Afternoon 07/21/2010
 
The Cracks will be broadcast on radio 4 in the afternoon play slot at 14:15 on Monday 6th September 2010. That's fun. Have a listen and see if you want to complain.
 
The Cracks 06/15/2010
 
Finished The Cracks last night. Think it's interesting. Should be broadcast on Radio 4 afternoon play slot sometime in August.
 
 
This past week I've been wondering if I ever risk failure in my work. And if not then why not. I have to. It suddenly seems the only way to go. Is it being 32? Is it my new cupboard? No. I think it was working with Mark Storor during his residency in Berwick. Learning to be honest, look at what is around you during a workshop and try and treat young people in the same way you would any collaborator. Mark works with various communities and always strives to make work that is taken seriously, making critics and audiences reassess their views of 'community art'. 


Work with Mark was followed by watching Taylor Mac at the Arches. Again. You have to risk failure, otherwise you're just making wank. You have to face an audience and collaborate. It's nerve wracking stuff to contemplate. Can I be naked on stage? Actually, being naked wouldn't by risky for me. Nudity is not my fear. Taylor Mac implores you as the audience, as theatre makers, to look at what we really fear. What really makes us uncomfortable. For me, I'm still trying. I want to walk the tightrope, I really do, because I know that's where life can be lived.


Finally at the CATS award I was made to think about failure again. And realised what it is I want to do. A project dedicated to failing. To exploring it. To wondering what makes me scared.

 
INK @ The Tron 05/20/2010
 
INK (a writer's collective) is performing 5 new short pieces all this week, all inspired by current news stories. Every day one of the writer's will also be writing a piece based on the newspapers that morning. I wrote mine yesterday and really enjoyed the experience. Sitting in the Tron bar for 5 hours trying to make a piece that is only 4 minutes, but has some kind of structure to it was BRILLIANT. If you missed it then here is the piece, maybe you fancy a read. It is based on a photograph taken at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday 18th May 2010. The photograph showed the arrayed benches of the new British government. An array of white middle aged men in dark suits, all except for a small rectangle around David Cameron where any ethnic minority or female MP that could be found was stuffed in. The perfect backdrop to Cameron's new politics.
Rob x
the_golden_rectangle.doc
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CATS and Dingos 05/14/2010
 
Pobby and Dingan has been nominated for a CATS award for best show for Children and Young People. Chuffed. Yes.
 
The Dark 05/12/2010
 
I became Imaginate writer in residence in March of this year (2010) and will spend the next 8 months researching and working closely with young people as we explore The Dark. The idea came from thinking about chaos and danger and wondering if there was a smaller and smaller space for these forces within our lives.
I really want to work with young teenagers as I think there is an energy and spark at this age which is crying out to be creatively expressed. The dark is a way of exploring the hidden aspects of our lives through a thrilling and theatrically rich metaphor. 
The residency will involve researching 
 
 
Pondlife McGurk will be on this week 10-15th May 2010 at the Imaginate Festival in Edinburgh. 
See the details here. 
There will also be a delegates performance of Kappa as a way of putting both parts of the Going Solo project on for anyone who is interested.
 
 
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 03, 2010Pobby and Dingan, theatre review

Published in Northings

Pobby and Dingan 
Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, 27 February 2010, and touring)


IT TAKES a while to warm to this adaptation of Ben Rice's novel. For one thing, there doesn't seem to be much at stake: just an everyday family hoping to get lucky in Lighting Ridge, an opal mining town in the Australian outback. For another, the production by Catherine Wheels takes a straight-forward approach that rules out the kind of imaginative leaps that children's theatre does best. The initial impression of Gill Robertson's staging is of a routine domestic drama.

All the same, you sense something is going on. Apart from the father (Damien Warren-Smith) with his Elvis fixation and conviction that untold wealth is just a day away, and apart from the mother (Ros Sydney) trying to keep order in a household with little money and a broken washing machine, and apart from Ashmol (Scott Turnbull), their son, zipping round town on his bike, there is the question of daughter Kellyanne (Ashley Smith).

Although the least vocal of the four, she is the most intriguing, because everywhere she goes she is accompanied by her two imaginary friends, Pobby and Dingan.

On the stage, Kellyanne's belief in the reality of these two characters is no less preposterous than our belief in the invisible food the mother puts on the table or the motionless journey Ashmol takes on his bike. One of the most touching aspects of Rice's tale, adapted by Rob Evans, is the willingness of the whole town to indulge in the little girl's fantasy. It is as if they recognise that her imagination offers an escape from the hard-bitten reality of their mining town that is so persuasively evoked by the play's incidental details.

But Pobby and Dingan goes further than that. Contrary to expectations, there is an awful lot at stake. This is a play about nothing less than childhood illness and death. It is about the way we can use the imagination not only to make sense of the world, as all children do, but also to come to terms with life's greatest traumas.

We take the play at face value when it treats the mysterious disappearance of Pobby and Dingan as a surreal and whimsical comedy, but all the while it is preparing us for us for the weightier events ahead.

Along the way it demonstrates the importance of community, ritual and shared belief as the townsfolk put aside their petty antagonisms and stand together in recognition of what is truly important. From its innocuous beginnings, Pobby and Dingan matures into a profoundly moving play, low on sentiment and high on good humour, that will leave you sobbing for the loss of more than just your invisible friends.

Pobby and Dingan is at The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on 20 March, and Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on 22-23 March 2010.
 
 
Over at the Traverse this week, meanwhile, the much-admired Catherine Wheels company – one of Scotland's top theatre groups for children – are continuing their current tour of Pobby and Dingan, a new stage version by Rob Evans of the award-winning children's story by Australian-based writer Ben Rice. Set in the remote outback mining town of Lightning Ridge, this 80-minute show tells the story of young Ashmol Williamson, his sister Kellyanne, and her two imaginary friends, Pobby and Dingan, who go missing one day, causing Kellyanne to take to her bed with what seems like a broken heart.

Pobby and Dingan is a strange story, which resolutely refuses to follow a classic sentimental pattern. Ashmol's quest is successful, yet he loses his prize; everyone in town behaves as if Pobby and Dingan are real, yet only a few believe in the right kind of way. Yet what emerges from Gill Robertson's beautiful production – which marshals music (by David Paul Jones), puppetry, and all the visual resources of theatre, to evoke the physical and social landscape of Lightning Ridge, and to tell this complex story, with a cast of just four – is a really moving meditation on the power of imagination to conjure what is not conventionally real, and to recreate what has gone. 

There's some fine acting here, from Scott Turnbull, Ashley Smith, Damien Warren-Smith and Ros Sydney. If the show's concerns are perhaps a shade too deep for younger children, it's a richly fulfilling experience for everyone over seven or eight, and for adult audiences, too.
 
 
Pobby & Dingan is a modern-day fable about the loss of childhood and the recognition of what matters most. Catherine Wheels take this tale and add layers of poignant magic and emotion in a wonderfully staged performance that resonates with children and adults alike. Indeed, one of its most impressive feats was keeping the mostly youthful audience at the Traverse in spellbound silence throughout, as they were transported to Lightning Ridge and the potential of the power of imagination and hope.

full review here