YOUR GUIDE TO THIS WEEK IN CULTURE
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Caro Meets Festivals Interview
Paul Jellis: London, Underground and all that
By TW Editorial | Published on Wednesday 26 February 2014
If you’ve ever been to one of new writing theatre company nabokov’s Arts Club nights, then you might be interested to hear that the event turns five this year, and is celebrating with London, Underground, two extra special events at the ongoing Vault Festival, as well as staging another show, Symphony.
I put some questions to nabokov’s Paul Jellis, to find out more about the the group, and what we can expect from their upcoming shows.
CM: You have two events on at Vault Festival. How did you come to get involved with that?
PJ: We did a small event for the first Vault Festival in 2012 which was really successful. Our production, Symphony by Ella Hickson, Nick Payne and Tom Wells, incorporates live music and spoken word and felt like a really good match for the sort of work that Vault are programming. Our other event, the nabokov Arts Club, started off in a warehouse and the bare brick aesthetic of the Vaults feels a bit like coming home.
CM: Can you tell us something about Symphony and about those involved in creating it? It sounds very collaborative but are there unifying themes to it…?
PJ: It’s made up of three short plays with live music by three of the most exciting and successful young writers in the country – Ella Hickson, Nick Payne and Tom Wells. The unifying idea is simply about telling stories in a way that fully incorporates music played live by the performers in interesting ways to make a sort of cross between a live gig and a piece of theatre. The music is composed by Ed Gaughan of London Snorkelling Team and it is directed by nabokov Artistic Director Joe Murphy. It’s something of a new writing dream team, and is just brilliantly entertaining and funny.
CM: Your other event is nabokov’s Arts Club, which is celebrating its fifth birthday. For the uninitiated, can you explain the format?
PJ: It’s basically a club night but with a whole load of different types of live performance thrown in. We have theatre, comedy & spoken word as well as bands and DJs all mixed up with exciting design, interactive pieces and lots of dancing and mayhem. It’s a really eclectic, mad, fun night out.
CM: What made you decide to create this kind of show at the beginning? Do you think you’ll still be doing it in another five years time?
PJ: We basically just want to make the kind of thing we’d love to see or go to. The group of artists collaborating on SYMPHONY is exactly who we’d want to see, and the line up for the Arts Club is a dream night out for us. As long as we want to see it, we’ll make it.
CM: Of the acts that have featured in the show over the years, are there any particular highlights?
PJ: Loads. We’ve made a couple of great spectacle pieces with the company tangled feet, have produced shows with amazingly talented writers like Jack Thorne and Polly Stenham and helped champion acts and performers such as The Correspondents and Josie Long who have gone on to big success.
CM: What can we expect from the two upcoming Arts Club events?
PJ: The night is called ‘London, Underground’ and is a celebration of the capital. We have a freerunning/beatboxing collaboration between 3Run who featured in the Bond film Casino Royale and Bellatrix, the world female beatbox champion, as well as music from the hip hop act Dizraeli & Downlow and the 8 piece funk and ska outfit King Porter Stomp, culminating in a DJ set from the Mystery Jets. Plus we have loads of theatre and comedy, an immersive design and lots of hidden surprises.
CM: What other shows is the company working on at present?
PJ: Our hit co-production with Soho Theatre, Blink by Phil Porter, is out on tour around the UK and getting a fantastic reception everywhere it goes. We’re also working on a major new piece with Live Theatre Newcastle and HighTide Festival, Ingcognito by award winning writer Nick Payne (Constellations) which plays at Live Theatre and HighTide in April before transferring to the North Wall, Oxford and The Bush, London, in May. It’s an incredibly exciting piece of new writing about the brain and what it means to be human and will be our biggest show to date.
CM: Have you attended/are you planning to attend other events at Vault Festival? If so what are they?
PJ: We’re really looking forward to Wingman – a scratch performance by the fantastic talent and nabokov Arts Club alumnus Richard Marsh. We’re also hoping to catch Tell Tales by our friends Jackdaw Theatre Company. London, Underground and Symphony are staged as part of Vault Festival, which continues until 8 March.
London, Underground and Symphony are staged as part of Vault Festival, which continues until 8 March. See the event website for more details.
LINKS: www.thevaultfestival.com | www.nabokov-online.com | twitter.com/nabokovtheatre
