On Saturday 3rd December we all began working together on My Robot Heart.

Two years ago, Molly started writing the show, and has already tried it out at The Junction’s Sampled Festival and the Battersea Arts Centre’s Scratch under the name Bad Wedding Photo.

Molly originally asked The Middle Ones to cover some bad wedding songs that she could use in the piece. Over time the idea evolved, until they all became enthusiastic about being on stage together, combining poetry, storytelling, autobiography, post-dramatic theatre and live music into this one, new show.

This is Grace writing. I’m still unsure of the voice to use in this blog, whether I should speak from a collective, impersonal viewpoint as above, or each of us contribute our own posts from our own perspective. We’ll see how it goes..

So far we have rehearsed at Norwich Arts Centre and Plug Studios. We began by identifying parts of the script that fitted with different parts of the songs. We brought in some Middle Ones songs as well as covers. We identified that the music should be an integral part of the action, but that it should not affect the rhythm of Molly’s poetry and prose. If the words and the music simply sit on top of one another, indifferent (to a point) the effect is better. At least it feels that way so far.

Next week we are in residence at the Battersea Arts Centre, and we’re very excited to work on structure, design and staging, finishing the week with two scratch performances at 9pm on Friday 9th and Saturday 10th December. Book tickets (pay what you like) here.