Chapter 179: On Shakespeare and Sonnets: Yes! Because...

"Puck and Titania rolled into one" (Ira Seidenstein)

Photo credit: Jane Hobson (www.janehobson.com - click here)

Yes! Because...

After an exhausting world tour, and not a little jet-lagged Dame June Bloom, semi-retired Shakespearean scholar and actor extraordinaire, touches down in London this April, ready to give one of her renowned lectures on performing the Bard. Using Shakespeare as her Touchstone Yes! Because... will take you on the rocky road trip of Dame June's life as touring actor, daughter and mother, accompanied by a finely tuned sense of the ridiculous, and a ukulele for good measure for measure...

Dame June is the creation of Australian-born Flloyd Kennedy, a seasoned actor who really has performed all over the world, including London, Brisbane, Glasgow, New York, Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Threshold Festival in Liverpool. Flloyd has two grown-up children and two grandchildren, and has been living in Scotland, on and off, since the 1970s. Training as an actor originally, with a passion for musical theatre and Shakespeare, Flloyd came into comedy and clowning later in life, through meeting Cirque de Soleil and Slava's Snowshow clown Ira Seidenstein (see blog post  Clowning Around - click here  on the workshop I went on with Ira), who directed the show. Dame June, who likes nothing more than a sonnet and a song, draws on all of that, as well as Flloyd's experience of family life. I am looking forward to seeing Dame June in full bloom next month, and in the meantime had a few questions for Flloyd:

When did you start clowning around, and how did you meet Ira?

Master clown Ira Seidenstein came into my life around 14 years ago, when he arrived in Brisbane to do a PhD on Actor Training and I was a member of the fledgling Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble while also studying at the University of Queensland. They invited Ira to run a workshop and then direct a production of Pericles. I was in my late 50s, thinking my chance at an acting career was well past, and I was astonished to find that he was able to engender such unspeakable joy in me with his clown approach to performance. 

I’ve continued to work with Ira ever since then, he is my best friend and my mentor.  I had no ambition to be ‘a clown’ as such, just a better actor (we call ourselves actors in Australia, there’s no genderisation of the profession). But over the years I’ve gradually accepted Ira’s insistence that I am, indeed, a clown. And I’ve slowly but surely recognised that I always have been, from a very small child.  All that messing about as a kid that got me into trouble, all the various attempts over the years to set up little companies so that I could muck about on stage with some pals, all my ongoing resistance to directors who give line readings, and block – Oh how I detest blocking!

Where did Dame June come from?

I took a slight detour around 2007 and decided to do a PhD myself, to research and write about how the actor’s voice actually functions in the process of performing, especially performing Shakespeare. But I couldn’t let go of my life as a theatre maker, so I insisted on having practice as research as part of it. Dame June entered my life pretty much as Ira had done, a happy coincidence. I needed a creative, theatrical way to bring my thesis to life in performance, and after struggling with a total blank mind for days, weeks, months, the idea came to me of Doing what I was talking about. Being a character who actually demonstrated in a fictional scenario what the actor’s voice sounds like when it is working effectively, and when it’s not – or at least when the actor is communicating her own insecurities and fears, rather than the character’s. 

When the PhD was finally done and dusted, I decided to take the advice of friends and colleagues who just loved the character, Dame June Bloom, and created a solo performance piece for her that could be easily transported. It still had to be entertaining, informative about some aspect of Shakespearean performance, and also bring more aspects of June to the fore.  I had a bunch of songs and poems I’d written over the years, kept in a folder in the bottom of a drawer, so I dug them out and lo and behold, they fitted June to a T!

When did you start learning ukulele?

Flloyd Kennedy at the Brisbane Festival

My father taught me three chords on the ukulele when I was seven, and I never forgot them.  I picked them up again three years ago, when I realised Dame June wanted to actually sing her songs, and I’ve been working hard ever since to extend those three chords. We’re up to about eight, not bad, eh?

Has Dame June ever crossed paths with that other Grande Dame, Edna?! 

Dame June has met a lot of famous people in her lifetime – she’s actually famous, a legend in her own mind, but I don’t believe Dame Edna features among them. She’s worked with Stanley Baxter though, and Rikki Fulton, two of Scotland’s most glorious clowns.

Who makes you laugh? 

My grand-dog, a Burmese mountain dog Maisie Blue, she's hilarious! I like actors who have something of the variety show about them, a quality you very often find that music hall quality in Scottish comic actors; the very dry humour of Scot Susan Calmen who you very often see on news quiz panels, and Billy Connolly's rough and sophisticated humour. I love watching Sheila Hancock, comedians Maureen Lipman, Joyce Grenfell, and of course Lucille Ball. 

What drives you to perform?

There have been times in my life when I've backed away from performing, but then I found myself as a nanny holding the children's hands watching from the wings, or as a dresser backstage, thinking "I could do that!" I think Anthony Hopkins put it so well when he spoke about performing and said "It's not something you do, it's something you are."

Yes! Because... is at The Bread And Roses Theatre (nearest tube Clapham Common on Northern Line) 4-8 April. Visit www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/yes-because (click here) to book tickets or phone 020 8050 3025.

Postscript: for the wonderful review of opening night by theatre critic Siân Rowland of London Pub Theatres click here

Chapter 178: Hikapee Theatre's Moonfall

Production photo credits: Robin Boot Photography (www.robinboot.com)

On the card I gave my youngest for her 5th birthday last week, there was a button to make the rocket light up and sound a blast, but I'd been saving the card for so long, the battery had died. No matter. We used our imagination. Love fuels all sorts of adventures, and one of the things I love about this circus journey is that I can take the kids along for the ride. So it was a complete joy to take the girls to Jacksons Lane last Sunday to see Hikapee Theatre's Moonfall, the story of a trip to the moon, and back, starring Bryony Livesey and Edd Casey. My 8 year old had last seen Bryony in a class at Flying Fantastic, while I'd last seen Edd as a rope aerialist in NoFit State's Bianco on the Southbank, so it was fascinating for us to see them in a completely different incarnation. 

We were enchanted even before the performance began by the strings of light-bulbs hanging down the backdrop, twinkling away. The bespoke music score by Finn Anderson was also instrumental in setting the scene and, whether sounding an upbeat, pragmatic march or ethereal mellifluence, always hit the right note.

Bryony was a tomboy of a princess getting up to all sorts of tricks on a rope that hung down in the centre of her circle of green, joined by her erstwhile friend the prince. The play between the two was a joy to watch - there was an easy chemistry there that made for engaging characters and a seamless choreography in their acrobatics. We loved the aerial sequences and the innovative use of the rope as a vehicle for children's games whether as hiding place, skipping rope or swing, but also were huge fans of their clowning around. The girls fell about laughing when Edd morphed into the Queen Mum in her apron (never a drag!), and particularly identified with the daughter's resistance to having her hair brushed ("though you are not quite so dramatic when you brush ours, Mum").

However, while the prince was free to come and go as he pleased ("that's just not fair Mum!"), the princess was zipped up into a froth of apricot silk and marooned on her island, getting increasingly frustrated until she realised that she had the power to change the status quo. By making a break for the moon and her lunatic dream, she pushed past all sorts of invisible barriers that had been holding her back in the process. Her departure was a wake up call for the prince, who went in search of her and had his own odyssey. 

The aerial hoop of a moon was used to lyrical effect and for more wonderful acrobatics that drew delighted gasps from the audience. The use of circus skills brought home the message that the sky really is the limit, the one lesson I want my children to take with them in life. The girls gave Moonfall five bright shining stars, thank you Hikapee Theatre.



Moonfall is a work in progress and Hikapee Theatre will be taking it down to Great Yarmouth this summer for further development in a week's residency at Seachange Arts. Click here to see the video trailer from the original scratch version. 

Chapter 176: Lumo Company's Lola

All photo credits: Chantal Guevara of  Cloud Dance Festival (click here)

The Place to be on Saturday night was in Euston, home to the contemporary dance festival Resolution 2017. On the last night of the festival, which had showcased over 70 different experimental pieces, I went to see tightwire artist Hanna Moisala and actor Heidi Niemi who together have formed the contemporary circus and physical theatre Lumo Company. They are both from Finland, which informs the emotive landscape of a piece that is darkly strange and fiercely beautiful. This first work in progress sharing of Lola, presented by Jacksons Lane, was a shockingly funny and tenderly moving exploration of memory loss and the resulting isolation through the depiction of the symbiotic relationship between the two women. 

Heidi was the body losing her mind, expletives slipped out and language slipped away, the functionality of objects escaped her, and her frustration was palpable. A piece of string, an aide-memoire, was slurped up like a noodle of spaghetti for starters, chewed up with animal gusto, while a musical instrument was potentially the main course. The plasticity of Heidi's face, her blank "chewing the cud" stare and the absurdity of her actions captured both the comedy and pathos of her condition, as anyone who has had a loved one suffering from any form of dementia would recognise. Hanna was the memory reasserting herself, punishingly so.  Stapling notes to a memory board, there was a collective gasp from the audience as Hanna turned and then stapled the final one to Heidi's bare bottom. Maybe there is a case for shock tactics resuscitating memory, it will certainly be a graphic moment I will never forget. 

There were moments of unspeakable tenderness and comfort between them as well, including my favourite acrobalance movement when Heidi took a running leap into Hanna's arms and in the catch wrapped herself round her horizontally. The use of a skipping rope was clever, doubling as a whip and then used for a beautifully choregraphed acro-skipping duet. I found echoes here in the aesthetic and dynamics of shibari, the Japanese bondage art form that inspired Hanna's solo piece Wiredo. 

I loved the visual progression in the work from string, to rope, to finally tightwire. Where better to display the precarious nature of memory loss? As Hanna stepped out on the wire, she incarnated the zen focus that we all need in our lives if we want to hold onto reality. It was a solo piece, and yet Heidi was present as an observer, watching her mind at work, and at one point standing under the wire her head became Hanna's balancing point. The audience sat in rapt concentration, as though willing Hanna to safety, but the sheer grace of a high splits kick at one point broke through our studied silence to elicit a huge round of applause. It was a breath-taking finale to a piece that is a study in tension, testifying to both the power of mind over body, and its fragility. 

Chapter 175: Jair Ramirez' Sugarman

All photo credits: Lidia Crisafulli

Resolution at The Place is a contemporary dance festival, now in its 27th year, that showcases short pieces of around twenty minutes long, experimenting with form and pushing boundaries. A great platform then for artists fusing contemporary circus and dance in their performance. 

I went on Thursday to see Jair Ramirez' Sugarman, a piece in which he grapples with the claustrophobia of everyday urban working life and overcomes stumbling blocks in his path in his own inimitable style. Sugarman has evolved from Rise Above (click here), presented at Jacksons Lane Hangwire last year, where Jair emerged from a culture of rubbish and addiction in his native Colombia, set to the theme tune from Narcos, while the year before Jair won the prestigious Circus Maximus contest for circus talent with an act  (click here) where he spun out of a floor of powder to soar to new heights. 

The name Sugarman refers to any addiction, whether it be coke, alcohol, cigarettes or the killer sugar, used to escape the daily grind. For Sugarman, Jair's outside eye was Lucho Guzman, a Colombian clown, also one of the Clowns Without Borders (click here), who was in the UK for the book launch of Barnaby King's Clowning as Social Performance in Colombia: Ridicule and Resistance (click here), in which he features. I should therefore not have been surprised to see Jair's natural clown at play in this latest incarnation. But I was surprised. And delighted. 

The stage was set with Ali Hunter's atmospheric lighting and a swathe of dry ice that conjured up a metropolis, while the Latin melody located it firmly in Colombia. In walked the Sugarman in a dressing-gown, brushing his teeth, with rebel feet that just wanted to salsa on out. But he is prisoner of a murky grey world, longing for the blue skies of Aldo Zolev's superb track Azul (see below), a puppet of routine like the suit that hangs there waiting for him. 

I loved the acrobatics that played on that and brought the suit to life, the hands that became feet, the legs that became arms, the briefcase that opened up into a typewriter, and the loop of a strap that was both tie and potential gallows' noose. Arresting images were threaded through with a wonderful humour, involving the audience at one point in an amusing fort da game with an apple, and blended with supreme aerial skills. The beautiful air walking was a lesson in surreal control, as was the siesta snatching, simply suspended by a neck, an ankle and sheer force of will. It was as though each time an obstacle presented itself, Jair's dexterity and innovation on the straps enabled him to circumnavigate it, so that by the end of the day, when the wheel had come full circle (all too quickly for me!) and the Sugarman was back in his dressing-gown, toothbrush in hand, he was no longer hostage to the norm, but triumphant. 

Jair Ramirez' Sugarman was presented by Jacksons Lane at The Place as part of Resolution 2017.

Music video for Aldo Zolev's Azul: