The Life After Prelude Performance

The Life After performed at the Bristol Old Vic Studio from 2 - 4 August to a sold out house. The show had originally been scheduled to play in BOV's theatre royal but due to delays in the restoration work the main stage wasn't ready so the 'prelude performance' took place on the same dates in the studio and the main house version which will feature a cast of over a hundered young people will take place in February.

The 50-strong cast supported by the rest of the Bristol Old Vic Young Company did a fine job and the hard work of the creative team paid off. Below is what I wrote for the programme.

This show has always been epic in subject matter and ambition. We began with the question ‘where do we go when we die?’ and the responses from Young Company members aged 6-25 were varied and moving. From that point, through research and development, our weekly sessions with 300 young people from around Bristol, regular rehearsals and a rather rainy fundraiser showing, we’ve come a long way to present you with the prelude performance. 

When Miranda and I first started work on the project, our aim was to make something that celebrated the Young Company as well as this gorgeous theatre. Both have been here for a long time and both are ever changing and evolving. The team of professionals who work with the Young Company expect a great deal from these new theatre makers and they have risen to the challenge in devising and producing a piece of work that they own and of which we are all proud. 

Of course this isn’t quite the end of our journey and in February, joined by nearly a hundred more performers, we will present The Life After in the Theatre in its final incarnation. I hope you enjoy the show.

Joseph Wallace - Director

We recieved an 8/10 review in the Bristol Post, here are a couple of quotes:

"somewhere between the films of Tim Burton and a stage production of Oliver"

"There's a humour and boisterousness to The Life After that's easy to like... hugely promising, certainly not something to be missed come February."

You can book tickets for February's full production of The Life After here. Production photography by Chris Collier.

Rehearsing The Life After

I'm currently directing a show with the Bristol Old Vic Young Company which will go up at the Bristol Old Vic theatre in the first week of August 2012. It's called The Life After and is a devised show I'm directing with Miranda Cromwell, the Young Company director. The show's musical directors are Elizabeth Westcott and Peter Reynolds, dramaturg Adam Peck and the designer is Liesel Corp.

We've been rehearsing for around seven weeks now and have just performed some material from the devising process at a fundraising event over the weekend and are pulling together the story and finding some wonderful characters. The show will have a cast of over 100 young people aged 10 to 24 and will be the first full show to perform on the newly refurbished Bristol Old Vic theatre's stage.

I've posted some photos from the rehearsal process and you can find out more on our stand-alone blog for The Life After which can be found here: http://thelifeafter2012.blogspot.co.uk

Buy tickets here.

Working with puppets in the research and development week

The Bristol Old Vic Theatre Club kindly donated £1000 to the show's budget

One of my initial character sketches

Devising a scene in a lake

Fox

As we creep into May I'm coming to the end of some small projects and starting new big ones. In April I helped devise and performed in a scratch performance of Project Moon, by my long term collaborator Chris Collier (Artistic Director of the Wardrobe Theatre) and The Original Spinners clown dance troupe led by the brilliant Rachael Smith-James with fab music by Verity Standen. There were no photos from the show but here's an image by Becca Rose who helped with the shadow puppetry.

Moon by Becca Rose

I also shot a live-action film called The Watchmaker with Chris Collier which will be online soon. At the moment I'm working on album artwork for composer Kit Wilson and am developing an animated music video for a Bristol band. Yesterday was the first rehearsal of The Life After, the new show by the Bristol Old Vic Young Company which I am directing with Miranda Cromwell. We have a great team of around 20 creatives and a full cast of 100 young people. The show will take place on the main stage at Bristol Old Vic in August and is my directorial debut on that stage. More images and details about the live-action film and The Life After soon. In the meantime here's a fox I drew based on a poem by Emma Ward.

Biro, Bristol, May 2012

Trnka's A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1959) Dir. Jiří Trnka © Krátký Film Praha

After a busy month of working with puppets in theatre I'm excited to be starting work on a new puppet animation. To get some inspiration I've been watching a whole bunch of Jiří Trnka shorts as part of his retrospective at Watershed in Bristol. Tonight I saw his adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream which I'd never seen before. It was gorgeous, delicate, colourful and the puppets both intricate and articulate. The world and the characters are artfully brought to life and the whole film has a really magical aesthetic. It was wonderful to see the film on the big screen and Watershed should be commended for programming the season and screening these rarely shared gems.

As part of the Trnka season I'll be doing a workshop in making simple paper animation puppets for children on 21st April. More details here.

Bearded Man

The bearded man felt slightly lost,

as his feet crunched on the frost,

his face was long, his beard was red,

'Where are my gloves?' he softly said...

Pen and watercolour, Bristol, Feb 2012

Afraid of Falling

February is a busy month; as well as beginning development a large scale show at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre with their Young Company, I am travelling around the UK visiting various festivals with my graduation film The Man Who Was Afraid of Falling. Last night the film won 2nd Prize Royal Television Society Student Animation Award at Ffresh Student Moving Image Festival, Wales. Read more here.

You can find out more about how the film is doing on it's very own blog: www.themanwhowasafraidoffalling.com

Top Five Bristol Christmas Shows

This Christmas marked a very busy time for Bristol's stages with what seemed to be a record number of shows in various venues across the city. I saw some brilliant work over the festive period and it left me feeling proud to be part of such a vibrant and thriving scene. The following are my top five Christmas shows from 2011.

5. Coram Boy (Bristol Old Vic and Colston Hall)
Dir. Melly Still
4. Home Alonely (The Wardrobe Theatre)
Dir. Chris Collier
3. Good Clown Bad Clown (Bristol Old Vic)
Dir. John Retallack
2. The Morpeth Carol (Sleepdogs, Bristol Old Vic)
Dir. Tanuja Amarasuriya
1. Cinderella (Travelling Light and Tobacco Factory)
Dir. Sally Cookson

Ella and the Prince. Image: Farrows Creative

Cinderella: A Fairytale was a truly magic production; a brilliantly subverted, playful version of a classic tale told by a wonderful cast and penned by my old friend and collaborator Adam Peck. Other productions I didn't manage to see included Bath Time by Toby Hulse, Peter Pan at the Hippodrome starring David Hasselhoff (...), Scrooge at the city farm by Dark Stuff and Knock Twice for Yes by Angelhair Productions. As well as my own humble offering in the form of the two-part Christmas Special of Closer Each Day an improvised Soap Opera at the Wardrobe Theatre.

First Ones Here on Motionographer

I'm very proud to say that the film I made with some very talented animators at Newport Film School has been featured on the prestigious Motionographer website. The site is a showcase for innovative animation, visual effects and motion graphic work. Here's how they describe themselves:

Motionographer seeks to be a source of inspiration for filmmakers, animators and designers by sharing: outstanding work from studios, freelancers and students feature stories that give readers a closer look at influential studios and individuals commentary that sparks discussion or introspection about the creative process miscellaneous items that Motionographer contributors find interesting.

Click the image to visit the post where you can also view the film on vimeo. The film was also featured on the following collections on vimeo; Kailash Media's Meeting on the Mountain, Tim McCourt's Peg Bar and Grill, Aziz Kocanaogullari's Everything Animated, Animated Review, Mia Font's Stop4motion, Design Collector's TV and Pristina as well as a host of other blogs and websites.

Winter Coats for Cloth Magazine

I have recently finished another live-action short for the wonderful folks at Cloth Magazine. I made this short promo film with Chris Collier as part of the viral campaign for the winter issue. We followed the events during a day of shoots at different locations and documented the garments from glamourous collars to warm winter coats. The film was shot at one of the Creative Editor's flats and the Wardrobe Theatre where I'm working as an associate artist at the moment facilitating Closer Each Day (an improvised Soap opera).



It was great working with the team at Cloth and Real Design and Media again. Music by my brother.

Website update

Quite simply, I have updated my website.. Check out some more image-friendly menus and watch some new work here:

www.joseph-wallace.co.uk

Also, my graduation film The Man Who Was Afraid of Falling has been picked up by the BBC to show on their big screens across the UK. Read more here.