Zollverein
This weeks’ destination of choice has been the no-longer beating heart of the Ruhr valley, I’ve been working on the outskirts of Essen and staying in Gelsenkirchen. Our venue is a disused coal mine and coking plant that at on point was one of the engines of the third Reich.
The site was abandoned quite a few years ago, and probably because it isn’t really near to anywhere, was simply left to decay. At some point, an enlightened person got up on his hind legs and said; ‘I know, why don’t we use the site for cultural purposes instead of just letting it rot?’ The result was Zollverein; on site there are design museums, working artists and all sorts, all connected by, and using the existing industrial brick buildings. To put this into some sort of context, the site occupies an area larger than Central Park in New York; it is some eighty kilometres by thirty. It is now strangely restful, the sort of peace that comes after a natural disaster. Now silver birch trees colonise the abandoned rail tracks, rabbits abound and the distant shrieking of over-excited children has replaced what must in its day have been a hellish environment; coal trucks continually rumbling and clanking overhead on the chain driven tracks, vast machines transferring coal from one area to another, the coking plant belching fumes and sparks, and everything covered in a fine black dust from the coal. It is a testament to natures’ ability to recover, although I suspect that parts of the land hereabouts are still quite toxic.
PACT (The centre for choreographic research and performance), where we are performing occupies the showers for the No.2 mine shaft, 2000 men at a time were able to shower, and store their clothes in the room that is now the main performance space. Our only gripe is that the venue has remarkably few social facilities (with this company this means bars), there is a bar, but it only opens for the performances, and a café which closes at 5.00 on the dot. The option of returning to Gelsenkirchen, a fifteen minute tram ride, and reputedly the poorest city in Germany, does not enthral. This is ‘gastarbeiter’ country, there are more Turks and Turkish kebab shops here than I have seen anywhere else, I think it would be possible to have a kebab three times a day for a week and not revisit the same shop. Otherwise, the town is unremarkable, clean, and deserted after nine in the evening. There are myriad small bars occupied by what are obviously ex-miners, who sit, drink and chat for much of the day.
This will be our last night tonight, in a strange sort of way I will be sorry to leave, I find industrial decay curiously attractive, and the fact that it is being put to good use is heartening. This of course is in the area that was largely flattened by the allied bombing, and the very visible lack of many old buildings is a testament to its brutal efficiency. That they managed to miss a site the size of Zollverein which must have been working flat out and constantly pumping smoke into the air, is a complete mystery to me.
tidying up...
While I've been tidying my flat, I have had cause to indulge in a number of displacement activities, one of the consequences being that I have finally unloaded the pictures off my phone. So in no particular order:
Item 1: an example of the perils of using Babelfish to translate your peerless prose, this text was from a Westphalian hotel menu (on the outskirts of Nurnburg) where we ate, the average age of the guests was in the nineties, and judging by their carriage and demeanour (even when using a zimmer frame), I would beg to suggest they were ex-servicemen. A time when 'don't mention the war' had real meaning, the food was very nice by the way (click on the picture to make it larger).
Item 2: Truckers shoes; every fuel stop patronised by truck drivers in Europe features large displays of these special clogs, in a variety of anodyne colours. Many truckers wear them too, when I got the Zeebrugge ferry over, I was stuck behind a huge truck from Finland, and I was amused to note that the driver had a special compartment behind the cab just for shoes. Mind you, having noted the IKEA obsession with shoe racks, maybe this is a scandinavian thing?
Item 3: The Anglepoises of Rotterdam (not to be confused with the Umbrellas of Cherbourg); during a somewhat fraught journey into the centre of Rotterdam. trying to find the theatre, we passed this square, with its enormous anglepoises. My colleague, who has played the Schouwburg at least a dozen times, ventured the opinion that they looked vaguely familiar, and that the theatre was nearby. It became evident later that I had actually used the theatre's get-in ramp to turn my truck round on, before setting off again. It was some considerable time later, when he had taken me to a semi-demolished Holiday Inn, that I took matters into my own hands, and started to follow the fingerposts, which brought me back onto anglepoise square, with the theatre occupying one side. The anglepoises, incidentally can be controlled and adjusted by any passerby, I was struck by the notion of replacing the rather insipid lights with giant mirror balls for the festive season, don't quite know how this would go down with the worthy burghers of Rotterdam.
Item 4: The innate creativity of the passerby, it happened to be bins day and I was rather struck by this little street theatre installation round the corner from the Rotterdam Schouwburg.
That's all for now folks, more fluff from the wacky world of European touring later. Apologies if you have seen this posting come and go a few times, Blogger has become part of Google, and they've made formatting and picture editing even more opaque than it was previously, so, gentle reader, if it looks a little scabby that is why.
there is such a thing as a free lunch
Many apologies for the lack of posts recently, the last leg of the tour involved dragging the show up and down Holland before diving across to Hungary for a couple of days. This meant that I had twenty-four consecutive working days without a day off, and after a couple of weeks of this I was beginning to lose the will to live.
Now I've had a few days off, and more importantly done my washing, I am back on the road, this time in Belgium. I commented previously about the working conditions in Dutch theatres, well I have to report that if the Kunstcentrum Vooruit is anything to go by the theatres are even better over here; not only do they provide lunch for their staff and any visitors (nothing grand; fresh soup, bread, cold meats and cheese, with fresh fruit to follow), but the crew room has a coffee machine, a fridge stuffed with beer, wine and coke. Today, as there were only a few of us here, they supplied an enormous platter of chocolates, jelly sweets etc and yet more fresh fruit.
I'm looking forward to the Kaaitheater in Brussels, as we have our own apartments on the sixth floor of the theatre, I could get used to Belgium.
