Gorey accomplices

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

A quick hello to some fellow Gorey-lovers Hoipolloi have met in cyberspace....

The Edward Gorey House in Massachusetts exhibits original copies of Edward Gorey's illustrations and celebrates his life and work, in the very house in which Gorey lived. It also honours Gorey's compassion for animal welfare issues by supporting local and national animal welfare projects. You can visit their website by clicking here. They've even got Doubtful Guest t-shirts in their online shop!

Goreyography is an online compendium of all things Gorey. There are articles about Gorey being translated into Japanese, first edition Goreys for sale and, my favourite, an online exhibition of the front covers Gorey designed for Anchor paperbacks (not a million miles from the British Penguin Classics series). For a lesson in Goreyography, click here.

Happy browsing!

A pornographic work by Ogdred Weary

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

"Alice was eating grapes in the park when Herbert, an extremely well-endowed young man, introduced himself to her."

What better way to liven up a Monday morning than with some titillating quotations from Ogdred Weary's "pornographic work" The Curious Sofa?

"Downstairs the three of them played a most amusing game of Herbert's own invention called 'Thumbfumble'."

"Ogdred Weary" is, of course, an anagram of "Edward Gorey", the maverick writer and illustrator whose book The Doubtful Guest Hoipolloi have adapted into a rather wonderful play. (You can find out a bit more about the eccentric Mr. Gorey in one of my previous posts here.)

The Curious Sofa is Gorey's only "pornographic" work and retains all the charm and playfulness of the rest of his oeuvre. Gorey's only teasing us by putting the word "pornographic" on the book's cover. Although every page is illustrated in his trademark style, there's nothing too salacious in view. But that's not to say our imagination won't run wild...

"To beguile the tedium of the journey, Albert read aloud from Volume Eleven of the 'Encyclopedia of Unimaginable Customs'."

Don't forget that Hoipolloi's production of The Doubtful Guest is back on tour in the autumn. It's not quite as naughty as an Ogdred Weary book but it's still great fun and The Guardian were kind enough to say that it "captures all the Victorian pastiche, fantastical imagination and ominous air of Gorey's original."

All the tour dates are here and tickets are on sale now! You can also see some video previews of the show here.

"Still later, Gerald did a terrible thing to Elsie with a saucepan."

Where are you now?

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

So Hugh Hughes’ week at the National Theatre Studio has come to an end. It was great to have so many new people working on the production and we made a huge amount of progress on Hugh’s new show Invisible Town. We owe a big thank you to the National Theatre Studio and their magical automated skylights.

If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a video on my last post in which Hugh and Sioned tell us what we might expect from the new show.

In the meantime, I’ll ask you a question Hugh asked all of us at the start of the week.


Where are you now?


(Give yourself a minute to think about it and try and come up with at least seven different answers.)

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!

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!