Today was the opening day of our eleventh Looping the Loop festival and it was a good day. A really good day, filled with lots of activity, sunshine, people and a real sense of presenting live performance that was relevant, embracing and truly accessible. 
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At 9am we arrived outside Turner Contemporary with the #MadVentureVan to set up for our 11am start with Adventure in Space and the Stranded Space Cadets. 3 actors, 1 director, 1 actor/director, a trainee production assistant, a producer, a volunteer helper and a photographer, all working together to give 7 performances of Adventure in Space  (it may have been 8!) and to have the Space Cadets descending on the Old Town, Dreamland and the Margate seafront. By 5pm we'd had up to 12 people at a time inside #MadVentureVan for a performance (amazing what a tardis this little 70s caravan theatre space can be!), handed out hundreds of festival programmes and talked to lots of people about what's going on this week. Then it was off to Theatre Royal Margate for the penultimate performance of Hannah & Hanna in Dreamland which we supported and are very proud to have as our opening weekend production.

​Over the weeks of its first tour the show has matured into a very special, engrossing piece of theatre, performed by Thanet actor Lisa Payne and Celia Meiras, who was in the original Hannah & Hanna play, premiered at the Theatre Royal in 2001. The last performance of this tour is on Sunday 4 November at 3pm. It's great, it's coming home, try it and enjoy it! There's so much to laugh, groan, squirm and rejoice at. By the time we all left the theatre at 10.30pm, it felt like a long, joyous, creative day, doing the stuff we love and having the reward of seeing people of all ages excited and inspired by what they'd encountered. 
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There's a whole wealth of performance on offer this week. Don't waste this opportunity for Thanet, come to something, tell others, check it out. Teatime Tales, Ground Control, Rendezvous in Bratislava - creative performance that's about life, family, the world around us - www.loopingtheloopfestival.org.uk

​JOHN RETALLACK – Writer & Director John Retallack is the author of twelve plays for young people and has adapted numerous texts for the stage and radio.

He was the founding director of ATC Theatre, director of Oldham Coliseum, director of Oxford Stage Company, and the founding director of Company of Angels.

From 2010 - 2013, he was Associate Director at Bristol Old Vic where he directed Owen Sheers’ play Pink Mist.

​Prior to setting up the Oxford Playwriting Course, he was Tutor in Writing for Performance at Ruskin College in Oxford. 

 What compelled you to write both the original Hannah and Hanna, and its follow up Hannah and Hanna in Dreamland?

Before writing the original play of Hannah and Hanna, I had worked on a play about refugees in Holland. When I came back to London, I wanted to write something about the hosts, since at that time, I didn’t think there was anything around where we saw how much animosity existed between long term residents and newcomers from outside the UK. I decided to test this out in Margate and we did a workshop in a school in Ramsgate. I set up an improvisation where the students were talking to refugees in Kosovo. Their attitudes were astonishing – presumably influenced by the views of their parents. In the eyes of these young people, all asylum seekers had babies, were thieves and had Rolex watches! They were happy to unite around a common enemy. My daughter’s name is Hanna and at the time, her best friend was called Hannah, so this gave me the title of the play, in which I wanted to explore how two young women from very different backgrounds could become friends and what their story might be. Then in the summer of 2015, I began writing a play for the Unicorn about the Calais Jungle. It wasn’t produced but it led to me revisiting the story of Hannah and Hanna and to find out what happened to the Hanna(h)s 15 years on.

rLooping the Loop is committed to supporting and promoting Thanet-based artists. We’re please to hand over our blog-space to one of our associate artists Megan Garrett-Jones to tell you all about ‘Things With Words’ – a spoken word performance event and occasional radio show that is about to have a particularly spooky outing for Halloween.
 
Megan: 
Yes. Things With Words is getting freaky for Halloween at the Ravensgate Arms in Ramsgate. Things With Words basically does what it says on the tin. It’s an open platform event giving people the opportunity to present any manner of things with words. This will be the 5th event and so far we have incorporated short stories, poetry from the page as well as slam-style poetry, song lyrics, character monologues, re-readings (for example, last event Gertrude Stein was recited whilst audience members all ate jelly). I tend to round up local creatives and ask them to present something, but it is also an open mic and we are forever welcoming new people to the floor.
 
Three events ago I decided to make a radio show to coincide with each event, which is hosted on the Ramsgate Music Hall Radio website. This was a chance to further explore a theme for each event. Songs are chosen for the lyrics and how the words do something in particular in each song. They are all available online, so please check them out if you are interested. The producer I work with in Ramsgate, Nick De Carlo, and I had a lot of fun on the Halloween radio show as we negotiated the fine line between wanting to revel in all of Halloween’s awful tacky fun and wanting to present something meaningful and dig a bit deeper into the significance of the festival. It will probably be a similar vibe at the Ravensgate Arms on Halloween. With such an array of people presenting, it’s certainly going to be multi-dimensional.
 
I connected with Looping the Loop as a volunteer when I moved to Thanet two years ago and I have enjoyed support from the festival as an artist, well as getting to see some genuinely transformative theatre and live art. This is another element to doing ‘Things With Words’ for me. I believe in the power of performance in exploring new ways to do things with words and actions. This is very much a community event and I strongly encourage people to come and get involved and discover what we can do together.
 
Things With Words
Spoken Word Open Mic
Tuesday 31st October, 7:30 pm onward, free
Ravensgate Arms, Ramsgate
 
Open mic signup or inquiries  megan.garrett.jones@gmail.com
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TNT. An explosive. Dynamite. Invented by Alfred Nobel. So he invented a prize. So that he’d be remembered for peace and not death. Smart plan. It worked. We’ve used a similar thought process in forming ‘Theatre Network Thanet’ (TNT). Actually we haven’t created a weapon of mass destruction. But don’t write us off just yet.

But to get down to brass tacks, TNT is a group that we (writer and performer Tom Adams and writer/actor Chris MacDonald) have set up in collaboration with Looping the Loop. TNT’s aims are simple. We want to get anyone who works in or is interested in live performance in Thanet together for a chat and a glass of something every month.

We had our guinea pig run at the Harbour Arm in Margate and followed it up at the beginning of October with our first official meet-up at Archive in Ramsgate.

Our aims are simple. Meet, chat, put faces to names and maybe exchange numbers and a desire to help each other out. We’re not attempting to form a hugely committed professional theatre company to rival the RSC in Thanet, we merely want to create a space where people can come together and talk. At future meets we’re going to have a little bit of live performance to get things going and we will encourage our people to volunteer themselves for this as we go along.

Both meetings so far have been a lovely way to spend a Thursday evening. I entreat you to come along or tell everyone you know about us. It can be a tough business at times and being able to talk to others in the same boat is incredibly nourishing. Perhaps the Nobel committee will one day give us the ‘Peace Prize’ for services to neurotic thespian souls. Let’s hope that one day, that’s all the world has to worry about.

Chris MacDonald
thechrismacdonald.com

The next TNT will form part of Looping the Loop Festival's launch event on November 12th at Tom Thumb Theatre. For more details of this event check HERE 

We have a callout for an artist/maker to take part in The Castle Builder on Sat 18 November at the Theatre Royal Margate. It probably sounds like an odd 'opportunity' - to make something during the performance, from wood from a broken chair.

We had this message today from one of the senior producers at Battersea Arts Centre, after seeing the show at Wigan Old Courts, the opening festival. It makes it make sense...

"Chatting to Louise afterwards, she mentioned that Vic (Llewellyn, performer) had described the show to her as a 'mix between a TED talk and a rock concert' - and just in case that isn't something he has mentioned to others I thought I would share that. It's a great description of the show I think. Vic and Ed are speaking really passionately and with great humour about what it is to make things; shows, buildings, toys for their kids, art....and the music is just great. 
I found it incredibly inspiring and really moving. 

There is a particularly beautiful song which is a dedication to the local maker that is working on stage throughout the show, and is essentially a love song for anyone who makes things. It made me beam and it made me cry."

So, if you are an artist or maker, or know someone who might get a lot from joining us at this performance, please get in touch. 

loopingthanet@gmail.com
Click here to read about the show
Click here to go to the Opportunity page