Hoipolloi offers a Master Class in London

Following Hoipolloi's month-long residency with Hugh Hughes at the Barbican and tours to Edinburgh, Dublin and Newcastle, our Artistic Director, Shon Dale-Jones offers you the chance to be part of a Hoipolloi Master Class. This will be a day-long event, running from 10am to 6pm, on Sunday 5 December 2010.

Revealing the secrets behind improvisation and free play which underpin the creation and development of every Hoipolloi show, this Master Class allows you to enter the fantastical world of Hoipolloi as rehearsal room meets playground.

Driven by imagination and laughter, Hoipolloi will help you unlock your creative potential and find the drama and the comedy inside every anecdote and experience. This is your opportunity to release and revel in the anarchy of the imagination.

You can find out more about Hoipolloi's work with emerging Welsh artist Hugh Hughes on his website at www.hughhughes.me

The Master Class takes places in the Jerwood Space on Union Street, London.

There is a strictly limited number of places, so book early to avoid disappointment! Master Class places cost £65 per person and can be booked by contacting Richard on 01223 322748 or via email on richard@hoipolloi.org.uk

Hoipolloi: Where the rehearsal room meets the playground
Sunday 5 December, 10am to 6pm
Jerwood Space, Union Street, London (nearest tube: Southwark/Borough)
Cost: £65 per person

Four stars and a full house

A sell-out show, four stars from Chortle and a couple of radio interviews for good measure... yesterday was a busy day for Hugh Hughes. And I think he gave his best performance of 360 yet.

The day started in the Fresh Air FM studio, where Hugh was joined by Hoipolloi's Artistic Director Shon Dale-Jones. Click here to listen again to Shon discussing Hoipolloi's fifteenth anniversary and The Doubtful Guest's upcoming run at Traverse. And click here for Hugh, who talks about 360 before sharing some anecdotes about life on Anglesey and growing up with Gareth.

We had a boost mid-afternoon when we heard on the grapevine that Chortle had published a review. After a mad scramble to find a laptop and some wi-fi, it was high-fives all round as we read the glowing review! Steve Bennett described 360 as "life-affirming" and "guaranteed to put a spring into your step", giving it four stars. Click here to read the full review.

By the time the doors to Pleasance Two opened at seven o'clock, there wasn't a single ticket left. We're delighted that the show is proving so popular, so early in the festival. And Hugh himself is over the moon, as pleased as ever to be talking to audiences before and after the show, greeting people who've seen his previous shows and making friends with newcomers.

With no rest for the wicked, Hugh only had time for a quick drink after the show before he jumped in a taxi and made his way to the Leith FM studio to round off the day with another interview. We both got a bit baffled, as the taxi dropped us off miles from where we were supposed to be. But we got there just in time!

Hugh will be onstage again at 7.05pm tonight at Pleasance Two. Click here to book your tickets. If last night's anything to go by, you'd better get in fast!

I'm already looking forward to my Hugh Hughes pick-me-up tonight. I saw Simon Stephens' new play Sea Wall at the ungodly hour of 9.45am and I couldn't have hoped for a more poetically desolate start to the day. I'm in the Traverse bar at the moment trying to collect myself but not having much luck so far. Catch it if you can but not until you've booked for 360 AND The Doubtful Guest!

John Hegley's Hoipolloi Limerick!

Our Artistic Director Shon Dale-Jones just made a small but perfectly formed contribution to John Hegley's Radio 4 documentary There Was a Young Man From Limerick.

It's a lovely little show, featuring a latin limerick allegedly written by Thomas Aquinas, Wendy Cope's limerick version of TS Eliot's The Wastelands, "serious" limericks and lots of discussion of Edward Lear, the much-loved nonsense poet who popularised the limerick and whose work inspired Hoipolloi's show My Uncle Arly.

You can click here to launch BBC iPlayer and listen to the show anytime for the next seven days.

John Hegley introduced Shon in a typically quirky fashion, with this "limerick":

....Shon Dale-Jones
Who write and directs and who hones
Works for the stage
Which inform and engage
And his company Hoipolloi have used some of Edward lear's limericks in the creation of a biographical drama.

We'd like to thank John Hegley and BBC Radio 4 for inviting Shon onto the show.

I hope you get chance to listen on iPlayer this week if you didn't catch it first time round!

There Was a Young Man From Limerick

Tomorrow, Hoipolloi's Artistic Director, Shon Dale-Jones, will be featured on a Radio 4 documentary about limericks. The show has been put together by John Hegley, the renowned performance poet, who has ammassed a legion of fans over the years (inluding Shon!) with his uniquely comic and quirky performances.

John Hegley is famous for his humourous rhymes and feelgood performances. Recurring motifs of his writing include dogs, his hometown Luton and glasses. In one recent show, he invited everyone in the audience who was wearing glasses to join him on stage for a "glasses dance", and he regularly rants against the "deserters" who opt for contact lenses!

Shon has admired John's work for years and was delighted to be invited onto the show. The two of them met up recently to record some musings on their mutual love of limericks.

The limerick, of course, was popularised in the 1860s by Edward Lear, whose nonsense verse inspired Hoipolloi's show My Uncle Arly. Arly is about to go back out on tour - click here for my recent Blog post with all the tour details.

There Was a Young Man From Limerick will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 11.30am on Tuesday 24 February. You'll be able to listen again on iPlayer for a week after the show is broadcast.