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We’re mid-way through construction of Terrapin’s new schools touring show. Space Neighbours, written by Nathan Maynard, is set in an alien gaseous world and rich in fart jokes, with an undercurrent of hard truths about invasion. I’ve tried to design the show to be minimal in impact and maximal in presence, using inflatables for the…
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How can we find and tell stories when connection is fleeting? With a team of Terrapin folk, I’ve just wrapped up a seven week unmapped exploration at the Migrant Resource Centre’s Youth Drop-in program, seeking to develop a way of working and a relationship that can grow in the coming years. Young recent arrivals to…
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I can’t divulge what giant character I’ve been working on for the last eight months, but in a few weeks the result goes public. The brief has been exacting. It has to represent in ways that people young and old can be proud of: to bridge biology and legend, and carry echoes of the first…
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In May and June I granted myself a three week residency. Artist residencies can be excellent for rigour and focus, but they are often an impossibility for sole parents. Applying also involves a lot of paperwork, uncertainty and waiting, and contorting to fit the terms. So instead, I granted one to myself and stayed home!…
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Making a show is a deeply iterative process. In the second creative development for Feathers, a room full of people thrashed out the potential and the limitations of the puppets we’ve built, and tested them against Dan Giovannoni’s boisterous script. A list of tweaks and changes emerged, some necessary for narrative or performer comfort, some…
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As a self-confessed Luddite I admit that there are some transformative apps out there. Since learning about the whiteboard app Miro in a Disaster Design course I’ve been applying it to collaborative creative processes, and it’s solving many issues. Working remotely or internationally, lack of contact between writers/designers/composers, ideas that fall by the wayside, performers…
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A small Terrapin contingent traveled to Nagoya this month to develop a new work with Japanese artists. Set in a possible future of rising seas and shrinking islands, it’s a work that demands climate-conscious treatment. The story will be told using objects found in any theatre – brooms, ladders, blocks – and the stuff of…
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Creative development for a new show begins with long-suffering performers, pegs and stickytape. You might not see it yet, but Greta Jean and Bella Young will eventually be two cockatoos and a ferret. The process of developing new work is iterative, with the design, script, and direction responding to each other as the storytelling becomes…
