Not Now Mum! Theatre for mothers.

Introducing Notnow Collective

 

 

We are very excited to be working with new theatre company Notnow Collective on their first tour. Their show is inspired by motherhood and includes relaxed performances which parents can bring their babies to.

 

 

 

Wonderwoman: The Naked Truth

 

A hilariously funny and brutally honest look at motherhood. Theatre by and for mums. 

“Everyone needs to see this show, especially parents working in the arts.” – Audience member

Mothers and theatre-makers Tina Hofman and Kristina Gavran are staging a revolution and they are getting their kids involved. Inspired by Lyn Gardner’s article entitled ‘Parents in the arts need to stage a revolution”, these passionate women are answering the call with their new show Wonderwoman: The Naked Truth. Originally from Croatia, these women have drawn on their own experiences as mums who miss their own mums,, mums who are raising bilingual kids and mums who are feeling guilty as they dream about success.

With three children between them the working environment can be a struggle which means kids in rehearsals, dressing rooms and even kids in meetings (which Professor Robert Kelly understands all too well from his recent viral interview gate-crashing incident.)

Wonderwoman; The Naked Truth is a physical exploration of the trials and superhero like moments motherhood can stir up and Notnow Collective use their trademark fusion of physical performance and playful new writing. Parents will recognise their own experience and marvel at the efficiency in which Tina and Kristina can simultaneously rap, change nappies and drink wine. #mumskills

Notnow Collective are also passionate about championing baby-friendly matinees, believing theatres should address better how to be truly welcoming to their audiences with caring responsibilities.

Kristina said: “Often new parents stop seeing themselves as theatre-goers: your life becomes baby classes and soft play areas. We found this both lovely and very lonely – I would have really loved to see some adult theatre to which I could freely bring my baby.

“Not only was the show relatable, but also it was great to be welcomed to a space where my little baby could also come.” – Audience member

Notnow Collective are Associate Artists of the prestigious artists development platform In Good Company at Derby Theatre and their work has been commissioned by Midlands leading venue mac, Birmingham. In June and July Notnow Collective will introduce themselves to wider national audiences at the acclaimed Pulse Festival and Departure Lounge Festival, with the sequel to Wondewoman: “DadMan- The Bathtime Warrior”, focusing on fatherhood.

 

 

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

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Kicking and Screaming with Tangled Feet

We loved working with physical theatre ensemble Tangled Feet on their latest show Kicking and Screaming, which went on tour around the UK.

Kicking and Screaming

“Highly original…Kicking and Screaming will leave a stamp on your heart long after you leave the theatre.” 4 STARS – http://www.thepublicreviews.com 

Like a tiny bomb exploding in the middle of your life, the baby arrives – and suddenly the world you knew becomes a different place entirely.  

Two couples negotiating the first year of parenthood are guided by our playful narrator, Laura. A baby is more than Natasha bargained for – and she’s also wondering whether boyfriend Jay will ever grow up. As a flood of plastic balls and children’s toys is unleashed in the middle of their marriage, Sam and Ronnie struggle to stay afloat despite their careful plans.

How do our priorities shift when we become parents? How do we adjust – and what happens if we don’t?

An honest, funny and touching show with a live score played on children’s instruments, Tangled Feet take a sideways look at how we cope with our children – and how our parents coped with us.

 

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

Perform with Tangled Feet in Leeds!

Photo from Tangled Feet show One Million

by Nathan Curry

Being a volunteer performer in a large-scale outdoor theatre production, performing to thousands of local people, in the heart of the city where you live is an exhilarating experience. People often describe these moments as ‘a once in a lifetime experience’ but there are now more opportunities than ever to be involved in large-scale mass participation events. A very brilliant production manager I once worked with gave some excellent advice to a young production placement student “life is better when you join in” – and it’s completely true – it is. As a people we yearn for opportunities to be part of a community, to meet, to celebrate, to connect; and the performing arts is the perfect place to do all of these things. We’ve been making up stories and playing in groups since we could learn to talk and move – why should it stop once we grow up?

Tangled Feet have made a number of shows featuring performers who aren’t trained working alongside young performers in training and professional performers to create theatre that is truly unique. Our show All That is Solid Melts into Air featured a flash mob of 50 young people for the finale scene and One Million featured 100 young people authoring the entire show. For our next mass participation performance we are looking for 300 performers, of all ages, in Leeds and the surrounding areas.

Our new show, Collective Endeavour, commissioned by Dep Arts and Leeds City Council to celebrate the arrival of the Rugby World Cup in Leeds will be an epic celebration of the power of community; of strength in numbers and of the idea that great things can be achieved when you work as a team. Echoing these sporting themes, the show places community at its heart as volunteer performers will help create a giant structure in front of the audience’s eyes. Volunteers perform simple movements evoking the physicality of rugby as well as ensemble work to create images and atmosphere en-masse.

Being a volunteer performer isn’t just about making big images. There is something fundamentally important and exhilarating about a regular, local person performing a story that resonates with them with and for their local community. It is about embedding art at the very heart of the community – made, performed and watched by a group local people. And brilliant. We want Collective Endeavour to be brilliant, highly accomplished and memorable for all.

We make theatre that places volunteers are the heart of something excellent, epic and hugely exciting. If you are reading this and think you’d like to be involved, grab a friend and sign up. Here is a video to tell you more…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cQifoz8uPw

More details and sign up here….

http://www.departsltd.com/projectproduction/tangled-feet-collective-endeavour/

Fantastic response to Tangled Feet’s Kicking and Screaming

Reviews:

The Public Reviews – 4 Stars

Hidden Hartlepool

Audience responses:

Venue responses:

Tangled Feet would like to thank everyone involved in the production and all of their wonderful audiences.

You can now book tickets to see the next show in Tangled Feet’s current season entitled ‘Care’. Care runs from 19th to 28th June at the Watford Palace Theatre. For tickets and further details go to http://www.watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk/page/care

Why don’t we value Care?

By Kat Joyce, Co-Artistic Director of theatre ensemble Tangled Feet Darwin’s law of natural selection, ‘survival of the fittest’ is often misinterpreted, particularly by the capitalist system to mean ‘survival of the best competitor’. But an equally valid interpretation is ‘survival of the best nurtured’.

In our society, the work of caring is not valued, at least not economically. People who care professionally – for children, old people, the sick – are often the lowest-paid. Profit-driven businesses and caring responsibilities often seem incompatible. The carer on a zero-hours contract, trying to look after a housebound elderly person in a 15-minute allocated home visit, epitomises how the dignity of the human drive to connect with others can be fundamentally undermined by the requirement to deliver a healthy profit margin.

The importance of ‘care’ in our society, and the often-unheard stories of the people doing the caring, are at the heart of Tangled Feet’s work in 2015. As we step back inside theatre auditoriums (after a spell of making work in public spaces) it seems fitting to focus our attention on the close-up, intimate acts of caring and being cared for that happen in our homes and our hospitals.

In ‘Need a Little Help‘ a show for 3-7yr olds, we explored the world of young carers, inspired by the young people we’ve worked with in recent years who carry the responsibility of caring for a parent or sibling. In that production (which happened at the Half Moon in January) we experienced the beautiful phenomenon of even the smallest children in the audience bursting with a desire to reach out and help our protagonist, Ella, as she struggles to juggle her caring responsibilities with a desire to play. We are all hard-wired to care for others. (You can see a wonderfully detailed review of the production here).

In ‘Kicking and Screaming’ we continue a strand of investigation that we began with ‘Push’ looking at what it’s like caring for a small baby. No-one wants to admit that they are struggling – or worse, failing – as a parent, but many wrestle with these concerns all the time, while simultaneously trying to present a veneer of having it all under control. There’s very little theatrical work about the domestic world of child-rearing, perhaps because so much of it happens behind closed doors and is considered mundane and of little importance. In Kicking and Screaming, Tangled Feet shine a light on the 3am netherworld of new parenthood, examining the pressures on relationships as we try to adapt to our new lives and new responsibilities. Read the 4 star review here.

Our headline show of the ‘Care’ season, a co-production with Watford Palace Theatre in June, examines the pressures faced by the NHS as the Health and Social Care Act comes into play. We’ll be making the show as the General Election happening, where it is predicted that the future of the NHS will be a make-or-break issue for many voters. What will the NHS’s future be come May?

As an ensemble, caring relationships are right at the heart of Tangled Feet. We know that the ‘value’ in our company comes from the trust, investment, excitement and commitment of the people who spend time working on, watching or taking part in our projects.

The ‘creative industries’ can often feel quite cut-throat, with individual artists lauded or discarded on the basis of their current hype level. But as an ensemble committed to a long-term artistic journey together, we are invested not only in each other’s creative development but also in each other’s wellbeing. We try really hard to create a working situation together which enables and inspires people to deliver their best performance, but also accommodates them when they are not on top form or need some flexibility – when they have just had a baby, or are recovering from injury, or a bereavement. This may not necessarily make us the ‘best competitor’, and it certainly doesn’t help us drive a profit. But sharing these joys and sorrows together – being part of something that we nurture and that we hope also nurtures others – makes the work, and our experience of it, infinitely richer.

Follow Tangled Feet on twitter: @tangledfeet

Like them on Facebook: TangledFeet

Check on their boards on Pinterest: Tangled Feet

Watch their work on Youtube: Tangled Feet Channel

You can book tickets to Tangled Feet’s new show “Care” at Watford Palace Theatre here.

Penguin chats with … A Younger Theatre

This Penguin in the Room took time out from the glare of the hot London sun to interview Jake Orr the Artistic Director of A Younger Theatre: a popular platform for young people interested in theatre. Read on to see the results!

How did A Younger Theatre start?

After graduating from drama school I decided to head down the safety route of administration work instead of performance. Sitting behind a desk was frustrating after being so creative. I began to write as a creative outlet. At the same time I watched at press nights when the critics would come to review, and I wondered where all the critics my own age were. Thus, A Younger Theatre was born. At first a blog, and later a website.

As a platform for young people do you think social media is important?

Social media has been crucial to the continual growth of A Younger Theatre as a platform for young people. Social media allows us to reach a large audience who are already well adapt at using these digital tools, and just so happen to be our own target demographic. That’s not to say that others outside our remit of ‘young people’ don’t use them, but social media has been adopted by young people as a tool of expression, networking and creativity.

How does social media play a role in your organisation?

As a digital publication we have to ensure that our content is seen by as many people as possible. Social media is a crucial tool for us to expand our reach for this content. Everyday we push out new content through our social networks (mainly Twitter and Facebook), and then rehash old content that is still relevant for our readers. We generally tweet throughout the day, roughly every hour, and with Facebook we publish at least two photos per day which include links back to the AYT website itself. We try to develop conversations through our social media output initially from our content but also through questions we pose on the social platforms.

Do you think online marketing is useful for theatre companies?

Online marketing is crucial for any emerging theatre company, and established companies too. It is a form of marketing that is constant, one that keeps a profile of a company active even when there is no work to actually market to an audience. Never underestimate the value of digital or online marketing alongside more traditional modes of marketing such as flyers or posters.

What are your top tips for theatre companies trying to get reviewers to their shows?

Think of your theatre work as a product. Make sure you know what you’re trying to ’sell’, and market accordingly to the right demographic or receptive audience. To get a review you have to have a strong product, and be offering something different. Send a press release outlining the production to members of the press. Be personal, and don’t nag.

Is there anything that turns you off a theatre company or show on social media?

When companies and organisations put no creativity into their social media, and instead produce a stream of what feels like blatant marketing. It’s tiring and dull. Be creative.

What turns you on to a theatre company or show on social media?

Creativity, and lots of it. A company who are willing to be a think tank of ideas and to ask questions to discuss and debate their work are of interest to me.

Jake is the Founder and Artistic Director of A Younger Theatre, a platform for young people to write about theatre and the arts. Founded in 2009, AYT has been called “radically agiest” by the Guardian and was named About.com’s Best Theatre Blog of 2011. Jake is also a freelance theatre writer, digital producer, think and commentator on the arts. www.ayoungertheatre.com / www.jakeorr.co.uk / @ayoungertheatre / @jakeyoh

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is one penguin with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping my way into the arts industry and helping creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact me any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to my website:www.penguinintheroom.com