R&D Project in Manchester - Day 6

Creative Director David Gibb shares his thoughts on day 2, 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.

Another fab day at Z-arts, working with our brilliant performers. Today we were also joined by designer Nomi Everall who is with us until the end of week. We started by sharing everything we’d worked on so far so that Nomi could have a clear sense of the piece and start thinking about how aspects of design would work alongside the songs and narrative.

Whilst Nomi got to work on ideas, the rest of us started looking at the songs we hadn’t tackled previously. The first one we looked at was the very last to be written the previous week, and I was slightly apprehensive about how it would sound, having not had the headspace to properly think about arrangement. However I needn’t have worried - Rob picked it up incredibly fast, and Nicki riffed on the chords to come up with a brilliant piano part to accompany the guitar. It was also great to get to hear Becky putting her amazing voice to full use today, belting out many an impressive note.

We then chatted some more with Nomi who had come up with some brilliant ideas for the bug themed song, ‘The Insect Swing’, which included bouncing bugs on bungee chords, and concertina bug books.

Tomorrow we’re in the theatre space and our brilliant dramaturg Renata will be putting the performers through their paces looking at the links between songs and main chunks of dialogue.

Renata and I finished the day by wandering round Manchester City Library and taking some silly photos which seemed thoroughly appropriate after such a busy and productive day.

Don’t tell anyone but I’m secretly hoping to be able to put my feet up a bit tomorrow.

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

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