Internal flights

Right now, according to the tour schedule, Hugh Hughes is up in the air, somewhere between South Carolina and Minneapolis.

Maybe he's listening to the CD I made him before he left. Or maybe he and Aled are having a chat and looking out of the window at the view. Behind them is the wonderful Spoleto Festival. Ahead, more performances of Story of a Rabbit at the Walker Center, Minneapolis.

Story of a Rabbit received its USA premiere two weeks ago. And Hugh and Aled have just waved a cheery goodbye to all the friends they made at Spoleto Festival in South Carolina. Spoleto is an annual arts festival, which programmes an incredible range of classical and contemporary theatre, dance and music.

Hugh and Aled were delighted to have been billed alongside their good friends, 1927, as well as fellow Britons Kneehigh, who have been performing their production of Don John.

Story of a Rabbit has been a huge hit with USA audiences, with some very warm reviews coming in. The Charleston SC Newspaper's review describes the show as one "that links the audience together with laughter, song and tears" whilst the Charleston City Paper enthuses, "you're going to be talking about how inventive and charming it is for the rest of the festival."

Story of a Rabbit will receive three final USA performances at the Walker Art Center this week, from Thursday 28th to Saturday 30th May at 8pm.

Thanks to sjotero for the photo!

360 web page launched!

Hugh Hughes' new show 360 now has its own page on our website! Click here to have a look and learn more about Hugh's latest show.

The new pages include some lovely new pictures of Hugh! The photos were shot by our old friend Geraint Lewis. He, Simon and Hugh did a photo shoot a few weeks ago and had great fun. Click here to have a look at Geraint's own website.

Hugh will be doing a preview performance of 360 at Latitude Festival between 16-19 July as part of the Picks of the Pleasance season. Click here for the official Latitude website.

Hugh and everyone at Hoipolloi hopes you'll be able to join us for performances of 360 which are coming soon. Keep your eyes peeled, we'll be announcing some more tour dates at the start of June...!

Wexner Center Podcast

Final preparations are underway for Hugh Hughes' tour to the USA with Story of a Rabbit. Tom, our Production Manager, will be boarding his plane on Monday, with Hugh and Aled following soon after!

We're extremely excited to be visiting the Wexner Center in Ohio, Spoleto Festival in Charleston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Click here for the full tour schedule and for details of how to book tickets.

Our friends at the Wexner Center have just released a podcast, in which Chuck Helm, their Director of Performing Arts, discusses his memories of seeing Story of a Rabbit at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007 and explains why he's so excited to have to show in Ohio. Click here to have a listen!

Thanks to plemjr for this photo of the Wexner Center!

Wanted: new intern!

I've been working at Hoipolloi for nearly a year now. I am the second ever Hoipolloi intern and, sadly, I will be succeeded by intern number three in the next few months.

I was talking to Hoipolloi’s Artistic Director Shon Dale-Jones about this sad fact last night, and he went so far as to get his thesaurus out to find kinder synonyms for ‘replace’. I decided that ‘supercede’ and ‘supplant’ were even worse, so in the end we decided that I was going on an extended, unpaid sabbatical to return to the company at some unknown point in the future!

We have now opened applications for my position and I have to say that I can’t recommend it highly enough. I remember Sara, my predecessor, getting upset when she was telling me how to do FedEx because it was ‘her’ job and now she was giving it away! (Sara and I are still the only people who’ve ever worked for Hoipolloi who know how to do FedEx – this company would have crumbled without us.)

A Hoipolloi intern can expect to spend three days per week in the office, assisting in a wide range of marketing, production and admin tasks – from helping to manage tours to writing this Blog! It’s a voluntary position (but take it from me, it’s worth it).

And it’s designed to fit around the individual and can be tailored to some extent to your personal interests and ambitions. Although the job is office-based, they’ll be ways to engage with our creative projects and we’ll give you as much hands-on experience as we can.

If you’d like to know more about the job, you might like to click here to read Sara’s farewell Blog entry from June 2008.

To find out more about the job or to apply, please drop me an email: david@hoipolloi.org.uk

The deadline for applications is 8 May.

Thanks to purplemattfish for the photo!

Made In England... and Paris and Switzerland and Norway!

Hoipolloi had a wonderful day last week, celebrating St. George's Day with Arts Council England and the BBC. We took part in Made In England, a huge event taking place over many parts of the country.

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. We then retired to the Betjeman Arms pub for a well-earned afternoon relaxing in the sun!

It was a really interesting project for Hoipolloi to be involved in because we tend to think of ourselves as an international company rather than particularly 'English'! Steffi, who founded the company with Shon Dale-Jones, is from Switzerland; the theatre we make tends to draw more on continental theatrical traditions than British ones - in fact, Shon and Steffi met at the Lecoq school in Paris; and Trond-Erik, one of the five actors in our ensemble, is from Norway!

But as a touring theatre company, we perhaps spend more time than most thinking about where we come from in relation to whichever part of Britain (or the world!) that we're performing, and how we carry our roots around with us wherever we go. This is certainly a common theme in Hugh Hughes' work and something that Hoipolloi all think about a lot.



It was also a chance to celebrate English eccentricity, with the sort of larger-than-life characters that Hoipolloi do best! And it was interesting to hear what Steffi and Trond thought of England and 'the English'. Often it takes an outsider to point out what is peculiarly English! Let's not forget that Oscar Wilde, that great satirist of all things English, was actually from Ireland...

You can click here to see photos from Milton Keynes, click here for photos of the bus journey, click here for photos of the train journey, click here for photos inside St Pancras and click here for a lovely BBC interview with the company. There's some audio stuff on there too!