ON MAKING THEATRE: January 2010

Saturday, 30 January 2010

i was powerful lazy and comfortable

Image: E.W. Kemble

SIGNS

And Jim said you musn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a bee-hive, and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.

Chapter VIII | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain | 1885

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

holocaust memorial day

The End and the Beginning

After every war

someone has to tidy up.

Things won't pick

themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove

the rubble to the roadsides

so the carts loaded with corpses

can get by.

Someone has to trudge

through sludge and ashes,

through the sofa springs,

the shards of glass,

the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post

to prop the wall,

someone has to glaze the window,

set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,

and it takes years.

All the cameras have gone

to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,

the railroad stations, too.

Shirtsleeves will be rolled

to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,

still remembers how it was.

Someone else listens, nodding

his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby

who'll find all that

a little boring.

From time to time someone still must

dig up a rusted argument

from underneath a bush

and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew

what this was all about

must make way for those

who know little.

And less than that.

And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there

in the grass that covers up

the causes and effects

with a cornstalk in his teeth,

gawking at clouds.

Wislawa Szymborska

translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

www.hmd.org.uk

Sunday, 24 January 2010

live

Photo: Manuel Ulls-Coules

London International Mime Festival

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Circus Klezmer (Spain)

Saturday, 23 January 2010

a pole | a chair | a stone

London International Mime Festival

Lindbury Studio Theatre | Royal Opera House

O Ultimo Momento (Portugal/France)

Contigo (with you)

Performer: Joao Paulo Dos Santos

Direction: Rui Horta | Joao Paulo Dos Santos

Choreography | Lighitng: Rui Horta

Music: Tiago Cerquiera | Victor Joaquim

Costume: Pedro Pereira Dos Santos

Q: What makes you want to go up there?

A: So that I can come down here...

my five

National Portrait Gallery | London

Meta Scheltes | To Love | September 2008

Sean Raggett | Queen's Woods | April 2009

Spencer Murphy | Dawn, Bewl Water | January 2009

Paul Floyd Blake | Rosie Bancroft 2008 | October 2008 | First Prize

Reinier Gerritsen | Wall Street Subway #22 | June 2009

sunday sunday | galileo | ground control

David Bowie | by David Bebbington | 1969

Memories of the 70's: aged 4-13 yrs...

Sunday afternoons: DAD

David Bowie
T-Rex
Fleetwood Mac
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd
The Kinks
The Moody Blues

Saturday afternoons: MUM

Cilla Black
Petula Clark
Marianne Faithfull
Mary Hopkin
Cliff Richard
Sandie Shaw
Dusty Springfield

But no (memories of) Beatles, Dylan, Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Jagger or Who...

again: just in time...

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON

Friday, 22 January 2010

fireworks & shooting stars

Photo: Philippe Cibille

London International Mime Festival

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Collectif Petit Travers (France)

Pan-Pot

by and with:

Nicolas Mathis, Julien Clément, Denis Fargeton

Pianist: Aline Piboule

Music by: Bach, Beethoven, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Liszt, Mozart...

Lighting Design: Arno Veyrat

Graphics | Visuals: Aude Poirot

Technical: Julien Durat

balletic
hypnotic
graceful
harmonious
precise
gallactic
the shooting stars !
the firework display !
playful
witty
mannequined
suited
spectacular
fast

Perhaps one of the most peaceful pieces of theatre...

www.collectpetittravers.org

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

free time radical: multi-coloured (insects)

"think about the things that weren't right before"

"was the spray coming up or the rain coming down"

"we have got to do the silence"

"this insect: it was multi-coloured"

"you know my story: am I doing it right"

"the landscape is changing"

The Frequency D'ici
Free Time Radical
Jersey Arts Centre: St. James
Friday 15 January 2010

the rules
being the best
winning
what is the game
doing it right
to congratulate
to punish
remembering
the loss
the irrational
the chaos
is it real
is the flood real

Free Time Radical is a domestic story of epic proportions. Two guys share a flat in a converted church in a big metropolis. They are from different parts of the world, united by a shared passion for the extreme sport of surfing. Outside the flat, the world is flooding dramatically. Whole continents are disappearing under water, populations are being wiped out, society is drowning, and riots are breaking out. In the midst of the chaos we see two men change and survive.

Tom Frankland, Sébastien Lawson and Jamie Wood: thank you...

Monday, 18 January 2010

pick up the kids | feed the cat

TODAY

05.45 réveille
06.15 breakfast: juice, tea and cereal
06.41 bus to train station
07.34 train to airport
09.00 check in for flight #1
09.05 passport control #1
09.15 tea and e-mails #1
10.50 flight due to depart
11.50 flight due to land
12.30 told to sit in any seat

- like being back in India
12.50 flight departs #1

- plane circles island for 3 hours: fog

- a lot of huffing and puffing by passengers

- great drama for 3 hours

15.50 flight lands back at Gatwick
16.00 overheard phone conversations:

- "pick up the kids can you feed the cat I really love you"
16.15 escorted back landside #1
16.30 check in for flight #2

- offer-up walnut whip to passenger to raise blood sugar levels
16.45 check-in for flight #2
17.00 tea and salad (better for the heart) and e-mails #2
17.30 passport control #2

- flight due to depart at: 19.35
18.00 flight cancelled: fog
18.05 escorted back landside #2
18.30 booked onto second flight for tomorrow

- given hotel voucher
19.00 check-in to hotel
19.15 planned to head into London to party
19.30 abort plan
21.00 blog

TOMORROW

05.30 réveille
06.00 breakfast: hotel breakfast
07.00 check-in for flight #3
07.15 passport control #3
08.45 fight due to depart
09.45 flight due to land

but it was a great weekend (see posts below) and today was good for re-reading huck finn...

Sunday, 17 January 2010

secret mice | blind weapons

Neil Andrew as The German Soldier
Francesca Duncan as Lulu
Secret Weapons 2005
Liberation 60 Theatre-in-Education Project
Jersey Arts Centre

Amidst three exhibitions, two films, Huckleberry Finn adventures, free time radicals, and planes, trains and automobiles this weekend - and it has only been 48 hours - by far the most poignant experience, and after 57/58 years in the making, was a glimpse at Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP to see Neil Andrew as Giles Ralston.

I now know why plays have to change...
I now know why theatre changes...

Lian Furness as Samuel
Sara Kewly as The Teacher

I know why Neil Andrew is a performer you would
Wish in your company:
he can make you believe it is snowing
he did this last night and

he did this five years ago...

"It's like Occupation jam our Dad says: it's the Occupation malady!"
Lulu | Secret Weapons | by Daniel Austin | 2005

Photography: Bruce Liron

what will you do if I die

www.theroad-movie.com

GO SEE IT

RA - some galileo inspirations...

Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt

Black Rain | 2009

HD video

Data courtesy of the Heliospheric Imager, STEREO, RAL

Antti Laitinen

It's My Island I | 2007

Diasec mounted c-type print

Nettie Horn, London

Mona Hatoum

Hot Spot | 2006

Stainless steel and neon tube

David Roberts Collection, London

Yao Lu

Spring in the City | 2009

C-type print

Red Mansion Foundation

Tracey Moffatt

Doomed | 2007

DVD | Edited by Gary Hillberg

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

Saturday, 16 January 2010

RA - just in time...

HENRI GAUDIER-BRZESKA (1891-1915)

Self-portrait | 1913

Pastel | 51.7 x 36.5 cm

Southampton City Art Gallery

Redstone Dancer | c.1913

Red Mansfield stone | 60 x 35 x 40 cm

Tate

Crouching Fawn | 1913

Bath stone | 30.4 x 25.3 cm

Ivor Braka Ltd. London

JACOB EPSTEIN (1880-1959)

Rock Drill | 1913-15

Polyester resin, metal, wood | 205 x 141.5 cm

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

(reconstruction by Ken Cook and Ann Christopher RA,

after the dismantled original, 1973-74)

The unfinished Rock Drill in Epstein's studio | c.1913

Portrait of Iris Beerbohm Tree | 1915

Bronze | 34.8 x 29 x 22.8 cm

Tate

ERIC GILL (1882-1940)

Ecstasy | 1910-11

Portland stone | 137.2 x 45.7 x 22.8 cm

Tate

I think an artist is not a person who makes things beautiful, but simply one who deliberately makes things as well as he can -- whether he is a clock-maker or picture-painter; because machine-made things are very much better when no "designer" has had anything to do with them -- when they are just plain serviceable things. I think that if you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself. ERIC GILL