Ben Hur

Ben Hur is a Theatre Royal Bath proyect that aims to involve the community in a epic play. With this idea comes many questioning and trouble, as the people from Bath are not proffesional actors that you can hire, but they go willingly to participate in the community play and there might be trouble with people that are not really compromised with the play.

First wa the issue of making the play known and letting people know that they can come and participate in every way the want,; acting, music, stage manager, costume, marketing, etc. As said before, the people that might want to be involved are not professionals, so they decided to have quite a few rehersals with everybody before presenting the play at the theatre.

One of the major problems was how to get people really compromised with the play and guarantee that they would be in the rehersals and more importantly in the actual date of the play (29th of October). First they made the advertisements of the comunnity play, inside them you could find a form that you fill to participate in the area that you wanted.

The genral challeng of producing a community play is that you never know how many people are going to be interested in participating and if your going to complete your cast and staff.

What the team decided that people that wanted to get involved had to pay a “fee” (£30). This way they might feel a bit more compromised with the production as they already payed to be in it.

To prepare the people of Bath to be part of this proyect the Theatre Royal Bath has prepared a number of workshops since november. This will be followed by the rehersals once the rolls of the actors.

Although there was a certain incertity of the amoun of people that were going to be interested in participating in this play they had a huge response from the people of Bath, about 300 hundres people showed interest in participating in different ways.

THIS IS BATH ARTICLE

THIS IS BATH ARTICLE

The rolls were finally decided in a similar way as “britains got talent”, where the people have auditions and the udges finally decide which will do what part in the play. It was decided that the part of Ben Hur will be played by Matt Hocken who always showed interesnt in theatre and was part of a youth theatre group at the Ustinov.

THIS IS BATH ARTICLE


The idea of Ben Hur came from the fact that Bath was a roman city and Ben Hur is a roman story and a silver screen epic film.

We will only see the real result when it is presented in the Theatre Royal in October. Hopefully nothing will go wrong and it will be total success.

Enslave Your Senses

During my second term at Bath Spa University my classmates and I, formerly known as The Imagination Station, started planning an event for the end of the academic year. The event was called Enslave Your Senses and was shown on the 22nd and 23rd of May at Chapel Arts Centre in Bath. There was three months planning behind this event, and it turned out to be quite a success.

Enslave Your Senses is an art exhibition with an unique twist. All the pieces that are shown "treat" one or two of your senses. It is an interactive exhibition where you can touch, smell, eat, hear and see different types of art.

The first thing that we new we had to do was convert the venue into what we had in mind regarding the look and ambiance we wanted to create. You can see on the photos below that we achieved what we wanted.

We had about 100 people over the weekend that wanted to see our exhibition. Some of the people that came into Chapel Arts were kind enough to give us a donation on top of the ticket price. The donations came to £25.50.

General look of the venue after the load in. It took us a whole morning to put things up and be ready for the launch night on the 21st of May. Only people that had an invite, artists and family/friends attended the launch night.

This piece is by Megan Hoyle and it consisted on pouring golden syrup on each of the strings. This might sound unconvincing, but when you see how the syrup goes down the strings you will soon find that you can't take your eyes of it.





In the Yurt we had a piece by Oliver Owen called "Deaf to..". This piece consists in sounds that you hear everyday but you don't register them. When you hear this piece you realise the sounds that are always present and with a bit more concentration you can distinguish all of the sounds. This piece has a pair of headphones so you can listen to it.

In the yurt we also had another piece by Jordan Packham called "Blind Sounds". You have to put a blindfold and the headphones on and listen to what is waiting for you.





The piece on the left is by Jody Foster and is called "Warped". Jody painted this picture with her left hand, challenging her ability.

The piece on the right is called "The Breakdown" by Ed Perrier. It is around the idea of communication breakdown, and if you have a look, you can find phones hanging in front of the canvases.

Almost in the middle of the room you can find the "Tree of Dreams" by the Imagination Station. This tree is not ordinary, instead of leaves it has sweets that you can pick up and eat.







The following pictures were taken during the get out. On the following we can see how the venue changed.

This is the main structure of the Yurt and there we can see some of the girls taking it down with a bit of help.







The "Tree of Dreams" looks rather different without the fairy light and the sweets hanging from it. But not only the tree, but the whole room just looks ordinary after the transformation by the Imagination Station.
All the team worked really hard to get this event done.