Where are you now?

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

So Hugh Hughes’ week at the National Theatre Studio has come to an end. It was great to have so many new people working on the production and we made a huge amount of progress on Hugh’s new show Invisible Town. We owe a big thank you to the National Theatre Studio and their magical automated skylights.

If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a video on my last post in which Hugh and Sioned tell us what we might expect from the new show.

In the meantime, I’ll ask you a question Hugh asked all of us at the start of the week.


Where are you now?


(Give yourself a minute to think about it and try and come up with at least seven different answers.)

Videos from Hugh Hughes & Sioned

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

We've just finished another great day at the National Theatre Studio, working on Hugh Hughes' new show Invisible Town. Here's a video of Hugh and his friend Sioned (who you'll recognise if you saw Floating) talking about their week at the Studio and what we can expect from the new show!

Story Machine

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

Hugh Hughes is spending this week at the National Theatre Studio working on a new show called Invisible Town. He's brought some of his friends along, including Sioned and Aled, and we're all working really hard, trying out ideas for the show.

There's a game we play every day which I'd like to teach you. It's called Story Machine.

Hugh's Story Machine is a huge piece of paper with 100 words written on it. All Hugh's words are to do with his childhood but you can make yours about anything you like! Hugh's words include names, places, emotions, days of the week, activities, and lots more. One of us presses one of the words (which we pretend are buttons on the machine) and then Hugh has to tell us a story to do with that word. Anyone can press any other button at any time, and when they do, Hugh has to incorporate the new word into the story as quickly as he can. Sometimes the actors perform the story as Hugh is telling it, and we also like making up songs about characters in the story.

It's great fun, and if you like using your imagination, like Hugh does, you should try it out!

If you make a really good story come out of a Story Machine, send me an email (david@hoipolloi.org.uk) tell me all about it. I'll pass them on to Hugh, he'd love to hear them!

Gorey details

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

Here at Hoipolloi Headquarters we’re putting the finishing touches to plans for The Doubtful Guest’s next UK tour. The company are extremely excited about getting back on the road, the show was a huge success when it toured for the first time earlier this year and we hope to see lots more of you in Plymouth, Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds and Cardiff. The full tour schedule will be posted here in the next few days.

The show is based on a book by Edward Gorey, an artist, illustrator and writer who is something of a cult figure in America, although still relatively unknown in the UK. Here are five things Hoipolloi pack in their suitcases to keep them in a Gorey mood when they’re out on tour...


1) Tim Burton DVDs:
Tim Burton, director of films like Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, acknowledges Edward Gorey as a major influence on the melancholic, macabre aesthetic of his own work.

2) Fur coats:
Gorey attended every single performance of the New York City ballet between 1957 and 1982, where he was made notoriously conspicuous by the enormous fur coats he wore to the theatre. He draws lots of his characters wearing similarly decadent outfits.

3) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats:
Gorey illustrated an edition of this book by T.S. Eliot (here's a picture) as well as works by Edward Lear, Samuel Beckett and Muriel Spark.

4) A Grammy-nominated concept album:
In 2003, London three-piece band The Tiger Lillies released an album called The Gorey End. Edward Gorey had enjoyed one of their songs so much that he sent them a box of his unpublished stories and invited The Tiger Lillies to write some songs around them. The album was nominated for a Grammy!

5) Health and Safety manual:
Gorey’s stories are full of dreadful accidents and unexpected deaths... In The Gashlycrumb Tinies we learn that “S is for Susan who perished of fits”, whilst “T is for Titus who flew into bits”.


Here’s hoping that The Doubtful Guest tour will be a little less accident prone than your average Edward Gorey story! Make sure you book a ticket, or you’ll end up like Neville who died of ennui.

Here's a video trailer for the show:




If you’d like to find out more about Edward Gorey, these websites are a great place to start:

Edward Gorey House
The Guardian's Obituary of Edward Gorey
The Gashlycrumb Tinies
Some more extracts from Edward Gorey stories

First day

Posted by David Ralfe (Marketing & Admin. Assistant, Hoipolloi)

I’m sitting at a desk, in an office. This is a new experience and my adolescent self would be furious if he knew. Around the age of 14, I decided that office jobs were a soul-destroying fate worse than death, and that if necessary I would run away to South America and join a shady Socialist resistance movement, rather than spend a career surrounded by stationery and filing cabinets.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve outgrown that phase and haven’t raged against any machines for ages. These days I prefer making connections. In fact, my teenage self would be delighted that the office I’ll be working in for the next year belongs to Hoipolloi. I’ll be helping out in rehearsal rooms, as well as the office, so I can learn how a company like Hoipolloi operates on both a creative and a practical level.

I first encountered Hoipolloi four or five years ago and they quickly became one of my very favourite theatre companies. It’s my first day here and I can’t quite believe that I’m now working at Hoipolloi, not just watching them! If my predecessor Sara’s last entry on the blog is anything to go by, I’m in for a wonderful year.

I’ll be writing on the blog fairly regularly, keeping you informed of everything that Hoipolloi are up to. We’re going to be busy! The Doubtful Guest will be back on tour in the UK this autumn and Hugh Hughes is heading to Helsinki, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania and the USA.

Don’t forget to keep checking the website for the latest tour dates!