Chapter 37: Space to Rehearse - A Life Less Simple

"They're apparently such delicate, fragile creatures, these petunias, but they have a terrible resistance."

Tennessee Williams, "The Case of the Crushed Petunias"

This week I went with a couple of friends back to Jackson's Lane to see a one-act piece, a cabaret musical, called "The Liberation of Colette Simple".  Staging the musical was the brainchild of the unstoppable force that is Nathalie Carrington, who owned the title role.  It is based on a Tennesse Williams'  "The Case of a Crushed Petunias", billed as a lyrical fantasty, where an act of vandalism shocks Mrs Simple out of her straightforward Stepford existence and propels her beyond the safety of her shop's four shop and double row of petunias to Life outside in all its rich complexities.  We hope.  The ending is ambivalent.   For Lynn Gardner's review in The Guardian of "this plucky experiment... that brings together a multiplicity of distinctive voices" (and, I would add, accents) click here.


This is Spatfeather Theatre's first production, and the fact that Jacksons Lane is supporting this fledgeling company, doesn't surprise me. Over summer its "Transmission" programme (click here) has supported the development of the works-in-progress of six circus theatre companies, giving them the space of a week-long residency, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have seen four of them in action. I have seen StumbleDance Circus explore the psychology of climate change, Circumference examine the intimacy and fragility of relationships, Inverted look at the calculation of space as a real balancing act and You Need Me, children's storytellers, combining puppetry and a triplet on trapeze to chart the fortunes of a disappearing circus.  It is incredibly exciting to see a project in development, and to hear the artists discuss their ideas and describe its potential. As luck would have it, there was a question and answer session in the bar following Colette Simple as well.  

These are experiences I value as a stay-at-home mother with a thirst for conversation beyond pushchairs and playgrounds.  Although the playground is where it all starts, a fact that was brought home to me this week when my son was describing a game of hoops he and some mates had been inventing as they went along.   Working out the rules together, exploring the boundaries, and pushing them, as free spirits do. A chance conversation on Twitter with poet Paul Cree brought home this point. 

Check out Paul Cree on soundcloud (click here)

I had started following Paul recently when a tour of the Battersea Arts Centre had reminded me of the superb 1-to-1 theatre London Stories there last year. Paul was one of about 30 performers who had a two-minute story.  His rhythmic pace transported me to a Millwall match, and finally, football, the vibe, I got it. So looking him up on Twitter I was chuffed to see (if gutted to miss) that he has been in a double-bill A Tale from the Bedsit and 3 Mile Radius with Talia Randall at RichMix. Talia (listen to her on soundcloud click here) came onto my radar back in spring through her collaboration with aerial rope specialist Maddie McGowan funnily enough, now part of the Stumble project, in a much-lauded performance called "Expectation" at the Roundhouse's CircusFest in Spring.

Talia Randall and Maddie McGowan in Expectation at CircusFest, The Roundhouse

Anyway,  Paul's mention on Twitter of a boy on a bus busy writing his homework, with a "Go on son", made me think of encouraging my own son scribbling away, while also prompting my counter-recollection of skiving homework and forging my mother's signature to sign it off while on my school bus.   I was eventually caught out by a fiercely strong Southern Irish nun, Sr Jospeph-Clare.  Who luckily also had a sense of humour.  I was 7 or 8 at the time. Still, being at a convent school there was a lingering touch of guilt involved, the vestiges of which have now been evaporated thanks to Paul's unwitting absolution, remarking that it's the ones that don't try it (on) that worry him.  And that's the point about life, isn't it?  Skiving, surviving, pushing buttons, challenging limits, seeing what works and, when you fall flat on your face, dusting yourself off and learning from it.  

And to be honest, this week, I've felt like a crushed petunia, petal.  At my father-in-law's funeral at the weekend, I found that each new mourning carries the remembrance and accumulative weight of previous losses.  And I've been seeing death everywhere, the hearse in rehearse even.  It's like the  first-time pregnant Mum, who will suddenly find herself clocking all the varieties of pushchairs in the supermarket aislse, or a Harry Potter muggle starting Hogwarts who finds a whole new world, hitherto invisible, revealing itself. But like the petunias, I too have this "terrible resistance". My vantablack (click here) mood has found expression and renewed my harp-playing. Ironically, focussing on a piece called "Habanera Gris" ("Grey Habanera") by Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, my mood is lightening. Together my son and I have taken up the 100 day challenge, practicing our own musical instrument every day, for an achievable five minutes at least.  And what happens when those 100 days are up?  Well, we'll see where it gets us, and then start all over again...  

This is ultimately what I'm aiming for:

Chapter 36: Back at Circus Space? Good Grief!

After the school run this morning, kids deposited at various locations, I stumbled out of the car dropping the remnants of my coffee everywhere, a baby's bottle, a satin negligee and half a packet of smoked salmon.  I wasn't expecting a welcoming committee of dustbin men on the doorstep.   Heaven knows what they made of the sight.  What can you do but laugh?  One of them picked up the cup, binned it, nudged me  and said "Maybe tired, but doing fine." Or was that damn fine?! Welcome to my world. 

It's been one of those weeks where you just keep your head above water and do your best to keep your sense of humour.  It started on a high, a mother and daughter trip to Chessington (yes, that's how I get my kicks) with dear friends, where the object of the exercise seemed to get as wet as possible. And we got soaked. The highlight, rollercoasters aside, was an encounter feeding the lorakeets who descended immediately on me, maybe identifying a fellow aerialist - birds of a feather?! Not often I get a load of birds fighting over me anyway.   It was uncanny. Then we got home to the news that my father-in-law had died, and suddenly I was reminded that birds have ever been regarded as messengers of the underworld, and it seemed somehow fitting.

"Balada de la Estrella" by Gabriela Mistral
(see translation below)

Alzheimer's is a bugger, there are no two ways about it.  In many ways you make your goodbyes as soon as the sentence is passed, and I am not grieving from the release from that indignity.  But I am mourning the gentle widower who, learning that his son had asked for my hand, took me aside one Easter, and gave me the bracelet he had once given to his wife for their anniversary. We shared a love Spanish and had many a conversation on Latin American poetry, music and Buenos Aires - a city I have yet to visit, but was one of his favourite haunts.

We all find our ways to cope too.  Mine has not been writing, funnily enough, but engaging in activities where my mind can't wander, and has to stay in the moment.  That is where circus comes into its own, and I am so glad term-time started up again at Circus Space this week, with so many friendly faces. I signed up for the beginners course again before finding out I'd been passed for the next stage, so am now doing two classes back-to-back in the evening. I love the familiarity of repeating the course where you rotate round rope, static and flying trapeze, and as luck would have it, I'm starting on my favourite rotation, flying. There is something about a swinging trapeze that lifts the spirit high.   Somehow even the fear stepping off the platform has simply evaporated, and my confidence has soared as a result.  But, keeping it real and stepping out of the comfort zone, I am also doing the next level class on static as well. Nobody warned me there would be rope (my nemesis) to climb too!  That's a good thing though.  There is pain involved, but I'm finding a certain release in moving on. 

 StarSong 

by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral

translation found on google books (click here)

Star, I'm sad.

Tell me if you ever 

saw so sad a soul.

"I know one sadder."

Star, I'm all alone. 

Tell my soul if there are

any others like her.

"Yes" sings the star.

Look how I'm crying.

What woman ever wore

such a cloak of tears?

"One weeps more."

Tell me if you know her,

the lonely one, the griever,

tell me, is she near?

"It's I, the dream-weaver

I whose light

has turned to tears."

Chapter 34: Boylexe - Man, I Feel Like a Woman ...

  

About last night...

... I think you get the picture.  Boylexe, and their sister company Burlexe, had come onto my Twitter radar over the past couple of months, thanks to the creation of LucyLovesCircus. Writing blogs that puts the personal on show, there was shared common ground, and the more I explored both their sites, the more excited I became about their brand of narrative burlesque and the use of the body to lay bare intimate storytelling.  And also, at the end of the day, I was looking forward to a night out having a giggle. That, for me, is at the heart of it. Burlesque literally means laughable after all (see The Polelogue) and the joke is always on us.   A space to tease (out) our desires, fantasies and foibles, and serve it up with a dash of sauce. 

So it was on Friday night I found myself sitting in a booth with half a dozen old friends,  enjoying the warm up act (pictured left), waiting for the show to begin. We're birds of a feather, I had joked with  Boylexe on Twitter, though not all of us are birds, but I’m sure we can lend them a feather or two.  That, there, is the art of tease, came the reply.  

There is something about a booth that secretes voyeurism,  Rear Window, springs to mind, courtesy of Hitched Cock in this instance.   Hidden in the shadows of the Shadow Lounge, we were in pole position for a bit of fun and frivolity, and having heard that the Edinburgh Fringe was one giant dick this year, quite frankly I was on catch up.  And that, there is the key to male burlesque at its peak. The (strip)tease and the tongue in cheek. 

Revenge is a dish best served up kohled.  

Master of Ceremonies for the evening was Reuben Kaye (pictured), bringing shades of Berlin Cabaret and Eddie Izzard to bear in inimitable Reubenesque style. The M.C.'s warning to rule-breakers, establishing the boundaries for audience interaction and respect for the artistes, clearly smacked of a challenge to certain inebriated ladies in the audience. These he deftly handled by, for instance, slapping  a tax on Miss Behaviour there, draining her rosé, "the coke of the middle classes" - he certainly had the nose for a vintage joke.  The timing of his delivery was tight as a butt of (in?) whisky and kept the show ticking along like a Clockwork Orange, and those who couldn't keep up, "google it". 

The black feather collar Reuben Kaye wore reminded me of the one I had seen recently on his fellow Australian, Dusty Limits. It also brought back memories of The Alchemic Order’s immersive promenade through the life of Dorian Gray last year.  The play is back again at the moment and I highly recommend:  click here.  They possess the chic-bones, verbal acuity and dry wit I’m Wilde about, and faux crow is so this season.  

River Hawkins, last year, in "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

The acts themselves were a variety of cabaret, and a frolic of names to bandy around: steamy Randolph Hott,  dreamy Esquire de Lune, The gentlemanly Mighty Moustache, iced cool Phil InGud, Viva la Diva Meth, and dear, put-upon Bobby Dee'vah.  Together they celebrated manhood in all its incarnations (with the emphasis on carne), from bulging biceps and the muscular masculine to boyish charm and the ultra-outré-feminine. There were tricks and turns, and monologues, some of which could have benefited from a little further stripping, enlisting the compere as copy editor, but credit to the performers who pulled them off with the same ease as their clothes. 

One of my favourites was The Mighty Moustache, the proper strong-man - you should see what happens when he gets to grips with a frying pan. So it was a real highlight of the evening to bump into him outside later and discover that he lives for the circus and is a pro in chinese pole and flying trapeze.  Sadly there was too much wrapping round the scaffolding poles opposite for him to demonstrate the perfect flag (it's all in the grip, again), but my goodness, Boylexe, what a catcher!  

The mix of cocktales served up by Boylexe was just the ticket - we laughed, we shared, we connected.  Afterwards, as recommended, we went to Balans, where my order of a porn star received a gratifyingly wry smile from the waiter. He must have heard that a thousand times before, but I'm learning it's all in the delivery. The espresso martinis meanwhile propelled us into the early hours, and then we de-camped, as it were, back to my kitchen table.  Well, that's what you do at our age. And maybe it is time to grow up.   I took issue the other day with being referred to as Madame, when I still feel like a young Mademoiselle.   In reality, going on for a decade now as a housewife and mother has turned me from la coquette to la moquette (moi?  a doormat? cue violin!), but give me the space, now and again, to don the smokey eyes and sequinned jumper, tousle that hair, and I feel fabulesque again.  So, about last night ...  guys and dolls, embrace your inner Madame Mojo and let rip, it's all in the best possible taste.  And company.   Cheers Boylexe!

 and Bottoms Up!

Chapter 32: The reality of BBC1's Tumble

It's Sunday morning, an ungodly hour, and I've just joined a group of beginners for my first ever windsurfing lesson.  The wind whips up blinding sand and we overhear the club owner wonder how safe conditions are to take us out that morning.  Secretly I'm willing them to call the whole thing off. But they don't, and we're committed. Once in, we all take to it like a duck... to snowboarding.  Our instructor's radio bleeps.  "How's it going?" crackles the radio.  "Wobbly" was the deflated response. I've never heard weather described as wobbly.

But we had one thing in our favour. Determination. Three out of four of us were Mums (the fourth was the teenage son), carving out this precious space for ourselves. Our instructor later confessed that as soon as she saw us in the water, she decided to call it quits after 20 minutes, but we lasted the full two hours, and we're incredibly grateful to her for bearing with us.  We got up on the board, and we managed a few turns into the bargain.  And even more tumbles.

And as these things do, probably because I'm in the zone right now learning aerial at Circus Space (National Centre for Circus Arts), talk turned to Tumble, the night before, the reality show in Strictly Dancing format on primetime BBC1 where celebrities try their hands at gymnastics and circus skills.   It turned out that my windsurfing buddy is a former gymnast, and as we are both London Mums who love a bit of Strictly, we swapped notes.  She felt it didn't have enough of the sport of pure gymnastics, and I was disappointed not to see more of the art of circus.  Would either of us have tuned in if we didn't have some background connection? Probably not.  

Will we stay tuned in?  Well, I will because it's billed as family entertainment and I'm certainly enjoying watching it with my kids.  Going by their reactions ("A.w.e.s.o.m.e.!!! ... Can you do that Mum?!" Er, no, Strictly speaking!), and those of their friends, the programme encourages the next generation to roll up and sign up. Especially when they include stunningly impressive and aspirational acts like Beth Tweddle's with her stars of the future, in a routine that was a beautiful balancing act of gymnastics with a touch of Cirque. My son's friend, another Beth, aged 8, said:

"I think it's amazing how people can do acrobatics like that when I really want to do them myself".

And it would be great if there were performances from groups like the London Youth Circus in the line-up:

The BBC have cottoned onto the fact is that circus is a zeitgeist and it's catching. After their summer workshop at Airborne Circus, the kids can now spot a mermaid on a hoop, turn swings into trapezes, and quickly made new friends swapping juggling tricks at family-friendly Camp Bestival.  And only this afternoon, my husband, who allegedly doesn't "do" circus, has been caught red-handed at the bottom of the garden practicing with their diabolo... in reality, I want to see more of that.

And funnily enough, there is an abandoned fortress for sale on the Thames.  Fort Boyard on silks? Now there's an idea ...

Source: The Independent

Chapter 31: bread&circuses: Wot? No Fish!!

I found this fridge magnet at the weekend at Fishbourne Roman Palace, circa (the) A27 and bought it in honour of Danny Braverman, of theatre company bread&circuses.  His one-man show Wot?  No Fish!! was on at the Battersea Arts Centre recently and blew me away.

Let me start by saying I'm not a theatre critic.  State the bleeding obvious Luce, I hear you say. The thing is I don't  attempt to review shows not for want of trying, but because every time I try my hand my writing bombs.  I know, because my husband starts to yawn. Instead I enjoy writing virtual thank you letters to performers for shows where I've emerged, renewed. And on occasion I buy them a fridge magnet (Danny, if you send me your address, it's yours!).

When I first heard about the show, it was the name bread&circuses that attracted.  So it's a figure of speech,  describing the opium of the masses way back when in Roman times.  But as I've been recently rather evangelical (kinder folk refer to it as "enthusiastic") about circus as a current zeitgeist, and the Battersea Arts Centre is my local theatre, I thought it was meant to be.

Danny Braverman inherited, through his mother, shoeboxes of doodles on the back of old paypackets that his great-uncle Ab (Abraham Solomons) a shoemaker, would pen each week to his beloved wife Celie. Over decades.  What emerges is the portrait of a Jewish family in the East End, their joys, heartaches and aspirations (pictured right).

See the trailer below. 

At the start of the performance, we are greeted with fishballs.  Real, home-made ones. Are there any other kind?!  Each member of the audience, takes one, dips it in the sauce should they wish and passes the box it on.  This very act seems to bring us into communion with the story before Danny has even begun.   Danny begins with a dream of his ancestors, a hilarious anecdote in the telling, which brings him to the realisation that life is neither a straight line nor a matter of going round in circles.  Rather, his(family)story is a helix, where certain spiral patterns map themselves onto events to come.  It's like viewing current events with a sense of deja-vu on the periphery.

And there are connecting instances between the past and the future. Danny ends up, by sheer joss, living in the house where his Great-Aunt Celie had grown up.  I later find out from my mother,  who like Danny's mother is the repository of family history, that a cousin had once ended up in a small terraced house in Liverpool, that had been home to her great-grandmother a century before.   Danny would not be surprised at such coincidences, or the fact that people invariably want to share their own stories with him afterwards.  Because that's what his show does, it connects.  It encourages each member of the audience to chime in with their own personal experience or recollection.   And thats the beauty of it.

And it has been ever thus.  The storyteller in society is the guardian of cultural memory.  Not all storytellers are writers, but given it is an art rooted in oral tradition, with stories passed from generation to generation, it strikes me that all performance is storytelling.  And Danny Braverman is a master storyteller.

When we bumped into Danny on the staircase afterwards, another member of the audience was asking him if he still writes political theatre.  Before I could help myself, I chimed in "But the personal is political." Jeez, I haven't said that since university. Or, to put it another way, Danny Braverman is a micro-historian.  He is one who "focusses [his] attention on people who can illuminate the socio-historical context of the period from ground level", a definition by Julia Barclay-Morton in her article  (click here) on writing about the "lived history" of her own grandmothers. 

There is an extract of a poem called Ancestral Poverty that I read recently which brings this home.  It is by a Cuban poet, Georgina Herrera, currently sponsored by a growing publishing house Cubanabooks in the US, which gives a voice to Cuban women writers by publishing them in translation. As a Spanish speaker who has spent time on the Island I obviously support this.  But also because it ties into my world view that the greater the diversity of voices we listen to, the more we engage in life around us, and that maybe the myth of the destruction of the tower of Babel is in essence a challenge to reconstruct our humanity. So I read:

We were so poor in my house.

So much so 

there was never enough for portraits;

family faces and events

were preserved through conversations.

It is this universal need to bear witness to life and hand down to future generations that drives storytelling, and justifies the odd blog into the bargain. Ultimately, for me, bread&circuses is food for the soul,  and manna from heaven.  Get your basket at the ready.

Chapter 30: Matisse and the Art of Circus

Here's where I'm going with this blog: circus for me is a state of mind. It denotes flexibility, an ability to explore beyond boundaries and an openness to new ideas. And that's what I find interesting about the current exhibition of Henri Matisse, "The Cut-Outs", at the Tate Modern, where Matisse engages with circus, dance and all that jazz, innovative disciplines that play with form.

from the book "Henri's Scissors" by Jeanette Winter

I find Matisse's life story illustrates that point as much as his work itself. It was his mother's gift of a box of paints while he was recovering from an appendicitis that drew Matisse away from a career in law and set him on a creative path. Many years later, again crippled by sickness, Matisse turned to a pair of scissors and developed the cut-outs. He was also inspired one day to take a  long pole and tie a piece of chalk to it to design the faces of his grandchildren on the ceiling, who “looked down on him and saw his dreams”. That creative, bendy thinking when presented with an obstacle reminds me of the time my mother, balancing on a stepladder for hours, turned the stains on the kitchen ceiling (from a leaking basin upstairs) into a fresco of a koala sitting on a branch, munching on some eucalyptus leaves. So when she asks me “Lucy, this circus thing, where does it all come from?” I think you just have to laugh. Maybe it’s genetic. 

I like to think the kids will inherit that creative gene too. Only they aren't allowed to go to art galleries to foster it apparently, according to Turner Prize-winner Jake Chapman see link here. To get a rise out of the chattering classes he has declared, stop press!!!, that taking kids to look at pictures is a total waste of time. Well, of course it is.  That's the whole point, honey. If you were stuck at home with three kids all day, all summer long, you'd find yourself becoming pretty creative with ways to waste a bit of time too. We saw Matisse this time round, before that Lichtenstein, and Hockney the time before that. Each time round the kids have chosen a print or some colouring that they enjoy, and off they go. Of course the finer points are lost, but it's time out together that gives us a direction. We've not yet gone to an exhibition by YBAs such as the Chapman brothers though - I wonder what the kids would make of it? Would the Brothers Grimm enchant? Or would they think it was a load of old Pollock?!

Dragging the kids to the Tate Modern again...

Chapter 29: Gandini Juggling at Camp Bestival

And, now, come to this spot

Where the spotlight is hot

And you'll see in the spotlight

A Juggling Jott

Who can juggle some stuff

You might think he could not...

Dr Seuss, "If I ran the Circus"

... Like what? 

Clubs and balls, 

hoops, a few

ideas, expectations 

Thing One and Thing Two. 

Do you give a jott for juggling? If not, then what?  Circus is the new religion you know, the tent is temple, and Gandini Juggling is a slice of heaven. Say festival, think fiesta, think party, right?  Originally though, a Spanish fiesta was a day off to celebrate a patron saint, a festival was a religious holiday.  

As a child, I read Paolo de Tomie's story of "The Clown of God" about a juggler in medieval Italy who goes from festival to festival, astonishing, delighting, awe-inspiring.  Gradually he ages, his clothes are in tatters, his balls have lost their gleam, he has lost his edge.  Our juggler is shown kindness by a couple of Franciscan monks, and chances upon a church, where he finds a statue of the Christ child looking sad. That won't do.  One last time he gets out his rainbow of balls and juggles higher and higher, creating beauty in the moment. And then, his work done, he dies.  The child is smiling.  Laughter is sacred.

So I am delighted that churches have become performance spaces for circus companies - Jacksons Lane in Highgate, hello! And then I see a picture on Twitter recently of Sean Gandini and partner juggling their way through a sermon.  I assume at first, being self-styled atheist jugglers, they are at the  London Sunday Assembly, which serves "the best bits of church but with no religion".  But no, on closer inspection it appears to be a bona fide Sunday Service.  And I've since learned that there are a number of church services around that use circus acts to convey that sense of wonder and mystery.  

So I love that the first time I see Gandini Juggling live is at Camp Bestival, the family-friendly festival at Lulworth Castle, Dorset, with my three minibeasts in tow, and they are LAUGHING their heads off.

The children are a bit skeptical at first about going to see a juggling act. What's so great about that? They are used to me juggling three balls, mildly amusing, but within their reach - and the whole point of circus is that it is fantastical, it should make your jaw drop and wonder "how on earth?"

But then the six Gandini jugglers walk onto Castle Stage and they are spellbound.  Within seconds. There is no fuss to the costumes, they are like slim-fitting overalls, utilitarian, and yet pristine white, an utterly impractical colour to wear to a festival. I like that edge, and the cut-away sections that give a touch of bare-faced chic to the ensemble.  This was a short introduction to the full show.  It was like one of Willy Wonker's gobstoppers - the children savoured the first course, actually more an amuse-bouche with those smiles, and were hungry for more.  

The main banquet was held in The Greatest Tent on Earth.  What a great name to roll up to.  There were balls, hoops, over-sized globes that toyed with perspective, and glowing orbs that they presented to the children in wonder, stepping down onto the small platform in front of the stage.  My kids wondered if the orbs were made of fireflies, and whether the fireflies have enough oxygen inside the balls to breathe? Enough to last out the act at least, I reassured them ...

All the sequences were choreographed to music remixed by Rob da Bank. It was an eclectic score that encompassed upbeat and bouncy, dreamy and classical, and, well, mixed it all up.  Harmoniously. There was an undercurrent of steady crescendo that culminated in a light display at the end of swirling LED-lit clubs that changed colour to the beat of the music.  It was stunningly beautiful.  We puzzled later over how that was done. Buttons on the clubs used by the jugglers?  No, too much to co-ordinate. Pre-programmed?  Remote-controlled?  We had fun trying to work it out, and not sure I really want to know the answer. 

When I asked the kids what they favourite part was, they said "The End".  They were not being facetious. They meant the very end, when a child was picked from the audience and asked to stand very still while clubs shaved past his head.  They loved seeing one of their own involved, and so composed, what a star.  It brought the jaw-dropping fantastical into their reality.  Bravo!

The few images and clips I have really don't do Gandini Juggling justice.  This is just a taster.  Still, I hope it makes you lick your lips ... and then go see them live.  

And smile.