Blog: ‘Meet the Artists’ - Forest Forge Theatre Co. Event
It was a joy to be asked to talk about my long term collaboration with actor, storyteller, creator and artist Michele O’Brien last Monday. Our association with Forest Forge goes back to 2007 and a cold Saturday Matinee at Lymington in Hampshire. Michele had been asked to appear in ‘To the Marrow’ written by Sean Aita and David Haworth the following Spring and we went to see the Christmas production of ‘Cinderella’. The set was bubblegum pinks and blues and greens, the script was quick fire and traditional it was not - hello Forest Forge!
Two further Christmas tours followed in 2018 (Rumplestilzkin) and 2019 (Little Red) with FF supported Bumblefly Thetare Co. as well as an exploratory production of ‘Axe’ by John Yates followed. Those at home aren’t often mentioned when a company’s on tour, but keeping the home fires burning, testing lines and keeping actors fed is an important role.
Then in 2019/20 Michele and I worked on her ‘The Ark’ and ‘Dove’ one woman show there. Due to Arts Council England funding she was able to work with Director Lucy Phillips, Set Designer Lizzie Watts, our longstanding puppetmaking friend Teresa Grimaldi, Dance Coach Junior Jones, Audio Description advisor and actor Tam Gilbert and Tech/Actor/Maker Dom Phillips at FF and there I was able to be part of the team myself, as Project Manager and Sound/Light Technician.
For the Meet the Artists session Jo Billingham -FF’s Education and Participation Officer- asked us to produce a 40 minute talk with time for Q and A afterwards. But of course in the virtual world we are surviving in it’s not that straightforward. I’ve honed my old DJ and Video editing skills in recent months with a whole summer of Babigloo Online, Valise Noire Storytelling Theatre Co. ‘What We Broke in Lockdown’ series and many more projects, so we were all set up for a 5.00pm check in with Jo and a 6.00pm rendezvous with those that had booked up for the session.
I made a ‘Spin the Wheel’ so as to make what we spoke about a little random. Although we live and breath most of our work from conception to evaluation it’s not often we get the chance to reflect on the rich vein of projects we’ve produced. we had some fun elelnments as well: What we’d bingewatched during Lockdown and some of our favourite photos of nature that we’d noticed and DDD (Delectable Dessert Designs). When Natural Yogurt is your staple pud this sort of detail becomes important (see photo).
Anyway it was great fun, we had some good questions including: How we decide which of our artistic disciplines to focus on? Where inspiration for our projects comes from? And whether we are planning to run the Ghost Walk this season? (Well the jury’s still out on that one).
Then all the tech needed to be cleared away and our living spacwe put back to rights. All in another fun packed day as a Freelance Creative!
colphillimore@gmail.com Tel: 07885535676
Logging on and ‘Sharing our Screen!’
DDD (Delectable Dessert Designs)
That’ll be guadeloupe melon, banana, oat bar, strawberry, shaved Dark (90%) chocolate, Greek style natural yogurt and obligiatory Delboy cocktail umbrella!
Two Metres!
Artsreach short featuring the many characters from history that Michele O’Brien has developed: Pictured, WW1 Nurse from Poppy Fields, Vailse Noire Storytelling Theatre Co. 2014/18.
