Tweeting a century

My latest Tweet is (or certainly will be) a link to this blog, which is a video about Twitter. And more by luck than any kind of sensible judgment, that Tweet is also Hoipolloi's 100th!

It amuses me that we've reached a century already, having only been using Twitter for a couple of months, unlike this blog which has been running for a good year or so and will only hit the 100 post mark in the next week or so.

Anyway, back to the point.

This is the latest installment of my video diary leading up to Shift Happens in June (click here for the first). It was recorded a couple of weeks ago in Sydney but I'm still playing catch up. Enjoy!



Thank you to Woody1778a for the picture.

All across the world

In just over 24 hours time, a momentous occasion in the history of Hoipolloi will occur. When I discovered this, just yesterday, I shrieked with excitement at the good fortune that's being delivered to us by time zone variations!

Our first performance of Floating here at the Ten Days on the Island festival in Launceston, Tasmania kicks off at 2pm on Saturday. This also happens to be 8pm on Friday in Los Angeles when My Uncle Arly will be 30mins into its first public performance at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.

And thus, for the very first time, two Hoipolloi shows will be playing at exactly the same time in two differerent corners of the world, neither of which are our home territory!

It's not actually the first time we've had two shows performed on different continents on the same day; if you cast your mind back to about this time last year, Hugh and Aled were over in Bogota, Colombia performing Story of a Rabbit whilst The Doubtful Guest was running at Watford Palace. However, none of these performances occured at exactly the same moment in time.

If you're in the UK and would like to celebrate the moment, I'm afraid you'll have to stay up until 3am on Saturday morning, but if you happen to be in Los Angeles or Launceston, please join us for one of these historic shows!

Anglesey to Anglesea

At the moment, our last performance is taking place in Melbourne. Today we took a trip to Anglesea, which is about an hour or so from the city.

We made this little video while we were there, enjoy!

Shift Happens 2.0

Ironically, this isn't another post about our recent earthquake here in Melbourne! I've been invited by Pilot Theatre to be one of the speakers at this year's Shift Happens conference in York (29 to 30 June).

Marcus, Pilot's Artistic Director, has asked me to provide people with an insight into the ways we're using social media tools here at Hoipolloi.

I've started creating some video diaries of my experiences, which I'll eventually edit together for the conference itself. I thought I'd share these here so that you can get a sense in 'real-time' how everything's fitting together. Although I have to admit that I'm a bit behind myself because I made this first one before I left for Australia and I've already made a second one, which I'll post early next week.

To book your place at the actual event, visit www.shift-happens.co.uk for more info. And thanks to Eurleif for the image.

Feeling the earth move in Melbourne

Ladies and Gentleman, I'd like to report that a minor earthquake has just hit our current home of Melbourne! It was about 20 minutes ago and Hugh and Sioned were in the middle of a tech rehearsal for Floating.

We all stopped, looked at each other and tried to work out what was happening. But thankfully it wasn't too strong and passed after about 20 or 30 seconds! Fortunately we had passed the moment in the show when an earthquake hits Anglesey otherwise we would have been really confused! It was worst for Tom as he was up on a rickety balcony overlooking the space.

The show opens here at the Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall tonight. We're all really excited to see how it goes, particularly following the success of our time in Sydney.

And speaking of Sydney, I've finally had time to edit together a quick video leading up to our first night at the Opera House. Here you go...

Moving to Melbourne

G'day!

Today I'm blogging from Melbourne, our second Australian destination on this tour. All went fantastically well in Sydney - a huge thank you to everyone who joined us there, Hugh and Sioned had a blast.

We transferred over yesterday (driven through the above bit of road in our taxi from the airport!) and were met by our lovely new host, Jude who works at the Arts House, the show's new home for a week.

She showed us around town a bit, sharing us the delights of Lygon Street and it's many Italian restaurants.

Today is going to be a relaxed day as we try and prepare ourselves for the week ahead. I've already completed a radio interview and am now attempting to catch up with myself in terms of sharing photos, editing some video footage and doing some jobs that I've been putting off!

If you saw the show in Sydney and have friends or family in Melbourne, please let them know where to find us (Arts House at North Melbourne Town Hall from 18 to 22 March!).

Hugh and Sioned can't wait to connect with a brand new set of people!

And thanks to SYN+H for the photo!

Centre Stage from London to Sydney

Wow, what a busy week for Hoipolloi... My Uncle Arly is on at the Unicorn Theatre in London and Floating continues at Sydney Opera House!

The first performance of My Uncle Arly was at 10am this morning, and there'll be another starting in the next half an hour! The show is on all week and in fine form. We reckon we've staged My Uncle Arly over 250 times but the cast had a great time putting the show back together last week and are delighted to be presenting it again. I was at the Unicorn Theatre on Sunday to help with the get-in and the technical rehearsal. It's an absolutely beautiful theatre in a new building near London Bridge. Click here to book tickets for the show.

Meanwhile, Floating is going down an absolute storm in Sydney. Australian audiences seem really keen to join in with the show and I know that Hugh and Sioned are loving every minute! Click here to read Simon's last blog entry from Down Under, including quotes from a superb review of the show in the Sydney Morning Herald.

On the digital front, we've had loads of great feedback about our new website. And we're delighted that as we tour all over the world, our online audiences are going global too. In the last month, we've had 485 hits from Sydney alone!

Don't forget that you can click here to download the first of Hoipolloi's brand new podcasts. Click here to read my last blog entry on the subject. We'll have another Word of the Week from Steffi very soon...

A huge thank you to everyone who's seeing our shows or making connections online at the moment. From Sydney to London, it's great to have you with us.

And we're looking forward to our next slab of touring, as Floating heads to Melbourne and Tasmania, whilst My Uncle Arly flies to Los Angeles!

Heralding a good morning!

Breakfast this morning was a rather exciting affair! As I tucked into my muffin and jam and flicked through the Sydney Morning Herald, a very pleasing sight caught my eye.

There on page 15 was a picture of Hugh staring back at me and the headline "Fantasy world makes real one hard to rejoin".

I think it's actually the best review of the show we've ever had! Here are just a few little highlights:

"The audience is carried effortlessly along, put at ease and immersed in good-humoured theatrical playfulness."

"The ease with which both performers establish rapport with the audience, make ambitious ideas accessible and glean laughter from all possible sources is disarming."

"Entertainment is first-rate when the audience has to be encouraged to rejoin the real world."

I don't think it's made it in full online as yet but will update this entry once it does so that you can read it in full. If you're reading this in Sydney and haven't bought tickets yet, I'd do so as soon as you can as the show is proving to be very popular.

And don't forget we'll be at the Arts House in Melbourne from 18 to 22 March and at the Ten Days on the Island Festival from 28 March until 5 April. Full details can be found here.

Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who's joined us at the show so far. Hugh and Sioned have been having a blast! Please continue to recommend the show to all your friends.

If you'd like to keep in touch with us, please join our free mailing list, or the Hoipolloi or Hugh Hughes groups on Facebook.

Love from Sydney

Hello! Just a quick note to say thank you for all the kind emails we've had following the first two performances of Floating at Sydney Opera House. I hear the show's going really well and it's lovely that so many people have emailed us from Australia to say that they've enjoyed it!

Click here to read Simon's last blog post for all the gossip from Down Under.

Good morning Sydney!

Good morning, welcome to Sydney and our first proper blog entry from our international tour. I'm going to be your main guide to our time in Australia although Hugh and Sioned will do their best to say hello as and when their busy schedule permits.

Hugh apologises for not updating you from Singapore. He, Aled and Sioned had a fantastically hectic week in the city, thank you to everyone who joined them at Story of a Rabbit, the symposium or one of the workshops. We'll try and post a catch up about their time there soon.

In the meantime, tonight is our first performance from Sydney Opera House. The building definitely lives up to its iconic status and I'm currently sat in the Green Room with a delightful view of the harbour and the city beyond. Something I could definitely get used to.

We've got a busy day ahead. Hugh and Sioned should arrive in about 30mins and then we'll be continuing the tech run. Floating hasn't been performed since Moscow back in May last year so everyone's doing there best to remember exactly how it fits together. But I'm sure we'll get there in time for the imminent opening!

I arrived in town early on Sunday morning and enjoyed the luxury of being collected by an Opera House driver. He'd just delivered Juliette Binoche to the airport so I enjoyed my little VIP connection!

I'll keep you posted on how it goes tonight with a few twitter updates as and when I can! I'm just in the process of putting together a little video and if I can work out a way of getting it online without crashing the Opera House's server, I'll post it to YouTube.

In the meantime, here's a few pics of outside of our current 'home' for you to enjoy!

Speak soon! Simon (Hoipolloi's Marketing & Touring Manager)