ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps}

2005-05-11T12:56:00.000Z

Whose Line Is It Anyway? montage

2005-05-11T12:51:00.000Z

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

2005-05-11T12:37:00.000Z

Here is the episode from Whose Line Is It Anyway (Series 8, episode 1)

The OFS: Episode 3 (and the proud owner of a busking license)

2005-05-01T22:56:00.000Z

I OWN A BUSKING LICENSE! Said license came in great use at Saturday's street performance on Cornmarket, in which cast and crew performed and flyered (waiting to be approached, of course, in compliance with the busking code of conduct) the previously unsuspecting people of Oxford. We had planned a pub crawl for Friday night and bought balloons/constructed sandwich boards etc. but cast were keen on a night off so balloons etc. were utilised on Cornmarket. Anyway I can now busk in Ox any time

The OFS 3 was highly uneventful. Largely because I wasn't there. And nor was Liz. Poor Kim. Alone with the OFS panel. From what I heard ALL WAS WELL.

After a mad rush to get press packs created in time, we had great reviews in the OxStu and Cherwell although we're a bit puzzled about why our photos weren't used. I have now used the photos for a low-key box office display.

I've sent press releases and photos to press people in Oxford AND BEYOND and we're expecting a few reviewers for the opening night on Tuesday. Fingers crossed. Kim needs the comps list by Monday. The Henley Times (think that's the name) asked us to find our own reviewer. So we have chosen Simon. Which is quite humorous really. No doubt he will write with the upmost professionality.

The envelopes were sent off to language schools and sixth forms and follow up calls made. We have our OUDS mailout to do on Tuesday with our SNAZZY motiffed envies.

So... tech run-through on Monday and first night Tuesday. Fingers crossed.

No rest for the wicked

2005-04-27T16:10:00.000Z

Well, didn't we have a busy Sunday?? The cast were rehearsing from at least one, if not earlier, despite a few post collections hangovers! (I personally nursed mine in bed...) Had a bit of a photoshoot, a bit of a costume fitting and what not all ready for press preview at four.

This was the first time I've seen anything since auditions, and I was MIGHTY impressed :) let's just hope the reviewers thought the same! The costumes looked great, despite not being totally finished. They were more suggestive of the period than exactly as they'll be in the final performance, but they were pretty close. We had a slight issue with press packs and printers... but I won't go into that now (mostly because I'm still annoyed about it... Grrr...) They got there in the end and the reviewers had them to take away with them...

We then had our launch party at Thirst, with a bit of a cast (plus me and the directors) meal in between, which was fun, as well as the beginning of the end of what was going to be a dry night...

Launch went really well, there was a really good crowd out as we were sharing it with the lovely EAS, who are also sponsoring us. If everyone in that room comes, we're well on our way but there's still work to do.

So that was Sunday in the life of 'Absolutely! (perhaps)' - or perhapsalutely as Will I think invented on the night - so much for a day of rest!

Final push now, had our final meeting on Tues (but I'll let Sarah cover that in The OFS: episode 3!) and there's still lots to do... Watch this space! Less than a week till opening night!

Feeling Foolish

2005-04-21T14:41:00.000Z

See below

Rolling in it (take two)

2005-04-20T19:47:00.000Z

Hmmm... once again technology has got the better of me so I'll try this post again...

St John's Mummers have confirmed that they'll loan us pro-rata stylee 200 squid, putting the running total of confirmed funding at £1,100 (and that's not including Balliol who haven't told me an amount yet!) Positively LOADED!

Rolling in it

2005-04-20T19:45:00.000Z

St John's Mummers have now confirmed that they'll loan us pro-rata stylee 200 squid, putting the running total of confirmed funding at £1,100 (and that's not including Balliol, who haven't told me an amount yet!) Positively LOADED!

The OFS: Episode 2

2005-04-19T21:41:00.000Z

Liz (director) was jovial after a hectic 6-8hr/day rehearsal schedule. All but the last scene is now blocked. The comedic aspects of the show are emerging from the enthusiastic and talented cast. Nearly ready to run individual acts in preparation for the Press Preview.

The Press Preview is being held on Sunday 24th (prior to the Launch) at The Pilch Theatre (Balliol's). It will be attended by esteemed student rags, The Cherwell and The OxStu. Cast will be in full costume for this collection of scenes. Liz assures us that the final scene will be kept for opening night. They are having their measurements taken tomorrow, and fittings will take place in the remainder of the week. Ashleigh will be taking photographs of Sunday's morning rehearsals to provide the papers and the Box Office display with ample fodder for reviews/beauteous posterboards.

We also need sepia shots of cast for the Press Packs and Programmes so Ash will be heading to rehearsals tomorrow to catch everyone looking their best! I led a successful stickering session today, ready to pidge flyers to friends/acquaintances of cast members, including (probably) illegible scribblings about the party on Sunday. We should have around 250 in pidges by tomorrow. Need to target people as they arrive back from the holiday.

Envelopes will be printed by tomorrow, so I have to finalise the letter to schools/language schools. We are offering after-show workshops to entice them in. There was a lot of interest prior to the holidays, so hopefully the printing delays will not hinder our success on this front!

Zoo have kindly offered to host our Launch party at Thirst on Sunday 24th April, so I''ll be heading down there early to poster/flyer. The EAS are currently producing their termcard so we;''ll provide them with yet more blurb about the show in return for warbling on about them in the programme. We will also probably be holding an after-show party with Zoo after the final Saturday night performance, though venue is yet to be confirmed. Tickets for this will be published in the programme, so look out...

Michael, Kim and Liz have collectively come up with lots of good ideas for targeting advertisers in the programme. Fingers crossed.

The other Michael (lighting Michael) started discussing some (supposedly) basic lighting strategy things with Chris and the OFS team, which none of the rest of us understood. Sounds as though it shouldn't be a problem.

Laudisi is determined to smoke a pipe, so smoke a pipe he will.... The risk application has been approved, so it's all steam ahead, though Laudisi's constume and anything else he comes into contact with will have to be flame-tested. Will wants to buy the pipe himself, apparently.... something about wanting a souvenir..... BIZARRE. Chris has ordered the fabric, but it's not yet in his possession. No doubt it shalt some day arrive.

Kim is a very very happy producer because the money is looking good and because she has rearranged her file, so that it even has an 'archive' section. Heaven help us all.

One more production meeting to go....

Launch Party with EAS at Thirst - Sunday 24th, 8pm

2005-04-19T21:36:00.000Z

So, the venue is booked and the details are finalised. The European Affairs Society and ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps} are proud to present A! {p}: The Launch, courtesy of Zoo.

Celebrate post-collections with great drinks deals and an eclectic crowd at Thirst. 8pm. Sunday 24th April.

£3 entry, but £1 to all those proffering EAS membership cards and/or say you're with ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps}.

The OFS: Episode 1

2005-04-13T16:24:00.000Z

Yesterday Kim and I left Manchester at 8.30 to race down the motorway(s) in time for Production Meeting number one, where we were joined by Liz and Ashleigh. On said 4hr journey we thought of lots of jobs for Michael (the lucky chap) such as collecting biogs for the press pack and the programme which now need to be done asap. The meeting was wholly successful. Carly (Drama Officer) admitted having 'wasted' a good 20 minutes perusing the blog. I established that I owned some plastic wine glasses. The rehearsal schedule had been put together by Liz and the read-through was to take place last night. The score had been completed and we were now only searching for 2 violinists, in addition to the guitarist, cellist and violinist currently on the job. Chris had ordered the fabric to be hung and we may have located a chaise lounge. Kim had secured around 1000 squid to play with. The envelopes should (fingers crossed) be in the post to Ash, who has established that the printing of said wallets with the logo would cost us 40 quid. Not too bad for 2000 of the things. Bring on the envelope stuffing. We were daft and forgot to take flyers and posters to Oxford, so we'll take them down for next Tuesday's meeting and start blitzing the city. We have contact details for a good few language schools, sixth forms etc. which will be plagued with envelopes and phone calls over the next couple of weeks. Phew!

Signed, sealed, delivered...

2005-04-09T16:32:00.000Z

Two exciting pieces of news: firstly, posters and flyers are here! woohoo! Very exciting receiving packages and signing and what not... The green is a little bit darker than i thought it was going to be and the font is bright red instead of the pinky red we were going for, but I suppose that's what happens when you use cheap internet companies... They still look good and professional, so I'm happier than if we'd got exactly what we'd specified at twice the price.

Secondly, we have more money! £150 from Univ Drama Society. Awesome! People love us... now we just need the audience to prove it...! That's a running total of £950 not including Balliol and St John's Mummers.

Production meeting on Tues, 1.00pm at OFS in case anyone needs reminding. Sure we'll have more to report after that...

Posters Away!

2005-04-02T01:07:00.000Z

Hooray! the print files are at the printers as of yesterday morning which means my time with Absolutley! {perhaps} is pretty much up. Been a blast, stay in touch everyone!

Booking info

2005-03-31T17:59:00.000Z

Don't forget, blog-friends!

OFS Studio Theatre
May 3rd-7th at 7:30pm
Saturday matinee at 2:30pm

Box office: 01865 297 170
Ticketmaster: 0870 400 0891

www.ticketmaster.co.uk

www.getlive.co.uk/ofs

Book now!

Goodies!

2005-03-30T09:00:00.000Z

have made some downloadable things for people to have all sorts of fun with!

We have three different WALLPAPERS for people to put onto JCR computers and just about every computer they can access the desktops of.

#1- Standard Green velvet. Generally very pretty.
wallpaper.jpg

#2 More colourful verson with the photo and details.
wallpaper2.jpg

#3 Simpler version of the title over the velvet.
wallpaper3.jpg

To install through (most) internet browsers just follow the links and right click on the image and select 'set as desktop'.

OUDS gif animated, for the OUDS site, pending approval from the team.

absolutely.gif

Non-animated version, as an alternative for other websites.

ouds1.jpg

The fun never ends! Here are some graphics for envelopes/letter heads that Sarah or whoever can import into word and play around with. The rest of the text can be written in a text box in Time New Roman.
envlope.gif
envelope2.gif
envelope3.gif

Enjoy!

The joys of the internet, the envelopes and the OFS

2005-03-29T13:56:00.000Z

Oh happy day! Another internet boff (Kane) is in our midst! What genius is this? 5000 flyers and 200 posters for less than 200 squid. Is this too good to be true? NO! I have had a perusal of the website www.fatflyers.com and it all seems to be in order cap'n. What do you have to say on the matter, Leigh? It really does seem bargainous! I am inclined to go ahead. We have had the go-ahead from Kerry, as long as we change the name of the theatre from The Old Fire Station Studio Theatre to OFS Studio (??!), so nearly at the stage (good pun, Saz) where we can send off the file. Phew!

On a different note, envelopes! I received an email from Carly saying that we could definitely go ahead with providing the envelopes for the OUDS mailout but that we'd have to buy them and have them printed ourselves. So I am going to set about costing this out, but if we use fatflyers, we'll have so much spare money that the cast party will be like the finale of the Crystal Maze all over again. How I used to love Richard O'Brien and his shiny head. What details do we reckon on the envelopes? I think an arty ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps}, OFS Studio, 7:30 and 2:30 Saturday matinee. As Kim rightfully pointed out, we don't need the dates as the mailout goes at the start of the week with all that week's productions, so it'd be a waste of print. I really think we should go for this, anyway. We need to let Carly know by the beginning of 0th.

Next thing. Still haven't heard from Thirst with an application for our party. Grrr. I will pester them over the telephone this evening. We need to exploit the EAS mailing lists to get invites out. Oooh yes. Those readers who received a joyful marketing schedule this morning in my frenzy of emailing excitement (apologies) might have noticed something about flyers and stickers. Well, to get round the whole problem of not being able to randomly flyer college post rooms, we will do as Graceland did before us and buy sticky envelope labels, then stick them onto flyers, write on the names of friends and the details of the launch party, in a double whammy, killing two birds sort of thing. They won't be able to resist. So my shopping list is now: 1650 brown envelopes, a few hundred sticky labels and the cost of printing on said envelopes... oh, and a launch party at Thirst, which incidentally is free and should accommodate 170 people. If anyone has any ideas about anything that we should take along to the launch, aside from a ridiculous number of posters and flyers, please let me know.

I now need to take my little brother to tennis and learn about differentiation, so shall love and leave you.

Progress on the poster!

2005-03-28T20:59:00.000Z

After a gentle exchange of emails and consensus, a finalised design for the poster has been decided, hooray!
after my last post we were left with this:

That design was emailed around the production company and garnered the following response:
>>logos - St
John's Mummers I'm sure will want one and Balliol deserves one as I think
(hope!) we're going to get a hefty chunk from them. Does the writing have to
be quite so pink? I was wondering if we could have a look at a kind of reddyer
pink like the one liz used when she was messing about. Also, font? Did you not
want to use soemthing more scripty? Lastly, and this is probably harder to do
and me just being fussy... maybe have something on the horizontal, either
picture or writing, so it's not all on the diagonal. What do you think? It
might create more space for the logos.

and a bunch of requests to add logos for various funding bodies, including AKM, which probably explains why we were sent to O'reilly logo(as a mistake, the file was ambiguously labeled something like 'newlogo.jpg').

As I don't want to reveal the finished design just yet I shall give you good peoples of the interweb some tantalising sneaky peaks:

The many colours of the different logos, especially white, was drawing too much attention away from the text and confusing the lower half of the image. Too resolve this issue I decided to make the logos the same colour as the lightest parts of the green velvet. The logos still stand out but they don't distract from the important selling points of the show. To keep the OFS sweet and to highlight ticketmaster as a means of getting tickets they venue logos remained in full colours.

It's not actually a completely finished design, though. Presently we are waiting on the publicity guy at the New Theatre (which owns the OFS) to approve the poster design. Once the poster has been approved we'll develop the imagery and concept a bit for the flyers. I hope Kerry at the New isn't waiting for flyer designs before he approves anything. Sarah will prolly have checked anyway.

I have a couple of ideas for the flyers already. Sarah has suggested that we try to get flyers that look like burnt photos. This is easy enough to achieve by having the flyers custom die-cut, but that costs money we don't have. As things stand the posters are likely to be printed in (inferior) digital printers to economise. The worst thing about digital printers is that they leave stupidly un professional white edges on their print outs and never offer to trim them off (which they only charge about £15 extra for) as a result the posters look like you've run up to OUCS and had them printed off for you. Which you might as well do, as they do it at cost and no VAT.

GRR unprofessional printers. I GRR at them.

So flyers. I was thinking maybe some kooky A7 minimalist stuff, which can save money on the same number of flyers by being smaller. They would be credit card sized and look a little something like this:

Short, snappy and pushing the blog.

Alternatively we might do the standard thing of reproducing the poster in flyer form. There's nothing wrong with this, but it can produce boring flyers. eg

Ideas need to be workshop a bit before coming up with anything. Hmm. Let's do that online. The first problem I highlighted that just reproducing the poster produced a boring layout. Easy solution: mix the layout up a bit.

The trick is to keep things separated and clear enough to read without your eye having to search things out. One way to do this is have your elements all fit in to a basic shape or line. On the second design this shape is provided by the photo, which is placed to emphasise it being a discarded object.

Almost all flyers need to be flipped over to get all the relevant information. With an image of two halves like the photo we might have a little fun mixing that up a bit. The flyer is now a little more interactive and plays with ideas of asymmetry and things being revealed.

The Photo is a wide rather than tall image so things might be simpler if we stick to a landscape aspect.

Hmm hopefully the crew will have some thoughts on these and express a preference!

takecare, y'alls

Leigh

Beaten to it

2005-03-26T16:56:00.000Z

Well, in a moment of (in my opinion) sheer bravery on my part (and mild procrstination...) I have faced my nemisis (technology) and created a blogger account. Not bad I say for somebody who still doesn't really know hwat a bolgg is. So, here I am all ready to add a Producer stylee blogg, only to find that certain Miss Lewis has beaten me to it with the most exciting news of the last week - the AKM funding!

For anyone who didn't have to endure one of these last term, the AKM interview was nothing short of gruelling, and we've got £300 pounds out of it! Rose to the challenge, I like to think :)

So, our current finances are beginning to look a lot healthier, with £250 in the bank already, a further £500 promised to us and unconfirmed amounts from St John's Mummers and Balliol Drama Society. All in all, looks like floating costs (£1,298 off the top of my head... can't resist going to check... ooh so close, £1,298.48!) are going to be covered one way or another, especially considering I haven't heard back from the vast proportion of funding bodies. The full budget is just under £2,500, but the theatre charges are taken out of the final box office sales and should we fail to break even (which, frankly, is forbidden in my book and unlikely with Sarah and Ashleigh's collosal marketing efforts) Cam Mac should cover the shortfall. Although I haven't heard back from them yet either...

My one minor concern at the moment is actually getting said funding from said funding bodies any time soon. Trouble is we need money in the bank now with a show in second week and it all has to wait until everybody goes back up next term and start posting me contracts and cheques. Personally, the only thing I need to spend money on at this stage is rights, which are £404.10 and need to be paid and liscence received before any publicity material is released, according to Casarotto, the people issuing them. Will check out overdraft facilities, and make up the difference out of my own pocket for the time being if needs be. I'm instinctively loathed to do so, a)because it's quite a substantial piece of money and my overdraft doesn't look to healthy as it is, and b) because I'm still owed money from Cuppers which was in Michaelmas, but it has just dawned on me that I'M in charge of the money now, so I'm sure chasing myself up for reimbursement shouldn't be too much of an issue! Mwahahaha the power...

Right, before I get too carried away... Should really return (return?? Haven't done any today!) to my reading/catch-up-essaying etc etc.

Now comes the interesting part of seeing if I post this successfully... (I'm guessing 'Publish Post' is the way forward, but who knows in this crazy modern world...)

Money money money

2005-03-25T01:00:00.000Z

Woohoo! Wahey! Mummers and AKM funding! And we were worried about 2-sided flyers! The dreaded interviews were not in vain! JOY!

It begins

2005-03-22T13:43:00.000Z

A couple of weeks into the vac I have cleared my schedule enough to start work on the print design. Firstly this will mean collecting all the emails, attachments and scraps of drafts that relate to the design and cluttering my otherwise pristine desk with them. This would hardly be an imposition on a desk that is usually over flowing with sketches, to-do-notes and half read modern classics but since it has recently been tidied up I feel a little remiss to do so. Ah well, art is messy my GCSE art teacher once intoned in her sultry Scottish accent. Ahh miss Todd. Where are you now...?

Where am I now? Ah right. Emails. Having trouble with the tm logo. Whatever that is. Most probable reason for this is it isn't saved in the right colour mode for 'net browsers to deal with (RGB). Not usually a problem as I would normally be able to save this to desktop from herald, but it's in my hotmail account (enormous storage) and will only open the file in the browser program that clicks the download link. There’s a saying among computer technicians: "computers don't crash, windows crashes." anyway I shall try to forward the lot to my herald account. Might as well sign up for gmail while I'm at it. I love google.

Damn. gmail is still on beta release and I need an invite for it. Ah well. Was right about colour modes. I should write a tutorial on graphics and output and stuff for the OUDS site. Later. Poster now.

Usually I collect together all the copy (text that goes on the poster) and cut and paste it into notepad document. This usually makes it easy to check for typos, which are often hard to spot if you have spent half a dozen hours staring at a design in Photoshop.

Hmm Sarah saved one of the wedding photos as a gif. Basically a gif is a map of what colours go where, only it can only deal with a limited number of colours. It works by telling the computer what pixels get what colour. It’s kinda like a knitting pattern, and the images you get are kinda like that too. I’d advantageous because you can animate them and on small images or images with limited colours you never notice. It's much less good for photos, paintings or areas of continuous changing texture. In fact it's rather bad at it. This why everyone uses jpg, which is enormously clever at calculating those changes in texture and hiding its compressions and lossy within them.

Now...copy. Not much on emails. Will have to scour TAFF archives and do my usual trick of working out dates. Off to change out of this suit and visit gents. Back soon.

Still not much evidence of any details etc on the thing. Why have I been sent the O'Reilly logo and the OFS logo? IT'S ON AT THE OFS. Maybe ash sent to O'Reilly logo in lieu of the Martin Esslin Society? V confusifying. Dates.... time to check herald/oxford gossip/oxforddrama for any mention of the show. Old TAFF request has it on during 2ND WEEK. Get live and oxforddrama.co.uk haven't listed it yet so shall have to trundle all the way down two flights of stairs to look it up in my term diary. What an effort.

Ohm 2nd week has May Day in it! Right. OFS shows run from Tuesday nights till Saturday nights...that's 3RD- 7TH MAY! Hah! You’re my BITCH Gregorian calendar! Right copy sorted. Now to start the photo-shopping process.

File/new-30.3cmx42.6cm @ 300 pixels/inch [OK]. Time to look at the velvets, see which one I like best. I will either put them side-by-side and blend the edges or enlarge one to fit the A3 canvas (+3mm bleed). Best to enlarge in small steps to allow Photoshop’s interpolation to smooth out jaggies, but it's not a big deal. Hmm. will enlarge both and see how they work with the diagonal picture later. Now for an adjustment layer (gradient map, which is infinitely adjustable) to turn it green.... background's done, now for lunch. Oh I’ll import the photos and text first- that won't take a minute....

two hours and some pasta later... have tidied all the logos into a sub folder on the Photoshop file- will deal with that later. The photo. Has to end up burnt up, and like a real sepia photo. Have given the original digital file a white border, like its been printed (load selection of the layer, selection/modify/expand 10pixels. subtract selection of layer, square of corners with additive selection fill tool in white). I cropped three versions of the photo along to basic 'rule of thirds' to draw the focus to the mans face and/or bridal dress. Should work out okay. My housemate is offering to take me out to scones now and I’m not going to resist
yum:)
bah place had stopped serving. Shall go hungry anyway, after about an hour fiddling with the text (it's all at a -25degree angle at the mo) I have moved on to the photo. This is actually going to be very hard as I have to
1 burn the edges digitally
2 burn the wife's face off, digitally.
This is not an easy task and will take the next two hours to composite from the burned photo Sarah scanned for me and a similar composite I did for kinder transport last term. See you in two hours.

Phew that took ages! The Kindertransport stuff wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped, being of flaming and not burnt photographs, so much of the original brochure image’s fire damage had to be cloned and blended in. It looks okay and the reproductions are hard to spot, I hope. Where I ran out of bits to use I painted on the right colours and textures to reproduce the charring around the edges. So we have a finished poster now with copy (including the nonsense the 'OFS studio' is now specifying) all at a wonderful slant, photo an all. The photo is at a bit more of a slant, to set off the text a bit and keep energy in the image. Now to save (takes ten minutes) and have some dinner!

Ohh dinner made me sooo sleepy! Any way left emailing off till following morning, but we should hope fully get some feed back. This will probably include a debate about the cropping of the photo and the angel of the text, but shouldn't be too bad. All in all the initial piecing together took about 6 hours, minus breaks. My main concerns (as always) are clarity of the image and information. We shall see what other people think. Tootles everyone!

The Moustache, the Musicians and the Marketing...

2005-03-21T12:44:00.000Z

Well, it's all go on the marketing front...

I've spent the morning taking pictures of velvet for our posters. A scintillating task. Am now about to work out the logistics of setting fire to a photograph, whilst filming it, without setting fire to a) my hand, b) my house and c) everything, for our flashing advert thingy for OUDS and the various blogs I've uncovered in the Oxford area. We were going to have the groom in our wedding photo winking, but sadly we've lost the moustache that we used in the original photo, so - in the name of continuity - we've scrapped that (said groom also fails to own a digital camera). We've had some positive feedback from language schools though I need to pursue the old ladies' evening classes. It's full steam ahead with the EAS launch party on Tuesday 26th April. Most likely to be held at Thirst. Need to buy some sticky labels for the flyer invites. Having fun booking (or not-booking, as the case has been) rooms for the final auditions and the press preview. Liz [Director] might be holding the butler audition out in Balliol's quad this afternoon, for want of a warmer, four-walled alternative. Have been quoted some extortionate amount for poster/flyer printing so might need a re-think on that. Ideas, anyone? In terms of our street performance, we need to go to Ramsay House to pick up a licence, which is free but necessary, apparently. Hopefully Ashleigh will have sorted us out with some musicians by then... Think Monday of 2nd is the best time to hit Cornmarket, but we may have to negotiate with the Council.

So, progressing.... Over and out.

Welcome to our blog!

2005-03-17T17:45:00.000Z

Well, it's a momentous day in the life of Trapdoor Productions as our blog takes its first few steps on its merry way to blogdom.

Hopefully it will also serve to chart our own merry journey to a stupendous production of Pirandello's ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps}, making its mark at the Old Fire Station Theatre, Oxford from Tuesday 3rd to Saturday 7th May at 7:30pm with an additional performance on Saturday afternoon at 2:30.

In this deliciously dark comedy, the arrival of an elusive new neighbour sets tongues wagging and curtains twitching. Will the truth be uncovered, or have we lost our grip on reality?

ABSOLUTELY! {perhaps} was last performed in the UK as Right You Are, if You Think So. Sherman’s modern translation of Pirandello’s Così è se vi pare combines comedy and philosophical debate to explore the nature of truth and identity. Set against the backdrop of 1920s bourgeois Italian society in the aftermath of an earthquake, the arrival of a new clerk and his seemingly invisible wife becomes the talk of the town.

As a neighbouring family and their guests maniacally struggle to solve the puzzle of this mysterious lady, uncle Laudisi – the voice of the playwright himself – coldly manipulates characters and audience alike. Who is telling the truth? Who is, in fact, mad? What is the real identity of the new neighbour?

There are many twists and turns in this satisfyingly enigmatic plot as Pirandello and Sherman play games, plucking at our heartstrings and challenging our sympathies.

Booking line: 01865 297170