Author: Jon Keevy

An abandoned letter to Theatre makers

/ Jon Keevy / 14 Comments

Theatre is great. Most anyway. Actually only some. But 90% of everything is crap and people don’t avoid cinemas because 90% of the films suck. Your theatre is definitely in that magical ten percent of goodness. I know this because you tell me. I can see by the care you put into your facebook event, letting me know who the cast and director are and the dates and time while leaving out any info on subject matter so I would have a nice surprise when I come watch your show. I don’t even know whether I’m going to laugh or cry. Or the way you playfully make a hideous poster and stick it up on poles all over the city, I’ll certainly not forget that image no matter how much I want to. I love the sassy way you challenge Capetonians not to be lazy, because that’s obviously why they don’t come to theatre. Sheer laziness. Never mind that they flock in droves to night markets, gigs, gallery openings, beerfests and quirky little film festivals.

Oh shit, I moved off sassy satire into outright sarcasm. That’s not what I meant to do. I meant to parody the thinking of marketing in the theatre scene, instead I just got angry.

Look, I don’t have a degree in marketing or sales or anything other than theatre. But I can see that if you are not giving people reasons to see theatre then they won’t. I go watch shows because I work in theatre, I have a professional interest. So if you see me at your show it’s not because you did anything right. You can only measure that by counting strangers.

TheatreSports has lasted for 18 years, which makes it a pretty successful company. It has no sponsorship or funding other than what people pay for tickets. I’ll be the first to admit that our marketing is patchy at best, but we have one incredible strength: we give people the reason to see our show. We don’t tell people how good we are, our awards, how long we’ve been running for or that theatre is an amazing cultural phenomenon that deserves support. We tell them that it’s hilarious improvised comedy. And when they come for hilarious improvised comedy, we give it to them.

Essentially marketing is telling people what you have for them. You cannot get people to pay to see something they don’t want to and you can’t get someone to come back if you can’t deliver.

So, semi-fictional people I began addressing at the start, look at the points of contact you have with the public – your posters, releases and facebook/blog posts – and ask yourself what reason you’re giving people to see your show.

 

Countdown to iQonga

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I’m living on avocados and toast. Also coca-cola. My flat is a spectacular mess, covered in rogue glue sticks, peelings of latex and foam chips. My kitchen counter is an electronics chop shop. My neighbours think I’m building an android. One caught me dancing around dressed as a demonic crow. It’s these awkward balconies that face each other – honestly, who designs buildings like this?

This morning I was elbow deep in the guillotine, trying to get its winch working. These projects have forced me to learn more than I’m comfortable with – latex molding, carpentry, compromise. I sat down and thought about all the skills I’ve learned and how generally I never get to use them again. That’ll change in the coming year. Although I’m borderline broke right now I have work lined up into January with London Road and a little something at the Baxter – between this and the piles of funding applications I’m filling out I’ll be able to do some juicy projects of my own.

Because if there’s one thing about iQonga I hate it’s that it’s once off. It’s an interesting and much needed platform for independent artists in Cape Town and hopefully the work will live again after Saturday, but we work in an uncertain industry in an uncertain time. Often our work gets one shot. It probably doesn’t help that I’m easily distracted by new styles and ideas and that I love so many different media. But I’m OK with that, it’s one of the elements that set theatre apart, it’s ephemeral: for it to live – for it to spread – it has to be reinterpreted constantly.

I’m going a little off track here but –

Theatre is paradoxically accessible and exclusive. Exclusivity as a concept is generally anathema to theatremakers so we tend to down play it, but exclusivity is also the foundation social and cultural groups and we acknowledge this when we talk about target markets. It is accessible because it can be made anywhere for anyone by anyone, it’s limited by imagination. But it will always be exclusive because there is a limit to how many people can see it. Damn you Time and Space!

In marketing terms we have something that could be framed as a negative or a positive: it’s difficult to see or it’s a rare experience. People want to feel special. Too often people trying to sell their show frame the exclusivity as something to overcome, “It’s worth the effort” – instead of emulating the slick marketing of a music event, “One night only – don’t miss out”. Same idea, different frames.

What was I saying before?

Right, messy flat, mad skillz, own projects, etc.

Right. Exactly. Tonight I’m rethinking the multimedia. Although a more honest statement would be that I’m stopping thinking about it, I’m doing it, realising my bad assumptions and doing something else that works.

Sanjin and Amy just walked in. They have declared me mad. But they seem happy.

So… iQonga, Saturday 10th September, The Little Theatre.

1 night.

6 short pieces by some of the hottest theatre talent in Cape Town.

Book via Computicket because seats are limited and you don’t want to be hearing about how great it was over Twitter.

Ink Black Water

/ Jon Keevy / 1 Comment

I can get carried away when describing what I see happening on the stage inside my head. I’m used to the concerned and slightly confused faces I sometimes get and I’m excited by the intrigued and engaged faces I get. What I’m getting when I describe Ink Black Water are the extremes: utter smile-and-back-away or pure wonder. The next question is always the same: How? And my answer is to whip out a notebook or grab a napkin and draw diagrams that no one understands. Except me, of course – I have faith in myself.

Ink Black Water is the collaboration between Sanjin Muftic and me for the iQonga platform at Out the Box (for more on my involvement click HERE). I’ll be building on the techniques we first explored with Under the Stars, Above the Tree in 2008 and then developed with Crowsong earlier this year. Just your typical light table, multiple projector and lamp with shadows and ink set up; also some interesting new experiments with different fluids and a couple of unlikely mechanisms. But all that is slightly lower on the priority list than the fish puppets – and the crows, can’t forget the crows. These are carved out of foam, meaning that my flat requires constant sweeping – the tiny scraps of foam are more tenacious explorers and spreaders than the 17th century Spaniards.

The piece is a dream; of floods, of deserts, of birds, beasts and fish; of crumbling cities and shaking ground. It’s about loss and longing – maybe not for the thing itself, but for the traces of it, the memories you should have. Sanjin and I decided to approach it visually (similarly to how Jason and I worked out Crowsong) and so I’ve been creating storyboards to capture the action – omitting the manipulators at this point, and also the multimedia – mostly because I’m a bit overwhelmed to create that detailed a storyboard (it’s a bugger to draw text layered over cracks and silhouettes of towering heaps of books behind a school of fish playing with a submerged performer).

Most exciting for me though is the chance to work with an old collaborator, the incredible Brydon Bolton. He did the music for my master’s final production (together with Niklas Zimmer) and for Under the Stars. It’s been way too long since then. His compositions are awesome, dark and layered, perfect for the surreal dreamscape.

I’m really excited and damn nervous that my work will be seen up on the Little Theatre’s stage. It seems like a step down from the Artscape Opera House where we did projections for the Flying Dutchman in January, but this piece is much, much more personal.

Ink Black Water is on at the Out the Box festival as part of the iQonga line up on the 10th September 2011. Bookings are open on Computicket.

How to get a head

/ Jon Keevy / 1 Comment

Yes, out of all the possible titles I opted for the most obvious pun. Guilty as charged – etcetera, etcetera.

In my slim defense I have been somewhat sort of almost high on the rich aromas of liquid latex and cough syrup; the earthy smell of clay is just layer of the crafty bouquet of my flat right now. What have I been caught up in that my flat should be put through such punishment?

iQonga. Which probably just deepens the mystery, since very few people seem to actually know what iQonga is. In brief it means ‘platform’ in Xhosa, and that’s the goal of the project curated by Handspring’s Jason Potgieter, to give artists working with puppets and in visual theatre a platform to show off their style. Six or so companies and individuals each get to produce a 10 minute piece, once off, with some money and support from Handspring.

I’m lucky because I get to work on two. And I didn’t even get my proposal accepted. Kim Kerfoot (that mysterious cipher of a theatre-maker who produces work all too rarely) and Sanjin Muftic (my Bosnian buddy and long time conspirator) both wanted a slice of the Keevy. So now I’m designing and building for Kim and fully collaborating with Sanjin.

Kim’s piece is called Guillotine and is about [SPOILERS!] a Guillotine. The biggest challenge of this project is the severed heads. Which are also puppets. After a good chat with Janni Younge about the process I dove into a bucket of rapidly hardening plaster of paris. I would be working with materials that were new to me and with clay, which I haven’t seriously played with in years. I’ll put the whole process into a tutorial (including where to buy the good stuff cheap) and post it after iQonga, I promise.

The clay was like coming home to Sunday lunch. I didn’t even know how much I’d missed it. I first made about 10 ‘sketches’ in plasticine and then Kim picked the characters he wanted. I sculpted them full size in clay and cast plaster molds. I messed up a couple of times and ruined one bucket before I nailed the process. I like working alone and at my own pace. I’m a slow learner, but a tenacious one.

So then the latex went in. It smells disgusting. Like ammonia. Like week-old urine.

But when I peeled the dry faces out of the molds I was stunned. I knew it was meant to be an amazing material – I just sort of assumed I’d have to have a few duds before I got the hang of it. It is such an easy material to use, as long as the clay and the plaster have been done right.

They need to painted and dressed, but I’m feeling pretty pleased right now.

Guillotine is on at the Out the Box festial as part of the iQonga line up on the 10th September 2011