The first videos from the wonderful world

Good morning. It's a little dark and drizzly here in Cambridge at the moment. I think someone forget to tell the weather gods that we're not in Edinburgh this year - my hopes to enjoy a little sunshine through at least one August seem to have been dashed!

My apologies that this is our first blog post this month; I feel slightly shamed that our last posting was back on 28 July, which seems like an age ago now! I'm sneakily going to shift blame on to Richard for abandoning his intern post for a few weeks so that he can go and review shows up at the Fringe (and thus he's not here to defend himself!).

My reason for posting this morning is that Hugh has created some lovely little videos for us to act as mini-insights into his wonderful world. Here, some of his friends (and his sister) give you their thoughts on the Hugh that they know.

I'll leave you to enjoy them...









And a quick reminder that tickets are now on sale for The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes at London's Barbican Centre from 8 September until 2 October and the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival from 12 to 17 October. Full details here.

Posted by Simon Bedford (Producer, Hoipolloi)

AMA Digital Day

Good evening! It is Sunday night, X Factor is on TV (I don't think I really care about any of the final 5 although if I'm honest I think it's definitely time Lloyd left. Isn't it?) and I'm here tapping away a little blog entry.

This is preparation for my presentation to the Arts Marketing Association's Digital Marketing Day tomorrow afternoon. I'm pretty excited as this is my first big London gig at Sadler's Wells no less. Anyway, if you're reading this on Monday after I've spoken, I hope it was useful!

So, here are the videos I'm going to need for the presentation, plus a few more bits and pieces that you might find useful.

VIDEO ONE



VIDEO TWO



And some other bits and pieces for you:

Hoipolloi on Twitter
Hoipolloi on Facebook
Hugh Hughes on Facebook
Our YouTube channel
Our audioboos

And a couple more videos for you:






EDIT: Wed 2 December

CJ from PCM Creative qik'd my presentation, which you can view here if you have a spare 43mins. Always slightly cringy to watch yourself back, so I won't be viewing it in too much detail although was pleased with how it all went on Monday!



Posted by Simon Bedford (Producer, Hoipolloi)

The Last Post

My last post (for now).

I spent the whole festival wanting to film Hugh's pre-show warm up but feared he may think it intrusive. Before the last show, however, I threw caution to the wind and captured this gem without Hugh knowing.

Whoever guesses what's on his iPod wins a prize.

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!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Posted by Simon Bedford (Marketing & Touring Manager, Hoipolloi)

I'm almost there. It's my last day of work for 2008 and I've reached the last few tasks on the to-do list. Phew!

It's been an incredibly busy year and now I'm totally looking forward to my two-week holiday. I fly off to New York on Monday - bizarrely its my third trip there this year - and the first where I won't be doing any form of work whatsoever!

Anyway, rather than bore you with the details of my Christmas plans, I thought I'd take this opportunity to look back at Hoipolloi's year...

It's incredible to think of everything we've achieved this year. One full new production, two further productions touring, two productions in development, and simultaneous performances in both the UK and Colombia!

So, here in photos and videos is Hoipolloi: 2008!

The first part of the year was dedicated to creating The Doubtful Guest. The creature itself ran wild around the Barbican Estate:


Before coming alive on stage for its first performance at Watford Palace Theatre where Lyn Gardner of the Guardian proclaimed the show was a:

"piece of visual theatre that captures all the Victorian pastiche, fantastical imagination and ominous air of Gorey's original"


And as soon as the show was on its feet, it was time for Hugh, Aled (and myself) to fly off to Bogota, Colombia with Story of a Rabbit for the XI Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro:


My favourite memory of this trip was being ambushed by the South American press in the hotel lobby!

Back in the UK, Story of a Rabbit went touring around the UK. Here's Hugh being interviewed on the radio whilst in Brighton:



And not content with the simple life, Hugh dashed off in the middle of the tour for some performances of Floating in Moscow.

But he was back in time for a two-week run of the show at London's Barbican Centre:


Once that was over, it was time for me to say goodbye to one intern and welcome another!

For the past two years, August has been a crazily busy month spent in Edinburgh for the Fringe. But this year we took it easy and instead popped over to Finland for a short run at the Helsinki Festival:



The autumn saw the Bishop's and their Doubtful Guest back on the road:



The tour started with our co-producing partners at the Theatre Royal Plymouth and reached Leeds' West Yorkshire Playhouse in time for Halloween:


Finally, the year ended with Hugh and his friends at the National Theatre Studio where they've been busy preparing a potential new show called Invisible Town:



Thank you again to everyone who's seen a show, read the blog, watched a video or commented on the wall of our Facebook groups.

So, it's time for me to officially sign-off for the year. We'll be back in January and can definitely guarantee that 2009 will be even more exciting than this! Best of all, we'll be reporting all of it right here on the blog. Come join us...

What a week...

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

Phew! Here at Hoipolloi headquarters, we’ve just about calmed down and caught up on sleep after our very busy week with The Doubtful Guest at Cambridge Arts Theatre. And what a week it was...

Six performances in just four days, and more than 1,700 people saw the show. That’s a Hoipolloi record for sure! It was wonderful to receive such great support in our home town. In the last twelve months we’ve staged Floating, Story of a Rabbit and The Doubtful Guest in Cambridge and our audiences have grown and grown. Hits from the Cambridge area on our website and this blog went through the roof last week, and we had some very favourable write-ups from the local press and the Cambridge University newspaper Varsity (articles are here and here). And The Doubtful Guest video trailer on YouTube has now been viewed over 1,000 times!

The company are enjoying a well-deserved week off at the moment, but The Doubtful Guest will be brooding in Leeds next week and Cardiff the week after that. Click here for the full tour schedule and, for good measure, here’s The Doubtful Guest video trailer one more time!

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.

Video interview with Hugh Hughes

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

After a gentle summer lull, things are getting busy again at the Hoipolloi office. The Doubtful Guest is going back on the road in October and November: you can find all the tour dates here. We’re also preparing to mount an exhibition at CB2 café in Cambridge in September. It will feature work by renowned photographers Geraint Lewis and Richard Heeps, who have been photographing Hoipolloi shows since the company was founded almost fifteen years ago. Most of the work will be for sale, so if you want a Hugh Hughes print or a picture of The Doubtful Guest on your wall, head for CB2! The exhibition starts Monday, 1st September.

In the last blog post, Simon told us about his trip to Helsinki with Hugh Hughes. Just before they left for the airport, Hugh was in the office, and I grabbed him for a moment, sat him in front of a video camera and conducted an interview for your collected viewing pleasures.

In the first video, Hugh talks about how he came to make his award-winning show Floating, how he met Sioned Rowlands at a voice workshop in Romania and how he hopes his shows will help people make connections. In the second part, Hugh talks about his next show Invisible Town, Heidegger and his mother’s garden shed. Enjoy!

Part 1:



Part 2:

Rabbiting around in Helsinki

Posted by Simon Bedford (Marketing & Touring Manager, Hoipolloi)

It's Monday evening and I'm now back home after my trip over to Helsinki with Hugh and Aled. Although international touring is exhausting in its planning, the pay-off of actually travelling out to the final destination is almost always worth the effort.

And Helsinki definitely didn't disappoint, with plenty of interesting stories to share!

The trip commenced on Thursday last week with a very early flight out of Heathrow (we checked in at 6am) with the delightful Finnair. Perhaps the most bizarre part of the flight was the addition of a CCTV camera at the front of the plane, giving us first a pilot's eye and then a bird's eye view of take-off and landing. It's actually quite fun to see the world become minature as the plane climbs up into the clouds but I'm not so sure I wanted to see us zoom down the runway and I definitely didn't enjoy seeing the pilot's (increasingly erratic) attempts to line us up with the runway to prepare for touch-down!

Over in Helsinki, the company were performing at Korjaamo, a new(-ish) theatre in the city. Actually to describe it as a theatre is a complete underestimation of what takes place there - it's actually a converted tram depot, with two gallery spaces, two theatres, a trendy bar, a delicious restaurant, a tram museum and even a TV studio (I think I made it onto Sub, a Finnish TV channel one night - in the background behind a continuity announcement!).

Anyway, I made this little video, which will give you a slightly better sense of the space we were performing in...



I think that Hugh and Aled were really happy with the show. It's always tricky to work out whether people outside the UK will totally understand and respond to the show in the same way but it's always fun/interesting to see what happens!

Our time at Korjaamo was part of their STAGE Festival, which in turn was part of the wider Helsinki Festival. With the city in a truly cultural mood, we found art popping up in lots of random places and on Friday evening, we were entertained by numerous choirs (including a group of Helsinki's policewomen) everywhere we went. They were at Korjaamo and even at a restaurant where we ate that night. The brochure for this mini-festival also provided us with our other entertainment for the evening - reading the different English translations of the copy...

For example, how do you fancy seeing some...

"Elderly young people pull solid rock songs about streetcars amd [sic] booze-vapored moments of enlightment"

or how about...

"The best female vocalists sing their audience into oblivion"

or my favourite...

"Love poems and sounds of liking a special person"

Actually I shouldn't mock too much as Finnish people speak far far better English than my very poor attempts at basic Finnish! I think I managed only to master "thank you" or "kiitos".

And it is a big "kiitos" to Raoul and all the staff at Korjaamo for inviting us over to Helsinki and making us feel so welcome.

Finally, as a way of bringing my trip neatly to a close and in tribute to the tram depot that hosted us for a few days, the final leg of the journey back to my flat in England was made by tram. Although this time sadly from the far less glamorous location of Croydon!

Hoipolloi elsewhere on the web...

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

I've just given our MySpace page a long overdue update and created a Hoipolloi Facebook Group to complement the Hugh Hughes Appreciation Society.

If you'd like to join either of the groups or add us as a friend on MySpace please feel free to click the links above. (It'd be great if you could write on the Facebook wall too, at the moment it's depressingly bare!)

Don't forget that you can subscribe to this Blog by clicking on the menu to the right. And if you haven't done so already, have a look at our YouTube channel for video previews of The Doubtful Guest and interviews and backstage footage with Hugh Hughes.

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!