TWTC’s Tipsy Towers travels to Pitlochry this Summer! Here’s the poster and the video!

One of TWTC‘s perennial favourites travels to Pitlochry this summer. A night not to be missed. I designed the poster, and also produced the video below – which will give you the idea!

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TWTC Pop up … in the most Surprising Places

… Well we all knew that anyway didn’t we? Over two hundred venues and many thousands of performances, The Walking Theatre Co. have done extremely well with online and offline marketing and PR, however, sometimes the old old is the new new, and this time a pop-up was required for an upcoming event.

Based on our successful series of tour posters (see above), I’ve just designed this …

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They’re going on tour again: TWTC have a triple bill ready to roll!

… and yours truly gets to design the poster! Great fun photos and a cut-out of Long John Silver to boot. Should encourage venues to take part in what looks like a really engaging tour.

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Dunans Rising, modelled beautifully!

On an evening when the light faded slowly into limpid shadow, and there was a stillness about Dunans which spoke of Summer rather than very recent Winter, I found four willing volunteers to model Dunans Rising tartan garments.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Sadie and TWTC’s intern Alex decided it was high-time we had some of our lovely tartan modelled properly in the grounds at Dunans. I was dragged out and had a thoroughly lovely time directing my four willing models … the results speak for themselves!

All the items are available at our online store.

Thank you Sadie, Alex, H & G

Que? A Murderously Funny Trailer for one of TWTC’s Big Hits!

Tipsy Towers is a Murder Mystery tribute to one of the UK’s most infamous 2-season, 12-show TV comedic masterpieces from the 70s. Starring John Cleese and Prunella Scales, Fawlty Towers has a legendary status and a huge fan-base. TWTC’s version recreates the atmosphere and hilarity of the original in an actual hotel and makes it a sublimely funny murder …

I made this trailer as a tribute to the tribute and it has great performances from Karen, Sadie, Andy, Rebecca as well as the Audience. Camera, editing and production was all down to me of course, and I am very happy with the result.

Incidentally, the bit I was amazed to find I got a real kick out of doing was the incidental music, written on an  app called Figure – the software was developed by the Swedish group Propellerhead and is a joy to use.

Here’s the vid:

 

Put ’em up? Put ’em UP?! Double trouble with the Wiz Around Oz and a certain angry hotelier for TWTC’s new tour

Always enjoy designing posters for TWTC, especially when its for the company’s new tour, this week visiting Norfolk and Suffolk, and later in the year Wales. Both Basil and Dorothy will get lots of outings and introduce the good “folks” to a new brand of form of gently interactive theatre – well aside from being harangued by Basil Fawlty …

The top shot is in Glendaruel during a performance of A Wiz Around Oz 

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The Drovers and the Laird: Premiered today on Dunans Bridge for an Octogenarian Laird of Dunans Castle @TWTC

It was bound to happen at some point: the two companies working so successfully side-by-side at Dunans would eventually get together and create a theatrical piece for our Lairds and Ladies.

Well, today marked the first performance of a specially commissioned play ‘The Drovers and the Laird’ by the The Walking Theatre Company, written by my lovely/their very own in-house play-wright, Sadie Dixon-Spain, and performed by Rebecca Bloom, Janis Marshall-Reilly and John Love.

The play begins in 1715 and tells the tale of the arrival at ‘Dounens’ of the first Fletcher. Rob Roy MacGregor makes an appearance as does the lovely Anne McNabb, however more than these snippets I will not reveal because next year we’re going to put on several performances of the play for our Lairds and Ladies.

Rebecca Bloom (front left) and Sadie Dixon-Spain (front right) with other members of The Walking Theatre Company a couple of years ago!

When you ask? Well the dates are not confirmed, but we think four or five weekends through the summer, and each will be available to our Lairds and Ladies well in advance to enable travel plans.

We’re also developing “command performances” for very special Lairds and Ladies – more on the website soon.

You may also be wondering why the picture of woodland at the top? Well, the party asked not to have photos taken on the day, so our only option was a long distance shot of the opening scene – on the bridge, in the sunshine. I can attest that there was lots of laughter, but the performers and audience are not really visible at all. Oh well. Next time we’ll get Jean Donaldson of Powan to take some crackers!

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@TWTC website design refreshed with visually edgier theme, giving better access to all of the TWTC content

twtc-newFor the last couple of years the TWTC website has been using a theme from Pagelines which has served us well. However, we started to hit its limits when the number of pages on the website exceed the menu functionalities capacity (128 pages, I think!). So it was back to the drawing board, or rather back to adapting one of WP’s venerable themes. Twenty Twelve lent itself readily and along with a sliding image plugin and some nifty CSS work, the website now looks spiffing and works properly…

… well mostly, Firefox, is good, but the webkit browsers Safari and Chrome are not rendering the sliding images at the correct width. I’ll be working on this over the next few days so check back then (those of you with webkit browsers that is!)

Updating posters for @twtc today in a distillation of the TWTC & the West Coast of Scotland using Illustrator

powerof3This poster is one of two that TWTC asked me to design for their projected tours in the UK and North America this year. We had a lot of fun selecting the images of the performers – yes its Colin Little as Long John Silver on the right there – and iconic elements of the Scottish landscape. The tartan is of course ‘Dunans Rising’ from the ScottishLaird project!

The image was created using illustrator and the main font is called ‘Another’ – ‘Futura’ is of course  the other.

Tam and Meg gallop out of the cover of a forthcoming book

allowayrapgraphic… artwork for the cover of Alloway Rap. Notice the signal black, white and orange – no where have I seen that before? The TWTC logo possibly?

The font is ‘Cracked’ by the way and it was drawn in illustrator.

 

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