DAY 1 - TigerFace Residency at Chapter

DAY 1 TigerFace Residency at Chapter

TigerFace - Fuck You

I know right, I can hardly believe it either. Chapter Arts (big thanks to Alice Burrows) have actually given me two weeks of lovely space to work on my long time "in production" piece TigerFace.

For those of you who don't know who TigerFace is; he's an asshole. Really, a crooked, morally corrupt, miserable, nihilistic version of my inner self loathing self.

Presumably a former Children's TV presenter, TigerFace now spends his evenings re-running his old routines, telling the same old jokes and showing you what he made earlier, much earlier, in like, 1997. The problem is his material hasn't changed and for some reason he's stuck performing to adults, and audiences of people he really can't stand.

The truth is, I still don't know what TigerFace is.

It started off as an access tool for me to try unplanned, unorganised and drastically unrehearsed pieces of something in front of an audience at scratch nights, an opportunity to throw shit at the walls and see what happens as well as develop my reflex ability in the arena of unplanned performance.

I bought the suit for something Tin Shed Theatre Co. was doing at the time, and in a moment of thoughtlessness the photographer on the project (the awesome Dafydd Bland Eminent Photography) caught this image:

Upon seeing this podgy, miserable looking tiger man I immediately became compelled to tell his story and find out how someone with such a joyful exterior could really harness some truly terrifying feelings of bitterness and hopelessness.

Today I spent around 5 hours in the space and accomplished a lot in my head, but very little in the physical. I wrote a tiny bit and moved a tiny bit, but mainly juggled rubber eggs... With little success.

So this is me posting blog one of what will be many blogs keeping who ever is interested in the loop with a piece of work I'm really very excited to be finally making.

I'll be posting regularly on Instagram (it's my new favourite social media platform) so get me there if you're interested: Instagram

Or check out updates on my: Website

Anything else you can email me: mejustincliffe@hotmail.co.uk

For now

Mucho

J

<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-version="6" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAAGFBMVEUiIiI9PT0eHh4gIB4hIBkcHBwcHBwcHBydr+JQAAAACHRSTlMABA4YHyQsM5jtaMwAAADfSURBVDjL7ZVBEgMhCAQBAf//42xcNbpAqakcM0ftUmFAAIBE81IqBJdS3lS6zs3bIpB9WED3YYXFPmHRfT8sgyrCP1x8uEUxLMzNWElFOYCV6mHWWwMzdPEKHlhLw7NWJqkHc4uIZphavDzA2JPzUDsBZziNae2S6owH8xPmX8G7zzgKEOPUoYHvGz1TBCxMkd3kwNVbU0gKHkx+iZILf77IofhrY1nYFnB/lQPb79drWOyJVa/DAvg9B/rLB4cC+Nqgdz/TvBbBnr6GBReqn/nRmDgaQEej7WhonozjF+Y2I/fZou/qAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BBATTFyDeiv/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Apperently being dressed as tiger doesn&#39;t help me juggle. An almost perfect routine. Getting there. #helpme #juggling #threeeggs #threeballs #juggler #showoff #failure #juggler #tigerface</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A video posted by Justin Teddy Cliffe (@justinosaurusrex) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2016-01-26T13:56:16+00:00">Jan 26, 2016 at 5:56am PST</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>

Dear World

Dear World,

This is an open letter to you from me.

I am a 10 year old version of myself, and I have a few things to ask.

I'd write to God, but, as it happens, he's never given me his forwarding address, although being omnipotent, I imagine he'll be able to read this anyway.

I was wondering, World, if you you clear up a few things I've been told.

Like, were you created by calculation or chance, and are you only 6000 years old?

Seeing as you've been here all this time, I thought you'd be the best person to ask. I know you can't really give an opinion, but in all the times I've asked God something, I've never had any kind of answer back.

So I was wondering, did we start off as single celled organisms existent only in the sea, or did we all come from two naked white people called Adam and Eve?

I've been told that God moves in mysterious ways, but you just seem to move the same way every day, and I must say, that I prefer that notion. That the atmosphere causes tidal waves in the ocean, or that tectonic plates that shift and vibrate causes seismic motion. Not some bloke with a beard and an agenda living in the sky, causes and then casually shrugs off massive genocide.

And on that note, World, did you once entirely flood? It seems illogical to me, but that's what I'm told happened, and like I say, in my opinion I think you're the font.

Did Noah managed to get them all, or did he leave anything we don't know about behind? Massive creatures with wings and flippers and grey fur and teeth? And whats the deal with dinosaurs? Did they ever exist in the first place? I'm confused because I'm being told that smart scientists are wrong, and that the words of a really, really, really old book are to be believed. Even though I've never seen a talking tree. Sounds like some kind of hallucination to me, and what with the server lack of medicinal understanding coupled with their utter lack of knowledge involving the intricacies of the brain, I might suggest that, that bloke was seeing things.

Also, if my vicar is so sure all this stuff happened, why does he go red and take off his glasses and raise his voice when I question there logic.

You can't really answer that though, World, because you're just a ball of chance matter that settled perfectly in one spot and allowed sustenance to grow and mould and shape and grow more. Fauna and flora, and slime, and fish and stuff in-between all that and me.

I've got to say, as a revolving, evolving emotionless ball of water and dirt, I way prefer you to this selfish, vein, anarchic butthole the Vicar keeps telling me about. He just seems like a twat.

Thanks, World.

Regards,

10 Year Old Me

The Lady Countess Of Nowhere

She waits, very impatiently. Complete anticipation. Sat on the arm of the settee, half uncomfortable, half un, she is completely ready to jump. She bites her bottom lip, rhythmically bounces her left leg up and down, and with index finger and thumb gripped on gold, she twiddles her wedding ring whilst staring out of the window.

The clock says eleven-thirty-one. He’s usually been and gone by now. “A watched kettle”, she thinks almost aloud. She’s excited, but finds the wait unbearable. A Jeremy Kyle re-run spews violent noises from the TV speakers that battle with the kitchen’s Radio 4 radiations. A mess of noise that may as well be neat silence.

She’s forty something with short blonde hair, and in some indescribable way, just by looking at her, you can tell she prefers a life indoors.

A clatter. She springs. She twitches at the curtain to see. He’s just walked through the gate. He’s approaching the front door now. She stands; back flat against the wall watches the letterbox. It’s flap, flips open and from the space the flap had previously been flipped and briefly left a rectangular gap behind. From this gap a box protruded, before extending so far it fell away, in and down and bounced away from the door.

Excitedly, she grabs the box and rushes towards the sofa. Carefully, she removes each piece of tape. She opens the box, her hands shaking, a wry smile curling up the edges of her mouth. She can see it now. There, folded up inside the box. She closes her eyes and sniffs the contents. It’s like a drug. She up ends the box onto the table and out falls the fur. The animal’s skin. She unfolds it and spreads it over her lap. She’s ecstatic. She loves fur.

She is the Lady Countess Of Nowhere. Her home is nothing special, her bank account near empty, her T.V bought on finance, her children from home absconded, her carpet old and scruffy, her windows wiped clean weekly, her kitchen smells of bleach, her bedroom soft and cosy, her walls attached on both sides to two others, and one another, the flowers in the vase fake, the lamp lit bright and sparsely, the laptop permanently plugged in and the kid’s toys in the attic. She has little, but manages to get by. She buys fur to remind her of better times, imaginary times.

The Spark

Today my good friend Daffyd Bland made this image for me from a video he took in June (2015)...

I don't know what sparks an idea, or what thing happens in the brain when you suddenly get one, but I think I know the moment a spark happens that makes an idea stick.

I saw this image of me practising a belly-flop into a paddling pool of water, I'd almost entirely forgotten about how much fucking fun it was. Looking at this suddenly reminded me, and it made a little spark click, and I thought... This is actually something.

I was originally practising the belly flop for a one off trick to be performed at Greenmail Festival 2015. I was going to do one belly flop for the end of a show, and that would be it. All the effort I put in required reward, but I didn't get one because I didn't even end up attempting the belly flop because of Welsh weather.

So it was to never be performed again.

Until Daff posted this image today and I saw it and reconnected with the idea... Not the idea to belly flop into a paddle pool of water, that's been done thousands of times before. The idea, to simply, make it something I can do.

Practise, get better, learn how to nail it, take the pain, pad the balls.

Perform it to crowds in swimming pools a few times before getting thrown out.

Hope someone books you off the back of your swimming pool show. 

Get booked at a really great event.

Tour the country visiting county fairs, family fun days, festivals and events, even splash into a paddling pool at my nieces birthday parties. 

Travel the world, go to Japan, learn how to do other stuff, encorperate it into a routine. Perform everywhere and anywhere, even splash into a pool in the middle of the set on This Morning. I'm talking huge ambitions here.

Jump from higher than you did before, then higher than that, then higher than anyone ever has.

Fly through the sky, smashing mightily into a million tiny paddling pools that explode and gush cold hard glory.

Grow old, forever being known as the guy who can do the really awesome pointless thing.

I'm talking about those sparks. The sparks that make you into something mighty.

Mucho,

Jx

A Philosophy in Funding

When we started Tin Shed Theatre Co. back in 2010 we didn’t know much about business side of making theatre. We were never taught about funding, or support schemes, we didn’t really know what R&D meant, and we never performed any sort of “work in progress”, we just made things and found places to perform them. We worked two jobs and paid an equal share into our productions to get them off the ground. Five years on, reflecting on our early work methods, the whole thing seems ludicrous, and never something we’d do now.

 We used to perform in bars and split the money we made on the door, which 9/10 times would just go back behind the bar before the night was through. We toured from town to town in a tiny car, rammed with costumes, props and pieces of paper on which we’d written the plays locations to save having to make sets. 5 years on we sit at desks, talk on the phone, send emails and type reams of wordy, eloquent bumpf in order to convince people we’re worthy of their cash. We drink more coffee and less beer, we no longer perform in the grubby backrooms of bars, but in lovely studio theatres, and although never content with “right now” always looking forward to “what’s next” I sometimes yearn for the days of “back then”.

 The philosophy this work ethic developed, I think, followed these rules:

+Don’t stop, just do.

+Talk less, move more.

+Make one another laugh.

+Always surprise the audience.

+Resist buying anything and use what you already have.

+Ignore all and any conventions.

+Turn “we can’t” into “how can we”.

+Never say no to anything.

 This early, almost accidental rule making has stayed with us and although has been slightly amended, has become intrinsically threaded into our work, and even though we now rely on funding and commissions for most of what we do, I feel we still have that spirit of poverty in us, and in a way, I feel our work was better back then. It wasn’t convoluted by the bending of ideas to appeal to the ever-changing demands of funding, or subject to a permanent state of “not-readiness” because we trapped it in development. It was wild and loud and raw and exciting and born of cardboard and charity shops. On some of the larger commissions we’ve had, I’ve been left feeling like the work suffered from an abundance of budget, resource, time, and paycheck, like we were swamped with possibility and prospect. The restrictions we’d become accustomed to, no longer exist.

 Now, don’t for a second think I’m anti-cash, or even anti-funding… Hell, if you’ve got some cash you want to give me, I’ll prove it. I’m also completely aware that some of the greatest work I have seen simply wouldn’t have existed had it not been for the fiscal component that supported the grass roots exploration, or the international collaboration, the initial opportunity or the overall prospect. I’ve seen phenomenal work that cost millions and phenomenal work that cost hundreds.

For me the problem arises when money makes the difference between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for a young company. Too many times have I spoken to emerging theatre makers who have thrust their hopes into the hands of invisible forces that grant cash on what ever basis. I’ve heard so many ideas that will never exist outside of the types of conversations that evoke them. These early companies are often rejected for having no prior experience, and the result is, they make nothing at all. In the quest for budget, quality, time, space, production value etc. they are stuck on the corner square of the board, scared to roll the dice and make the first move.

 My point is this; I wonder if the current culture of funding, research and development, work in progress, support schemes and fiscally incentive initiatives sets an unrealistic precedent for young theatre makers. I wonder if it dilutes the spirit of “doing it” and prevents the taking of risks.

I wonder if, rather than encouraging the creation of new, exciting work, it creates a vacuum of discontent, in which it never gets made at all.

Mucho,

Justin

Appocolypso

I have dreams of a dystopian future.

Where a city lays ruin and not a single thing moves.

Grey dust lays atop of grey matter and leaves grey outlines in a grey skyline where grey buildings once where but have now grey tumbled.

Two people still live here. Somehow. Lately they have sustained themselves on a few remaining packets of Peanut M&M's, found in a cobwebbed vending machine situated in a previously overlooked leisure centre foyer.

A half chicken half man wearing only a captains hat and a bra, clucks and struts and clambers up a large pile of brick and cement whilst gritty-blues-like-metal-punk-funk tunes click and drone from an old boombox he carries on one shoulder.

Across the rubble his small female companion, kitted out with a gas mask and a "kiss the chef" apron, also sifts and lifts large chunks of grey debris, looking for lost relics and objet d'art.

Old shoes should be collected, even if they have to be unlaced from skeleton feet.

Handbags, hats, belts, bicycle parts, old tin, rope, string, chord, etc, trimmings, glass eyes (rare but quite a find), newspaper, cutlery, glasses/spectacles/shades, bottles, ice cream tubs, furs, jewellery, electric fans, balls, musical instruments and very, very small things.

They scuffle and rummage with a penchant for desperately seeking eclectic adornments to hang, dangle and decorate their bar.

The last bar on earth.

Appocolypso.

The door hangs loose on the hinges, as each time they enter they kick it hard open, so full of excitement to give home to the lost objects they've reclaimed.

They leap across old tables, and climb over chairs. She's the head chef, he looks after the bar.

"A drink my dear?" he asks the mannequin they propped up on a stool, with blu tacked hand holding a five pound tip that can't be spent anywhere near here anymore.

He pours brown-water-whisky into an already too full tumbler, fullup from all the other drinks undrunk.

She clatters pots and pans whilst chasing twenty pantry escapees that squeak and flee and she curses "fucking rats!" and wonders what they'll serve for tea.

Then with an almighty thwack, she whacks a rat, the others see, they form an orderly line and march right back to the cage from whence they came.

It's darkish, but lit by furious glowing flames from flares they found in an abandoned ambulance, along with fairy lights reclaimed from old christmas trees that shed their needles and needless to say no one was going to be needing them any time soon.

The music that plays is swing, but the record skips and the plate revolves too slowly, so instead it's a distorted, almost demented sounding thing.

The lawn flamingo, mannequin, porcelain cat statue, baby doll, princess Diana commemorative plate, rubber frog, henry hoover and mug with a face on are the only customers the bar ever see's, but they all eat heartily and drink till they fall (are moved/pushed over).

She marches wide legged out of the kitchen, with a twitching rat between to pieces of newspaper.

He leans forward, scoops it off the plate, and although someone (she), who he can't quite now recall, once recommended he start at the head, he pops the tail end in and bites down.

She watches on, face in a gas mask, covered in ketchup, waiting to see if he likes what he eats...

He...

Smiles. A wide, rat bottomed smile.

The half rat betwixt newspaper finally let's go of life.

They laugh out loud, one gas masked, one rat mouthed, for what seems like a few seconds, but is actually a very, very, very long time.

Then the record stops.

And they quickly stop laughing.

The room, silent.

Together, in sync, at the same time, they slowly turn their heads.

Their, stood beside the stereogram... A man.

Mucho

Justin