I am student studying Forkbeard and I’d like to interview a member of the Company, is this possible?
To help satisfy the demand for information we have tried to include a vast array of resources on our website. It may be possible that your questions can be answered by going to the Background & Past Shows and Use of Film web pages. There are also many articles about specific shows or aspects of our work. They too can be found on the website.
I have looked at everything on your website but still have a few more questions, can you help me?
You can email or write to us but don’t expect an answer straight away. We might be busy so give us plenty of time. We can’t work to your deadlines! We do try to answer all queries from students so if we don’t get back to you immediately bear with us.
I am interested in booking Forkbeard to run a workshop. What should I do next?
Forkbeard often run workshops for schools, colleges, universities, as well as creative professional development courses for teachers and artists (please see our short courses page). We normally work with no more than 20 people during each session. If you’d like Forkbeard to work with your group, please email us with background information, including details about the size of your group, possible dates and whether you’d like the workshop to take place at your venue or our Studios in Devon. The company often run workshops or pre and post shows at venues on tour.
I’m interested in attending your Short Courses/Summer Schools. How do I apply?
Each year we run two residential Summer Schools and a week of Short Courses (usually in Febuary). They take place at our inspiring creative base in the heart of Devon. We post dates for all our courses on our Diary page as soon as they’re scheduled. The Short Courses and Summer Schools cover similar areas of the Company’s work – film interaction for stage, screen and cinema; animation techniques; how to make animated props and basic automata; editing, lighting and sound. The Short Courses allow you to pick and choose the areas you’d like to learn; whilst the Summer Schools cover all aspects of FF’s work and provide participants with more time to experiment, make and do. The Summer Schools include accommodation and all meals. Further information is available on the Courses page of our website, but if you have any queries do email us.
Are there video recordings of Forkbeard’s shows?
A multi-camera DVD of Fall of the House of Usherettes live show. Colour of Nonsense is available October ’10. Both these can be bought via the Shop section of our website. We hope to be producing a version of ‘Shooting Shakespeare’ soon.
You can see the following filmed recordings, made by The V&A’s Theatre Museum, in the V&A National Video Archive of Performance:
‘The Brain’ (performed at The Natural History Museum)
‘The Barbers of Surreal’ (Lyric Hammersmith)
‘Frankenstein’ (Lyric Hammersmith)
‘Shooting Shakespeare’ (Hackney Empire)
You can find short clips of the following Forkbeard shows (as discussed in the Use of Film pages), and much more, at Youtube:
‘Shooting Shakespeare’ (Island sequence)
‘Boxmanship’
‘The Clone Show’
‘Fall of the House of Usherettes’
‘Carbon Weevils’
‘Frankenstein’ trailers
‘The inComplete Works’ DVD Box-Set (on sale at the Forkbeard Shop) is a glorious compilation of the best of Forkbeard's film and video work over the past thirty five years. Disk 1 includes such classics as The Bonehunter, Worm and the Night of the Gnat, plus some rarely seen masterpieces of early cinema such as Der Schreibender Guppelschtick, Fossil Works and The German Expressionist Nursery. Disk 2 includes clips of recently uncovered fragments of early work including such forgotten gems as "Could a Whale Fly?" and "Chablis", as well as numerous examples of film interaction live on stage and recent show trailers.
We also have DVDs of the animation sequences which formed part of our last two shows: ‘Carbon Weevils’, as seen in the stage show ‘Invisible Bonfires’, and ‘The Dong’ from ‘The Colour of Nonsense’ - both are available from our Shop.
I am a performer/designer/technician and I’d like to work with Forkbeard. How should I go about this?
We create, devise, design, make and perform all our own work. Openings within the Company are rare but there are times when we look for skills and knowledge outside of the core team. We like to have first hand knowledge of an artist’s or technician’s work. The Summer Schools are an opportunity to meet and work alongside a hugely diverse range of practitioners. A great network of over 400 people. Quite honestly there isn’t much point in just sending us a CV or script. We are a small and very busy outfit and just can’t find the time to process this kind of stuff.
I’d like to gain work experience with Forkbeard. Who should I write to?
Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to accommodate all the people who write to us requesting work experience or placements. We do try and help where and when we can, as we do want to support young people who are new to the world of performance. All requests should be sent by email and we will respond as our plan of work permits.
What are the key features in an FF Show?
A humorous, satirical view of the world and mankind. Interaction between film and live performance is a technique we’ve been pioneering and perfecting since the mid-1970s. Sometimes it involves merging from stage into screen or vice-versa; sometimes we as performers engage in dialogue across what we call The Celluloid Divide. The ways we have used film in our shows and installations have been taken to unhinged extremes over the years - see section called Use of Film on our website. Combined with Forkbeard Fantasy's love of cartoon and animation the possibilities for combining film and performance remain endless. We will happily continue experimenting. In a Forkbeard show the sets and props are often sculptures in their own right. Not just disposable items scrapped at the end of a tour. Penny, especially, takes tremendous care to give her constructions an individual character of their own. Some of our favourites live on long after a show has been finished, featuring in installations and exhibitions or otherwise see their days out growing moss and litchen in the grounds of our studio - see article on website called Collaborators - UK Design for Performance 2003-2007. Puppets and puppet costumes populate all our shows .For instance the 12ft chain-smoking rabbit in Barbers of Surreal – quickly slipped into backstage; Dolly the Parrot in Colour of Nonsense, sits on her perch throughout until her heroic rescue flight at the end of the show. The caryatid statues in Fall of the House of Usherettes, who bring the house down at the end of the show.
What is FF’s theatrical style?
Comic Cine Theatre or Multi-media. The term ‘multi-media’ really means mixing art forms - music, sculpture, film, painting, performance etc - in public spectacles and events which, although probably originating with the Dadaists, found their first widespread incarnation in the 1950s/60s happenings in the USA by the likes of Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine, John Cage et al.
What are FF’s working methods?
The core artistic team of five devise shows together. A new production can begin with a theme (e.g. a haunted cinema) or even several themes (surrealism and genetic engineering!) coupled with a desire to make a new film/ cartoon or mechanical structure or costume that explores that theme. Sometimes we want to investigate the possibilities of a new technology and that too will feed into the pool of ideas. We don’t physically devise as a group in the early stages; we often work, build, film and explore individually and then present and discuss the results around the table. Some ideas are kept and progress – some are lost as the show develops. As a script takes shape, we begin rehearsing (often, at first, reading around a table) while we continue the construction of a set, the filming of sequences that we know will get used, the finding of sounds and music and the making of all the other elements of the production. There is usually a really intense period of rehearsing for the final three or four weeks when all these parts of the show come together. The script/story will be continually adapted and we try to involve a director (the outside eye) during this time.
Who is FF’s target audience and how do you market a show?
Our shows can be enjoyed on many different levels and therefore by a huge range of people and ages. It’s sad that so many people don’t go to the theatre. They worry about it being too intellectual, wordy, obscure, boring. They might have been to a Panto when they were kids but that’s about it. We’ve always been based in rural areas. Over the years we have persuaded loads of people who would never normally have thought of taking a trip to their local theatre to come along to one of our shows. They’ve invariably had a great night out. “Never seen anything like it”…. “ completely mad but we loved it”……”my five-year old was gripped”. It’s difficult suggesting ways of targeting an audience when you’re on tour. Our fans travel hundreds of miles to see a show if they know we aren’t touring in their area. So we just keep trying to get those trillions of people who have never experienced a Forkbeard show to take the plunge and come along. Some of them just might get hooked. We have a mailing list of approx 3,000 and it’s always growing. Our shows are suitable for most ages. Under 11’s are best in a family group. We always target schools, colleges and universities with departments in subjects relating to theatre, film and art….. it’s always best to have a personal contact. Networks, journals, newsletters, parish mags etc are all excellent for spreading the word. Sometimes the subject matter of a show means that you can target particular professional outlets.
What is the director’s role?
FF has three founder Artistic Directors. We regularly ask Andy Hay, a freelance theatre and TV director to come in on a show during the last three weeks of rehearsals. He usually makes a few visits during the devising period as well. Being a freelancer he isn’t always available. We ended up having to direct Invisible Bonfires ourselves. This was in fact one of our more complex shows involving a four piece band, an extra sound/projection operator and another performer Luckily it was subtitled a cataclysmic cabaret. There were many, many teething problems, which we won’t go into. For the second leg of the tour we cut the running-time down by half. Andy directed Frankenstein, while he was at The Bristol Old Vic, Shooting Shakespeare and Colour of Nonsense. He helps us sharpen up sections of dialogue, make cuts no-one else would dare suggest, jiggle things about and gets us to rehearse certain bits over and over again. He helps us sort out some of the nightmarish technical problems and with his understanding of film and TV often suggests refilming, cutting or adding new material. For Colour of Nonsense he suggested Tim draw several new sections of comic-strip narrative to drive the story-line along. Andy helps to temporarily eradicate those haunting doubts, by laughing and encouraging and boosting our egos as well our belief in our show.
What is the actor’s attitude to the role of performing?
FF performers have to be adept at multi-tasking. Handling technology on stage, puppeteering etc; to take on several different parts as well as climb in and out of films, puppet-costumes and agonisingly positioned trap doors; to operate puppets, projectors and smoke machines, sometimes at the same time as delivering complicated speeches; to be ready to improvise around a technical hitch ; to do get-ins and get-outs Quite often people think our shows are improvised. In fact they are very tightly scripted and need to be because of the technical cues. Over the years we’ve evolved an informal, slightly vaudevillian style of performing this helps us adapt quickly to the very different types of audiences when on tour.
How/Where do FF gets their inspiration when producing a new production?
Life, topical issues and imagery; articles, books and films or tv programmes. Some favourites: The Goons, Fellini, Bunuel, The Surrealists, Lear, Carrol, Tinguely, Botero, Gilliam, Giles cartoons, Herge’s adventures, Larson, PhilipKDick, Bladerunner, Flann O’Brien, Beckett, Kantor, Bobby Baker, Mike Hodges, Norman Mclaren, Michel Gondry, Stanislav Lem, Dad’s Army, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, People Show, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, David Attenborough etc etc.
Who makes the films?
We are our own film crew! Whether on location or in our studios, members of the FF team draw all the storyboards, build sets, operate the cameras, lights and sound recording equipment (and perform!). Animations are captured on computers or filmed on 16mm Bolex cameras. We edit the films using Final Cut Pro at our studios. In recent times we have begun to use more and more digital technology; using video projectors and media players to show the films, as always (when suitable) placed within the set or performing area to be operated by the performers. Although we embrace the improving quality and lightweightness of Digital we still try to use proper celluloid 16mm film wherever possible.
What's the formula for stitching together film and theatre effectively, how should both complement each other, what different roles do both have?
There is no point if they don’t blend together seamlessly as a compliment to each other. Having said this all the technology will probably blow up the night you come! Films aren’t just an add-on, or a background... to us they must add to plot or character or to the depth & world of & beyond the set. They enable the impossible theatrically, multiplying the characters, extending the suspension of disbelief which are all vital ingredients to our way of imaginative story-telling. When its really well used its fantastic to see Film in Theatre. They’re natural cousins….But what’s often ignored in our media obsession with the New and Cutting Edge is that right from the first couple of decades after Cinema’s invention people were using film on stage: the great Georges Méliès, father of film fantasy, in his magic theatres; Winsor McKay (creator of Little Nemo) climbing in and out of his own animations with “Gertie The Dinosaur” as far back as 1914; and by 1929 no less than 15 Berlin theatres were already fitted with full projection facilities.
Where does the name Forkbeard Fantasy come from?
Sven Forkbeard was the Viking ruler of parts of England (circa 1000AD) and father of King Canute. Chris was heavily into the Viking sagas when he was a student. Forkbeard’s first show was called “A Forkbeard Fantasy”. There were two characters - Forkbeard (Chris had alot of hair in those days and a forked beard) and the other, Tim, a time-traveller. They were to break themselves out of a sort of time-machine box , as if they had just landed. On this occasion to do the lunch-time slot at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Club 1974. On the interior of each panel was a depiction of the four stages of their journey. Tim and Chris had a stall on The Mound, selling their original drawings. They never got round to learning the script so they scrapped it and staged a sort of dada event instead. Another outfit called Birkenhead Dada saw this event. Unbeknown to us they planned to disrupt the following day’s performance with their mountaineering equipment. The following year we shared a space at Tollcross School with Birkenhead Dada and a number of other anarchic performers. Forbeard must be one of the few companies ever to be banned from The Fringe. A dead fish was discovered by the headmaster in his lectern, during morning assembly. We protested vehemently! “It wasn’t us guv! “ But to no avail.
How did Forkbeard start?
Formed in 1974 Forkbeard Fantasy is one of the oldest & longest-surviving British multi-media theatre companies. The idea came in the early 1970s out of brothers Simon, Chris and Tim Britton. Simon (who now pursues a solo career as a sculptor) was a painter and maker of kinetic mechanical sculptures; Chris, fascinated by experimental and physical theatre, built constructions and gadgets to perform within; and Tim, budding writer and cartoonist, could see how his animated worlds might get realized in live performance. Chris, the originating force, saw the possibilities of forming a theatre group where the three’s shared delight in comical contraptions, ridiculous situations, isolated eccentrics, elements of painting, sculptural and film skills could all combine. So they began putting on ad hoc events, living exhibitions and absurdist comedy performances in any public place, gallery or students union that would have them.