GUTS SOUNDSCAPE TEST

A GUTS soundscape test.

The TWELVE ACRE ORCHARD theme plays like a chapel of rest organ then is engulfed by sewer construction noises and GUTS MACHINE scraping...then the dripping sewer takes over followed by an urban interlude of beats,sirens and helicopters.Eventually the theme returns with a Roy Budd feel...
(for best results listen with headphones)

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Phantasmagoria

I am very interested in Pre Cinema techniques particularly the effects of the Phantasmagoria, moving projections, mirrors and other reflection and light effects.

The PEPPER'S GHOST effect is one of my favourites.It uses a hidden plane of angled glass to reflect a carefully lit superimposition creating the effect of a 'manifestation'.

This would work very well in the Coal Cellars, as the Ghosts start to make their appearance.

Modern Ghost trains and Theme Park rides still use the Pepper's Ghost technique.

I was wondering what my 'role' was in this process - Hey, can I be the 'imagineer' !!

These photos in this post found through Google Images and are for illustrative purposes only.

Lecture Theatre

The Lecture Theatre may have once been used as a disecting theatre...

Spiral Staircase - Lecture Theatre to Library

Leads from the Lecture Theatre, past the Committee Room (which smelled of a fish supper),through the Archive and up into the corner of the Library...

Coal Cellars Tour

Neville Hall Photos

The three main spaces in Neville Hall, which is fast becoming our favoured venue.

The well preserved and atmospheric COAL CELLARS would be CHARLIES SUBTERRANEAN KINGDOM

The LECTURE THEATRE and MAIN LIBRARY could act as Trail Room, Grand Dome
and everything else...

bolbec stairwell

links

www.mininginstitute.org.uk/events/findingus.html

www.litandphil.org.uk

Sketches of the spaces

Here are some sketches of the potential spaces at the Tyne Bridge North Tower, Bolbec Hall stairwell, The Literary and Philosophical Society main library and small basement library and hall area and the Mining Institute's Neville Hall - library, raked lecture theatre and coal cellar.

These are from memory but show the rough arrangment of the spaces.

LIT AND PHIL

mobile phone pix!!

GUTS drawings

Some drawings of Charlie in the sewer.

Here is his proto GUTS model ready to be hooked up to the plumbing.

Charlie in the sewer, sewering.

Charlie dressed as a London sewerman of the early 20th Century.

OCEANA

Owner Tony Mann generously showed us around the OCEANA site himself.

Peter had seen a show staged in this buildings complex next door to Swan Hunter and very much liked the ambience and potential of the interesting industrial buildings and proximity to the river.

The buildings were great and I especially liked the old sluice pools which made me think of Charlie's sewer home.

Some of the shallow ponds, with their rectangular fomality, looked like Japanese gardens.

An open warehouse area with a wall of opaque glass was also very visual.

The site is a more functional space than the somewhat constricting Bridge Tower.

It would make a great location for many films, but for me was perhaps too evocative of the city's maritime history. Among the boat like sheds and office blocks, with the staiths and jettys, one felt steeped in the history of ship building and the river. The only problem is GUTS is about Dobson and Grainger and the classical heart of the city, and the OCEANA site is about another part of the city's history.

TYNE BRIDGE PART THREE

I like the sound of the traffic coming from above and the cries of the Seagulls who have covered the tower with a protective shell of guano.

TYNE BRIDGE NORTH TOWER PART TWO

Staging GUTS

A sense of place and the character of the architecture is central to the play.The idea that the world and its built environment functions like the internal digestion system of the human being recurs throughout. Charlie the agrieved Sewerman is psychotically dedicated to building his GUTS MACHINE which is both his instrument of purging destruction and his symbol of universal harmony. Charlie is a good egg driven a bit phantom of the opera by the death of his wife and his hatred of the semi criminal property developer Carlisle.

As the two come into conflict the subterranean GUTS MACHINE seems to conjure up the ghosts of similar antagonists John Dobson and Richard Grainger, architect and master builder of Newcastle's Nineteenth Century city centre.

With this in mind, Peter, Fiona and I began visiting some potential sites for staging the play, with a view that the location would become like another character in the play.

We began with my personal favourite. I am usually preoccupied by extremes and it is the subterranean, stigean underworld of the sewers and Charlies steampunk, anatomical GUTS MACHINE and it's opposite loft/penthouse roof of the city looking down world of Carlisle that excites me most.

What could be more central to newcastle than the Tyne Bridge?

We visted the North Tower and we kindly showed around by our helpful guide Lee.

Here are some pictures from the visit.