Midnight at the Boar’s Head

Where is it playing, on what dates and at what times?

The Hurly Burly

20th May (6.30 & 9.00pm)

22nd May (9.30pm)

+ FREE live music, theatre and poetry before and after Sunday 20th shows (from 1pm)

+ ‘Devising Shakespeare’ public workshop, 23rd May, 4-7pm.

What is it about?

The Boar’s Head was Shakespeare’s favourite pub. We’ve brought it to life and filled it with an array of colourful characters. Some of them you’d expect to find there, propping up the bar; Prince Hal and Falstaff are front-men of the pub band, for example. But others we have relocated from across Shakespeare’s complete works.

The result is a foot-stomping, ale-swilling adventure about friendship and camaraderie, war and responsibility, love and loss, drinking and drunkenness.

And the entire piece is driven by live folk music. Fine Chisel’s four multi-instrumentalist storytellers not only play all the characters, they also perform beer-fuelled sea shanties, close-harmony working songs and haunting funeral odes.

What is new and different about it?

It’s a brand new devised piece, with all original music. But every word, spoken and sung, is Shakespeare’s.

It’s the first time Fine Chisel have applied our folk sound and handmade storytelling style to existing text.

Audience members will be required to fire party poppers and silly string. And there’s a strong likelihood you’ll get a free beer.

What would one of your rehearsals look at sound like?

We shout to each other over the bedlam, ‘Do you think they did this in the original production of Henry V?’ as we fire confetti cannons and balloons across the room.

The four of us stand in a circle, often around a pot of tea, with our instruments (normally guitar, mandolin, cello and double bass), practicing harmonies.

‘Do you think that looks like a nose?’ one of us asks, as we paint lipstick on a puppet-pintglass.

‘What if Caliban wandered into the bar?’ we muse, before remembering that we have three days to re-rehearse the show before our Brighton Fringe dates. ‘We’ll save that for Edinburgh, then’.

What’s the story behind the show’s appearance here? How did it come about?

‘Midnight at the Boar’s Head’ was originally commissioned and produced by Theatre Royal Bath for their Shakespeare Unplugged Festival in February. They believed that our live music-led style could encourage new audiences to get excited about Shakespeare. And, after some brilliant feedback on our work-in-progress performances in Bath (from the RSC, amongst others), we decided to take the piece on and develop it into a summer festival show.

We’re now working on a brand new piece called ‘Unplugged’, based on a small town pub’s Open Mic night. That piece will premiere in Edinburgh in August, alongside a run of ‘Midnight at the Boar’s Head’. We’re then planning a tour of pub venues for both shows in 2013.

What’s your favourite theatre show ever (excluding your own) and why?

The two pieces that have had the strongest influence on Fine Chisel’s recent work are actually both performing at Brighton Fringe: ‘The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart’ by David Greig/National Theatre of Scotland, and Little Bulb’s ‘Operation Greenfield’. Both of these shows feature live bands. In fact, they both feature musicians as central characters, which allows for a really thorough blend of musicianship and storytelling (something we’re always trying to achieve).

‘The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart’ is a beautiful, haunting, deceptively simple folk story told through very clever (and often hilarious) verse and brilliant live music.

‘Operation Greenfield’ is a tender, wonderfully quirky exploration of the awkwardness of youth. All of Fine Chisel grew up playing in bands, drinking squash and gigging in village halls… so it feels very close to home.

WHEN:

Sunday 20 May 2012, 1.00-5.30pm

WHERE:

The Hurly Burly, next to St Peter’s Church, Brighton

WHAT:

Fine Chisel are bringing our production of ‘Midnight at the Boar’s Head’ to the Hurly Burly as part of the Brighton Fringe. Before our Sunday show, we are curating an afternoon of free entertainment in this unique pop-up venue. It should be great fun, nice and relaxed, and a perfect opportunity to play to a diverse audience at the heart of the festival.

Events should be low-tech and family friendly. We’re looking for acoustic bands, singer-songwriters, poets, storytellers, puppeteers and theatre makers. Acts are welcome to perform an extract from their own Brighton Fringe show, or to just play a few songs.

We’ll offer anyone who plays free tickets to see Midnight at the Boar’s Head, and we’ll try to get hold of a few platefuls of the Hurly Burly’s awesome Sunday dinner.

If you’re interested in taking part, please get in touch: info@finechisel.co.uk

After our late show (finishing approx. 10pm) we will bringing the night to a close with a bit of a party. We’d like to get as many artists on stage as possible, and to get the audience on their feet as well with some impromptu folk madness. You have been warned. We look forward to hearing from you.

We were nervous. We had taken Shakespeare’s Complete Works, ripped out our favourite scenes and pasted them together into a brand new piece, focused on his favourite pub - The Boar’s Head. Were we allowed to do this? I kept checking the rearview mirror; was some angry daemon screaming up the hard shoulder to smite us down for such irreverence to our national playwright?

Our first performance was in the cafe of the egg (Bath’s wonderful children’s theatre). Our welcome party was a handful of toddlers dashing around the space, hurling stuffed giraffes at each other. Suddenly everything seemed a bit more relaxed. Our show that night in the Cafe was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in a Fine Chisel show. As we clambered over tables and launched party poppers at the opposing audience army (Shakespeare cut that scene from his version of the Battle of Agincourt, don’t you know?), it all became clear. This was exactly what we should be doing with Shakespeare’s words. Because, at the heart of all our storytelling decisions - editing of scenes, songwriting from Shakespeare’s lyrics, relocations, irreverent staging options - was the text. We were inspired and guided by the beautiful, often hilarious, language that was our source.

The following night, we carried our van-full of instruments next door into the Ustinov Studio. The cafe might have been fun, but in the theatre we could hear ourselves think. George’s songs were given room to breathe, and James’ orchestrations came to life thanks to the theatre’s rich acoustics.

We began the year uncertain about what 2012 would hold for Fine Chisel. In the feedback session after our final performance (as part of the Incubator mini-festival), led by Jamie Luck from the RSC, we were met with incredibly warm suggestions. Theatre makers, producers and casual audience members alike insisted that we took the Midnight at the Boar’s Head on for further development. And not just this particular piece, but this way of working as an ensemble. We are always striving to find new ways to integrate live music into our theatrical storytelling; it seems that with this project we made some progress. So we’re doing exactly what we were asked - we’re booking dates for audiences around the country to experience the excitement of the Boar’s Head for themselves.

BRINGING SHAKESPEARE TO THE SEASIDE

You can see MIDNIGHT AT THE BOAR’S HEAD at the Hurly Burly, as part of the Brighton Fringe on 20 & 22 May (as well as free live music on Sunday 20th and a public workshop on Wednesday 23rd). Find out more and book tickets on our productions page.

LOOKING AHEAD…

We are also dragging Shakespeare’s favourite pub north of the border for a full month-long run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August (full details TBA).

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

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 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…

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

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?