Festivals:Tents, a bedsit, nice people and booze

Greetings.

It's been a busy few weeks, again. I'm beginning to understand the saying 'feast and the famine.' So, whilst there is a swirl in the water, I'm going to attempt to surf, paddle and struggle until the swirl dies down and I'm back sipping tea and staring out of the window again... 

Latitude and Camp Bestival

 

As part of the 90's BPM show with Poejazzi myself, Joshua Ideuhen, Bridget Minamore, Chimene Sulleyman, Rosie Knight and James Massiah performed 90's influenced pieces at both Latitude and Camp Bestival. Here's a peice that the nice people at Latitude got me to perform called The Colour Orange

 

A Tale From The Bedsit

 

 Last week I finished the final development phase for my first solo show A Tale From The Bedsit. As part of the process, we had a room in the Camden Lock Hotel opposite the Roundhouse for a week. I stayed there for 2 nights and we did 2 sharings in there, which went well, it was very intimate and quite relaistic in comparison to the bedsit I originally lived in back in Brighton. Then on the Thursday, as a test, we moved the set (amazingly designed by India Banks and Lucy M) into the studio theater at Roundhouse and invited 40 people into the space with me and I performed the show and it was probably the best one so far! The nest stage for the show, is a preview on the 23rd August at Hoxton Hall then a 3day performance at Bestival with the full show debuting in November at Roundhouse. Exciting times...

Forthcoming EP and wee up date!

Hello!

It's Monday and I've just got back from Latitude festival yesterday, had a great time. I was performing as part of the 90's BPM show and apart from a 7 hour journey to get there from London, due to a man on the roof of Ipswich station with pants on his head (if you don't believe me read HERE) it was a whole heap of fun.

There's been a quite a few gigs of late, Purely festival, Brockley Jack Scratch to name a few, most with Conrad Murray who I work with regularly, we both had a lot fun. But on the 7th July I was invited to perfrom at the Cabaret Lounge, which is a night run by a singer and artist called Airlie Scott. I took Conrad with me and we did a full 25 minute set so I was able to mix it up with straight spoken word and music, which I don't get to do very often, I even played the snare drum for one of Conrad's solo tracks. It was a wicked night and we were well looked after. It was a different sort of gig to what I'm used to but I really enjoyed it. It's set in a restaurant called Toulouse Lautrec and is very well set up for small gigs, there's even a camera over the piano keys so the audience can see what the pianist is doing! Anyway, I was able to perfrom 2 tracks from the EP myself and Conrad are working on called The Dice That Rolled A 3, and luckily we had it filmed and recorded, so below is a one of those tracks, called No Frills. 

From next week, I go into the final development phase for my first solo show A Tale From The Bedsit so I'll keep you all posted. 

Enjoy

Paul

Paul, where have you been and what are you doing?

Well, I hear you (don't) ask...

I've been a bit slack with updating this, but I guess that means that in-between watching reruns of Peep Show and Don't Flop rap battles I have actually been doing some stuff. So before I mention what’s coming up, I think it only nice I mention a few things that I've been up too.

Since February gigs wise I've been lucky enough to feature at The Patchwork Club, Platform @ The Ritzy, Come Rhyme With Me in both Brighton and London, and also at Look Mum No Hands as a fund-raiser for the charity CALM. I also did a weeks run, for the third time, of The Great Escape (A Borrowers Tale) as part of the Imagine Children s Festival at The Southbank Centre, which of course was a lot of fun.

I've also been working on some more workshop projects with Battersea Arts Centre as part of their Homegrown young people's program for 18-25 year olds, for the Brave New World festival. I also worked with Farnham Maltings Art Centre in a spoken word project working with some Traveller children from Cranleigh Primary school which was ace, working in part of Surrey that I'd never been to before, and quite different form Horley where I grew up in.

And so to the future! It's been a very long time in my head, and in carious forms and drafts on my PC, but since January my first ever solo project A Tale From The Bedsit is now currently being made and is in it's second stage of development, which I'm very excited about. It's essentially me telling a story about a bedsit I actually lived in Brighton a few years ago, and some of the things that went on. I say it's a solo project, but in reality, it isn’t, as it firstly took the Roundhouse to commission me to do it, and produce it, and for them to bring in a director, which is Stef O'Driscoll who's quite frankly breathed a whole new lease of life into it as a project and really helped me to shape the writing. Were currently rehearsing all this week at Battersea Arts Centre, and have bought in a sound designer, Phil Davies who's a don! There's going to be 2 scratches coming up at the Roundhouse on 22^nd April.

I'm also working on a show that will be heading to the Lattitude festival with Poejazzi, called 1990BPM, so, along with, Joshua Iduhen, Chimene Sullymen and Bridget Minamore, were all busy working on pieces to do with the 90's...and to top it all off, in conjuction with the bedsit show, I'm working on a EP with Conrad Murray called The Dice That Rolled A 3.

Hopefully it won't be so long until I update this again

Until next time

Paul