New New New Skills
New New New Skills

New New New Skills

Co-Company Manager and performer Arran talks about some new skills Tortoise in a Nutshell have been bringing into the development room.

As a company we have always been interested in challenging ourselves, trying out new skills and keeping our work fresh by incorporating different elements. As part of this we try and bring something new to our development process each time we have a new production. This is done to challenge ourselves and keep our passion in creating work alive. We find that if we are challenged, we create our best work and have the most enjoyment and ideas during the process. We hope this also keeps our work fresh and exciting for audience members. Sometimes a new element is very small, it can be something technical or staging related rather than purely performance led. For our newest production Fisk, we have chosen to focus on an unexplored challenge for us, movement.

blog pic

We have plunged ourselves head first into a completely different world of development and have loved our first taste. Despite our enthusiasm it has not been a smooth road so far, it was a difficult realisation that a lot of what looks easy, smooth and relaxed can actually involve a lot of muscle, strength and coordination. It’s amazing how bad you can make a so called simple movement look when you have no experience. Really bad. As puppeteers we are very focused on having a solid stable base, we are very grounded and this is the opposite of what we want to create for this piece. We’ve been playing with more fluid movements, looking for smooth and light character transitions and pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve with our bodies. This has only been possible due to working with our fabulous new movement director.

He has already challenged how we work within devising processes and even how to warm-up effectively. We have already established a good working relationship, which incorporates our style and way of creating work, but also brings in new methods and ideas. We don’t know how much we will use movement within the final piece, but it has definitely already had many benefits.

Now if you are looking for us anytime soon we’ll be the ones tripping over, as we attempt to leap and twirl down the street. And 1,2,3,4,5…