Life out of the box

Mayfest - ten days when Bristol claims 'the city is our stage' with drama in 20 venues for this celebration of 'work that pushes hard at what theatre can be - from artists who are being brave and brilliant and doing that with skill, style, power and wit.'  It's a terrific-looking programme and I'd like to have seen everything but, as always, there's so much happening ~ in Frome this week we had two artist's talks, a council consultation meeting with local performers, and a wicked Grain Bar Session from fantastic Captain Cactus and the Screaming Harlots.
So it wasn't until Friday (sadly clashing with Party in the City, Bath's biggest night of free music) I arrived at Bristol Old Vic having chosen Opening Skinner's Box from Improbable, 'a whistle-stop tour of the scientific quest to make sense of what we are and who we are.'   As my recent TV viewing was mostly BBC4's The Brain and E4's Big Bang Theory, this looked like one for me. Directors Phelim McDermott & Lee Simpson took their 'compendium of cautionary tales' from the same-name book by popular psychologist Lauren Slater and some reviewers felt they didn't take it far enough. True, it's not so much a show as a lecture: the five actors though charming are interchangeable voices, and if you don't mind missing mimes of monkeys you don’t need to look at the stage at all. But I found it gripping drama, and totally fascinating. Much of the psychological research is familiar territory ~ those terrible tests to prove babies can't thrive without touch, and to show that compliance to authority will turn people into torturers ~ but there's something profound and poignant about our obsession with that bit of pinky-grey flesh called the hypocampus where emotion and memory lurk. How do we select our memories anyway, or do we live our hypothetical lives imagining everything?  Like I said, fascinating...

'To Lyme they were to go..'

Like Captain Wentworth's party of pals in Persuasion, Rosie and I were 'wild to see Lyme' on our writing trip last weekend, and Lyme was wild to see us, too. We arrived as storm Imogen was dancing like a tiger along the Cobb, rattling the pebbles and slapping the sand into a new beach. We watched entranced from our sea-front window, then I set off to get provisions from the shop at the top of the hill, agreeing with Jane Austen that 'A very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.'  That was when the sky join the sea in a combined assault. Rain instantly made the road a waterfall, indeed rain was making the air a waterfall, soaking me literally to the skin in moments, my boots transformed into rain-barrells. It was wildly exciting though red wine & chocolate were required for full recovery.
Next morning all was calm in blue-skied sunshine. The Cobb looked distinctly hungover but must have yielded great beach-combing for the fossilists - as Lyme's superb museum calls its collectors. Fossils are to Lyme Regis as books are to Hay-on-Wye, I discovered, and as much a feature as its Jane Austen and French Lieutenant's Woman connections. The museum has everything you could want to know about all these aspects of the town's story, plus other artistic connections like Beatrix Potter and the painter Whistler, and a fascinating chronicle of the town's rebellious history. One of the few anti-royalist southern towns in the Civil War, they resisted Prince Maurice's contemptuous boast that taking Lyme would be 'a breakfast time job' and survived their long siege successfully ~ with women playing a significant role in all the action.
And as we were there to research Lyme Regis now, as well as then, a visit to the gorgeous Alexandra Hotel gardens for coffee in the conservatory was essential. So now we've found the settings and the inspiration all we have to do is create the play! Simples...

Back in Frome, it's been another great week for music. Grain Bar Roots Session featured the The Spoonful, 'from toe-tappin' rootsy blues to mellow' - I loved their creamy name-song - and on Saturday the marvellous Captain Cactus and the Screaming Harlots played a superb session in the Artisan. No pig-head this time but still charmingly random and highly energetic, with audience participation of yogic chants and dancing...


And on sunny, chilly, Sunday it was great to walk to Nunney for the monthly Acoustic Cafe ~ this one featuring the awesome talent of Darren Hodge. Darren was just 15 when he gigged with the legendary Tommy Emmanuel, and four years on he still looks 15, but his self-taught skill on the guitar is phenomenal: take a listen to Cannonball Rag which he played in his set today.

Black Swan Arts had two new exhibitions this week so I should be reminding writers about Words at the Black Swan on the first Sunday of the month, but sadly the Independent Market on March 6th is cancelled which means the gallery won't be open either for the poetry workshop.  Hopefully we'll be running again in April, and in the meantime there's the Poetry Cafe Love Night at the Garden Cafe and Maggie Sawkins at the Merlin with  Zones of Avoidance which won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. Yup, Frome still rocks.

Festival weekend: Sizzling Saturday & Stormy Sunday

The best thing about festival is the sheer number of amazing events, and the worst is that most inevitably clash, so my best aim can only be to give a taste. Frome Open Studios offer an amazing diversity as artists combine at each venue, with pens, pots, and photographs alongside paintings like Kate Cochrane's landscapes, and coastlines by Amanda Bee neighbouring Feverleaf's 'festivalesque finery and pixy clothing' at Silk Mill studios.

Saturday's sunshine held all day and into a balmy late night at Silk Mill cantina.  Frome Street Bandits led the parade through town to the Market Yard for the ever-popular food feast in early evening, followed by on-stage sessions from the Frome Jazz Club and Three Corners. Sunday's flash storm at the end of the Independent 'Wonderland' Market didn't daunt the wandering minstrels under the awning outside Lungi Baba or Jazz in the Afternoon at the Victoria Park bandstand.  More jazz at The Cornerhouse evening jam session, after a stonking session from the amazing Captain Cactus: "Rootin'-tootin'.... sort of like hula-swamp with bits of bluegrass and acoustic country rock avec les Screaming Harlots wailing like African Queens." (That's another Griff quote, I suspect)

And there are lots of excellent word-y things, or 'Literary Events' as the brochure highlights call them. Frome Writers Collective revived the 'Writers in Residence' event, with ten writers settled in cafes pubs & shops around town, scribing throughout Saturday on a set theme. Paul Newman was at Hunting Raven talking about his book Netted in a Silver Mist, which combines his drawings from the natural environment with words from Jill Harris to bring a deeper narrative to these superb evocations of wood, water, and stone.

With similar ekphrastic intention, our Words at the Black Swan workshop, led by David Davies, explored the Home In Frome exhibition to find personal recollections evoked by Mell Day's exquisite Postcards from an Ordinary Childhood and the amazing quilt of memories. Mell calls these glimpses of a past ~ all probably enhanced, possibly misremembered ~ "clear bright little moments... where our personality becomes our version of history, not snapshots but embodiments."

Sad to miss Al O'Kane's Magical Folk Garden acoustic music evening at the Archangel, my clash this time a rehearsal for Midsummer Dusk, our Nevertheless site-specific outdoor production for this festival. Director Rosie has made the Dissenters Cemetery look fantastic and our 'Star Players' are looking & sounding terrific... only 3 sleeps now till our opening night...