Investing in the future...?

Paul's creativity research is featured on the radio today: he's on Radio 4's Creativity programme (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/creativegenius.shtml), talking about the experiments he's done with creative activities in brain scanners. Hopefully this is what we'll be building on as the work in Plymouth progresses.

I'm spending the first three days of this week at the ENO. I think most directors tend to mix their company commitments with freelance projects, and when you work with a project-funded company like this one it's all the more necessary, for reasons of simple survival. But it does feel odd to be plunged into a totally different set-up, where many of the key issues (like casting, scheduling and - in this case - even the set and the structure of the staging) are totally outside my control. Even odder is the fact that these three days on Handel's Xerxes are a full six weeks ahead of the main rehearsal period. It's because Lawrence Zazzo, who'll be singing Arsemenes, isn't going to be in the real rehearsals for the first two weeks - so I have these three days to dip his toe in the water, helped by whoever else happens to be free. Luckily, Larry is a very intelligent and creative performer. Otherwise this would be distinctly tricky....

A letter turns up from the Arts Council, turning down our application to fund my research visit to China. This isn't the end of the world - we've got money in the bank which can pay for it (though obviously we'd sooner have used that for something else). What's more worrying is that this is the third application in a row to be turned down (and the other two were a lot more significant - which is why there's no full-scale production in this, our tenth anniversary year). I need to phone them and see whether we're doing something wrong. It really doesn't make any sense in the wake of two really successful productions last year. And we HAVE to get funds behind the new project.