Some Hansel and Gretel Audio

This is some audio recorded at BAC as part of our Hansel and Gretel scratch work... this will give you a rough idea of the ways in which we will use music in the finished show.

Hansel and Gretel - sharing work at BAC

After 5 days of work at BAC and a greta time with a big variety of people we shared some of our work and ideas on the Thursday evening - and had a great time doing it.

We also got some of it on video - see below....

It's only a short bit of the scratch after 5 days of work but at least it gives you some of the flavour.

More Hansel and more Gretel...

Back into BAC today for more Hansel and Gretel madness. We have been working on lots of music using some simple tunes and motifs for the show. We have also been writing some lyrics which is really entertaining and a new thing for me. I keep thinking about the age range for the show and if the story is too scary – terrible things happen in the story – famine and cannibalism and death. We have been trying to have fun with these and keep then playful, to make sure that we explore them in a playful and questioning way.

We worked on the story and how to tell it trying to find out what we thought was important in the story.

Some lyrics for the story

Birds came down out of the trees and the bushes

And they ate up all of the crumbs

(that Hansel had dropped)

And when they woke from their sleep

They were lost in the forest

The way home had been devoured

(by the birds from the first verse)

Unai’s hungry Witch was very funny and scary as was his description of her hideous appearance…

Starting new work at BAC

Today was the first of a few days of development work at Battersea Arts Centre in London. We were starting work on our new Christmas show based on Hansel and Gretel. It's a bit weird to start working on a 'Christmas Show' in April but this is just the first workshop stage. The finished show will be on at The Junction in Cambridge from December of this year.

We have just started working on some ideas and messing around a bit. We spent a lot of time talking about the story and what it means and how nasty it is in places...
We also spent some time just playing around with some games and costumes. I have worked with Carly and Unai before but this is the first time that Steffi has worked for NIE - she was very very funny today.

Unai found out that the floor was not that clean.

Christmas in April ....

Welcome to our blog which will tell you all about the making of The Junction's Christmas show for 2011 - Hansel and Gretel. Created by New International Encounter (NIE), this family show will transform the theatre into a magical forest where NIE's ensemble of european performers will tell the story of this well-loved Brother's Grimm fairytale with lots of live music and magic.

You can find out more about NIE by visiting their website www.nie-theatre.com