Production shots

We now have some great production shots from the show thanks to Claire Haugh which give some idea of what the show looks like (although even better to come along to The Junction and have a look at our winter wonderland!)

Photos: Claire Haigh 2011
www.clairehaigh.co.uk

Start of set designing for the show

Alex met with Steffi today (our set designer and one of the performers in the show) to talk in detail about ideas for the set design. We will transform the theatre into a forest so we are currently talking to local tree surgeons about using bits of cut-off branches in our set. Steffi has also been working on some beautiful puppets which we use in the show:

 Here they are in our office at The Junction with a head still to be added to little Hansel!

Workshopping in London

We worked on Saturday with our Director Alex, our Musical Director Carly Davis and a bunch of great performers at St Mary's University College London. We have four confirmed cast members for the show already, but are looking to find a fifth performer for Hansel & Gretel.We explored some of the songs from the show and played some improvisation games together .

Let it snow.... in August!

For the show we will transform the theatre into a winter forest, so this week we ordered a variety of different types of theatrical snow to see what will work best for covering the floor of the forest as well as falling snow.

The falling snow is especially pretty as it is thick plastic flakes which slowly rain down, so in the theatre with the right lights - the effect will be really magical. The company we ordered from also make different snow effects for TV and film, including Harry Potter, the Golden Compass and Narnia, so I think we are in good company!

Say cheese!

Last week we had a great time doing a photoshoot at The Junction with two actors from the show, Rew Lowe and Steffi Mueller (who is also the set designer for Hansel & Gretel). We borrowed loads of different costumes from Classworks Theatre Hire and spent a morning dressing up and playing about with them to get different shots to promote the show.

Christa Holka, a fashion photographer worked with NIE's Artistic Director Alex Byrne to get pictures that reflected the live music in the show and the different emotions in the story.

Photographer: Christa Holka

Book now for a Christmas treat

Tickets are now on sale for Hansel and Gretel at The Junction which makes us very excited.

We won't go into rehearsals until November but we are already designing leaflets and posters for the show so look out for these around Cambridge in the next couple of months.

We are also having meetings with our set designer to think about how we can build a forest in The Junction's theatre space. It might look something like this but with much more snow everywhere.

To book tickets, please visit www.junction.co.uk

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.