Three French Hens...

We're really storming through the year now! If you've just arrived at the party, we're reviewing the year and here you can find part one and part two.

JUNE

Hugh and Aled returned to the UK after their American tour. It was officially a smash hit with more lovely comments: one review, on the Charleston City Paper's Spoleto Buzz Blog, began with these words:"Hugh Hughes made me cry. It's a good thing".

The same blog also named Story of a Rabbit the best show at the festival, calling it "pitch-perfect theater". The Lantern said: "some in the audience were left with tears in their eyes, while others had smiles on their faces". The best comment though has to be in a review in the Charleston SC newspaper which urged people to go and see Story of a Rabbit with a wonderfully Hugh-ish call to arms: "embrace it, and remember that Life IS spectacular!"

Not quite everyone agreed though, and critic Tim Page got a bit of an ear-bashing from audience members who disagreed with his not so charming review of the show!

When one tour ends, there’s always the risk that there will be an empty hole left, and a sad cry for more performances. Fortunately June wasn’t just the end of the USA tour but also the month when it was announced that Hoipolloi would be taking not one, but TWO shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This is one of my favourite of David’s blogs, mainly because of the insanely cute picture of a cat in a bag.

As if things couldn’t get more exciting than the Edinburgh announcement and the cat photo, June also revealed that The Scotsman listed both The Doubtful Guest and 360 in its Top 100 shows to see at the Fringe feature.

JULY

Of course July was mainly focused on gearing up for Edinburgh, but one of the fold, Ben Frimston, was busy being a television star… Ben has performed in Hoipolloi’s last five ensemble shows, but somehow managed to find time to appear in a Rowntree’s Randoms advert.



And if that video wasn't enough, David made his video debut with Simon as they selected the winners of our little competition for Edinburgh tickets...



Other highlights of the month included the arrival of the 360 badges and Hugh’s performance at Latitude.

Posted by Marieke Audsley (Marketing & Admin Assistant, Hoipolloi). Thanks to LizJones112 for the photo

Four calling birds...

Welcome to day two of our special round up of 2009, undoubtedly Hoipolloi's busiest ever year. I worked out earlier that this year we've worked on 5 full shows plus 1 show in development and 1 mini-project. Wow! And if you missed it, part one of our round-up is here.

APRIL

Still on tour and making new discoveries…Simon made a note of all of the places in Tasmania which have connections to the UK: Brighton, Kettering, Launceston, Tamar, Swansea, Melton Mowbray, Richmond, Ross.

Although there was also plenty of fun to be had back in Cambridge, especially with Steffi’s word of the week podcast. One of the highlights was ‘truculent’, which apparently Steffi originally associated with truffles and toffee. Yum!

Amazing April also saw the 100th blog post, and Hugh announced the title for his new show…360.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Hoipolloi took part in the Made In England celebrations for St George’s Day. Made In England was a special artistic adventure assembled by the BBC and Arts Council England, which took place all over the country on Thursday 23rd April.

Hoipolloi led The Full English, which involved a performance in front of Milton Keynes Theatre, a double-decker bus journey to Luton, performances on a commuter train travelling from Luton to St. Pancras and a final performance at St. Pancras itself, alongside a choir of school children singing a new national anthem composed for the day.

MAY

This was the month when David’s post was advertised as up for grabs and I got terribly excited and wrote a letter begging Hoipolloi to pick me. I thought I’d scuppered my chances when I had to ask to move my interview date due to one of my final exams. Luckily Simon, Louise and David very kindly let me come on another day.

I was so nervous that as I crossed the road to get to the office I tripped over on my brand new shoes, looking like a fool in front of all of the pedestrians on Mill Road. Oops. Although I must have done something right in the interview as a few weeks later Simon rang to offer me the job. Hurrah!

While Simon, Louise and David were busy interviewing keen beans like me, Hugh and Aled were wowing audiences with Story of a Rabbit. They got some lovely reviews, too. The Charleston SC Newspaper's review described the show as one "that links the audience together with laughter, song and tears" whilst the Charleston City Paper enthused, "you're going to be talking about how inventive and charming it is for the rest of the festival."

Posted by Marieke Audsley (Marketing & Admin Assistant, Hoipolloi). Thanks to Ansik for the photo

Five Gold Rings...

Welcome to the Hoipolloi Advent Blog! It is the final week in the office before we all take a break to enjoy the delights of Christmas and New Year so we thought we should do something special.

Instead of five gold rings, you get five blog posts this week. Lucky you! As it is the end of the year I thought it would be fitting to do a nice little round up of 2009. Of course I only joined the team in August, so I have trawled through all of David’s posts from January to July in order to get the low down on all of the exciting things that happened before I rocked up. So this is in effect, the Hoipolloi blog 2009 ‘digested’; if you didn’t get a chance to follow the whole thing this year, then do not despair, the key events will be reported right here...

JANUARY

Hugh was a busy bee performing The Wonderful World of Hugh Hughes at The Junction in Cambridge. We are big fans of The Junction here at Hoipolloi and we can highly recommend Gomito’s Christmas show, A Merry Little Christmas, which is being performed there at the mo.

Hugh also performed sneak previews of his new show Invisible Town at the Barbican in London. As I wasn’t there I’m afraid I can’t fill you in on the intimate details of the performance. Although I will take this opportunity to say how much I enjoy following the yellow line which takes you from the tube station to the Barbican. It always makes me feel a little bit like Dorothy following the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz.

FEBRUARY

February was a month of great adventures with Hugh, Aled and Sioned flying to Singapore, where Hugh and Aled performed Story of a Rabbit at the National Museum. Meanwhile, back in Blighty, Shon starred in a Radio 4 documentary about limericks. The show was put together by the performance poet John Hegley. John introduced Shon with the following lovely lines...

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.

MARCH

More exciting travels for the gang, with performances across Australia, including Floating at the incredible Sydney Opera House. At the same time, we revived the classic My Uncle Arly in London and Los Angeles and ended up with a time where both shows were on stage at exactly the same time!

When Hugh and the crew zipped over to Melbourne they experienced an earthquake during the tech rehearsal of Floating. Luckily it was only a little one, lasting for about thirty seconds but poor Tom was caught up on a rickety balcony at the time.

To round things off, here's a video of Hugh Hughes' day trip to Anglesea (that's the one near Melbourne, Australia and not Hugh's homeland in Wales!). We'll see you back here tomorrow for the next installment...

Posted by Marieke Audsley (Marketing & Admin Assistant, Hoipolloi). Thanks to Jerry 7171 for the photo

Plans...

The sun is shining, it is Friday afternoon, and the smell of mulled wine being brewed for the festive season is about, but Simon and I are being very good and working hard, in spite of the potential distractions (I do like a good glass of mulled wine). As you may have seen on Simon's last post we have announced some more dates for 360, so if you missed it in Edinburgh then Spring is the chance to book in for 70 joyful minutes with Hugh Hughes either in Sydney, Oxford or Liverpool.

Simon has very bravely (or maybe 'foolishly', would be more appropriate) handed over the majority of the responsibility for the marketing of the show over to me. As 'the intern', I feel very honoured to be promoted like this, and to give you an insight into my new daily life, and to prove that we do more in the Hoipolloi office than drink tea, eat cake, and discuss red carpet fashion, here's a lowdown of how the 360 plans are going...

Our venues are booked and contracts sorted. Even though the performances aren't for a few months, all the legal stuff - pages with clauses, and lots of jargon - get signed way in advance to ensure the venue and company know exactly what the deal is. I've never been very good with big legal words, and still haven't perfected my 'official' signature, so Simon deals with the contracts.

In order to spread the word we'll need literally thousands of posters and flyers. Liverpool and Oxford - watch out for the iconic blue clouds and face of Hugh on the 360 posters hitting you soon! We are using similar print to Edinburgh, although we need to ask our designers to make some alterations to the venue and performance dates. Otherwise we would end up with rather a few confused audience members looking for Hugh at the Pleasance Courtyard in March. We're also changing the quotes on the publicity. Some lovely things were written by the press in the summer, and we're so proud that we want to put them on our flyers, and that way you can see them too. Once the designs have been finalised they can be sent to the printers and from the printers the publicity will go to the venues. In order to give people time to notice the posters, check their diaries and book tickets, we usually send print out a few months before the performances.

We always like to let friends of Hugh know directly that he will be performing again. So he has been writing some letters, and I have started writing some letters, and sometimes the venues will also send out letters too. We love email, but you can't beat a nice bit of snail mail can you?

Something else we are very keen on this time round is creating an education pack for drama teachers and students. I was mightily inspired by the ones offered by the marvellous National Theatre, so I've started making a 360 one myself. In order to get a bit of extra help from some experts I'll be visting the education department at the Everyman in a few weeks. I've never been to Liverpool before, so I'm very excited about having an adventure. I'll have quite a lot of time to kill after my meeting and before I get my train back to Cambridge, so if anyone has any 'top tips for what to do in Liverpool' then do let me know!

So there you have it, the update so far. I'll keep you informed as plans progress.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Photo by Geraint Lewis

New UK dates for 360

Just a quick blog post from a dark and wet Wednesday evening in Cambridge!

I will leave Marieke to do a far more interesting post on Friday when she's back in the office but for today, I wanted to let you know that we've just announced some further touring for Hugh Hughes in... 360.

In addition to a return to Australia to perform at the Sydney Festival (performances from 22 to 30 January 2010), we'll also be doing shows back in the UK in early March with a return to both Oxford Playhouse (3 March) and the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool (4 to 6 March).

We haven't had a chance to update the main website with these new dates but full details can be found either by clicking the individual links above or they're posted at the top of the right-hand bar of this blog.

Ok, sales message over. You can get back to your normal routine!

Posted by Simon Bedford (Producer, Hoipolloi)