Hugh Hughes Edinburgh diary

Another 360 sell-out last night and four stars from Metro this morning! The review is so good that I really want to quote the whole thing. I think the line we'll end up sticking on our flyers is, "inclusive and delightfully daft, he's the favourite teacher you never had". But in truth, I prefer, "If you've ever had an existential crisis whilst staring into the eyes of a sheep, Hugh Hughes is the man for you"! Click here to read the other bits.

I mentioned in my last post that Saturday's show was unusual. I wasn't in the theatre that night but Hugh has written an account for us. Here it is:


"Saturday's show was full of strange occurrences. I met the audience as they came in. My Uncle Trevor was there, so it was nice to have a familiar face, and I met a man called Patrick, his wife Judith, two sets of twins, four Lauras and a man whose forehead I thought I recognised.

Ten minutes after that, I was walking through Llangefni when a plane flew overhead so low that the whole audience ducked. It was so loud that I had to stop the show for a moment. Even afterwards, the space was vibrating and I found myself wondering if the plane had left a stripe across the sky, so I ran outside for a moment to have a look. I think a lot of people in the audience were probably wondering too and it was easier for me to look because I was already standing up.

When I came back there was a green woman in the audience, who hadn't been there before. Then she collapsed, her neck giving way and her head toppling, first very slowly and then like the moment a rollercoaster goes over the edge. She hit her head on a gong which made a noise which rippled across the space, changing the atmosphere like flicking a switch. I stopped the show and found it quite amazing that we really were having an 'is there a doctor in the house?' moment. A woman in a nurse's uniform jumped out of the audience. She had a klaxon and a megaphone and was shouting and the noise of the plane was screaming again and before I knew it Annabelle our Stage Manager was evacuating the venue.

I thought about continuing the show outside the courtyard but there was a lot of background noise and it would have been hard to find a space. But soon Annabelle told me that the green woman was fine. She'd had a fainting spell and the nurse had said she needed air but actually she'd just got a bit hot and dizzy. She said sorry to me on the way out, even though she didn't need to, and she wasn't green anymore which was a relief.

The audience trooped back in and I went back onstage. It was weird because there was no way I could just pick up where I left off and pretend nothing had happened. But oddly, that was exactly what we all had to try and do together. The audience seemed in good spirits, after all they'd chosen to come back in and hear the end of the story! But in order to do that, it was like creating a mass amnesia where we pretended to forget that anyone had turned green. I went back to Snowdon and wondered if the woman had fainted when we were here last because she suffered from vertigo."

Story Machine

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

Hugh Hughes is spending this week at the National Theatre Studio working on a new show called Invisible Town. He's brought some of his friends along, including Sioned and Aled, and we're all working really hard, trying out ideas for the show.

There's a game we play every day which I'd like to teach you. It's called Story Machine.

Hugh's Story Machine is a huge piece of paper with 100 words written on it. All Hugh's words are to do with his childhood but you can make yours about anything you like! Hugh's words include names, places, emotions, days of the week, activities, and lots more. One of us presses one of the words (which we pretend are buttons on the machine) and then Hugh has to tell us a story to do with that word. Anyone can press any other button at any time, and when they do, Hugh has to incorporate the new word into the story as quickly as he can. Sometimes the actors perform the story as Hugh is telling it, and we also like making up songs about characters in the story.

It's great fun, and if you like using your imagination, like Hugh does, you should try it out!

If you make a really good story come out of a Story Machine, send me an email (david@hoipolloi.org.uk) tell me all about it. I'll pass them on to Hugh, he'd love to hear them!