Forest Fringe TV – Part 1 – May
Forest Fringe TV is a new project for unusual times.
Every Thursday night at 7.30pm, beginning from May 14, the artists of Forest Fringe will present something for you to watch or participate in. It may be a few minutes long. It may be two hours long. It may be a film to watch, or a live digital performance, or something else entirely.
As with the Forest Fringe of old, all events will be free, but with the oppportunity to donate to the artists involved. All donations will go to straight to the artists.
Each Month we will announce a new programme of events. This is the first month.
MAY PROGRAMME:
14 MAY – Little Bulb Theatre – Farewell
Free to watch on Little Bulb’s website here.
Farewell is the final track taken from Little Bulb’s The Album Project (2015). The video features original music and artwork by Little Bulb and their associate artists (Clare Beresford, Dominic Conway, Miriam Gould, Eugénie Pastor, Tom Penn, Alex Scott and Shamira Turner).
The track was conceived and mixed by Alex Scott and mastered by Ed Clarke. The video was conceived and animated by Dominic Conway.
Backstory –
In 2013, following a time of much togetherness during Orpheus, we found ourselves scattered around the country working on different projects. To keep making music together from afar we decided to develop an album by sending each other art packages containing music, pictures, lyrics, ideas and anything else that could fit through a letterbox. The final track, Farewell, began as a piano instrumental by Alex that he then asked us to create overdubs for in our separate locations. Recordings were made with phones, laptops and basic microphones in bedrooms, bathrooms and backrooms of theatres, which Alex then layered together into a swirling collage of disparate voices and instruments colliding together. It was finally released as part of The Album Project in 2015.
Fast-forward five years and we, along with the rest of the world, find ourselves in a very different type of separation. When our friends at Forest Fringe sent a callout for art that could be streamed during lockdown it seemed fitting to return to this piece and try, once again, to collaborate as a long-distance ensemble. The stop motion animation was created using original artwork from each member of the ensemble, sent using the beloved postal service (plus email). Though we could not be together, our pictures and ideas could still co-exist, weaving around each other to form a surreal and dreamlike meditation on friendship, separation, communication and connection. We hope you enjoy it! Thank you very much for watching. And a big thank you to Forest Fringe for setting the ball in motion.
Access Info: This is a premiere of a music video for the Little Bulb song ‘Farewell’. Lyrics are integrated as captions in the video itself.
21 MAY – Rachel Mars & Greg Wohead – Story #1 Returns (A Zoom Of One’s Own)
Free but ticketed event. Book here.
For the past few years Rachel Mars and Greg Wohead have performed their show Story #1 around the UK.
On Thursday May 21 they are performing a live, online version of the show that can be watched from anywhere in the world.
It’s the Zoom performance no one needs, but it’s the one we all deserve.
In Story #1 Rachel Mars and Greg Wohead take Pixar’s 22 Rules for Storytelling and How Stories Make Us Human, make them fuck each other, kidnap the resulting baby and dance out a prophecy of its future life before its barely opened eyes.
It’s a reflective consideration of how and why we construct narrative.
‘Imagine a bullfight without the bull: it would be a set of aesthetic manoeuvres, pretty twirls and pirouettes and so on – but there’d be no danger. The bull, crucially, brings danger to the party… that’s what the real is: the tip of the bull’s horn.’ Tom McCarthy
We promise no less than 100 minutes.
We promise live.
We promise real fictional characters.
We promise a plot.
We promise a surprise twist.
We promise a rupture.
We promise an ending.
We promise a rupture.
‘It’s horrible. Brilliant, scintillating, guillotine catching the sunlight as it falls dazzling, but also horrible.’ Maddy Costa, Exeunt
‘Story #1 is like a live grenade thrown at television: a thrilling exploration of truth, fiction and the strange space between.’ Jonathan Wakeham, Screenwriter
This performance contains explicit sexual content and images and is therefore recommended for ages 18+.
Originally an Ovalhouse seed commission.
gregwohead.com rachelmars.org
28 MAY – The Museum of Hope in the Dark
Free to watch on youtube. Follow this link.
The Museum of Hope in the Dark was created by Forest Fringe in 2018 as a light installation that may on first view appear to be failing but is actually working just as it needs to. A set of messages hidden in morse code, blinking out into the world.
For this version, there will be one short message of hope, translated into morse code and broadcast live as a series of flickering lights, from 7.30pm until midnight, ready to be deciphered by anyone with the patience to do so.
Amidst all this noise we want to try and find hope in small acts of patience and concentration. In the unspectacular effort required to sit and decipher these words, either individually or together online as a community.
‘After my visit to the museum, the darkness doesn’t seem as scary, and hope seems much closer to hand, a background noise always available to tune into.’ (Andrew Edwards, Exeunt)