THE CRICK CRACK CLUB NEEDS HELP TO GO NOMADIC…
We’re seeking funds to buy (commission & make) our own portable performance space so we can take our legendary performance storytelling events for adults & families, beyond the confines of theatres and art centres, to all manner of new places and new audiences. The Crick Crack Club’s Fabularium will be a wild haven of fairytale, myth and epic – a place of pure performance, playfulness, and utter enchantment.
Performance storytelling needs four elements: a storyteller, an audience, a story, and a space. We have the first three in plentiful quantities, but vast amounts of our time, effort and resources are spent on searching for, securing, adapting, begging and borrowing spaces where storytelling performances can happen. Renowned for our live performances, we have been given extraordinary opportunities to perform in theatres and arts centres in London and across the UK. We’ve worked hard to develop audiences across a circuit of venues in England and Wales, and like a motley crew of latter day fools, or travelling philosophers we roam from place to place.
BUT we want to be able to ‘pop-up’, to go outdoors, to appear in unusual places, to take fairytale, myth and epic to audiences wherever they might be. To do this, and to do it well, we need to be able to take our own performance space with us…
‘The UK's most vivid and exciting Storytelling organisation’ Ian Macmillan, The Times
COST
In total we need to raise £10,000 in further funding to have the Fabularium built. We've set the target here at £5,000, but if collectively you can donate more, then the more delighted we'll be!
The Fabularium isn't a one off wonder. It will last for decades to come, and will become a major part of the Crick Crack Club. We've already raised a large chunk of the funds we need from The Foyle Foundation, The Golsoncott Foundation and the N. Smith Charitable Trust. Don't keep this initiative a secret - tell your friends, tell your family, tell anyone you think may be interested in supporting us and the Fabularium - the more the merrier! You don't have to be UK based to donate...
THE STRUCTURE
Large tented venues are often unwieldy, difficult to transport and require expertise to erect. The Fabularium design is based on a contemporary ‘multi-yurt’. The result is an open-plan space that can seat 80-100 people; with a stage and small dressing area. with an additional reception and box office area. The structure is designed to have sufficient height for a performer to work on a stage without being hampered in gesture or movement; to be aesthetically beautiful; to provide sufficient capacity to be economically viable, with the audience seated safely on the floor and on banquettes; to have necessary attachment points for rigging basic theatre lighting where necessary; to be transportable in a long wheel base van, and to be erected by our staff. In true Crick Crack Club style, The Fabularium will be designed and decorated in such a way that no one will be any doubt when they arrive, that they are entering another world.
WHERE WILL THE FABULARIUM GO?
The Fabularium will be part of our annual programming, and will be most used in summer, when we don't programme in theatres and art centres. We have very many ideas and plans, but to give you a taster - we will tour our events to acoustic music and arts festivals; run a rural Village Green Tour, and do something special on the South Bank...and that's just for starters!
IF YOU DON'T KNOW OUR WORK, THEN READ ON FOR MORE ABOUT US & WHAT WE DO.....
WHAT IS PERFORMANCE STORYTELLING?
We work with contemporary storytellers who perform work created from and inspired by fairytales, folktales, folklore, legend, myth and epic - the veritable ocean of international traditional narrative, which was once common currency in pre-literate societies, but which today represents a very rare entertainment indeed. These stories are performed live, usually unscripted, often by a solo performer (or a solo performer accompanied by a musician), with little, or no, set or costume, but with immense capacity for improvisation in direct response to the audience. The ‘in the moment’ and genuine spoken word nature of the performance, makes for a vivid and immediate experience, as each audience member conjures up their own personal cinema of the imagination.
WHO WE ARE...
One of the oldest art forms, storytelling is, paradoxically, one of the newest performance arts. Founded in 1987, the Crick Crack Club has been at the heart of the re-visioning of oral storytelling as a contemporary performance art in England, Wales and beyond, for 25 years. We are England’s premier promoter and programmer of performance storytelling , working with the finest storytellers, performing for adult and for family audiences.
The Crick Crack Club is based in London but we have a national remit. We put on shows, performances and festivals, tour work, promote the artform, run educational projects, advise others on the use of storytellers and storytelling, place artists in educational and community contexts, commission work, run training courses, and mentor emerging artists and apprentice promoters. We are noted for standard-setting within the sector; for our support and knowledge of artists and their repertoire; for our inspired programme curation and audience development work; and for our forward looking, strategic approach to the continued development of the performance storytelling sector in England and Wales.
We have worked with an amazing range of partners – some big, some small; they include The Barbican, The South Bank Centre, The National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Northern Stage, Cheltenham Literature Festival, The British Library, Hay Literature Festival, The Wellcome Trust, York Theatre Royal, The Royal & Derngate, and many, many others.
The Crick Crack Club is run by a small, hardworking and passionate team, at the heart of which is our inspired founder and Artistic Director, Ben Haggarty. We programme full-length performances of richly metaphorical myth and epic; riotously entertaining themed events; lying contests; feasts; festivals; experimental work where risks are taken; collaborations with musicians/puppeteers/painters; short stories; long stories; stories that go on all night; stories that are very adult, and stories that are very not. In London, our core programme includes monthly sell out performances at the Soho Theatre and at Rich Mix; a new season of storytelling at The Forge, Camden, and we took the alternative Christmas spirit by storm with a festival of Fairytales for Grown-ups at The Bargehouse on the South Bank in December 2011 - an event which will return in December 2013.
Find out more at www.crickcrackclub.com
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