Visit Hugh's brand new website

To celebrate his arrival in London, Hugh has launched his own brand new website and he'd love to share it with you. It can be found at www.hughhughes.me

Thank you to everyone who's paid a visit to the site so far, we're really excited that we've been able to work with Hugh to create it. Over time, it'll become both a vast archive of the Hugh's journey as an emerging artist and also a place for a whole host of new content for you to enjoy.

It's been a busy month, hence the lack of posting here since the 13 August!

The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes has opened at London's Barbican Centre to great critical acclaim and we've had the very first screening of Hugh's brand new film - How I Got Here.

Here's some of what the press has been saying:

"If there's a friendlier, more engaging character in contemporary British theatre than Hughes, I've yet to meet him"
The Times (reviewing 360)

"An infectious enthusiasm that radiates warmth like a homely coal fire."
The Stage (reviewing The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes)

"Just the tonic for the cynicism and drudgery of London"
Time Out, Show of the Week (4stars)

Don't forget that the shows run at the Barbican until Saturday 2 October and then move on to the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (5 to 9 Oct) and the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival (12 to 17 Oct).

And also, if you're in Cambridge this Sunday (19 Sept, 6pm, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse), Hugh will be introducing a screening of How I Got Here as part of Cambridge Film Festival. This will be a special moment as it's the first time that Hugh's work has been included in a non-theatre festival.

And to celebrate that fact, he's an exclusive clip from the film...

Hugh Hughes tells us about In Rehearsal

I bumped into a friend the other day who had seen In Rehearsal advertised in The Junction's brochure.

She said, "Hello Hugh, I see that you have an exciting new project going. I saw The Junction's brochure. It sounds a bit scary!" I asked why she thought it sounded scary and she said, "I’m scared that if I come I’ll be asked to participate and do some acting or I’ll be expected to come up with ideas." So, I thought I’d try to clarify what might happen if you come along:

I might ask you if you’d like to participate or not.
I might, if you’ve agreed that you’d like to, ask you to participate. I might not.
I might tell you some stories. I might ask if you’d like to discuss them.
I might show you some maps and tell you about the places on them.
I might try out some ideas for presenting a story.
I might try out ideas for how to begin a possible show.
I might do one long improvisation.
I might ask you to make suggestions to me what to do next.
I might show you some slides.
I might show you some films.
I might read you some poetry that I’ve written.

What I will do is share with you a process.

And, to be very honest with you, having thought about it some more, we should have called it In Development, not In Rehearsal.

Lastly, and most importantly, I would be thrilled to see you there. I’m really excited by the idea of developing my next show with you. I’m opening the doors when normally they would be shut.

Anything might happen. Come along.

My friend ended up saying she would, I hope you do too.

Posted by Hugh Hughes

Hugh Hughes's Rough Book

Happy New Year! It is the sixth day of 2010 and I am "fully" back at work. My brother says calling milk "full" milk is potentially confusing and so he would probably take issue with my statement about being "fully" back at work. To clarify any possible confusion, I mean that I’m back in my studio after taking a break from it.

My break took in Christmas and New Year and a lovely time at home in Anglesey. And a trip to Snowdon. It was not just a trip. It was a treat. A treat of a trip. A tongue-twister of a trip. Better than going to buy sweets on Saturdays when I was an eight-year old boy (the year I loved sweets the most).

The island looked beautiful, lined by the long white-skirted mountains of Snowdon. The air was so clear and the sky so blue it felt like Aunty Glen had been up polishing all night. Spectacular. I did plenty of walking.

2010 has been declared between myself and friends as ‘The Year of Opening New Doors’. It was our joint New Year’s resolution. And one door I’d like to open is to my studio and to the rehearsal room. And so today’s sudden fascination in my studio has led to WORDS AND SYMBOLS.

Once you start to get your head around the idea that a letter, therefore a word, is just a symbol, then a whole new communication system, another visual world of pictorial reality opens.

In fact, I am launching a new series called HUGH HUGHES’ ROUGH BOOK. It is a series of blogs, photos, podcasts etc that shares my on-going work-in-progress. It’s a virtual open studio. It’s rough and ready. I hope you’ll enjoy it and come visit.

Happy New Year!

Hugh Hughes

Hugh speaks... Monday morning

Monday morning! My brother would doubtless sing the classic Boomtown Rats hit I Don’t Like Mondays if he was reading this now. He has got a really good voice too. In fact, his impression of Blondie is the best I have ever heard. When you open your eyes and see him, your mind cannot accept it. And that is a bit like the experience I had last night in Durham. Artichoke were in the city with a wide variety of artists, illuminating the city. When I woke up this morning, it was like seeing my brother, not Blondie, there out of the window. Durham had been wonderfully and magically transformed by the imaginations of these fabulous artists. And my brother and Blondie weren’t involved at all. The whole thing was dreamlike.

It made my journey south on the train this morning more colourful. First of all I heard this conversation: Tall Boy to Small Boy, “You will never know what it is like to be this size, but I know what it is like to be your size.” Small Boy to Tall Boy, “But you will never know what it is like to be this size as well as I do.” Then I saw an owl-like tree overlooking a cabbage-filled field and unused warehouses holding clouds hostage, issuing ransom fees to the farmers on tractors.

Getting off the train and onto this computer to write this blog was like waking up properly for the first time in a while. I feel like I’ve done an all-nighter…

Hugh speaks... travelling to Edinburgh

Hello! I am very happy to write this blog. We have embarked on a short tour of STORY OF A RABBIT in the UK, five months after our tour in the USA. It is really good to be performing this show again. I really do enjoy it. Aled said, "it’s like visiting an old friend."

We'd like to say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who has joined us so far – in Eastleigh and Cambridge - and to say we are very much looking forward to meeting our audience in Edinburgh, Leicester and Plymouth later this month.

Right now I’m travelling to Edinburgh by train. My favourite kind of transport. We’ve been through gentle rising fog and blinding bursts of sunshine. It’s remarkable to think how this ball of a planet is enveloped in so many weathers. My brother once left a leather football in the garden throughout the whole winter – when my father found it in the spring, it was deflated, sagging and discoloured. "Luckily this planet is not made of leather," Aled said and we all laughed and then imagined we were part of a giant’s game of football in Brazil. Then Tom said, "In a way, Pele is a giant."

I haven’t been to Edinburgh outside of festival time. Neither has Aled. "It’ll be the same but different," he said. "It’ll be wearing it’s winter coat," he said as he looked out of the window at Newcastle. "While Sydney is putting it’s shorts on, Edinburgh is pulling on a thick jumper," said Tom. Then he said, "I wonder if we could knit a giant jumper for Pele and present it to him as a gift at the next World Cup. A nice golden yellow one trimmed with green." Aled said we probably could but he’d be unlikely to wear it because the World Cup was taking place in South Africa and it’d be too hot.

As we get ever closer to Edinburgh I’d like to use this opportunity to say another "thank you’ to the Sydney Festival for inviting me to present 360 in January. I’m really looking forward to it.
Goodbye for now.

Hugh Hughes

[I found this lovely photo on Flickr by laurencea taken during a London to Edinburgh train journey. I'm guessing it was during the snow we had in January this year. Thought it illustrated Hugh's blog nicely. Simon]

[pps. we've just had this lovely review come in for Story of a Rabbit]

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!

Hugh speaks... Brighton Festival

Posted by Hugh Hughes

The Brighton Festival. Glorious sunshine, sea and art. It’s a cultural paradise. Playing Story of a Rabbit here is a big pleasure.

Audiences are incredibly polite, well-behaved and friendly. Their concentration is outstanding. They are significantly different from the audiences we found in Liverpool and Cambridge. Aled and I have become increasingly interested in audiences and how they differ from place to place and night to night.

Looking back on our performances in Bogota, we were moved by the warmth and generosity of the audience, their openness and involvement was breath-taking. Next week I go to Moscow with Sioned to present Floating. I’m very curious to see how we communicate the story over there.

We are becoming more interested in this relationship between the stage and spectator and beginning to wonder how it might be worth much further investigation. We are asking, “Why do people come into the theatre?”

We are always amazed when we see people walking into the space. It’s as if each night we don’t expect anyone to come and therefore we are surprised to see people come in. It’s the moment they walk in that gets me. As they enter one by one theatre begins.

It’s wonderful.

ps. I'm trying out some new technology that Hoipolloi have helped me buy and here's me being interviewed on the radio!

Hugh speaks... Different Journey, Same Direction

Posted by Hugh Hughes (travelling from Cambridge to Liverpool)

Travelling from east to west across Britain today made me think of the journeys other people have made in this direction. The phrase, 'go west young man' sprang to mind. It made me think of cowboy films and the whole western movie genre and the music that went with it. Before I knew it I was in a wagon, pulled by horses, galloping across the Prairies, with some medicine in the back and a gun strapped to my hip. And it made me think of some of the extraordinary stories of people trying to cross the Berlin Wall, to escape a political regime they felt oppressed by. I was driving through Checkpoint Charlie with a false moustache and someone hiding in a false-bottomed boot in the back of the car.

In comparison my journey was calm and peaceful, especially as the M6 Toll helped me by-pass Birmingham and avoid heavy traffic.

This freedom I was experiencing dawned on me. I was not driving into unknown territory, anxious about what I might discover and I was not fleeing a country, leaving loved ones behind, hoping not to be caught and imprisoned. I was driving with an open mind, ready to take in the countryside as it rolled by, able to imagine. I was surrounded by space. The warmth of the sun and the colours the light illuminated were dazzling, the music was cheerful and my voyage became a technicolour dream. Everyone waved at each other from car to car. All travellers had their windows open and listened to the same radio station. The cars found auto-pilot and in our hands-free luxury we could lean back as we sped safely down the motorway, taking in the sunshine, relaxing and tanning ourselves as the cool breeze swept across our bronzing bodies. Life was perfect. Undisturbed and joyful. Moving at a pace, from east to west, under a blue sky without a care in the world.

The amount of lives that are lived, the amount of east to west journeys that are made – each one so different, even if their direction is the same.

Hugh speaks... Norwich and Norfolk Festival

Posted by Hugh Hughes

I travelled from Hoipolloi’s home base in Cambridge, up to Norwich yesterday. It is a journey that normally takes 75 minutes. It took me 6 hours. I was stuck in a traffic jam caused by an accident involving a lorry.

Being trapped inside the car for 360 minutes made me think of submarines. I spent a long period of time watching the cars on the other side of the road, imagining them to be fish, sharks and other aquatic life forms. As the sun hit the bonnets and made them shine I saw their silvery skin swish past me.

The idea of labelling fish with registration plates seemed like a good idea – to avoid confusion. The reports coming in on the radio talked about life on land. A place far from my underwater world. Submerged, I found tranquillity away from the dry place. This wet place offered silent relief.

Another soundscape was emerging. One that drew me towards a colourful place with light and space. The initial feeling of entrapment was being replaced by the freedom of this newfound territory not far from Newmarket.

And then I thought that it was likely that I was rapidly becoming the person who had spent the most time on this particular spot on earth. Because, where my submarine was hovering, was normally passed through at 70 miles an hour by people in motor vehicles. When the traffic started to move, I felt the disruption that wildlife must feel when the builders move in to build the next housing estate for humans.