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In May and June I granted myself a three week residency. Artist residencies can be excellent for rigour and focus, but they are often an impossibility for sole parents. Applying also involves a lot of paperwork, uncertainty and waiting, and contorting to fit the terms. So instead, I granted one to myself and stayed home!…
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Making a show is a deeply iterative process. In the second creative development for Feathers, a room full of people thrashed out the potential and the limitations of the puppets we’ve built, and tested them against Dan Giovannoni’s boisterous script. A list of tweaks and changes emerged, some necessary for narrative or performer comfort, some…
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As a self-confessed Luddite I admit that there are some transformative apps out there. Since learning about the whiteboard app Miro in a Disaster Design course I’ve been applying it to collaborative creative processes, and it’s solving many issues. Working remotely or internationally, lack of contact between writers/designers/composers, ideas that fall by the wayside, performers…
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A small Terrapin contingent traveled to Nagoya this month to develop a new work with Japanese artists. Set in a possible future of rising seas and shrinking islands, it’s a work that demands climate-conscious treatment. The story will be told using objects found in any theatre – brooms, ladders, blocks – and the stuff of…
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Creative development for a new show begins with long-suffering performers, pegs and stickytape. You might not see it yet, but Greta Jean and Bella Young will eventually be two cockatoos and a ferret. The process of developing new work is iterative, with the design, script, and direction responding to each other as the storytelling becomes…
