Thundercat Performance - Weymouth Spirit of the Sea Festival 2008

A Call for Volunteer Drivers

This year the Weymouth and Portland “Spirit of the Sea Festival: is taking place in July in and around the Weymouth area. This is an exciting and fast-growing annual event that will build up over the coming few years culminating in the London 2012 games. Please see http://www.spiritofthesea.org.uk/ The festival organisers have approached Thundercats because they would like to create a particular special event this year.

The Idea:

We want to create a short 10-15 minute performance using fast Ribs, to be seen by the public from a vantage point on the shore, in this case Newton’s Cove, near Nothe Fort in Weymouth overlooking the bay area. The cove is more sheltered, the scale and proportions are right for the event and it has a useful “stage left” for dramatic entry. We would like to develop a simple visual story around the power and impact of the Thundercats, and perhaps including 3 or 4 jetskis (these would be the bad guys!). We would also like a bigger vessel (something along the lines of a coastguard or pilot boat) to make an appearance as “The Boss” at the end. At this point in our discussion, someone made a crack about “The Sharks and the Jetskis”, and we’re thinking about that as we speak! What it boils down to is a great opportunity to perform and show off exactly what Thundercats can do when they’re not racing. Like any performance (think dancing JCB’s or the Red Arrows), this needs to be very carefully planned out and rehearsed with a team of skilled Thundercat drivers and any other craft involved. We are currently looking at ways of providing music to accompany the Thundercat action. The festival team are looking to programme an afternoon of events around this that will attract quite large numbers to the cover area, possibly including an Air Sea Rescue demonstration.

So if you are a skilled Thundercat driver/racer we need you!

In order to plan and rehearse, experience tells us we need about 8 hours together and on the water. Once its planned, we will provide a “crib sheet”, a set of instructions to accompany the action so that drivers can go over and commit the moves to memory in the intervening week. Given time and distances, we think perhaps the best way to do this is over one weekend in Weymouth (5^th/6^th July) with the event itself taking place the following weekend (12^th/13^th July) when we have the essential high water at around 2pm in Newton’s Cove. The time of the performance should be 2.00pm at high water on Saturday 12 July. The festival team will be taking care of all permissions, communications with harbour authorities, coastguard and so forth. Alan Rogers, Arts Development Officer for Weymouth and Portland is at present applying for grants, which will cover your accommodation for 5/6^th.

If you are up for joining in with this one-off event, just get in touch with Fiona at Thundercats HQ by e-mail or phone and from that point you will be provided with all the necessary details.

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or 07795618701.

The team:

Antony Waller is a producer specializing in outdoor events and performance work with young people and communiites. Antony has produced numerous large-scale outdoor projects, working with all sorts of craft over then years including RIBs, sailing dinghies, wakeboards, JCB’s, bicycles and so forth. Last year he worked with Plymouth Youth Sailing when they hosted the 2007 national Youth Sailing Regatta to make a “Wave Armada” Rib performance with 8 of the rescue boats and their volunteer drivers. He and an associate choreographer will be working with us to plan out how the Thundercat performance works in practice. Follow the following link for some images: http://www.creative-partnerships.com/projects/121368/182453/?view=Standard

The event will be organized and promoted by the Spirit of the Sea Festival organizers, including Matt Ryan (Outdoor Events Manager WPBC), Jacqui Gisbourne (Communications Manager WPBC), Alan Rogers (Arts Development Officer for Weymouth and Portland), Julia Long (Marine Development Officer WPBC). http://www.spiritofthesea.org.uk/