Horse and Bamboo Theatre - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Horse and Bamboo Theatre or Horse + Bamboo Theatre is a British theatre company founded in 1978 by Bob Frith. The company works with a commitment to strong narratives but using visual, physical, and music-based forms rather than text. In particular it uses distinctive full-head masks. It works internationally as well as from its Centre in Waterfoot, Rossendale

Waterfoot, Rossendale

Waterfoot is a small Rossendale mill-town at between Rawtenstall and Bacup in Lancashire where the B6238 from Burnley meets the A681. It is where the River Whitwell meets the River Irwell.- History :...

, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, UK.

Origins

Frith taught in the early 1970s at Manchester School of Art (later Manchester Metropolitan University

Manchester Metropolitan University

Manchester Metropolitan University is a university in North West England. Its headquarters and central campus is in the city of Manchester, but there are outlying facilities in the county of Cheshire. It is the third largest university in the United Kingdom in terms of student numbers, behind the...

). Unhappy with the prevailing abstraction of the period he experimented with extending purely visual forms to include live performance and music, influenced by Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...

, Red Grooms

Red Grooms

Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...

and Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...

, and working with groups of his students. At the Bede Gallery, Jarrow

Jarrow

Jarrow is a town in Tyne and Wear, England, located on the River Tyne, with a population of 27,526. From the middle of the 19th century until 1935, Jarrow was a centre for shipbuilding, and was the starting point of the Jarrow March against unemployment in 1936.-Foundation:The Angles re-occupied...

, he worked on a large scale project with his friend Dave Pearson

Dave Pearson (painter)

Dave Pearson, , was an English painter and educator who was "a great example of an artist whose life was completely dedicated to serving the imagination". Highly prolific, throughout his life he produced a prodigious quantity of work.- Life :Dave Pearson was born in Clapton, London in 1937...

, filmmakers and artists, and including the musician Alan Price

Alan Price

Alan Price is an English musician, best known as the original keyboardist for the English band The Animals, and for his subsequent solo work....

, as well as engineers from the local shipbuilding industry.

In the mid 70s he met Welfare State

Welfare State International

Welfare State International were an influential performance group based in the UK and founded in 1968 by John Fox and Sue Gill. Fox was, and remains, a vociferous proponent of 'celebratory theatre' and an anarchic, energetic and imaginative approach to creating theatre. In 2006 they felt the...

and worked with that company for two years. He formed Horse + Bamboo Theatre in 1978, with a group of ex-students, musicians and members of Matrogoth Theatre from Leiden, Netherlands.

For the past decade or more Frith has worked closely with Alison Duddle, originally of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre is a puppet company from Minneapolis, Minnesota. HOBT began in 1973 as Powderhorn Puppet Theatre, named for a neighborhood park and lake in Minneapolis, and changed their name in 1979...

from Minneapolis on the majority of the company's productions.

Name

The name derives from the use of horses to pull a caravan

Caravan (travellers)

A caravan is a group of people traveling together, often on a trade expedition. Caravans were used mainly in desert areas and throughout the Silk Road, where traveling in groups aided in defence against bandits as well as helped to improve economies of scale in trade.In historical times, caravans...

of vehicles when touring, which was a central feature of the company's work from 1979 to 1999. This grew from their commitment to taking their work to rural communities, and using the horses and horse-drawn wagons to attract an audience. Bamboo, due to its lightness and strength, was the main structural timber used in the early horse-drawn touring sets, and was also used to make puppets and music instruments.

Horse + Bamboo now tours theatres in a more conventional manner, but its roots in rural touring are maintained through tours with small, flexible shows that lend themselves to community venues, and the development of the Boo, that serves as a centre and venue for the company's local community in Pennine Lancashire. In this regard Horse + Bamboo has much in common with Kneehigh Theatre

Kneehigh Theatre

Kneehigh Theatre is an international theatre company based in Cornwall, England.Kneehigh was started in 1980 by Mike Shepherd. Early productions were performed in village halls, marquees, cliff-tops and quarries...

, who maintain a locally-based presence in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

in addition to their wider touring work. The company also developed the pPod, a specially designed portable structure that was suited to festivals and community venues.

Productions

Horse + Bamboo Theatre creates its own material, occasionally in collaboration with other artists and writers, with the majority of its productions made by the core team of artists. Its hallmark is in creating sustained theatrical narratives without the use of dialogue, as well as the use of full-head masks and puppetry

Puppetry

Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BC. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects...

. Film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

and dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

are often integrated within the company's productions.

"The work that they create is uncompromising in terms of artistry and subject matter. The artistic directors Bob Frith and Alison Duddle create work to which they bring the passion of great artists - emotionally powerful, beautiful to look at, laced with humour and pathos that reaches out to audiences, and one more thing that is quite difficult to describe. It is a roughness, an absence of slick polish and finish in the design. A deliberate roughing of the edges which contrasts with the beautiful precision of the performance and the soundscoring. Watching and being involved in a Horse and Bamboo performance, we as the audience aren't allowed to forget that this is an event that is being hewed from the wood, metal, paper, cloth, paint and bodies of flesh and blood in front of our eyes. It brings the moment into focus for us."

"Horse and Bamboo isn't a puppetry company, but it does use puppets. From what I've seen, puppets are mixed in for either stylistic or semiotic reasons, or both at the same time."

Touring

For the first two decades Horse + Bamboo toured using horse-drawn transport. These productions started as outdoor shows, and moved into a marquee after four years. Eventually the company began to create shows that played in village halls and other community centres. The performers walked about 400 miles each season, living in tents and cooking on open fires. Horse-drawn touring took place in England, Scotland, Ireland, Hungary and Slovakia. Now the company tours its productions throughout the UK, and has also toured in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, the Netherlands, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, and Belgium

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

. A co-production (with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre) of Company of Angels toured the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

between 2003 and 2006.

Significant Horse + Bamboo Theatre touring productions include The Woodcarver Story (1982); Dance of White Darkness (1994), about Maya Deren

Maya Deren

Maya Deren , born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s...

in Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

; Harvest of Ghosts (1999) created with Sam Ukala

Sam Ukala

Sam Ukala is a Nigerian playwright, poet, short story writer, actor, theatre director, film producer and academic. He has been Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at a number of Nigerian universities, including Edo State University and Delta State University...

, the Nigerian playwright; as well as Company of Angels (2002) about the life of Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon

Charlotte Salomon was a German-Jewish artist born in Berlin. She is primarily remembered as the creator of an autobiographical series of paintings Leben? oder Theater?: Ein Singspiel consisting of 769 individual works painted between 1941 and 1943 in the south of France, while Salomon was in...

. The company toured an epic production Veil in 2008 that contrasts the lives of two young women, one an Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

i, the other brought up in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, and is set across two generations.

In The Shadow of Trees was written and designed by Bob Frith for the Royal Exchange Theatre Studio in Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

. Directed by Associate Director, Alison Duddle, it won the Best New Play at the M.E.N.

Manchester Evening News

The Manchester Evening News is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom. It is published every day except Sunday and is owned by Trinity Mirror plc following its sale by Guardian Media Group in early 2010. It has an average daily circulation of 90,973 copies...

Awards in 2006 and subsequently toured, despite being created especially for the Royal Exchange.

In 2009 the company created Little Leap Forward, a production in collaboration with Barefoot Books

Barefoot Books

Barefoot Books is an independent children's book publisher based in Bath, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.The company began as a home business in 1992. It is now an international business, with offices in the United States and in the UK...

adapted by Alison Duddle from the book by Guo Yue

Guo Yue (musician)

Guo Yue is a renowned virtuoso of the dizi and bawu . He was born in Beijing, China and as a young boy experienced the Cultural Revolution. In 1982 Yue left China and, with the help of his third sister Yan who was living in England, he studied the silver flute at the Guildhall School of Music...

and Clare Farrow which opened at the Manchester Royal Exchange. Guo Yue created new music for the production that was integrated into the score by Musical Director, Loz Kaye. They also devised Deep Time Cabaret, part of the 'Valley of Stone' project inspired by the landscape of Rossendale, its geology and industry. The production was unusual for the company in hardly using masks at all, and complex use of projected images and video.

The Boo

Horse + Bamboo is based at The Horse + Bamboo Centre known as The Boo, in Waterfoot, Rossendale which is used as centre and venue for arts events and the development of visual theatre, as well as being a rehearsal and workshop space for the company. The Boo also hosts an annual summer puppet festival, and has close links with the local visual arts community. The Boo is also used by the Waterfoot community as a meeting place and venue for other events. Horse + Bamboo Theatre has a long history of producing community projects both in its home community of Rossendale, and beyond - for example the Good Friday Parade and Service at Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...

in 1994 and 1996.

The building is also used by other artists and theatre companies as a place to research and develop new visual theatre work, sometimes in a mentoring partnership with Horse + Bamboo.

Guided Imagery

Horse + Bamboo has also been influential in its work with people who have special needs

Special needs

In the USA, special needs is a term used in clinical diagnostic and functional development to describe individuals who require assistance for disabilities that may be medical, mental, or psychological. For instance, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International...

through its Guided Imagery programme. This programme, started in 1982, uses a large-scale built environment and performance space through which small and intimate groups journey, and interact with, a highly sensory environment. These 'performances' last several hours, and are notable in blurring the gap between performer and audience. 25 years later Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk

Punchdrunk is a British theatre company, formed in 2000, the pioneer of a form of "immersive" presentation in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. This format is related to "promenade theatre"....

has taken up and developed aspects of this work for a mainstream theatre audience.

External links

Horse + Bamboo Theatre website
http://blog.bellostes.com/?p=1252 pPod images - Italiano
http://europaconcorsi.com/projects/17798-Ppod-Mobile-Theatre/images pPod images - English

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