The other side of the world

Hugh Hughes and Sioned's plane landed safely in Singapore last night. We've just had a Skype conversation between Hugh's hotel and the Hoipolloi office. Hugh said it was very hot and that the decor in his hotel is rather eclectic.

Soon Aled will be joining them, and while he and Hugh stage Story of a Rabbit at the National Museum of Singapore, Sioned will be sharing her expertise in a series of workshops organised by the British Council.

Next Friday, Hugh will be contributing to a symposium on the subject of autobiography in theatre. He'll be joined by theatre practitioners and academics from all over the world, and I know he feels very excited and extremely priveleged to have been given this opportunity by the British Council, who have been friends of Hoipolloi for many years.

Hugh and Sioned have promised to record their jounrey through Singapore and across Australia on this Blog, so keep your eyes peeled!

And finally, another chance to play with Hoipolloi's interactive, international touring map...


View Larger Map

Thanks to Katie Cowden for the photo above - click here for her Flickr photostream.

The future's a little closer

Ladies and gentlemen,

Please excuse the appearance of the blog over the next few days. We're currently in the process of testing the new website.

For the time being I need to test how the blog entries feed into the new site and make sure everything is working as it should.

So, if you're a regular reader, please bear with us whilst we push the new site to its limits. Normal service will resume next week.

Thank you!

Simon (Marketing & Touring Manager, Hoipolloi)

Getting AmbITion...

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

It's Sunday afternoon and I'm in the office. It's been a busy weekend, making sure that all was well with the performances of The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes and preparing for a full day of interviews tomorrow.

At the moment, I'm struggling to make some projectors work. It's ironic that this is happening just as I intended to be sharing with you Hoipolloi's leaps forward into the digital age. But hey, not everything runs according to plan when you're working with technology!

For the past couple of years, Hoipolloi and a select band of arts organisations here in the East of England, along with colleagues up in the North West have been part of an Arts Council England scheme called AmbITion.

As the name cunningly suggests, this is all about helping organisations to engage in new ways with the digital revolution that continues apace around us.

At its most basic, it's enabled us here at Hoipolloi to sort out our IT infrastructure and improve the way we operate day-to-day from the office. If you've seen The Doubtful Guest, it also helped us to work with a far more powerful set of projections within the show.

But from your point of view, as a reader of this blog and, I hope, a visitor to our main website, the biggest change is yet to come!

For the past couple of years we've been experimenting with a variety of social media tools to help provide a greater insight and engagement with our work.

We've posted videos to YouTube, photos to Flikr, we've created a variety of Facebook groups (here and here) and started this blog. My latest mission is to explore the possibilities of Twitter, which I intend to become an integral part of our communications in the near future.

Up until now, these tools have been fragmented across the web. But this is all set to change and in the next few weeks we'll be releasing a brand new homepage into the big wide world which for the first time brings all these elements together in one place for you to all enjoy.

For the time being, you'll have to be patient with us as it's not quite ready. But I'm stupidly excited about it and will launch it with great fanfare very soon.

In the meantime, if you'd like to find out more about AmbITion, please visit the project's website which is ever expanding with case studies, hints, tips and helpful videos like this one...



I'll admit that it does feature me very fleetingly (!) but more importantly it helps to introduce some of the ideas behind successful digital marketing and people with far more interesting ideas than me. Enjoy!

Genuine or Genu-wine?

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

Hugh Hughes premiered brand new material last night in a sold-out show at The Junction in Cambridge. It was the first time Hugh had shared the work he has done on his new solo show with an audience, and he admitted to me just before he went onstage that he was a little bit nervous!

Here's what Hugh said about the show in the programme notes:

"In some ways tonight's performance will be very different from my previous shows. I will be onstage completely alone, with no set, costumes, props, music or multimedia.

But I hope that together we will be able to fill this empty space using our imagination. I believe this will allow me to share my experiences in new ways and to make more intimate connections with audiences than ever before."

I was in the rehearsal room with Hugh a little bit last week. It really was fantastically exciting to see Hugh continuing to experiment with theatrical forms, never content to re-use an old artistic formula, as he seeks new and different ways to communicate with his audiences.

There's a moment in the show when Hugh tells the audience about a game he used to play as a child, and we've found ourselves playing it in the Hoipolloi office today! If someone says something a bit unexpected, you ask, "Are you being genuine or genu-wine?" "Genuine" means they're telling the truth, "Genu-wine" means they're joking. It's a little childish but I think Hugh would approve of that!

All the performances for this week have now completely sold out but we very much hope to take Hugh's solo show out again in the near future.

Keep checking in with this Blog for all the latest updates!

The Dong With the Luminous Nose flies to LA

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


The Dong With the Luminous Nose and The Pobble With No Toes will soon be flying to Los Angeles, as Hoipolloi revives its comic and colourful production My Uncle Arly: a show based on the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear.

First performed in 2002, My Uncle Arly has been one of Hoipolloi's most popular shows. It was nominated for a Total Theatre Award in 2003. It was also the first Hoipolloi show I ever saw, back when I was seventeen!

The tour has been organised in association with WebPlay, a company which allows primary school children in Britain and America to talk online, and discuss a play which will be performed in both of their countries. This year's project will link London with Los Angeles.

The first performances of My Uncle Arly will be at the Unicorn Theatre from 11 to 13 March. Then the company will be flying to Los Angeles to perform at UCLA from 27 to 29 March.

To get you in a silly mood, I'll leave you with a stanza from my favourite Edward Lear poem, The Dong With the Luminous Nose. (Click here to read the whole thing.)

Slowly it wanders,pauses,creeeps,
Anon it sparkles,flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
And those who watch at that midnight hour
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as the wild light passes along,
'The Dong! the Dong!
'The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
'The Dong! the Dong!
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'