I’m finally getting through the backlog of blog posts, so I thought I’d jot down some blether about a recent project that Talk In Colour got involved with.
Soundbites is a collaborative arts project that puts upcoming bands (that’s us!) together with upcoming playwrights (in our case the excellent Alice Birch) to create new theatre pieces mixing together music and drama, culminating in a one-off live performance.
Before Christmas, we sent over two tracks from our upcoming album – Nightshifts and Rocking Horse – and Alice got to work writing a short play inspired by them. Then the week before the performance (aaargh!) we got together with director Mel Hillyard and actors Stephen Fewell and Laura Martin-Simpson to turn it into reality. Although we were under a lot of time pressure, the process was fascinating and fun, and it was a privilege to see the work take shape over our limited rehearsal time.
L-R - Director Mel, Steven, Laura
Thinking faces
We performed the piece, Little Find, at the Soundbites night at Richmix on 28th January to a pleasingly sold-out house. Also on the bill were short plays by Tom Morton Smith (with singer Abdul Shyllon) and Rachel De-lahay (with band Your Girl Likes Us). I may be biased, but I definitely think ours was the best one 🙂
A scene from Rachel De-lahey's play
After the performances, the venue switched over from a theatre to a gig and each band did a short live set. Ours went stormingly well, including mine and Mary’s now-traditional dance moves in Radiophonic Freakout, captured forever on film:
Tinge took some great pics of our gig – here are a couple:
More pics up on Facebook here.
Huge thanks to the Soundbites cast and crew, and to Ginny from Beat Unique for getting us involved.
