Things are heating up

With only 3 weeks until Echoing the Ghosts opens at the Corban's Estate chapel building (September 18th), one might say that things have been moving rapidly since our return from Whangarei. We're also performing the same show on September 25th at Galatos.

Last weekend we watched the footage of the Ghosts previews we performed and took things up a notch. Now we are preparing for our first rehearsal in our performance space at Galatos. The set is about to be constructed. I don't want to ruin anything, but this involves suspending things from ceilings and collecting vast amounts of lamps.

Each show is going to be slightly different, the content the same, but with such vastly different venues, the set and lighting must adapt.

The chapel show is going to be more intimate, with the smaller venue. The building itself, being historical in vibe, will become part of the scene; though the show itself has almost no religious content, I can't help but wonder how the building itself could change the lens people view the poetry through. This will be interesting to observe. While we have full sound capabilities at the chapel show, the lighting side of things has required some inventiveness, with what we think will be beautiful results. It's just not the kind of thing you could achieve in a big venue, with a stage like Galatos.

But at Galatos we get to present the result of a three-week series of workshops with moving image artists from the moving image centre as a prelude to the main event. At Galatos, you'll be further away from the poets, but there's capacity for full lighting and more room to move around in.

We've all been rehearsing with our music hard out, and will start rehearsing with our sound tech on the 4th. After so long with these poems, you better believe it feels good when you finally start to get your music cues bang on every time!

Sabrina and Christian just left after an hour or so of extra rehearsing - our multiple person pieces have become so much more complex, and cooler. We've been doing this since 2007 now, and it's great to be at a point where we can now start experimenting a bit more. Daniel and Christian have THE most awesome duet where the product of Jung's mind is pitted against that of Voltaire's. I love it. NIN's music is freaking awesome, travels us everywhere, it is amazing that they made this kind of project possible. I wonder if they ever got our emails saying we were doing it. We did run it by some official representative in Auckland, so it got a 'go ahead.' But I wonder if Trent Resnor himself knows. It would be cool if he did.

Last night Christian, Dan, Shane, Murray Haddow, Anna Kaye and I, trooped into Poetry Live to check out the guest appearance of Gus Simonovic and his new group Printable Reality. The name is highly misleading, because they're actually a brand spanking new performance poetry group. We are pretty stoked because on their website they proudly state that they combine theatre, poetry, music. We think it is about time that another group of people come out and try their hands at it. I'm especially pleased to see that they haven't just taken to reciting poetry over music and thinking that they've made it - but that they've also tried their hands at the theatre component of what we've been doing too. Totally jealous that Siri is Gus's girlfriend and not mine though - a beautiful dancer - oh we've been planning on working dance in since forever, Haddow and Shane did it out at Lopdell a while back, and there was that awesome collaboration that ummm, damn I forget the artists, they presented photos of it at Winter Warmers at the art gallery in 2009, was great. Anyway, awesome to see that in action. Pissed we didn't get to it first!

Anyway, it's time that someone else has come along and stoked the revolution in word again, it was needing it. With us off workshopping for a year, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in spoken word in Auckland aside from Freaky Meat, which has continued to churn out the jewels. It's be great for us to have another group of peeps making stuff along the lines of what we do, great things can only come of it, there will be some local people to respond to, instead of having to turn only to other countries for connection with other people doing what we do, (not that we're about to stop doing that).

They've got a real collection going on, including resident visual artists, and of course Siri Embla, the dancer - who brings other dancers too. So I expect they are going to produce some cool stuff.

Last night I caught their guitarist, and then Gus performing with the guitarist, while Siri danced. One dance was a bizzare thing involving a chair that I won't go into. It was emotive to say the least. They projected images onto a white-clothed dancing body and I thought it was amazing. We think they're going to do some really good things together. If you get a chance, check them out sometime.

Here's to performance poetry though, may it live long and prosper!

It's Been A Long Time, Baby.

But we're still here. And we've been working.

In fact, things are smoking.

After spending 2009 experimenting, we started workshopping the Ghosts Project in November last year. Today, we had our second-to-last writing workshop before we move into the next phase of the project - workshopping performance. Now is the time when we get to know our music with the familiarity of our own pulses.

Today was epic - the newest member of the project, Anna Kaye Forsyth, joined the workshopping process for the first time - and the five of us co-wrote a finale piece for the show. I think it is bloody brilliant, and have the task now of turning it into a script that speaks with the music - track 18 on NIN's Ghosts II. Yes, that's right, so much material flew out of the project that we just had to branch into the second Ghosts album - also released onto the creative commons. There are only three tracks that still need poetry.

So the body is almost complete.

Now we just need to make it dance.

The Cast Assembles

We recently announced that we are creating a performance poetry show set to and inspired by the album released by Nine Inch Nails onto the Creative Commons in 2008, Ghosts I. We called the madness the Ghosts Project and invited expressions of interest from people who wanted to write to the music as well as the Ghosts theme, with guest musicians being invited to further riff off the poetry and album.

We started off the month by meeting with all interested parties. Together we got clear on the concept, brainstormed ideas and chose NIN tracks to write to.

The Ghosts Project cast of contributing poets is: Miriam Barr, Christian Jensen, Daniel Larsen, David Ingram, Sabrina Muck and Shane Hollands. We are excited to be working with some people for the first time and to be reunited with both past and new Literartists once more. I think we proved with Growl that we don't do anything by halves in The Literatti. And our collaboration on the Ghosts Project with Shane Hollands, the founder of The Literatti and frontman for Freaky Meat, and David Ingram, a harmonica-playing, retired sailor with a long-time presence on the open mic circuit, promises to deliver nothing short of inspiring. Collaborating musicians are still to be announced - but the shortlist is very exciting.

The Ghosts Project reincarnates a series of characters who have influenced the shape of the era in which we live. After listening to the album together and choosing a track to start working with, we are now each researching characters ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci and Hans Christian Anderson through to Kate Sheppard and Tawhiao. These characters will be plunged into the modern age, placed in interactions with each other, introduced to their successors and given an opportunity to reflect on their own lingering effects. With a cast that spans three generations, the Ghosts Project is shaping up to be an unprecedented experience.

In other news, the Word of Mouth CDs have almost all sold out and as such, you can now download an MP3 version of the album on our website for free - they're not as good quality as the CD, but it at least makes them available. We hope to release downloadable MP3s of selected live Growl recordings shortly as well.

Our newest Literartist, Daniel Larsen, and I have been collaborating together with our old friend and DJ Steve Riley on a 30-minute show for a guest performance at Poetry Live on December 1st. This show is doubley exciting for me, because this is the first time Dan and I, who are also engaged, have worked together on such a substantial series of pieces. A few of you might have seen us perform 'eight ways of looking at it' with The Literatti at October Gig or Rhythm & Verse recently. Our Poetry Live show builds on that, but with the addition of new pieces, all set to music mixed and sampled live by Steve Riley.

On November 24th you can catch Christian Jensen and Murray Lee doing a shared Poetry Live guest spot. It's a good chance to catch Murray Lee in performance for those who have been missing him (my fingers are crossed for a big enough crowd to warrant him performing Train Gang). And I must say, Christian has been delivering some stellar work recently. The Global Eyes/Feet/Voice performances he did were fantastic.

Poetry Live is at Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Rd, it starts at 8 pm.

Dan, Christian, Sabrina and I were all part of the Global Eyes/Feet/Voice project and the poetry and art work we produced for it is all included in the Global Eyes book and multimedia CD. You can purchase copies for $30 by contacting Christian via ideasimbedcreative AT gmail DOT com

We'll keep posting updates about the Ghosts Project and what's happening with The Literatti Pool as things go down. Check in on the website regularly - we try to update it as often as possible. There are new photos of our last big shows up now.

You can catch Sabrina in performance on Sunday November 15th at the PEN Courage Day event alongside Stephanie Johnson, John Pule, Tim Heath and others. A great line up, and a great event.