Hello! Welcome back our wee blog. This weekend is being spent sat on this balcony in Brighton, working hard with our Marketing Manager to design our leaflets and posters, as well as reading through the applications we have received so far! Everyone who has emailed us with their weird, wonderful and wacky shows - THANK YOU! We are having such fun seeing a tiny piece of your world. We said we'd get back to everyone by the end of March, so we are finalising details with the help our our oat-milk flat whites (we are so those people! Oat milk for the win!)
It can be quite daunting at this point in the process, when we cannot predict how much interest we will get from creatives, how the scheduling will look for each venue, but you have to start somewhere! And this is the bit that Tabitha (one of our founders and Creative Director) absolutely loves! It's when all the pieces start to come together, and you can start imagining the day, which seems so far away, but so close at the same time! (113 days! eek). So we start slowly, seeing how long each show is, how many actors are in it, which space it would be most suited to. Some are musical, some are intimate, some comedy and some tragedy, some professional and some locals getting involved too! Tabby's favourite thing about the festival is the variety or work on offer, even just from our first rounds of applicants! Working out all the timings is a full-on and intense process. The venues have to run like well-oiled machines, as if one show overruns, it impacts the rest of the day. It takes us a whole living-room of lists, diagrams, notebooks, laptops all open on different tabs, Trello boards and controlled and respectful communication (or sometimes Lee and Tabby shouting over one another until finally reaching a COMPROMISE :D)
Remember there is still plenty of time to apply to take part - around may will probably be a loose deadline, as thats when we need to let all the theatre companies know what time they will be performing. With four stages this year, we are aiming for a busy and bustling day of theatre from all angles!! Last year we had 30 hours of theatre. Who knows how much there will be this year!
Also, we had a super meeting today with Tabby's best friend Amy and her boyfriend Richard, who are running the food for the festival this year. Together, they are BoxTrot. They love theatre, and they love delicious, healthy food. Funnily enough, they met on stage as members of the musical theatre society at Sussex University, where they studied Psychology and English Literature respectively. After graduating, they began to build a business that enabled them to live an ‘outdoorsy’, alternative and healthy lifestyle centred around sharing the food they love. A perfect fit for Theatre in the Fields! More info on this lovely couple in another post! :)
LOVE AND HUGS!
THE TEAM XOX
