The Read Through

Today the cast of Alice met in full for the first time today in our rehearsal space kindly supplied by the University of Derby. Beki Mahon, Ed kennedy, Pardip Kumar and Rhiannon Prytherch spent the day taking the script apart and putting it back together with Angela Truby our fantastic writer.

It was a hard day but a fun one. Each cast member spent hours getting to grips with their character and the text and one thing is for sure…You’re in for a great show Derby.

Tomorrow you can find the cast of Alice marching from the site of Alice Wheeldon’s imprisonment in the cells of the Guild Hall (now the Guild Hall Theatre) to the Derby Theatre in preparation for the show. Alice herself will deliver a “rousing speech” for the crowd. You can expect her to denounce war and futile death as well as tell the ruling classes a few home truths. Come and find us at 2pm by the Guild Hall and make sure your following us on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date.

Alice, at the Derby Theatre Studio from the 12th to the 16th of April at 8pm.

Tickets are on sale now, priced from £7 so book online or call 01332 255800 and get your seats.

Alice, a new play by Angela Truby, produced by Sustained Magic

Yes, following hot on the heals of Sustained Magic’s last production, Release – which was a resounding success – we now bring you Alice, from the 12th to the 16th of April, 2011 at the Derby Theatre Studio

The script has been written by our renowned local playwright, Angela Truby and is directed by Matt Green. Company members, Rhiannon and Ed will be joined by Beki Mahon and Pardip Kumar.

In 1917 Derby born Alice Wheeldon, socialist, suffragette and conscientious objector was accused of plotting to murder the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Held in Derby’s Guildhall prison cells “that Wheeldon woman” went on to be tried at the Old Bailey whilst the world’s press watched.

With striking resonances to the contemporary political landscape, Alice’s story of activism in a country at war, paranoid against a fearful sinister foe, sounds eerily familiar. Find out what happens when an ordinary person dares to stand her ground, the establishment can wreak a terrible retribution.

Alice is actually an offshoot of a previous project called Hawthorn, which in its self was an offshoot of the ghost walks we did years ago in Ilkeston and Long Eaton. Hawthorn was a curtin warmer for Derby Lives Halloween run of Shining City at the Guild Hall in Derby. The show took place in the tunnels under the Guild Hall. The very tunnels that

Alice Wheeldon was kept prisoner in all those years ago. In researching the history of the Guild Hall and its tunnels Angela and Sustained Magic discovered a lost historical figure of Derby in our Alice and we found her fascinating. We hope you find her as interesteing.

Tickets are on sale now. Please go and buy yours now!

Visit Derby Live online or call 01332 255800 to book.

Or if you like, why not pop into the Derby Live or Derby Theatre Box Office.

Its been an awesome run but we are nearly finished now.

Cast Warm Up - The Funky Chicken

Thats right, tomorrow is our final night in the Derby Theatre Studio.

I will reffer you back to our gushing first night blog for all the thank you’s to all the wonderful people who have supported us but just once again a huge thank you to everyone who came to see the show and an extra special thank you to all the people who have given up their feedback.

I know I’m biased but I have to tell you, it has nearly all been positive. Someone came up to me in tears after the show this evening, telling me how much it had moved them and made them think about people trapped in violent situations. The power of this play Angela has written has really touched the audience and that truly is the magic of theatre.

Tonights show was again spectacular. Despite some trouble with the main house show being pumped all over the building (including the studio until we dismantled the speaker  - see the picture below) the cast stayed focused throughout the performance as did the audience.

As I have said, tomorrow is our last show of the run so if you havent been to see it yet, what on this green Earth are you waiting for?

You know what to do by now if you have been reading this blog daily – as I hope you have been, call 01332 255800, visit Derby Live’s Online Box Office, go to the The Derby Theatre box office or the Derby Live box office next to tourist information and get your tickets ASAP people, your running out of time.

As tomorrow is the get-out there may not be a blog up right after the show, but there will be a post show blog coming fear not.

You can follow @SustainedMagic on Twitter, friend us on Facebook, sign up to our YouTube Channel or even go old school and subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up to date with what the Magic is up to so why not follow, friend or subscribe now? Its easy.

Bad Tannoy

Thursday night brought us our largest audience of the run so far!

Well we are past the midway point in the run now and the show is getting stronger and stronger! One audience member , Diane Dawson said that Release was the best production she had seen at Derby Theatre in a long time which really warmed our hearts. Tonight was also our first mobile phone related disturbance.

Above you will see that instead of the usual photo to accompany this blog we have given you a video slideshow of some of the moment in the play. Take a look and I think you will agree that the show is well worth coming to see so if you haven’t got your tickets yet please please call 01332 255800 or goto Derby Live’s Online Box Office and book some now. We have two performances left of the run, Friday and Saturday, 8pm at the Derby Theatre Studio.

Again, thank you to everyone who came along tonight. Your support means the world to us.

Tonight was Press and Guest night and a great time was had by all.

Nick and Matt Suited and Booted

I probably shouldn’t do this but Im going to give you the randomly over heard quote of the night. “F*£k me!”

Well the show is quite intense after all. There are raw emotions playing out and it is terrifying, tragic, visceral and no punches are pulled.

As you can imagine, it has been a adrenaline fuelled few days and this blog will be short.

As for tonights audiance thank you for time. Its so good to hear all the positive comments after the performance so please keep them coming.

A couple of tonights tweets about the show were…

@Pineapple2468 @sustainedmagic well done guys really great show, the girls were fantastic. Tell them they were brilliant 12/01/2011 22:07

@TheatreParadise @SustainedMagic thank you for a great evening and for your hospitality after (I came with Ben). Well done to everyone involved 12/01/2011 22:32

Thanks (once again) to Professor John Coyne for providing the the refreshments for tonights reception. It was great to see everyone there.

Two shows down, three to go.

Get your tickets from the Theatre, Derby Live’s Box Office, their Online Box Office or by calling 01332 255800.

Quote of the night - ”Man, that was intense“.

Wow! We had so much fun tonight it should be illegal!

The cast really took things up a couple of notches. They turned things up to 11 and thats a fact.

On behalf of Sustained Magic I would just like to say a massive thank you to a few people.

Firstly, and I cant say this enough thank you to everyone in the audiance. One person said “Man, that was intense!” Rebecca Holmes (a local actor) tweeted “Brill“. To all of you who were at the Derby Theatre Studio for tonight’s magic, I want you to know that, from the bottom of our hearts, it was fantastic to have you there with us. Thank you.

The four graduates from Huddersfield University, Lorelie, Jacqueline, Eleanor and Carly who have worked with Sustained Magic on this project, who have put in so much time, have embraced Rhiannon as a new cast member and helped us tell the story of a prison drama therapy group. Ladies, thank you. You are stars and will forever be part of the magic.

Our Stage Manager, Emma Fowler has been coming from nottingham every day. She takes our rehearsal stress, our performance insanity and all other needs and wants and magically solves our issues and looks after us. Emma, thank you, you are so much more than the word awesome can convoy but Sustained Magic couldn’t fly as high without professionals like you at our side.

We would also like to thank Rajan and Chadrac, our technical assistants on work placement from DMU for their work pre-show and their superb front of house performance. Guys, you rock the magic!

And Jenny, our opporator, without you our lights wouldnt run, our sound would be silent – there would be no magic. For your work we salute you.

Lastly… Derby Live, the University of Derby and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor John Coyne who have been our most gracious hosts please accept our most grateful of thanks. The relationship Sustained Magic has with you is something very precious to us. With your aid we can continue to to go from strength to strength, to produce more outstanding theatre and to sustain the magic.

On behalf of all of Sustained Magic - Matt Green, Ed Kennedy, Rhiannon Prytherch, Angela Truby and James Glazebrook –  to all the people mentioned above and more, again we say thank you.

Without your support we are just five artists, but with you we can bring magic into the world. And the world needs magic wouldn’t you say?

You can still buy tickets to Release, call 01332 255800 or visit Derby Live’s Online Box Office. We are on at the Derby Theatre Studio every night at 8pm until Saturday the 15th of January.

Sincerely,

The dress rehearsal last night was AWESOME!

And I mean AWEsome!

We all knew we had a great show, none of us doubted it, but I have to say I was blown away by just HOW good a show we have on our hands here!

So many photos were taken that a flip-book could be made out of them, but a few have been added to this post and some will be on our FaceBook page.

Now, here comes the part where we here at Sustained Magic ask you a favour. And I’m not being cliché here but yes, I really do mean YOU.

If you haven’t got your tickets yet, why not book them right now? Either call 01332 255800 or visit Derby Live’s online Box Office.

If you have got your tickets, why not tell your friends on twitter, or facebook or text message or phone or even tell them in person.

If you have already seen the show and are reading this blog afterwards, why not tell the world what you thought, tell us what you thought, tell anyone and everyone about the show.

Sunday, Tech day, T -minus 48 hours till opening night!

OK, so no blog yesterday. Sorry about that. Ed is to blame, he had to do the day job and earn some money and so was away this weekend with no wifi. But for all those who have been wondering, Saturday was “Go get the set” day. Matt collected the floor, and the cast either got friendly with their scripts or maybe just rested. (They have earned a day off the amount of time they’ve been clocking.)

And that brings us to Sunday…

At 9:00am there was a an empty blackbox studio, but after a day with Sustained Magic, it’s transformed into a drama therapy room inside a prison. The black and White check floor, lively lighting and great sound all compliment the edgy performances well- it’s all coming together well. Big thanks to everyone at Derby Theatre today for all the help.

To book your seats for Release please call 01332 255800 or visit Derby Live. 11th-15th Jan, 2011, Derby Theatre Studio, 8pm.

Watch the Release Trailer on YouTube

More Photos…

Day five is a musical day.

When we arrived at our rehearsal space (kindly provided by the University of Derby) we found that the cleaners had taken the mark-up off the floor, which while very thorough wasn’t as helpful as they might have expected. Rehearsals have got to the technical stage now. To keep up our energy levels we have been relying sweets and a MacBook Pro. Emma is in her element (with the sweets but the mac is confusing her). All we need now is a theatre but that comes on Sunday.

Tomorrow the cast hopefully have the day off while Ed and Rhiannon actually have some paid work over the weekend and a very early start in the morning to start in Oxford.

The reception to the Release Rehearsal Trailer has been fantastic as well so if you haven’t seen it yet WATCH NOW, if you have TELL YOUR FRIENDS please.

To book your seats for Release please call 01332 255800 or visit Derby Live. Show, 11th-15th Jan, 2011, Derby Theatre Studio, 8pm.

As mentioned in yesterdays blog entry we have some exciting YouTube related news for you all.

Yes, we now have a Release Rehearsal Trailer for your delectation and delight.

Please check it out and tweet, facebook, email and pass it on in as many ways as you can.

To book your seats for Release please call 01332 255800 or visit Derby Live. Show, 11th-15th Jan, 2011, Derby Theatre Studio, 8pm.