Lazy Saturday Afternoon

Humm, FREAK is turning out to be pretty chilled in the daytime, with the mural coming on nicely and a few people hanging out and using the space for practice and learning, its all terribly creative.

I’m smiling because I taught two lovely ladies how to do the french drop, for those unacquainted its what yer granddad did when he vanished a coin and pulled it out of your ear. I’m smiling for two reasons, one is they picked it up really well, and that’s nice for a teacher, the other is the crystallization of my own technique that teaching brings. Its these things that remind me of the good this place does.

Anyway, tonight we are having the John Langan Band at 8 and the Caberave 10 -1 (ish) and if your really lucky, i will preview one of my new stage tricks for the fringe

But first.. a lazy little disco-nap

ruggcat

EDIT: to get you salivating for festival madness I present Amanda F. Palmer with the Horndog Brass Band  from a secret gig at the BRD last year:

The BRD, F.R.E.A.K. and the Festival!

Hello lovely denizens of the internet!

Well its been a little while since we last blogged, that’s cos the ruggcat has been away playing with other people for a change, but is back for festival madness! expect a lot more activity!!

So what’s been going down?

Well the whole building has been for a re-fit, the walls are whitewashed, the toilets redecorated, the stage moved and the garden turned into a place of loveliness once more. (actually that last bit is a lie, its currently full of stuff from everywhere else) The electrics have been cleared up but Ken still hasn’t had a haircut.

The Too Much Fun Club, a local posse of excellent graffiti artists have taken up residence in the light studio  and are currently helping with the mural in the hallway.

The music room is now fully equipped with amps and organs and has had its acoustics adjusted. I’ve been in there lots learning kit in the quiet times

Our computers have been updated! Big thanks to Andy, Jean-Luc and Gavin for putting linux Mint on all our machines and clearing up decades of disorganised hard drives. This one runs like butter in the sun, and takes less than 1/2 an hour to load Firefox. *GRIN*

So things are coming together once more, tell your friends, the BRD is BACK and in effect!

For FREAK timetable see our events page.

So very nice to be typing to you all again, see you on the wrong side crazy….

Ruggcat

P.S. WE ARE ON TWITTER!!! @TheBigRedDoor for all the latest news

NEW!!! BELTAN!!!!

Hello There!

Are you bored with your skin color? wish you could look a little more sexy, have the confidence to go nekid through the middle of a city?

NOW YOU CAN!!

With BELTAN!!!!

check out these amazing before and after pics!

Before:

and after a session in the BELTAN!!

Yeah Baby!

Ruggcat

a change is as good as a rest…

yo folks,

so as you may have herd most of the evening events are off until the 26th of April, the exceptions being Stunners this Saturday and the Howl nights on Wednesdays. Daytime classes and workshops will go on as usual.

Why is this happening? well because we are trying to get our license back! woot woot! but there’s lots of stuff needed done first including large scale renovation of the fire alarm system, If anyone out there could help with that, would be cool. But yeah we gonna give our limited core team more time to get the necessary changes made. And speaking of core teams…

Other news!!! Cos its been ages since we posted anything, but i see we still get visitors every now and then.

so lemme see… we didnt manage to pay rent last month.

I busted out with a broken heart, still trying to limp back into the air.

Mim has resigned and is no longer taking an active interest.

Jess is on leave too, and will be back in a few weeks.

We have had a few new additions to the core team (and by that we mean people who show up and do stuff) Chris and Becca being prominent entries for noob of the week

If you haven’t seen it already, there is now a volunteers page on facebook http://www.facebook.com/?sk=nf#!/group.php?gid=110074869010973

I don’t know if ill be there much more, The feeling and ethos of the door has changed, it used to be a very respected and respectful place, a sanctuary of silliness, stupidity and synchronicity. An acoustic venue that believed in local produce, moderate intoxication, entertainment, experimentation and interaction. It was about producing great theater in all forms, street, wood, inner city festival.

It was that performance freedom that gave the door its great vibes, made it the place to have an amazing party, but the point was in the practice, not the party, that was a side effect.

I think this has been lost a bit of late, there are few practitioners and we increasingly go for the party without the performance, or the performance being subservient to the party. Remember the Halloween festival, ‘A Wake for All Souls’ ?

So this is my call, my last try. People who want to make things, dance, puppets, singing, happening, costuming and characterizing. Get your ass over there and use it! while you can.

see you round.

Ruggcat

Great April events and classes  have been listed in the “events” section. Take a wee look!

February Events are now up!

personally im looking forward to Queer Mutiny

Ruggcat

BRD in the skinny!

check it out

http://www.theskinny.co.uk/article/98384-save-the-big-red-door

Ruggcat

Events Page has been Updated!!

more coming soon, Feb is exciting

ruggcat

What is actually going on?

Hi all,

Fin here again. I’ve got a wee issue. There are as many rumours as there are true stories floating about regarding what is actually taking place behind the BRD. For my part, I would like this blog to be as open as I can possibly make it (my cultural inheritance permitting). And so, to fight my demons and to make the BRD more transparent, I’ll try to describe briefly what is truly going on. In order to achieve this, I have to give you a bit of a history lesson and then I can move to current and finally to the future. It might take me a while so bare with me. I’ll try to make it as concise as I can.

The Big Red Door was not supposed to move into being as quickly as it has had to. Originally the building was acquired by te POOKa to function as a production house and a workshop space when the previous premises above the Tollcross Scotmid became insufficient. Even then there was a long term plan to make the building open to various different people and a strong underlying environmental focus.

The plan altered as the economy came crashing down in the autumn a year ago. Back then the main vessel of income was the project, entertainment and teaching work done by te POOKa which provided the overheads for the building. This is a fickle market and as everyone started to cut expenses, of course, first things to go were entertainment and extra curricular educational activities. Suddenly, bulk of the income was gone and we were left hanging. Without this income, we started quickly owe rent as we could not meet the payments.

So far the building had only experimented with running a venue on few occasions. After few attempts to revive te POOKa income, only logical solution was to speed up the process of establishing an alternative creative and cultural hub. It has taken us a long time as we cannot pull in huge resources, close for a month and alter everything in one go. We’ve had to deal with constant lack of time, money and people. Finally, after about year later, we are slowly getting there and WE ARE STILL HERE!

My most heartfelt gratitude for achieving this goes to all the people who have given from their time and energy to uphold and believe in this place. We would have folded a long time ago without you. Thank you so much for your help!

As you might have heard, we are not out of the ditch yet. We owe the landlords a substantial amount of money which we have actually managed to reduce significantly even during the recession. We are on a deadline to pay up by the end of March and the threat of closure looms and December wasn’t even nearly as lucrative as we had thought it would be. The te POOKa work has not returned and offers us no respite and as I probably made clear in my last blog, we are fairly tired. So, we do face problems, but these are not any worse we’ve faced in the past and still prevailed.

Wonderful things are happening. More and different people are coming in through the Big Red Door and it is actually starting to be a living space. The building sits less and less unused. We have a proper series of workshops starting in a couple of weeks. Our brand new, soundproofed music space will be available for hire from the beginning of February. Latest by end of February, we will open three artist studios, with enough space to accommodate perhaps six working artists. The venue will keep going hosting the strange mix of night we are used to and the word is definitely out. Our brilliant fund raising volunteer with few others are working hard on funding applications. We are looking again towards project work within and out width the BRD. Our promotions team is more on the ball than ever, making us the February venue of the month in Skinny Magazine. I love it! So many things and opportunities.

We will make it. There is no other way to look at it. It is fundamentally important that these kinds of spaces exist in the world. People creating things out of nothing motivated by love instead of money or status seems to be subdued in the current economic model. If these powers shouldn’t balance out, we will still have had the experience of our lives which will never allow for us to settle for anything less than this. The final tally will be based on all of us. There is no way this can fail as long as enough people believe in it. We do, do you?

Hope you are well,

Fin

ps. The full vision statement is available at the bar for anyone interested.

Oh Dear

So… we dont actually know if we are alowed to sell booze yet

Tonight (Friday) will defo be BYOB.

Ruggcat