Hoipolloi: stretching the imagination

LAB

Hoipolloi LAB:
The ingredients of creating a Hoipolloi show

Hoipolloi LAB is the company’s research, development and training programme. It provides us with an opportunity to research and play around with an idea, explore different ways of working or experiment with different media.

Unlike many companies, where the writer’s script is often the starting point for creating a show, a Hoipolloi script is likely to be the final part of the jigsaw in the rehearsal process. And even when a show has gone into performance, it is likely to evolve and develop as we begin to fully understand an audience’s reaction to the piece.

Hoipolloi’s work is normally developed and written by the company’s core artistic team in collaboration with our performers, with a script emerging, being shaped and finally written by Shôn Dale-Jones, Hoipolloi’s Artistic Director,

We are continually working on the way we create theatre together as a company – so the writing, directing, designing, performing and the music are all simultaneously influencing the creation of a show as it evolves.

All this work generally happens behind closed doors, without the additional pressure of having to perform the results in front of a paying audience. Work produced as part of Hoipolloi LAB often provides the starting point for the creation of a full production.

And sometimes it’s important to gauge an audience’s reaction to an idea, so the results might be turned into a Hoipolloi MASH event and performed to an invited audience or form part of a venue’s own work-in-progress platform – like the JAM nights at The Junction, Cambridge (www.junction.co.uk).

To find out more about Hoipolloi MASH, click here.

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