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  • Home
  • About
  • People
  • Current Projects
    • I LOVE YOU WILL U MARRY ME
    • A History of Sheffield in 200 Objects
  • Past Projects
    • The Gods of Pick 'n' Mix
    • Memory Collection - The Gods of Pick 'n' Mix
    • The Skillswap Project
    • Starr and Pitt
    • The Hoult's Yard Project
  • Blog
  • Get in touch
Sad Siren Theatre

our blog

Forge North | A Nation's Theatre

5/16/2016

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Below is the text of a short introduction to Forge North: A Night From the North, given by Gwilym Lawrence at Camden People's Theatre on 10th May 2016.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Forge North: A Night from the North.


I’m Gwilym Lawrence, co-Artistic director of Sad Siren Theatre, one of the five companies or artists whose work you will see tonight.

Sad Siren moved to Sheffield in the same month that Theatre Delicatessen opened a new building there - September 2014 - and like a number of the artists whose work you are about to see, we have been involved from the very beginning. Before basing ourselves in Sheffield, we had one small-scale, unpaid show to our names, which we loved dearly but which had only been seen by around 25 people over two nights.

Since then, with Deli’s support and as part of a generous and mutually enriching artistic community, we have created three more pieces of theatre - two of them independently Arts Council funded; engaged over 300 people as participants in our work; performed to over 300 more; been reviewed by Exeunt and The Stage; featured in both of Sheffield’s major newspapers; and appeared on BBC Radio Sheffield three times. This is just one story. All the companies and artists here are all on similar, if not identical, trajectories. We are all in the process of discovering our artistic voices, and beginning to take our place in a new generation of artists creating a rich landscape of contemporary performance in Sheffield, South Yorkshire and beyond. This, in a nutshell, is the value of supporting emerging artists outside London.


This evening, you will see extracts from, and work-in-progress sharings of, five new pieces of performance by Theatre Delicatessen’s resident artists. We are all based in Sheffield, and we all operate out of an old Woolworths building on a busy shopping street called The Moor in Sheffield City Centre. Theatre and performance grow out of the specific buildings, infrastructures, politics and social life in the cities and towns in which it is made, and this is why A Nation's Theatre has been set up. Whilst the five pieces this evening may not all be about Sheffield – some are, some aren’t – they are all, in my opinion, unmistakably of Sheffield.
​

Making theatre in Sheffield does not mean writing plays about whippets, flat caps, the historic manufacture of cutlery and Henderson’s relish – it is about drawing on and emerging out of a politics and culture that has been marked historically for fierce independence, creativity and non-conformism. This spirit pervades the works you are going to see this evening, and we hope you enjoy both our theatre and the Sheffield ale we have brought down, and which is available at the bar.
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"WHat is the point of this?": on our workshop with Hannah Ringham

4/4/2016

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“What does this look like?” “Is this standard?” “What is the point of this?”

Happily, our day-long workshop with Hannah Ringham of Shunt threw up more questions than answers. Our focus was on the audience, on drawing them in, implicating them, leaving space for their imaginative engagement. On practising what might usefully be termed a dramaturgy of generosity.

Hannah’s work, she told us, has been informed in a big way by her collaborations with Tim Crouch – not least in clarifying her desire to pick over, prod and probe the unwritten contract between performer and audience. Talking about Dance Bear Dance, the show that first made a name for Shunt when they performed it in a railway arch in Bethnal Green in 2002/03, Hannah recalled moments during the show in during which the audience was asked open questions to which no response, including no response, could be wrong. This sense of an invitation, of the certain validity of everything and anything an audience might bring on any given night, inspired us.

Inspiring, too, was Hannah’s playfulness, her trickery. The image of her standing at the front of the stage with a look of sheer abhorrence painted across her face, pinching a dirty napkin at arm’s length and demanding of us “who left this piece of shit here?” is etched in my mind. Likewise, a GIF-like clip of her stamping on an apple, smashing it to smithereens. “Objects,” Hannah insisted, “can break, be moved, be handled, be played with, modified, changed, mended, cleaned, examined. They are always in motion, in a state of constant arrangement.” Like any good teacher, Hannah nurtured in us a sense of exploration, of discovery, of unruliness. Without these qualities, after all, what is the point of anything?

Gwilym Lawrence
@its_me_gwilym

 
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WE have a metaphor

3/31/2016

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We have a metaphor. We’ve gotten lost inside a few, and several were simply swept up and blew away. But we have one now, and we’re getting to hold it and watch it burble. Hopefully soon it’ll begin speaking, though it’s first words might be, ‘neutrality’.

For me, metaphors are vital because they describe a thing as well as how you feel about the thing. And that’s important in the creative process. We think in - and with - feeling. To use another metaphor: thinking and feeling dance together. Sometimes one leads; sometimes the other.

Metaphors aren’t always great dancers though. Sometimes they don’t like the music, or the music doesn’t like them. Sometimes a metaphor can just shrug, pulls out a bag of monster munch and walk off.

A good metaphor is one that will dances with you all night. In the rehearsal room they’re an extra person full of curiosity, ideas and emotion. A good metaphor doesn’t judge. A good metaphor vibes.

And over the course of ten days, we’ve imagined ours into existence. It’s taken playing, story telling, collecting, discussing, talking, and chatting. We’ve had to make a language together, and our metaphor is fluent in it.

But no matter how satisfied we are with it, it won’t make our play for us. But it is going to tell us about it, even if it has to use a metaphor.

Andy Owen Cook
​@andyowencook
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A song

3/22/2016

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​There’s a bit in the opening pages of Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” where the narrator begins in earnest to talk about his life in the city, in his case the Paris of the nineteen-twenties and thirties, and he says, “I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing […] To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”


I’m on the ground floor of a student house in Sheffield, near the university, and I can hear one of my house-mates singing along to some old-fashioned Italian music while he hangs out his washing. I feel a bit lost and worn-out because I’ve just moved house, try and walk around the streets and old houses to work out what my impression of Sheffield is, but it’s all fragments, cigarette-ends and door-frames and street-names and house-numbers and cooking, cooking to reassure myself in one of those pans you know has lived in a house for years and years, through years and years of occupants.


On Saturday, collecting stories from the people of Sheffield we’d managed to persuade into the theatre for a tea and a chat, I was - and still am - desperate not to be awful, not to be condescending, not to be someone who starts an essay with something quoted from Henry Miller, not to try and be impressive, but to be generous, and good, and almost invisible. I wanted to reassure people that it wasn’t necessary to know what they were doing, and that I didn’t know what I was doing either, I was only offering something, only offering a space to talk about something.


When I listen back to the recordings that we made, I feel alright, partly because I like it when people laugh. The low notes of people talking about their mothers, about handwritten letters, the high notes of “you know what else we’ve got …!” I spent all day talking to people whose voices fall into a rhythm, a sort of song. I can’t work out yet if it’s a song of Sheffield, but it’s a song I think of coffee-cups and talking, the song of remembering.

Lauren Stone
​@lstone345


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No nothing

3/17/2016

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“How did it feel to you? This morning?"
 
Gwilym asks me.
 
He’s standing at the sink washing the dishes from last night. I think about all the other people who have washed dishes at that sink. I imagine the people who rented this flat before us. And the people before them and before them. I wonder what their plates looked like. What they ate. What were they washing away down the sink? What conversations did they have in this kitchen? The traces they left behind. I think about this space when it was a complete house, not divided into three flats as it is now.
 
 What does it mean to live in a place? What does it mean to belong to a place? Our starting point for our project is objects: dormant objects in a home which people do not think about that much, do not use, perhaps do not look at very often, but crucially, would never throw away. What do these objects say about a person, about their relationship to others, to themselves? How do people construct selfhood and relationships from these seemingly everyday, nothingy things?
 
I feel exhilarated. I feel tearful. I feel frustrated. 
 
Standing on the drive of my Nan’s house on Norfolk Road, S2.  
 
What does it mean to make theatre in a city that you have roots in? That is coloured by family histories, mythologies. But also to be discovering it anew:
 
Going back to the door, aged 25, posting an invitation through the letterbox.
 
Taking flowers to City Road cemetery.
The bloodline of my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother.
Mum was born on Manor Lane.
Hope Villas.
​Round the corner from Sky Edge.
 
Strangely quiet. Peace.

​The man with his pigeons. The woman leaning on her windowsill, dressing gown and hair done up in a towel from a shower, looking out.
 
The three friends. Those friendships of threes. 
 
“No cold callers. No free newspapers. No takeaway menus. No leaflets. No nothing.”
 
Soraya Nabipour

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Forge north

3/9/2016

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Sad Siren Theatre is delighted to announce that this Spring, with support from Theatre Delicatessen and Arts Council England, we will be presenting our new show I LOVE YOU WILL U MARRY ME in Sheffield and London.

Having been selected by Theatre Delicatessen to take part in Forge North, an eight-week programme of tailored development and support, we will be taking the show to Camden People’s Theatre as part of the inaugural A Nations Theatre festival run by Battersea Arts Centre and The Guardian.
 
We’re particularly proud to be part of this initiative as it means we’ll be representing Sheffield’s vibrant alternative artistic landscape, alongside some wonderful Sheffield-based artists: The Bare Project, Epiphany VR, Heather Morgan and Joe Bunce.
 
We’ll also be working for the first time with poet and performer Andrew Owen Cook and resuming our collaboration with comedian and storyteller Lauren Stone, who took such great photographs of our previous show The Gods of Pick ‘N’ Mix.
 
Finally, we’ll be updating our blog much more regularly with details and reflections on making the show, and on mentorship sessions with a range of fantastic and inspiring artists (all will be revealed!).
 
In the meantime, if you’d like to sign up to our newsletter just click here. 
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we've been in darkness all morning

5/31/2015

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Last month, the European court of justice ruled that 3200 former Woolworth's employees will receive no redundancy pay or compensation for the loss of their jobs, due to a loophole which exempts workers in stores which employed fewer than 20 people. Watching the video above from 2008 in light of this verdict, it's hard not to feel the dull ache of inevitability; despite the protester's hopes and the support of passers-by, a far more powerful organising hand would ensure it got its way.
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Sheffield - a city on the move!

5/21/2015

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It's funny watching this video now; it's full of hope. It presents a Sheffield utopia - the biggest and best shops; a thriving industry providing enough jobs for all; a vibrant nightlife; the most open, public spaces of any UK city; the best culture; plentiful social housing. In common with every child in Sheffield in the 1970s my mum watched this video in school, and the phrase 'A City on the Move' always stuck in her mind. It brought with it a sense of positivity, of pride, of passion for where she was from. As the video announces: "A city is people - a place for them to live in, to use."
Fast forward to 2015 and the sweeping re-election of the most ruthless and brutal government in a generation, and the video jars. We're in the age of the 'closing-down sale', where the only things springing up are chain shops. Another Starbucks here, a Taco Bell there. Meanwhile, the axe swings over Rare and Racy.

As theatre-makers, we're lucky enough to have a residency at Moor Theatre Deli to think out loud about these things. Theatre Deli is based in the old Woolworths, a site where people came for decades to work and to shop. Because of its range and value Woolworths was the place where many children spent their first pocket-money - it made 'buying your dreams' available to the masses - and for many the shop is now enshrined in a mist of nostalgia. Paradoxically, though, Woolworths itself was of course a chain shop - it was imported from the United States and still exists in Germany, South Africa and Australia.


How has Sheffield interacted with global commercial forces? What communities were formed at the Moor Woolworths, and have they now disbanded? What ghosts are left in the building? What is the role of the artist in re-animating the space, and what does it mean to make theatre there? We're going to be using The Woolworths Project and this blog to explore all these thoughts and more.
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