FALSTAFF

Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?

PRINCE HENRY

Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack

and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon

benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to

demand that truly which thou wouldst truly know.

What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the

day?

(Henry IV, I. ii)

And what the devil have Fine Chisel got to do with a Shakespeare festival? We devise new work and work with new writers, don’t we?

It started with the wonderful people from the Ustinov Studio in Bath (part of the Theatre Royal complex), who came to see 4.3 MILES FROM NOWHERE in Edinburgh this summer. They seemed to enjoy the piece, particularly the music, and asked us whether we’d like to propose for a small commission for the ‘Shakespeare Unplugged’ festival. The project is all about encouraging new audiences to engage with Shakespeare’s works. We have always been interested in classical work as individuals - and 4.3 Miles was very loosely based on The Winter’s Tale (the play from which Fine Chisel’s name is drawn) - we simply felt that it was important to carve a niche as a young company and we were most interested in twenty-first century stories. However, the whole team at Bath (the festival is programmed by Kate Cross, Artistic Director at the egg) have allowed us an incredible amount of freedom to approach Shakespeare with devotion and irreverence in equal measure. We are hugely grateful for their support and cannot wait to show what we’ve been developing at our work-in-progress showings in February.

MIDNIGHT AT THE BOAR’S HEAD

Join us for an evening of foot-stomping, ale-swilling, folk-fuelled storytelling, with handmade puppets and live music.

Fine Chisel Theatre breathe life into an eclectic collection of often-overlooked characters plucked from the Complete Works. Armed with nothing more than an array of acoustic instruments, this dynamic group of theatre makers and musicians explore the underside of Shakespeare.

Praise for Fine Chisel’s previous productions:

***** ‘Every so often… the [Edinburgh] festival unearths a little gem and this piece sparkles as brightly as any I’ve seen’ Broadway Baby on ‘Firing Blanks’

**** ‘A charming, witty and ridiculously entertaining piece of theatre’, FringeGuru on ‘4.3 Miles from Nowhere’

——————————-

That’s the official blurb, as it appears in the programme. More specifically, we’re looking at the characters that began this blog, Prince Hal and Falstaff. The pub is the great leveller; princes and rogues sit side by side. We are devising a new piece, using only Shakespeare’s words, set entirely in the pub (the Boar’s Head in cheapside was Shakespeare’s favourite as well as Falstaff’s). Other characters, plucked from across the complete works, will wander in to the Boar’s Head and join the party.

James Hill (Felix Fables) and Greg Hall (Minima), who both worked with us in the band for 4.3 Miles, will be joining George Williams (Longnose Puppets) and me to bring the piece to life musically. We’ve been tracing through all of the songs from Shakespeare’s plays and adding a Fine Chisel folk twist to them.

This production is commissioned by Theatre Royal Bath, and will premiere there 22-25^th February 2012. Full ticketing info will be published asap.

The thinking artist. The artistic thinker.

Both sound good to me. Things may look like they’ve been a little quiet at Fine Chisel Towers, but I’ve been busy pondering the difference (if there is one) between these two ideas. This year I’m studying for an MA in Text and Performance at RADA and Birkbeck College. Combining theory and practice, the course welcomes students from a vast range of backgrounds: some of my peers are fresh graduates, some are returning to academia after significant time working in the industry, others come from different worlds altogether. It’s a vibrant, inspiring group. And everything I do as part of the programme feeds into my work with Fine Chisel, and vice versa. I’ve just been looking at my diary for 2012 and it makes my head hurt already. Despite my technically being a full-time student, we’re going to be busier than ever.

Read the next post for news of MIDNIGHT AT THE BOAR’S HEAD, our new commission for Bath’s ‘Shakespeare Unplugged’ festival in February. We’d like to thank all the RADA MA students (from ‘Theatre Lab’ as well as my own course) for coming out last month to workshop ideas with us for this show. We’re hoping that this will mark the start of a new era for our workshop delivery, as well as an exciting new avenue for our professional performance practice.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for news of a brand new large-scale project for spring/summer 2012 as well as an array of Fine Chisel fundraising nights and one-off events. Don’t forget, you can always get in touch with us if you’d like to share ideas…

Email: info@finechisel.co.uk

Twitter: @finechisel

Facebook: www.facebook.com/finechisel

Sorry for the lack of life in the site for the last couple of months, it’s been a topsy-turvy time. I, and Fine Chisel, suffered a great loss. My Dad - Tony Spencer - died in September, a few days before his fifty-ninth Birthday. This blog isn’t the place for personal tribute, but this does mean a few changes for the company. Logistically, our Surrey home will be moving in the new year. It’s not yet quite clear exactly where, but there are some exciting plans afoot. It has to be exciting; that’s what he would have wanted. Tony was not only a great supporter of Fine Chisel (personally, financially, enthusiastically), he was an inspiration for many to stand up and turn their daydreams into something solid.

Artistically, this is like a punch in the sternum. We have to make things count. I’m incredibly proud that we made ‘Firing Blanks’ - with all of its personal connections - happen and that he was able to be there to see it reach and touch so many people. Standing on the streets of Covent Garden shouting about sperm was hard work, but we have to trust in the stories we believe need to be told.

This summer the enlarged company had an awesome time performing all over Edinburgh (theatres, bars, cafes, streets, bus stops) and it seems we made an impression. ‘4.3 Miles from Nowhere’ was a resounding success at the ZOO Venues box office and proved just how much fun you can have with a live band. Music has always been central to our vision, but I think we might have started a bit of a freight train…

For now, here I am in Dorking. I am stuck in this town - this sleepy, beautiful, inspiring, frustrating, 20-miles-from-London-but-impossible-to-reach-late-at-night town, for a couple of months while solicitors play their games. I’m commuting every day to central London, where I’m studying for an MA in Text and Performance at RADA and Birkbeck College. While a full-time degree does make running Fine Chisel a little stretched at times, it’s an amazing place to meet emerging artists. Amongst my classmates are Bertrand from Fellswoop Theatre and Lia from Opera Viscera, as well as exciting new projects already in the pipeline. And this train-journey existence is not stopping me from making work.

George (Lucas from 4.3 Miles and frontman of the Fine Chisel Folk Band) and I have been commissioned to make a new Fine Chisel piece for a festival in the South West in the new year. As soon as we’ve finished squabbling over the title, I will publish full details here. There are also very tentative plans for a huge research and development project in the spring.

The name for this post has another resonance. James Hill, our regular composer/collaborator/performer, works with a band called Felix Fables. Tonight is their album launch (free entry at the Bedroom Bar in Angel). Check out ‘In This Town’ on itunes or catch them live asap.

Oh, and here’s a funny picture of Rob for anyone who didn’t catch the show in Edinburgh:

A few weekends ago I went to a festival. Two Thousand Trees is a relatively small affair: new independent music and lots of West Country Cider. It rained, as it has for the last four years. With the exception of the eclectically brilliant Frightened Rabbit, I hadn’t heard of many bands on the lineup. I never have. And it’s always a highlight of my summer.

A good festival is a mini journey of discovery. Whatever your taste in music, theatre, comedy, line dancing, extreme ironing, wensleydale… there’s sure to be a festival out there that will suit your interests and, more importantly, introduce you to something a bit new. There’s nothing more satisfying than wandering into a marquee because something catches your ear and leaving half an hour later safe in the knowledge that your music collection will be enriched by the addition of your new favourite band’s CD.

Two Thousand Trees provided a microcosm; we were a community of soggy, slightly drunken music lovers crammed together in a ramshackle tent. We had a choice, at any one time, between a handful of acts across a handful of stages. It was perfect downtime after rehearsing a show all about being stuck in the middle of nowhere; the festival reminded me just how much that can be.

And now we’re on the brink of another festival. A festival on a whole different scale. There is nothing micro about Edinburgh. He we are - Fine Chisel - a group of theatre makers out to tell a story. We’ve got a band, we’ve got some beautiful posters and we’ve got buckets of enthusiasm. The only problem is there are 2,500 companies out there with a similar idea. They’ve all got stories to tell too, many of them very exciting. I never ceased to be overwhelmed by Edinburgh. This evening as I drove over George IV bridge, with a van full of set and instruments after our tech, I could feel the air moving rapidly across the city. Yes, the Scottish weather is as changeable as ever, but I think that the communal intake of breath from all of those people has got to make a difference too. So many hours of work, so many ideas. And now we all wait and watch to see whether they fly…

Very quick post just to show you our amazing new publicity material for 4.3 MILES FROM NOWHERE.

This poster and flyer was designed for us by Lisa Finch

http://flightofthefinch.blogspot.com

With illustrations by Kyle Platts

http://megaskull.blogspot.com

We can’t wait to hand these out around Edinburgh! We think the fun, folky designs are going to make a huge difference. Would you like a signed copy of our poster? We will give a print to anyone who donates over £50 to Fine Chisel this summer - just send us your address.

George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures.  So I did ten times more work’. I suppose that is the best thing we have discovered working residentially for the last couple of weeks: time to fail. Time to reconsider, or just consider, every angle.

I promised that this blog would become a gushing torrent of thoughts and ideas; I’ll admit now it’s still looking like a timid brook after several weeks without rain. Most of that is due to the fact that our wonderful rehearsal mansion (for anyone who hasn’t read my recent posts, we’ve been given the incredible luxury of making our new show in a huge unoccupied house in the Surrey hills) doesn’t have an internet connection. We are taking photos and scribbling notes to remember little snatches of inspiration along the way, but very little of it has made it online. Sorry.

However, I’m really interested in this idea of intensive creation. How important is it? By living together during this process, the company have not only bonded socially (potentially too much, given the amount of beer bottles I’ve had to recycle) but also they have begun to share a language, an understanding, a way of making work. As many of our best ideas have sprung up around the dinner table as have been fought for in the rehearsal room.

Perhaps we have too many ideas. We’re certainly going to be tight for time. And it’s terrifying knowing that we will hit our first night in Edinburgh without having spent any time rehearsing in a theatre. There is a lot of educated guesswork going on about the technical aspects of the show.

But the heart of the show itself… I couldn’t be more excited. Every day we pump through new scenes and ideas. ‘Never settle’ is a perfect motto that Holly has been reminding me of, and her work with Chris and Lauren on our movement sequences gets stronger each time we return to it. And just when things are getting a little too intense, Rob and George make us all laugh out loud with a new comedy moment. If you’re ever wondering just how funny Shakespeare can be, have a glance over Autolycus’ tricks in The Winter’s Tale, which provide much of our inspiration.

Here are a few more rehearsal photos, and I will post our (very exciting) new publicity designs in the next couple of days. Did you know you can buy tickets for Edinburgh already? Thank you to those who have. The link is here:

http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/theatre/4-3-miles-from-nowhere

‘Forget about the price tag’, says Jessie J. But it’s not always easy. Newspapers like figures, so they’re often thrust at us. This week there was the brilliant quantifiable revelation that the combined Edinburgh Festivals contribute more to the Scottish economy than golf. £261 million. Fact. This continual growth of the festival scene and its impact on local tourism is wonderful. It’s particularly cheering news as we work on our new show for the Festival Fringe. More the merrier, I say. But what a lot of the coverage of this story fails to point out is the disparity between these huge figures and the financial reality for most people taking part. Most companies will make a loss. Some, if they’re really good and fundraise effectively, will break even.

It’s okay though. Because more and more people are coming into contact with the arts through festivals such as those that take place in Edinburgh each summer. Our audiences are growing; we’re forging connections with the groups of people that (if anyone) will keep us in business our whole working lives. So come, watch, play, enjoy, spend… we just want to meet you. As Ms J likes to remind us, ‘we don’t need your money, money, money; just want to make the world dance’

If you would like to donate to Fine Chisel though, you can do so here.

We had a brilliant weekend developing 4.3 Miles from Nowhere at our wonderful temporary home in the Surrey hills. Here are a few photos from our discussions, devising workshops and improvised outdoor performances. We’re going back in this weekend, and our question to you this time is:

Which stories do you remember being told as a child? Why do you think those particular stories have stayed with you?

So here we are. This piece has been a long time coming… but it’s only just beginning.

You can read the official blurb on our productions page. This little blog is to tell you how it came to be and what we’re going to do next.

Sometime last year, on a sweaty midsummer night after a few too many drinks, the idea for 4.3 MILES FROM NOWHERE  was conceived. No going back. Through the cold winter months it fed upon me (and anyone who would listen) and made me feel a bit sick; it all seemed a bit too much to carry. And nine months later the piece is born. Out in the world to be poked, fussed over and worried about. Now it’s time to meet the family who will shape it. Suddenly everything is exciting.

‘The Winter’s Tale’ is a text I have often returned to. Fine Chisel’s name comes from Leontes’ line as he leans towards the statue of his dead wife at the play’s conclusion: ‘What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath?’ I fell in love with that moment, the exact point at which we realise that it is within our power to make a character live, breathe, startle, entertain, from the most unexpected of circumstances. The play is rich and multi-layered. It is Shakespeare at his most intriguing: snatching ideas from folklore and popular song as well as Robert Greene’s ‘Pandosto’. It’s full of wonderfully silly ballads and beautifully touching poetry. And it has a gaping hole in the middle of it; there are sixteen years between acts three and four. The foundations of our piece are laid on the slightly shaky ground of this gap.

But you won’t need to ‘know your Onions’ to enjoy our piece, we hope (Mr Onions compiled a glossary of all of Shakespeare’s works, in case you’ve ever wondered where that phrase comes from). We’re telling a story about five present day teenagers and that’s that. ‘The Winter’s Tale’ is our diving board: we will bounce on it, spring from it, perhaps attempt to cling on to it, but it’s what we manage to do in the air that will make a splash - or not.

It will be a modern day folk tale, of sorts. We have been discussing exactly what the word ‘folk’ means. It’s a very maleable term, but at its heart we think its about passing down stories, often with pastoral roots, that sing to everyone. We knew from the start that we wanted to make a piece that used a larger musical ensemble than we’d previously work with, and to further our exploration of ‘handmade’ theatre craft. There is a huge sphere of influences to be found in balladry, aural storytelling and nature itself.

So what better than to drop a group of city-dwelling, underdressed, over-hormonal teenagers right in the middle of nowhere and try to imagine how they might react?

Describe it in a nutshell? All of these ideas don’t fit into a nutshell. Yet. That’s the joy of devising. And its the fear of devising. This baby can barely even support its own head yet. And we will need to get it potty-trained before too long.

As we begin to play with it, we’d love to know:

What does the term ‘folk’ mean to you?

Twitter - @finechisel

facebook.com/finechisel

info@finechisel.co.uk

Yesterday I set out what we hope to provide on this blog: an inclusive, regularly updated insight into Fine Chisel’s workings. But who are Fine Chisel? Our site is being redesigned so it’s gone a little unloved for a while, and there isn’t too much information for anyone new to the company. So here’s a potted history for anyone who’s interested…

Fine Chisel are a small - but growing and evolving - group of theatre makers. We’re storytellers, actors, musicians and composers, directors and choreographers, writers and poets, awkward puppeteers and reluctant producers. That makes it sound like there are loads of us; there aren’t, we just all have a go at many things. The company began as a group of students in Bristol. As students do, that group moved on - to train, to work freelance, to explore new things - but the company was born.

My name is Tom Spencer. I’m a director and writer and, although I try to shake off the control-freak vibes, I suppose you could call Fine Chisel my baby. In 2010 I wrote ‘Firing Blanks’ and brought in Holly Beasley-Garrigan and Robin McLoughlin, first to scratch the show in Bristol and then perform it in full (in Bristol, Oxford, Edinburgh and London - click on ‘productions’ to read more). After this, the company’s HQ moved, with me, from Bristol to the South East. James Hill, a long-term friend and collaborator who wrote and performed the music for ‘Firing Blanks’, is just down the road. As we begin to dip our toes into London and to explore venues and possibilities in the South East (with help and advice from Fiona at Farnham Maltings, amongst others), our fingertips still firmly hold on to the South West. Holly, who is continuing to work with me as a performer, choreographer and general sounding board, is still in Bristol. We wouldn’t have got anywhere without invaluable space and support from Rona, Rod and Pam at the Wickham Theatre, Carrie and Ali at the Tobacco Factory, and Katie at Theatre Bristol.

We make theatre that is driven by characters that intrigue and entice us, whether found in a finished play text or - more often, it seems - somewhere else: a newspaper article, a song lyric, a photograph, a park bench. We get excited by music. We are always looking for new ways to bring music to the centre of our practice without jazz hands ever coming anywhere near. Pumping, grinding, dancing beats - yes, a little; we worked with composer Julian Bradley on ‘Be My Eyes’ and loved it. But folky, earthy, real wooden instruments - that’s the direction we’re moving in. We would like the company to be a vehicle for musicians to experiment with theatre making, and a place where actors are encouraged to pick up instruments.

Robin T Barton wrote in his five-star review of ‘Firing Blanks’ for Broadway Baby that ‘the staging is simple but brilliant, a red anorak becoming actual characters in front of our eyes’. That’s thanks to Tobi Poster of Wattle and Daub Figure Theatre; his workshops changed the way we made that piece and changed the way I view puppetry and object manipulation forever. That’s another thing we’re keen to explore further. And we are always interested to hear from writers. We’d like to bring more voices into our rehearsal room, to share our process and use it as the starting point for new ideas; we want to get away from one-big-show-a-year schedules to lots of smaller works-in-progress that may or may not develop into full productions.

We’re moving into our new rehearsal space next week. It is an incredible, beautiful, unoccupied mansion in my home town of Dorking, Surrey. I honestly don’t know how we blagged it. We’re working on a new piece that will begin its performance life in Edinburgh this summer. I will write a full blog soon about the ideas we’re starting with, but for now here is the 40 words you’ll see in the fringe programme:

A comic tale of growing up and getting lost in the countryside. Dynamic storytelling, featuring poetry, puppetry, movement and a live folk band, from makers of Firing Blanks: ***** ‘simply outstanding’ (All the Festivals). www.finechisel.co.uk

We believe in Edinburgh. There’s been a lot of doom and gloom about the spiralling costs and increased competition at the world’s biggest arts festival. It’s true, it’s bloody expensive. But look at even a very brief list of exciting young companies in the UK - BeltUp, Little Bulb, RashDash, Beartrap, 1927, River People - who have found essential early audiences at the Fringe in recent years. We certainly wouldn’t have been booked by the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden without our successful run at Underbelly. We’re excited to see where this year’s festival might take us.

We are professional and we are amateur. We are professional in the sense that sometimes a few pennies from tickets come our way, although we’ve learnt better than to ever count on that. Every penny we save from crap jobs along the way goes towards making theatre and, hopefully, towards a professionally viable model for creating and performing. We are amateur in the sense that Alison Croggon made clear on her blog recently: ‘Amateur derives from the Latin verb amare, to love. It also signifies a commitment to a vocation that was pursued for its own sake, rather than for the sake of money’. Even if the roughly sketched ‘business plan’ I sometimes come across in a drawer doesn’t quite add up, there isn’t anything else we’d rather be doing. We love it.

I have been longing for a while to make this blog a more regular, more exciting, more involving platform. Young artists all need a place to talk about our work, the art that inspires us and how it reflects - or even affects - the crazy, messy world we live in. Andy Field wrote a simple but potent call-to-arms for theatre makers to write as part of their process on the Guardian blog a while back and I think he’s absolutely right.

It’s tricky though. Many of the blogs we at Fine Chisel enjoy reading are written by reviewers, both ‘professional’ (more on my unease with that word soon) and self-published. The Guardian’s is a great start because it welcomes so many contributors. Alison Croggon’s Theatre Notes manages, from the other side of the world, to say a hell of a lot about a hell of a lot that resonates in the UK. In the last fortnight I have seen two shows thanks to another blog: Dan Rebellato’s Spilled Ink. His response to David Eldridge’s ‘The Knot of the Heart’ transformed a slight itch of mine to see the production into a throbbing need. He labelled Eldridge’s play ‘the most searingly moving new play of the last decade’. That decade is my entire theatre-going experience, and I have had a great number of moving evenings, but it was without doubt a challenging, heartfelt, beautifully-performed piece. And because I enjoy reading Dan’s blog generally, I went to see his own Chekhov in Hell at the Soho last night.

We are not looking to become part-time reviewers and commentators alongside our own work though. I will flag up shows of friends and collaborators, and sing loud and proud about work that excites me (in any medium), but never officially. This blog should be about our process, our audiences (and how to foster and extend them), our ambitions, our influences, our successes and failures. All I’ve done in the past is posted reviews of our productions; this, I know, is not the way to win followers. So let us begin anew. Let’s face the music and blog.

Sounds easy? It still feels like a challenge. Very few people who call themselves artists have the luxury of a regular income from their art. Most of us pull pints, serve coffee, teach, clean or go on the dole to supplement any income from ticket sales, grants or rare commissions. And when we do have the opportunity to work - to dive into the rehearsal room, scatter pages of ideas across floors, walls, windows, to do what we love - rarely does there seem an appropriate moment to break from that energy to copy all of this wonderful process onto the internet.

But that’s what we have to do, I think. Because blogs are no longer (if they ever were) a one-way stream of personal rants. Thanks to twitter and other social media, thoughts are shared more immediately, comments come in more frequently and from more diverse thinkers and makers. So, if used wisely, our scattered thoughts can be spread over the ether for others to comment on and contribute to. We can achieve more and earn a greater understanding of our potential audiences right at the heart of the creative process rather than waiting in dread until opening night.

Early in the year, Daniel Bye wrote an astute and well-timed challenge to theatres to use twitter as a tool for active engagement, rather than yet another ineffective marketing outlet. The Public Reviews ‘hosted’ an impromptu debate about twitter use a few weeks later, on twitter itself, that received some very interesting comments. And Jake Orr from A Younger Theatre (a brilliant concept that is consistently growing) wrote a new post this morning re-invigorating many of the questions being asked by artists, buildings and organisations about whether, or how, to use social media in the theatre.

So, as we get ready to step into the rehearsal room for a new project, joined by collaborators new and old, here is a promise: we will include you. YOU. We want to know whether our ideas intrigue you, excite you, challenge you, bore you… Follow us on twitter, we’ll try to keep that updated more consistently. Read the blog, please, we’ll write something on here as often as we can. Within the next few weeks, our site will be re-designed and made sparkly be the brilliant Jono Lewarne at City Edition Studio (let us know your thoughts on that too, when it comes). Hopefully that will help. I can’t wait…