Some twenty years ago I saw Punchdrunk's The Masque of the Red Death and their extraordinary takeover of Battersea Arts Centre. The world they created in that gothic mansion was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
I will never forget queueing up outside with my friend Linda. We were each handed a Traitors-style cloak and a beaked plague mask to don, with instructions that from now on no speaking was allowed. As we walked through a velvet-curtained corridor carpeted with dry ice, my stomach dropped and my knees buckled at the prospect of stepping into the void. I turned, mortified, and confessed: "Linda, I feel sick. I just can't do this." Without missing a beat, Linda turned around and, as we cut through the waves, announced to the creepy sea of masks behind, "Excuse me please, lady with a baby coming through!" I was ten weeks pregnant with my first at the time, and while I guess the mask hid both my face and my blushes, those words somehow further saved face. The sweet usherette took me by the hand and said, "Don't worry, the same thing happened to my Mum when she saw the show. I'll escort you to the cabaret at the centre. Follow me."
We did have a ball, and maybe it was the mesmerist act, but after an hour or so there I felt the nausea pass, my courage return and we were able to explore all sorts of hidden spaces.
Three children later, in 2014, my husband and I went with friends to an immersive experience in the Docklands, the Spectators' Guild Restoration tragedy Venice Preserv'd. Masked again, this time with a mask of my own (pictured), in anarchic, festival spirit I was singled out as Queen of the Carnival, given a sash to wear and ceremoniously dumped in a wheelbarrow, weaved through the crowd and delivered up to the Doge, on stage, where I was invited to spin the wheel of fortune and pay my respects to the Republic. Or not.
Then, after the frivolity, the tempo switched and, with the audience now drawn in, we became spectators once again, helpless bystanders watching the tragedy unfold.
My husband also attracted his fair share of attention at these events, and we had such fun over the years at Secret Cinema. In fact, the first one I went to was Casablanca, with my nieces, one of whom, Fly, had worked on the set design of Punchdrunk's Masque.
I think in many ways the attraction to all these immersive experiences was that they acted as a safety valve. That is the function of carnival after all. To release all the pressure of day to day living within a safe space to play, perform, try out other identities, and then knuckle back down to the hard graft of day to day living. It helped us navigate the transition from life as a jet-setting couple, to settling down to the rhythm, and massive responsibilities, of family life.
Little did we know that our greatest adventure was still ahead of us: two years sailing as a family aboard La Cigale (www.sailinglacigale.com ) wherever the wind would take us. And those lessons in improv, immersive experiences and rehearsals in stepping into the unknown stood us in good stead.
Why does all this come to mind now?
Because I'm just back from Prague, from seeing Cirk La Putyka's Okamžik having been immersed in another world for 48 hours, and Fly came to stay with me a couple of nights before I left. We were talking about those days and all things theatre and circus. She is still working with Punchdrunk's director Felix Barrett having recently taken Paranormal Activity to Broadway, so theatre ghosts were something of a touchstone for our conversation (see also her set design in Tao of Glass).
Fly grew up with me at home, and we are all still reeling from losing Mum in January. When the second parent goes, it feels like being on a conveyor belt, only now you're next in line to drop off the end. Even me, the youngest of six. So I feel the need for a circuit breaker, to do something completely outside the ordinary, to break that reckoning, beckoning, inexorable pull. My acupuncturist had observed that it was as though my spirit was detaching from my body. I needed to reground, regroup, reconnect.
Okamžik came onto my radar this summer thanks to Charlie Wheeller. At the time I was broke. I'd just left my steady teaching job, had no idea was on the horizon and it certainly wasn't a trip abroad. But somehow chatting to Charlie about the show, hearing how special it was, a milestone celebration of Cirk La Putyka's journey, featuring 35 performers, live music and celebrating the extraordinary talent and vision that has shaped the company since it was founded by Rostislav Novák Jr (Rosťa) in 2009, well, it sowed a seed. It brought back memories of seeing Cirk La Putyka's Dolls at the Edinburgh Fringe, the same year as seeing Charlie for the first time in Barely Methodical Troupe's Bromance. That, and Charlie's supportive words about my writing. He gets its purpose and intention. I witness, make connections, share the love on.
Then my university friend Jane rang, out of the blue.
"Fancy a trip to Paris for my birthday in November?" she said. "I have Eurostar points, I can take you."
"How about we go to Prague first?" I counter-offered, half jokingly, because Jane's calendar is never anything less than full to overflowing. However, the weekend in question she was free. And she had been there at the Edinburgh Fringe and had seen Bromance and Dolls then too. Jane was living in Glasgow at the time, nipped over for the day, but there was so much to see I'd smuggled her into my hotel room. The same hotel where my great-grandmother had once been a hostess.
The universe was having a laugh, and I knew we would too.
The comedy began on Saturday at 4am when we almost left without my phone, which had our boarding passes on. The catch had gone on the inner door, so I was locked out and had to bang on the glass to get back in, waking the whole house up. All two of them. My husband was understandably not amused. My daughter was delighted. One last hug Mum. It was more than a hug though. It was a cwtch. That Welsh word my Qi Gong partner once had taught me at the end of our sessions. Safety, warmth, family, home.
And I was leaving that behind? At the airport a text popped up out of the blue from a friend, James, who had been our family photographer years ago. He knows how much I love circus (who doesn't?!) and had come across a fin-de-siècle poster of a mysterious female lion tamer known only as Countess X, La Dompteuse Masquée. James had recently acquired a Cirque d'Hiver reproduction and loved it so much he was getting some high-res reproductions made. Would I be interested? The moment I saw the image, it called to me. Of course I was. It's a sign!
It felt strangely in tune with the zeitgeist of the week, coming on the back of Ben Duke's Lion King The Last Hamlet (see previous couple of posts). Hannah Shepherd's performance had resonated and enthralled on so many levels. If only Ophelia at the end had a whip, not a gun (spoiler alert?!). And it reminded me of the lion tamer's act in the clowning workshop with Ira Seidenstein's protegé Butzi (see Chapter 134 on the Gift of Clowning). There is a time to wear masks, and there is a time to drop them and bring out the real clown. Step out of my comfort zone. Be a little braver.
And there's something about wearing a mask that focuses attention on the eyes. Okamžik, after all, means in the blink of an eye. Those little everyday moments of wonder for which you need to keep your eyes peeled. Blink and you miss it. Though sometimes I have to blink twice, just to believe it.
In no time at all we were on the plane. Jane got out her book on Discovering the Clown by Christopher Hayes. I got out my satin eye mask to give my inner eyes some space to dream.
Eyes wide shut. We took off.
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