The Open-Air Theatre Project

Anonymous asked: Hi Anna, Just read your wonderful news about your theatre, wow how exciting! As someone who is so passionate about the Minack and as a performer and Producer/Director of shows at Minack I would love to know if you are looking for touring companies to perform at your new venue. It looks beautiful! Regards Matthew Chandler

Hi Matthew!

I’ve just seen your message (sorry, I’m not that technological). I hope it’s not months old! I’d love to hear more about what you produce… I’d certainly be interested, though we’re still in the middle of building the seating at the moment :) Everything is up in the air, but… it’s going to happen, so yes, please, get in touch. anna@unteatroentretodos.com

Hope to hear from you soon!

Anna

If at first you don’t succeed…

Let’s face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me.

- Audrey Hepburn

As you probably know by now, we couldn’t possibly build an open-air theatre without cake. We had cake in the sweltering July heat last summer when we restored the stage… so, by george, are we going to have cake on a bracing morning in February.

On this particular morning, I was up early - possibly too early - with my head full of Big Cake Plans. Virgin olive oil… free range eggs… cocoa powder… cranberries… and, what the heck, half white sugar and (oh, the oppulance!) half brown. The only problem is, I didn’t quite manage to fully wake up…

So, I grabbed my ingredients, flipped them into a salad bowl and zapped them with an electric hand mixer. I did notice that the eggs had seemed to curdle when I added a little milk but hey ho, into the oven it went. And off I went to have a shower… almost knocking off the box of - EGGS!!!!!!!! - which were doing their best to curdle at the splash of cold milk from where they sat, untouched, on the work surface.

The slightest of dithers. And then that cake was out of the oven. Back in the bowl. Eggs in. Whizzed up (wooden spoon this time, out of respect for the cranberries). And back in the oven… And I was heading off happily to the shower. Disaster adverted.

I

… Or so I thought. I had time to catch up on site, just as the day was getting going… Attend to pressing engagements, like recording Manuel-The-Weatherman’s daily spot… And nip back in time to take the narrowly rescued cake out of the stone-cold oven!!!… Somehow, in the middle of the egg debacle, I had managed to turn the oven off!!!

 Cake out (again). Oven on. Cake in. Back to site….

… until break time, when at long last, I could take a properly cooked, beautifully risen Chocolate, Cranberry (and uncurdled egg) Cake out of the oven. Success…

… if we forget the fact I forgot to add the brown sugar!!!

“All farewells should be sudden, when forever…” (Byron)

Day One. February 17th… goodbye mountain…

… and hello seats!

Right, I have a confession to make. While you avid readers have been enjoying the last rays of summer sunshine, looking forward to finally tasting those migas perhaps, or wondering whether the kids need more suncream… I have been living a very secret, but excruciatingly exciting life in the future!!!

Which must come as a bit of a shock, I know.

It is not actually August where I am. It is February 17th 2014 and it is a Very Important Day. 

Which is why I see nothing for it but to fall back on that time-weary, but oh-so-effective device: the flashforward. You’ll have to imagine we’re in an arty film and we’ve gone all 'non-linear’. Or perhaps I’ve dozed off with the DVD remote wedged behind a cushion? But either way, here it coooooomes…………………..!!!

http://flashgordonforever.blogspot.com

I’m ripping you - rudely, and without warning - from those lazy, hazy days of summer and hurtling you into the damp and rather chilly world of Laroles in mid February. And the unglodly hour of 7.30am.

Past back-to-school moments and the first nip of autumn. Past the Conama Award you all helped us win, and the talk we had to give as a consequence. Past meeting The Man From Unesco, and The Day We Got More Money. Past chats with the mayor… with the architects… with people in farflung corners of the globe… Past the ups and the downs. The crowdfunding whirl… And a crash course in slate… 

All this whizzes past us. Not lost. Merely ‘parked’. And we land, slightly dazed, in the here and now.

Welcome! Take a moment, have a look around, and then hang onto your hat because…….

in precisely 22 minutes time…… 

WE START BUILDING THE SEATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The best-laid plans of mice and men… (Robert Burns)

Sometimes in life things just don’t go to plan. And so it was with our migas-and-sardines banquet. About ten days before the event - posters up and bloggers from far and wide on their way - Jana and I bumped into a teary-eyed Elvira outside the bakery and she told us her mother was seriously ill in hospital.

This was obviously terrible news. And it did, undoubtedly, eclipse any worries about grilling 800 sardines or making garlic breadcrumbs for 150 into insignificance. But, I have to admit, I was thrown into turmoil. For we were not just losing the lovely Elvira. We were losing all that culinary know-how (I mean… Migas?! Moi?!), the gas ring thingies she would have used to cook on, the pans,  the grills… and all the calm, capable friends she would have roped in to help. And all we were left with… was the meagre budget of 5€ a couple Elvira had come up with. Plenty of money if you are a mean, lean Alpujarran housewife used to rustling up food for a multitude (and in possession of that prized possession: a recipe for migas) but it’s dizzyingly little if you happen to be two wishy-washy urbanites building a theatre with mouths to feed.

They say that God moves in mysterious ways. Well, I wouldn’t know about that, but it is certainly how things work in a rural Spanish village. Everything seems to involve unspoken agreements, unwritten rules; unseen connections between people… And when all that is in place, things move with surprising efficiency. But to us mere mortals, doomed to flounder on as best we can, it can feel an uphill struggle to get anything done.

We did our best with what we had. First, we ditched the sardines (uproar). Then we ditched the migas (more uproar). Then we tried to limit the numbers (bedlam). We begged some wine from the ecological bodega… We found someone to make us our migas… for a price. We were frantic. We talked incessantly about breadcrumbs… It was not pretty.

And then one day, in some far-flung corner of the universe, there was a cosmic click… And as the mist cleared, one of the women from the village - Nieves - took pity on us. She began to bustle about in the background… finding gas rings and coercing friends on board. And slowly, order was restored. The migas came back. And then the sardines…. And then - miracle of miracles - Elvira did too! She knocked at the door, apron in hand and back specially from the hospital, on the day of the party, just as the first oil was starting to sizzle in the pan…

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. - Jean Anouilh

Last summer, that was me. The sleeves were metaphorical but the sweat was real. Suddenly the dream was taking shape. It was solid. It was dusty. And it was (largely) churning in a cement mixer. And as the theatre grew, out there on the mountainside, it began to grow in other ways too. The local people would gather under a tree and stare for a while. It began to creep into everyday chat in the shop… the bar… the queue for the fish van. The people working on the theatre became minor celebrities, the village gripped by their progress on Facebook.

As the village succombed to Facebook Fever. And began to buzz with excitement. As the new wall inched its way up and the cobbles emerged from under the mud, it became clear. We needed a party.

We would celebrate our new stage… and to say thank you to the people who were working so hard to get it done. We would also give people their first “feel” of their new-look threshing circle as something other than… well, a threshing circle. We would need to do it on a shoestring, but I wasn’t too worried…. because I had a plan.

And it was this. I’d introduce the builders to the concept of a potluck supper - as plans go, it was as simple as it was brilliant - and I’d do it while they were enjoying an end-of-work beer for added effect. And, who knows, it might have worked. I had a few builders nodding thoughtfully, after all. But like most of my ideas once they floated out onto the village scene, it was nimbly 'hijacked’, right before my very eyes (in this instance by Elvira, one of the women in the team) and transformed into a new and improved version of itself. She was pragmatic, very convincing and utterly ruthless with my feeble little plan. We would charge 5€ a couple. We would have local wine. We would have migas and we’d have them with sardines. It was cheap, it was cheerful …and it was way out of my comfort zone.

Migas?! I’ve lived in Spain long enough to know there is a serious art to rustling up this humble dish of garlic breadcrumbs. And could we really grill our way through 4 boxes of sardines?!

But luckily none of this mattered. Evira was now at the helm. I could see we were in safe hands… and my original idea for the party was out of potluck! 

The global village

The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom. - Jon Stewart

I have to say I’m kind of new to the whole social media scene. I’ve had a Facebook page (gathering dust) for years but beyond that… unchartered waters. So, when this project started, I had to grab my coat and run out onto the social scene in my slippers (as it were) and it has not been pretty. I’ve found it difficult - particularly at first - to convince myself anyone ‘out there’ wants to know. And then, the storm-in-a-teacup dramas of twitter: no followers… too many followers… the follow-only-to-unfollow-ers… the directly-won’t-follow-ers… The science behind that most revered thing: your ratio… The ridiculous happiness of your first retweet… The brief grip of angst on hearing that new-tweet-peep on your phone when you’re in the shower…

But as the weeks went on, and the fog cleared, I began to get it. There was a world out there - it seemed - and, not only was it listening, it felt like a chat.

Tori Spelling (yikes, woman, why are you quoting her?!) sums it up:  

I just wanna thank all those amazing Internet bloggers out there that hate me day-to-day. I love you! You rock!

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Or finding yourself finally rescued, weak with relief, by firemen.

I must admit I found all this rather unexpected. As far as I knew, the internet was supposed to be about finding information, buying things, keeping in touch with friends… You need something; you google it up. I somehow hadn’t imagined the 'online community’ would be, well… a community. 

Now, I’m very clear on this. Without the internet… without the information at my finger tips… without being able to dip my toe into that infinite pool of expertise… without being able to rent-a-mentor at the click of a mouse… And without that mysterious sense of community… there would be one less open-air theatre in the world. Of that I’m certain. So, given all that, you can imagine my reaction when some of those virtual cheerleaders decided they might rather like to pixel themselves together and materialise in real life, in the flesh, in Laroles. Mid summer. The dust not yet settled on our new stage. And - to my mind at least - a wonderful idea. 

We started to hatch a plan…

And a theatre is born…

The old threshing circle… more of a lemon than circle, the outer edge fallen away and the cobbles hidden under layers of mud…

And how it is now… after the restoration work of this summer…