NB plot spoilers
In a little street in the West End, a curious shop has spring up. Clod and Pebble - House Furnishers and Engravings. There is little to see from the outside, just a sign, and a gold telescope in the window (previously it was a stuffed, black, Raven). Looking through the door from the street, you can just make out some furniture and the dull yellow glow of a lamp in the distance.
A bell rings as you open the door. Furniture is piled up all around; but a narrow path has been left to guide you inside. What you can see of the walls are covered in old documents, flyers, and photographs. Somewhere ahead of you, a music box is playing a Christmas tune. There is a smell in the air, essential oils, lavender maybe somewhere in the mix.
Beyond a pile of chairs, shielded from view by an old piano, is a parlour room, but you feel like you are intruding. So you wait by the door, until you remember that this is Punchdrunk, and fortune favours the intrepid.
The parlour is cluttered with all manner of objects, but there is still no sign of life. Then you notice an alcove at the back, and there you find a pale, unshaven man, reading a book. He says his name is Robert. He asks after your health, and says he has no watch, and relies on a goldfish to tell him the day. The goldfish swims in a large specimen jar with a tag marked Monday. Other jars, with tags for the rest of the week, surround this jar. He tells you of the fish’s magical properties, of its abilities to leap out of the jar, and to appear in the correct jar for the day of the week.
He takes you by the hand through a dark corridor, past a solitary candle. His mood changes as he stops underneath a swinging lamp. He asks for news of William, hopes that you can help him.
He leads you into a small, cold room, with a low ceiling. There are two wooden chairs placed opposite each other, separated by a table. On the table is a wooden mirror frame, but no mirror. You sit opposite him, you look at him and he looks at you through the empty frame.
He tells you of his brother William, how close they were, as close as close can be, and how one day a figure came through the snow and took him away. You mirror his hand movements, he clutches you hand to his heart. Ominous drones grow louder, so does his voice, echoing against the ceiling. He falls into a kind of reverie.
He leads you to realise that he is the spirit of Robert Blake, and you further realise that it was Robert who was taken from William, not the other way round, and so what you are witnessing is the agony of separation from the other side, from the afterlife.
Then it goes quiet, except for the tinkling of bells. Something has visited. He brings you back upstairs, to the table where the goldfish was. The jars have gone, and instead there is an old box, with a note. You read the note – it is from William, offering comfort for eternity. Inside the box is a glove, which matches the solitary glove Robert is wearing.
He is happy and grateful, and it time for you to leave.
Notes
This Punchdrunk performance is for registered Friends of Punchdrunk only, and by appointment. Once you have made the appointment, you are sent a riddle with the location of the shop.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica: Death of Robert Blake
One of the most traumatic events of Blake’s life was the death of his beloved 24-year-old brother, Robert, from tuberculosis in 1787. At the end, Blake stayed up with him for a fortnight, and when Robert died Blake saw his “released spirit ascend heavenward through the matter-of-fact ceiling, ‘clapping its hands for joy,’” as Alexander Gilchrist wrote. The occasion entered into Blake’s psyche and his poetry. In the epic poem Vala or The Four Zoas (manuscript 1796?–1807?), he writes, “Urizen rose up from his couch / On wings of tenfold joy, clapping his hands,” and, in his poem Milton, plates 29 and 33 portray figures, labeled “William” and “Robert,” falling backward as a star plunges toward their feet. Blake claimed that in a vision Robert taught him the secret of painting his designs and poems on copper in a liquid impervious to acid before the plate was etched and printed. This method, which Blake called “Illuminated Printing,” made it possible for Blake to be his own compositor, printer, binder, advertiser, and salesman for all his published poetry thereafter.
The Clod and The Pebble by William Blake
"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."
Monday, December 15, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Hay Ho
So the Latte Days Loafers decamped (or camped on mass) to Hay-On-Wye ...here are some memories...
The festival site; we learnt many statistics over the weekend, most impressive of which was that 74.6% of the white middle class literate population between the ages of 50 and 65 were at Hay last weekend 
Gill takes the "literary Glastonbury" idea too far by getting stuck in the mud; the girls got more excited than was strictly necessary by the hunky farmhands who came to the rescue. I could tell you more, but what goes on tour stays on tour. Needless to say, they left with a better understanding of the meaning of the references to Greek vases in "Lady Chatterley's Lover"
Mariella does a piece to camera
three litle orphan children playing the violin
I had a lovely cheese scone and pot of tea in this gallery / sculpture garden / tea shop
Hay is where old books and old heroes go to die. Or maybe it is more like a kind of limbo, where they go to reflect on theirs sins and await rebirth.
Captain Jack declared that he wanted to feel what it was like to be a woman. He could have done worse than start by checking out one of Hay's two splendid Dolls House shops
I'll have whatever he is having
Highlight of the weekend without question was the performance of Peter and the Wolf by the Llandiddyllanllandiddyllangugnoch State Chamber Orchestra narrated by "superstar" Gethin Jones
The festival site; we learnt many statistics over the weekend, most impressive of which was that 74.6% of the white middle class literate population between the ages of 50 and 65 were at Hay last weekend
Gill takes the "literary Glastonbury" idea too far by getting stuck in the mud; the girls got more excited than was strictly necessary by the hunky farmhands who came to the rescue. I could tell you more, but what goes on tour stays on tour. Needless to say, they left with a better understanding of the meaning of the references to Greek vases in "Lady Chatterley's Lover"
Mariella does a piece to camera
three litle orphan children playing the violin
I had a lovely cheese scone and pot of tea in this gallery / sculpture garden / tea shop
Hay is where old books and old heroes go to die. Or maybe it is more like a kind of limbo, where they go to reflect on theirs sins and await rebirth.
Captain Jack declared that he wanted to feel what it was like to be a woman. He could have done worse than start by checking out one of Hay's two splendid Dolls House shops
I'll have whatever he is having
Highlight of the weekend without question was the performance of Peter and the Wolf by the Llandiddyllanllandiddyllangugnoch State Chamber Orchestra narrated by "superstar" Gethin Jones
Monday, May 26, 2008
St Vitus' Dance
My goodness the Last Tuesday Society know how to put on a party. I had such fun at the St Vitus' Dance...
Coffins, naked girls, champagne. What more do you want in life?
Handsome fella; someone said I looked like an Arabian Prince...
lots of lovely ladies in lbds
Dave came too 
the wonderful Broken Hearts, breaking hearts and inducing wild dad dancing
the lovely April Angell of kissmypanties.com let me look in her box, and I was in for a big surprise
backstabbers
Chorea sancti viti (Latin for "St. Vitus' dance") is an abnormal involuntary movement disorder, one of a group of neurological disorders called dyskinesias. The term chorea is derived from a Greek word χορεία (a kind of dance, see chorea), as the quick movements of the feet or hands are vaguely comparable to dancing or piano playing.
girls and coffins and monsters
I think they were French
Bjork at Hammersmith Apollo
here at long last are the the pics I took at Bjork's Hammersmith Apollo gigs...
Sunday, May 04, 2008
You are The Tower
Ambition, fighting, war, courage. Destruction, danger, fall, ruin.
The Tower represents war, destruction, but also spiritual renewal. Plans are disrupted. Your views and ideas will change as a result.
The Tower is a card about war, a war between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. The Tower stands for "false concepts and institutions that we take for real." You have been shaken up; blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What's most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
April
is the cruellest month…well I say then – bring it on. What a few weeks I’ve had, and I’m running out of superlatives.
From Russia at the Royal Academy was every bit as breathtaking as the reviews said it was, and a welcome reminder of how uplifting and invigorating beautiful works of art can be. I include in that the fantastic abstracts and cubist-futurists works at the end of the exhibition as much as the Monets, Bonards and Picassos. Just so many wonderful paintings.
Peter Doig at Tate Britain was also stunning – his work kind of lulls you into this odd state of mind - meditative yet also sinister, and in its own way quite beautiful.
Then back to Battersea for my fifth and final visit to the Masque of the Red Death, which climaxed with an intensely unpleasant yet pleasantly intense one on one with Vinicius Salles during which he threw me against a wall several times before strangling me, all the while telling me how he had once hanged a man. I still couldn’t find the séance, but did see the famous puppet of the black cat and had Bon Bon force me to pluck out one of its olive eyes and eat it. Marvellous yet, like the last joint of the bag, the buzz somehow didn’t last long enough.
Modern opera at the Barbican? Hmmm. Yet Ainadamar: An Opera in Three Images by Osvaldo Golijov, based on the last days of Lorca and the memories of his muse, the actress Margarita Xigu, had me gripped from the very first note through to the last. This was a concert performance rather than a full staging, but still, having the projected libretto and the singers to focus on really helped and the music was, well yes, beautiful, full of flamenco and Spanish and latin rhythms, touches and flourishes. An opera with a sampler and a fantastic percussionist – what’s not to like?
Golijov is apparently one of Bjork’s favourite contemporary composers so it was fitting that the opera should come the day before the big one. I’ve been virtually following Bjork’s lolloping world tour for over a year via the excellent blog on her website written by keyboard and harpsichord player Jonas Sen, but at long last the crew rolled into the Hammersmith Apollo and my goodness me I was excited. I must have been waiting 10 years to see her ladyship live, having very stupidly not got my act together for the Royal Opera House show which I believe was her last visit. But this gig was something else – all was full of power – the big beat numbers really rocked, but the set up of the band meant they could switch from crazed techno-pagan fury to delicate madrigal like folk song in the flash of eye. We had Toumani Diabaté and Antony (minus his Johnsons) guesting. It was just…AWESOME. I arrived home covered in glitter and found myself raising my own little flag to Bjork. Higher and Higher.
Here are some piccies I stole off the web.
From Russia at the Royal Academy was every bit as breathtaking as the reviews said it was, and a welcome reminder of how uplifting and invigorating beautiful works of art can be. I include in that the fantastic abstracts and cubist-futurists works at the end of the exhibition as much as the Monets, Bonards and Picassos. Just so many wonderful paintings.
Peter Doig at Tate Britain was also stunning – his work kind of lulls you into this odd state of mind - meditative yet also sinister, and in its own way quite beautiful.
Then back to Battersea for my fifth and final visit to the Masque of the Red Death, which climaxed with an intensely unpleasant yet pleasantly intense one on one with Vinicius Salles during which he threw me against a wall several times before strangling me, all the while telling me how he had once hanged a man. I still couldn’t find the séance, but did see the famous puppet of the black cat and had Bon Bon force me to pluck out one of its olive eyes and eat it. Marvellous yet, like the last joint of the bag, the buzz somehow didn’t last long enough.
Modern opera at the Barbican? Hmmm. Yet Ainadamar: An Opera in Three Images by Osvaldo Golijov, based on the last days of Lorca and the memories of his muse, the actress Margarita Xigu, had me gripped from the very first note through to the last. This was a concert performance rather than a full staging, but still, having the projected libretto and the singers to focus on really helped and the music was, well yes, beautiful, full of flamenco and Spanish and latin rhythms, touches and flourishes. An opera with a sampler and a fantastic percussionist – what’s not to like?
Golijov is apparently one of Bjork’s favourite contemporary composers so it was fitting that the opera should come the day before the big one. I’ve been virtually following Bjork’s lolloping world tour for over a year via the excellent blog on her website written by keyboard and harpsichord player Jonas Sen, but at long last the crew rolled into the Hammersmith Apollo and my goodness me I was excited. I must have been waiting 10 years to see her ladyship live, having very stupidly not got my act together for the Royal Opera House show which I believe was her last visit. But this gig was something else – all was full of power – the big beat numbers really rocked, but the set up of the band meant they could switch from crazed techno-pagan fury to delicate madrigal like folk song in the flash of eye. We had Toumani Diabaté and Antony (minus his Johnsons) guesting. It was just…AWESOME. I arrived home covered in glitter and found myself raising my own little flag to Bjork. Higher and Higher.
Here are some piccies I stole off the web.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Mitsuko Uchida - RFH - 2 April 08
I think I’ve just about had it with piano recitals at the Royal Festival Hall – just about all the things I hate about the experience came into sharp focus during this one – the constant, unashamed coughing, the terrible sight lines forcing me to have to keep constantly craning my neck in the hope of getting a brief mono-eyed glimpse of the performer, the “soft” sound, and all for £38 and supposedly one of the premium seats.
The behaviour of some of the audience was astonishing. I watched someone – from the rear I couldn’t tell if they were female, she-male or trans-something-or other – kind of Germaine Greer looking anyway - constantly opening and closing a sketchbook and drawing in it until the bloke next to here finally exploded and grabbed her arm. Next to me a greying couple who’d brought packed lunches played ring-a-ring-a-roses on each others palms. As well as the incessant coughing, enough said the Times reviewer to have justified Uchida walking off, there was the regular patter of programmes falling off laps whilst their owners snoozed.
I tried my best to enjoy the concert but in such circumstances it is hard for me. It comprised a Schubert sonata, some modern pieces by Kurtag interspersed with Bach, and for the second half Schumann Etudes. There were some sublime moments, especially in the encores, the best being Mozart so I gathered from the Pinter Hat wearing buck toothed chap sat in front of me.
But really what’s the point? And I later found it is broadcast next week on Radio 3 anyway, so I think I’ll listen again in the comfort of my own home, sketchbook ever ready.
The behaviour of some of the audience was astonishing. I watched someone – from the rear I couldn’t tell if they were female, she-male or trans-something-or other – kind of Germaine Greer looking anyway - constantly opening and closing a sketchbook and drawing in it until the bloke next to here finally exploded and grabbed her arm. Next to me a greying couple who’d brought packed lunches played ring-a-ring-a-roses on each others palms. As well as the incessant coughing, enough said the Times reviewer to have justified Uchida walking off, there was the regular patter of programmes falling off laps whilst their owners snoozed.
I tried my best to enjoy the concert but in such circumstances it is hard for me. It comprised a Schubert sonata, some modern pieces by Kurtag interspersed with Bach, and for the second half Schumann Etudes. There were some sublime moments, especially in the encores, the best being Mozart so I gathered from the Pinter Hat wearing buck toothed chap sat in front of me.
But really what’s the point? And I later found it is broadcast next week on Radio 3 anyway, so I think I’ll listen again in the comfort of my own home, sketchbook ever ready.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
a classical week
a quieter week, by recent standards, but still time for 3 classical concerts:
at the RFH – Leif Ove Andsnes performing Beethoven , Sibellius, Grieg and Debussy;
at the Wigmore Hall – The Zehetmair Quartet performing Schubert, Holliger and Schumann;
at the Barbican – Piotr Anderszewski and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart Haydn and Beethoven.
What can I tell you?
At the Wigmore Hall I was sat in seat C13, just 4 along from the seat made famous in Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’ – as far as I could tell, none of the Zehetmair string quartet looked longingly in my direction.
The Holliger piece was a newly written piece. It was atrocious, buttock baringly bad. Sounded like a dreadful soundtrack to a gormless horror movie, full of atonal tuneless clichés. The rest of the evening was sublime.
The Barbican audience were the friendliest. And the baldest. I’d estimate that 4 in 5 of the blokes had some form of male pattern balding. These are my people.
Best encore was at the Barbican too, performed solo by Piotr Anderszewski, Bach if I’m not mistaken.
I drank too much coffee. This is because I am anxious about falling asleep. It doesn’t stop me nodding off though, but it does make me anxious about being anxious and my mind go whirling. Well the music makes it do this too, but I think the coffee enhances the effect. I should do what the regulars do, have a couple of glasses of red wine and just let it all hang out.
I should tell you what the pieces were but I can’t be bothered. You are not reading this anyway.
Also at the Barbican I checked out their latest exhibition, the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art . The central conceit (I think that’s the right word) is that we are on Mars, looking at a museum the little greenies have put together from their foraging on Earth. But they get things wrong, and make weird connections. So far so – crap, but bearable. The problem is that the whole thing is put together in this weird alien accent – ho ho such funny mistakes the Martians make – but it is a bad accent, totally unconvincing, and one which keeps slipping when the curators feels the need to tell you something about the artist or work. So early impressions were as depressing as the not very funny art and humour shambles at the Heywood. But at least here some of the art is interesting – I liked the totem poles, weird masks, and generally a preponderance of peculiar wooden boxes with strange things in them – fake cabinets of curiosities. And for all the curators’ knowing irony, I wonder if they haven’t unwittingly stumbled upon another truth, that much contemporary art is in fact pants and completely unfathomable, that it might as well come from another planet.
at the RFH – Leif Ove Andsnes performing Beethoven , Sibellius, Grieg and Debussy;
at the Wigmore Hall – The Zehetmair Quartet performing Schubert, Holliger and Schumann;
at the Barbican – Piotr Anderszewski and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart Haydn and Beethoven.
What can I tell you?
At the Wigmore Hall I was sat in seat C13, just 4 along from the seat made famous in Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’ – as far as I could tell, none of the Zehetmair string quartet looked longingly in my direction.
The Holliger piece was a newly written piece. It was atrocious, buttock baringly bad. Sounded like a dreadful soundtrack to a gormless horror movie, full of atonal tuneless clichés. The rest of the evening was sublime.
The Barbican audience were the friendliest. And the baldest. I’d estimate that 4 in 5 of the blokes had some form of male pattern balding. These are my people.
Best encore was at the Barbican too, performed solo by Piotr Anderszewski, Bach if I’m not mistaken.
I drank too much coffee. This is because I am anxious about falling asleep. It doesn’t stop me nodding off though, but it does make me anxious about being anxious and my mind go whirling. Well the music makes it do this too, but I think the coffee enhances the effect. I should do what the regulars do, have a couple of glasses of red wine and just let it all hang out.
I should tell you what the pieces were but I can’t be bothered. You are not reading this anyway.
Also at the Barbican I checked out their latest exhibition, the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art . The central conceit (I think that’s the right word) is that we are on Mars, looking at a museum the little greenies have put together from their foraging on Earth. But they get things wrong, and make weird connections. So far so – crap, but bearable. The problem is that the whole thing is put together in this weird alien accent – ho ho such funny mistakes the Martians make – but it is a bad accent, totally unconvincing, and one which keeps slipping when the curators feels the need to tell you something about the artist or work. So early impressions were as depressing as the not very funny art and humour shambles at the Heywood. But at least here some of the art is interesting – I liked the totem poles, weird masks, and generally a preponderance of peculiar wooden boxes with strange things in them – fake cabinets of curiosities. And for all the curators’ knowing irony, I wonder if they haven’t unwittingly stumbled upon another truth, that much contemporary art is in fact pants and completely unfathomable, that it might as well come from another planet.
Friday, March 07, 2008
A Literary Week
yes another busy week...
The highlight of Jewish Book Week for me was Simon McBurney, the main force behind Theatre de Complicite, and what a force. He came across like a hyper-caffeinated cross between Patrick Marber and Boris Johnson, and all the better for that. Ostensibly he was taking part in a discussion about diaspora and Bruno Schultz, but really it was his passion and drive and wonderment for the world of the imagination and of words that shone through, in great contrast to the rest of the rather drab offerings at JBW. Adam Thirlwell, in the same event, came across as a bit plain and somewhat newsnight review-ish. Earllier in the day, Amy Bloom lectured us in how not to write, but seemed to have not heard the the one about not writing historical fiction in the present tense when it came to her own latest offering. And we got a delightful glimpse of Bernard Malamud in an event by his biographer Philip Davis with readings by Janet Suzman, but in an event which drew ties between his writing and his life the absence of anything from the Fidelman stories was a bit of a surprise.
Let us go then, you and I, to the British Library where, as part of a series of events linked to its Breaking the Rules exhibition of European avant-garde book artistry, this month’s Josephine Hart’s Poetry Hour was dedicated to T.S. Eliot. The great and the good were all there. As well as me, I had that Harold Pinter and his lady wife in front of me (I didn’t think it appropriate to ask where he used to get his Pinter Hats from), the Michaels Portillo and Howard were in the cheap seats, and Maurice Saatchi (who it turns out is married to the said Ms Hart) nearly accidentally invited me into the room next door for drinks with the elite. Harriet Walter and Damian Lewis were our readers and a very wonderful job they made too of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Portrait of a Lady and the Wasteland, though sadly nothing from the Four Quartets nor from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. There is something about Eliot, those weird and wonderful phrases which once read are somehow never forgotten, for ever liable to lurch into your conscious mind at unexpected moments. Who is the third who walks always beside you?
I was back at the BL later in the week for a performance by Cindy Oswin entitled “A Salon With Gertrude [Stein] and Alice [B. Toklas]” and really rather marvellous it was too. Ms Oswin began with extracts from “The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas” before reporting how Toklas emerged from under the shadow of her lover/patron with the Alice B Toklas cookbook, whereupon an intermission was declared and waiters emerged bearing trays of nibbles from the said cookbook. They were delicious – stuffed aubergine topped with olives and anchovies, cucumber boats bearing cheesy peas, and little round mushroom sandwiches, and some good wine. All for £7.50 and all these extras completely unadvertised. In the second half Ms Toklas was joined on stage by Gertrude Stein in puppet form (jokes about whose hands were going up where were avoided) and we enjoyed tales of the famous Paris Salon, of Picasso and Hemingway, Matisse and Scott Fitzgerald. It made for a wonderful night.
Whilst at the BL I gave the Breaking the Rules exhibition (Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937 to give it its full title) a second go but still found it frustrating, all those books behind glass unable to yield up their secrets. But something else I noticed, a different narrative, emerged from the way that the exhibition was structured around various cities –– Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Vilnius – and so it went on - all names associated with great pre-war Jewish communities - and all leading inevitably to the final “scene” in the exhibition - footage of the Nazis burning ‘degenerate’ books. It seems a shame that nobody picked up on the opportunity to explore the Jewish contribution to the European avant-garde movements when it was lurking so clearly under the surface.
The highlight of Jewish Book Week for me was Simon McBurney, the main force behind Theatre de Complicite, and what a force. He came across like a hyper-caffeinated cross between Patrick Marber and Boris Johnson, and all the better for that. Ostensibly he was taking part in a discussion about diaspora and Bruno Schultz, but really it was his passion and drive and wonderment for the world of the imagination and of words that shone through, in great contrast to the rest of the rather drab offerings at JBW. Adam Thirlwell, in the same event, came across as a bit plain and somewhat newsnight review-ish. Earllier in the day, Amy Bloom lectured us in how not to write, but seemed to have not heard the the one about not writing historical fiction in the present tense when it came to her own latest offering. And we got a delightful glimpse of Bernard Malamud in an event by his biographer Philip Davis with readings by Janet Suzman, but in an event which drew ties between his writing and his life the absence of anything from the Fidelman stories was a bit of a surprise.
Let us go then, you and I, to the British Library where, as part of a series of events linked to its Breaking the Rules exhibition of European avant-garde book artistry, this month’s Josephine Hart’s Poetry Hour was dedicated to T.S. Eliot. The great and the good were all there. As well as me, I had that Harold Pinter and his lady wife in front of me (I didn’t think it appropriate to ask where he used to get his Pinter Hats from), the Michaels Portillo and Howard were in the cheap seats, and Maurice Saatchi (who it turns out is married to the said Ms Hart) nearly accidentally invited me into the room next door for drinks with the elite. Harriet Walter and Damian Lewis were our readers and a very wonderful job they made too of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Portrait of a Lady and the Wasteland, though sadly nothing from the Four Quartets nor from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. There is something about Eliot, those weird and wonderful phrases which once read are somehow never forgotten, for ever liable to lurch into your conscious mind at unexpected moments. Who is the third who walks always beside you?
I was back at the BL later in the week for a performance by Cindy Oswin entitled “A Salon With Gertrude [Stein] and Alice [B. Toklas]” and really rather marvellous it was too. Ms Oswin began with extracts from “The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas” before reporting how Toklas emerged from under the shadow of her lover/patron with the Alice B Toklas cookbook, whereupon an intermission was declared and waiters emerged bearing trays of nibbles from the said cookbook. They were delicious – stuffed aubergine topped with olives and anchovies, cucumber boats bearing cheesy peas, and little round mushroom sandwiches, and some good wine. All for £7.50 and all these extras completely unadvertised. In the second half Ms Toklas was joined on stage by Gertrude Stein in puppet form (jokes about whose hands were going up where were avoided) and we enjoyed tales of the famous Paris Salon, of Picasso and Hemingway, Matisse and Scott Fitzgerald. It made for a wonderful night.
Whilst at the BL I gave the Breaking the Rules exhibition (Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937 to give it its full title) a second go but still found it frustrating, all those books behind glass unable to yield up their secrets. But something else I noticed, a different narrative, emerged from the way that the exhibition was structured around various cities –– Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Vilnius – and so it went on - all names associated with great pre-war Jewish communities - and all leading inevitably to the final “scene” in the exhibition - footage of the Nazis burning ‘degenerate’ books. It seems a shame that nobody picked up on the opportunity to explore the Jewish contribution to the European avant-garde movements when it was lurking so clearly under the surface.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
a Long Week
Well it’s been one hell of a week, so much to report.
Jewish Book Week opened on Sunday with barely anything to do with reading, writing or literature in the programme. I think the organisers must have got confused and thought they were programming Limmud, not JBW. Still I had an enjoyable day with sessions on mysticism, Spinoza, and secularity. The highlights as always were the questions from the audience. At the end of the Spinoza lecture, in which we had learnt of his extraordinary achievements in philosophy and his struggles with community and identity, a lady asked if Spinoza had got married and had children. When told he hadn’t, she heckled ‘well he didn’t have much of a life then’. Prof Rachel Elior explained the correlation between different mystical movements and the tragedies that befell the Jewish people – mysticism was the creation of the losers by way of imaginative response to their own tragedy; this hadn’t happened after the Shoah because of the creation of Israel. It was such a shame said an audience member desperately trying to find a question to justify the sound of his own voice that she had POLITICISED the lecture. Err sorry she said she was just stating facts based on her academic research. Anyway we all noticed it was him not her who was trying to politicise things - he faced death by a thousand tuts. Touchy these lefty secular anti-zionists.
Things became even weirder in the evening session with Willow Winston who makes “book art”. I really liked her work and the ideas behind it – kind of variations on pop-ups rich with mathematical and spiritual thinking. For her workshop we were encourage to cut up, mash-up, remix and just generally destroy old books. We were all uncomfortable with the notion, but dealing with our book angst was part of the experiment. I stuck to cutting up my JBW booklet. It was great fun, and a large room of people took to the task with relish and some of the work was really rather impressive.
On Friday I was back at the JBW for more tales of mystical madness from Howard Schwartz, a session which turned into a workshop on storytelling as we all struggled to finish a fragment of story attributed to Reb Nachman of Bratslav. As a writer I was of course fairly hopeless, seeing myself as neither a storyteller (I follow EM Forster on this, oh yes, oh dear, the novel tells a story) nor a performer, but by then I was so far out of my comfort zone not to worry.
It was events at the Arts Depot that brought this odd mental state into being. I would love to know what the thought process is at the Arts Depot. It must be something like – lets put on a festival of physical /visual theatre; we’ll invite some of the most exciting up and coming companies and performers in the land; we’ll get some of the leading theatre companies in London to hold workshops; and we’ll put on some talks as well to give general advice to aspiring performers; and then what we will do is hold the festival midweek, mostly during the day, so that no-one can come, and we won’t bother to actually tell anybody about the festival anyway just to make absolutely sure that the place is all but empty. And with no apparent irony we’ll call the festival “depot untapped”.
So it was that I found myself in a workshop hosted by Sarah Dowling of Punchdrunk; max 15 places, and it was half empty! I had tried to ignore the bit on the programme which said “come prepared to move” but once committed, there was no escape. So it was that I found myself on an intractable projectory leading to myself and a poor lovely lady who had the misfortune to be partnering me preparing and performing a piece of physical theatre in one of the public lifts in the Arts Depot. Thank goodness LaLa Latte Days didn’t walk in that moment. I have to say I just had the best time; the whole experience was really liberating and fun – everyone else in the group was really talented, basically they were other performers taking part in the festival, drama students, or people who go regularly to acting classes, and no-one seemed to mind the fact that I was performing with all the grace of an elephant in the room. I had nothing but admiration for Sarah; not only did she make it such a fun experience, but she had to repeat the workshop again (the second one looked half empty as well) and then get off to Battersea to perform for 3 hours.
That was Wednesday morning. Thursday I found myself in an even emptier workshop hosted by Peter Glanville of the Little Angel Theatre Company, the country’s leading, and probably only regular, venue for puppetry. This wasn’t so much fun somehow, it all seemed a bit too serious, but I learnt a lot about puppetry and was really glad I went.
I caught 3 shows at depot untapped. First was the Levantes Dance Theatre with a piece called Gin & Satsumas, which seemed to be about the terrible boredom of everyday housewife drudgery seen through a prism that verged on the camp / burlesque; there were some lovely images and moments, but overall it was quite a short piece and had the feeling of being the start of something rather than finished product.
Over the two days I grew very fond of the Lost Spectacles, who had been in the Punchdrunk workshop, and their performance, Lost in The Wind, blew me away (no pun intended). This was physical / visual theatre on a large scale, full of imagination and ambition, and was as wonderful as any of the many wonderful things I caught at LIMF last month. A man steps out of his house (always a bad move in these kinds of worlds) into a storm and gets lost, finding himself amongst a very strange ‘family’ who to me felt as though they had been orphaned at an early age in some remote land and had managed the difficult business of not growing up, free from any adult intervention. There was a great sense of play, some wonderful theatrical magic, for example conjuring up a mountain snow storm and an underwater scene from the simplest of materials. And the soundtrack was great. I think this lot could really go places.
Last up and running very late were two puppeteers from Manchester, Mishimou, with a version of The 3 Little Pigs. The puppetry was excellent and again there was just a wonderful vibrancy and sense of imagination. Unfortunately they were plagued by technical difficulties – the lighting kept going wrong, some of the shadow puppetry was out of focus, and ultimately the intercostal animation broke down altogether. My heart really went out to the performers, because, as we told them, what they had done was really good. They managed to limp on to the end of the show, but it was a real shame.
Well if all of this wasn’t enough for one week, I managed to go to a Tea Ceremony at the British Museum held by the London Branch of the Urasenke Foundation, Japan’s leading exponents of Chado, the Way of Tea. I caught a Richard Goode recital at the South Bank - Chopin, with some Bach, Debussy and Mozart. I found it all a bit soporific – I don’t know if that was a good or a bad thing, but it didn’t seem very melodic, all a bit kind of difficult to hold any focus on. I thought I was being plagued by a phantom snorer, but it turned out that the heavy guttural wheezing was actually coming from Richard Goode onstage. I went to Ceramic Art 2008, a fantastic selling exhibition at the Royal College of Art with many of the best ceramic artists from Britain and Europe showing. And I went to the most dreadful exhibition at the Hayward – Laughing in a Foreign Language – supposedly about art and humour but which was not in the slightest bit funny, nor was the art interesting in any way. The artists on show could have learnt something from Lost in the Wind about using humour in art. I just about managed to climb up the stairs at the Hayward to the Alexander Rodchenko exhibition, - what I saw of his graphic art / photography / montage work was really good, but I was too knackered to really appreciate it, and hope to go back again.
I’ve got some random photos from the week to stick up when I get a mo.
Over and out.
Jewish Book Week opened on Sunday with barely anything to do with reading, writing or literature in the programme. I think the organisers must have got confused and thought they were programming Limmud, not JBW. Still I had an enjoyable day with sessions on mysticism, Spinoza, and secularity. The highlights as always were the questions from the audience. At the end of the Spinoza lecture, in which we had learnt of his extraordinary achievements in philosophy and his struggles with community and identity, a lady asked if Spinoza had got married and had children. When told he hadn’t, she heckled ‘well he didn’t have much of a life then’. Prof Rachel Elior explained the correlation between different mystical movements and the tragedies that befell the Jewish people – mysticism was the creation of the losers by way of imaginative response to their own tragedy; this hadn’t happened after the Shoah because of the creation of Israel. It was such a shame said an audience member desperately trying to find a question to justify the sound of his own voice that she had POLITICISED the lecture. Err sorry she said she was just stating facts based on her academic research. Anyway we all noticed it was him not her who was trying to politicise things - he faced death by a thousand tuts. Touchy these lefty secular anti-zionists.
Things became even weirder in the evening session with Willow Winston who makes “book art”. I really liked her work and the ideas behind it – kind of variations on pop-ups rich with mathematical and spiritual thinking. For her workshop we were encourage to cut up, mash-up, remix and just generally destroy old books. We were all uncomfortable with the notion, but dealing with our book angst was part of the experiment. I stuck to cutting up my JBW booklet. It was great fun, and a large room of people took to the task with relish and some of the work was really rather impressive.
On Friday I was back at the JBW for more tales of mystical madness from Howard Schwartz, a session which turned into a workshop on storytelling as we all struggled to finish a fragment of story attributed to Reb Nachman of Bratslav. As a writer I was of course fairly hopeless, seeing myself as neither a storyteller (I follow EM Forster on this, oh yes, oh dear, the novel tells a story) nor a performer, but by then I was so far out of my comfort zone not to worry.
It was events at the Arts Depot that brought this odd mental state into being. I would love to know what the thought process is at the Arts Depot. It must be something like – lets put on a festival of physical /visual theatre; we’ll invite some of the most exciting up and coming companies and performers in the land; we’ll get some of the leading theatre companies in London to hold workshops; and we’ll put on some talks as well to give general advice to aspiring performers; and then what we will do is hold the festival midweek, mostly during the day, so that no-one can come, and we won’t bother to actually tell anybody about the festival anyway just to make absolutely sure that the place is all but empty. And with no apparent irony we’ll call the festival “depot untapped”.
So it was that I found myself in a workshop hosted by Sarah Dowling of Punchdrunk; max 15 places, and it was half empty! I had tried to ignore the bit on the programme which said “come prepared to move” but once committed, there was no escape. So it was that I found myself on an intractable projectory leading to myself and a poor lovely lady who had the misfortune to be partnering me preparing and performing a piece of physical theatre in one of the public lifts in the Arts Depot. Thank goodness LaLa Latte Days didn’t walk in that moment. I have to say I just had the best time; the whole experience was really liberating and fun – everyone else in the group was really talented, basically they were other performers taking part in the festival, drama students, or people who go regularly to acting classes, and no-one seemed to mind the fact that I was performing with all the grace of an elephant in the room. I had nothing but admiration for Sarah; not only did she make it such a fun experience, but she had to repeat the workshop again (the second one looked half empty as well) and then get off to Battersea to perform for 3 hours.
That was Wednesday morning. Thursday I found myself in an even emptier workshop hosted by Peter Glanville of the Little Angel Theatre Company, the country’s leading, and probably only regular, venue for puppetry. This wasn’t so much fun somehow, it all seemed a bit too serious, but I learnt a lot about puppetry and was really glad I went.
I caught 3 shows at depot untapped. First was the Levantes Dance Theatre with a piece called Gin & Satsumas, which seemed to be about the terrible boredom of everyday housewife drudgery seen through a prism that verged on the camp / burlesque; there were some lovely images and moments, but overall it was quite a short piece and had the feeling of being the start of something rather than finished product.
Over the two days I grew very fond of the Lost Spectacles, who had been in the Punchdrunk workshop, and their performance, Lost in The Wind, blew me away (no pun intended). This was physical / visual theatre on a large scale, full of imagination and ambition, and was as wonderful as any of the many wonderful things I caught at LIMF last month. A man steps out of his house (always a bad move in these kinds of worlds) into a storm and gets lost, finding himself amongst a very strange ‘family’ who to me felt as though they had been orphaned at an early age in some remote land and had managed the difficult business of not growing up, free from any adult intervention. There was a great sense of play, some wonderful theatrical magic, for example conjuring up a mountain snow storm and an underwater scene from the simplest of materials. And the soundtrack was great. I think this lot could really go places.
Last up and running very late were two puppeteers from Manchester, Mishimou, with a version of The 3 Little Pigs. The puppetry was excellent and again there was just a wonderful vibrancy and sense of imagination. Unfortunately they were plagued by technical difficulties – the lighting kept going wrong, some of the shadow puppetry was out of focus, and ultimately the intercostal animation broke down altogether. My heart really went out to the performers, because, as we told them, what they had done was really good. They managed to limp on to the end of the show, but it was a real shame.
Well if all of this wasn’t enough for one week, I managed to go to a Tea Ceremony at the British Museum held by the London Branch of the Urasenke Foundation, Japan’s leading exponents of Chado, the Way of Tea. I caught a Richard Goode recital at the South Bank - Chopin, with some Bach, Debussy and Mozart. I found it all a bit soporific – I don’t know if that was a good or a bad thing, but it didn’t seem very melodic, all a bit kind of difficult to hold any focus on. I thought I was being plagued by a phantom snorer, but it turned out that the heavy guttural wheezing was actually coming from Richard Goode onstage. I went to Ceramic Art 2008, a fantastic selling exhibition at the Royal College of Art with many of the best ceramic artists from Britain and Europe showing. And I went to the most dreadful exhibition at the Hayward – Laughing in a Foreign Language – supposedly about art and humour but which was not in the slightest bit funny, nor was the art interesting in any way. The artists on show could have learnt something from Lost in the Wind about using humour in art. I just about managed to climb up the stairs at the Hayward to the Alexander Rodchenko exhibition, - what I saw of his graphic art / photography / montage work was really good, but I was too knackered to really appreciate it, and hope to go back again.
I’ve got some random photos from the week to stick up when I get a mo.
Over and out.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Pina Bausch – Café Müller / The Rite of Spring
It was the lovely Persephone who first put me on to Pina Bausch, when we went to see Compagnie Philippe Genty as part of LIMF last year. Since then I’ve lost track of the number of people telling me that I’d love her work, that I must go and see her if I can, that she is the originator of much of the contemporary dance and physical / visual theatre that I love.
So I was pretty excited as I made my way to Sadler’s Wells last night, and judging by the vibes in the audience, I wasn’t the only one. We don’t really “get” this kind of work in this country – in both senses of the word “get” - critics and promoters and arts institutions would much rather put on the kind of work that features, say, the stars and stripes to a soundtrack of guns and screams, than something more complex, elusive, less obviously “political” and “realist”.
So this was a pretty rare visit by her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, to London, and the first chance ever in this country to see her two seminal works from the 1970s in a single bill.
Taking the second half first, The Rite of Spring was, quite simply, awesome. For somebody who doesn’t really do “classical” this managed to be the 3rd version of The Rite that I have seen in a year, and although the Michael Clark and LPO/Julia Mach versions were both great in their own ways, this was something else altogether.
The scale was breathtaking, a huge bare stage, immaculately lit, covered in earth, and a cast of nearly 40 performers, but it felt like ten times that number at times, such was the effect of the staging, the angles, the physicality, the energy.
The dancers were extraordinary, whether operating as individuals, or as masses (the tension between these two states was one of the central motifs of the piece). There was a lot of the animal about the work, powerful, unselfconscious, beasts thundering about the stage, kicking up a dustbowl of dry earth into the air, savage rituals of mating and slaughter. It was appalling, horrifying, gruesome, in the way that a David Attenborough documentary can be appalling and horrifying and gruesome, and as gripping and wonderful and alien too.
The two key protagonists had amazing presence – in selecting and capturing the victim the prime male was majestic, brutal, proud and irresistible, like a stag, all muscle and sinew and grace; the victim, once chosen, became birdlike, fragile, full of fear and torment, wounded, alone and afraid.
The first piece, Café Müller, was very different indeed, with just 6 performers, and a stage littered with chairs and tables. It was a much more elusive piece, built like a symphony with learned and then repeated motifs, physical phrases with repetitions and variations. Couples come together, fall out, fall apart, drop each other, fling each other against a wall, fight, come back together. A man desperately flings chairs and tables out of the way of a woman running just a fraction behind him.
The piece had a feeling of mortality about it, and although it was apparently based on Pina’s childhood memories of her parents cafe and the people who went there and the liaisons that took place there, it had the feeling to me of being a projection from the mind of an old woman, near death, looking back on a lifetime of romances, good and bad, often both, the remembering of incidents which at the time seemed so awkward and embarrassing and significant, but which with the wisdom of age, seem now just to be part of the ebb and flow of life.
It had a delicious melancholy about it, a sense that moments in life which seem so important at the time turn out to be minor in the grand unknowable scheme of things. Only really now, in thinking and writing about it, does the depth and impact of the piece start to work its magic on me.
So I was pretty excited as I made my way to Sadler’s Wells last night, and judging by the vibes in the audience, I wasn’t the only one. We don’t really “get” this kind of work in this country – in both senses of the word “get” - critics and promoters and arts institutions would much rather put on the kind of work that features, say, the stars and stripes to a soundtrack of guns and screams, than something more complex, elusive, less obviously “political” and “realist”.
So this was a pretty rare visit by her company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, to London, and the first chance ever in this country to see her two seminal works from the 1970s in a single bill.
Taking the second half first, The Rite of Spring was, quite simply, awesome. For somebody who doesn’t really do “classical” this managed to be the 3rd version of The Rite that I have seen in a year, and although the Michael Clark and LPO/Julia Mach versions were both great in their own ways, this was something else altogether.
The scale was breathtaking, a huge bare stage, immaculately lit, covered in earth, and a cast of nearly 40 performers, but it felt like ten times that number at times, such was the effect of the staging, the angles, the physicality, the energy.
The dancers were extraordinary, whether operating as individuals, or as masses (the tension between these two states was one of the central motifs of the piece). There was a lot of the animal about the work, powerful, unselfconscious, beasts thundering about the stage, kicking up a dustbowl of dry earth into the air, savage rituals of mating and slaughter. It was appalling, horrifying, gruesome, in the way that a David Attenborough documentary can be appalling and horrifying and gruesome, and as gripping and wonderful and alien too.
The two key protagonists had amazing presence – in selecting and capturing the victim the prime male was majestic, brutal, proud and irresistible, like a stag, all muscle and sinew and grace; the victim, once chosen, became birdlike, fragile, full of fear and torment, wounded, alone and afraid.
The first piece, Café Müller, was very different indeed, with just 6 performers, and a stage littered with chairs and tables. It was a much more elusive piece, built like a symphony with learned and then repeated motifs, physical phrases with repetitions and variations. Couples come together, fall out, fall apart, drop each other, fling each other against a wall, fight, come back together. A man desperately flings chairs and tables out of the way of a woman running just a fraction behind him.
The piece had a feeling of mortality about it, and although it was apparently based on Pina’s childhood memories of her parents cafe and the people who went there and the liaisons that took place there, it had the feeling to me of being a projection from the mind of an old woman, near death, looking back on a lifetime of romances, good and bad, often both, the remembering of incidents which at the time seemed so awkward and embarrassing and significant, but which with the wisdom of age, seem now just to be part of the ebb and flow of life.
It had a delicious melancholy about it, a sense that moments in life which seem so important at the time turn out to be minor in the grand unknowable scheme of things. Only really now, in thinking and writing about it, does the depth and impact of the piece start to work its magic on me.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Loss - A Valentine's Day Ball
Well what better way not to celebrate Valentine’s Day than at London’s most miserable night, Loss, hosted as always by the Last Tuesday Society. It was all a bit of blur really, and still is. I remember there was a great cheeseboard, a fantastic chap called the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table who sang traditional Japanese folk songs, I know I found a business card in my pocket the next day from somebody I couldn’t remember describing himself as an Aesthetician, there was somebody who thought he was Bogart and kept telling me he had to go back to work, there was a gorgeous string trio in burlesque costume and legs right up to their fiddles, there was a very nice chap called Orlando who sang a song about the North End Road with his fine and very intense looking band, a seminar on broken hearts, oh and the lovely Broken Hearts and the fantastic Alan Weekes Quartet, and some bloke in a kissing booth who just could not stop snogging the girls. I dunno that’s about all I can remember. But it doesn’t account for 6 hours does it? Here are the photos…
Persephone, masked
the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
the Broken Hearts
dolls and coffins
self portrait with peacock feather and urinals
Persephone, masked
the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
the Broken Hearts
dolls and coffins
Sunday, February 17, 2008
A Life More Ordinary
Over at the ICA, the Japan Foundation has put together a programme of 6 films under the heading “A Life More Ordinary”. The films, all from the last few years, are intended to show a more realistic side to Japanese life, free from ghosts, gore, geishas and the like. I managed to catch four of the films (in for a penny, in for a pound!)
Kamikaze Girls was a teen girl buddy movie, the girls friendship being unlikely because they hailed from two very different yoof tribes – Momoko being a “Lolita” who loves to dress ‘rococo’, all frills and bonnets, and Ichigi being a ‘Yanki’ biker chick who spits and headbuts people at the slightest provocation. The film was glitzy and high energy, perhaps not the deepest film but delightful nonetheless.
The Cat Leaves Home was just about as different as it was possible to be, minimalist, moody, sketchy, but at its heart also lay an uneasy relationship between two girls, older this time, who since their schooldays have always fallen out over boys, the prettier of the two always getting the guy. A film of subtle gradations, where not an awful lot happens, the frumpier of the two manages to get some revenge on the prettier girl, who herself has to come to terms with her own fallibility and limitations.
Kaza-hana was an odd couple road trip, the couple being a hostess who wants to return home to see her child whom she hasn’t seen for five years, having left her in the care of her own mother after the father’s death, and a disgraced and deeply unpleasant bureaucrat whose drunken shoplifting of a can of beer has made it into all the papers. When the hostess attempts suicide having been rejected by her family, you really don’t know which way the film is going to go. Had this been Hollywood you would be pretty confident that it would all come good in the end, and/or the hype surrounding the film would have given you a pretty good idea of what the outcome was. But with no prior cultural knowledge, predicting the outcome was impossible, making the finale truly gripping.
No One’s Ark was probably the most difficult film to watch of the four. A black comedy who’s humour frankly felt very alien to me (the Japanese in the audience found it hilarious though!) and yet a film which in some ways, for all the jokes about snot, had the most incisive moments. It was a film about a couple dreaming of business success selling a new health drink, but the problem is that it tastes disgusting, and they refuse to sell it in small quanities, thus alienating the few potential customers they manage to attract. They return to the bloke’s hometown, where he behaves very badly indeed to his family and his girlfriend.
Some interesting themes emerged across the various films, even though they were all very different. Most characters were either dreaming of going to Tokyo or if they had gotten there, were now dreaming of escaping it. A sense of failure, in business / career and in relationships, pervaded the films, with an undercurrent of unfulfillable pressure to live up to the way of life of previous generations. The women in particular seemed trapped in unsatisfactory relationships, unable to escape because the prospect of starting out again seemed a worse solution than sticking with what they had. The men on the other hand seemed withdrawn, slightly out of time. Universal themes but at the same all the films seemed uniquely Japanese.
Kamikaze Girls was a teen girl buddy movie, the girls friendship being unlikely because they hailed from two very different yoof tribes – Momoko being a “Lolita” who loves to dress ‘rococo’, all frills and bonnets, and Ichigi being a ‘Yanki’ biker chick who spits and headbuts people at the slightest provocation. The film was glitzy and high energy, perhaps not the deepest film but delightful nonetheless.
The Cat Leaves Home was just about as different as it was possible to be, minimalist, moody, sketchy, but at its heart also lay an uneasy relationship between two girls, older this time, who since their schooldays have always fallen out over boys, the prettier of the two always getting the guy. A film of subtle gradations, where not an awful lot happens, the frumpier of the two manages to get some revenge on the prettier girl, who herself has to come to terms with her own fallibility and limitations.
Kaza-hana was an odd couple road trip, the couple being a hostess who wants to return home to see her child whom she hasn’t seen for five years, having left her in the care of her own mother after the father’s death, and a disgraced and deeply unpleasant bureaucrat whose drunken shoplifting of a can of beer has made it into all the papers. When the hostess attempts suicide having been rejected by her family, you really don’t know which way the film is going to go. Had this been Hollywood you would be pretty confident that it would all come good in the end, and/or the hype surrounding the film would have given you a pretty good idea of what the outcome was. But with no prior cultural knowledge, predicting the outcome was impossible, making the finale truly gripping.
No One’s Ark was probably the most difficult film to watch of the four. A black comedy who’s humour frankly felt very alien to me (the Japanese in the audience found it hilarious though!) and yet a film which in some ways, for all the jokes about snot, had the most incisive moments. It was a film about a couple dreaming of business success selling a new health drink, but the problem is that it tastes disgusting, and they refuse to sell it in small quanities, thus alienating the few potential customers they manage to attract. They return to the bloke’s hometown, where he behaves very badly indeed to his family and his girlfriend.
Some interesting themes emerged across the various films, even though they were all very different. Most characters were either dreaming of going to Tokyo or if they had gotten there, were now dreaming of escaping it. A sense of failure, in business / career and in relationships, pervaded the films, with an undercurrent of unfulfillable pressure to live up to the way of life of previous generations. The women in particular seemed trapped in unsatisfactory relationships, unable to escape because the prospect of starting out again seemed a worse solution than sticking with what they had. The men on the other hand seemed withdrawn, slightly out of time. Universal themes but at the same all the films seemed uniquely Japanese.
CSSD/Punchdrunk - A Guest For Dinner; Array / Darren Johnston - Outre
What a glorious day Saturday turned out to be. Watching United thumping Arsenal 4-0 in a pub near Waterloo was the glorious meat in a sumptuous cultural sandwich. Van Morrison said there'd be days like this but frankly I’d stopped believing him.
The day began with “A Guest For Dinner” up at the Arts Depot, for what was, to all intents, a mini-Punchdrunk performance in Finchley. Regular readers of this blog (oh if only!) will know just how extraordinary and exciting that concept is to me. So exciting that I have to say it again, as if aurally pinching myself to believe it. Yes. Punchdrunk in Finchley.
To be precise, A Guest for Dinner is a collaboration between final year degree students at The Central School of Speech and Drama and Maxine Doyle (director/choreographer) and Livi Vaughan (design / details / atmosphere) of Punchdrunk. But this was no student drama production, this was the real McCoy. Continuing Punchdrunk’s obsessive investigation of Edgar Allan Poe, A Guest For Dinner takes as its starting point Poe’s story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” about the lunatics taking over the asylum. The story is also used as the basis for one of the most powerful set pieces in Masque of the Red Death.
We weren’t given masks, but otherwise the entrance into the theatre was classic Punchdrunk. We were led into a goods lift lined in red fabric, with a silent actor with moody beard rocking on a child’s wooden horse; the doors were slammed shut and we descended, emerging from the lift into a pitch black space, following a path inside a desiccated bonsai forest which had magically sprung up inside the Arts Depot. We were led into a tiny anti –chamber where a stunning ethereal ghost told us the story of the little boy who went to the moon (first encountered by me in Faust, but which I now know to come from Woyzeck) whilst dabbing a silent man’s shaved head with TCP. In the flickering light one could just make out various specimen jars with unidentifiable organic matter inside.
We were then led into the main space, where the lunatics / doctors) were assembled around the dinner table. It was a full on sensual assault – the actors passed over to us bits of papers dipped in essential oils with strange sayings – “who put the din into dinner”. The normal spectral equation was reversed – as if we the audience were the ghosts - occasionally one of the actors would just glimpse us out of the corner of the eye, and strain to see or hear us.
Just as everything was starting to feel familiar and comfortable, at least for a Punchdrunk obsessive, we were moved on again – a curtain opened to reveal what ordinarily is the auditorium, and we were ushered off the stage and into the seats, whilst the lunatics/doctors gave us a show, an interlude one might call it, perhaps recalling the vaudevillian Palais Royale inside the Masque of the Red Death. After a crazy song, some mesmerism and some quackery, the show took a further turn as the cast, now all in white, turned what had been the dining table into hospital beds, and a long and quite brilliantly choreographed scene emerged, the actors exploring the duality of the patient - doctor theme in the Poe Story. The choreography reminded me of the Woyzeck I saw earlier in the year and last year’s Icelandic Peer Gynt (set in a lunatic hospital), especially the way the beds were hurled from side to side of the stage to create an extraordinary energy and visceral visuality.
It was a tremendous production – light and sound and smells were of course magnificent, and I cannot praise the cast highly enough given their relative inexperience. As with all Punchdrunk stuff, they are really challenged hard, acting, dancing/physical theatre-ing, singing, some playing instruments, interacting with the audience and performing in tight narrow spaces. It was difficult to believe they were still learning their trade. Not everyone was equally brilliant at everything, but everyone excelled at something.
After heading down to the South Bank and watching the footie, it was into the QEH for Darren Johnston / Array and a piece of visual theatre / dance called Outre. If my Martian cousin were to come down from the skies and say to me “Robin, I’ve been reading your blog, in fact I am that regular reader you have been dreaming about, and I really like the sound of this thing you humans call culture - oh and before I forget, yes they do have Jews on Mars, anyway I really like all this stuff you go to see - can you take me to see something, maybe - cos it’s short visit, you know what with the costs of accommodation on Earth and all that – something that has a bit of all the stuff you keep going on about, please, will you, please?” then I would take him/her/it to see this.
Outre seemed to be a summation of everything wonderful I have seen in the past three years. In no particular order it was: uncanny, gothic Victorian, ghostly/hauntological, fragmentary, macabre, sinister, and extraordinarily, intensely, mentally stimulating. It had touches of the freak show/circus. It suggested automata and living puppets. It had elements of David Lynch and Angela Carter. It was sound-tracked with specially commissioned abstract electronica and contemporary classical. I connected with it on a deep unconscious level, yet it remained elusive, forever just beyond the tip of my tongue. It had touches of those classic Doctor Who episodes, The Talons of Weng Chiang and Spearhead from Space, and brought out memories of Bagpuss. It made me think (and dream) of Von Kleist’s famous essay “On The Marionette Theatre”, with its discussion of grace and the unconsciousness of inanimate objects in movement. It had intimations of Noh and Kabuki theatre and tapped into that uniquely Japanese strain of supernatural/ghost story, in particular reminding me of Kaneto Shindo’s two wonderful supernatural movies of the 1960s, “Kuroneko” and “Onibaba”.
But more, more than this, it was absolutely exquisite, with some of the most beautiful moments I have ever seen conjured in the theatre. To manage to be tough and physical yet at the same time delicate and fragile is the sign of a truly masterful piece of work.
What it was is of course hard to describe. The first section seemed to be set in the freakiest of freakshows; we saw a living automaton, conjoined twins, a headless man, and a lithe erotic dancer who was revealed to have a gruesome witch’s face. Each act was preceded by a projected introduction from a sinister distorted MC. Then there was some kind of breakdown, a rift in the ether, and we were watching a crazed and tortured Japanese ghost figure. Finally all the pieces of the nightmare seemed to coalesce before the figures collapsed in a heap in the centre of the stage, like de-animated children’s dolls.
The production took place behind a gauze screen and the air was heavy with dry ice. Minimally, but very carefully, lit, the haunting figures seemed barely there, drifting in and out of the blackness and the mist and the beams of light.
Like I say, exquisite.
The day began with “A Guest For Dinner” up at the Arts Depot, for what was, to all intents, a mini-Punchdrunk performance in Finchley. Regular readers of this blog (oh if only!) will know just how extraordinary and exciting that concept is to me. So exciting that I have to say it again, as if aurally pinching myself to believe it. Yes. Punchdrunk in Finchley.
To be precise, A Guest for Dinner is a collaboration between final year degree students at The Central School of Speech and Drama and Maxine Doyle (director/choreographer) and Livi Vaughan (design / details / atmosphere) of Punchdrunk. But this was no student drama production, this was the real McCoy. Continuing Punchdrunk’s obsessive investigation of Edgar Allan Poe, A Guest For Dinner takes as its starting point Poe’s story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” about the lunatics taking over the asylum. The story is also used as the basis for one of the most powerful set pieces in Masque of the Red Death.
We weren’t given masks, but otherwise the entrance into the theatre was classic Punchdrunk. We were led into a goods lift lined in red fabric, with a silent actor with moody beard rocking on a child’s wooden horse; the doors were slammed shut and we descended, emerging from the lift into a pitch black space, following a path inside a desiccated bonsai forest which had magically sprung up inside the Arts Depot. We were led into a tiny anti –chamber where a stunning ethereal ghost told us the story of the little boy who went to the moon (first encountered by me in Faust, but which I now know to come from Woyzeck) whilst dabbing a silent man’s shaved head with TCP. In the flickering light one could just make out various specimen jars with unidentifiable organic matter inside.
We were then led into the main space, where the lunatics / doctors) were assembled around the dinner table. It was a full on sensual assault – the actors passed over to us bits of papers dipped in essential oils with strange sayings – “who put the din into dinner”. The normal spectral equation was reversed – as if we the audience were the ghosts - occasionally one of the actors would just glimpse us out of the corner of the eye, and strain to see or hear us.
Just as everything was starting to feel familiar and comfortable, at least for a Punchdrunk obsessive, we were moved on again – a curtain opened to reveal what ordinarily is the auditorium, and we were ushered off the stage and into the seats, whilst the lunatics/doctors gave us a show, an interlude one might call it, perhaps recalling the vaudevillian Palais Royale inside the Masque of the Red Death. After a crazy song, some mesmerism and some quackery, the show took a further turn as the cast, now all in white, turned what had been the dining table into hospital beds, and a long and quite brilliantly choreographed scene emerged, the actors exploring the duality of the patient - doctor theme in the Poe Story. The choreography reminded me of the Woyzeck I saw earlier in the year and last year’s Icelandic Peer Gynt (set in a lunatic hospital), especially the way the beds were hurled from side to side of the stage to create an extraordinary energy and visceral visuality.
It was a tremendous production – light and sound and smells were of course magnificent, and I cannot praise the cast highly enough given their relative inexperience. As with all Punchdrunk stuff, they are really challenged hard, acting, dancing/physical theatre-ing, singing, some playing instruments, interacting with the audience and performing in tight narrow spaces. It was difficult to believe they were still learning their trade. Not everyone was equally brilliant at everything, but everyone excelled at something.
After heading down to the South Bank and watching the footie, it was into the QEH for Darren Johnston / Array and a piece of visual theatre / dance called Outre. If my Martian cousin were to come down from the skies and say to me “Robin, I’ve been reading your blog, in fact I am that regular reader you have been dreaming about, and I really like the sound of this thing you humans call culture - oh and before I forget, yes they do have Jews on Mars, anyway I really like all this stuff you go to see - can you take me to see something, maybe - cos it’s short visit, you know what with the costs of accommodation on Earth and all that – something that has a bit of all the stuff you keep going on about, please, will you, please?” then I would take him/her/it to see this.
Outre seemed to be a summation of everything wonderful I have seen in the past three years. In no particular order it was: uncanny, gothic Victorian, ghostly/hauntological, fragmentary, macabre, sinister, and extraordinarily, intensely, mentally stimulating. It had touches of the freak show/circus. It suggested automata and living puppets. It had elements of David Lynch and Angela Carter. It was sound-tracked with specially commissioned abstract electronica and contemporary classical. I connected with it on a deep unconscious level, yet it remained elusive, forever just beyond the tip of my tongue. It had touches of those classic Doctor Who episodes, The Talons of Weng Chiang and Spearhead from Space, and brought out memories of Bagpuss. It made me think (and dream) of Von Kleist’s famous essay “On The Marionette Theatre”, with its discussion of grace and the unconsciousness of inanimate objects in movement. It had intimations of Noh and Kabuki theatre and tapped into that uniquely Japanese strain of supernatural/ghost story, in particular reminding me of Kaneto Shindo’s two wonderful supernatural movies of the 1960s, “Kuroneko” and “Onibaba”.
But more, more than this, it was absolutely exquisite, with some of the most beautiful moments I have ever seen conjured in the theatre. To manage to be tough and physical yet at the same time delicate and fragile is the sign of a truly masterful piece of work.
What it was is of course hard to describe. The first section seemed to be set in the freakiest of freakshows; we saw a living automaton, conjoined twins, a headless man, and a lithe erotic dancer who was revealed to have a gruesome witch’s face. Each act was preceded by a projected introduction from a sinister distorted MC. Then there was some kind of breakdown, a rift in the ether, and we were watching a crazed and tortured Japanese ghost figure. Finally all the pieces of the nightmare seemed to coalesce before the figures collapsed in a heap in the centre of the stage, like de-animated children’s dolls.
The production took place behind a gauze screen and the air was heavy with dry ice. Minimally, but very carefully, lit, the haunting figures seemed barely there, drifting in and out of the blackness and the mist and the beams of light.
Like I say, exquisite.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Blugging
This passage from Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize acceptance lecture caught my eye:
"What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc."
The whole lecture is fantastic, and thought-provoking - the sections on Africa are so moving.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html
"What has happened to us is an amazing invention, computers and the internet and TV, a revolution. This is not the first revolution we, the human race, has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, changed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked "What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print?" And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with the new internet, which has seduced a whole generation into its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging and blugging etc."
The whole lecture is fantastic, and thought-provoking - the sections on Africa are so moving.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2007/lessing-lecture_en.html
EAR
One of the nice things about LIMF is that none of the performances outstayed their welcome; most were about the hour mark. Coming out of the QEH on Saturday, I saw there was some free music event going at in the RFH so, enhanced with January positivity from my reading of the Power of Now, I thought, I’m here, let’s check it out.
Well I was amazed. First of all, I had no idea there was a whole ‘nother level (in a downwards direction) to the RFH. The Spirit Level, in the basement, featured
a blue room, a gamelan room and lots of hip young things lounging about on very uncomfortable looking white blow up cushions. Plus a load of stragglers coming in from LIMF.
EAR stands for the “emerging artists in residence” at the Southbank. They have a microsite at www.southbankcentre.co.uk/ear.
First up I saw Japanese sound artist Mieko Shimuzu. To be honest, her first number was pants. I thought about toddling off. Luckily I didn’t cos the rest of her set was fantastic – kind of electronica influenced soul-pop in a Matthew Herbert / Jamie Liddell vein. Her recorded stuff on her myspace sounds really top notch: http://www.myspace.com/micouk.
Mico in the gamelan room
All this was as nothing to the jaw dropping set from cellist / composer / singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson. As soon as she started to sing, I saw the heavens open. It was one of those moments when the noisy room of over-excited kids all shut up at once. It was one of those rare and delicious moments when you see someone and know instantly that they are going to be a star. I thought she came across as the secret love child of Stevie Wonder and India Arie (yes that good!!) and, found myself telling her so later when I bumped into her in the main hall (the Power of Now has a lot to answer for). What I should have added though is that yes she sounded like that and also managed to fit in a dollop of contemporary classical into the equation, but also that she sounded completely unique, with her own distinctive sound and vibe. I’m not one prone to messianic fervour, but I think she could the one, the saviour of all that is good in music. http://www.myspace.com/ayannawitterjohnson
AWJ (centre) and friends in the blue room
Still reeling from AWJ, I caught the end of a performance by Natascha Eleonore which sounded great – great tunes, brilliant production and meaty samples/backing noises. And I read she is working with high end producers and various Afro-Cuban legends, and you know what, she sounds fresh and funky and I guess will be hugely popular. If they still have charts, she will be in them. http://www.myspace.com/organicurban
Back in the ballroom, I caught a set by Nila Raja. Hard to judge her on this; there were too many people talking / moving about and it was too big a space. It sounded good but you know, everything is relative, and maybe I was losing focus and presence in the now, so I came home for a nice cup of tea. http://www.myspace.com/nilaraja
The next EAR is in April.
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment is available from all good bookshops, new age outlets, and Amazon right now. It should come with a health warning.
LIMF Modes II
Wow. The weird and wonderful world of the London International Mime Festival continued.
First up this week were BlackSkyWhite from Russia with a production called Astronomy for Insects, one of the most peculiar, disturbing and downright sinister things I have ever had the (great) pleasure to see. Impossible to describe except by reference to the Other; imagine vintage doctor Who choreographed by Punchdrunk, or Kafka’s Metamorphosis performed by the Teletubbies/In the Night Garden people, or Quartermass animated by the Brothers Quay and you might get somewhere close. We may have been on a space ship peopled by our ancestors or descendants; or witnessing life from the consciousness of a still born puppet/human/Pierrot hybrid. Or maybe not.
Next up was Dead Wedding, a collaboration between puppeteers Faulty Optic and the very wonderful abstract electronica /contemporary classical composer and performer Mira Calix (see previous posts, especially http://robingrebsonsguidefortheperplexed.blogspot.com/2007/03/mira-calix-man-of-mode.html). Mira must be one of my favourite musicians of the last few years. This was a haunting, uncanny, troubling and often moving re-creation of the Orpheus myth, imagining his desperate attempts to be reunited with Eurydice where the Greek legend ends, after his previous rescue attempt has resulted in failure and death.
I guess what this show, and LIMF as a whole, proves, is that the theatrical space is and should be a magical one; that you can create magic from two padded envelopes with minimal faces drawn on. In Dead Wedding the envelopes came to represent the hopes, dreams and agonies of the central characters. Excellent all round from the live score performed by Mira and her three person mini chamber group, brilliant puppetry using all sorts of different puppetry techniques, and some excellent animation thrown in as well.
Saturday’s double bill was a last minute booking from me because on the travels I had heard much talk about the companies, and was having such a great festival I thought why not? In the afternoon I caught a pared down version of Woyzeck by the wonderfully named Sadari Movement Laboratory from South Korea. Performed on a bare stage, the cast in black vests and tights, the only props were chairs, which were used as evolving metaphors for Woyzeck’s plight, from cages of the mind to physical imprisonment to twirling flashing symbols of mental breakdown. The soundtrack all Astor Piazzolla which gave the work a fresh, vibrant feel.
Similarly minimal, and again using chairs as a main prop, were the Collectif Petit Travers with their show Le Parti Pris Des Choses. I was initially a little worried that I was at last going to have to watch some real mime, and even some juggling, but I was quickly grabbed by this eccentric trio. Their main thing was try to make what was virtually a contemporary dance piece out of juggling and physical movement and some spectacular and scary trapeze work. I’ve never scene a Cirque du Soleil show but I have rather gotten the impression that their shows are empty, soulless, spectacles, carnivals of nothingness. Certainly in the intimacy of the Purcell Room, the trapeze work here seemed genuinely dangerous and thrilling. The narrative seemed to be a love triangle; the moral: never come between a man and his balls. The said (juggling) balls) were used in the climax in vast quantities to produce a spectacle of cosmic proportion. This was a show with a menacing undercurrent of violence and perversion, which of course how we used to think about the circus before cirque and their ilk sanitised them. It was also wonderfully, nostalgically French (you could all but imagine Gerard Dipidoo or Daniel Hotel walking on stage). And great chamber music before and during too.
On the closing day of the festival I caught Silent Tide, a collaboration between various instrument makers/musicians and puppeteers/performers. There was something odd about the scale of this performance – the giant industrial instruments and the tiny puppets, so tiny we were issued with opera glasses, and this was in the tiny theatre in the ICA. The puppetry was exquisite, but hard to watch in these conditions. Overall this was production somehow didn’t quite add up to more than its parts. The hand-out spoke of a show contrasting mankind’s need for movement with the immobility of urban life, but the scenes themselves – people marching to a city in the dessert (foot festival or invaders or nomads?), the dessert sky becoming filled with the cranes of the oil industry, the Manhattan skyscrapers full of restless unhappy people drinking / shopping / arguing themselves into extinction, somehow they were too familiar, too politically pre-loaded to work in such an abstract setting. The music was ominous and drone like but not that transporting. The finale however was brilliant, in which a female puppet figure starts to ape the movements of an angel that we saw crawling out of the dessert sand at the start (perhaps discovering the angel within her); she then climbs up the side of her apartment building, then up a kind of Oval type industrial building, before launching into flight, exploding into flames as she does so. It was an image of transcendence and enlightenment, and a magical way to end the festival for me this year.
First up this week were BlackSkyWhite from Russia with a production called Astronomy for Insects, one of the most peculiar, disturbing and downright sinister things I have ever had the (great) pleasure to see. Impossible to describe except by reference to the Other; imagine vintage doctor Who choreographed by Punchdrunk, or Kafka’s Metamorphosis performed by the Teletubbies/In the Night Garden people, or Quartermass animated by the Brothers Quay and you might get somewhere close. We may have been on a space ship peopled by our ancestors or descendants; or witnessing life from the consciousness of a still born puppet/human/Pierrot hybrid. Or maybe not.
Next up was Dead Wedding, a collaboration between puppeteers Faulty Optic and the very wonderful abstract electronica /contemporary classical composer and performer Mira Calix (see previous posts, especially http://robingrebsonsguidefortheperplexed.blogspot.com/2007/03/mira-calix-man-of-mode.html). Mira must be one of my favourite musicians of the last few years. This was a haunting, uncanny, troubling and often moving re-creation of the Orpheus myth, imagining his desperate attempts to be reunited with Eurydice where the Greek legend ends, after his previous rescue attempt has resulted in failure and death.
I guess what this show, and LIMF as a whole, proves, is that the theatrical space is and should be a magical one; that you can create magic from two padded envelopes with minimal faces drawn on. In Dead Wedding the envelopes came to represent the hopes, dreams and agonies of the central characters. Excellent all round from the live score performed by Mira and her three person mini chamber group, brilliant puppetry using all sorts of different puppetry techniques, and some excellent animation thrown in as well.
Saturday’s double bill was a last minute booking from me because on the travels I had heard much talk about the companies, and was having such a great festival I thought why not? In the afternoon I caught a pared down version of Woyzeck by the wonderfully named Sadari Movement Laboratory from South Korea. Performed on a bare stage, the cast in black vests and tights, the only props were chairs, which were used as evolving metaphors for Woyzeck’s plight, from cages of the mind to physical imprisonment to twirling flashing symbols of mental breakdown. The soundtrack all Astor Piazzolla which gave the work a fresh, vibrant feel.
Similarly minimal, and again using chairs as a main prop, were the Collectif Petit Travers with their show Le Parti Pris Des Choses. I was initially a little worried that I was at last going to have to watch some real mime, and even some juggling, but I was quickly grabbed by this eccentric trio. Their main thing was try to make what was virtually a contemporary dance piece out of juggling and physical movement and some spectacular and scary trapeze work. I’ve never scene a Cirque du Soleil show but I have rather gotten the impression that their shows are empty, soulless, spectacles, carnivals of nothingness. Certainly in the intimacy of the Purcell Room, the trapeze work here seemed genuinely dangerous and thrilling. The narrative seemed to be a love triangle; the moral: never come between a man and his balls. The said (juggling) balls) were used in the climax in vast quantities to produce a spectacle of cosmic proportion. This was a show with a menacing undercurrent of violence and perversion, which of course how we used to think about the circus before cirque and their ilk sanitised them. It was also wonderfully, nostalgically French (you could all but imagine Gerard Dipidoo or Daniel Hotel walking on stage). And great chamber music before and during too.
On the closing day of the festival I caught Silent Tide, a collaboration between various instrument makers/musicians and puppeteers/performers. There was something odd about the scale of this performance – the giant industrial instruments and the tiny puppets, so tiny we were issued with opera glasses, and this was in the tiny theatre in the ICA. The puppetry was exquisite, but hard to watch in these conditions. Overall this was production somehow didn’t quite add up to more than its parts. The hand-out spoke of a show contrasting mankind’s need for movement with the immobility of urban life, but the scenes themselves – people marching to a city in the dessert (foot festival or invaders or nomads?), the dessert sky becoming filled with the cranes of the oil industry, the Manhattan skyscrapers full of restless unhappy people drinking / shopping / arguing themselves into extinction, somehow they were too familiar, too politically pre-loaded to work in such an abstract setting. The music was ominous and drone like but not that transporting. The finale however was brilliant, in which a female puppet figure starts to ape the movements of an angel that we saw crawling out of the dessert sand at the start (perhaps discovering the angel within her); she then climbs up the side of her apartment building, then up a kind of Oval type industrial building, before launching into flight, exploding into flames as she does so. It was an image of transcendence and enlightenment, and a magical way to end the festival for me this year.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
LIMF modes 1
Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu, as they say in Japan. Or Happy New Year to you.
As I have promised/threatened previously, my primary writing this year is on my novel, so I am attempting to adopt a more succinct approach to recording my out and abouts.
Everyone seems terribly depressed at the mo, but not me. I find myself in fine fettle. One of the reasons for this is the superb extravaganza that is the London International Mime Festival (LIMF). The name is wonderfully misleading; there are no starving drama students running into invisible walls or golden glitter encrusted living statutes to be found, just the finest companies from around the world specialising in visual / movement theatre, object manipulation and puppetry. OK there’s a guy called Pep who does things with balloons but I shan't be going to that.
First up were Mossoux-Bonte, and a show called Nuit Sur Le Monde. It was a kind of triptych, and moments in the first and last sections were as stunning examples of visual theatre as I have seen for many a year. In the first part, multiplying members of the cast e-merge from and back into a thick set wall. They move a little like good old Morph, evoking claymation, puppetry, and Ray Harryhausen style animation. Sometimes they sink back into the wall, disappearing into it like bass reliefs, and when they re-emerge it is as if the three dimensional effect is heightened. In the final part, lit in a weird harsh red light, they shuffle out towards the audience on their knees like damaged puppets or demented mutants. The middle section is not as successful for me – the cast are dressed in white robes, and perform movements evoking uneasy awakenings and awkward interactions which made me think of the innocents before the fall; then stripped naked they seem to discover the pain of childbirth, hardship and death. Overall a stunning start to LIMF.
Next up were sculptor Mique Barcelo and performance artist Josef Nadj and a stage comprising ten tons of clay. Each night, in a work called Paso Doble, the artists attack the clay, and attack themselves and each other with clay, producing an ever evolving three dimension action painting/sculpture. It may lack the cerebral quality of Mossoux-Bonte’s work, but nonetheless was absorbing and the work produced (images below) was surprisingly stong, evoking thoughts of Picasso, Gaudi and Dali. The performance itself had touches of Godot, and Laurel and Hardy (high praise indeed).
As I have promised/threatened previously, my primary writing this year is on my novel, so I am attempting to adopt a more succinct approach to recording my out and abouts.
Everyone seems terribly depressed at the mo, but not me. I find myself in fine fettle. One of the reasons for this is the superb extravaganza that is the London International Mime Festival (LIMF). The name is wonderfully misleading; there are no starving drama students running into invisible walls or golden glitter encrusted living statutes to be found, just the finest companies from around the world specialising in visual / movement theatre, object manipulation and puppetry. OK there’s a guy called Pep who does things with balloons but I shan't be going to that.
First up were Mossoux-Bonte, and a show called Nuit Sur Le Monde. It was a kind of triptych, and moments in the first and last sections were as stunning examples of visual theatre as I have seen for many a year. In the first part, multiplying members of the cast e-merge from and back into a thick set wall. They move a little like good old Morph, evoking claymation, puppetry, and Ray Harryhausen style animation. Sometimes they sink back into the wall, disappearing into it like bass reliefs, and when they re-emerge it is as if the three dimensional effect is heightened. In the final part, lit in a weird harsh red light, they shuffle out towards the audience on their knees like damaged puppets or demented mutants. The middle section is not as successful for me – the cast are dressed in white robes, and perform movements evoking uneasy awakenings and awkward interactions which made me think of the innocents before the fall; then stripped naked they seem to discover the pain of childbirth, hardship and death. Overall a stunning start to LIMF.
Next up were sculptor Mique Barcelo and performance artist Josef Nadj and a stage comprising ten tons of clay. Each night, in a work called Paso Doble, the artists attack the clay, and attack themselves and each other with clay, producing an ever evolving three dimension action painting/sculpture. It may lack the cerebral quality of Mossoux-Bonte’s work, but nonetheless was absorbing and the work produced (images below) was surprisingly stong, evoking thoughts of Picasso, Gaudi and Dali. The performance itself had touches of Godot, and Laurel and Hardy (high praise indeed).
Finally for this report, Teatro Corsario’s adult fairy tale Aullidos brought hard-core puppet sex to the ICA. If (like me) you have ever dreamt of mermaids performing cunnilingus or wanted to see a puppets penis go from flaccid to erect in front of your very eyes, then this was the show for you. It was like a Brothers Grimm tale retold by Angela Carter and then staged by a 10 year old Pedro Almodovar. The puppetry was excellent – I particularly liked a superb fight scene which managed to incorporate Crouching Tiger and Matrix style slo-mo effects, and the final scene where the wolf-boy hero (having given the heroine a good licking with his remarkably long tongue) carries her off at high speed.
Inspired by LIMF I have dug out my old black polo neck, a look I haven’t sported since my youthful prime. Also in my sights is the perfect theatrical-type black shirt; nipping into Selfridges I was amazed to see that the place was full of black shirts. It is this season’s big thing. Weird how this has happened. Did the fashion world know LIMF was coming? Is mime going to be this year’s dubstep/ kate and pete / new black? Are we to be treated to Celebratory Come Miming or Puppets on Ice? I do hope so.
More reports from LIMF next week.
Inspired by LIMF I have dug out my old black polo neck, a look I haven’t sported since my youthful prime. Also in my sights is the perfect theatrical-type black shirt; nipping into Selfridges I was amazed to see that the place was full of black shirts. It is this season’s big thing. Weird how this has happened. Did the fashion world know LIMF was coming? Is mime going to be this year’s dubstep/ kate and pete / new black? Are we to be treated to Celebratory Come Miming or Puppets on Ice? I do hope so.
More reports from LIMF next week.
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