Author: theatrecollection

Forkbeard at Christmas

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By Rosie Smith, Project Archivist: Forkbeard Fantasy

As you may remember from a previous blog, Forkbeard Fantasy were known for their use of elaborate and unusual props and costumes. After a successful touring exhibition of some of these items, they established the Museum of Forkbeard in North Devon. Visitors to the museum would be given a guided tour by one of the Forkbeards as they were shown the material on display.  

When we took in the Forkbeard Fantasy archive, the Theatre Collection wanted to preserve the essence of this museum. As well as making a 3D scan of the museum, we made many hours of oral history videos of Tim, Chris, Penny and Ed talking about the history of Forkbeard.  

These videos were an absolute godsend to me when I first started the cataloguing project and needed to learn about Forkbeard. But there was one clip in particular that made me realise that I was going to love this job, and that was Penny talking about one of Forkbeard’s Christmas productions, The Little Match Girl. The six-legged mashed potato had me crying with laughter! 

 

 

In 1997, Forkbeard were approached by Neil Bartlett of the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith to ask if Forkbeard would be interested in working on their upcoming Christmas production, The Little Match Girl. Penny set to work designing and building the sets and costumes. The set designs for this show are some of the most beautiful items in the archive. Penny went all out to bring the atmosphere of a fairy tale to life, from the cold streets of Victorian London to a massive feast, and ending with a giant Christmas tree surrounded by a staircase.  

 

Meanwhile Tim and Chris took on various comedic roles, including angels, a knife and fork, a giant teddy bear, and many more. For these, they had to be squished into a variety of odd-shaped costumes. The knife and fork costumes required Chris and Tim to be pushed into long tube-shaped outfits that prevented them from moving their arms, before having a large headpiece placed on their heads. Sadly, while we have some great drawings of these costumes, no photographs remain in the archive. Tim also played the giant teddy bear. Here you can hear Penny explaining how the enormous costume worked. 

 

 


Unfortunately, the play didn’t sell particularly well. It was intended as a show for children, but that didn’t necessarily come across to the public and the audience was mainly adults. The story also had a sad ending, which wasn’t what the audience wanted from a Christmas show. Most importantly, it reminded Forkbeard of a lesson that they had first learnt back in 1985: that they much preferred touring shows and outdoor performances to “festering Greenrooms and 12 hellish weeks stuck in London.” Back on the road they went! 

In 2007, Forkbeard were commissioned to provide the “special effects and stuff” for a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol written by Simon Persighetti for the Brewhouse Theatre. Forkbeard kept the correspondence between themselves and Simon relating to this production, and it’s fascinating to see how their ideas developed. The Ghost of Christmas Present was supposed to reflect the overconsumption of food and the increase in food waste at Christmastime. While he started as a “Santa-like human”, he slowly morphed into a puppet sitting in a shopping trolley with a projected face. The knife and fork costumes from The Little Match Girl made a reappearance, as this time dancing across the stage with a giant turkey.  

However, it was the Ghost of Christmas Future that was a true Forkbeard special. Using a giant screen, they back projected a film of Scrooge dancing in shadow. They then had an actor behind the screen copy the movements to create a real shadow on the screen. Using Forkbeard’s technique of ‘Breaking the Celluloid Divide’, the actor then emerged through the screen, making it appear as though the ghost had emerged from Scrooge himself. It sounds fascinating and faintly disturbing!

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, Forkbeard planned their shows in Daler notebooks. These notebooks are a mix of show ideas, script extracts, draft correspondence, funding applications, to do lists, shopping lists, poems and doodles…everything got written in these books! Flicking through them, you can tell when Christmas was approaching, as little doodles and poems of Santa start to appear. There are a series of doodles working out how Santa would deliver presents to an underwater house. There is a satirical cartoon in which the Arts Council attempts to prevent Santa from giving performers presents (that’s their job!). There’s even a drawing of Santa trying on Mrs Claus’ outfit. As far as I’m aware, Santa never actually appeared in any of Forkbeard’s productions. Maybe it was just a matter of time…

 

 

The Great Tape Bake Off

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Sticky tapes

One of the many challenges we face when digitising audiovisual material from magnetic tape is “sticky-shed syndrome”. Certain types or formulations of tape suffer from this problem that, as the name implies, causes them to literally stick to the components of the playback machine creating a phenomenon known as “stiction”. The friction of the sticky tape against the metal parts causes screeching/squealing noises and slowed/ uneven speed of tape playback. Sometimes the machine will slow down and grind to a halt. If you haven’t encountered this phenomenon before you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a fault on the player. Playback of sticky tapes can result in damage to the tape and in some cases, the playback equipment. The magnetic oxide material sheds from the tape resulting in a distorted signal and dropouts which compromise the quality of the digital transfer. Extreme sticky-shed can cause catastrophic damage to a tape and result in partial or complete loss of the often unique audiovisual material contained on that tape.

A magnetic tape which has been so affected by shedding that the oxide which holds the magnetic information (brown), has completely come away from the polyester base (clear) rendering the information unrecoverable. Picture by Anothermelbournite, Wikipedia

Ingredients

Magnetic tape consists of a plastic base layer (substrate), a layer of magnetic oxide or metal particle material (the brown stuff that contains the audiovisual signal) with lubricants and a binder which glues the oxide/metal particles to the base. Some tapes contain an additional back-coat on the base designed to lubricate the motion of the tape through the player and reduce friction.

Structure of magnetic tape, picture from https://publish.uwo.ca/~dspanner/LIS9670/lect11.htm

The problem of sticky-shed results from a breakdown in the binder resulting in hydrolysis i.e. absorption of water. The urethane molecules in the polyurethane binder react with the water, making them migrate to the surface of the tape where they cause the stickiness.

The issue is difficult to identify by visual inspection but suspect tapes should be tested before attempting playback by slowly turning the reel and observing whether the tape unspools naturally or sticks/lingers on the pack. Sometimes the tape surface can exhibit a soft/gummy quality. The problem of sticky tapes has become more apparent over the last 30 years as tape stock ages and patterns of binder breakdown have been identified. Certain brands manufactured entire batches of tape with a faulty binder formulation which almost invariably suffer from sticky-shed. This makes it easier to identify a tape that will have problematic playback before placing it in/on the machine.

Recipe

Thankfully, for most cases of sticky-shed there is a solution – “Baking” the tapes i.e. heating them gently for a period of a few hours. For this purpose, I use a food dehydrator as it is suitable for lower heating temperatures and maintaining them more consistently than a conventional oven. My ultimate goal is to obtain an incubator which operates at the most consistent temperatures over long periods but for now, the dehydrator does the job well. Any apparatus used should not contain strong magnetic fields which can damage the tape’s content. A digital thermometer allows easy and accurate temperature monitoring.

Food dehydrator used for “baking” tapes with sticky-shed syndrome

Baking at 54.4°C (130°F) is the sweet spot to temporarily reverse sticky-shed syndrome. The duration required varies for each format but should be at least 2-3 hours with tapes flipped once or twice then allowed to cool for at least the same length of time. Once baked, there is a short window of a few days to digitise before hydrolysis makes the tape sticky again. It’s wise to carry out the process during drier weather conditions as humidity in the air will speed up hydrolysis. A tape can however, be re-baked several times and this is often a requirement for some of the more stubborn formats anyway. As there isn’t 100% consistency of tape behaviour, it can be a case of trial and error – bake for the minimum time, manually test unspooling of tape and carefully attempt playback. If not successful, bake again and so on until the tape plays back correctly.

The main tapes to look out for are:

• Reel to reel audio tapes – Ampex/Quantegy (mid 1970s into the early 1990s) and Scotch/3M. Bake for 3-6 hours.

Ampex 1/4″ audio tape reel

• U-matic video tapes (1975-1985) by Ampex, AGFA and Sony – those affected often have a wax crayon type smell. The tape reels should be removed from the cassette shell for baking. Bake for 8-16 hours.

Sony U-matic video cassette

• EIAJ ½” open reel video tape – particularly Sony branded V60H, V62 and V30H Helical Scan. If the tape is back coated, it will require baking. These tapes often require long bake times, I have found that manually winding and cleaning with a lint-free cloth after baking can improve playback results. Bake for 8-16 hours, sometimes multiple bakes are required.

Sony 1/2″ video tape reels

• Quad 2” open reel video tape. We don’t currently have any of these in our archives but due to their large size they require extended baking times – up to 24 hours.

Other formats can occasionally suffer from sticky-shed too e.g. Betacam (oxide formulation), VHS, Hi8, even MiniDV.

If you are in doubt as to whether a given tape has sticky-shed syndrome it is much safer to bake it than play it.

Audio compact cassettes are an exception in that the faulty binder was not used in cassette formulations. However, some cassettes can suffer from stickiness due to fatty acids migrating to the surface of the tape. I have baked some notoriously sticky mid-1980s EMI cassettes for 2-4 hours with excellent results.

Slow cassette:

Baked cassette:

The Raw and the Cooked

Just to confuse things, some tapes can also suffer from a different type of Soft Binder Syndrome which can cause squealing on playback. These are often non back-coated tapes and leave less of a deposit on the playback path. It is not recommended to bake these as it can exacerbate the problem. Some success has been achieved by playing back this kind of tape in a cold environment, even placing a playback machine inside a refrigerator. Other tapes display a problem where the back-coat of the tape is turning to powder leaving a non-sticky accumulation of powder on the playback heads. These also shouldn’t be baked but cleaning will be necessary. Finally, never bake an acetate tape. These can be identified when held up to a bright light and visible light can be seen coming through the tape pack.

Despite these exceptions, the most common type of tape degradation you are ever likely to come across is sticky-shed syndrome.

It’s always worth that extra effort to ensure our AV material is preserved in its optimum form.
Happy Baking!

Nigel Bryant
Audiovisual Digitisation Officer

 

Forkbeard Fantasy – A Life on Tour

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A ticket from a Brittonioni Brothers’ performance in Warsaw.

By Rosie Smith, Project Archivist, Forkbeard Fantasy 

I’m now a year into my three-year long project to catalogue the archives of Forkbeard Fantasy. I have successfully cleaned, repackaged and catalogued the objects, which means it’s time to do the same for the physical documents. Rather than starting with the production material (a gargantuan task that will take many months), I decided to start with the smaller pile of material about Forkbeard’s foreign tours.

Between 1977 and 1997, Forkbeard Fantasy travelled to sixteen different countries to perform. Many of these tours were sponsored by The British Council, who were eager to promote British culture abroad. Usually on these tours, Forkbeard performed as The Brittonioni Brothers, two high-flying film producers who occasionally entered the films themselves. However, foreign tours were also a good opportunity for Forkbeard to perform some of their street theatre pieces, as many of these pieces didn’t require spoken language or a knowledge of English.

The post-it notes about Oslo.

In the early 2000s, Forkbeard toyed with the idea of writing a book about their history. To start the process, they went through the archive and covered it with post it notes, noting what they felt should be included in the book. One of these reads “mention the life on tour. Sometimes fun, sometimes terrible.”  This seems to be a very good summation, and their touring certainly led to some fun stories. In 1990, Forkbeard were invited to headline the Vancouver Comedy Festival, which they did…for the first night. On the second night they were demoted and replaced by a custard pie clown troupe! Meanwhile, the freight costs to South America were so expensive that it was cheaper to have new sets built in situ for their 1994 tour of Colombia and Argentina. This led to the Forkbeards having to write incredibly detailed descriptions of their often quite complicated sets. In Norway, Forkbeard had arranged to perform in Oslo and Bergen. The Oslo theatre director was so unimpressed with their performance (too silly for her tastes) that she called ahead to the theatre in Bergen and advised they cancel the performances!  Thankfully the theatre in Bergen didn’t listen, as the Brittonioni Brothers went down very well there.

Tim Britton preparing to perform in Amsterdam

Forkbeard’s favourite place to visit was the Netherlands. They went at least eight times, performing in a variety of festivals and performance spaces. In 1977 they travelled to Rotterdam with performance group The Crystal Theatre of the Saint to take part in the Festival of Fools. This festival was organised in part by Melkweg Theatre in Amsterdam, where Forkbeard would go on to perform many times. Why did they return so often? Melkweg was one of the few theatres they encountered who paid their acts in advance, meaning the Forkbeards had ready cash to spend on their trip.

I was most intrigued by Forkbeard’s various trips to Greece. In 1989, they were invited to Athens and Thessaloniki by the British Council to perform various bits of street theatre. Forkbeard created a new work called The Statue in which two museum workers place a statue in the middle of a public square. The statue is unimpressed with their choice of position, so as soon as the museum workers aren’t looking, he moves. The piece descends into chaos as the statute repeatedly runs away from his assigned spot and is forced back by the staff. During one performance, they combined The Statue with The Great British Square Dance, allowing the statue (who has a plinth instead of legs) to dance one of the parts in the square dance. I am really hoping to uncover a recording of this performance in the archive!

The Statue dutifully attempts to join in with The Great British Square Dance, despite his lack of legs.

The plan in Greece was that the British Council would invite their students to Forkbeard’s performances, giving them a ready-made audience. This did not work as very few of the students showed up. Instead, the audience was made up of people who happened to be outside anyway and stumbled across the show. Many found it hilarious, and Forkbeard felt they had been a success. This was a great surprise to the British Council in Greece. In a letter to Forkbeard a few weeks later, one of the ambassadors wrote that there was no culture of street theatre in Greece. Forkbeard were invited back in 1994 to see if their popularity was a fluke. It was not!

A group of Greek women enjoying the show, while the Statue runs away behind them

If you would like to find out more about Forkbeard’s foreign tours, why not come and look through the archive for yourself? I’ve heard it’s all been recently catalogued and repackaged and is ready for researchers 😉 (Unfortunately the catalogue is not yet avalible online, but if you would like to come and see the collection, please get in touch.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Episode 7 of Polly Tisdall’s audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’

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Polly Tisdall, the 2024-2025 recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Episode 7 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to earlier episodes, please head to the previous Kevin Elyot Award blog posts.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

It’s the May Bank holiday weekend, the early one. What are we today? 4th of May. May the fourth be with you! And I am on my research trip that I booked. Just one night away in Wiltshire, near Cherhill and the Cherhill White Horse. I’m actually staying in Calne – Calne – still learning how to say that correctly and I never knew, even growing up!  But anyway, somebody in the Morrisons Local just called it Calne, I think.

Just wait for this car to pass. I’m just walking down a, sort of a lane, but quite a wide and busy fast driving country lane. Coming into, I think, Lower Compton and then that will bring me out onto the A4, the Old London Road and onto the stretch of road called Labour-in-Vain Hill, which is where, when I was growing up, there was this lay-by and in the lay-by was a cafe called the Crop Circle Cafe, which isn’t there anymore. But there is, I think, another cafe there now. I don’t even know if it’s in the same building. Just wait for this other car speeding along. This is the sort of sound I imagine in the background to some of the scenes in the play, because the cafe is on this A road. So. Yeah, it’s just a fascinating area to me.

Just walking from Calne to Cherhill this morning. Just the way the land shifts and changes, the land-use shifts and changes. I’ve come through housing estates, new built housing estates on the edge of Calne and then into a sort of old lane called Lower Lane, which then took me through landscape that was by turns beautiful and green and lush. I could see loads of solar panels on the hillside opposite where land is being used for energy, and then I came through what looks like a very old, and I assume now disused, quarry workings, but still loads of barriers up and old machinery and huge quarries that are filled in with water. Lots of danger signs, bits of barbed wire and electric fence to keep you out. And then I came across this beautiful little lake, much further down with swans, as well as what I’m pretty sure was a landfill, like massive hill of landfill. Yes, it’s a really interesting landscape that shifts between the very sort of beautiful countryside, comfortable rich feeling landscape, into the quite industrial, and then the sort of rubbish tip of stuff we don’t want to look at. And I’m aware that there’s also military land. There’s an old RAF base in this area as well. Seeing lots of signs on the edge of the lane, saying CCTV in constant use, no trespassing.

Anyway, so, a whole mix and I’m really excited that after the first stage of the walk, I’m going to finish at the current cafe in that lay-by, hopefully only about 20 minutes, half an hour from now. I’m getting hungry and and I’m really interested to see if it…If it does ring bells with me as the same building, if it’s even in quite the same place and and what the cafe is like, and I’m hoping it will help transport me back to the Crop Circle Cafe. And what I remember of it. Certainly just being back here in this part of Wiltshire, just even some of the smells like the smell of the the Morrisons Local, what was it called the Morrisons Daily? I think they are. I mean it’s Morrisons now, but it had the same smell of, like, the little news agents I remember when I was a kid. I can’t really describe it, but it’s a very particular smell I just haven’t smelled in years! So that’s already sort of springing up memories and thoughts, and while I was in there, I was chatting to a local lady who’s telling me about the local events coming up, which includes I think, one in 2 weekend’s time. I don’t think that I’m going to be able to go. It’s really annoying, because they’ve got the duck racing. I’m so gutted. I’d love to come to the Calne duck racing! I’m going to look it up.

Day 2 of my field trip and and I’ve got a couple of hours left before I hop on the bus back to Chippenham train station and today I’ve come out along the River Marden, which is, like, a little branch of what used to be called, like, the small Avon and I’m just walking from an area called Castle Fields. Yesterday I made it to The Dandy Highwayman and it does turn out that it is the same building that the Crop Circle Cafe was in! I had a chat with the owner, the current owner. And he said that he thinks it was the Crop Circle Cafe and then it was the Silent Circle Cafe, which I want to find out lots more about, where that name came from, or it might be the other way round. It might have been Silent Circle first and Crop Circle Cafe next. But anyway, and then it became The Divine Cafe. More and more godly! And then that closed and then for a long time it was out of use and they sort of made it into a car wash and then he took over with his cafe. And so it’s the same building, but it looked very different. Had the same feel, that same sense that I remember. But I remember all the walls being kind of wood panels and they are, I guess maybe fake wood panels, but they’re all white painted now and the counter is in a different place. I was checking with him. I think the counter was somewhat different. Anyway, he confirmed all of that, or his memory sort of went alongside mine. And then I did a huge big walk up to Cherhill White Horse and the Lansdowne Monument and all the way round about and the London Road and picked my way through lots of small villages and the Blacklands estate. I think it’s an estate, I need to find out more. Yes. And then today this morning, I went to Calne Heritage Centre, which was fascinating for all sorts of local history and discovered in the bookshop, a book on the history of crop circles. I’ve just enjoyed reading that over a coffee, before taking this walk along the river. But it’s looking like rain, so I think sadly it’s time to wend my way homewards now. Back to Bristol and see what I can do with all of these ideas now bubbling in my mind.

One last thing that was very pleasing to me today: There’s a big VE Day celebration in the community centre in Calne and there’s a Victoria sponge cake that people can guess the weight of. That’s pleasing to me because one of the very few things I know about one of my lead characters in the play I’m writing is that she is the best maker in the county of Victoria Sponge. So I was very pleased to come across one in Calne!

It’s the 18th of May, and I’m back in Wiltshire, close to Warminster, near a little village called Sutton Veny, because my partner spotted on Instagram that a new crop circle had appeared on the 5th of May here and we’re just overlooking it now from the hillside. There’s quite a few people who are obviously exploring it, going into the crop circle, to feel the vibes. So we’re going to try and go down there ourselves in a minute. And it’s quite a simple well simple-ish design that I think we need to see another picture from above to remember exactly. It’s kind of like, yeah, one big central outer circle and then inside a bit like a Celtic knot, but not quite that design. Yeah. So it’s quite intriguing. I was just beginning to think, ‘has the crop circle activity died down since the 90s?’ which is really the the era I remember being so full of crop circles, but it seems it’s still going strong, which is obviously great news for me and my play!

Episode 6 of Polly Tisdall’s audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’

Posted on by theatrecollection

Polly Tisdall, the current recipient of the Kevin Elyot Award, is publishing an audio diary, ‘Kevin Elyot, Crop Circles & Me’ as part of her residency at the Theatre Collection as she explores the Kevin Elyot archive and her own writing practice.  The annual award established in 2016, generously funded by an endowment from members of Kevin’s family, supports a writer-in-residence at the Theatre Collection to inspire a new dramatic work or other creative or academic outcome.  It is given in memory of Kevin Elyot (1951-2014) – an alumnus of the University of Bristol Drama Department – and the influence he has had on writing and the Arts.

Episode 6 is available to listen to below along with a transcript.  If you haven’t listened to earlier episodes, please head to the previous Kevin Elyot Award blog posts.  Polly’s audio diary is also available to listen to via Polly’s website with new episodes being published throughout her residency.

It’s brilliantly sunny outside.

I think we’re entering this April heat wave.

And it’s funny, sometimes I find the sunshine not very cheerful, which is unexpected. For some reason. I suppose it’s when I don’t feel particularly sunny and the world is sunny. It feels a little bit incongruous, and maybe I notice it more than I do in the winter when everything is grey. I suppose today I’m just. I’m not at the archive today. I’m reflecting back on my last few visits and I’m sitting in one of those moments of the creative process of writing, where I’ve just done a big chunk of work.

I’ve submitted the next draft of a play I’ve been working on for a long time to the Women’s Prize for Playwriting last week, so I’m very pleased to have submitted it. So there was this kind of big adrenaline rush and build up to the submission and getting everything to where I wanted it to be to the best it could be for that award submission. And then there’s kind of a drop. And a coming back to other projects and I’m refocusing on Crop Circle, which has been bubbling along in the background and which can now take centre stage for the next 6 months or so at least, which is exciting. And I’ve booked a research trip next weekend to go and spend some time in the very area where the Crop Circle Cafe was when I was growing up, near Cherhill White Horse in Wiltshire. So all of that is really positive. And I’m still feeling very inspired by reading Kevin’s work and Kevin’s drafts at the archives. Just on Friday I was reading through The Day I Stood Still, one of his slightly later plays that was staged at The National in 1998. And really enjoying reading, again, his notes, his process, the reflections from critics, the conversations with directors that he was having in advance of the production. It’s fascinating. And it is so inspiring and exciting. But I also had a conversation with a friend yesterday, who’s also a theatre maker in Bristol. Um, which was a really good connecting conversation. But we also shared our frustrations with the realities of getting work produced and getting work made.

And so, I think there’s something for me today. Questioning. Is it going to happen? You know, is any of this work that I write and I put down and I painstakingly edit and change and shift – Is it ever going to appear in front of an audience? And that is, you know, the question of every playwright, and we all know it’s such a competitive and lottery type of industry, really, when it comes to getting your work made and put on and produced. And it’s such an expensive process. And so not everything that everybody writes is going to go the whole distance. But it’s hard sometimes, I think, to sit in this moment of questioning. Because, I think I felt on this award and this residency with Bristol Theatre Collection, a real closeness to Kevin through reading his work, a closeness to: ohh it can happen, you know, it really can happen! You send things off and you make relationships and you keep at it. And those plays go the distance eventually, and then, you know, he gets these really incredible productions on, which is testament to his writing as well as his persistence, I think. And he’s quoted in an article I was reading on Friday, saying he always knew recognition would come, and he was willing to wait for it. And I think that’s how I felt in my 20s. I kind of felt like if I just keep grafting, the recognition will come. So I recognise that and it’s lovely to hear him sort of trusting that. And and it did pay off. But there are moments of real doubts, I think and and the reality of.

I suppose the present moment, maybe as opposed to when Kevin was writing – I haven’t done an in-depth analysis of the difference between the two and the theatre landscape and funding and appetite than you work and all of those things – but I think…

Today I’m feeling a bit low and a bit unsure and most of that is probably it’s like an after a show feeling. I’m also an actor, and I know – and a director, and I know – that kind of come down after a show and I think it feels a bit like that having finished this draft of one of my plays and sent it off, there’s a bit of a. And now what? And and it’s bringing up lots of questions and a. Bit of a kind of –

So that is honestly where I am. Still feeling inspired by Kevin’s process and journey but questioning my own and questioning what the next steps are for writers. You make something, you write something you’re proud of. And then it feels like there’s only so many avenues to go down for production, and perhaps I’m wrong about that. I’m trying to think creatively at the moment. You know. If we want to get our work staged, if we want to just put it on and test it out and try it out, with an audience. And what are the ways we can do that and what are the ways we can take agency in making that happen and in making those next steps? Not waiting and feeling powerless about it, waiting for someone else to pick it up and say this is great. So those are the questions I’m asking today.