Totoro Brothers’ Travelling Circus: The Greatest Show on Earth!

Just over a week until our circus show so hurry up and get in contact if you’re interested in being involved. Can you juggle? Paint faces? Hula hoop? Join our circus! It doesn’t really travel and it’s only for one night:

Friday 4th of December, 6.00pm-10.00pm

Totoro’s Tea House – 1/111 Hunter Street, Newcastle

Featuring: art, music, performance, tealeaf reading, popcorn, costumes…

This is set to be an AH-MAZING night… DON’T BE BORING! COME TO THE CIRCUS!

As always, please make emails to: totoro.teahouse@gmail.com

CIRCUS

We have exciting plans for a circus-themed exhibition, so if you’re interested in being involved please get in contact. We’re after artworks, writing, performance, anything with a circus theme. The tea house will be transformed into a beautiful big-top for the event! Exhibition starts mid-November, opening date not yet confirmed.

totoro.teahouse@gmail.com for more information.

Events

Oh hi.

We have this amazing space on the Hunter Street Mall in Newcastle that is just sitting empty for four days of the week. We’d really love if you were to organise some events to take place in our shop: workshops, discussions, exhibitions, readings, launches, performances, private (tea)parties…

We have couches, tables + seating, free wifi, and a selection of delicious teas. If you’re interested in using the space then contact us at: totoro.teahouse@gmail.com

teaNA weekend

What an amazing and amazingly exhausting weekend we have had! Our opening was a great success and we were far too busy to be taking photos, but here are a few that have surfaced from the weekend:

Lazy afternoon.

Delicious soy chai + honey for two.

Craig Schuftan’s disco lecture, ‘You Can’t Stop The Musing’.

National Young Writers’ Festival Roundtable Discussion: Space invaders: DIY and artist-run festivals.

Maddy Phelan plays Indie-Breaky Heart.

Thank-yous to all our friends (old + new) for dropping by, Craig and Kirileigh, the Format kids, Leigh, and anyone else who did some dishes!

We’ll be open this week: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, from 10.00am – 5.00pm serving delicious tea and soup!!

A sign of good things to come

Today I finished painting the sign we made for the inside of the shop. It will hang above the counter where previously there was a horrible fluorescent thing advertising the ‘energy bar’ that once stood where we do now. I didn’t think too hard about it and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out – it’s fluid and unfinished and charming, which is how I would like our tea house to be also.

Maybe I will do some more work on it later… that black is awfully black! What do you think?

Busy…

Today I began work on our sign:

& I upholstered a chair:

I think it turned out quite nice,

& Totoro seems to agree:

We found five of these chairs on the street and fixed them up, and the fabric came from op-shop Friday at the church down the road from my house. I still have four to upholster, so I am going to use different fabric on each one. It is very comfortable to sit on because it has much more padding than a regular chair!

teaNA program

This is it… same information, slightly more pleasing to the eye:

…& for anyone wondering where to find the tea house, it’s just a short walk from Newcastle train station. We’re on the corner of Hunter and Morgan Streets, in the Hunter Street Mall.

(tea)NA

I’m working on our program of events for TINA next weekend and having a lot of trouble trying to fit it all onto a flyer. We’re hosting some NYWF roundtable discussions as well as the world’s first ‘Disco Lecture’, and a 140th birthday party for the postcard! Well, here it is… flyer is coming soon:

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Friday, October 2^nd

5.00 – 8.00pm: Opening Night Party!!

5.30 – 6.30pm: You Can’t Stop The Musing – The philosophy of disco with Craig Schuftan

White pants, mirroballs, dancing while pointing at the floor – everybody knows Disco is fun. But is it good for you? For many, in the seventies, Disco represented the last word in mass-produced trash – moronic music made by robots for robots. For others, it was a solitary ray of humanist hope in a world that was rapidly going to the dogs. Now that Disco is back (trust us, it is), the time has come to determine, once and for all, whether it’s part of the problem or part of the solution. Triple j’s Craig Schuftan – author of The Culture Club and Hey! Nietzsche! Leave them Kids Alone – presents the case for and against in You Can’t Stop the Musing – the world’s first Disco-lecture. Expect to hear from The Silver convention, The Chic Organisation and the Frankfurt School, and don’t be surprised if you start doing that which both Theodor Adorno and the adherents of the Disco Sucks movement considered an impossibility – thinking and dancing.

6.45 – 7.15pm: Maddy Phelan plays Indie-Breaky Heart

7.30 – 8.00pm: Bicarb & Vinegar

Also…

Wonder Chamber: a collection of the curious, wondrous, and whimsical, featuring: 7U?, Textaqueen, Emily Hasselhoof, Leigh Rigozzi, Helen Nehill, Neil Tomkins, Ace Wagstaff, Chris Tamm, Kake Geck, and Licky the Cream… (until Nov 6^th)

zine launch: ‘This is the [second] stupidest tea party I’ve ever been to in all my life’

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Saturday, October 3^rd

11.00 – 12.30pm: Space Invaders: DIY and Artist-Run Festivals and Spaces (NYWF Roundtable discussion)

No budget is the way of the future. DIY spaces bring people together, creating an explosion of ideas and action: real social networking, people. Hear true stories and get valuable advice on setting up spaces and running whole festivals with just enough money to buy a shoestring. Featuring: Ianto Ware, Guy Sterling, Danielle Bentley, Susy Pow, Maddy Phelan, and Natalie Aylward.

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Sunday, October 4^th

4.30 – 5.30pm: Curatorial How-To (NYWF Roundtable discussion)

Wranglers, hoarders, dropouts, show-offs, very talented circle of friends! Wanna figure out how to get all gallery on that shit? CURATORIAL is part of NYWF’s new series of informal, abnormal, but very, very practical roundtable how-tos. Featuring: Ianto Ware, Anthony WP O’Sullivan, Lev Diatschenko, Nimble Fox Trappings, Emily McCulloch Childs, Maddy Phelan, and Natalie Aylward.

6.00 –  7.00pm: The One Hundred and Fortieth Birthday of the Postcard

Participate in the collective penning and posting of 140 postcards plus eating cake and other regular birthday party activities. The event will double as a book launch for ‘from sometimes love beth’ a postcard compendium by Beth Sometimes.

Presented by Beth Sometimes: misssometimes@gmail.com

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Monday, October 5^th

Come rest your weary head as we serve up some hot brews and cool tunes.

Let’s just take it easy today.

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Photos

Here are a few photos of the shop, taken by Carli Hyland (thank you!). We’d just moved some furniture in and were making a list – our opening is less than two weeks away and there is still so much work to be done.

Oh, I may as well mention that we’re after a nice rug if you have one to spare?

What a mess! These windows open right up and let in the breeze. It’s a very charming place to sit.

We are very busy! We will be removing those benches and repainting the wall over the next week, ready to hang our opening exhibition.

Definitely Famous

A few weeks back we were mentioned in an article here on the TIME magazine blog  and another here on Reuters. Both articles are discussing economic downturn and the commercial real estate market, and speak about Renew Newcastle.

Opening a teahouse on a 30-day lease is risky stuff and so we get a mention for that reason mostly… Oh, and because people are excited by what we are doing and they want to hang out and quaff some tea. It might be a huge risk but it’s also a huge adventure and we’re both learning so much through this experience.

Getting a mention on those blogs came as a huge surprise and we were a bit unprepared, so now we’re making an effort to keep this up-to-date and interesting!