(Why the pig cartoon? Read our blog post here – there is a whole sequence of pig photos of our pig adventures!)
Huge thanks to the generous sponsors of the June 2012 Brautigan Book Club trip to Wales:
Several Anonymous donors, John Ballinger, Colin Bartlett, Joe Barton, Bridget Bentley Jones, Gerhard Beukes, Gareth Buchaillard-Davies, Michael Caines, Marvin Chan, Shera Chok, Nik Corrall, Gregory Cowan, Michael Daly, Rishi Dastidar, Thinley Delma, David Duchin, Joanna Ewart-James, Bill Ford-Smith, George Fuller, Miles Gallant, Adrian Gillott, Roland Gilott, Rebecca Gray, Dan Hogan, Mark Holloway, Nick Hughes, Alexander Ide, Cat James, Thomas Kampe, Sarah Le Fevre, M Lee, Jen Leibhart, Alex Mackenzie, Victoria Manifold, Anna Sulan Masing, Wayne McGee, Gary Merry, Carina Moerch-Storstein, Michael Morris, Michelle Neeling, Erik Patterson, Tanya Roberts, Gloria Sanders, Vik Sivalingam, Amy Smith, Mitesh Soni, Mark Sun, John Walton, Pat Wheele, Phil Whelans & Gabby Wong.
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I am just processing all the rewards and making sure everyone is thanked personally in some shape or form. Fuchsia has been painting Kool Aid pictures, I will soon start making cards and pressing flowers, and I’ve already filmed a mini video of me being silly. [I am excited about reprising what I started at Live Art Speed Date i.e. working on my solo piece, “You Can Leave Your Hat On” as part of the reward scheme, with donors taking part in the creative process as they feel fit.]
The festival is done but we’re a hive of activity stilll.
xV
The updates, written during the fundraising process, letting people know how pre-production was coming along, and sharing the nail-biting tension of whether we’d make the target! Read from bottom up:
(From the sponsume website. Links have been lost but if you want, the original postings are here for a while. See the Updates tab)
“WALES! Wales went down a storm…
Posted: Friday, 6 July, 2012 – 18:29
… and I’m not just talking about the weather!
We got back from Wales this Sunday evening and I promptly fell ill with post-production flu. Apologies for the delay in updating you but no fear, your rewards will be with you by the end of the month!
See some of my photos and footage from Wales here, and some professional photos of Sunday’s talk here. The lovely blonde lady reading is Ianthe Brautigan, who you helped fly over from San Francisco. Her presence was an incredible and made a huge impression on so many artists at the festival, guests of the Brautigan Book Club in London, and our own team of creatives. She rarely, if ever makes public appearances to talk about her father and so we were very honoured. Her holiday snaps are online here (a facebook link) and there’s a write up of the London meeting she attended here.
Since getting back we’ve been invited to perform Tonseisha – The Man Who Abandoned the World, the opera we’re creating based on Erik Patterson’s play, Tonseisha, at the Arcola’s Grimeborn Opera Festival. We’ll be showing 25 mins of our piece, on Fri Aug 31st and Sat 1st Sept, 7.45pm. This has been made possible by kind permission granted by the Brautigan estate and Erik Patterson himself.
HUGE piles of other exciting news, but I must dash out to meet up with co-producer Tilly Brooke, as we’ve been invited to see Gruff Rhys’ London gig at the Royal Festival Hall tonight. He was so lovely, alongside Martin Carr and H.Hawkline, who played their Brautigan Suite for us in Wales, and is keen to work with one of our rising artists, flautist, Ilze Ikse, who plays on Tonseisha.
Exciting times!
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WE DID IT TOGETHER, TEAM BRAUTIGAN!
Posted: Sunday, 17 June, 2012 – 16:24
We successfully raised our £2000 target, folks, thanks to all your publicity, retweeting, enthusiasm, support and donations!!!
We’ll be sending out your rewards after we get back from Dinefwr Festival (29 June – 1 July) so watch your postboxes then. Fuchsia has already been painting the numerous Kool Aid paintings, while also making wonderful artwork for the festival itself. I’ll be updating the websites, making the videos I’ve pledged, and will let you know once this is all online. I go back into the rehearsal room tomorrow for the final push before the festival. What’s new? I have chopped off all my hair, we have the piano music accompaniment to work with, Satoshi Date’s designs will be fitted on to me tomorrow, and we’ve found a fabulous Brautigan hat. (Have a look at it online here and see recent new writings inspired by Brautigan on our blog). Lastly, if you’ve won an art experience, we’ll be in touch directly to arrange the meetings.
Stay tuned!
Love, Vera
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24 hours left!
Posted: Friday, 15 June, 2012 – 12:22
Friends! 24 hours left to raise £95 for our EPIC endeavour. It’s Friday! Before you rush away for the weekend, please do tell everyone and anyone that if they have £2 to spare, £20 to spare, or £95 to spare, to send it our way. (I have in my diary to pop this in myself at the very last moment of our fundraising deadline, in order to avoid the higher % charge if we don’t make our target.)
NEWS!! The Independent (one of the four broadsheet newspapers in the UK) may feature our Please Plant This Book (PPTB) project in the paper next week. Cross all fingers and toes! They’re interested in the resurgence of Brautigan in the UK. It’s a question the Brautigan Book Clubbers ask each other, and strangers ask me – why Brautigan*? Why’s he special? Well, as much as I love other writers – am reading F Scott Fitzgerald at the moment – Brautigan seems to me to offer the space to dream, think, create, and, most importantly to me, to communicate. He seems to represent a very special kind of freedom, and what’s more important** than that?
Warmest thanks and have a lovely weekend. On behalf of the team,
Vera
(* At greater length – an article I wrote earlier this year on the reasons why I started the Brautigan Book Club: http://readinggroups.org/tips/why-start-the-brautigan-book-club-bbc.html)
(** Well, rather importantly, I ‘met’ co-founder Michael Caines’ 1 month old baby daughter via Skype earlier this morning. She is adorable but the reason why we won’t have him in Wales. Michael is incredible, though, and will be playing his new song live at the next book club on the 26th. This is part of the virtual album he’s put together with various wonderful bands across the country. Please Plant This Song will be given out for free, alongside PPTB.)
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Need Sleep, Can’t Sleep!
Posted: Tuesday, 12 June, 2012 – 01:12
Oh dear, *only* £150 left to raise and 5 days to do it in! Do help spread the word in these last few days of our campaign!
Thank you to everyone who donated in the last week. I know it’s been super-eventful with the Jubilee weekend bank holiday. It’s taken me a while to lock back in, but what with encouraging emails from Gruff Rhys and lovely skype calls with our guest, Ianthe Brautigan from California, I can’t sleep for excitement! We’re organising a cutting-and-pasting weekend party where we hand make the Please Plant This Book folders, and the next (free, as ever) Brautigan Book Club meeting looks like it’ll throw up a bumper crop of creative responses. Come along if you can get to it! Have a look at our blogsite at the flurry of recent, fascinating, beautiful submissions – they compliment our live work – and see the Events page to book tickets for the meeting and for Wales.
In terms of festival updates, here’s some news on Tonseisha – The Man Who Abandoned the World (the new opera inspired by Brautigan being previewd at the festival): Director Gary is off to see composer Kim this Friday and we’ll have the CD of new music to play with in this next phase of rehearsals starting Monday, at least till we have our very own classical musicians in the room! I am incredibly excited about hearing what Kim has written*, based on a weekend earlier this year where the creative team – cast AND crew – workshopped the text at King’s College, London, where Kim is doing his Phd. The other great thing happening on Friday’s meeting is that Gary and Kim will be playing with making sounds on various domestic implements with a view to amplifying these effects live on stage. For Victory Over the Sun, the 1913 Russian Futurist Opera which Gary directed for The New Factory of the Eccentric Actor in 2009, Gary attached pick up mics to some fabulous, everyday items, and they very much created a soundscape that was alien, evocative and gorgeous. It was my very first encounter of being directed by Gary and I recall being blown away by his super-bold, effective vision, his ability to magic up beautiful swathes of live art by deftly orchestrating huge teams of actors, musicians, technicians, artists, and spectators.
I am exuberant about beginning our next phase of rehearsals with him next week and have to pinch myself when I think of how priviledged I am to be working with all the other incredible artists on this team.THANK YOU for making it possible. This project has been gestating for over two years, and will continue to grow secure roots, lush branches, and spread its seeds far and wide. Each and every one of you is very much a part of something much larger. Help us with our final push as we raise the remaining £150 over the next 5 days. Any surplus raised will of course cover this site’s fees and go towards the project.
Warmest wishes from a London shining with rain, Vera
*Have you listened to Kim’s past projects yet? Listen here http://soundcloud.com/user3996103
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Final push! £200 to raise in ten days
Posted: Thursday, 7 June, 2012 – 13:02
Dear friends,
We got a lovely, encouraging message from Super Furry Animals frontman, Gruff Rhys this morning along the lines of, “Wow! Sounds great!”. I had sent him an update today as to how we’d integrate our operatic piece with the acoustic set he’s doing with Cardiff pals, Martin Carr and H.Hawkline.
Listen to their fab music here:
hhawkline.bandcamp.com
Director Gary Merry has come up with some excellent ideas, Devon-based technician Jack Robson is coming to Wales to help us out, and we’re looking forward to working in a non-traditional theatre space – a 700-seater tent, the main stage of the entire festival! – presenting our work straight after after Edinburgh Comedy Award Nominee Josie Long and on just before the infamous Julian Cope!
Still looking for seed sponsorship for the first ever Please Plant This Book re-creation in the UK but here’s some exciting breaking news: A host of original songs are being written now, by various bands and songwriters inspired by the poems. They will form Please Plant This Song, a mini, downloadable album. This creative response was initiated by Michael Caines, assistant editor at the Times Literary Supplement, a key Brautigan Book Club member, and member of the geekpop band Spirit of Play, recently on Mariella Fostrop’s Book Show on Sky Arts.
All these lovely tunes have been donated to our project, and will be available to download for free, with a code we’ll distribute, in keeping with ethos behind Please Plant This Book which can only ever be reproduced if it’s distributed for free. Included in the mini album line up are the magnificent Lancaster-based The Lovely Eggs, The Sound of the Ladies, James Murray, treecreeper, Welsh songstress Georgia Ruth and of course, a song by Michael aka stephenmcaines.
So once again, thank you for being a part of a wonderful, community-building creative movement which brings people together live and locally, but also spans oceans. In the last week, we’ve heard from supporters and had donations from Oslo, Brighton, Paris, Ontario, Kuala Lumpur, Bournemouth, Bedford, New York, Borneo, Tokyo and Amersham. Read Daniel Hogan’s short piece on how he discovered Brautigan (online here) and how he found out about the Brautigan Book Club while still living in Australia, prior to his move to London.
If you’d like to see what we do, come say hello at our next free meeting in Bethnal Green, London to see more new work created with Brautigan’s writing as the starting point. Meetings are open, informal chats, with the guests providing stimulus for discussion of the book and associated ideas. It is not obligatory to have read the book, nor is it necessary to say anything at all when present! There is a bar. Details & booking here (Booking is advised as we tailor the event to attendees).
Warmest wishes
V
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82% raised and two weeks left to raise £400
Posted: Thursday, 31 May, 2012 – 18:54
Dear supporters of the Brautigan Book Club and saltpeter
A whopping 82% of our target has been raised in the last two weeks. Everything’s looking very possible, thanks to your generous and heartening support. Thank you so much.
Here’s an update on how some of the pre-production for the events is coming along. You’re help is making this plethora of activity possible. Involving a team of international artists, your donations are stretching an extra long way due to additional offers of sponsorship in kind and our team is freed up to focus on making the art happen.
The Friday event, re-creating Please Plant This Book: Have a look at an online interactive book of it here. I found out today that apart from the original 1968 campaign, where Brautigan self-published and distrubuted 6000 folders in Santa Barbara, each containing 8 poems and 8 types of seeds, PPTB has only been documented as being replicated in 1970, where 2000 folders were given out in New York State. We might just be the third ever PPTB and the first ever in the UK! How tremendously exciting! Though ours is pretty small scale at 200 folders, that’s still an awful lot of cutting and glue-ing and seed-sourcing. I hear that Brautigan threw rather alcohol-fuelled parties with pals helping him decant seeds. Ianthe, his daughter, told me a top tip i.e. to try and incorporate this into the event. We had a little think and have settled on a hands-on collection of the handmade packets from various stations around the tent. I like this idea of station stops, especially since it ties into the next evening’s point of inspiration, the idea of travel, trains, and stations in life. (Ref. Brautigan’s book Tokyo-Montana Express)
Saturday night’s event, The Man Who Abandoned the World: Details of the rehearsals for Los Angeles-based writer Erik Patterson’s Tonseisha – The Man Who Abandoned the World, are being planned. Our lovely soprano, Philippa Boyle, has been taken from us to sing in Rome – she is really a gorgeous singer and a rising star – which means we’ve had to reschedule a rehearsal to squeeze her in but thank goodness that’s all sorted. As part of the creative process – we’re turning this straight play into a modern opera. I see director Gary and composer Kim as my Philip Glass and Robert Wilson! – I’ve been talking to writer Erik about the lead character’s name. We’ve been bandying about wonderful metaphors and ideas. It’s been so lovely to be able to work with a writer in this way. Erik is absolutely supportive, on the ball and we’re so lucky to have his piece to work with.
saltpeter is also grateful to innovative, cross-disciplinary artist, Satoshi Date, who is looking to design our costumes. Born in Tokyo, Satoshi trained at Central St Martin and is creative director of the highly successful ethical fashion label, Satoshi Date. His philosophy complements saltpeter’s cross-arts and socially-aware goals: Satoshi layers art and music into his clothing and explores social themes via his pieces. His collections feature at London Fashion Week and in shows across Europe yet remain accessible to the public.
“To make clothing mean more, we must invest in everyday life and make a beauty that impresses and touches people.”
We’re also pleased to announce that the actor playing Richard Brautigan is Jamie Wood. Jamie is a performer and theatre maker specialising in clown, devised performance and dance theatre. He is Director with The Frequency D’Ici & co-Director of theatre company Petra’s Pulse, and recently devised and performed with the acclaimed Belarus Free Theatre. Read more about how incredible Jamie is as a practitioner and creative on the saltpeter website here.
Last but by no means least, we’re super pelased to have on board, Mark Aitken, producer extraordinaire and presenter with Resonance radio, which gets 400,000 listeners. Mark is a Brautigan fan but also wants to support Dinefwr Festival, this being its inaugural year, so will be making recordings and publicising it via his own work. Listen to his Brautigan episode on radio here, where he interviewed Fuchsia Voremberg, key Brautigan Book Club member, about our work.
Stay well, and we’ll post more news soon. In the meantime, do tell people about our efforts, come along to our free London events, read, watch and enjoy the art we post on our blog, www.brautiganbookclub.co.uk, collected from world over, and do get in touch any time. We’d love to hear from you.
Vera
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A huge thank you: over 50% of our budget raised in under a week
Posted: Monday, 21 May, 2012 – 19:11
Dear friends
WOW! An incredible, overwhelming response from supporters far and near. In a week, we’ve raised over 50% of what we need toward the trip to Wales. A huge thank you from me on behalf of the entire team, working away to present the best we can at the festival. The Richard Brautigan metaphor of planting a book – substitute ‘book’ with ‘creativity’, ‘optimisim’, ‘a brighter and more delightful future’ – is never far from my mind, and it’s incredibly heartening to feel your support.
We’ve had donors all the way from Singapore, Zurich and Los Angeles, and, closer to home, supporters who’ve pressed a note into my hands or slipped a few pennies into a jar. (Note: cash donations have been entered online here and appear as items from me/saltpeter. They’ve all come from direct donations but I’ll ensure they will receive their rewards in thanks.)
Support in kind, to generate interest in what we do, has also been super. Re-tweets via twitter from Brautigan fans, guests at future Brautigan events telling their networks, and other arts organisations offering fundraising advice – a huge thank you to Gloria Sanders at Hide and Seek Theatre who has been nothing but an angel through sharing her top tips and sunny, calming positivity.
If you’d like to catch the Brautigan Book Club in action but aren’t going to be able to make the festival in Wales, come to our free events in London, every last Tuesday. We put together a lo-fi, welcoming evening of a variety of super guests who present their responses to the book of the month. There’s always some sort of snack to hand, and a bar to lean against thoughtfully. This month, we have the incredible Salena Godden, “The Mae West madam of the salon” – Sunday Times, with Adrian Gillott & the aforesaid Gloria Sanders presenting mini-responses. And for my sins, I’ll be showing some new work as well. Details of the book club meetings here.
If you are planning on going to the festival, friends of the club are elibigle for a 2-for-1 ticket, if booked before June 8. I am negotiating the logistics of how this can be booked, but do contact me if you’re keen. My email address is vera@saltpeterproductions.co.uk. Dinefwr Park is gorgeous, the festival is on the grounds of a stately home, and B&Bs nearby are as affordable as £40 per night. There is also camping on the grounds!
Once again, thanks!
Vera
The Brautigan Book Club 