Oral Histories : Alison Woods, Hazel Bryan, Anne-Fay Audet Johnston and Mark Robson

Oral Histories

Alison Woods interviewed by Paddy

Alison Woods interviewed by Paddy

"The best days are when you see somebody's life, you see somebody's face in the audience,

you see somebody's life really changed by what we do.

It's when you get a letter from somebody who's seen the show,

it's when you, it's when you, eh, see people just in floods of tears at the end of the performance,

when you see people proposing to their partner of the last forty years at the end of the show.

It's, it's, when you see people who have profound issues,

challenges, blocks, problems in their lives

and somehow their engagement with this company breaks through those barriers

and frees them and they can become who they are.




I'll tell you the best,

the best day,

the best day I ever had, I won't name names.

Some years ago, we employed a guy who was probably in his mid-thirties, he'd had a very challenging past.

He'd spent significant times in prison, he'd spent time, um, living on the street, he'd had alcohol problems and so on and so on,

and he came as a volunteer

and he was great,

and we offered him a job,

and he accepted,

and he was on the payroll,

and he'd been on the payroll for a month or some such thing like that,

and he came to me one day with his bank statement and said

'Alison I think there's been a mistake with my wages, something's gone wrong'

and I looked at his statement and said 'no no, that all looks correct'

and he said 'but it's so much money, am I really worth being paid that much money'

and I went 'yeah!'

and he was on £300 a week, you know, this was a couple of years back, this is not big salary,

this was the first time in his life anybody had said to him -you are worth paying for what you do - ever,

and it's not about the money, it's the first time anybody had said to him you are worth something to us and to this community,

and his life has been completely transformed.

Those are the days that really matter, those are the best days, those really are the best days."

Hazel Bryan interviewed by Paddy

"The first volunteering really I did for

them was for the warehouse shows -

Autogeddon, Now.Here,

just going down, helping out,

building installations,

climbing up the scaff towers,

rigging things, riveting things,

trying to get someone to teach me

how to weld."

'Who taught you to weld?' PF

"Nobody's taught me to weld really, I had my first welding lesson last year, the year before last; Hinch, whose my crew now, at the moment."

Hazel Bryan interviewed by Paddy

'What's your job now at the moment?'PF




"I'm tent master for the silver tent

and I'm also crew boss,

I run the crew."







'If someone was coming for a job as a tent master and you were doing the interview, what would be the top five qualities required' PF

"Oh that's tricky, they'd have to know something about tents, [interviewer cracks up!]

I actually, I actually, you know, I actually love tents, [more giggling!]

being really interested in how these structures go up, that's probably the only quality they'd need really, to have done it before, put a tent up, not just like a pop up one."


'What's special about this tent?' PF

"It's a unique structure, there isn't another one like it. It was designed by NoFit State, well, Tom collaborating with a tent maker. Erm,

It's very good in the wind it's quite aerodynamic so it weathers better a than quite a lot of your  standard big tops, erm,

It's got no external guys, after we've put it up, we can take the main guys off and it's held up by the ring of ratchets, the ring of stakes,

and it just looks like a spaceship thats landed, you can't see any of the whats holding it up, it's quite, it's quite a thing to look at.

Anne-Fay Audet Johnston interviewed by Jo

"I kind of got in in Eden and then got prepared in a way of how it would be like but then
didn't have the reality of changing place because Eden was really fixed but got used the lifestyle of like living in a caravan and other site realities

Anne-Fay Audet Johnston interviewed by Jo

and then and then yeah,

I think the first tour was a bit hard because a lot of people were new, and structure-wise it was full on, I think the get ins and get outs were really really, had to be done quickly, and it was basically the lack of experience as a group, to put the tent up and down was also hard on everybody 'cause it would just take ages and so that aspect was really really hard,

I remember in Bristol where everybody was just like dead, but then I think then with the years
the second tour was a bit better and just it kinda slowly built to having more experience and
structuring everything better."



'Do you have a favourite show' JR

"I think Eden was was really had a nice aspect to it because we had quite a long creation
but it wouldn't be so much per week
so I think we were a lot more on it,
we had more energy basically to perform and we had more time to explore things
so I really like that about Eden

but then on tour we had a lot more audience and different audience as well so the variety of the audience and the feedback was better,
I think, yah, one of my best feeling of the show
was when we did Edinburgh the first year, so the first year of Bianco, where I really felt that the show was there
and maybe Australia as well everybody was really on it, that was my favourite time I think."

Mark Robson Interviewed by Paddy

Mark Robson Interviewed by Paddy

"I am about to go off with Open House as their production manager, kind of production manager, it's kind of shared between some of us,

so I'm doing parts of it, and and photographer, so documenting it, like when we're actually on site doing the shows and stuff.

'It's quite a new venture Open House isn't it,  how does it differ from the main show' PF

"So ah, we have the show that goes out in the main tent which this year is called Bianco and is a touring professional show that goes out in the tent, eh,

Open House is a smaller group of, well slightly smaller, of performers with a smaller support network round it.

Doesn't have a tent so it's an outdoor show

and basically we turn up in a city and take over the town square,

city centre, pedestrianised street or something

and do a mixture of, like, show and community engagement,

so there'll be like ensemble show to start with the professionals,

and then that leads into community workshops where anybody on the street can join in and have a go and we actively encourage the adults to join in as much as the kids

and then it finishes off with more professional show, so you get a bit of a full on show and you get community engagement as well, um,

and it happens just for the weekend, so whereas because of the logistics and the size of the tent show it tends to turn up and be there for couple of weeks, three weeks,

this is, turns up for the weekend so its more intermittent although we're doing like every weekend throughout the summer."