~ The Middle Ages ~
This period was when we found Dave Bere, and Sarah Ratheram, two actors who would go on to become members of the company, and help to mould both the work and the company. The company finally had a stability of performers that could go from show to show to forge a very distinctive Ophaboom style. It was also a period where we explored a number of different styles mixed in with Commedia as we continued to strive for the best shows we could make.
Whilst the crowning success of the early period was arguable going to Venice carnival for five years running, and performing at the Almagro festival, the Middle ages saw the company taken on by a French agency, Cote du Cour, which expanded and solidified the French touring. The company also had success in Edinburgh, and travelled off continent for the first time, and eventually secured some funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain.
The first show was Alchemy. Having worked on the zanni in Richard III, and added the Inammoratti with Romeo and Juliet, it was decided that we should now look at the character of Pantalone. After much debate we decided not to do another cover of a shakespeare play, although we knew there were certain advantages to it, such as easier marketing and a ready made plot to play with and joke against, we didn’t want to get stuck as a company that does Commedia pastiches of Shakespeare.
The company auditioned for four new members to develop two shows - Alchemy, the long show, and a new street show - Don Balderdash, since we had found that Richard III worked well in festivals a way of bringing in audiences for our longer shows. (We had thought we had retired Richard at the point, but it was later revived, and went on to perform even more shows - over one thousand over it’s life time.) The new cast members were: David Bere, Julie ?, Sarah Ratheram and Grant ?.
The shows themselves were mixed. Don Balderdash never really worked as a street show, only really showing promise a few times, for example in Limoges and Kulmbach. It was a kind of take on Don Quixote. We tried to make sure every member of the cast had an equal amount of stage time - unlike Richard III, where there were very clear status’s of character. Unfortunately that lead mostly to it being a mess. There wasn’t enough time in a twenty five minute street show to establish the characters and get plot across.
Alchemy did work, more or less. With such a large cast, the songs - many in Latin, due to the theme of alchemy, were very powerful. It went down well in Kulmbach in Germany, and in Domfront France in particular. It suffered a little in the middle of the tour when Geoff got jaundice (!) and having decided to go to Chalon in France instead of Aurillac and suffering from not knowing the festival and Geoff being ill. It also suffered from the same afflcition in Jersey, which was a shame as we were building a following there from Romeo and Juliet. (It also suffered from not being allowed to perform in Guernsey due to it being ‘about witchcraft!')
It was at the start of the Alchemy tour that we received funding from the Lottery for a new van, and the remarkable stage, lovingly made by John Broadbent, which would become our traveling home.
In the next show, Miller’s Tale, we returned to a known story. This show mixed Commedia with Medieval theatre. We brought in a writer, though this didn’t work brilliantly, and we ended up devising most of the show. but the beginning of the show was fairly tightly scripted, and this saw us saying goodbye to Pedro Muscadet and Mr. Spavento, as they were taken off by death at the start of the play. We would still be performing with those two up until the end of this period in 2002 in Richard III, but they were retired as far as new shows were concerned. In this piece, Howard played the pantalone figure - John the carpenter, and Geoff played a capitain - Absalon. We used puppets, and for the first time made amendments to the back drop, so that it had windows in that we could perform through. It was more or less a faithful rendition of the plot line of Chaucer’s tale.
The show went down well in England, and although it went down well enough in France to get us an agent, we felt in retrospect that it was too wordy. At the same time we reverted to touring Richard III as our street show. The cast was: Howard, Geoff, Sarah Ratheram, Dave Bere and Georgie.
The next show, which was again devised in Selavy, France, was Faustus. This show was greatly influenced by a workshop with a French clown troupe - Les Totors Roberts, whom we had met in Aurillac that previous year. We met up with them for a weekend of sharing work on Selavy. One of the most obvious results of this on our style was that we wore white face beneath the masks. The show was very deliberately theatrical, with a foot lights feel to it - (which we finally got properly when we went to Warsaw to perform for the English theatre there, which was based in a ballet school, and actually had the most wonderful footlights.
The mask of mephistopheles was made as a commission by Ninnian Kinnear-Wilson. It was such a good mask, that from then on we always used Nin’s masks. The centre piece of the show was the vegetable battle in the second act.
This show was a great success, and in many ways a break-through show for the company. It went to the Edinburgh fringe festival, at the Hill Street Theatre, and as a result the company ended up being taken on by Universal Arts. The show went down well in France, especially in Valence, and as at the very end of this period when the show went to Aurillac. It also toured to Warsaw twice, once the year after Edinburgh, and then again as a revival during 2004. Faustus stayed in the repetoire for three years.
The final show of this phase was the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Having tackled gone rather over board with the clowning with Faustus, we decided to try to find a little bit of tragedy to mix with Commedia. The show went well - after an initial hick-up in the second show, and went on to get a five start review and front page picture in the Scotsman in Edinburgh, and we finally got our wish to have full houses and people cuing around the block. The show went well in France too, and went to Montreal festival. The set, which was a rather extravagant tower with puppet gargoyles embedded in them, was designed by Catherine. The show worked well, and together with Faustus toured around the Scottish Highlands and many rural touring circuits in England.
Although it was critically well received, we felt it was rather an odd ending to the show. Unlike in Romeo and Juliet, where we had subverted the ending to leave Romeo and Juliet alive, we took the decision to end this show with all the characters dead. This meant that for us, the show, which worked really well as theatre, left us without the usual rapturous applause we were used to from Comedy. Audiences loved it, it worked, but obviously we couldn’t get the kind of feel-good response that we had to Faustus at the end. As Commedia performers we missed that.
The seeds of the next phase of Ophaboom were thus sewn at the end of this period. Dave Bere decided to leave after five years of outstanding commitment to the company, and he did his final show of Faustus in Aurillac, where he was presented with his mephistopheles mask and applauded by the French audience. (He did subsequently return for a two week tour to Warsaw and Krakow in 2004.) Geoff and Howard had directed a version of Romeo and Juliet, (not the ophaboom version, but a new devised one) where they met up Nic Kellington and Claire Jones, who were asked to join the company. Although the link with Universal Arts had been good for a while, it was felt that we were being pushed into more main stream theatre, which we were happy with if we could keep the rural touring networks going, but it became clear that a choice would have to be made. We chose to keep the rural touring as this community and communal aspect to our work was important to us, and to the nature of the work. The company therefore split amicably from Universal Arts. Added to this, after years of wrangling with the Arts council lead to an ultimatum - either we get some proper funding to create our work or we fold. We got funding, and thus the later years begun....
Whilst the crowning success of the early period was arguable going to Venice carnival for five years running, and performing at the Almagro festival, the Middle ages saw the company taken on by a French agency, Cote du Cour, which expanded and solidified the French touring. The company also had success in Edinburgh, and travelled off continent for the first time, and eventually secured some funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain.
The first show was Alchemy. Having worked on the zanni in Richard III, and added the Inammoratti with Romeo and Juliet, it was decided that we should now look at the character of Pantalone. After much debate we decided not to do another cover of a shakespeare play, although we knew there were certain advantages to it, such as easier marketing and a ready made plot to play with and joke against, we didn’t want to get stuck as a company that does Commedia pastiches of Shakespeare.
The company auditioned for four new members to develop two shows - Alchemy, the long show, and a new street show - Don Balderdash, since we had found that Richard III worked well in festivals a way of bringing in audiences for our longer shows. (We had thought we had retired Richard at the point, but it was later revived, and went on to perform even more shows - over one thousand over it’s life time.) The new cast members were: David Bere, Julie ?, Sarah Ratheram and Grant ?.
The shows themselves were mixed. Don Balderdash never really worked as a street show, only really showing promise a few times, for example in Limoges and Kulmbach. It was a kind of take on Don Quixote. We tried to make sure every member of the cast had an equal amount of stage time - unlike Richard III, where there were very clear status’s of character. Unfortunately that lead mostly to it being a mess. There wasn’t enough time in a twenty five minute street show to establish the characters and get plot across.
Alchemy did work, more or less. With such a large cast, the songs - many in Latin, due to the theme of alchemy, were very powerful. It went down well in Kulmbach in Germany, and in Domfront France in particular. It suffered a little in the middle of the tour when Geoff got jaundice (!) and having decided to go to Chalon in France instead of Aurillac and suffering from not knowing the festival and Geoff being ill. It also suffered from the same afflcition in Jersey, which was a shame as we were building a following there from Romeo and Juliet. (It also suffered from not being allowed to perform in Guernsey due to it being ‘about witchcraft!')
It was at the start of the Alchemy tour that we received funding from the Lottery for a new van, and the remarkable stage, lovingly made by John Broadbent, which would become our traveling home.
In the next show, Miller’s Tale, we returned to a known story. This show mixed Commedia with Medieval theatre. We brought in a writer, though this didn’t work brilliantly, and we ended up devising most of the show. but the beginning of the show was fairly tightly scripted, and this saw us saying goodbye to Pedro Muscadet and Mr. Spavento, as they were taken off by death at the start of the play. We would still be performing with those two up until the end of this period in 2002 in Richard III, but they were retired as far as new shows were concerned. In this piece, Howard played the pantalone figure - John the carpenter, and Geoff played a capitain - Absalon. We used puppets, and for the first time made amendments to the back drop, so that it had windows in that we could perform through. It was more or less a faithful rendition of the plot line of Chaucer’s tale.
The show went down well in England, and although it went down well enough in France to get us an agent, we felt in retrospect that it was too wordy. At the same time we reverted to touring Richard III as our street show. The cast was: Howard, Geoff, Sarah Ratheram, Dave Bere and Georgie.
The next show, which was again devised in Selavy, France, was Faustus. This show was greatly influenced by a workshop with a French clown troupe - Les Totors Roberts, whom we had met in Aurillac that previous year. We met up with them for a weekend of sharing work on Selavy. One of the most obvious results of this on our style was that we wore white face beneath the masks. The show was very deliberately theatrical, with a foot lights feel to it - (which we finally got properly when we went to Warsaw to perform for the English theatre there, which was based in a ballet school, and actually had the most wonderful footlights.
The mask of mephistopheles was made as a commission by Ninnian Kinnear-Wilson. It was such a good mask, that from then on we always used Nin’s masks. The centre piece of the show was the vegetable battle in the second act.
This show was a great success, and in many ways a break-through show for the company. It went to the Edinburgh fringe festival, at the Hill Street Theatre, and as a result the company ended up being taken on by Universal Arts. The show went down well in France, especially in Valence, and as at the very end of this period when the show went to Aurillac. It also toured to Warsaw twice, once the year after Edinburgh, and then again as a revival during 2004. Faustus stayed in the repetoire for three years.
The final show of this phase was the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Having tackled gone rather over board with the clowning with Faustus, we decided to try to find a little bit of tragedy to mix with Commedia. The show went well - after an initial hick-up in the second show, and went on to get a five start review and front page picture in the Scotsman in Edinburgh, and we finally got our wish to have full houses and people cuing around the block. The show went well in France too, and went to Montreal festival. The set, which was a rather extravagant tower with puppet gargoyles embedded in them, was designed by Catherine. The show worked well, and together with Faustus toured around the Scottish Highlands and many rural touring circuits in England.
Although it was critically well received, we felt it was rather an odd ending to the show. Unlike in Romeo and Juliet, where we had subverted the ending to leave Romeo and Juliet alive, we took the decision to end this show with all the characters dead. This meant that for us, the show, which worked really well as theatre, left us without the usual rapturous applause we were used to from Comedy. Audiences loved it, it worked, but obviously we couldn’t get the kind of feel-good response that we had to Faustus at the end. As Commedia performers we missed that.
The seeds of the next phase of Ophaboom were thus sewn at the end of this period. Dave Bere decided to leave after five years of outstanding commitment to the company, and he did his final show of Faustus in Aurillac, where he was presented with his mephistopheles mask and applauded by the French audience. (He did subsequently return for a two week tour to Warsaw and Krakow in 2004.) Geoff and Howard had directed a version of Romeo and Juliet, (not the ophaboom version, but a new devised one) where they met up Nic Kellington and Claire Jones, who were asked to join the company. Although the link with Universal Arts had been good for a while, it was felt that we were being pushed into more main stream theatre, which we were happy with if we could keep the rural touring networks going, but it became clear that a choice would have to be made. We chose to keep the rural touring as this community and communal aspect to our work was important to us, and to the nature of the work. The company therefore split amicably from Universal Arts. Added to this, after years of wrangling with the Arts council lead to an ultimatum - either we get some proper funding to create our work or we fold. We got funding, and thus the later years begun....