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The STICKY project started very quietly in the summer of 1998 while Phelim and Lee were in America touring 70 HILL LANE. I had drawn the short straw, or so it seemed, for I was going to Stockton on Tees to lead a workshop - in the rain.
Many years before Improbable, I had specialised in large outdoor events - working on at least 17 shows with Welfare State International, the leading British practitioners in that field (and it usually was a field). I was working on one of their gigs back in 1993 when I got a phone call from a director called Phelim McDermott who was asking me to design a production of DR. FAUSTUS at the Nottingham Playhouse. I said yes and was happy to get a chance to work under a roof for a change... but after 6 years had passed I had a hankering to return to the outdoors.
The opportunity arose from two main factors - Firstly, it became apparent to me that the same team of artists and technicians that had helped us over the years to create such visual theatre pieces had the vision, ambition and technical experience to develop their skills on a larger canvas. Secondly, we had discovered the very theatrical properties of Sellotape. We'd used the sticky stuff in two shows - Improbable's 70 HILL LANE, and the ESC's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (which had been a freelance job for Phelim and I). Immediately I had recognised that it would be a great material for outdoor work in that it is pretty much waterproof and that you can draw expansively in a space with it without creating too much wind resistance or weight.
And so the first STICKY project was born out of a burnt-out church in a 20 minute event tagged onto the end of workshop given at Stockton's Riverside Festival in 1998. Leading the workshop were myself, Rob Thirtle, Graeme Gilmour, the pyro-technician Greg Woods, and the Lighting designer Phil Supple. It was swiftly slung together in very wet conditions and centred on a huge insect-like creature giving birth to a host of larval eggs, which floated skywards against a backdrop of fire. We were amazed at it's immediate success - this modest show with a few stilt-walkers, a couple of fireworks and sparklers, and of course, the Sellotape.
Watching in the crowd was Neil Butler, the Director of UZ Events who asked us on the spot to produce something for Glasgow's Year of Architecture and Design, 1999. On the train back, Rob and I were watching out of the window as electrical pylons wizzed by. It was the pylons that gave us the idea for the next stage...
In Glasgow we decided to create an 80 foot animated tower - stupidly really, because the time and resources were not quite there. We were pulled through by the remarkable skills of Mr. Phil Eddols (Phleds) who had been technical manager on SHOCKHEADED PETER and who understands big stuff. So our small company were joined by a crane and an aerialist, and few more team members and volunteers.
It was a beautiful day and a beautiful show and yet again our next booker was in the audience, so in August of that year, the team recreated this fleeting monument to the architecture of the imagination to open The Zuercher Theater Spektakel in Zurich, Switzerland. It was a bit of a wash out there but we learned a lot about rain.
We didn't do the show again until May 2000 when it played Brighton on a beautiful evening. By then I had pretty much handed over the directing to Lee who does the 'Cogreography', and Phelim who guides Geoff as he spins the discs...
STICKY is a 'Chinese Whisper' of a show, and each time its performed, it changes and develops. I'm a bit in love with it and a bit scared of it.
Julian Crouch May 2002
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