Another new venue and another performance

It has been such a long time since I last blogged, and loads of things have happened.  As I have just at last replaced my rubbish old no good computer with a nice new one I will be back blogging regularly, so will gradually get back up to date with everything, including some pics, and if I can work out how to load it, a video.

Here is the news:
We got another new venue!  Now we are at Staffordshire Performing Arts, thanks to a lovely lady called Amanda who saw our article in the Newsletter saying we are homeless.  SPA is I think the best workshop space we have had so far, and we can also do performances there.
We finally got to perform Urashima - after the London Expo thing was cancelled by its so-called organisers very rudely at the last minute, we were allowed to do a candlelit performance of this tragic tale at St Chad's Church, which is small, lovely and gothic.
I haven't got pics vids to hand, but here is Chris's writeup from his blog... (thanks Chris!)...

http://www.d-list.co.uk/2012/04/urashima-at-earth-hour-you-had-to-be.html?spref=fb

We also nearly have a performance date for the Gatehouse - end of June - where we will perform all three fairy tales.
And the final bit of news - we are starting a new project - after 15 months of working on the Japanese Fairy Tales, we are now doing bouffons.  More on these funny monster type things as soon as I've read up on them, but in the meantime, here is what I wrote on the Facebook group...

"This week we are meeting on Wednesday as usual, but we are starting a brand new project ... bouffons "the art of mockery".  This clowning technique is very physical and as crazy as we like...

Also, because of my own interest in the health and wellbeing side of all this, I'd like to use the project to look at some deeper and more meaningful stuff like "why do we laugh?", "who are we laughing at?", "can laughter be used as part of a therapeutic process?"  (Maybe by enablingus to think the unthinkable, or taste the unpalatable).  What can we do with this ghastly material once we have made it visible and diminished it by ridiculing it?  Is laughter enough?  Are there other therapeutic processes that can carry themes forward to enable, for instance, empathy? understanding? acceptance?  Also, what happens when we realise that however we distance ourselves from a role by giving it more and more unreal, unhuman characteristics, we always play elements of ourselves..."