Just past half-way through the Pulse Festival we were attending our fourth show. Stand had attracted my attention on three grounds: it's Oxford connection, the use of oral history, and the involvement of Chris Goode. I had never seen any of Goode's shows but I had read some of his texts and heard the enthusiasm of theatre buffs. The New Wolsey ( Read more... )

That Is All You Need To Know followed Bromance on the first night of Pulse Festival 2015. The Idle Motion Theatre Company have developed quite a reputation for using sophisticated projection technology to create an absorbing context in which to tell theatrical stories about people. I was eager to see what they would do to tell the stories of the ( Read more... )

It was the beginning of the Pulse Festival 2015. The opening show was Bromance, which was billed as a trio of acrobatic circus performers. The three of them had filmed a parkour run from Ipswich station to the New Wolsey Theatre and put it on YouTube. The video went viral and the show sold out. Over a quarter of the audience were coming to the ( Read more... )

New Wolsey Young Associates have been touring their short play for months but we had yet to see it because of sundry diary clashes. Tonight it was being staged at the New Wolsey Studio as part of the Pulse Festival 2015. Four members of the young company worked with Rob Salmon (Associate Director of the New Wolsey Theatre) and three of their ( Read more... )

We went to South America for three weeks at the start of April. Here is our story:

Day 1: Across the Atlantic to South America
Day 2: Across the River Plate to Uruguay
Day 3: Tastes of Colonia del Sacramento
Day 4: Colonial heritage and parillada
Day 5: Back to Buenos Aires
Day 6: Recoleta and Retiro
Day 7: San Antonio de Areco
Day 8: San Telmo ( Read more... )

Tonight I attended a performance of World Factory at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. Or I participated in a running of it because this is not a show but a participatory experience. It is a moderated game of Fighting Fantasy set in the real world to explore the dynamics of running a clothing manufacturer in China. Wrapped around this are some ( Read more... )

I awoke fresh but I was not hungry and only had the bright fresh fruit for breakfast. I even declined anything from the appealing basket of warm pastries that was offered. It had been a pleasant flight and our passage through immigration went smoothly. We had something of a wait for our luggage but we were soon repacked down to single bags and on ( Read more... )

We were up, washed, packed and ready for Conceição’s 0745 visit to check us out and collect the keys. She was a sympathetic, slender, tanned woman dressed in skinny black trousers and golden sandals with sunglasses in her long dark hair; a typical Carioca.

I manoeuvred the bags down the stairs with much more ease than I had brought them up on our ( Read more... )

As far as I was concerned, Ipanema beach was known for only two things: Tom Jobim's 'girl' and the Sunday 'hippie market'. It was Sunday. We were going to the market. We walked south along Copacabana to the fort that sits on the promontory. We could have paid to see the museum at the fort but we still would have had to leave the beach to get to ( Read more... )

We had a lie-in and watched the Sky coverage of Ipswich Town's draw against Wolves using W's phone to display our home signal through our SlingBox. With one eye on the game I checked the opening hours of Real Gabinete Portugues Da Leitura, a vast library of Portuguese books built in the 1880s to promote Portuguese culture. The reading room is an ( Read more... )