Fresher faces in Cambridge

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

On my way home from the pub the other night, I popped into my local chip shop for some deep-fried carbohydrates, only to find this usually reputable establishment over-run with drunken school children. Upon closer inspection, said school children turned out to be rather larger than one would expect. They weren’t children at all, they were students dressed as children. Freshers’ week is upon us.

Now explain this one to me: you leave school, you leave home, you go to university in a hyperactive flurry of grown-upness... and the first thing you’re expected to do is put your school uniform back on for a Freshers’ Week “School Disco”.

There are rather a lot of students in Cambridge, making it completely normal to stumble across groups of people in silly costumes wandering the streets late at night. Pirate costumes are a popular choice in my experience, and I couldn’t approve more of such a wholesome and hearty theme. But school uniform in this post Hit Me Baby One More Time-era?

Perhaps I’m jealous. I’ve just graduated and I’m still getting to grips with being on the wrong side of the university/real-world barrier. But I’ll be returning to university spheres, for the Anglia Ruskin University Freshers’ Fayre tomorrow and the Cambridge University one in a couple of weeks.

Hoipolloi are looking forward to meeting lots of Cambridge’s newest residents. We hope that you’ll come to our stall and say hello, and that we’ll see lots of students at the Cambridge Arts Theatre for The Doubtful Guest between 15 to 18 October.

The company started re-rehearsals for The Doubtful Guest in Plymouth today and I’ll be blogging from the rehearsal room next week. In the meantime, don’t forget to book tickets for Plymouth, Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds or Cardiff! All the tour dates and box office details are here. Book soon!

“Obsessed by what? Ourselves, I expect.”

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

When Edward Gorey, author of The Doubtful Guest, arrived at Harvard in 1946 as a fresh-faced freshman, he found himself sharing a room with a man who would become one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated poets: Frank O’Hara.

By the time O’Hara died prematurely in 1966, he had cemented his reputation as a bold and inventive writer at the forefront of what is now called the New York School of poetry. Like Gorey, O’Hara had rather a lot of strings to his bow. As well as writing, he devoted a significant portion of his career to visual art. He worked at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) until he died, he was close friends with painters including Jackson Pollock and his writing reflects a fascination with Surrealism and Dadaism. He was also an accomplished pianist and he referred to writing as “playing the typewriter”!

This inter-disciplinary approach, combining text, visual art and music, perhaps stemmed from his university days with Gorey, where students were encouraged to see themselves as “artists”, rather than restricting themselves to one medium. This approach is evident in Gorey’s work too.

Over the course of his life, O’Hara became a famed socialite, mixing in circles with painters, jazz musicians, writers, dancers and aesthetes. And all this started in the Harvard dorm he shared with Edward Gorey.

O’Hara and Gorey have been described as a “noticeable odd couple on campus”. They bonded over their love of stylised English writers like Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett, a passion for foreign films and trips to the ballet. They hosted innumerable parties, where guests would lounge on rented garden furniture, drinking, arguing and listening to Marlene Dietrich records. It was here that Gorey began illustrations which would later appear in his books.

Together O’Hara and Gorey founded the Poets Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gorey designed programs and posters and O’Hara wrote experimental new plays. In an interview, Gorey said of the period: “We were all obsessed. Obsessed by what? Ourselves, I expect.”

Over time, O’Hara’s rambunctious social life became too much for the reclusive Edward Gorey and the pair drifted. But that’s probably a good thing, because it gave Gorey time to write The Doubtful Guest, which Hoipolloi have adapted for stage.

Did I mention that The Doubtful Guest’s autumn tour kicks off in just over a fortnight? It’s coming to Plymouth, Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds and Cardiff. Click here for the full tour schedule and book soon because tickets are selling fast!

Can you explain the ascendance of Ogdred Weary?

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

There’s a clever thing called Google Analytics which tells me exactly how many people have looked at this blog. Because I’m a narcissist, I check it most days and I was surprised and delighted to find that after my last post, the numbers rocketed up.

Naturally, I assumed that I’d tapped into a vast and devoted Sesame Street fan base. But Google Analytics is so very clever, that it was able to tell me that the hits had all come from people in the USA googling “Ogdred Weary”, one of Edward Gorey’s pseudonyms, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. (Click here to have a look.)

If anyone in America can tell us why this is, please tell us! Was it a crossword clue, a reference in a TV programme...? There’s a sweepstake going in the Hoipolloi office so do put us out of our misery. Email david@hoipolloi.org.uk

If you read the post, you’ll know that Gorey used the pseudonym Ogdred Weary for his “pornographic work” The Curious Sofa. And yes... there was a hit from someone searching for porn. “Pornographic theatre video”, to be precise. The mind boggles.

Mystery, missing toast and Sesame Street...

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

A friend of mine, when aged about three, accidentally stabbed herself with a pin and needed several stitches. But despite being in immense pain and bleeding all over the sofa, she didn’t find the time to tell either of her parents until that day’s episode of Sesame Street was over. Even three year olds know how to prioritise.

If you’re vaguely the same age as me, or if you have children who are, Sesame Street should be etched into your memory as a daily slice of televised joy which, at that age, was enough to make the world seem entirely happy and complete.

And do you remember Vincent Twice, who always said his name twice and hosted a segment called Mysterious Theatre? What British viewers probably didn’t know was that Mysterious Theatre was a spoof of long-running American TV show Mystery! (yes, it’s always spelt with an exclamation mark) which tells detective stories featuring familiar characters like Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.

Mystery!’s animated opening sequences were created by none other than Edward Gorey, the cult author and illustrator whose book The Doubtful Guest Hoipolloi have adapted for stage. Gorey is famous for his playfully macabre, pseudo-Gothic-Victorian visual style which Tim Burton, amongst others, acknowledges as a huge influence on his own work.

Here’s one of Gorey’s truly wonderful Mystery! intro sequences:




And just for good measure, here’s an episode of Sesame Street’s Mystery Theatre, in which Sherlock Holmes investigates the case of The Missing Toast!




Funnily enough, having spoofed Edward Gorey on Sesame Street, Jim Henson Productions have recently announced that they'll be making a Muppets-style film of The Doubtful Guest.

Meanwhile, Hoipolloi's autumn tour of The Doubtful Guest kicks off in less than three weeks. Tickets are selling fast, so if you haven’t yet booked for Plymouth, Southampton, Cambridge, Leeds or Cardiff, get in quick! The full tour schedule and all box office details can be found here.


Finally, here’s a trailer for The Doubtful Guest to whet your appetite.

Floating off to Australia

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

Since his first ever theatre performance, in Belfast in 2005, Hugh Hughes has made connections all over the world. He’s already ticked Colombia, New York, Moscow and Helsinki off his list of places to visit, and now Hugh is looking forward to performing on a fourth continent.

In March 2009, he’ll be flying to Australia for a five-week tour, which will include eleven performances of Floating at perhaps the most famous performing arts centre in the world: Sydney Opera House!

The Sydney Opera House was designed by Danish architect, Jørn Uzton, who won an open competition in 1955. There was a slight hitch though: Uzton designed a building which, at the time, nobody knew how to build. The concrete shells, or “white sails”, which make the building so distinctive caused a lot of headaches during the early stages of the project. Between 1957 and 1963, at least twelve different versions of the design were created before an affordable and feasible solution was found. Needless to say, almost everyone who worked on the project, from Uzton himself to the tea boy, claims to be able to remember the “eureka” moment and more often than not tries to take credit for discovering it. It’s still unknown where exactly the solution came from.

Despite being a hive of culture, a cursory glance at the internet demonstrates that Sydney Opera House attracts some really tacky merchandising... Here you can send an “animated” Sydney Opera House e-postcard. Not exactly Harry Potter-esque levels of photo animation, you’ll agree. And the photograph top left seems to be of the Sydney Opera House mid-apocalypse. This is a nice little video of the Opera House, taken from the sea, but turn the volume down... what an odd soundtrack to choose. And finally, a Sydney Opera House “joke” I found on the web:

-What powerful reptile is found in the Sydney Opera House?
-The Lizard of Oz!

(If you’re struggling to get that one, as I did for a while, it might help to know that you could replace Sydney Opera House with the name of any other place in Australia. Or with “Australia”.)
But amongst all the tat, I’ve found two wonderful items: here you can download and print all you need to make a paper model of Sydney Opera House! And here’s a second one, designed by a man who calls himself “Papermeister Dooney”.

It’s Friday afternoon, so I can’t possibly be expected to do any more work this week. I suspect the rest of my day will be spent with a furrowed brow and my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth, wrestling with fold lines and Pritt Stick, until my paper Sydney Opera House is complete. Papermeister Dooney, I salute you.

With thanks to Sir Mervs for the photo!

The Hanging

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

I usually need a bucket or two of coffee before I get started on a Monday morning, and this morning’s Monday morning start was even earlier than usual. Luckily, I was at CB2 cafe in Cambridge, so there was no shortage of caffeinated beverages; and after a bleary start, I was able to begin hanging a Hoipolloi exhibition, which will be on show at CB2 until the end of October.

Sadly, I have few practical skills and little to no common sense. On one occasion, I spent a good fifteen minutes looking first at a picture, then at a nail on the wall, then back to the picture, trying to work out how the two could be united. A reel of hanging wire eventually provided the solution, although this triangular approach (picture, nail, wire...) made me feel a little dizzy at first.

The exhibition showcases photographs of almost fifteen years of Hoipolloi productions, including The Doubtful Guest and Hugh Hughes’ productions, as well some of Hoipolloi’s much earlier shows. The photographs were taken by Richard Heeps and Geraint Lewis. Richard is an old friend of the company and a widely acclaimed photographer, who has published five books of his work. Geraint is an extremely well established theatre photographer, who takes pictures for The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Times, as well as the Royal National Theatre and numerous West End productions.

Most of the photographs are for sale, so if you want a Hugh Hughes print or a picture of the Doubtful Guest on your wall, head for CB2! We should also point out that even when it isn’t being colonised by Hoipolloi, CB2 is a great place to eat and drink. We’ve had lots of delicious company meals there over the years. It’s on Norfolk Street in Cambridge, fairly close to the Grafton shopping centre and Anglia Ruskin University. (Click here for a map.)

Finally, a reminder that The Doubtful Guest is going back out on tour in October and November! The show will be heading to Plymouth, Southampton, Cardiff, Leeds and Cambridge. Click here for the full list of tour dates, and don’t forget to book tickets soon!


http://www.cb2bistro.com/
http://www.richardheeps.co.uk/
http://www.geraintlewis.com/