ImMortal - Coming Out Alive 2004

After the plan for touring a warehouse style community show in the new tent was cancelled, because we didn't receive the funding for it, we decided to create a new professional touring show for the silver tent. It was going to based on the third Stepping Stone, ImMortal and was intended to tell the same story. Originally we had planned for it to be directed by Orit who had just completed directing the stepping stones trilogy. In short, Orit became unavailable as she was pregnant so we asked Firenza Guidi who directed Autogeddon. She said that she either worked for good money or for exciting art. We promised her it was going to be very exciting art because we couldn't promise her good money! I believe it was this moment that changed the destiny of nofitstate and Firenza's professional journey.

We knew that touring the Silver tent would be a challenge it would be tent touring at a much bigger scale than our blue tent and with a much larger company and crew. We received a tiny grant, our first from Arts Council England ( ACE for £32000 towards the creation and touring of the show and another £20,000 from Arts Council Wales. on top of the touring grant from ACW they also grant funded eight of Splott State Circus community members to join us on tour as trainee performers. this was the start of nofitstate's commitment to providing opportunities for trainees and emerging artists to join the various touring projects. All of this first batch of trainees are still involved in circus and many of them still work with nofitstate.

Ali and Tom produced this project between them with Tom leading on the practical production elements and Ali managing funding, tour selling and budgets. The rehearsals and Opening performance took place in Ynysangharad Park in Pontypridd and then the showed toured around Wales and UK. It was the first tour since Treasure island in 1997 and we failed spectacularly to understand the difference between marketing for a small scale tour and marking for a much larger venue. The show was really stunning but we found it hard to get audiences. Our biggest marketing tool was the tent and word of mouth of those that saw the show. we had an amazing product but didn't know how to sell it properly. In that first year ImMortal lost the company £40,000 and the company members were paid very badly Luckily we had some other strands of income coming in so we managed to keep paying the wages although we didn't empty the portaloos much that summer. At this point the professional show was subsidised by the community outreach and agency work we ran alongside the tour but it wouldn't be long before that changed . Fortunately when we played at Streets Alive in Manchester we were spotted by some key promoters Including Jordi Duran and Mike Ribalta from Fira Tarrega in Spain and we generated enough interest to commit to doing the show again.

So the first big tent tour a success or a failure ? We certainly learnt many lessons for the future, particularly about marketing. It was definitely an artistic success with the UK circus sector excited by this new style of performance and surprisingly even though we had an incredibly difficult tour the company wanted to do it again.

Here is the directors text about the show and you listen to Oral histories from those first company members by clicking on people links
ImMortal coming out alive

Directed by Firenza Guidi

Immortal is a journey into what it means to be human. It is a world of truths turned upside down, hilarious yet tragic, always on the move, but with pegs sunk deep. It’s where west meets east. Immortal is a world populated by humanity high and low. Who are these creatures, familiar yet unknown? Are they survivors of a revolution? Or gods coming from afar? Are they actors in a forgotten film-set? Have they been or are they yet to come? Are they memory or future? Immortal is a unique, timeless experience where the spectator enters the performance world and doesn’t simply watch it. It's an event, a multimedia promenade where action explodes all around you, above and below. It is a circus, a rotating spectacle of humanity at its naughtiest: human beings as crossroads of memory, history, faded pictures, blurred birth certificates, and uncertain mothers. A diorama of what is most tragically funny: a party, a bacchanal, a furious wedding dance. It is a total show, where music keeps the time and theatre has no numbered seats to map out the forbidden space. Come and watch closely: CCTV, lacing real and virtual, make spying a new art form: you'll find traces of a self, a place, a past, a sound, a pleasure, a memory, an image - connecting future to a sudden death. Immortal is daring, ambitious, anarchic, surreal, magical, breath-taking, thought-provoking and funny. Excessive and irreverent, Immortal is a spectacular meditation on one of the biggest questions of the human race: are we immortal?

Firenza Guidi, March 04

Soundtrack