R&D Project in Manchester - Day 8

Creative Director David Gibb shares his thoughts on day 4, week 2 of our R&D project at Z-arts in Manchester, to explore adapting ‘Luna Loves Library Day’ by Joseph Coelho and Fiona Lumbers into a musical stage show.

Day 4 of week 2 and we started the day with a stagger through of the showing. Despite a very hot stuffy previous night, and those of staying in Manchester being kept awake by the extremely loud Harry Styles concert taking place at the cricket ground the night before, it felt like there was a real energy and concentration in the room.

The morning was spent running the performance twice through and each time the performers were more and confident with the songs and material. At 2pm we’d arranged to share our work with Zoe Pickering, head of programming at Z-arts. Zoe was the person who really championed the project from the very start so I was really hoping she would like what we had come up with. Luckily she laughed, cried and joined in at all the right places, and it was a real confident boost to see how much she enjoyed the run through. It was the first time we’d shown the piece to anyone outside our little family for the week. Whilst I think we all had the sneaky feeling that what we were doing was really start to come together, it still was great to have someone come in to see it and give the thumbs up.

We took a longer break after that, in which there was some much needed larking about. Here’s some of it in evidence:

We finished the day working on harmonies on the reprise of the first song ‘Library Day’, which were sounding really really beautiful. Here’s another video:

Tomorrow is the first scratch performance, and I can’t wait!

Till then.

This R&D project is a commission by Z-arts, supported by Big Imaginations.

https://www.z-arts.org
https://www.bigimaginations.co.uk