Live - Ben Winger

Down by the sea

bwinger — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 21:52:00 +0000

The post Down by the sea first appeared on Ben Winger.

The Kingfisher

bwinger — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 20:51:32 +0000

Development information

I was lucky enough to be selected as one of Starcatchers’ latest recipients of their Play Space fund. I’m working on a piece of interactive theatre for 3-5 year olds and their families, that explores the themes of Ownership, Isolation and Loneliness.

I’ll be working with Fergus Dunnet and Gilchrist Muir. Fergus is designing and building a giant Sou’wester for me and Gilchrist will be an outside eye for the development weeks.

Updates to follow... For now enjoy a video of one the inspirations...

Starcatchers' Play Fund annoucement here

During the development Gilchrist [Parky] and I worked on the story below and the images above. It’s not finished yet… here is where we got to. Currently there is too much in it for how interactive and playful I’d like the show to be but it’s a nice structure to work from.

The Story so far...

SAME FISH, DIFFERENT DAY

The Fisherman sits in his boat in the middle of the sea, his rod in the water. He waits. The boat has no oars and no sail. This is where the Fisherman is and has always been.

He catches the same and only fish he ever catches.

The fish persuades him to let him have a go.

The fish catches a crown.

CORONATION FISHIN’

They fight over who’s crown it is. The fisherman snatches it away and crowns himself The King Fisher (This is not overly mean, he just gets caught up in the excitement of it all.)

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU FISH FOR

Dark ominous sky.

He makes the fish catch him more things. A boot, a plastic bottle. A rope. A telescope. He claims everything as his.

He looks through the telescope and spies land. “LAND HO!” He throws the rope around the fish and screams at him to swim hard. “Swim as hard as you can little fish”

They reach land. It is fascinating. The fisherman has never even seen land let alone stood on it.

MINE!

“Come on fish. Let’s see what else is mine.”

He pulls on the Fishes rope. The fish struggles to stay in the water. “I can’t breathe!”.

“But you are mine! You have to come”

“I am my own”. Says the fish and it swims away.

The fisherman empties the boat of all his things onto the shore. Just as he is about to go and explore the island, he sees the sea taking his things away. He runs down the shore in a panic and gathers up all his things.

“These are mine! You leave them alone Sea. MINE.”

The sea is silent.

“That’s what I thought.”

We see him traveling across the island claiming all things as his own, until eventually he has claimed everything.

He sits, covered in all of his things. “I AM THE KINGFISHER, AND ALL OF THIS IS MINE”. The sea is getting louder and louder and we can see it start to annoy The Fisherman.

TAKING THE SEA

He storms down to the beach and yells to the sea. “YOU ARE MINE SEA. YOU ARE MINE. SO BE QUIET!”

But the sea doesn’t listen. It laps at his feet. He goes to grab the sea, and tries to pull it up to his throne. His crown falls off and tumbles into the water just as The Sea barrels over him and overpowers him.

He’s thrashing around for his crown as the sea floods the whole island. He’s covered in all of the things he has collected and is getting overwhelmed and struggling to stay afloat.

The fish swims in, knocks the things off him and pulls him to safety. The sea falls back and he falls empty handed into the boat, gasping but safe.

FISHERMAN FRIENDS

Fish and Fisherman reunited.

Does the Fisherman let the fish catch him?

Has the rod gone missing? Do they sing a song together?

The Fisherman is sorry. Does he makes the fish a crown?

The post The Kingfisher first appeared on Ben Winger.

The Search

bwinger — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 12:54:17 +0000

Project Preview

A community treasure hunt with story at its heart. We were approached by Fringe by the sea to create a piece of theatre that would engage with residents of North Berwick outwith the central festival hub. We chose to focus on one particular street (Lochbridge Road) and engaged the people living there over 3 months in the run up to the festival. We finished as FBTS opened, with a large scale quest on the street.

Focussing on intergenerational play, our provocations and events were delivered for all ages and made with accessibility in mind.

Project Story

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DUCK? ‘Missing’ posters appeared overnight along the street.

DUCK TRACKS & CLUES chalk sprayed duck prints and our duck symbol appeared overnight along pavements and walls.

RUBBER DUCKS ON DOORSTEPS every household on Lochbridge rd

received an unexpected visitor. It included a request to decorate the duck and tell its story. We made a website where people could upload photos and stories of their decorated ducks on ifoundaduck.co.uk

FUNish FAIR

A run-down fairground arrived in town with a ‘Hook the missing Duck’ games stall & Clairevoyant. This was a chance for us to playfully collect story ideas from residents

SAIL & STORY DROP

A mysterious scroll with a poem penned by a lost fisherman and sail piece posted through all doors. With the instruction to design part of a new sail and drop it into the ‘sailbox’ inside the local shop who were keen to be part of the project.

EVENT INFO

A letter arrived through all doors with information and an invitation to come along to decorate the boat and attend the Treasure Hunt.

BOAT DECORATION

Residents painted and decorated the boat with the community using spray paints and continued to decorate sail scrolls.

THEATRICAL TREASURE HUNT – during the Fringe by the Sea Festival Performers and clues transformed Locbridge Rd for the day in the quest to find The Fisherman and his boat. Hidden treasure awaited them at the beach.

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Households

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Months

Treasure Seekers

Project Footage

Some films we made during and after The Search

Project Summary

We loved doing this project. Catherine Wheels were incredible throughout and it was brilliant to get back to the theatrical world again!

You can download our report on the project here.

Download Report

The post The Search first appeared on Ben Winger.

Dr Squash

bwinger — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 22:29:58 +0000

About

This is my Clowndoctor character. Though the photos here are slightly out of date. I wear much much faster more athletic clothes these days.

I work for the arts-in-health charity Hearts and Minds as a therapeutic clown. As a Clowndoctor with Children and young people and as an Elderflower with people living in care with dementia.

It’s the greatest job. I get to play and connect with such incredible people and it brings such joy to my life. I’ve learnt so much from my time at Hearts and Minds and from everyone I’ve ever visited. All our interactions are improvised and person-led. It is a great feeling to be able to make people laugh or smile *but * in reality the work is much deeper than that. Our work is about making connections. We’re expert listeners and communicators no matter if you’re verbal or not. It is our job, to see you, to hear you and acknowledge you.

Clowning is a perfect art form for facilitating communication and the work that Hearts and Minds does fills me with shed loads of pride.

Dr Squash - A visit

[Names have been changed]

A hush descended in the playroom of Ward 7. Everyone had gathered for Dr Squash’s unmissable World Premiere performance… Unfortunately for Dr Squash, he wasn’t aware that he was expected to perform, and hadn’t prepared anything. Not wanting to let twin sisters Betty and Billie, and 5 year old Martin down, he took a deep breath and readied himself. Drs Mousse and Squash had already had great difficulty getting into the playroom and only managed it thanks to the good graces and instructions of Martin, so Squash was keen that everything should be perfect for the performance… whatever it was the performance was going to be… Mousse took up her Kazoo and with much fanfare announced the arrival of Dr Squash. Squash entered full of confidence and with the immense presence of a great Shakespearean actor, promptly tripped on a chair and ended up bundled over a nearby bookcase. A slight wave of embarrassment washed over him but he comforted himself with the fact that in all likelihood no one had noticed his stumble. Amazingly it seemed fortune shone on him once more… he had not only landed on a bookcase but upon the perfect idea for his performance. A dramatic reading of “That’s not my pig”.

Squash stepped forward nervously, and with an encouraging glance from Mousse and the twins, and Martin, and Grandad, and Audrey the play specialist and the rest of the audience who had gathered outside… he began.

“That’s not my pig, its tail is too smooth”

The room erupted with beautiful laughter, Mousse was awestruck by such stupendous idiocy and Squash felt his heart swell.

“That’s not my pig, its hooves are too bumpy”

Tears rolled down the twins four cheeks, and Martin was struggling to breath, Squash continued;

“That’s not my pig, its back is too rough”

He’d rolled the ‘r’ in ROUGH with such skill and dexterity that the audience had fallen into a reverent silence. Heads, shoulders, knees and toes shook in what he assumed must be disbelief. Mousse’s head hung in pride as Squash reached the final page.

“THAT’S my pig, its ears are so soft”

Basking in the whoops, cheers and adoration of the playroom Squash bowed deeply. Mousse’s apologies echoed around the room. “I’m sorry the other wards didn’t get to see this too” Squash thought, nodding in agreement. He’d done what everyone had thought was impossible. Squash had saved Christmas. In April.

Clowning during Covid-19

In order to continue with Clowndoctor visits during the pandemic we had to go online. Below are some examples of online visits and bespoke video content.

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The Hunt

bwinger — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 22:30:54 +0000

Project Preview

During the first lockdown in 2020, Kerry Cleland and I were lucky enough to be recipients of the inaugural Make Space development funding from Catherine Wheel’s Theatre company.

We wanted to create a theatrical community treasure hunt that built on the increased sense of community spirit brought about by the pandemic.

Project Details

We started with different provocations and playful installations on our street. Seeing how people would interact with them, and what sort of responses we might get. We were really keen to look at ‘whole family’ play and how people might begin to break and bend rules again after such stringent lockdown requirements.

After that, we spent some time in Catherine Wheels’ unit working with Gill Robertson to develop some narrative and structure for the treasure hunt and came up with the Character of Mr Yellow and The Colour Suckers. We were enlisting the community in the fight to reclaim our colour.

Project Summary

The Hunt took place over a weekend in September, with the phonebox shack arriving as if by magic in the darkest night hours. Participants were required to solve a series of clues and find numbers that, when combined would give them the phonebox telephone number. They spoke to Mr Yellow and were presented with the next colour that needed saving to display in their window. We invited 6 families at timed intervals to ensure social distancing and other Covid-19 measures were in place.

PS...

For those who might find it interesting. Kerry and I submitted a video application for the Make Space fund. I’ll be putting up applications (both successful and not) for archive and sharing purposes. You can watch it below.

The post The Hunt first appeared on Ben Winger.

MESS

bwinger — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 14:24:00 +0000

Project Preview

A show/project originally conceived by me but taken to incredible heights by Tenterhooks and the ensemble. A show made for and with children and young people with complex additional support needs.

Project Details

MESS was totally redesigned and reimagined during the Covid-19 pandemic. We took it outside, inside and to peoples gardens. All whilst maintaining social distancing measures and other Covid precautions.

Losing our ability to be tactile and close with our audience was a tough challenge to overcome but with the help of some R&D funding from Creative Scotland we were able to rework the show and make it even better!

We’re now in the middle of another tour to SEN schools in the east and west, after our 2021 tour of some of Scotland’s leading venues with support from Creative Scotland’s touring fund.

It has been an absolute delight to work on MESS again. The show works so well, and it is a testament to the diligence and incredible work of the team.

Film and Website

During the last tour I was able to create a filmed version of the show. I filmed over 2 days and used rehearsal performance to follow the action and performers much more closely. I wanted to give viewers the best chance to get a sense of what watching the show live is like.

With the help of Fergus Dunnet MESS’ designer I developed messtheshow.org as a resource for audience, venues and promoters. You can watch the trailer, some additional MESS content and check out the website below.

The post MESS first appeared on Ben Winger.