Southward Bound

We’re deep into rehearsals now for our collaboration with the Young Actor’s Company for this year’s Takeover Festival at the York Theatre Royal. Elsewhere is becoming very exciting and will be truly unique theatrical experience taking place at York Explore (York Central Library). Tickets can be bought from www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk so make sure you get yours!

Whilst not in rehearsal for Elsewhere though, we’re deep in preparations for our second run at the Southwark Playhouse from the 9th to the 27th of November. We’re taking three of our Edinburgh shows – Lorca is Dead, Atrium and Quasimodo – down south as part of the ‘Belt Up Season’. We worked out that over Edinburgh around 2250 people saw these shows and contributed to these performances to make each of them entirely unique. It’s always lovely to reminisce on our highlights whether these be mad things that audiences do or bizarre things that occur to make a performance truly different. We’ve put together a little list of some our favourite moments from this shows over their runs at Edinburgh.

So (in no particular order):

1. The Parisian Powercut
One of the difficulties of working outside of normal theatre spaces is that sometimes the technical equipment can be quite temperamental. One performance of Lorca is Dead saw Breton’s apartment plunged into darkness for a good ten minutes. Luckily we all knew where the torches for ‘Dreamscape’ (our blindfolded sensory show) were kept so an improvised lighting design quickly came about. Bizarrely this occurred just as the story moved to being in New York so there were lots of references to the New York Blackout being knocked about. When the story moved back to Spain the lights miraculously came back on. We’re not sure if the audience knew whether this was all intentional or not but behind the scenes there were a lot of panicking technicians trying to fix the problem.

2. The Stripper
In Atrium there is a section where an audience member is invited to come and perform a strip tease. One performance had a good sport in the audience. Well done him!

3. Breton’s Wives
The final performance of Lorca at the Fringe inevitably had a little bit of playing around in it. There’s one moment where Breton pulls back a curtain and on this performance this included several members of the Belt Up company playing a collection of his many ex wives who all gave him a slap. As far as the audience was concerned, this could have happened every show but for them it was entirely exclusive.

4. Kissing Quasimodo
We pride ourselves on the fact that the audience can get up close and personal with our characters. One audience member was so involved that as she left she gave Quasimodo a little kiss. Bless her.

5. A Genuine Thankyou
Lorca was full of fun and opportunities for the audience to mess about. One audience member that stands out though approached one of the characters as she left and said that her father had been a Minister in the government that General Franco had overthrown. She said we had captured the era and story beautifully and that she was very much moved by the piece. That was one of the moments that made us feel proud of what we were doing; a genuinely heart warming response. There were a lot of tears from the audience at the end of each show and we are eternally grateful to all of those that opened up to this story.

6. Over egg-cited
Apologies for that pun, it felt urgent. There’s a moment in Atrium where an audience member is encouraged to do something with a raw egg (a specific task as well, not just ‘something’). One performance saw an audience member panic, get over excited or just simply go a bit odd and she flung it at the floor. Bizarre. Funny, but bizarre.

7. Naughty audience member forgets the lack of a fourth wall
A lot of people grieve the loss of audience good behaviour in modern theatre and we’ve had our fair share of talkers, sweet rustlers and vomiters (she at least tried to be subtle and contained it all in her hand and wiped it under her seat). One woman didn’t really like Lorca (which is fine, it doesn’t have to be every cup of tea) but she made the mistake of being quite vocal about this so much so that she disturbed the rest of the audience who had been tutting and shushing at her throughout. However, she’d forgotten that Lorca doesn’t have a fourth wall and she was in a room full of highly strung, egotistical Surrealists. Hopefully having Salvador Dali roar at her that she was a worthless human being (this speech is in the play anyway but in all other performances was about the masses in general, on this performance Dali had a prime example to direct it at) and had no right to have such genius shared with her. Hopefully she’ll be more respectful in the future and remember when there is or isn’t a fourth wall to hide behind.

8. Egg on his face
Another Atrium one. Same egg moment. Audience member decided to eat raw egg. Literally just bit into it. If you bite into a raw egg it explodes. What an odd thing to do.

9. Dialect coach
Throughout Lorca, audience members are asked to volunteer to take the title role and act in scenes having their lines fed to them by the other members of the cast. On two occasions the doppelganger (two different ones) of Federico Garcia Lorca was in the audience so naturally they were invited up. Strangely both turned out to be Spanish leading to a bit of embarrassment when their beautiful accents tripped out words like ‘Granada’, ‘Vega’, ‘Cadaques’ with perfect (and beautiful) pronunciation making the English cast quickly try and emulate the correct pronunciation.

10. The one and only
The final one is a very special one and another Lorca moment. Unfortunately it’s one we can’t say much about as it would spoil bits of the play. If anyone has seen Lorca then you will know that very near the end an offer is made to the audience. This has only ever been accepted once and by a very brave individual who we are very thankful to. It was a very special and magical moment. Well done him!


They’re just a selection of our many favourite moments from these shows. The run at Southwark means entirely new audience members who will no doubt throw some more surprises at us – this is what makes these shows so exciting to perform in. No doubt we’ll post another highlights thing after the run.

In the meantime, you can come and offer your own contributions to these shows by joining the audiences – get your tickets at www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Look forward to seeing you there!

Belt Up

It's that time of year again (October to be precise)

Somehow it has become October again. There is of course a rational explanation for it being October again (earth rotating round the sun etc) but it's still surprising.

It's well over a month since the mammoth month that was August and we've just about recovered from our 9 shows at the Fringe. We managed to ease the recovery by doing another show, Macbeth, in the main house of the York Theatre Royal last week. This went incredibly well with packed houses for all three performances
The dust has barely settled on Macbeth and we're heading towards our second show of the month, Elsewhere, a collaboration with the York Theatre Royal's Young Actor's Company for the 2010 Takeover Festival. This will be a site specific piece set in York Explore (York Library) and wil be a bit similar to the piece we did for NSDF earlier this year.

The reason why it feels such a shock that it's October again is because we're back preparing for a run at the Southwark Playhouse this November. It barely feels a year since we were last there with The Tartuffe and The Trial. This time we're taking three shows that some of you may have seen as part of our Edinburgh Programme; Lorca is Dead, Atrium and Quasimodo. For Lorca and Atrium we'll be converting their main space into a cosy study with Quasimodo taking place in their spooky back vaults.

That's just a quick update, there'll be a few more posts coming that talk about the shows in a bit more detail but for now that's where we're at - it's October again and it's getting cold... so we're going underground. We'll be spending a lot of the next year or so underground it seems, that's a little hint at some potential projects coming soon...

James Wilkes x

We're at the fringe!

So, we've been up in Edinburgh for nearly a fortnight now. It feels like years since we started our mammoth rehearsal schedule for The House Above programme.

So far the fringe has been unbelievable. The space we've made is by far our favourite, the shows surpass anything we've done before and our company are made up of some of the hardest working actors and crew in the world -without them, this project would not exist.

The fringe audiences so far have been a delight - they're wonderfully playful thus year and have been making our flyering a lot easier by singing our praises to other festhoers (Belt Up is currently the most positively tweeted about theatre at the festival, second most positively tweeted about act!).

The House Party bar nights have also been great, with Dreamscapes making a welcome return. We're also becoming a secret celebrity haunt with a few famous faces turning up for a drink!

In short, if the rest of the fringe continues to be as great as this then this will be by far our favourite festival yet!

If you haven't already, grab your tickets as soon as possible - the shows are selling out with the smaller capacity shows starting to sell out far in advance.

One week in and the pre-shows begin...

We're now a third of the way in to our rehearsal schedule. Most of the shows now 'exist' in somewhat crude forms, everythings starting to take shape. We had a moment where the terror kicked in but that's now passed and (touch wood) we're going to pull of a huge programme of shows for this fringe - and they won't just exist, but they will be better than anything audiences have seen from Belt Up before.

There's still a way to go before the fringe begins though but some shows have technically already started - well the 'pre-shows' at least. The Surrealists from 'Lorca is Dead' have been unleashed on the world, you can meet and chat to them if you want on Twitter - they will remember you!

Our rehearsal process is influenced greatly by Keith Johnstone (get 'Impro' from here, you won't regret it!) and we spend a lot of time building up each character using mask and trance. Those of you who caught 'Lorca is Dead' at York Theatre Royal in May earlier this year will have met and even had conversations with some of the characters. Using Mask and Trance we essentially breed our characters, teach them to talk, walk etc so that when audiences meet them, the actor playing them doesn't need to worry about improvising or anything, they act on impulse in character - if anyone's seen 'Being John Malkovich' that's kind of what it's like from the actor's point of view. This sounds very odd but read Keith Johnstone's book, especially the chapter on 'Mask and Trance' and it will all become clearer. We use a variation of this technique to create all our characters which makes it incredibly exciting when developing new characters. With so many brand new shows, this means developing a lot of new characters, we have no idea what they'll actually be like (we can get vague ideas but will never truly know till we meet them). Quite often as part of this character development process we'll take the characters out on trips into town, to shops and such like which makes for a lot of entertainment. If anyone's in York this month then you may bump into some new characters getting ready for the Edinburgh shows!

The rehearsals so far

It's Day 5 of rehearsals...



Energy is still surprisingly alive and kicking amongst the members of Belt Up despite 12 hour day of mainly physical work. The excitement is still very much buzzing about the company and there's a real sense that the 9 shows taking part in The House Above are going to be the highest quality work we have ever done, both as a company and as individuals.

We began rehearsals with three days of workshops in which we played about with everything from voice and movement to a session entitled only as 'ballsiness'. The ballsiness workshops essentially consisted of getting rid of all fear and reservations through the use of trampettes and a couple of crash mats - we can pretty much all fly now, or at least fall with style.

The individual show rehearsals began on monday but there's not really much to say about these because we are all sworn to secrecy. All I can say is that there's been a lot of discussion in blogs and reviews about site-specific, interactive, participatory, whatever-you-want-to-call-it theatre having no depth or heart recently... This Edinburgh we're hoping we can prove otherwise... and judging from rehearsals so far we're looking set to achieve this goal.

So, that's a little round up from Belt Up Boot Camp so far, Odyssey and The Boy James are currently being rehearsed at the moment and then it's Metamorphosis after lunch and then Lorca is Dead after dinner - a very busy day but an incredibly exciting one.

Belt Up

p.s. As a little shameless self-congratulatory point, we were listed in the Guardian this week as amongst the 'must see' shows this Fringe - check it out at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/04/edinburgh-fringe-festival-preview-2010

The Origins of Belt Up

A number of people have been in contact recently asking about how Belt Up was set up and how we’ve got to where we are today. Here is a potted history of Belt Up…

We were set up in January 2008 after a little meeting in the foyer of York Theatre Royal. As part of the drama society at the University of York we were about to collaborate in a production of Steven Berkoff’s ‘Metamorphosis’ so we thought we should have a go at using this as a launch pad to start a theatre company. This production went on to the National Student Drama Festival where it received a lovely load of attention and awards and spurred us on to attempt an ridiculously ambitious project at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that summer. This manifested itself as ‘The Red Room’, an immersive environment that hosted a huge programme of shows and secret-catch-them-if-you-can events. ‘The Red Room’ went on to win the ThreeWeeks Editor’s choice awards and the Edinburgh International Festival award 2008. Then throughout our final year at Uni we experimented more and used the Drama Society venue, The Drama Barn, as a developing house before returning to the Fringe in 2009 as a professional company with our second immersive environment, ‘The Squat’. This hosted our productions of ‘The Tartuffe’ and ‘The Trial’ as well as a late night bar. These two shows transferred to York Theatre Royal (where we were made a company in residence) before heading to the Southwark Playhouse for our proper London debut.

That then brings us pretty much to the end of 2009, the previous post outlines what we’ve been up to in 2010 so now documented for all to enjoy is a brief history of Belt Up.

Our production timeline so far...

Metamorphosis (Steven Berkoff') - York/NSDF - Jan/Mar 2008
Morbid Curiosity (Dominic J Allen) - York - May 2008
The Grotesque Tea Party - Shunt, London, June 2008
A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) - York Theatre Royal - June 2008

THE RED ROOM - Edinburgh Fringe - August 2008:
The Tartuffe (James Wilkes after Moliere)
The Park Keeper (Nikolaus Morris)
Volpone (Dominic J Allen after Ben Jonson)
Women of Troy (James Wilkes after Euripides)
Macbeth (William Shakespeare)
Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)

William & Octavia (Alexander Wright and Jethro Compton) - York - October 2008
The Pitchfork Disney (Philip Ridley) - York - November 2008
Instinct (James Wilkes) - York - December 2008
The Oresteia (Dominic J Allen and James Wilkes after Aeschylus)- York Theatre Royal - February 2009

The Tempest (William Shakespeare) - RSC Dell - July 2009

THE SQUAT - Edinburgh Fringe - August 2009
The Tartuffe (James Wilkes after Moliere)
The Trial (Dominic J Allen after Franz Kafka)

The Tartuffe and The Trial then transfered to the York Theatre Royal in September 2009 and then to the Southwark Playhouse, London in November 2009.

The Atlantis Project (in collaboration with Punchdrunk Enrichment) - NSDF - March 2010
Lorca is Dead (Dominic J Allen) - York Theatre Royal - May 2010
The Tartuffe (final performance, James Wilkes after Moliere) - York Theatre Royal - May 2010
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare) - Rowntree Park, York - June 2010

Halfway through 2010...

It’s been a busy 2010 so far for Belt Up Theatre but life is about to get a hell of a lot busier at the end of the week when we enter our boot camp style rehearsal process for our ‘The House Above’ shows this coming Edinburgh.

It’s about half way through the year and so we thought we’d do a little bi-annual review of everything we’ve been up to so far...

1. A GHOST WALK
Our first official show as residents of York Theatre Royal, playing throughout February on the very cold streets of York. This intimate play, based in the context of a traditional haunted walking tour, accidentally became our most controversial show with about two complaints per night (out of an audience of 20). The reason being that a lot of people weren’t aware it was a play and thought it to be just a normal Ghost Walk. When the main character had a mental breakdown over the recent loss of his father, audience members complained to the York Theatre Royal for making this poor man work in such an unstable state of mind – often people refused to believe it was a play even when they were told.

2. COLLABORATION WITH PUNCHDRUNK ENRICHMENT AT NSDF10
In 2008, Belt Up debuted at the National Student Drama Festival with a production of ‘Metamorphosis’ (a new revamped version of which with a brand new adaptation is returning with Belt Up to The House Above) and two years later we were invited back to the festival as visiting artists. We were set the task of collaborating with Punchdrunk Enrichment’s Peter Higgin to devise a durational piece that demonstrated an alternative form of theatre. The result was the Bensalem B&B otherwise known as ‘The Order of Atlantis’. The premise was that 14 or so weird and wonderful characters had arrived in Scarborough as a sort of a waiting area before passing on to a mythical world. Throughout the week they would meet and chat with the festgoer’s (those brave enough to approach them) and the lucky ones were invited to the Bensalem Bed and Breakfast to learn more about the Order. The really keen audience members ended up spending a great deal of time in the ‘B&B’, a huge, beautiful empty Victorian house learning about the intricate stories connecting these strange characters. It was received extremely well with audience members immersing themselves almost entirely in the world we had created – one audience member possibly solved time travel in a bid to uncover the villainous Professor Higgs...

3. 'LORCA IS DEAD: OR A BRIEF HISTORY OF SURREALISM' AT YORK THEATRE ROYAL
As a Research and Development period for ‘Lorca is Dead’ (one of the shows heading up to Scotland for ‘The House Above) we inhabited the York Theatre Royal studio and foyer for most of a week at the beginning of May. The purpose was to experiment with audience interactivity and how they can best gain agency over a piece of theatre. This involved many talkback sessions, four public performances, open rehearsals and lots of hanging around York as the Paris Surrealist group. The result was a transformation of the play that we performed at the beginning of the week; ending up with a show where the audience could be accommodated to do whatever they wanted, even play the protagonist. This period was vital in the shows development and certainly means that audiences in Edinburgh are in for quite an incredible experience come August.

4. OPENING OF JOSEPH ROWNTREE'S NEW SCHOOL
In mid-May, we had the delightful task of coordinating the opening ceremony of the new Joseph Rowntree school building in York. This involved working with almost 100 secondary school pupils towards a spectacle of song, dance, singing and of course some Belt Up style grotesquerie.

5. THE FINAL TARTUFFE
The Tartuffe was performed a handful of times in 2010 in everywhere from Bude to Great Wyrley, South Staffordshire though it received its final performance in the York Theatre Royal main house on the 25th of May. In the previous post is a more detailed farewell to the show. The final performance saw the main character, Orgon Poquelin, head of the anarchic troupe kick the bucket onstage in an incredibly self indulgent (within the context of his character of course) death scene set to ‘Zadok the Priest’. 600 screaming fans and a handful of disgruntled people expecting Moliere were present to see the end of a Belt Up era.

6. THE NISDA CONFERENCE- PINOCCHIO

As part of the National Independent School’s Drama Association conference in June, we were invited to be the resident practitioners working with the NISTC (National Independent School’s Theatre Company) towards a short performance at the end of the weekend. This was a lovely process in an extremely sunny Warwick with a brilliant troupe of actors. The end product was a meta-theatrical and interactive production of Pinocchio performed by a group of ghostly performance types ranging from puppeteers to 60s rock gods.

7. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
In what has now become a Belt Up tradition (if two years running can be called a tradition?) we assembled a huge company of actors to perform an outdoor family friendly Shakespeare in the sunshine. This year’s was A Midsummer Night’s dream directed by Marcus Emerton (Tartuffe in ‘The Tartuffe’, Andre Breton in ‘Lorca is Dead’) who also took on the role of Bottom. The show was a wonderful success with beautiful sunshine in York’s Rowntree Park and very enthusiastic audiences. A perfect summer’s day out!

That brings us pretty much up to date for 2010. Now we’re preparing ourselves for 12 hour work days and a month of rehearsal... It’s going to be worth it though. There’s no place like our home.

‘The House Above’ programme begins on the 4th of August in C Soco as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe