The idea for this show started with a work in progress show we did 2 years ago, titled ‘AngelRust’ which we scratched in 2009 at the Bedlam Theatre during the Edinbugh Fringe (alongside ‘Lilly through the dark’) armed with all the feedback given by our audiences – maybe you were there? We have transformed the show with the help of the Edinbugh International Festival 2010, into ‘little matter’, a folk tale about an ancient battle between  light and dark.

While all of this devevlopment was going on, Ed, myself and our friends from Spinney Hollow, Kate and Geoff , stumbled upon the fact that we all wanted to make a theatre wagon. We had a shared interest in making theatre in a format  that can access a new audience and everyone can enjoy, we also gave ourselves the challenge of keeping the whole wagon self sufficient and low impact, just to make things easier…!!

So, last summer, we four and an awful lot of willing volunteers built a little (albeit slightly shaky!) theatre wagon, material for which we begged, borrowed and definitely stole to make the wagon. Geoff took the lead, managing the team and directing them how to build it, ready for last years Hat Fair.

That year we took ‘terrible tales’ to the Hat Fair, Bestival and up to the Edinburgh Fringe – sadly minus the wagon as there was just too much standing in our way to get the wagon up there. However the dream to be on the meadows with our wagon began to grow…. how very romantic.

After the Fringe in 2010, Ed and I were determined to take the wagon up to fringe in 2011 and began to approach the Edinburgh council about performing on the meadows. Then followed a series of emails, extension numbers  and far, far too many departments to recall here, to then be told that the meadows were ‘booked up’ for 2011 (so expect wall to wall shows this year!). So we approached our lovely friends at The Bedlam Theatre and together we have created Venue 47 – The Bedlam Chambers, which is where this year we and our wagon will be performing ‘Little Matter’.

The Team this year have had a few additions, the cast this time is Ed Wren, Kate Hadley (‘Terrible Tales’), myself, and new comer and violin dynamo Ivan Stott of Hiccup Theatre. Also Alice Carter, our administrator, will be making the trip to Edinbugh this year to deal with all the things we can’t do, and Eimhin Walker will be joining as our production assistant… so hopefully we’ll have a very organised, well-manned Fringe for once!

 The next few weeks sees us rehearsing and tweaking ‘Little Matter’ following our tour that began in May – thanks to those who have come out to support us and have been kind enough to give us feedback, say hello, help us fill in flyers and more. We were also lucky enough to have Georgia Green on a placement with us, meaning we can get even more done over the coming weeks, she is writing this months newsletter as I right this and is herself performing at the Edinbugh Fringe with Tiny Dickens and Titus Andronicus: Bingo”

Thanks for reading, and hopefully we’ll see you fringe side!

Claire x

I discovered The River People after they performed Lilly Through The Dark, at my university theatre and have followed them ever since, so to work with them was a great opportunity. Directors Claire and Ed created a great, passionate and fun environment to work in.

For this event, we were tasked with providing a pre and post film zombie experience, echoing aspects of the film The Evil Dead, which the guests had just watched.  As Buck Boulders, Zombie Protection (Ed Wren), lead the audience along the narrow woodland path with the sole aim of getting the public safely onto their bus, spectators were astonished to see live zombie acts jumping out of the creepy midnight forest. Suffice to say, things didn’t pan out too well for Buck. (Being torn apart by zombies and then having your insides ripped out isn’t such a great day at work!)

Spinney Hollow leant itself to the horror production perfectly – in the daylight a stunning, serene woodland, by night a terrifying tangle of twisted trees with all the dark sounds of the night piercing your ears! The wood was truly amazing; everything there from the compost loo with a stunning view to the wooden stage was built by its owners Kate and Geoff.

Claire, armed with a lot of latex effects and jars of ‘congealed blood’ , (aka golden syrup and food dye,) transformed the cast into an army of zombies. The makeup was so effective we even found ourselves scaring each other in the dark on the way to the loo! There were 15 zombies in total each with unique fatal face traumas ( I had two bullet holes to the face), or horrific props – a gnawed dog’s leg and a half mangled baby!

During the run through we chose strategic locations from where the zombies would stagger out and reduce the audience to a gibbering mass. Responses from the actual audience were wide and hysterical! It was often hard to hold back the laughter when a torch light is pointed in your face and you hear screams of terror and Buck shouting obscenities! With big blokes running in fear and feisty, petite women trying to fight us off, it was a revealing experience for all!  I don’t know how well I would have handled being on the other side!

The finale – of Bucks insides being ripped out and a gut pack of bloody intestines made from tights and jelly being devoured by a pack of zombies  – was welcomed by a flurry of video phones and cameras to record the mess; I would have loved to have seen what it looked like!

It was an unforgettable experience and one I am still having nightmares about (I am still trying to get the golden syrup blood out of my hair!)

A big thanks to Ed and Claire (The River People) and Kate and Geoff (Spinney Hollow)

Hope to see you all soon!

Tiffany Anne Jackson

Charlie here, sat in rehearsals for Little Matter. I’m a bit of an imposter here at River HQ. I’m a student really, but the lovely River People have let me come and play with them for a couple of weeks. I’ve been doing a bit of everything while I’ve been here, from making spreadsheets to levitating tables. But the most fantastic thing by far has been watching the play come to life.

My time here began, quite conveniently, on the first day of rehearsals. We sat round with tea and cake aplenty to read and discuss the new script. Since then the play has been coming together remarkably quickly. It really shows how well these guys work together and have a really clear shared vision for their work.

I’ve also been lucky enough to tag along with Claire to rehearsals at the youth theatre at the Theatre Royal Winchester, and to get involved with Dr Strangelove’s Burlesque Discotheque at the Railway Inn. I think Dr Strangelove was one of the most bizarre pieces of theatre I have ever been involved with, and an immense amount of fun!

What a busy life the River People lead!

As I write this the cast are having a go at running what they’ve done so far and its looking beautiful. I shall definitely be popping back down to see the finished thing, perhaps I’ll see you there.

Love,

Charlie

So here, in no particular order (you can decide which is best) are the memorable moments/events…

- During a scene with The Alice, Lilly’s foot quite obviously falls off, Clare Pointing grabs it on her exit and the sweet sound of gaffa tape can be heard behind the box as I frantically gaffa it back on, while Andy Gray stalls for time at the start of The Willow scene.

-A rehearsal during which a roll of black LX tape was discovered, which lead to all cast members (and puppets) emerging with little Hitler/Chaplin moustaches at regular intervals.

- During our very first scratch when we had some very bizarre ideas in the piece…The Willow had a cage and a massive Resident Evil style claw, the strange moaning clay figures, when Rottenpockets was more like ‘Hoggle’ from Labyrinth and had tentacles that were puppeteered, the scene where Lilly fell into Rottenpockets’ Pocket and became queen of some feuding fruit(?!)

- (This might be my favcourite) Imagine it, the final scene, Lilly is hanging from the moon and is about to make her decision to go home, the atomosphere is tense and everyone stares in awe up at the glowing moon….and the moon falls off of its hook, smacks Lilly in the face and falls into my arms.  Oh the Horror. A quick look to Clare and seconds later the moon is held aloft in her hands and all is well again….phew!

-During every technical rehearsal replacing the word ‘Lilly’ with the word ‘Willy’ and the word ‘Moon’ with the word ‘Poo’.

-When we discovered that one of the books was Terry Wogans autobiography, so took out a photo of Terry that became our mascot behind the set. Then consequently during that days rehearsal Terrys image would appear from books where props were supposed to be. My favourite was Terrys appearance in the final scene in the book that opens as a window in Lilly’s room (all credit to Andy Gray for that gag)

- A beautiful paper man emerges from a book, tenderly and delicately his opens the door and breathes…then his head does a 180 degree spin and suddenly its the exorcist.

I must stop now as there are so many more and I really must do some real work today. If you were in the audience for any of the above incidents do drop us a line!

Thanks for reading

Claire

Hello

So Im just sitting here, at Bath Spa University, waiting for the rest of the cast to arrive so we can do a show this evening, and I thought I would drop a line to say hello.

We’re currently doing the last few performances of Lilly through the Dark, its funny to be finishing a show, I say finishing, Im sure we’ll see her again if the time is right. But we feel its high time to move on to a new show, something we can really get our teeth into. Terrible Tales was loads of fun, but it wasnt quite as meaty as we like.

So the next project is underway, The Wagon Show (working title). We’ve got interest from some venues and festivals for next year. The wagon is going to be bigger and better, (and more road worthy, there was a small incident with some panels flying from the current wagon on the M27, which might have been my fault)

Its going to have handmade benches for audience seating, a solar powered LED lighting rig, and a big canopy to cover it all. So we can invite the audience into our little world and mesmerise them with a new show. Its going to be a development of the sort of thing we did in Little Matter I think, but perhaps a little more lively. Its been a few years since we were able to focus on doing one show at a time and we’re really looking forward to getting stuck in.

So that means we’ll be building the new wagon over winter…which will be nice. At least I wont get bitten to death by midges like I did building the old one.

Keep in touch with the blog for exclusive pictures and info as it develops. I really hope you get to come see it.

But for now we’ve got other things on, we’ll be spening this weekend painting faces at our local Discovery Centre. Then for Halloween, we’ll be doing a shadow puppet play based in Spinney Hollow woods www.spinneyhollow.co.uk, if you’re near, come say hello. 

Until then,

Ed

Yo,

So its been a while since we last spoke, since then we have been to the Edinburgh Fringe. Which was nice. We performed The Terrible Tales of the midnight chorus. People seemed to like it, we even sold out all but a few nights. While we were up at the ‘Burgh we did a scratch performance of a show called ‘Little Matter’, this was for The Edinburgh International Festival (Part of the award they gave us last year). It was good fun, we got lots of feedback, although perhaps a little strange to be performing a show for someone else as part of a competition. We were in the grand main hall of The Hub, again, out of our folky comfort zone. But thankfully our fingey audience turned up to see us and make us feel safe, so that was nice.

We’ve also recently come back from doing The Terrible Tales at The Bestival, out of our gypsy wagon stage, this was loads of fun, we did four 15 minute shows a day. I really like performing to outdoor audiences, they’re much more appreciative of the little show they’ve stumbled across, you get a sense that you are giving them some unexpected magic. Whereas theatre audiences can tend to be a little more judgmental, for better or worse.

All this has got us thinking, it would be good to create a mobile theatre experience, an experience outside of theatre buildings that isnt outdoor theatre, a space that we can create and control ourselves, something different. Its with this in mind that we’re creating our new show, a blend of Little Matter, Faust and Dante’s Inferno. We’re going to be doing a little taster of it at a symposium in Brighton on Monday. If you would like to know more, or you would like to dispel my suspisions that there is no-one reading this, then do comment or drop us a line.

lovelove

Ed

 Hi, I am Holly, I’m about to go into my third year at east 15 acting school. I like being by the seaside, four legged creatures, camp fires and anything a little dark and bizarre….. Yes you got it! That’s how I came across the rivers last year at Edinburgh Fringe and fell in love with ‘Lilly through the dark’. Late last year I found out I had to do a placement with a company. That is when I began to badger Claire and Ed. And It worked! Here I am, in a (rather hot) little office upstairs at the Point, reading emails from all you lot! Now, responding to emails is just one of my many talents my main aim here is to find out exactly how a theatre company operates. However one of the more exciting parts of the day is getting to sit in on ‘Little Matter’ rehearsals.

 The cast did a scratch showing of ‘Little matter’ last Wednesday. The audience took to it really well and I did too, they then gave Ed and Clare some feedback for them to think about…….

 But they don’t hang around here! First thing Thursday morning Ed and Claire walked in ( I would say looking relatively pleased with themselves) with a brand new script in hand!! I popped in and filmed a run of the new ‘Little Matter’ and I can tell you its looking good, it has a different twist compared with ‘Lilly’ yet it still has that ‘River people’ feel that we all know and love!

 I’ll keep you updated!

Love Holly

Howdy,

So this past week we have mostly been running around the Barbican theatre dressed as pirates going ‘Arr’, as part of Slung Low Theatre Company’s show ‘Captain Barbian’.

Slung Low is run by our good friends Alan and Lucy Lane, Alan was our selctor for the National Student Drama festival in 2007 where we got our first foot up into the industry. They needed some people to be pirates for the week so we happily obliged, it was great fun, staying in London and messing around with kids (theatrically speaking). My character was called Sea Shanty Sue, and I taught the kids a song, my favourite part was getting to dance like a lude idiot in front of children saying “Ive got a poker face, can you see my poker face” as part of a Lady Garr Garr gag. The stuff you find yourself getting paid for - very odd.

But it’s back to the ‘real’ non-piratey world now. Im in the middle of writing the script for ‘Little Matter’ that we will be working off when we’re at BAC next week. After doing Lilly Through the Dark on tuesday and wednesday (which I have learnt is now sold out on one day!) we’re working on the new show. And its just dawning on me that I will need more than just a script, some sort of puppet is needed I suppose. Thats tonight’s challenge.

Im also getting stuff ready for the upcoming tour, we’ve added Bridport Arts Centre and Farnham Maltings to our list of venues that we’ll be taking Lilly Through the Dark to. All very exciting. Although Im wondering why people have trouble grasping the fact that the show is called Lilly Through the Dark, not Lilly in the Dark. Maybe its a small point but I think the latter just sounds like she’s quite confused about something, not going on a journey. Hey ho.

Catch you soon.

Ed

Hello Everyone!

It’s been a little while since Ive wrote, Im still getting used to this new fangled blogging malarkey.

So this month we have been working on our new show called ‘Little Matter’ which we are presenting at the Edinburgh International Festival in August. Its been going well, we have decided to work a completely new way this time, I have stopped myself writing anything (usually I come in with a whole load of script) and we’ve been doing a lot of thinking, allowing ideas to come easily instead of forcing them.

The show is about a boy that grows up in a village and his transition into adult hood, its inspired by our own thoughts of the stage of life between childhood and before being a proper adult, which always seems just beyond reach.

The show is of course inspired heavily by William Blake, but Im also looking a lot into quantum physics and mythology too. Eventually after two weeks of heavy thinking we managed to get about 30 minutes of stuff, which is excellent. The next stage involves a trip to BAC in london to do a work in progress scratch type thing on friday 19th March. Do come and see what you think, we’d love your feedback.

The big news is that we found out today that we have been awarded a grant by Arts Council England to tour Lilly Through the Dark! This is excellent news as it means we can do it properly instead of scraping along on a shoe string.

So we’re very excited and busy texting our mums.

I’ll keep you updated, in the meantime come and see Lilly Through the Dark at BAC on the 16th and 17th March, twould be lovely to see you.

ta ta for now,

Ed