Hugh Hughes's Rough Book

Happy New Year! It is the sixth day of 2010 and I am "fully" back at work. My brother says calling milk "full" milk is potentially confusing and so he would probably take issue with my statement about being "fully" back at work. To clarify any possible confusion, I mean that I’m back in my studio after taking a break from it.

My break took in Christmas and New Year and a lovely time at home in Anglesey. And a trip to Snowdon. It was not just a trip. It was a treat. A treat of a trip. A tongue-twister of a trip. Better than going to buy sweets on Saturdays when I was an eight-year old boy (the year I loved sweets the most).

The island looked beautiful, lined by the long white-skirted mountains of Snowdon. The air was so clear and the sky so blue it felt like Aunty Glen had been up polishing all night. Spectacular. I did plenty of walking.

2010 has been declared between myself and friends as ‘The Year of Opening New Doors’. It was our joint New Year’s resolution. And one door I’d like to open is to my studio and to the rehearsal room. And so today’s sudden fascination in my studio has led to WORDS AND SYMBOLS.

Once you start to get your head around the idea that a letter, therefore a word, is just a symbol, then a whole new communication system, another visual world of pictorial reality opens.

In fact, I am launching a new series called HUGH HUGHES’ ROUGH BOOK. It is a series of blogs, photos, podcasts etc that shares my on-going work-in-progress. It’s a virtual open studio. It’s rough and ready. I hope you’ll enjoy it and come visit.

Happy New Year!

Hugh Hughes

Hello 2010!

Happy New Year! I hope you all had wonderfully indulgent Christmases with plenty of food and prezzies, snow, carols, decorations and other lovely things, plus brilliant New Year celebrations including bubbly and countdowns and Auld Lang Syne. But alas all good things must come to an end (at least for another 365 days) and 'real life' is back. Of course it's not all terrible and here at Hoipolloi we have many exciting things on the cards. Most excitingly...Sydney. Hugh will be in there performing 360 at the festival. So if you're in Sydney,do go along. If you're not, but you need a holiday, then you should go too. Click here for more info.

As much as I would love to go along for the ride, muggins here will be remaining in Cambridge for the foreseeable future. Aside from freezing my face and fingers on my bike as I cycle around the city in my shiny new shoes, and attempting to stick to my probably un-stickable-to-resolutions, I'll be preparing things for Hugh's trip to Oxford and Liverpool in March. So if you can't make it to Sydney, but you still want to see 360, then here's your chance.

Thanks to Geraint Lewis for the picture of Hugh

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

We're taking a well-needed Christmas break right now but normal blog service will resume in the New Year!

In the meantime, why not flick through our review of the year...
* Part One
* Part Two
* Part Three
* Part Four
* Part Five

Don't forget that we start the new decade with Hugh taking a trip with 360 to the Sydney Festival (22 to 30 Jan) followed by visits to Oxford Playhouse (3 March) and Liverpool Everyman (4 to 6 March). Full details are here.

From everyone at Hoipolloi, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

See you in 2010!

Shon, Steffi, Simon, Sylvia, Marike and of course, Hugh!
And thank you to alicepopkorn for the photo.

And a partridge in a pear tree!

Finally, we've made it to the end of the week and the end of the year! A huge thank you to everyone who's seen a Hoipolloi show this year. And if you've missed anything, you can read about it in part one, part two, part three and part four!

OCTOBER

October was the changing rooms month when we switched everything around in the office. This involved some fun day trips, including one to the dump. It was here that Simon and I rescued the following books from the paper recycling bin: Sebastian Faulks' Charlotte Gray; Industry and Empire by E.J. Hobsbawn; The Path to Genocide by Christopher R. Browning; Safe Outback Travel by Jack Absalom and The Holocaust in History by Michael R. Marrus.

NOVEMBER

Hugh toured Story of a Rabbit with Aled, and learnt to tweet. I’ve never seen anyone throw themselves into twitter with such enthusiasm. Do check out our twitter stream for Hugh’s wonderful musings.

While Hugh was obsessed with twitter, my attention was focused on Cate Blanchett’s dress and my appetite was mainly keen on cake.

Oh, and the reason I mentioned Cate Blanchett's dress was because we won another award! Floating picked up Best Live Theatre from Australia's The Age paper.

DECEMBER

The best thing to have happened so far this month has to have to been the announcement that 360 will be touring in the New Year – Sydney, Oxford and Liverpool, prepare yourselves!

If you haven't seen it already, we've prepared this little trailer for the show!




As well as getting everything sorted for the tour, Simon and I were involved in the 24 Hour Plays at the ADC, which was a lot of fun indeed. And Simon's spent several occasions this year telling our arts world colleagues about we keep up communcation with you guys via the internet.
As you can see it’s been a great year for Hoipolloi and we’d like to thank you all for reading the blog, seeing the shows, sending us emails and generally being fantastic.

And to sing out the year in good cheer, and in the absence of the Hoipolloi staff doing so, here are the muppets (with the help of John Denver) to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!





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

Two turtle doves...

There's an obvious focus to today's part of our review of the year... the ridiculously busy month of August plus we manage to squeeze in September too! If you've missed any of the earlier posts, here you can find part one, part two and part three.

AUGUST

Literally masses of fun things happened while we were in Edinburgh.

We had some sell-out performances, some excellent reviews, one really not so good review, The Doubtful Guest was nominated for a Total Theatre Award, 360 won a Three Weeks Editor’s Award, Shon featured in a HUGE interview in The Scotsman and we all saw lots of excellent shows.

Definitely worth a mention is My Name is Sue, which all of the Hoipolloi team saw and enjoyed. Although David definitely deserves the title ‘most obsessed My Name is Sue fan’. I lost count of how many times he went to see it.

It would take yonks to give you a blow by blow account of everything that happened in Edinburgh, so in neat, bullet point form, here is a list of the top anecdotes from the street team:

* One day in the Courtyard I was proposed to by a man. He asked whether I’d marry him if he bought tickets to see ‘360’. I said ‘of course’, willing to do almost anything to make people see 360. The man then produced two tickets, which he had bought earlier. So I guess I’m engaged then.

* Chris flyered someone who seemed quite interested but then said, "Oh, the time doesn't quite work for me. I've got badminton at six."

* A very inebriated punter wandered into the Pleasance Two dressing room, helped himself to NIE's costume rack and came out holding a megaphone and wearing a Russian policeman's hat and a pair of fluffy knickers.

* Chris got picked out of the audience during a show and found himself doing press-ups on stage, with Denise Van Outen standing over him singing 'Let's Get Physical'.

* A friend of David’s drunkenly pointed her finger into a woman's face and shouts, "You're Gillian McKeith!" It is not Gillian McKeith. It is a not-very-famous actress who is extremely offended that my friend didn't know who she was. Actress shouts as David’s friend. Five minutes later, actress goes back to shout at her some more. Five minutes after that we send someone to ask if she knows any good recipes for lentil soup.

* David flyers a couple who seem really interested in the show. "Where is it?", they ask. "Pleasance Two!", David exclaimed and pointed rather over-excitedly behind him, poking a man directly in the face. It was Simon Amstell.

* David flyers a man with two sons. Conversation as follows:

Father: Sounds interesting. Is it suitable for these two?
David: Yes, absolutely.
Father: So there's no tits or fannies in it?
David: Um... no. It's not really that kind of show.
Father: Oh, OK. Because I have two thirteen year old boys with me, so if you'd said there were tits and fannies in it, they'd have probably become a lot more enthusiastic. It sounds good though, maybe we'll come along.
David: Great, see you there.
Son 1: Dad, when are we meeting Mum and the knobs?
Father: They're not 'knobs', they're your younger siblings.

And if all that weren't enough, here's a fantastic little snippet of Hugh Hughes' pre-show warm-up routine...




SEPTEMBER

September saw the first ever ‘What’s in a Name?’ award for the best show titles listed on the CVs of actors who have sent their details to us at Hoipolloi.

The nominees were:

* Daisy and the washing up gloves
* The Christmas Chimney Pot Plot
* This is a Chair
* Incest and plastic surgery
* Captain Cholesterol and the Grannies from Mars
* Princess Plimsole
* Seasonal Sauce
* Cowardly Custard
* Quidditch Adventure
* Wot No Condoms!
* The Uggs
* Orgasm: the musical
* Scandalous! The musical
* The Lazy Ant
* Mission Possible
* The Pumpkin Eater.

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