Did you ever dream of running away to the circus?

What would you have been – A trapeze artist? A bearded lady? A clown?

Not me. It all seems a bit too much like a camping trip on a massive scale. Camping in a tent large enough to contain an elephant. Camping in a tent that does contain an elephant…

Yet somehow I’ve managed to sign up to the nearest thing.  I’ve ended up on tour with a theatre company.

They’re called Imitating the Dog. It might be a Kantian reference, it could be a derivation of ‘copy cat’, it is also, and more likely, something a little more obscene.

For the last week, and the next, I’ve been making my way around the country with them whilst they tour their play, The Bar of Lost Souls. I also did some animation for them.

I’ve been learning plenty about the theatre… such things as ‘never leave even half a glass of wine unattended’ and that 90% of deaths in the theatre come from above. Also, that a lot of the language of the theatre is nautical… something to do with sailors being used to help with the stage rigging… and also a reason why it is bad luck to whistle on stage. Apparently sailors communicate by whistling, and so doing that increases the chance of someone dropping something on you. Death from above, again.

We’ll be in Leeds next week, and then we’re bringing the show home to sunny Lancaster. Feel free to give me a shout if you feel like coming to see it.

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In other news, and one of the reasons I’ve been a little quiet of late, I have been working on an awful lot of animation work. here, for example is a music video for the rather excellent band The Joy Formidable. There are two versions… one which I made as an animation, and one that was made with the help of editor, Steve Orchard, into a music video… can you tell which is which?