We’ve just heard that The Jellyfish Theatre has been  shortlisted for the Urban Intervention Award Berlin 2010, awarded by the Senate Department for Urban Development of the City of Berlin.

Now we are reaching the end of The Oikos Project, we would love to hear what you thought. There are only five questions and you can find them here:

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In two weeks from now I start rehearsing the first of two plays to be performed in The Jellyfish Theatre. Oikos by Simon Wu. Oikos takes its title form the project and is Simon’s first play for The Red Room.

I first met Simon two years ago. In our early conversations we talked about his experiences growing up in a house on stilts above the water in Hong Kong. Being from London I though this was a magical thing. However the stilt houses, now demolished, were created because of overpopulation and poverty.  Similar to the ones featured in the BBC documentary Welcome to Lagos.  In a sense this was a reminder that although our plays are dealing with a possible future, the present, (with the “Big Three” issues converging, namely: over population, finite resources, and a rise in world temperatures) is where action needs to be taken.

Perhaps this is why Simon has chosen to focus his play around our obsession with consumerism and the need to shore ourselves up against harm through material possessions. In Oikos he asks the question what will it take to find another way?

The exciting challenge I have with Oikos is to create a space that represents a beautiful house in Chiswick which can also be flooded with real water; in a building more like the stilt houses of Simon’s youth than any modern theatre today. It’s a daunting challenge that we hope to make theatrically exciting.

The great thing is that we have almost all our actors. Despite the ambitious themes it’s a small company just three actors, and we are very nearly fully cast.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday this week ( 21st July) we are having a workshop for Protozoa our second play, written by Kay Adshead. Tickets for both plays are on sale now. It’s worth seeing them both as Simon’s is set about five years from now at the beginning of the floods and Kay’s is set in 2020 in a period after the floods.

Kay has written for The Red Room before. Her play Bogus Woman won a Fringe First and I am really excited that she is collaborating on The Oikos Project. Kay writes with passion and commitment. Protozoa pulls no punches, it really must be seen.

We have had a great time picking up the transformed water bottles from schools across Southwark.  The classes have turned them into such imaginative things!  Every time I think I have found my favourite, another one comes along.  We have water bottles that have been turned into a purple octopus, a rocket ship, a ladybird.  There is one that reception children from St Joseph’s made with seedlings growing in it and another that’s been filled with water and sand (it was heavy to carry!).  A beautiful vase with paper flowers stands next to an abstract art piece with cut outs of children’s hands glued to it.  A time capsule has been created with notes written by children placed inside and if I’m not mistaken, the Very Hungry Caterpillar has made an appearance as well.

As we video the children talking about their bottles, what we hear time and time again is not only how much fun the children have had making their creations, but how much thought they have given to creating them.  A number of children have told us that their first attempt didn’t look so good, so they had to start again. Groups have told us how they wanted to send a message with their bottle so that people would think about protecting the earth’s precious resources.  Another class made theirs into a rocket because they were studying space and it ‘just made sense’ to use their bottle as an extension of their learning.  The bottles are colourful, full of life, joyous and surprising.  Just like the children who made them.  Now. . .how to incorporate them into the building!

Sydney Thornbury from WebPlay reviews the creative use of water bottles from Southwark school children…

Last weekend, for the first time the public was invited onto The Jellyfish Theatre construction site to take part in creative reuse workshops for the final weekend of the London Festival of Architecture.  Kitted out with hard hats (kindly donated by Balfour Beatty) adults and children alike came along to create their very own masterpieces using recycled and reclaimed timber found onsite.

Under Martin’s supervision participants in the workshops sawed, hammered, stuck and decorated ornaments all inspired by the idea of the sea and the jellyfish.  We had seats, we had deck chairs, we had fish and we had sculptures of all different shapes and sizes all of which will be incorporated into the final design for the theatre in some way.

The workshops were only scheduled to last an hour but most people ended up staying much longer to finish off their work!  The two-day series of workshops was a great success and certainly helped to prove once again that one man’s trash really is another man’s treasure.

Here are some photos of what was created!

This is a really exciting week. Thanks to a great team that includes Moira Lascelles from The Architecture Foundation and our Project Manager Ben Melchiors we can welcome you to the beginning of what we know will be an exciting journey.

Over the next two months we will build The Jellyfish Theatre. Martin Kaltwasser, the architect, with an army of volunteers will be hammering, sawing and fashioning the walls and floors of London’s first fully recycled handmade theatre. Small but perfectly formed we hope that people in the neighbourhoods of Southwark will get involved in a conversation about how to best use its public spaces. We also hope to kick start debates about climate change and how we are going to live together in what will be very changed world city in the future.

I have been down to the site in Union Street SE1 for the past few days and the building is shaping up slowly but surely. So come rain or shine we will be there all summer. I will be rehearsing two new plays from August to stage in The Jellyfish, something I have never done before.

Its going to be different and challenging. I really don’t know what shape the building will end up being. But I do know that is going to be one of the most exciting venues in London if only for a short time. Don’t miss it.

Artistic Director
Topher Campbell

P.S. for  real time updates on how The Oikos Project is going follow me on Twitter