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Can you Adam and Eve it? Today's the day! Today we clamber on to the train at Kings Cross and journey 4.5 hours north to Edinburgh! It's been a long time coming but it's still surprising how quickly it's come round. With the cast of THE RULES: SEX, LIES & SERIAL KILLERS and Team Sprocket leaving London imminently, nostalgia has crept over us so we thought this'd be a good moment to indulge ourselves with a little trip down memory lane... 2013 A rough first version of The Rules script is created by writer Lila and thrown onto the stage at the Old Red Lion Theatre in June for a one night experiment. We sell out and reviews and feedback are universally positive! Lila goes back to tinker with the script...
2015 February: Third draft workshop and rehearsed reading at the Actor's Centre.
Artwork for the show is created with the help and talents of Rob Fellman and Keif Gwinn:  March: Our Edinburgh Fringe venue is confirmed - we're off to theSpace on the Mile for 21 performances! (Edinburgh accommodation is booked pronto.) April: Director Jez Pike comes on board and begins work with Lila to whip the script into Fringe shape. May: Associate Producer Isabel Dixon joins the team and the London preview venue sorted - 2 nights at Theatre503 on 20 & 21 July. June: Auditions held and our delicious team of actors cast:  And we put them to work right away, filming our rather brilliant trailer (thanks again to Keif and Sketch-In Studios): Designer Suneeda joins the team and gets to work with Jez creating our fantastic set:  July: Team Sprocket takes over the Rag Factory and rehearsals finally begin:
Half way into rehearsals Sprocket host The Rules Launch party to help us on our way to the Fringe - guests are invited to the first ever meeting of the Psycho-Not-So-Anonymous support group:
Theatre503 rehearsals come to an end and the set is built:  20 & 21 July THE RULES: SEX, LIES AND SERIAL KILELRS previews with two sold-out shows at Theatre503:
August: A quick dash back in to the rehearsal room to re-stage the play from Theatre503's end-on space to theSpace on the Mile's corner space Edinburgh (and to practice the all important get-in / get-out: Edinburgh!
It all sounds so simple doesn't it? It's been a huge amount of hard work from the whole team, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the behind the scenes work of chasing emails, hiring vans, working on our social media campaign and the actual selling of tickets. But we're as ready as we can be, and we are hugely excited for Edinburgh - hope to see you there! 7-22 Aug @ 21.50 24 - 29 Aug @ 20.35 theSpace on the Mile (venue 2) Buy tickets: www.edfringe.com
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 There’s lots of survival guides around for how to ‘do’ the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – mainly involving wellies and Berocca (other branded vitamin C tablets are available). However our resident serial killers Mel, Steven and Jay didn’t feel these guides are quite appropriate to their needs... So, as part of their outreach work with Psycho-Not-So-Anonymous, here’s a rather more, er, ‘tailored’ guide for the psychopath abroad. Enjoy! The Psycho-Not-So-Anonymous (PNSA) Survival Guide to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 1. Consider your accent
2. Do your research
3. Enjoy the Mile
4. Choose your marks wisely When assessing potential marks you have a variety of food groups to choose from - each with their own benefits and drawbacks:
5. Embrace the rain
6. Footwear
7. Pace yourself
8. Enjoy the show!
1. We've created a whole new genre of theatre – the black comedy, serial killer romance!
2. We’ve got not one, not two, but THREE psychopaths for your enjoyment 3. Our London preview got 5 STARS from Female Arts… 4. …they said it was ‘deliciously dark and fiendishly clever’ 5. It’s funny, like ridiculously funny 6. There’s a gun called Priscilla in it 7. ‘You know what it’s like, you meet a girl, you start following her, start imagining what it would be like to skin her alive…’ - is a direct quote, good right? 8. There’s kissing in it. Full on Geordie Shore pashing, wit-woo! 9. TheSpace on the Mile is in the Radisson Blu hotel on the Royal Mile - right in the middle of everything (and there's a bar)! 10. At 65 minutes there’s plenty of time for the pub afterwards (and before, we don’t judge) 11. Before working on THE RULES director Jez was assistant directing Simon Russell Beale at the Donmar Theatre – ooooh! 12. Things get messy (there’s blood and EVERYTHING) 13. We’re committed to providing at least an equal number of roles for women (on and off stage) 14. So half the cast are women… 15. (…the other half are men…) 16. …and they’re all hugely talented (and pretty easy on the eye too!) 17. Our trailer is 56 seconds of genius (watch it here) 18. ‘Darkly entertaining and hysterically funny’ - UK Theatre Network 19. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll gasp… 20. …you’ll be surprisingly moved… 21. …so much so you’ll tell all your friends and come back again and again because it is AWESOME 22. Christian Bale does a Patrick Bateman cameo* 23. And you get all of this for under a tenner! *Well, we asked. We’re still waiting for a response from his agent… Launch party for The Rules Play / the inaugural meeting of the Psycho-Not-So-Anonymous support group17/7/2015 We had a HUGE amount of fun on Wednesday - thanks SOOOO much to all who came and played the quiz and took part in the raffle. Congrats to all of our winners! Wowee, things are starting to hotten up in The Rules rehearsal room! We've been spending some time getting to 'grips' with the play...and when we say 'grips' we don't mean metaphorically... A play about killers was never going to be an all-dancing, smiling, cheerful affair - these characters have bite and they're not afraid to, er, express themselves if they feel a bit hard done by. So we spent a good morning going through a few of the 'rougher' sections of the play - our pyschos might be out to do some damage to one another but Jez and our actors really aren't! Fight choreography is not just a bit of fun - it's an essential part of the story telling, much in the way that a song is part of telling the story in a musical. It adds to and furthers the plot, it develops and exposes the relationships between the characters, it creates and heightens the atmosphere - it sits very much within the play and is not separate to or bolted on afterwards as a bit of showmanship. Despite the dark nature of The Rules, violence for the sake of violence is never something we would encourage or promote, so please don't try any of this at home! No rehearsals today so our cast have been taking a well earned break, but no such luck for our production team who have been busy beavering away - no rest for the wicked! With just a couple of weeks to go till our previews at Theatre503, Director Jez has been meeting up with designers Suneeda and Geoff to make sure the show looks and sounds amazing. We can't give too much away but ask yourself - if you were a serial killer and needed someplace safe to meet up with your sociopathic buddies, where would you meet..? Bet you a tenner on our Kickstarter you'll never guess! While you ponder on, why don't you say hello to one of our serial killers - his name is Jay and he's delighted to meet you... Wowza, it's been one heck of a week! Rehearsals are now in full swing and the behind-the-scenes-team have been pretty busy too... By Saturday we had managed to work our way through right to the end of the play - aided and abetted by the fantastic Jez who has quite a turn of phrase ('present her like she's your prize marrow'). Real relationships are starting to emerge between the characters, as well as a LOT of laughs (Lila is still failing miserably to keep a straight face) . It's been incredibly exciting to see the whole play start to take shape -there's a rhythm and a pace to the show which ebbs and flows from drama to romance to farce to danger to hilarity back to romance on to violence and so on... It's a massive challenge for our actors to keep up with the rapidity of THE RULES but when it clicks it really really clicks! Behind the scenes we've also been busy getting things ready for our Launch Party on Wednesday 8 July.
We're holding a serial-killer themed Pub Quiz in the Jerusalem Bar, central London, along with the chance to win some AMAZING raffle prizes. Pledge on our Kickstarter to get free entry or pay £10 on the door - RSVP on the Sprocket Facebook page to find out more! PRIZES!
Today we carried on ploughing through the first 15 pages of THE RULES and even managed to reward ourselves with a stagger through at the end of the day - we were a bit wobbly on a few lines, there was some TERRIBLE corpsing going on (Lila we're looking at you) and every now and then someone would remember they had to be on the other side of the room and try to stroll across subtly (Lila)...but we got through it! And the afternoon was made all the better by the arrival of our TERESA in the shape of Catherine Nix-Collins - so, sooo good to have the whole cast together in the rehearsal room! All in all a brilliant second day - just 10 more rehearsals till we're on at Theatre503. Sprocket says BRING IT ON!   Thinking cool thoughts... Wowza! It was HOT HOT HOT in the rehearsal room today - 34 degrees and not a air conditioner in sight - but led by director Jez the cast of managed to keep their cool...just!
Today was the first official day of THE RULES: SEX, LIES & SERIAL KILLERS rehearsals and we had a LOT of fun. Actors Neil Chinneck, Ben Higgins and Lila Whelan all got stuck in exploring their wild serial killer characters - what exactly is it that makes these people tick? How do they feel about one another? What do they want? And what will they do to survive? We're a long way from answering all those questions (and believe me there's a lot more where they came from!) but after nearly two years in the making it was HUGELY exciting to finally get stuck into rehearsals. We're gonna keep our fingers crossed for cooler weather tomorrow (the choccy biscuits our lovely stage manager Alex brought in melted!) - wish us luck! Team Sprocket x A little cheeky sneak peek behind the scenes as our male 'psycho's' relax and get into the groove while filming our trailer. Like what you see? Pledge on Kickstarter to find out more! www.kickstarter.com/projects/the-rules-play #TheRulesPlay |
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August 2015
CategoriesThe Rules: Sex, Lies & Serial KillersFollow Team Sprocket on their journey to the Edinburgh Fringe 2015 |
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