don’t look back
Orpheus
The temptation is too great. He drives himself to find some evidence of her presence in the world – knowing that it is totally wrong; knowing that it can do no good. He hates himself for it. He thinks he can cauterise his wounds in some noble way. But it doesn’t work. It never works. It only sends him crashing.
What was is now gone forever, but something in him just won’t give. He wills himself to wail, to scream out the poison that darkens his core. But it doesn’t come. It never has and he fears it never will.
He cannot be purged. So he punishes himself by prodding the wound. And he looks back, glimpsing an eternity.
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no strings attached
We left Mainz this morning, the company dispersing via Frankfurt airport or the Hauptbahnhof. It has been an excellent, if very tiring week. Our hosts at the Festival, namely Nike and Tom, have been incredibly warm and generous to us. They loved the show and were only sorry that not more people could have seen it. We managed to elicit some press feedback, which I haven’t seen but which were described by Nike as “not reviews, but hymns…”.
German audiences are characteristically generous. I have sat in dance audiences with my hands almost bleeding from the interminable applause. At the end of our first performance I suddenly realised that our modest 2 bows were not going to satisfy the hunger of an oversold auditorium. We hadn’t anticipated or rehearsed the extra bows so rather sheepishly waited for their applause to die down. Had we tripled the bows on subsequent nights I don’t think it would have been enough. British artists do very well here. Forced Entertainment were performing their Void Story simultaneously to ours in a venue 50 yards away, Bootworks (from Chichester) were performing their Little Box of Horrors/Une Boite Andalouse phenomenon in tandem with ours. Host Tom had translated and directed a production of Tim Crouch’s England barely a fortnight ago and cartoon artist David Shrigley has an exhibition of his work downriver in the remarkable building of the Kunsthalle Mainz. With previous Stan visits to Hanover, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Bochum, Hamburg, Rostock, Mannheim and Frankfurt (not to mention German-speaking Freiburg and Vienna) I should feel ashamed at not having a better grasp on the language. Such is the welcome here that it is never a problem – only an opportunity for people to brush up on their spoken English.
The show is done here, the strings detached once more. It’s lamentable and somehow inevitable that friendships appear, shine and then slip out of sight. We say goodbye, and fly.
I arrive home, dump bags and race into the children’s hospital where asthma boy is once more entertaining the staff, whilst unsettling his parents. I re-prioritise.
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Tags: mainz, mainzer kammerspiele, Stan's Cafe
figurentheater und mehr
The Cleansing of Constance Brown is performing it’s Deutschlandpremiere here at the Mainzer Kammerspiele as part of the ‘No Strings Attached’ puppet theatre Festival. This may seem strange, given there are no puppets (lest you count the team’s deft manipulation of the Orange Billowing Mass – the animate bag of air which swallows stage and occupants, Blob-like, half-way through the show) but Germany has a much more progressive reading of ‘puppet-theatre’, as we found out 3 years ago when the Rice Show was booked for the acclaimed FIDENA programme in Bochum. Over here ‘figurentheater’ covers a multitude of progressive interpretations including ‘Object Theater’ and Mask work. In the context of FIDENA, the Rice made new sense – the 80 million grains (population of Germany) becoming a huge cast, animating the purpose of each statistic.
Today was get-in day for Constance Brown, and an opportunity to rehearse in our newest recruit, Fiona, who is the latest (and third) Bernadette. On the strength of her short-time studying the dvd, reading Bernadette’s notes and chatting to James, she seemed totally tuned in and conversant with the material, putting some of us to shame as we stumbled round the set, trying to re-patch our memories of the last version.
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Tags: figurentheater, mainz, The Cleansing of Constance Brown, theatre
mto at the ikon
Ten gifts for Jonathan Watkins, in celebration of his ten years’ tenure as director of the Ikon Gallery. The Toy Orchestra provide gift number 9, a rendition of A Grand Occasion. At barely 3 mins it is a brief offering, but generates excited response.
Because of the short notice of the gig, I bring along small things 1 & 2. Though still sporting their school uniforms, flecked with remnants of their tea, they move seamlessly through a crowd of chic-ly dressed Bohemes. This is their first chance to see the band performing live.
Archie documents, on my phone-cam, employing his signature finger-over-flash flare! technique… to interesting effect. The mto masterplan is to present a run of high profile gigs in the spring, in support of the launch of the 2nd album, known as Earth One for this year’s Hong Kong demo release . I just hope that my other project plans will not force a compromise come the spring, because the public are hungry for more toy orchestra and the band deserve a big audience.
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Tags: Birmingham, brian duffy, ikon gallery, jonathan watkins, modified toy orchestra
Forever Indebted
I find myself having conversations about how lucky I am / one is to have work happening in these tricksy times. Maintaining a flexibility to work and working patterns is probably the key; theatre-making teaches you to have to respond to eventualities, survive on your wits, make do on the leanest means. Arts organisations can make the most of redundant industrial or commercial space once the speculators accept there’s no point holding onto dead space with no profit attached.
I’ve just spent a thoroughly enjoyable past week at the Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolverhampton,working with Talking Birds and Foursight Theatre Co.s as they R & D their forthcoming collaborative venture, Forever In Your Debt. The basic premise is this – woeful stories of Debt and Despair are woven together in a song-driven cabaret format: Cautionary Tales which pull on our heartstrings, prig our consciences, prod the old pathos bone.
We’d spent most of the first day character-devising, when Kate Hale deigned to ask,
“You do know we want you to play a woman, don’t you?”
…and so was born (Venus-like from the shell) Pippa – forced by dire financial circumstances to shed her store-card-debt-ridden former life as Philip to embrace a new future as part of the Whitmore £4.07 Ladies Cabaret Band.
There’s something suspicious about Pippa. … a cuckoo in the nest, perhaps?
In the absence of much musical ability, let alone the right physiology, Pippa takes up a position at the back with the Tea-chest bass and quietly strikes up (…pic).
Useful to know that even where there’s a willy there’s a way, and tea-chest bass can now be added to my CV skills list. Off with Stan and Constance Brown to Germany tomorrow. Following that, the show hits the South of France.
I pinch myself again….
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Tags: debt, forever in your debt, foursight theatre, newhampton arts centre, talking birds
Emergency!
Tomorrow is my dad’s birthday.
What do you get for a man on the ninth of the ninth of the ninth?
A ride in a fire engine?
A scale model of a Ford Anglia squad car, with flashing lights and fully pose-able parts?
If he were 99, I might consider it.
But he’s 72. I get him a shirt.
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B13 fOLk
A Big B13 shout for The Moseley Folk Festival, which triumphantly played out this weekend in the private park. Can there have ever been such a gathering of fanciful coloured wellies within these City limits? In this demi-Eden, women freely breastfed their babes, ate felafel, quoffed organic ale. Blokes chewed over social injustices, compared temporary tattoos, reminisced about the last time Fairport played the Town Hall. The occasional whiff of weed or glimpse of silver-haired dancer; the inevitable spot of rain.
The Moseley eco-credentials made me suddenly self-conscious of carrying our picnic around in a disposable plastic Somerfield’s bag. Everyone else seemed to have dressed appropriately – with long-life bag, fair-trade picnic blanket and brolly in tow. The MFF is now into it’s 4th year and growing impressively for what is a tiny festival. This year’s line-up including Beth Orton, St.Etienne, Cara Dillon, Ade Edmondson & the Bad Shepherds. the excellent Mama Matrix, Carthy and Swarb (a decade after his obituary was famously published in the Telegraph). The boys happily fitted into the vibe, disdaining their more feral peers and seeming to share my enthusiasm for the reformed cult legends Comus, introduced to me by Jonathan Holloway earlier this year (“drip, drip…from your sagging lip…” : My Arms, Your Heurse, 1970). It was exciting and strange to see Jethro Tull , performing but gobbing distance from The Prince of Wales, the pub that we, as 6th formers, would call our own; which hosted our music-obsessed gatherings and which oft inspired our music-making. We first saw the Tull (yeeeaaaahhh!) at the NEC in about 1982. They were getting on a bit then…or so we thought. In fact, they were a lot younger than we now. With those thoughts permeating darkly, I slipped out from the gig quietly and went home for my cocoa.
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Tags: Comus, Jethro Tull, Moseley, Moseley Folk Festival, Prince of Wales
festival highs
It’s impossible to do any justice to the enormity of this festival – which keeps moving relentlessly forward, whilst shifting in character. This week The British Council Showcase is in town, upping the stakes. I joined the schmooze this morning, catching up with old friends and making a heap of new ones.
I’ve been wanting to log the work that I’ve seen, but keep tripping myself up in the attempt to make sense of it.
I’ve seen shows that moved me (Beachy Head); shows that left me reeling with their scale and audacity (Kursk, The Overcoat) or reeling with their over-ambition (Anomie). Shows that dazzled me with their skill (Circa); shows that made me feel a bit sick (The Dark Party); that made me laugh (Monsieur Montpellier, The Tiger Lillies) and that troubled me with their brilliance (Orphans). Shows that made me feel like an old friend (360 degrees) and shows that left me feeling like a unwelcome alien (Showstopper!); shows that will launch glittering theatre careers (The Odyssey) and shows that I see as mere launch-pads to TV or radio (The Boom Jennies). Shows that successfully borrow their format from TV (Stand by your Van)
Storytellers (Rachel Rose Reid, Laura Solon) and chanteuses (Camille O’Sullivan) – on the elevator to higher things.
But my favourites so far are those shows which have transcended the intellectual toward something utterly sublime. Shows which have me repeatedly pressing the imaginary ‘YES’ button on the edge of my seat; shows which possess that elusive quality to truly transport in the moment.
Accidental Nostalgia – Cynthia Hopkins (Traverse theatre)
Intriguing, mysterious, sexy, captivating. A faux-casual slickness that belies an immaculately technical construction. She is brilliant.
My Name is Sue – Dafydd James / Ben Lewis (Pleasance 2)
Pitched perfectly, past the pitch of some terrible grief that Sue still carries with her, this warmed me thoroughly with it’s charmingly sardonic Welsh-Methodist heart. A rousing, crowd-pleasing singalong finale “We’re all going to die!” to the tune of “I will survive” – Ok, a lot better than I’m making it sound.
PowerPlant – Mark Anderson, Anne Bean, Jony Easterby, Kirtsen Reynolds et al.
An inspirational walk through a dreamscape of the botanic gardens, with light and sound installations animating the night-time foliage. The meeting of electro-acoustics, led’s and pyros with the natural forms in the glasshouses and gardens was at times breathtaking. It left me unexpectedly and blissfully happy. I felt proud to be able to number them amongst friends. Check this out…
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Tags: Edinburgh, Fringe Festival, mark anderson, powerplant
press more
It has been 3 days since my last posting. The early release and reception of Al-Megrahi has had the press in a spin. Meanwhile the cauldron of the Festival is also bubbling furiously. Friendly faces are rolling up here in a steady stream and chance encounters with old acquaintances are inevitable.
Since committing the ‘90% audience attendance’ figure to ether-print though, our numbers have dropped off. Have the good public had enough of being made to feel virtueless? Fortunately the press don’t seem to have given up and a steady stream of reviews continues into the final furlong…
Filed under: Red Shift | 1 Comment
Tags: Red Shift, reviews, the fall of man
we happy phew
Week two of the Fringe passes and my mood seems to shift from one 4 hour period to the next. The experience is so intense at times that you feel you might only be able to really appreciate it once it’s all done and dusted. I’ve racked up 22 shows as audience member, I think, and performed in a mere 14. The initial burst of excitable, gleeful, speculative reviews gives way to a counter-response – sometimes bilious (“self-indulgent, poorly acted nonsense”), sometimes a little over-exuberant (“MUST SEE!” / “the writer should get a Nobel prize for Literature…”) Rants now permissible through the welter of online public forums.
It’s a painful, yet hardening experience. The fact remains our audiences have been about 90% full on average. Granted, we’re in a small venue, but that’s pretty impressive tally for any Edinburgh Fringe show. I was trying to be philosophical about the divisive feedback, needing to remind myself that we never set out to make a comfortable, tidy show. It had always been our intention to challenge audiences and ourselves with the material and the staging of it.
Of everything, the review that I’d been most concerned about was published today. I had become very anxious about its impending publication on behalf of myself, Jonathan and Red Shift. From a much respected and honest voice.
Here it is, Lyn Gardner’s Guardian review of Red Shift’s The Fall of Man.
Phew
We happy phew…
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