Home Made with MGA

May 13 2020 | By More

Wonder Fools lead Academy’s Zoom production

Edinburgh’s MGA Academy has teamed up with Wonder Fools to create Home Made, a new online Zoom production with their 3rd year acting students, streaming live this Friday 15 May 2020.

Home Made experiments with the possibilities of remote theatre and will take the form of a sketch show, featuring material that varies from the dramatic to the surreal, but all created with the students and filmed by them in isolation.

Home Made from MGA

Wonder Fools most recent production to be seen in Edinburgh was 549: Scots Of The Spanish Civil War, which told of four lads from Prestonpans who went off to fight with the International Brigade in 1936.

The MGA students were all set to perform Margaret Atwood’s 2007 adaptation of her novella The Penelopiad as their final show at college, under the direction of Eve Nicol. However the production  became a victim of the ongoing pandemic and Nicol was unable to continue.

Instead, MGA brought in Robbie Jordan and Jack Nurse, co-founders of Wonder Fools, to create an alternative to fit the changed circumstances.

The result is Home Made, starring the students and created with them in a devised process over the last three weeks – all done online using Zoom.

Wonder Fools co-founder and director Jack Nurse told Æ: “During Home Made we explore the loss of this production of the Penelopiad before turning our attention to the students’ circumstances now – and what the idea of home means to them.

“The performance takes the form of a sketch show featuring material that varies from the dramatic to the surreal featuring music by regular Wonder Fools collaborators VanIves.”

Stories to Connect Us

The production is the first part of an upcoming digital season, Stories to Connect Us, that Wonder Fools will then deliver from June onwards. Part of the season is funding dependent – but it will involve streaming a performance of 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War recorded in an Ayrshire town hall during the show’s UK tour last year.

A scene from 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War. Pic: Mihaela Bodlovic

Stories to Connect Us will also contain an auditory reinterpretation of the company’s 2017 taboo-breaking play about pornography, The Coolidge Effect, with its themes of isolation and mental health feeling particularly relevant right now. Funding allowing, it will also contain new work made specifically for online platforms.

Working remotely, using online platforms to create new theatre to be shown on those same platforms has been as much a step into the dark for Wonder Fools as the students. However, Nurse is clear that it potentially going to be part of the new normal that the students will graduate into.

a complete experiment

Nurse says: “The process of Home Made has been a complete experiment for myself, Robbie and the students and has been defined by the mantra ‘throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks’.

“The students are only too aware that working on digital platforms as an actor may be a necessity in the near future, and who knows how long after that, but they have thrown themselves into the process with an abundance of creativity and commitment.

“It has been genuinely joyous and cathartic to spend this uncertain time making a show with such a talented and dynamic group of emerging actors and theatre-makers.”

Home Made will be streamed live on www.wonderfools.org via YouTube on Friday 15 May 2020 from 7pm and will then be available until Monday 18 May.

Listings and links:

Home Made
Streams live on www.wonderfools.org via YouTube
Friday 15 May 2020
Stream at 7pm.
Remains online until Monday 18 May 2020.

Wonder Fools
Website: www.wonderfools.org
Twitter: @wonder_fools
Facebook: @wonderfoolsonline

MGA Academy:
Website: www.themgaacademy.com/
Twitter: @themgaacademy

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