apologies
The Nottingham correspondent and I have been presenting our combined photography/soundscape piece at the Micro O festival in Bristol, and in consequence, gentle reader, I have neglected you.
Lots of editing, very little sleep and a good time had by all. We had the usual technology problems, the pictures were edited on a mac, the soundscape on a pc, and much to our surprise, joined together without a problem. So much so that we were lulled into a false sense of security, and I didn't have the sense to test it with the data projector. We were projecting onto a weather balloon (an idea I nicked from the show at Kensington in January), sadly, although the show would cycle happily on my laptop, we couldn't make it talk to the projector, so we went for the lovely mac. The mac wouldn't repeat the show, which was a bummer, and meant that we had to go and run it every now and again.
This might not have been such a bad thing, as someone bawling
'loverly lilies free for a fiver' every few moments might have been a bit disconcerting.
This coming week I am back with the red kites for three days, and then I'm off to Wakefield (the Rhubarb triangle), for my first rehearsal and run-through for 'Bouncers'. More later.
healthy lunch
I was up in the East End again yesterday, dropping off the lanterns I had borrowed for my show. While I was there, I was gripped by a nostalgic desire to visit my favourite kebab shop.
It is only fair to explain that Hackney has a very large turkish (and near eastern) population, and whilst you can get the minced goop lollipop that everyone knows as a doner kebab, if you know where to go, you can do so much better. My favourite place is called 'Anatolya' and is on Mare Street, I was slightly dismayed to discover that they have moved a couple of doors down from where they used to be, but reassured that all was familiar when I went inside. Same chiller counter with skewers of chicken or lamb, quail, mackeral, kidneys and sweetbreads, and further into the room a low counter with a charcoal fire burning in it.
I wasn't proposing to have a big meal, but rather a delicious snack, always ordered as
'turkish pizza' , this is a thin flatbread about 18" x 12" spread with a thin layer of spicy tomato sauce, swiftly heated over the charcoal, and then filled with a salad selection and a spoonful of chilli sauce. The ends are elegantly tucked in and the whole thing is then rolled up into a sausage and wrapped in paper. One then consumes it by tearing off the paper in a spiral and munching your way down; at the risk of sounding like a food writer; delicious and nutricious, and containing more healthy vegetables than Jamie Oliver. The price of this meal? £1.20, bargain...
Eating in is even better, and it's hard to spend a lot of money. This is not a kebab shop that stays open late, however, so don't expect it to be open at 2.00 in the morning, there's plenty of other places that will be, and many of them will be good, personally I'd hit the 24 hour beigel bakery in Brick Lane, but sometimes only a kebab will do.
How to save the world, Part 1
Another opening of another show... we did three fairly painless performances and pulled it all down. I think it went quite well, despite having a set designer on-board, the only structural set element was a 4' disc of white painted MDF which I had demanded (to project an image, either of the moon, or of the earth seen from space). Still, it worked for me.
Before this work is unleashed on the paying public though, I think there's a bit more to be done. Still, the word is that it's to be staged in Ipswich in June (Suffolk readers take note!), presumably at the Wolsey, although I couldn't say for certain.
The basic premise of the piece is that of an anglo-chinese person who gets involved with far-left politics, discovers their inherently self-serving and racist underbelly, and escapes to modern china as an asylum seeker, whereupon she is co-opted onto the space programme.
Although there was a strong chinese element amongst the production team, I was the only person who was actually born in China, so I was the chinese-anglo amongst anglo-chinese. I found a lot of what was being described in the play curiously familiar, probably because it was describing a past that, even though I have a place in it, is not part of my actual experience (I was still a babe in arms when we left China). Not only that, but the far-left stuff was all kicking off when I was at school, and I was very familiar with the rhetoric; curiously nostalgic really.
On the first performance, the revolutionary chapter of Lavender Hill trotskyites (I made that up, they were hand-knitted old people with beards*, woolly socks and open toed sandals) packed out the venue, and, given the opportunity to have a post-show discussion with performer, director et al, didn't they give it their best shot. We all wanted to crawl away, sleep, or go to the bar etc, but this mob hadn't been invited to open their gobs in public for decades, and they would sooner die than fail to exercise their democratic right to free speech, and exercise it they did. We'd still be in there if they hadn't rung the bell in the bar.
*I think in this case, rather as in Terry Pratchett, the beard is a transgender issue.
Hooray!
Nazi apologist gets what's coming to him, why am I not sad?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4733820.stmnormal service will be resumed shortly.
Update:
It would seem that Mr Irving hasn't been aprised of the concept of
'when you're in a hole, stop digging', not judging by his interviews post-sentencing at any rate. Let's be grateful for free speech, he seems incapable of controlling his.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4757506.stmThe world of serious holocaust historians seems to have made what to me is a somewhat perverse decision, which is to decry the extremity of the sentence. I know full well that I have no knowledge of the politics underlying this (I am probably about as ayrian as it is possible to be in this textured island), but any hero of the propagators of hate deserves what he gets in my opinion. It's too damn easy to sit in a cosy arm-chair in Britain or the US and pontificate about numbers; these are dead people we are talking about, and all over Eastern Europe there are forests full of unopened graves.
I have serious problems with what the state of Israel has become, but when you look at the backstory it's not hard to understand. In the meantime I fully support Mr Irving's (I have no idea if he actually has a qualification*) right to express his views, and even more so, I'd encourage him to continue to express them in countries which operate a less tolerant attitude than mine. Full marks to Austria (which hasn't an unblemished record: ref: Georg Heider/Kurt Waldheim etc), for enforcing its law, null points to Mr Irving for having the arrogance to think he could mince in and address a neo-nazi student rally and get away with it.
He said in his interview on the BBC that his cell was comfortable, he was able to write without interruption, and was served three hot meals a day, long may this continue.
*subsequent researches indicate that Mr Irving studied physics at Imperial College, and his elder brother is a muslim and chairman of Wiltshire Racial Equality Council. I cannot find any reference to further education.
Juicy quote from the Lipstadt libel trial (1998):
Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.I rest my case...
Oh, and I'll stop going on about it too.
Procrastination.
I have a show going into Battersea Arts Centre tomorrow morning, part of a try-out weekend for new theatre pieces. I've been to rehearsals, the script is finalised and the design is clear and crystal in my mind. So why is it that I can't quite force myself to get the plan and the paperwork finished? I've had this before (I call it Lighters Block, sorry), back in the days when I used to draw my plans on huge sheets of paper, the first pencil mark was sometimes the most difficult to do. I once stared at a sheet of A0 for ten days without touching it, it was only until my friend the psychologist came round and sat on my bed talking to me about nothing in particular that I was sufficiently distracted to get on with the drawing.
These days a designer is expected to produce reams of paperwork, not just a plan, but elevations, sections and housekeeping (colour cutting lists, lantern lists, flying weights and so on). Some directors even expect a simulation of the images, all this can be done, but takes time and ultimately takes you away from the creative process (which is why even the cheapest lighting designer will often employ an assistant).
In the case of
'Taikonaut', tomorrows exercise, I have finished the plan, and just need to tidy up the paperwork before the fit-up. This is a try-out and I don't see why it shouldn't be the same for me.
Love is in the air?
A return trip to Columbia Road with the Nottingham correspondent today, to take more pics, and record more sounds for our entry in the Micro O festival. I'm thinking of calling my sound bit 'fiver' because that's all you hear;
'free bunches loverly lilies a fiver' and so on.
As you might expect, they were shamelessly exploiting the impending Valentines day, not wholly successfully as it was raining and cold. Added value, in this case consisted of a red plastic heart inserted into a bunch of roses. There were some notable and slightly obscene alternatives (see Ill.), the succulent does not look real, although I assure you it is, and the other flower is a waterlily. To quote from Mr Dury; "
a seasoned up hyena could not have been more obscener" (
'Plaistow Patricia', should you wish to know). Still, these things are all in the mind of the beholder.
Yesterdays culinary activity consisted mostly of making a Polish Baked Cheesecake (or Sernik), much internet research had ensued, Grandma Krysia's recipe was rejected on the grounds that she looked way too fierce and included mashed potatos. The recipe that we used has turned out very well, even though I made half quantities I still have enough of the stuff to pave a small street. Time to test the theory of good neighbourlyness I guess.
nature notes
One of the great pleasures of my bed, apart from comfort and warmth, of course is that it is more or less level with the ground outside my window. I sleep without drawing the blind down, so when I wake, I can see straight down the garden, or more commonly up into the air. This morning when I awoke I could see something green bouncing energetically about on the grass, after I had crawled out of bed and out my contact lenses in, it was still there. I had though it might be a parakeet, but it is so uncharacteristic for them to be on the ground, and the way it was moving was all wrong, more like a crow or a magpie.
It obligingly came closer, and it immediately became clear that it was a green woodpecker, and it was having a good old root in the lawn in search of worms and such like. I've seen them in Richmond Park before now, but never in my back garden. A very handsome bird, already in its breeding plumage, and looking for love I guess. There was no sign of another one, unfortunately.
On another note, the primroses are starting to flower in the grass, and there are a few snowdrops out as well, not much else to report otherwise, it's still cold here.
Update, the woodpecker is still hanging around, it obviously like whatever it's finding in the grass, unfortunately I scared it away when I went out to cut some wood (how ruritanian is that).
An everyday story of tin mining folk
Following encouragement from the Nottingham correspondent, I thought I might present the true and awful history of an early show, it is experiences like this one that have made me the scarred and cynical travesty of a human being that I am now. Worse even than '
Ghetto' (see below), this was a truly life-changing experience.
I can't remember how I came to be asked to design the show, it would be a contact through another show or some such. Whatever the reason, I got a phone call from a complete stranger asking if I'd be interested in working on a new project, to be produced through a mixed rehearsal process of improvisation and poetry devised through the rehearsal process. These days, if you were to make this offer to me I would be inclined to treat it like an unsolicited offer to buy double-glazing, but perhaps with less sympathy.
Anyway, in my naivety, I expressed an interest, and after a meeting with the very sincere director, and the brooding, sullen and very, very sincere poet, I still said yes.
The piece was partly based on a poem called
'Blood on St Johns Eve' and partly on the biography of a bolivian political activist called
Domitilla Barios de Chungara (you can possibly tell how this is seared into my brain twenty years on!), and dealt with the political and sexual oppression in that country in the preceding decades. So far, so bad, but things were about to take a downward spiral, it turned out that the director and the poet (did I mention that they were both very sincere?) were both heavy duty Christians and they cast as performers an existing theatre company; a christian TIE (Theatre in Education) company in fact. The four girls (I use the term advisedly), were just out of college, and being of a like persuasion, were keen to spread the word of the lord to anybody who was prepared to listen. The first job offered to recent acting graduates is often TIE, it offers few rewards and fewer pleasures, but in those days it was a fast track to an equity card, a situation mercilessly exploited by the cynical fascists who run TIE companies.
As I was keen, and naive, I did go to rehearsals, and whilst the whole procedure was a bit mysterious, there was evidence of progress. This was a touring show, I wasn't going to tour with it, so I had only to produce a design for the first venue and the production week, and my duties thereafter were simply to produce a lighting plan for each venue. The venue for the production week was a campus theatre in Bedford, and not very well equipped, either with sentient beings or with lights. Somehow I produced a design, and we advanced into the production week.
Generally I find the production week the most exciting part of a show, it is when your abstract ideas are translated into something more concrete, and you get a chance to see the images that have been floating around in your mind in a three dimensional space.
Up to this point I have avoided mentioning the set designer, he was very nice (but not especially sincere), in fact he lived in his own weird floaty world of pretty shiny things and swagged fabric. It was hard to have a conversation with him because his attention would wander off after a very short time. Soon enough I realised that I was pretty much on my own as far as my design was concerned.
The first version of the set consisted of a sort of tepee made out of bamboo and white linen, with a trail of artificial red roses like a trickle of blood running down it. This was set at the back of a circular stage, delineated by stones, and filled with a four inch thick layer of peat. As I said earlier, the subject of the play was political, sexual and religious oppression, and although stylised, the violence depicted was by implication graphic and brutal. The scene in which the heroine aborts her 8 month old foetus after being beaten with rifle butts for example, involved a lot of stylised movements and red balloons filled with red-dyed water being burst over the unfortunate performer (this was in february). The director had decided that the unfortunate foetus should be represented by a raw chicken, and I in my capacity as the only person with both feet attached to the ground was despatched to purchase one.
As a frugal north-briton I went for the cheapest option, which was a frozen chicken from Sainsbury, this, unfortunately, was still frozen when, in the lighting session, we came to its big moment. Also, it was up at the back of the hall in the lighting box with me, rather than on the props table, so, when the call went out for the chicken I rather foolishly lobbed it from the back of the hall down onto the stage; the sight of a still wrapped, semi-hard chicken flying through the air and landing with a soggy squelch in the even soggier peat, set the tone for the rest of that rehearsal session. Even worse, the revelation of the aborted feotus was laden with significance, and had many significant cues associated with its appearance, unfortunately each one of these cues reduced me to hysterical laughter for several minutes as the chicken was manipulated by the hapless performers. How we got to the end, if in fact we ever did, remains a mystery to me.
By the opening night the peat was resembling a marsh, the performers were slipping and falling constantly, and even in february, with the encouragement of the stage lights perhaps, things were starting to grow.
It had become like
'Come Mudwrestling' except that the participants were not busty beauties, but rather skinny and bewildered young women. Each time they appeared on stage you could see the question;
'what am I doing here?' telegraphed across their faces.
The chicken was cut after the opening night, and replaced with a bunch of grapes. The show toured for seven months (SEVEN MONTHS!) including a three week stint at the Edinburgh Festival, where we performed in a church with a carpetted floor and our peat circle was banned. After the show was over, the girls unanimously and simutaneously gave up the stage, and married their respective very nice and sincere boyfriends, getting down to the serious business of making babies at the earliest possible opportunity. As far as I am aware, none of them has ever appeared on a stage again. I was approached by the director with a view to working on another show, but for some reason I was doing my hair that year. More theatrical horror stories to come...
floating hotel, tenerife part the third.
The reason for the above title was that the predominant building material used on the island (which is volcanic, have you been paying attention? there'll be questions later) is pumice, and it seemed a perfectly reasonable theory that in the event of rising tides the entire building would rise up and float away.
I'll swiftly bring my saga of dodgy electrics to a conclusion and then get on to more interesting things. It wasn't until the end of my first evening rigging, (started at 3.00 pm, ground to a halt at 4.00 am, back in at 8.00 am through to 5.00 am the next day since you asked), that I discovered that we weren't in fact plumbed into the hotel's electrics at all. When we walked in to the building on our arrival, we had noticed a large generator, perched on the main road, by a bus stop, some considerable distance from the Hotel. We thought nothing of it, there was a lot of construction work going on (spanish hotel, building work...are they ever finished or do they grow like topsy?), someone jokingly said;
'I hope that's not for us' and it passed from our thoughts. So, when I told them to power down at the end of the evening, and my rudimentary spanish roughly translated the reply as
'I'll go and turn the generator off then' I began to smell a rat.
Two points here, it is illegal in the UK to use dual voltage installations (ie; ones where you are using two different sources of power), this is because there could potentially be a voltage difference between the generator power and the house power that is greater than the normal voltage differences, and is thus more dangerous. Secondly, if you are spending £300.000+ on a party the last thing you want to do is rely on a single generator, there should always be two (one as a back up).
The next day, of course, there was a problem, we were, as already mentioned, back in at 8.00. Nobody had thought to tell us who had the key to the genny, or indeed where it was. We dismissed the previously seen one, on the grounds that it was outside the hotel and a long way away. When, an hour and a half later, we got the keyholder to come in, he took me to check it out. Guess what, the lone genny up on the hillside was ours, and it was a ten minute walk from the venue (which is terrific if there's a problem). The solution offered by the venue was to have a golf buggy waiting outside for me throughout the evening, a promise they did not keep, by the way, as I checked.
Oh well, we got away with it, lessons were learned (by us at least), and no serious accidents occurred. I walked into a swimming pool whilst on the phone, and we had a couple of comic accidents with spanish ladders deciding to fold up with people on them, and we all had very sore feet and calves by the end. Let's hope they choose somewhere flatter next year.
Incidentally, the above images are of one of the flocks of parrots that zoom about shrieking and a strelitzia alba in bloom. There are also many pestiferous collared doves squeaking about the place. I came back to Ealing to be greeted with flocks of parakeets, collared doves and a flat full of bananas and strelitzia, isn't nature wonderful. It's a lot colder though.
fun and laughter, tenerife part deux.
Well, I'm back, largely unscathed apart from blistered feet. The hotel we were working in covers some 15 acres horizontally, and about 500' vertically, and, because it was designed to be a magical place where the moneyed stroll about, having a leisurely dip in the multitude of swimming pools carved from the volcanic rock on which the building is perched, there are no direct routes to anywhere. To get from our production office to the room where the main event was being set up took at least ten minutes, involved six cutesy bridges, two rustic staircases, several flights of stone staircases and a lift. It is just as well that this was all good for us, because it was pretty terrible otherwise.
I had fairly typical spanish electrics to contend with, as the pictures can demonstrate, the taped up cable hanging out of the ceiling (and with water running over it intermittently) is a 125 amp three phase supply (the equivalent of six houses) and wasn't in the end used by me, the other, is the back of a socket that I did use. We had no end of trouble with the technical equipment, there was nothing on the island, and bringing our own equipment over from the UK was vetoed on grounds of cost. As it turned out, bringing our own from the UK would have been a cheaper option, lighting hire cost 18.000.00 euros (for one day), and we'd have expected to pay about £3000.00 for the same gear over here for a week, and we would have been able to pick the equipment we wanted rather than the equipment that they were prepared to rent us.
Having said that, the lighting company were very nice, and their equipment was mostly very good, they were being stitched up by the intermediary facilitator just as much as we were.
On the other hand it was nice to wander around and see bananas growing and strelitzia alba too, oh, hang on, that's here in my flat. There were some seriously good specimens growing over there, the local hooch appears to be some sort of banana spirit, I've bought some, but I'm not sure I have the courage to open it, let alone drink it.
The gig went quite well, Lemar and his band were quite nice, although musically not to my taste, they did disconcert me somewhat (I was standing offstage) by having a group hug and prayer together before they went on stage, each to their own I guess. The gala dinner was not entirely a success either, the combination of the spanish taste for meat that is still twitching, and car dealers from Beckenham was not a happy one, and I watched many dozens of uneaten tenderloin steaks heading back to the servery. Mine was lovely, and the grilled langoustines that preceded it were lovely too, although I think the absinthe sauce was a bit unneccessary.
That's all for now, more later...
Travels with a roll of felt, tenerife part 1
Felt brings you smiles, makes friends and is guaranteed to break the ice at parties, even my humble bolt of Audi corporate mushroom colour brought me an introduction to a lonely accountant, an invitation to bring jesus into my life and a smile from an obvious foreigner. All this before I even got onto the Gatwick express.
That in itself was a strange experience, not especially busy, but there was a line of attendants ushering us along the platform and as far away from the first class carriages as possible. Was it so obvious that we were all pondscum, or was my roll of felt a dead giveaway to the cognoscenti?
Many moons ago there was a Morecambe and Wise show which reduced me to helpless giggles, the guest star (Glenda Jackson I think) announced, deadpan;
'I have a long felt want,' and Eric did a doubletake. I feel as though I've been travelling with a long felt unwant, but hey, that's all behind me now.
Leaving London by train, the city looked particularly dreary for a February morning, grey and dirty, even the graffitti is monochrome. The only splashes of colour are the garish liveries of the various train companies, it's too early for crocus or daffodils, except for my neighbours garden, where his daffs have been out for about ten days. Mine have barely poked their heads above the parapet yet.
Tabula rasa; it's quite exciting to have a blank page in front of you (this blog is being written longhand on the train), it could be a metaphor for this weekend, I'm off to a country I know little or nothing about, to do a show that I know nothing about, and ultimately it's not a problem. I'm working for a company that once sent me to drive a truck to an unknown destination in Northern Ireland with 37p in cash and a company bank card with no pin number, so, no need to worry then.
Flight was dull, I was wedged into a section of blokey blokes who were determined to party, inflight food was apricot themed and pretty unidentifiable. I suspect the flight back might be more of an adventure, we are all on the same flight, and it doesn't get in until past midnight. I didn't watch the film, but a couple of credits caught my eye at the end; one for
'inflatable crowds' and another for
'inflatable crowds co-ordinator', nice work if you can get it.
that's all for now, I might actually have to do some work soon, if our kit makes it through customs.
