I am grateful for it, as it provides a welcome chance to reflect upon everything that has happened in the last few months to get us to this point.

Never before has anything I've done seemed so all-consuming. One of our goals with the (Kindling) project was to learn just what it takes to ‘make’ a show – from the initial pitch, through applications, accommodation bookings and budgets, then on into devising, scripting and rehearsing. Never before have I felt like I was juggling so many things at once, and so relentlessly.  I do not have a Producer’s brain at all, and have found it a real challenge maintaining all of these things.

A brief aside – typing while listening to an iPod on shuffle is a dangerous thing. You will find yourself pausing nervously every three to four minutes, awaiting the next song, hoping it is not from one of the many poorly-judged albums that seem to have crept onto a playlist, and fester there. Thankfully, I have Paul Simon. Berlitz French for Beginners is less welcome.

And so, the show opens tomorrow.  I am looking forward to sharing the work. It is tiring telling stories to no-one. It feels as if the next stage of the process has to be with an audience. And then hopefully there will be some response. While the show might not break any records for audience numbers, I believe in it whole heartedly. It has come from an honest and open place, and it strongly resonates with with me. I hope that it resonates with our audiences. The show is about the present, the here and now, this moment. It is about a shared experience. If tomorrow, having finished the opening performance, we can come off-stage having had a shared experience with the audience, and with us all considering this moment in our lives – our own ‘presents’ – then I will be immensely proud.

Despite a relatively short blog, I now appear to be in Newcastle. The dangers of peace and quiet. And a shuffling iPod.

VERTIGO FLYER

We managed to get the two performers in Vertigo together for an hour to take some photos, so they could make a flyer, hope you like it. It was awkward as they had just met at their tech rehearsal and it wasnt exactly 'smooth'. I'm sure they will have things worked out before the show opens on Sunday... fingers crossed...

Todays Pic

The First Kindling Project Ever!

What do you need to start a fire?
You need Kindling.

Some of the best Night Lights are campfires.
Campfires bring stories, songs, food, people sharing experiences and entertainment.
The Kindling Project will be all about starting such fires.

The first theatrical fire we are helping to ignite is a tiny project called ’Vertigo’. two associate artists of Night Light Theatre (both of whom will be appearing in Romeo and Juliet in the autumn) will spend June devising a unique style of improvised storytelling for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Two performers will perform their 'one man show' at the same time, in the same space under the same title.

The piece will premiere in the first week of the Fringe at the brilliantly creative and ever eclectic Bedlam Theatre. If people like it then they may tour but the show is strangely site specific so we will have to see how it might work.

Over the coming weeks this blog will provide more information about the show. In the meantime you can get in contact with the performers here
Philippa_hogg@hotmail.co.uk and Tom.penn@yahoo.co.uk