LucyLovesCircus

Friday 11 September 2015

Chapter 103: 35 Amici Drive and Friends


"Hi, would you like to come to our meeting tonight to save 35 Amici Drive?" asked a friendly face, handing me a leaflet. I looked blank. A meeting? Afterwards? I thought I'd come to a show at the Lyric, a short one at that. Had I walked into a fundraising evening to save a local community? Another cause to support. I was exhausted, emotionally spent, nothing left to give. Compassion fatigue you call it, right? I raised a barrier and retreated, too tired to engage, too concerned that I should be putting the kids to bed, not leaving it to my husband, again. It took me a moment to register this was the welcome committee in character, all part of the show "35 Amici Drive" at the Lyric, in Hammersmith.

I didn't know much about the show, you see, or the company. I had only heard about it that morning, when Facebook alerted me to the fact that a couple of friends where going - Joli Vyann's Jan Patzke and Olivia Quayle (Click here for Joli Vyann's show Stateless). I didn't have time to email them, or check which night they were going, so it was a real surprise to find that actually they were in it - circus everywhere - I should have known! I knew that Turtle Key Arts were the producers, and had heard about them through Ockham's Razor. Another familiar face was Jenny Sealey (click here for post on Extraordinary Bodies' "Weighting"). We had never met, but I recognised Jenny from the discussion panel at the press event for Weighting, and very much admire the work of Graeae's theatre company. We ended up sitting together, and it felt like the wheel had come full circle. Weighting had been on my mind recently as the BBC released a reportage about it last week, which I then sent on to the Circus Debere Berhan, an Ethiopian circus company, the first one in Africa to integrate disabled performers. We had just met on Twitter and I wondered if they knew their sister company Extraordinary Bodies, the partnership between Diverse City and Cirque Bijou. Circus Debere's director Teklu Ashagir in turn sent me the following video and told me more about Cargo, their collaboration with a Swedish theatre tracking the story of 14 illegal Ethiopian immigrants, and showing it from an EU perspective. Talk about zeitgeist.




"35 Amici Drive" is the knock-out production celebrating 35 years of the Amici theatre dance company. The company was founded by Wolfgang Stange, integrating disabled and able-bodied performers and the show is a celebration of the empowerment and embodiment of diversity and community spirit. It is energetic, joyful, moving and life-affirming, with a fantastic musical score - and musicians! - to boot.  If my words fail to do it justice here it is simply that I am in a hurry to get the word out and give you a chance to go and see it as well.  

The story centres round the inhabitants of 35 Amici Drive on the Candy Estate, where life is not so sweet. A so-called "regeneration" project by Eastlawn Incorporated, approved by the fictitious  Streathlee Green Borough Council, headed up by the divinely insouciant local MP Mrs Hatcher, is about to evict the residents, and their individual histories and herstories are interwoven into the battle to stay. 

The mischievous Mr Loki, living up to his name, introduces us to both residents on one side and councillors and developers on the other, and leads all a merry dance. It took me a while (until I heard the voice) to cotton onto the fact that the star of the fabulous cabaret-style set Ebony Rose was actually a man and there was a touching duet with Ebony's friend that when interrupted segues into a dramatic stick dance fight, staving off the developers. What struck me about that scene was the way every single member of the cast was drawn into the performance, and that it flowed with such ease, belying the complexity of logistics that must have been taken into consideration.  

There was a tender duet between a mother and son, with the twist that her love is overpowering rather than empowering, and it had me in floods of tears. There was a spectacular violence in the acrobatics representing the tale of domestic abuse, with such ease and dexterity in balletic movement in the way Suzi is ripped from her wheelchair and flung around, that it is hard to believe her legs don't work properly. This is thanks again to the ingenuity of the choreography and strength of her partnership with circus duo Joli Vyann (see below). Four sisters danced with colourful scarves with a grace and joy reminiscent of dancers at a Holi festival, and the masquerade of homophobia that battered Ebony Rose was incredibly powerful. The final tango to Ich Bin ein Berliner, an anthem that celebrates democracy and self-governance was just genius, and the dispatch of Mrs Hatcher gratifyingly dramatic. 

There were other moments I loved too - the Matilda of a girl with her single mother, a regular Mrs Wormwood, the tea lady swigging the cups back, the twilight twinkly elderly Scottish couple, Rosie the painter, gliding and creating works of art, the Amici Arms pub landlord whose wheelchair became a novel set, the Spanish-speaking political refugee, whose family has been disappeared, so topical. 

As you can see residents of 35 Amici Drive have all suffered from discrimination because, in some shape or form they do not "fit the mould", but the support they give each other is movingly beautiful to behold. Fiction and reality blurs, because the love the company has for each other on stage is tangible. Of course "Amici" is a word rooted in friendship.  The thing is, as an able-bodied person who lived as a student in Spain in a L'Arche community with disabled people, I find an emotional honesty and directness there that cuts the crap. Through the frustrations and the laughter, you become as one, with one, and that's what true com-union means. Family. So I was delighted later to meet, among others,  Mr Loki, who is in fact called Francis, like my son. He told me very directly there can only be one Francis and a lively debate ensued.  It all felt very familiar. I'd love them to meet one day. In an after-word later, Wolfgang Stange talked about how the idea came to him when the Lyric, that is home to them, went under refurbishment, and that Amici theatre company is telling its own story through the show, after a fashion, is clear. Congratulations Amici on your 35 years of success, and here's to the future building on solid foundations.

35 Amici Drive has two shows left, tonight 11 and 12 September. 7.30pm at the Lyric. Catch it will you can. 

Monday 7 September 2015

Chapter 102: Women in Circus



"Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak."
Rosalind,  As You Like It


Last night I was back at the Edinburgh Fringe, watching a show called "Robbed of Sleep" in which half a dozen clowns hijacked a lorry, then turned their guns on the audience, shooting out ribbons, party poppers and festival banners. The oldest trick in the book, and we laughed. It was a dream, obviously, and I don't need my subconscious to warn me that circus is stealing all my time. But right now so much is happening, I must speak.


Oxford was on my radar last week. Keziah Serrau has just taken STRIKE! up to the Oxford Playhouse. Unfamiliar with the work, I had seen Serrau's heart-stopping use of a suspended wooden platform, hanging either horizontally or sliding to vertical depending on the balance of performers, at a presentation at the National Circus for Canvas 2015 (pictured left - for more about Canvas click here) and would love to see this production:

"STRIKE! is directed by rising star Keziah Serreau and devised by highly skilled performers using innovative aerial structures, lively humour and a Kafka-esque setting to blur boundaries between circus and theatre. Expect daredevil stunts with a fiery tale of uprising as the cast of five play office workers, buried (quite literally) under an ever-increasing workload. But when they decide they aren’t going to take it anymore, they bend rules- and their bodies- to escape."   See the Oxford Mail - Curtain Raisers, and the BBC Radio Oxford interview (click here) which is available til 1st October.

I emailed friends in Oxford immediately, only to be told, "actually we are at the Playhouse already on Wednesday, the night before, to see some sort of cross between juggling and ballet". Aha! I thought, Gandini Juggling must be up in town too, with Ephemeral Architectures (Chapter 59 - click here). The friends contacted me later to say how much they had been impressed by the sheer athleticism of the choreography and the beautiful music. So close, but narrowly missing them, I went to Oxford myself on Friday night, with my husband to his alma mater Lady Margaret Hall, for a promenade production of As You Like It* (pictured right) through the college gardens. Set in occupied France, I caught a glimpse of circus in a ring, albeit a wrestling tumble, an onion-juggling Touchstone and some stellar clowning. It's on until 12th September, and well worth the journey. 



While travelling up to Oxford, browsing circus channels, I came across a video of Lyn Gardner in conversation with young critics and bloggers**. Find your niche, she advised them, find something that no-one else is writing about, and name-checked Kate Kavanagh, of The Circus Diaries. It was terrific to hear that recognition for both Kate's work and her platform. Here are two writers at the vangard of circus criticism, one a journalist, the other a blogger, and reviewer for on-line periodicals. To point out that they are women could be taken as a sexist observation. What does gender matter in the job they do? Well, hugely for me. Maybe because seeing the clip was so closely followed by a performance of the gender-bending As You Like It at a college that was formerly all-women, reminding me of my own all-female college in Cambridge (New Hall, now Murray Edwards - see Chapter 43: Cambridge Circus - click here). Both colleges seek to redress an inherent, institutionalised sexism in society, that is still rife. It may not come as a surprise to hear that I came across Sexism in the City: the lads invited to strippers clubs on "bonding" evenings with managers, secret pay grades, partners asking why you don't sleep your way to the top. But I have seen discrimination at work in academia as well, and heard Jude Kelly, director of the Southbank Centre, talk about it in the Arts - read her here marking Women of the World Festival.  And yet, despite being warned of the "jocks and jerks" around, I find the community of circus pretty egalitarian and I wonder if growing out of the margins of society, and still, to a certain extent, on the fringes, accounts for its inclusivity? There is a discussion there, waiting to happen.

Photo: www.maddiemcgowan.com
And happen it will on 14th October in Bristol. Ausform, in partnership with Circomedia, as part of the Bristol Circus City Festival (see www.bristolcircuscity.com) is hosting VOLT: Women in Circus. An evening that begins at 7.30pm, it will host a discussion on women in circus and a double-bill of work in progress performances from Maddie McGowan and Grania Pickard, the descriptions below taken direct from the website: VOLT: Women in Circus (click here)

"He Ain't Heavy from Grania Pickard (see project video below***) depicts an autobiographical narrative using a swinging trapeze and a puppet to give you an insight into Grania's relationship with her autistic brother. After an intensive month of research and development this will be the first showing of this exciting new work at Volt. This process has sparked a burgeoning collaboration with Alexander Hamilton-Ayres who has composed an original soundtrack for the piece. Grania hopes to raise awareness about families caring for a loved one with autism or special needs by sharing her own experiences with you. In his own words, her brother is both a 'rat bag' and 'the best.'

Grandma's Hands from Maddie McGowan: 
“Two people, at the start and at the end of their lives, 
bonded through blood...” 
The relationship between grandparents and grandchildren can be tender, delicate, and funny, its significance changing with time. Through aerial rope, text, movement and recorded conversations, Grandma’s Hands explores themes of biological inheritance, ageing, and what we can learn from each other across generations."

On Twitter at the weekend @Ausform invited suggestions as to whom should be on the panel for the evening. Were they talking circus artists, producers, programmers, promoters, writers, directors? I wondered out loud. A whole flurry of names immediately sprang to mind, and I have only been moving in circus circles for a year. That is incredibly encouraging. Fresh from my first ever 10k run round Kew Gardens (the Richmond Running Fest) with half a dozen girlfriends yesterday, I am in the zone for celebrating women supporting women. I think of the girlfriends who came to a circus experience afternoon at National Circus, and my fabulous friend Anne who signed up, with me, to evening classes there on the back of it (see Chapters 1, 2 and 3 - click here). It's Anne's birthday today, happy days! And I give thanks for the men who support us. So here's to momentum, moving forward and celebrating, circus style.




"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." (Anaïs Nin)

*Creation Theatre's As You Like It is on in the gardens of Lady Margaret Hall until 12th September. 

** Lyn Gardner on Blogging and Theatre to Young Critics



***Grania Pickard is looking for support. See this project video for He Ain't Heavy