Shock & Awe

Wow! What a busy time I'm having! Just now securing our Edinburgh venue, and indeed booking in previews and a small-scale tour of Zanniskinheads in October. As always lots of new territory being covered, and as I'm a one-man band at the mo I've had to learn how to deal with it all. My highlight of the week was writing Slingshot's Health & Safety policy - I nearly died with boredom. Still, we are officially a Limited company now and I'm feeling great about that, another step forward.

Watched two plays this week, Mogadishu at the Lyric Hammersmith and To Kill A Mocking Bird on it's national tour, this week in the epicentre of progressive cultre: Bromley. Both contained good content and some really good acting (in various degrees of course!), but I was left by both of them just, as my friend Martin concurred, 'wanting more'.

I think it's a really healthy attitude for theatre makers to just keep wanting more. One of the key phrases for Slingshot's 'manifesto' if you will, has been 'to go beyond the expectations of our audience'. I find this spirit so important. I don't want to go and see something which meets my expectations. I don't want to be able to acurately predict what the show will be like before I see it.

This is why I'm falling more in love with mask & puppetry, because I think it brings that spectacular dynamic to the stage. The word 'Spectacle' gets thrown around like dirty laundry in the West End. Snotty actors say "Oh but you know, it's all just cheap spectacle, it's not real, it's not drama". Firstly, I don't agree with these sentiments anyway, because I think spectacle can create much greater drama and intensity of emotion, but secondly, the profound truth is that audiences WANT specatacle. Look at the shows which succeed year after year in the West End - while I wouldn't at all say that I like them all, they all have great amounts of spectacle: glorious singing, dynamic dance routines, impressive staging & technological splendour. My favourite example is WarHorse - one of the few plays to be transferred into the West End in recent years, and certainly a freak of nature in terms of its continued sell out audiences. WarHorse has surpassed the National's last big success 'History Boys' and why? Spectacle. If it weren't for the puppetry and the music in the show, I'm not sure it would have even transferred - after seeing the show 5 times now they are the only sections of the show which remain interesting to me!

But I don't believe spectacle is about big budgets, not at all. Indeed, part of our reason for choosing the name 'Slingshot' was the story of David & Goliath. Goliath has a sword, a spear, massive armoury protection, and stands 10ft tall, a man-mountain. David is a young shepherd boy, with simply a slingshot, but he knows how to use it and uses it well and Goliath falls. David asks to borrow his sword, and chops off his head. Young companies like us - we may not have big budgets, we may be surviving in unorthodox ways, we may not have the weapons & the armoury that the big organisations have. But I believe that theatre is predominatey made manifest through the actors, through their skill, talent and ability to look after an audience, and if this is done well, I truly believe we can compete with the best.

A great example of this is my friend Dan Clarkson who with his comedy partner Jeff went off to the Edinburgh Fringe 6 years ago with the proviso "How far do you think we can get by just dicking around on stage?". Their show 'Potted Potter' was picked up by a producer, and they have toured the UK extensively playing to sold-out theatres, were head-hunted to be presenters on CBBC, and most recently brought their new show 'Potted Panto' into the Vaudeville theatre over the Christmas season, for which they were nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Entertainment Act, alongside the English National Ballet's Beauty and the Beast and the eventual winner, the Railway Children. As one reviewer said of them "It's good to see how far you can get with just a few silly hats".

All the best and more news to come soon,

Christopher