I’ve just been sent the photos from the official LSE photographer, so I thought I’d put them up, together with a few I took on the day. (Mine are the slideshow and are copyright Cherry Potts I assume the others are copyright LSE as they didn’t give me the photographer’s name.)
Summer all Year Long and Will Everett singing Only Remembered
Gloria Sanders reading Birdland
SAYL
Will Everett reading FROG
Part 4 of our LSE Space for Thought Branching Out festival work.
We collaborated with Summer All Year Long, our singing friends, and actor friends from Liars’ League to match songs and stories to the themes being explored by the festival.
Finding stories for Art Curation was easy Martin Pengelly‘s Girl with Palmettes (from London Lies, read by Lisa Rose) and Rob Walton‘s Lenny Bolton Changes Trains (Stations, read by Ray Newe) were obvious choices – finding a song was not so simple. Many (lovely) songs were considered and discarded by SAYL, until Patrick came up with Crash Test Dummies’ When I go out with Artists. A couple of hours of footling until it was in a key everyone could manage, and we were away.
Apologies for the sound quality here, the battery on the video camera went flat, and the backup was struggling even more than the respectable camera with an odd background hiss from the PA system.
Part 3 of our LSE Space for Thought Branching Out festival work.
We collaborated with Summer All Year Long, our singing friends to match songs and stories to the themes being explored by the festival.
This section is Oral Tradition and Human Rights. We didn’t have a story for human rights, so SAYL came up with a song that is both Oral Tradition in that it is a traditional folk tune, and uses all the tropes of repetition you might expect from a folk song, and a Human Rights theme as it is also known a The Maid Saved From the Gallows, though we know it by the snappier, The Prickle-eye Bush.
We continued the Oral Tradition theme with Emily Cleaver’s retelling of the Frog Prince, The Frog, which also uses repetition, (purflop, purflop) to rather sinister effect; magnificently read by Will Everett. We finished up with Sophie Morris-Sheppard reading Rebecca Gould’s Speaking in Tongues, about lying, and learning love in a foreign language, which just seemed to fit somehow.
Part 2 of our LSE Space for Thought Branch Out festival work.
We collaborated with Summer All Year Long, our singing friends to match songs and stories to the themes being explored by the festival.
Here we respond to Nature with SAYL singing the traditional folk song, One May Morning Early (arranged by Mel Harrold) and Gloria Sanders reading Birdland by Joan Taylor-Rowan. from Stations.
followed by our interpretation of Food Fashion: Jo Widdowson reading Monsieur Fromage by Rosalind Stopps, from Lovers’ Lies
Part 1 of our LSE Space for Thought Branch Out festival work.
We collaborated with Summer All Year Long, our singing friends to match songs and stories to the themes being explored by the festival.
Here is our contribution for Conflict: SAYL singing Only Remembered (familiar to many from War Horse, but actually a traditional hymn by Sankey & Bonar with the words tweaked by John Tams and Adrian Sutton. Arranged here by SAYL) and Will Everett reading Mirror by Cherry Potts
and our contribution for Poetry: Greg Page reads from Bartle Sawbridge’s Rich & Strange.
I’ve been having fun graffiti-ing the cover of Lovers’ Lies for the poster for our reading at Wood Green on 28th February. It shows what a versatile design it is.
Lovers Lies Wood Green reading original image copyright Annie Rickard Straus
Join us at 6 pm (come straight from work!) for a brief tour of the book – 5 stories in an hour – well, segments of stories perhaps.
Then of course we have our all singing all dancing outing to London School of Economics Branch Out Space for Thought Festival on Saturday 2nd March, which is actually showcasing all three books, where actors Gloria Sanders, Will Everett, Sophie Morris Sheppard, Greg Page, Jo Widdowson, Ray Newe, and Lisa Rose will be reading from stories by Cherry Potts, Emily Cleaver, Bartle Sawbridge, Martin Pengelly, Rebecca Gould and Rob Walton; and are joined by Summer All Year Long (who are doing the singing – there isn’t really dancing).
And a bit of new news:
Bobbie Darbyshire will be reading from her story Something Missing at Booked event Words & Music #2 for Women’s History Month.
BOOKED poster for 17/3/2013
LSE Space for Thought Festival 2013: Branching Out runs from Tuesday 26th until Saturday 2nd March, and everything is FREE (Including a workshop from Katy Darby on Saturday morning)!
On Saturday 2nd March Arachne Press will be providing entertainment in the foyer between the main events in the auditorium. We are going for a Liars’ League style with readings by actors, and have chosen stories from all three books to fit the themes of the other events. Each section will be introduced by a very brief burst of (equally appropriate) song from our friends Summer All Year Long to draw attention!
12.30-1 (oral tradition/ human rights) Frog (Emily Cleaver – London Lies) read by Will Everett and Speaking in Tongues (Rebecca Gould – Lovers’ Lies) read by Sophie Morris-Sheppard
2.30-3 (Conflict/poetry/art/politics) Mirror (Cherry Potts – Lovers’ Lies) read by Will Everett and Rich & Strange –extract (Bartle Sawbridge – Stations) read by Greg Page.
4.30-5 (food fashions/landscape/nature) Monsieur Fromage (Rosalind Stopps – Lovers’ Lies), read by Jo Widdowson Birdland (Joan Taylor-Rowan – Stations) read by Gloria Sanders
6.30-7 (art curating/ comedy) Girl with Palmettes (Martin Pengelly – London Lies) read by Lisa Rose Lenny Bolton Changes Trains (Rob Walton – Stations) read by Ray Newe