// EMBROIDERED TATTOO PARLOUR
This Saturday (11th May) Beyond Retro will be teaming up with Jenny King’s embroidery studio as part of the Brighton Fringe. Experience couture craftsmanship as you witness your chosen tattoo embroidered on the garment of your choice using 1950’s machines in a perfect vintage setting in-store at Beyond Retro Brighton. Choose from a classic swallow to a personalised rose on to the shirt off your back or choose from an array of dazzling vintage items on the rails. Tattoos start from £5 and items purchaced from the store will be priced at normal cost.
Production Blog #5
We are now in our final rehearsals in the run up to Pygmalion. The actors and the technical crew are now working together to get the show ready. Rehearsals have been devoted to running the play and polishing sections, adding details and layers to performances. The actors have also been working with all the props, including food and drink. It has been a challenge to keep the crew away from the chocolate box!
We’re putting the finishing touches to bits of set today. We have a quick change between Professor Higgins’ flat and Mrs Higgins’ flat which we’ll be finessing.
On Wednesday we move into the lovely Marlborough Theatre for fit-up, rigging, and a full technical run, ready to open on Thursday!
It’s been a great process and we’re really looking forward to bringing the show to Brighton Fringe. We hope to see lots of you there!
Please follow!
Hello ladies and gentlemen of tumblr!
After the success of our production blog for Doctor Faustus, my company has started another for our current production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (directed by me!) We’ll be performing at the Brighton Festival Fringe in June! Please go and follow it for rehearsal blogs, beautiful inspiration images, backstage bits and pieces and special offers!
http://barefootpygmalion.tumblr.com/
Thank you and fabulous hats all round! <3
The con goes on...
We’re approximately half way through blocking the play now and creeping ever closer to Brighton Fringe! The Alchemist is developing really well and we’ve been really enjoying putting it together. Rehearsals are always highly physical, with quick-change accents and an ever-increasing list of weird and wonderful props, including a dead mouse, test tubes, fairy wings, feather dusters and 1920s-vintage knickers!
During the course of the play, Subtle, Doll and Face trick a series of gullible customers. We thought we’d introduce you to a few of the con artists’ victims!
Abel Drugger is the first visitor to the ‘alchemist’. An honest young tobacconist, he has just bought his first shop and is looking to make his way up in the world. He is easily tricked into handing over money, cigarettes and new suits to Face and Subtle, and into bringing Pliant, the rich young widow who he wishes to marry, into the clutches of the con-men.
Subtle and Face con Abel Drugger. (L-R) Face (Sam Black), Drugger (Steven Bollschweiler), Subtle (Andy Mansell)
Dapper is a lawyer’s clerk and social climber with a small income, who fantasises about becoming a rich and successful gambler. He visits the ‘alchemist’ with the intention of obtaining a pocket-sized fairy of his own, to help him cheat and win at games of cards and chances. It is extremely easy for Subtle and Face to carry the fairy con to ridiculous lengths with the extremely greedy and gullible Dapper.
Subtle whets Dapper’s appetite for miraculous gambling fairies. (L-R) Subtle (Andy Mansell) and Dapper (Louis Osbourne)
Kastril is a country boy with money and land who has come to the city to learn how to be angry and pick fights. Immature and impressionable, his attempts at quarrelling are weak in the extreme (the only insults he knows are ‘you lie’ and ‘you pimp’.) He is bullying and overprotective towards his widowed sister Pliant.
Kastril is delighted by the promises of ‘Captain Face’. (L-R) Face (Sam Black) and Kastril (James Davies)
Watch this space for more character updates, to include Sir Epicure Mammon and his cynical friend Surly, and Tribulation Wholesome and Ananias the Anabaptists!
Hurray for friends at the Fringe
So for this year, since I am studying at ACT I had resigned myself the the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to get any acting work.
Well it turns out I’m wrong, and I have to thank my teachers for this one. My movement teacher recommended me for a job with a theatre company she has worked for before, but first thing she did was go to my Principal and ask her permission to put me forward. My Principal, then checked all the dates that I would be needed and gave her the go ahead.
All this was done behind my back with out any knowledge of it until the last minute. When I was finally informed of the audition I felt such gratitude towards my teachers for giving me the footholds I’ve needed to get started on my acting career.
I had fully expected to be focused on studying and not getting the chance to perform outside of act. But people surprise us sometimes, they do things without an expectation to get something in return. I love these people, they show the better side of humanity, and remind me that not everyone is cruel or has an agenda towards everyone they meet.
So why this should relate to my readers? If you ever have like me felt that no one shows compassion, kindness or honesty. Give it time, those qualities do show themselves, just don’t expect to find it if you actively look for it.
So if you want to respond please do:
Would you agree with me, or perhaps you feel that no matter what people always have a selfish reason for what they do?
