Total Man

‘Total Man’ part of Electronic Voice Phenomena. Commissioned by Penned in the Margins and Mercy.

Our tour starts on Friday! I’ll be performing alongside Ross Sutherland, SJ Fowler, music group ‘Outfit’ and special guests. Further details HERE

‘Total Man’ is based on the writings of Stan Gooch, who, in his book The Paranormal, describes himself as ‘a reasonably well-endowed psychic’. Gooch was a sociologist/occultist/psychologist and the author of thirteen books including the epic ‘Total Man’. He was one of the first exponents of the ‘hybrid-origin’ theory of evolution. Most of his books explore the theory that humans are the result of cross-breeding between Cro-Magnum and Neanderthal. This research can be traced back to an experience Gooch had during a seance in 1958; he saw what looked like a Neanderthal man, crouching in the corner of the room ‘breathing heavily, as if nervous’.

I’ve been in touch with Dr. Brent Logan, who corresponded with Gooch in the last years of his life. Gooch’s final years (he died in 2010) were spent living in a rented caravan in Swansea, surviving on income support pension. Dr. Logan has sent me copies of the letters, which provide an insight into Gooch’s mind, his depression, and his commitment to his work. Here are some previously unpublished extracts. The first is from 1992:

I have now published well over a million words, often to critical acclaim by in themselves influential individuals. I have never made any money, and have lived much of the time in what most westerners would describe as poverty. Furthermore, I have signally failed to influence either the academic establishment or the world of alternative, new age thought. I am far too revolutionary for the former, and far too critical for the latter. Heigh ho.

2003:

The reversals and set-backs throughout my career have been continuous, relentless and un-remitting, as to some extent you already know. It all goes far beyond the reach of chance.

And later in 2009 finally some proof (underlining Gooch’s)

Recent discoveries of bones and skeletons in Spain have proved that Neanderthal and Cro-magnon did interbreed… When widely separated species of animal cross breed the offspring have two conflicting sets of instincts, with which they struggle to come to terms. And that’s why we’ve got left-wing political parties and right -wing parties. If lions evolved there would only be one political party – the lion party. If horses evolved there would only be one political party – the horse party. But we have two opposed political parties. (And as I’ve said in my books, if members of the labour party and members of the Conservative party were examined there would be: more left-handedness among the former; a greater incidence of the big toe being shorter than the other toes; shorter average height; less male baldness; larger cerebellum; more red-headedness, and so on and so on…)

Time to measure those toes….

‘Less’ male baldness, did you say?

Reading Stan Gooch’s books has been a trial. As soon as I’m able to follow his reasoning, he’ll matter of factly mention something like vampires, as if they prove his point. He draws on everything: psychology, sociology, archeology, mythology, the paranormal….which makes his writing fascinating, but also impossible. It’s easy to laugh at Gooch’s theories, but if I’m honest, I believe in fate, and I’ve experienced a few things that would deserve a chapter in his book The Paranormal. As Gooch said, the only proof of the inexplicable is personal experience. And even if you do experience something, it’s much easier to ignore it than to attempt an explanation. No wonder Gooch often found himself tangled in Ariadne’s web.  Within his theories about the life of Neanderthals is an attempt to understand the contradictions of humankind.

Join me as I attempt to channel Gooch and dissect, reverse, layer and articulate his ideas and experiences:

10 MAY 2013   THE SAGE GATESHEAD

15 MAY 2013   ST GEORGE’S HALL, LIVERPOOL

17 MAY 2013   THE BASEMENT, BRIGHTON

18 MAY 2013   RICH MIX, LONDON

19 MAY 2013   THE CUBE, BRISTOL

22 MAY 2013   ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, MANCHESTER

23 MAY 2013   ARC STOCKTON

25 MAY 2013   NORWICH ARTS CENTRE

Writing with you

The Disappearance of Sadie Jones is a play. Written on page. By me….

But now that we’ve gone through our development, rehearsal and production process, it has become a performance written in a space, with a creative team, and with you.

When my writing is occasionally published on a page it empties. As if the words have been stolen, type set, set in stone, an elegy, lost and concrete at the same time.

When I receive a book I have poems in, it sits for weeks before I can bear to look up my work.  When I eventually bring myself to do it, I skim them really quickly and never return to them after that.

I hate the finality. I suppose that the act of reading brings them alive again. I suppose when someone reads them they can live. But I don’t believe mine do, because I write for voice and space and people. Words can’t move when they’re trapped on a page.

Perhaps having a play published is slightly different, as the reader knows it is really just the blue print. I’d like to be able to give my plays to other people to play with. But still, the play text becomes final. A final word, I don’t want to have a final word on anything.

In conversation, in performance, we constantly adjust, to other performers, to space, to audience, even when it’s a quiet one. We adjust our bodies, faces, voices, intonation…it’s a constant search for communication. Even when the audience isn’t asked to respond verbally, it’s never a one sided conversation.

During the last few performances of The Disappearance of Sadie Jones at the Bike Shed Theatre, and during discussions afterwards, I felt the work being taken by an audience, taken into their imagination, their bodies…and what they translated was often more beautiful than anything we worked out the play was about.

The work is given a new life by the viewer, it is born, something of it is taken away and it might transform, and grow and become something else. A performance is a gift that is given in different shaped pieces to anyone who wants to take it home with them.

The audience member is an artist (yup, I’ve no problem with that word), the audience member is the most interesting artist at this stage in the process, because they are new, they are questioning, taking in, helping a birth, assembling and assimilating the work within themselves. The audience brings the final stage of the creative process to the work. In the end they are the best dramaturgs. Audience members help us to see the work fresh, to see it from many perspectives, to witness that it is continuing to be written, every night. The writing is never finished. 

 Stephanie Greer playing Sadie Jones. Photos by Eileen and Chris Long

Interview with Stephanie Greer (Sadie Jones)

Stephanie Greer. @Stephanie De Leng

I met Stephanie nearly a year ago at the audition for ‘The Disappearance of Sadie Jones’ (then called ‘Hunger’). I thought she was great, but the role she was right for (Sadie) was already cast. The first phase of work was development followed by a showing at CPT, after which it turned out our lead was unable to do the production and tour, so I called Stephanie. I knew she was very keen on the project, her training seemed right, and there was something about how she found her way around Sadie’s lines that told me she got my writing.

- The fact that she looked so perfect for the role wasn’t the deciding factor – it’s a bit disconcerting to meet someone who has existed in your imagination in real life. Thankfully the similarities are only external.

It was a great call. Stephanie is a fantastic actor – flexible, dedicated, open, emotionally connected, and after just a few days she has a great sense of the character and the play. I found it interesting to hear Stephanie talk about Sadie – she started with her back-story, and details that aren’t actually mentioned in the play. – perhaps reveals the actor’s approach to character.

[odd fact: Stephanie’s real surname is Jones]

****

Where did you train?

At Bretton Hall, in the middle of nowhere in Yorkshire. It had a reputation for being a bit cult-like, which is accurate in a way, it was very much a bubble, the emphasis was on creating new and exciting work, it wasn’t as traditional as some drama schools. So even though it was an acting course- Stanislavski training, animal studies, Shakespeare, Greek plays, you got the opportunity to choose your own path through the degree.

In my third year I was lucky, our large cast performance was directed by someone with a theatre company and links with the National Theatre in Cyprus, so that was how I got my first job. We took a version of the same piece to a festival of ancient Greek drama in Cyprus, the director produced it and we had a new director – Michael Fentiman who was at the RSC.

I was the last year to graduate from Bretton hall. We didn’t know it was going to close until half way through our first year. Once we’d come to terms with it, for us it meant we had a lot of outside directors who came in for modules, so we worked with some very interesting professional people. …and there was loads of space….

It sounds similar to my experience of Dartington – in the middle of nowhere in Devon. The move to Falmouth was announced in my final year there. It seems that these kind of small, experimental arts colleges aren’t sustainable anymore. We also described Dartington as a bubble….actually that’s a great thing when it comes to training and making your own work. I always feel like I’m in a bubble during a rehearsal process…..  In what ways was your training at Bretton Hall useful for this project?

In a general sense, it’s the openness to something different and not having set ideas on what ‘theatre’ should be. I worked with a PhD student in my 3^rd year and he was interested in treating text as music, not everything, but some of the things in this piece are reminiscent of that. I think I take for granted how physical our training was, and even if you didn’t decide to go down physical theatre route, if you’re devising theatre it’s different to being sat around a table writing. When I think of creating a piece it comes out of the body first…

Tell us about your character:

Sadie lives with her boyfriend Danny, her sister Kim lives nearby. Her and her sister were predominantly brought up by their mum, their dad left when they were young. Their mum wasn’t very stable, she had depression, I think that’s had a massive impact on Sadie, I think she blames herself for her mother’s unhappiness and I think her mother’s relationship to food and meals was perhaps not greatly helpful for Sadie.

However I don’t think you can blame everything on the mother, because Sadie has got an eating disorder, and self-harms as well as seeing things and hearing voices that aren’t there. Kim deals with the grief of the mum’s death in a very different way. When their mother died, Kim took on her role, Sadie was too vulnerable. What we see in the play is that Kim has smothered Sadie and not allowed her to become an adult, and her own person. Sadie is living with her boyfriend, but I think her sister is around a lot and involved in that relationship. I think Danny is a very patient person, to put up with that, and loves Sadie very much. And perhaps he didn’t quite know what he was letting himself in for.

Sadie wants to be tall and thin, and has no real sense of her actual body. This image, even though it’s something she aspires to, manifests itself in a nightmarish way….She sees tall, thin people around her, when she’s walking down a street or at home…but also I think her mind guards itself. If something painful happens in real life she switches, forgets about it and goes into her imagination. Her imagination frightens her a lot of the time but it also protects her, which is maybe why she believes it. I think when she’s in a really bad place she loses bits of time, she won’t remember something that’s happened, I think that’s really quite scary.

I think she finds things that are real and builds nice places and fantasies from that…if she felt safe in her childhood bedroom, or something she’s seen…it’ll appear in her fantasy….and then it might take over and the fantasy becomes a nightmare.

Do you identify with her in any way?

Yes, it’s difficult because she’s really messed up, and I think I’ve been fortunate in my life in that I’ve nowhere near got the same issues that she’s got, but – some of her worries and fears and insecurities do ring true, I would imagine with a lot of people. Danny’s got his issues with tidying up, we see in the play that at one point this prevents him going to bed with Sadie, she takes that as a massive rejection. I think there’s something in me that if someone was to say ‘OK yeah but later’ I’d be like – do you not fancy me enough? I suppose I’ve learned about my own insecurity there…I think if all her issues were coming out of somewhere far from most people she’d be hard to identify with, but I think there is a point where you go ‘I do get that, I understand, I just don’t deal with it in that way’. The people around her aren’t helping. She’s coddled and protected, Danny puts up with her craziness and shouting and moods.

What are the challenges of the role?

Her journey is a rollercoaster. Where she goes emotionally is so extreme that it’s about finding the sense and meaning of it but then going further than that. Whatever I imagine I would do in that situation, if those things were happening to me – I then push that to the very extreme… I have to lose any barriers, any holding back. I think we do guard ourselves, we don’t cry in front of people we don’t know…in order for me to play Sadie in the most truthful way I need to let that go…

As an example – Sadie is in the market having an absurd conversation about buying apples and a disagreement on the price…she’s trying to explain her point of view but the market seller is having none of it and she completely breaks down. It reminded me of a time recently when I needed to be in London for a screening, and I had a ticket for a specific train but I’d forgotten it was Sunday and the buses were irregular, I was cutting it fine and I ran from the bus stop to Liverpool Lime Street, I got there just in time. I’m convinced the conductor saw me and he put up the signal for it to go just as I was getting there. I lost all sense of the people around…I was pleading with him, he was like stone, I completely burst into tears which is very unlike me. People were stood on the platform staring at the conductor like he was the worst person in the world.

He came to help me change my ticket, I couldn’t say thank you in a normal way, I was choking. So that’s what I channel for the breakdown…..you know  it’s embarrassing and you want to control your speech but you can’t, you’re in such a state of distress.

 What’s your favourite moment in the play? 

I really like the naturalistic bits with Danny at the moment, you can ask me this again when we’re further on, I think it’s because the naturalistic bits are easy for me to find, I can relate to them – living with a boyfriend, having tense moments. It should remind the audience that actually she’s a person…not a fantastical character, and I think that’s important, and hopefully she’ll be likeable so they will care…that’s my job…

You came into the process later than Lizzie and Alan. What’s this like?

I’ve never done that before, I’ve always started with everyone else, so it’s a bit daunting despite everyone being really nice, it’s a bit scary because I don’t want people to get frustrated if we have to stop because I’m not up to speed on lines or don’t understand bits they’ve already worked on… plus there’s the fact someone else has already had a go at this role, so I’m trying not to think about that as it’s not helpful. I am really competitive and a perfectionist, I’m not used to being the person who’s behind, it’s a good learning curve for me.

At times though it’s been really useful. A scene has just been left to run and the other two are doing things in character and in the space, and I have no idea what’s going on, so I get to experience it for the first time, I’m in the same position that Sadie is in.

I’m really impressed by the other two, in awe at times actually. Which makes me go ‘come on’ – sometimes you might be in a cast where the others don’t have the same work ethic. But here everyone’s working extremely hard and are really talented…so I have to tell myself ‘OK don’t let the side down’.

What’s it like being based in Liverpool?

I’ve never lived in London, although I spend a lot of time here, there is that assumption that if you’re taking acting seriously you should live in London. I continuously pull against that and I wonder if I’m making a bad decision, putting myself out of opportunities – which is why I go to auditions, I get up at stupid 0’ Clock in the morning…but Liverpool is so much cheaper so you can get a better quality of life for less money. I remind myself of that when I’m on a coach at five in the morning…it allows me more time to be creative and not have to do menial jobs for rent and things. So I do think I made the right choice for me, also because I’m Northern…. I’m not about to be on Eastenders….but Liverpool and Manchester are in the middle of the country, and media city is now in Salford.

I’ve only lived in Liverpool for two years….moving out of Manchester didn’t affect my work there, but I’d never worked in Liverpool until I lived there. I’ve had a lot of work there since…I have had to perfect my scouse accent….

What are your ambitions for the future?

I’d like to be able to live off just performing. At the moment I do lots of workshop leading and teaching. Having said that, I’m sure I would miss working with children and young people, they always surprise you and that can inform your work, but I suppose if it was a choice rather than a necessity that would be nice. I’ve done a lot of film recently and I’m liking that as it’s very different, I’d like to do more, and there are so many theatres and theatre companies I think are brilliant….I want to work with them all.

This job is closer to my training than anything I’ve done before. When we go to Leeds in the autumn I’ll get some of my tutors to come, it’s funny because even though I’ve had good jobs I’m proud of, this will be what they are most proud of me for. Because it’s new and exciting and daring.

Thanks! – Great place to end the interview and start the rehearsal!

Stephanie Greer, Lizzie Crarer (and Alan Humphrey’s arm) in rehearsals.

The Kingdom – Three men, digging

The Kingdom

Talking to playwright Colin Teevan about The Kingdom 

The Challenge (set by director, Lucy Pitman-Wallace):

‘A version of Oedipus at Colonos, as written by Beckett in Krapp’s Last Tape’

The rule of three

Sophocles

Beckett

Teevan

Identity, exile and emigration

Writing a play is like watching theatre. When we go to the theatre, we go with as many levels as the writer goes to the page (or stage) with. We go to the theatre with all of the baggage of our history, our thoughts, our mood, the books we’ve been reading, and the people we’ve been talking to. The same happens when we write; all these influences combine with the life of the writer, and this becomes the heartbeat of the play.

Teevan talked about the influences on The Kingdom:

– The life story of John Murphy who claimed to have walked barefoot from a small Kerry farm to London in the thirties (via the Dublin boat); he then went from working in Heathrow as a runway cleaner to building RAF bases during the war and died a multi millionaire with his name on the side of London’s ubiquitous green vans.

– Exile, and repeated exile – Oedipus was cast out from Corinth then Thebes, in Oedipus at Colonos he is a wanderer, he has no home.

CT: “When I was at school plays were taught as literature, but we translated Greek drama line by line. I learned how to write drama from the Greeks. In any story, I ask ‘what is this the myth of?’ There’s always a classical underpinning.”

– Krapp’s Last Tape – and the question of our identity across a lifetime… Am I the same person I was twenty years ago?

CT: “Beckett’s characters exist in the remnants of an epic world. Greek tragedy is often about man’s relationships with the gods. Like the Greeks, Beckett cuts out the middleman. One addresses an existing god, the other an absent god.”

– An Irish Navvy: The Diary of an Exile:  Written in Irish, this book tells the story of a character who refused to speak English in Britain where he spent twenty years digging tunnels.

This soup of material is woven into the veins of The Kingdom alongside Teevan’s experience of his own identity.

CT “Ireland has a certain attitude, once you’ve gone you’ve gone. It’s how the country has dealt with the trauma of emigration over the centuries. It’s like a loss in the family.”

The Kingdom sounds like a personal play, a play that asks a question about identity, particularly an Irish-British, or Irish-London identity. It’s also told through stories, and storytelling tends to be associated with the Irish.

Will it be seen as a very Irish play?

CT: “There is something that is perceived to be Irish theatre. However, this play is produced in Britain by a British company for a British audience. I am wary of being put back into that ‘Irish playwright’ box and hope that having done so many other things this won’t happen. It’s a way of patronising a play, a way of dismissing it ‘we understand that it’s an Irish play’. For instance it might be put in the same category as Conor McPherson’s The Weir, just because it contains Irish men telling stories. It’s interesting how some playwrights in this country are simply known as ‘playwrights’ and others are given particular identities. Labeling is a way of not thinking, of short cutting actually thinking through the work. The categories are meaningless.”

How is the storytelling within the play dramatic rather than… telling?

CT “It’s the interplay of the characters on stage. They are not only speaking, but listening. The subtext of who they are develops towards a realisation. There is a dynamic on stage that is beyond storytelling, that is their relationships with the other and their selves….a dawning…which ultimately leads us to question where we are and what is actually happening. When each character has a stake in the story they are telling, the act of telling the story is dramatic.”

“A principle of storytelling I was aware of is the rule of three. I have three speakers, and each speech has three parts, although the timescales of the stories are very different. Motifs like tossing a coin, and the boots [a character steals the boots from men he kills when he is ambushed on his way to London] appear three times.”

I recently spoke to Teevan about the composition of  text, and his experience of working with Harrison Birtwistle on The Bacchai at the National.

What role do musical ideas of composition play in the construction of these stories?

CT: “One reason I often write in verse is to create a tighter frame, a more musical structure. Verse helps to put a rhythm in a piece and to lend stress where you want it, not where actor emotes it. Lucy [Pitman-Wallace] was very good in impressing upon the actors the principles I learned from The Bacchai – that they needed to learn the work as if it were a piece of music. Rather than imposing external thoughts and emotions on the text they first needed to learn the rhythm and the timings. Then they can find their truth within it.”

“In one sense I saw the men as instruments…In this piece we’ve got a strong rhythm through the digging and the effort involved, the breathing. The action establishes a rhythmical framework from the word go. Each character has motifs that are played with – they come together and move away. There is a heartbeat throughout the work, and this is important for the meaning. We establish a rhythm and then play over and under it. We should hear the rhythm even in the silences.”

The level of Borges

Jorge Luis Borges, by Paola Agosti

CT “So much of British theatre functions on narrative and sociological levels but nothing more.”

Teevan talks about the ‘four levels of meaning in Medieval Literature’: Narrative, Sociological, Metaphorical, Metaphysical.

CT:  “On the narrative and sociological levels The Kingdom is about emigration and exile…there’s enough of that in London for it to be a contemporary issue, but on the metaphorical and metaphysical levels it’s about identity and the nature of the self…and the inescapability of history. The literal action of three men digging accrues meaning as it goes on.”

My partner remembers listening to Eugenio Barba speaking at the Odin Theatre.  Barba also talked about levels of meaning in theatre: The concrete level, the interpersonal level, and the level of Borges…(Borges used for the benefit of a Latin American audience as a shortcut for metaphor and metaphysics).

Theatre needs to function on all four (or three) levels.

The Kingdom is being presented upstairs at the Soho Theatre

It’s a small space for a new play by an established writer. But perhaps it’s fitting that rather than happening with one of the more obvious collaborators, The Kingdom found a home in the same theatre where Teevan’s great collaborative work The Bee was shown –

The Bee, by Hideki Noda & Colin Teevan

Theatre in exile, made by exiles

I think we go to the theatre to find out about being human, to question who we are on a metaphorical and metaphysical level as well the concrete (narrative) and interpersonal (sociological) – afterall, we are complex beings. If this is the case then theatregoers and theatremakers have a lot in common. Teevan wrote The Kingdom with the same intentions with which many of us go to the theatre.

The action is simple. It’s just three men, digging. In the beginning this is a concrete action, but as the play goes on, we reach the level of Borges. At least, that’s the idea.

THREE LEGGED THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS THE KINGDOM 
BY COLIN TEEVAN, DIRECTED BY LUCY PITMAN-WALLACE
Wed 24 Oct – Sat 17 Nov, 7.45pm, Sat matinees 4pm: Soho Upstairs

 

Also recommended: THEBES, LONDON, HOLLYWOOD: WHERE THE THREE ROADS MEET. Writing workshop with Colin Teevan. 

Related Articles [Exeunt Magazine]:

The Five Obstructions of the Librettist
Crisis of Naturalism

Leaving Plymouth for a little while…

‘It’s bad luck to have flowers on board a boat. I’m going to have to come down and punch you on the nose-  it’s the only way to reverse the curse…’ [Boat on the water 2009, Stonehouse Plymouth - with Alice Tatton-Brown and Chloe Langford]

Just to let you know….

I’m going to Nottingham tomorrow to be involved in a project called ‘Park in Progress’ - World Event Young Artists.’1000 artists 10 nations 10 days’ (yay I qualify for a ‘young’ scheme)

And then I’m moving to London. I’ll be living pretty near the Olympic Stadium in the East. I’ve never lived in London before. Looking forward to be able to perform at events I’ve had to turn down in the past because of travel costs, going to poetry events and plays and theatre and workshops and better second hand shops….First workshop I’m doing is on Greek Tragedy with Tamasha.

Starting next week I’m ‘playwright in residence’ at the Lady Eleanor Holles School. So my first job is to find out what teenage girls want to make theatre about.

Last chance to see Opposition in the South West on the 18th & 19th October at the Brewhouse Theatre Taunton

First London run of Opposition : at the Ovalhouse - 6-17th November. It took me over a year to get a London venue, and I still love the work as much as when I first made it. So I’ve got a couple of months to try and make my knees work/find appropriate pain killers.

Then a week in Suffolk at Aldeburgh Music to try out ideas for a new opera ‘Thanatophobia’ with the composer Joanna Lee

And I start work on Jerwood supported project ‘Hunger’ back in Devon with a residency at Beaford Arts in December, with dramaturg David Lane, actors Kathryn O’ Reilly, Alan Humphreys and Lizzie Crarer and designer Fiona Chivers. I started writing Hunger three years ago, so excited it’s finally happening, and that I’ve got such a strong team of collaborators to work with.

More soon…

p.s I wrote the first of three columns for Exeunt Magazine: Crisis of Naturalism

- and also, check out this brilliant new resource set up by Sophie Mayer and her students : ‘I don’t call myself a poet’ - Interviews with Contemporary Poets Living and Working in Britain

The Shit/La Merda

‘A text for naked voice and naked body’ photo: Valeria Tomosuolo

Summerhall. Edinburgh Fringe

The Shit/La Merda performed by Silvia Gallerano and written by Cristian Ceresoli

[contains spoilers, although I’m not sure anything can prepare you for the live version]

In The Shit, words might be sung, yes, but the chant never emerges. Invective remains and prevails, so does the howl, the body that shakes out its personal story in an unbroken flow of thoughts/words rendered as sounds (then etched into memory). Shrieks. The deafening din of screams that have been choked. Appeased. Imploded. (Ceresoli)

It’s dark and it’s raining. We stand in the rain outside the ‘Demonstration Hall’ to the sounds of a woman warming up her voice. Which is already inhuman.

The first thing is the space. It’s concrete, stone, an old lecture hall, students perched high up, but it also feels like a building from childhood novels, in the middle of nowhere, strange owl creatures might appear, perhaps there are blood stains in the concrete.

No – but there is a naked woman perched on a high stool. The height makes her small. Her eyes are wild, her lips are red…her hair is in bunches. She’s quietly singing the Italian National Anthem. Perhaps her nudity is the first thing we notice, but later, it’s her voice and her words that take centre stage.

I’ve spent some time wondering what it was that made the stream of consciousness narrative that followed so compelling. It wasn’t just the sense, but the sound. The voice as an extension of the naked body; the unrelenting hammering of words and meanings that bleed into each other. She remained on the high stool throughout. The vocal stream only punctuated by monosyllables: “Yes” and “Me”, are the jumping off points for long vocal dances. The text breaks down at the end of each section, and gradually breaks down throughout the whole piece. In the beginning the sentences are endless, by the end they are a series of monosyllabic words.

Meanings circle, images reappear, she opens with a story about railway tracks, she says she would jump, she says it would take a lot of courage, except she’s using the second person, so is it herself she is referring to? Later she says he…he, her father must have had a lot of courage to jump.  We discover her father is dead, and that this is how he died. His death is beneath the surface of everything she says. She skims over the kind of lines that we don’t often hear in the theatre…‘starving little midgets’… and “Have you ever seen a spastic reading the news?” There’s no censorship here.

I know bigness. So big you can see its material. It’s so big that when the feeling happens down there, you can’t tell what’s going on in there, what’s going on in there. Everything becomes lost. It can be anything, it and what goes on in there, and as long as you don’t die, you survive…..This is what sex was. Death, then sex. I didn’t recognise it at first. This is when I learned that I can close my eyes, fight however I have to, and survive.  Kathy Acker, In Memoriam to Identity

It is a musical text. The music is in the punctuation, the syllables, and the voice. It’s a strong, brilliant voice, but it’s also uncontrolled, with too much vibrato. I thought, it can’t be uncontrolled because she can’t control it; she’s too good for that. And later this was proved when she dipped between two registers: a deeper, chest voice without vibrato, then back to her penetrating higher register, or ‘vocal mask’. She jumps back and forth between the two voices. It was virtuosic.

- I wonder about the sound though. Her voice echoes in this space. With the microphone and amplification on top of the natural reverb, the words merge into each other and are hard to hear. And this is a text I want to hear the whole of. The microphone has become a part of her physicality, a part of this work. But in this venue, I’d consider losing it, or just switching it off…

And what about the body? Meat on stage. Meat me me me me me meh meh …merda. Or at least, that’s how it sounded. This ‘me me me’ happens at the end of each movement, it is the shitting out of all the experiences and words up until that point, it is the body turning itself inside out, rejecting everything, or it is the rape, the howl. The word ‘me’ transforms, it becomes ‘meh’ – which of course, is the same phonetically as the ‘meh’ sound in ‘merda’. – The Italian version comes through…the same phonetic transformation would work in the French version ‘La Merde’, however ‘The Shit’ – phonetically, doesn’t work in the same way. Which is a reminder that this version is a translation. And that Gallerano performs this text in three languages.

And truly
must it be reduced to this stinking gas,
my body?
To say that I have a body
because I have a stinking gas
that forms
inside me?
Antonin Artaud, To have done with the judgement of God (1947)

In this play there are no boundaries between childhood, sex, the body, food, shit, fame, and politics. Not just in the sense that people often talk of a ‘politics of the body’, but Italian politics…just glimpses, fragments of things her father told her, there are no differences in her world. A sentence can begin with the topic of food and end with a rape “you wouldn’t think a handicapped guy could have such a tight grip” begin with body hatred and end with the revolutionary anthem, or the world cup, or VAT, or dolphins.

What the fuck is reason in this life, a life of disease and sex show? Perhaps I had become too polluted, not down there, but socially, as everyone becomes, to be pure even down there in the blood  Kathy Acker, In Memorium to Identity

She tells us that the flag is the male sex. Her words narrate a transformation of the body, or a consumption of the body. Is it out of self-hatred, or out of a desire to somehow become her country, to become what people want to see, or to become something of what her father once was? Whatever the answer, her vision is distorted. Her voice narrates, but is also a channel for this strange swallowing of the self.

I want to attempt a terrible feminine. The cry of the revolt that is trampled underfoot, of anguish armed for war, of the demand for justice.
It is like the groan of an abyss that is opened: the wounded earth cries out, but voices are raised, deep as the bottom of the abyss, voices which are at the bottom of the abyss crying.
Neuter. Feminine. Masculine.

In order to utter this cry I empty myself.
Not of air, but of the very power of sound. I raise up in front of myself my human body. And having cast on it ‘THE EYE’ of a horrible measurement, part by part I force it to reenter me.
Artaud, For the Theater and its Double (1931-36)

She tells us how her father once took her to an aquarium. There she learned that male dolphins rape females, and that a female octopus eats her own limbs. And we discover that the returning themes of her life - rape, the consummation of her own flesh – were born from these childhood memories. She tells us that a woman must transform her body, must submit to men, to get anywhere. A fantasy of escaping her life is blurred with a rape in a warehouse  - she resists the rape because it’s ‘thanks to the Resistance Movement that Fascism is over and our country exists, yes” and the movement descends into the howl of ‘me me me meh meh….’

I wanted my body to be mine. Deep in me I didn’t want it to be theirs. Something in me was revolting. Something in me was screaming, ‘No. No. No.’
So just as I was learning about my own body, I learned this kind of revolt.
No one was going to touch me but me. That’s how all of me felt with a scream. But it didn’t matter how strong I felt it cause the slimy man lifted up my right breast and looked at it… Kathy Acker

In the final movement she eats a dolphin, (she eats the rapist?) she goes to the toilet…(not literally, this is all in the narration) there’s a repeating phrase ‘in my shit’. Everything up until this point fragments and collides with ‘in my shit’.  She shits her life –her father, all the food, the cripple-rapist, her fears, the army, her youth. And then she tries to take it back. The consumption of her shit becomes the consumption of her nation. The Italian anthem returns, another scream, she tells herself to jump….

If only one could taste one’s void, if one could really rest in one’s void, and this void were not a certain kind of being but not quite death either.
…
I have only one occupation left: to remake myself.
Artaud, From the Nerve Meter (1925)

The Shit/La Merda is intense, dark, searing, powerful, raw. It is satirical but not in the way we usually understand the word. With its collision of the body, food, sex, and rape, it is also an intensely female play, but is written by a man. This is what would be born from a brief, violent meeting between Artaud’s vocal and physical screams and Kathy Acker’s fucked up cut up texts.

Gallerano is an astonishing actor, but don’t let that mask the fact that this is an astonishing piece of writing too.

photo: Valeria Tomosuolo

They brought forth in me the image of that scream armed for war, that terrible subterranean cry.
For this scream I must fall,
It is the scream of the wounded warrior who brushes past the broken walls with a drunken sound of glass.

I fall.
I fall but I am not afraid.
I give up my fear in the sound of rage, in a solemn roaring.
Artaud For the Theater and its Double

Devoted…

…& Disgruntled in Plymouth (and Cornwall and Devon)

My first D&D, although I’ve done the open space format thing a few times.

Theatre Royal Plymouth

Here’s a detailed description of how the D&D Roadshow works in case you want to have a better idea of what I’m talking about: Downstagewrite

So it’s basically filling a day with those kind of coffee break chats that are often the best bit of a conference. Anyone can suggest a topic. And anyone can turn up – theatre goers/dancers/writers/producers/artists/venues ….maybe a little tricky to communicate that, I asked a composer-friend if he was coming and he’d assumed it was an exclusive invite-only event.

Devoted and Disgruntled – how was it for me…

I immediately liked the title as it pretty much sums me up – utterly devoted and a bit disgruntled.

But during the day I got the sense these states were being polarised. You were either in the devoted camp (good) or in the disgruntled camp (bad). Being seen as being in the disgruntled camp felt rather uncomfortable, like you were just a moaner.

I think being both devoted and disgruntled means that you are up for debating the problems, and then up for trying to do something about them.

Do we need the provocative formal debates/speakers in order to have something to rebel against/discuss/debate during the coffee chats?

One conclusion of the day is an obvious one….Devon….whether that’s Exeter or Plymouth…is never going to be Bristol.

We just don’t have the population. So we’ll never have that kind of self-perpetuating theatre ecology that draws people in and keeps them. I still think the various theatres and organisations in Devon can do more in terms of talking to each other, trusting each other, getting together to support the few full time theatre makers who are based here, helping us develop the regional audiences for our work, providing a bit of infrastructure…and they think that too.

from: http://welovelocalgovernment.wordpress.com

Will it happen? How long will it take? Why is being a supported artist a postcode lottery?

I look at what goes on in the East region  – I never would have imagined that the place I grew up – which felt so cut off and rural and boring –is now pretty much the best place in the country for a theatre maker to live.

Having said that, while growing up in Suffolk I was a member of ‘Splinters’ youth dance company at Suffolk dance, and we worked with Richard Alston, Wayne McGregor, Phoenix dance company…and I commuted once a week to the Royal College of Music junior school. On second thoughts rural Suffolk was the perfect place for an artist to grow up.  (if your arty middle class parents take you to Snape Maltings)

–Is it simply distance to London and travel costs that are the problem?

When I attended the Jerwood Aldeburgh opera writing foundation scheme last year,  it was brilliant to have time to talk with other artists – writers, directors, composers, – all of them full time practitioners, and to collaborate. That’s one of the things missing from Plymouth/Devon. Even when artists do get together we’re usually too preoccupied with the practicalities of how to make the work happen to talk about the work itself.

Which is why it’s so important to travel and spend time outside of the region. – That was one of the suggestions of the ‘Is the work being made in Devon good enough?’ session. – Maybe the artists based here don’t see enough good work. I guess that might be true for the recent graduates who have stuck around, but it’s also a little patronising. I’m a graduate from the region who stuck around. The few writers/directors/actors/theatre makers I know here have spent most of their lives making and seeing work in other places. It’s quite tricky to suggest that the work being made here isn’t good enough  - when many of the professional artists based here are not actually able to make the work they want to make at all.

Doing something about it.

There were some great things I got from the day…I met Kate Sparshatt who was very impressive and nice, and generous, and we have subsequently met up and had a useful chat about Gecko and producers and funding applications. On the topic of brilliant women –  one of the most vibrant chats was called by Natalie McGrath, ‘Women’s Voices – ? Do We Want To Hear And See Women On Our ‘Stages’ In The South West?‘ – other than Kate (Plymouth Arts Centre), and Emily Williams (Wide Awake Devon/Theatre Devon) I think the representatives of organisations/theatres in the room were all men. Robert Miles from the Brewhouse joined the debate.

There were a number of women making things happen in the room – including: Natalie McGrath (playwright), Josie Sutcliffe (director), Belinda Dillon (critic, Exeunt/Devon Life), Belinda Chapman (choreographer/director), Fiona Chivers (designer), Ruth Mitchell (actor/theatre maker), Bethany Pitts (director), Emily Williams (producer/Wide Awake Devon), Danielle Rose (producer), Cassandra Williamson (Pilot’s Thumb) …

I did a little tweeting and Lyn Gardner liked the idea of coordinating with other performances in the region and sending invites to critics to come down and see a few things at once. I would have liked to have talked more about the issue of lack of theatre criticism in the region …. I turned up too late to that session – but I think a conclusion was we need to blog more – tweet and blog about everything. And #swtheatre is available. I’m going to see the latest Belgium experiment at the Drum tonight. I’ll give the hashtag a go afterwards.  (But still find it very hard to comment on/review work, especially when I don’t like it) – Had a chat with Belinda Dillon about that. – I can’t afford to make any more enemies than I already make through this blog!

Had a little brain storm with Seth Honnor about what to call things.  - He made a list, none of them are great, although ‘Grokking’ perhaps the favourite. But anything that taxi drivers don’t understand is no good. My taxi driver thought ‘theatre maker’ meant that I built theatres. Maybe we just need to call ourselves and our work by different names in different situations.

I talked to Mark at Beaford Arts and started thinking about rural touring, and pondering whether my work could be rurally toured. We have subsequently had a chat and Beaford is supporting the development phase of ‘Hunger’ with a two week residency – which also gives me a chance to explore the question about audiences for my work.

So it now it looks like making Hunger in the region is a possibility. I‘ll still be based in London for a few months from September, but even having just one thing to come back for makes my year ahead more exciting, less disgruntling – and I’m as devoted as ever.

A selection of the reports:

How can theatres and organisations prioritise and support their local theatre makers?
Is Work Being Made In Devon Good Enough?
Should We Be Happy To Work For Free – And Are We Damaging Theatre If We Do?
Theatre In Non-Theatre Space: Was Creating The Bike Shed Theatre A Waste Of Time?
Women’s Voices – ? Do We Want To Hear And See Women On Our ‘Stages’ In The South West?
How Do We Get SW Theatre Regularly Reviewed?
Half The SW Lives In The Countryside. Why Doesn’t The Sector Give Rural Work Equal Weight?
In addition to developing opportunities for artists in the South West, how do we retain, attract and develop producers and arts managers?

From Plymouth to the Bush Theatre

Which way?

A meandering diary-entry-like account that includes a long bus journey, the tribulations of being an artist in Plymouth, ‘Encounters’ at the Bush Theatre and the post show discussion with Madani Younis and Omar Elerian, developing new writing, solo writers/performers, being a female solo writer/performer…There will be many tangents. I was on a bus all night and wrote this on that bus and haven’t had time to write less. And I also want to post this before something about the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and my new projects. I will probably write something more concise with similar ideas in it soon for the Capital Theatre Festival debate ‘New Writing Vs New Work’. So this is only for the committed procrastinator. I’ll put some headings and pictures in it. See, even the disclaimer was too long.

Encounters at The Bush

Opening emails from Sabrina Mafouz and from the Bush Theatre a few days ago: Look at this double bill at the Bush!  Sabrina Mahfouz and Caroline Horton are associate artists. This is quite something. And Friday was ‘writers’ night’ with a discussion about making innovative theatre and the challenges that female solo writers/performers face in the industry. I want to go.

Public Transport

I want to go. I won’t let this living-in-Plymouth thing get in my way. But I can’t afford the train – over £100 if you don’t book it ages in advance… but how about the bus? There and back in 24 hours for £35. £50 in total with the Encounters ticket. And that’s OK, that’s the price I pay for living here. My rent is cheaper.  And I’m going so that I don’t feel trapped by this geography, to be part of a conversation.

New Writing – for me or not for me

The last time I went to The Bush I saw The Kitchen Sink – which I enjoyed in the way I enjoy good TV drama. I sat in the new bar/library area for an hour afterwards, waiting to catch my night train back to Plymouth. And I felt so apart from that world. And seeing that play – I thought, it’s silly for me to feel bad about this theatre rejecting my plays – that is the work they put on and my work is in a completely different world. There’s no point sending my stuff to them. It’s like sending….I don’t know I’m too tired for analogies…like sending somebody something they haven’t asked for and have no idea what to do with….It’s like sending me one of those German ‘Herman’ bread things. I had the same realisation after seeing Bartlett’s Love love love (about my plays not Herman).

no thanks

But now, new directors, new directions…

So I booked tickets. I know Sabrina Mafouz through the spoken word world and I should have seen Dry Ice at the Edinburgh Fringe last year. But I didn’t because it was on late and the bones in my knees felt like they were rotting from the inside and it was all I could do to get through my flyering-performing-flyering schedule for two weeks. But I should have gone anyway and I’ve regretted it ever since. So this was my last chance.

On the bus

Mine twas not ‘rapide’ but this, my friends, is Plymouth

I was feeling quite chirpy. I suspected it wouldn’t last. But I was fine. Feeling quite inspired by my impressive reading material, left Marie Claire at home and took Caryl Churchill, Václav Havel and Jan Kott – never come across his writing before and it was a revelation, ideas that’ll keep me writing for life. It reminded me of what I want to write about, of what I really know about. (Love, by the way, the body, the erotic) That’ll keep the googlers busy.

But then an accident on the road, a diversion….and we were an hour delayed by the time we were at Heathrow, and then another 40 mins delayed in traffic from there to Victoria. And you know, we practically went past Shephard’s Bush and I asked the driver if he could let me out and he said no that wasn’t possible…I should have pretended to need to puke. By that point I was avoiding watching the clock in the bus. Wasn’t willing to accept that I was going to miss it.

I’d left a bit over an hour contingency. Optimistic. But earlier buses were more expensive. Last time I got the bus to see something at the National we were delayed and I missed the first half. This time it took seven and a half hours – Plymouth to London. I think it felt worse because I was half expecting it. I knew I’d be lucky to get there in time. But then, being let down when you are half expecting to be let down….it was worse. My optimism suddenly gone…because it had been proved to me again – I can’t live in Plymouth.

So I arrived at the Bush 15mins too late for Dry Ice. I had a pint at the bar.

Enter: Madani Younis and Omar Elerian

Madani Younis

Omar Elerian

Wrapped in their own integrity and Madani with a rucksack. I’ve always liked people with rucksacks –  carrying their homes on their backs. My first image of my husband was seeing this huge green rucksack, retreating down the stairs at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Short, stocky, dark – Mexican – a little pack horse, a snail. When we met he was a director. He would have walked up to those two men and introduced himself and impressed them. They probably would have wanted to produce his next production there and then. He had/has that knack. He went to Eugenio Barba in Denmark, went into his office, talked – and on the spot was invited to spend time with the Odin Teatret whenever he wanted. I don’t have that knack. Maybe I’m just socially awkward.

First impressions

I was at a networking meeting a while ago with an important person I know from a theatre. I introduced a female playwright to him. He also briefly met a young male director. After the meeting he joked that the female playwright probably wasn’t any good, and also mentioned the young male director in a positive light. It is often assumed that women don’t know what they are doing and that men do. Women have to overturn assumptions and men just have to not disprove them.

Anyway, that’s something I struggle with – a lack of confidence in talking to people on first meetings. A lack of confidence in presenting who I am when someone knows nothing about me. Too much of an awareness of all the other people in the same situation who in fact don’t know what they are doing. So I finished my pint.

You’re not like other girls Chrissy by Caroline Horton. Directed by Omar Elerian

Caroline Horton in ‘You’re not like other girls Chrissy’

Although I was gutted that I missed Sabrina’s I could still watch Caroline’s in the second half. This isn’t any kind of a review because that would involve structuring my ideas and perhaps mentioning what it is about. But just want to say a few things including – what a beautiful piece of work.

You know those annoying audiences who laugh at stuff that isn’t funny? Sometimes they do it because the work is so tedious they are so desperate for respite they laugh out of a need to laugh. Sometimes they do it because they suddenly have a collective shite sense of humour. I don’t know. Well normally I don’t laugh when the audience around me laughs. The last thing I saw was Ontroerend Goed’s A History of Everything. It really was the most soul-numbing bit of work I’ve seen for ages. The actors were just going through the motions, the theatre had buggered off leaving a bare idea of a performance struggling to survive in a dead space.

So this, Chrissy character – so full of life, so embodied, it was like soul food or something, to be laughing, naturally, spontaneously. And of course to be reminded of how simple it is, really, to engage an audience completely. How beautiful it is to be engaged, entertained, drawn in, by just one character and some suitcases. This was craft I was seeing – the acting and the writing coming together so that there was no distance between ‘actor’ and character. She was Chrissy. And whenever she was looking at the audience on the other side I was a bit jealous.

I loved the use of language – the use of English from a French woman’s perspective, ‘hot cat on a roof’. I love that, when the context is given for word play, I loved the way she was tasting these English words, revelling in the newness of them. That distance from the language, not taking it for granted…

Submission policies & You’re not like other girls Chrissy cont.

And one other thing. Well, Vicky Featherstone is at the Royal Court now, so maybe this will change. But the other day I came across the Royal Court submissions policy, or maybe it was via a High Tide Symposium tweet – saying they were looking for work that is about our times…contemporary, relevant…(London presumably)…? I think, what a silly thing fixate on. There’s the risk of just making work about things that are in the UK news. As if that is a good reflection of today anyway. And there’s the fact that if you are trying to make current work then by the time it’s on it’s not current anymore. You don’t want to be looking for work that is current and relevant Now – you want work that is current and relevant Always…surely? (And now and then putting on work that is ahead of its time wouldn’t hurt either)

Well on that note, a funny thing about this play (set in France in the forties so unlikely to have made it through the Royal Court’s submissions policy) – it opened with a little scene about queuing. ‘The English wouldn’t stand for this’ – in a queue at a train station for over an hour. It was hilarious of course because of the Heathrow debacle. But that couldn’t be planned. Serendipity aside, it was a timeless piece that will always be relevant. Don’t take history away from writers, we have a hard enough job as it is.

When I was a kid I used to love to replay films in my head, I could do it with strange accuracy and I used to write, in my head, different endings for novels. When the work is so real, it takes you over, involves you, lives within you. That happened with You’re not like other girls Chrissy. In my delirious state of tiredness on the delightful seven hour bus journey back to Plymouth I sometimes had Chrissy with me, I could hear her. I have that character now, to entertain me in my imagination. What a beautiful thing this theatre can be.

Theatre can do many things. My experience of Caroline’s piece is one of those things but I wouldn’t write an artistic policy based on that work. Caroline’s, for me was all about character and a voice.…another show might be about ideas, might be about what my imagination does while I’m watching……to search for work that does a particular thing…is homogenising…deadening…

Solo writers/performers

Sabrina Mafouz

When you perform your work as well as write it, there is no division between writer and performer. The process of writing takes place in a studio, the writer in you is involved in a strange kind of internal collaboration with the performer in you. It is still writing – and Sabrina and Caroline are fantastic writers. And (‘and’ not ‘but’) it is a different way of writing. It often doesn’t happen on the paper, alone, it happens in the studio, often with others. With recent plays I’ve seen – Shivered by Philip Ridley for instance, and I’m a huge fan of his writing….the actors were very good, but I could see them as actors….acting the characters….doing a job…. With a writer/performer, the really good ones that is, it’s not like that. Partly of course because the writer/performer is so invested in making their own work, they rehearse it for longer, develop it for longer, the responsibility of making it a success is entirely down to them. No pressure (shit loads of pressure).

Post show discussion

Madani Younis said he wants to engage with a new generation of writers…he might have said theatre makers….he might have said artists….I think he did say writers…different processes of writing…the point is…a new generation of ways of writing and making work.

This new-writing-London-centric-theatre-world has been closing its doors to the writers who write differently…and now there’s a possibility the doors will open. And these directors are coming from different trainings, theatrical backgrounds, approaches to making work, with different taste, different perspectives. I think it’s really exciting that Omar Elerian is there as associate director. His background in theatre outside of this country, training in Lecoq, and interest in visual story telling could prove…well just imagine it – Complicite with a decent script.

Neither Sabrina or Caroline were ‘found’ through script submissions…Sabrina said her script had been rejected many times as the readers/directors didn’t know what to do with it…so I asked whether a script submission policy still works? Will they have a different way of finding artists?

Watch this space was the answer I think. Or,  this one. And they will try to see lots of stuff.

I wonder about a different way of submitting…I wonder about submitting ideas, working methods, past work as evidence…more like putting together an application for a new project…I wonder if that’s a possibility. I really think the writer in their cave…the script meetings….the rehearsed readings….the three week rehearsal period….needs a re-think. Alex Chisholm on a similar topic.

Central female characters

Sarah Lund

Very interesting – Madani and Omar said they read many script submissions prior to programming their first season….they said there was a 50/50 male female split in the submissions. But none of the work they read had a female character at its centre.

I recently blogged about the brilliance of strong female characters in Scandinavian drama. I think we are really un-used to…un-programmed to seeing female central characters in British contemporary theatre and TV. Are writers emulating what they are watching?

Female writer/performer again

Hannah Silva in Opposition (photo Eileen Long)

On the topic of difficulties that face female solo performers/writers Sabrina and Caroline both seem to have found that they have not experienced challenges because of being women, and that being the writer and performer gives you control over the work. Sabrina said she has found it much harder in the other areas she has worked in – spoken word and scriptwriting….

Have I found it hard as a female solo writer/performer? First answer is yes. Don’t know how much it has to do with being female, how much it has to do with living in Plymouth, how much it has to do with writing non-naturalistic plays and making work that gets described as ‘avant-garde’ and how much it’s just that – no one ever said it was gonna be easy. Yes. It is bloody hard. I’m feeling quite good right now as I have two amazing opportunities and I’m going to survive from my writing for the next few months. But those are not South West things, I don’t even get shortlisted for the rare opportunities that come up here. It’s my location not my gender that’s the challenge. It’s the bloody transport system.

It was lovely to have a chat with Sabrina afterwards, and also to meet Caroline, both of them are very generous to other artists, male and female, which is part of it. I think some women feel that there are only a few slots available for us in the theatre world, and that we must compete for them. In fact a victory for one opens doors for others.

Taking Risks

Madani and Omar said they had a tricky time convincing whoever it was they had to convince, to programme this double bill. They weren’t expecting it to do so well. It was only programmed for a week but actually could have run for longer. That’s fascinating too. The unremitting timidity of programming. The relentless underestimating of audiences….A theatre like The Bush has a  developed core audience and a high profile; if the work is good, it is going to sell. If a theatre like that can’t take a chance with their programming, who can? The point is, there is an audience in London for this work. It’s good work. As the youngster with the cool t-shirt in the audience said – our mates would like it.

On the bus again

So my slumbering bus journey back to Plymouth was a pretty happy one. Things are changing. A few weeks ago I decided not to try anymore, decided that I need to build a home for my plays myself. Now, I have hope again, I think it’s worth trying. New writing might become ‘new’ again. There was a half moon. A man got trapped by his seatbelt. I had strange dreams of theatre. Got back at 5:40am. Had a little sleep.

Then wrote a crazy long blog. Has anyone actually read it? All of it? 

Seven Billion Humans – a libretto

Plymouth’s Tunnels, Plymouth’s Squid

photo by Georgie Kirrin. ARP shelter Plymouth

I’ve been doing some research for Part 1 of my performance in ‘Ferment’ at the Bristol Old Vic.

It’s one of those occasions where I wrote the description of the work before I’ve actually written it all. I wrote that Part 1 is about ‘Plymouth’s tunnels’.

I have a poem that’s the basis for this idea – I wrote it after visiting the Marine Biology Research Library at the Citadel. The woman who showed me around thought I might like to explore the books and drawings…and I would….but I was especially interested in the stories she told.

In the forties there was a director there who had a parrot. She explained he had to go and get his parrot from the library before going down to the tunnels when Plymouth was being bombed.

She also told us about the research students they used to get there, from Oxford…They wrote poetry every year, which was great. But the thing I found brilliant is that they used to dissect squid down in the basement of the Citadel. As they were cutting them up they’d throw the parts over their shoulders, and they’d land on the ceiling. Now, apparently, they’re still there – it’s a hazardous zone.

So that inspired a poem. Here’s an extract:

Years ago the squid from Plymouth Sound
were massive, brought back to the lab to be
examined then tossed over a shoulder landing
on the ceiling and staying there – stuck, suckers.

The parrot was left in the library
when they went down to the tunnels,
this is not the future we are talking about,
simple bombing, simply bang bangs.

So I’ve been researching Plymouth’s tunnels – apparently there are tunnels under the flat where I live… I’ve come across some great blogs on Plymouth history: This one: http://www.cyber-heritage.co.uk – and this about the tunnels: http://www.cyberheritage.com/plymouth_hidden_tunnels/

& this hardy Plymouthian has done some exploring: http://georgiekirrin.com/

Better get back to it…

Hope to see you there. Ferment Festival. Bristol Old Vic, 20th Jan, 6:30pm