Art and life: reopenings, trips & plans and local heroes.

Last Monday celebrated another cautious step forward into community life when Words at the Black Swan poetry group reconvened in the Round Tower to create responses to In Pursuit of Spring, the current exhibition of artworks created in response to the book of that name written by poet Edward Thomas, which you can read for free here or buy at the gallery. Our group discussed the art on show - this is the ipad response by David Daniels, an image of the River Frome which we all liked - and we reflected also where our own personal journeys might take us, with some very moving poems crafted and shared by all the group. 

Still in the arty centre of Frome, congratulations to Daniel Musselwhite - who works, usually, in his jewellery workshop at the Black Swan -  for reaching the final of BBC's show All That Glitters. The task for the three stunningly talented finalists was to design and make pearl drop earrings and a bridal tikka. Here's judge Shaun Leane modelling Dan's pearl earrings, and Dan in his Frome workplace.

Mega congratulations too, to Andy Wrintmore, here posing for probably the most unconventional official mayoral portrait in history. Andy is Sick Ones' drummer & a tremendously popular figure in Frome, and I'm immensely pleased his talent and energy is represented in my book Frome Unzipped - from Prehistory to Post-Punk, where he talks about his music and his commitment to the town. Supporting him as Deputy Mayor, we now have Sara Butler-Bartholomew, another big personality with high energy. (I'll add picture credit when I find out!)

A change of theme now, with online drama from Stepping Out Theatre Company in Bristol: Pumpgirl by Abbie Spallen, set in Northern Ireland and first performed back in 2006, is a harsh story of drab, loveless, lives told in three separated monologues. A good choice for lockdown production for this last reason, it's also particularly pertinent in a year which has put a public spotlight on women's vulnerability. Danann McAleer is excellent as Hammy, car-obsessed and brutally sexist; Neroli Trammell strong as his emotionally unstable wife, with Emma Stadon memorable as the vulnerable pumpgirl who feels gratified by his attentions.  The virtual backgrounds are sometimes distracting but this production is an impressive achievement and a credit to the company. 

Ending now with some images from local walks, as spring merges with early summer with little cessation of howling winds and rain, but bursts of sun have allowed short sorties: a jaunt with friends to The George in Norton Saint Philip, in 1685 during the Monmouth Rebellion used as headquarters for the rebel army, and in the terrible aftermath used by Judge Jeffreys as a courtroom: these idyllic lawns now being rolled as an immaculate cricket pitch saw hangings in the Bloody Assizes.

The short (under an hour) walk to Marston Park seems to have become a regular route for me so here again is the lake beyond the bluebell wood, where you can sit with a drink from the tiny bar and look ahead to Frome Festival, only 6 weeks away, when this will be the venue for many of the bands.  

Brochures are out now, and despite all uncertainties and anxieties, their 36 pages are crammed with events : walks and talks, performances of every sort, displays, workshops, and general celebration. As Festival Director Martin Bax explains in his welcome letter: We thought we might produce a much smaller festival this year. We have failed abysmally.  Don't forget the Poetry Cafe - page 12 - where as well as the quirkily egalitarian open mic, you can hear wonderful Liv Torc - the Best Fest Guest in the West.

The week we remembered ordinary life

The 'glorious twelfth' of April has brought many openings, one of which is Hauser & Wirth in Bruton, where there are two art exhibitions and, of course, the famous Oudolf Field garden, designed to complement the gallery by looking like 'a giant artists palette'. A trip here is always a pleasure but at the moment it's not at its most dramatic & felt a bit like visiting a friend who's laid out the paint cards and wallpaper swatch to show how nice the flat will look later. The pond is lovely though, as is walking up the hill to the dovecote above the town.

Performance poetry zoomed in again on Thursday from the Rainbow Fish Speakeasy run by Take Art, the excellent events organisation for Somerset rural areas. Superbly compered by Liv Torc, this has developed a wide audience with contributors providing poems from their sofas, kitchens, and other areas of comfort, sometimes with delightful interruptions from children and cats. Guest of the night was Kat Lyons, who introduced me to the poignant word solastalgia: "a feeling of despair when one's home environment changes" and a neat 'group poem' from audience comments was woven by Jaime. Liv's vivid & moving poem on how her hair sacrificed its life for hers was for me the highlight of an excellent event - you can read it on her FB page here.

From poetry to prose: Andy Wrintmore's Giant Pod this week features Eleanor Talbot, another brilliant exponent of audio sessions, definitely not one to miss. "I have no problems with borders," Eleanor explains when Andy asks about her eclectic choices in music in her weekly show Variations on a Theme, where Kazakhstani hip hop is likely to be heard alongside Noah & the Whale, or Elvis.  Eleanor talks with refreshing frankness and genuinely upbeat vitality about 'touchy' topics like mortality and libido and her lifelong chronic kidney disease.  

The last year has tested the ingenuity of all performance groups and a range of ways have emerged to present productions online and, even more challengingly, to rehearse them. Stepping Out Theatre Company in Bristol maintained their programme of activities via whatsapp and zoom, compiling a presentation with a topical theme: Putin's Mist, on-line for two nights, imagined an hour in the life of the community of a tower block as a mysterious toxic mist confines them to their homes in an intriguing metaphorical processing of reality.  Credit to all the team for this provocative and disturbing look at the effects of disinformation when 'nothing is what it seems.'

And now we can look ahead with confidence that  Frome Festival will definitely go ahead in July - it's already been featured in the Guardian Top 10 summer festivals. "Quirky cobbled alleyways" always seem to head the bill in London-based publications but it's great news anyway, and festival director Martin Dimery expects the line-up to be online by the end of the month. The ECOS amphitheatre will be a major venue for performance, including on Tuesday (6 July) the return of the Frome Poetry Cafe with Liv Torc as guest as well as our popular Open Mic - check it out on the Merlin page here, but note there's no advance booking - it's turn-up-on-the-night in the traditional spoken word way of the 1960s beat poets and here in Frome since the first festival twenty years ago. 

Concluding this bulletin on another upbeat note: the longed-for return to socialising with near-normality has seen a new bar opens up in the French antiques shop in Frome, serving widely spaced tables in a car park that looks as good as the Alhambra gardens to our friendship-starved eyes. Here's me with thespian friends Rosie and Tracey, and a toast to everyone able to enjoy meeting friends and family again - hopefully that's all of you. Cheers!

mostly celebrations

Stepping Out Theatre, which has supported several Nevertheless shows over the last few years (and produced Media Monsters, the double bill show Rosie & I wrote for the Alma Tavern in Bristol) boasts as patron the marvellous Mark Rylance who has been winning awards since he stepped on the boards 35 years ago, so with Farinelli and the King ~ Mark's current 5-star performance ~ at the Duke of York's, a trip to London was clearly the the perfect seasonal celebration event for the entire company.
And as Stepping Out is co-producing our next Nevertheless show, Toxic Cocktails (at the Cornerhouse, 16&17 December if your diary is at hand) I was delighted to join the very jolly coach party on Saturday. An 'incident' on the motorway meant we only arrived in time to see the second half so I can't review but the theatre, all lit with candles, is beautiful, the costumes are gorgeous, and the music, if you like counter-tenor singing, is extraordinary. The story of the King of Spain and his beloved castrato movingly reflects on melancholy, madness, and the power of creativity to alleviate both, but I tend to agree with the online review from Culture-Whisper: It's not for everyone. There's nothing boundary-breaking or bold, and this is the kind of show that reinforces idea of theatre as for the middle-aged, middle-classes who know their Handel from their Hasse. But it's a warm and charming showcase of spectacular acting and musical talent.  And the festive supper afterwards was fabulous.


Back in Frome on Sunday, the Cheese & Grain seethed with sensuous smells and sumptuous samples as Frome celebrated its fifth Lip-Smacking Chocolate Festival, organised by Jo Harrington.
Stalls from all around the west country offered nibbles & tasters of lip-smacking experiences from raw chocolate bars to whisky-filled hand-painted chocolate creams. The River House team were there with Tom's marvellous cakes & Ellen's latest taste-experience brainwave: chocolate mulled wine. An event literally sensational!


Another architypically-Frome experience is the festive Extravaganza at the end of November to celebrate the switch-on of our christmas lights.  There's always a theme ~ the year before last it was Jenson Button scorching up & down the main road ~ and this year was a Snow Ball. In actuality it was more of a wildly windy rainswept evening but that didn't deter the hundreds who poured into the town centre to enjoy the fabulous story-telling projections on town buildings and the music & dancing in the street till late. Official 'switch-on' was due at 7.30 and a mere 15 minutes later the MC on the George balcony yelled out "Frome! Are you all ready for the big anti-climax of the evening?"  and we all yelled happily "Yeah!"
And the tree lights came on, bless, and a kind of shimmering golden shower ~ snow, obviously, but gilded by lighting ~ cascaded on the throng below. What a time to be alive, one might say.

Moving out of town again to end this post, to Bath this time, again for a theatre trip: I absolutely loved Monsieur Popular, the frothy French farce that opened the Ustinov autumn season, so was hoping for similar entertaining frivolities from director Laurence Boswell’s follow-up The One That Got Away. This one by George Feydeau is a different fish, longer and more laboured.  During the first act I was strongly reminded of a ditty attributed to Dorothy L Sayers but sounding more like Dorothy Parker: As years go in and years go out / I totter towards the tomb / caring less & less about / who goes to bed with whom.  Several more characters were still due to appear, some from the gendarmerie, so I was rather hoping there might be a more interesting twist in store. Like murder. Or a play within a play, in which the players of these clichéd roles had more interesting personae.  By the second interval I had given up hope for anything more exciting than the final curtain. The acting is all fine, the sets are lavish, but the only salacious sparkle came from  the countess-turned-concierge ruined by love of a lion-tamer (Victoria Wick). Lots of debagging and door-banging but a story so thin you could fold it up and lose it in a trouser pocket.

Fringe-ing Frome's festival

While half of Frome disappears to Pilton to either work or perform, the rest of us are warming up for our town festival starting next week. As anyone in, or interested in, Frome will know there's so much creative stuff happening all the time that festival fringe activities aren't exactly oases in a cultural desert but this week the buzz is even more bombinatory than usual.  Or bombinatious, not sure which is the right adjective from this great verb. Where to begin?

Muffin Man 1 & 2 had two nights at The Cornerhouse, and my marvellous actors & co-writers, Ross Scott and Fleur Hanby-Holmes spent a full day in rehearsal with the relevant pastries before our opening on Thursday.  The show comprises a replay of my 'Bard of Frome' title-winning short from last year, followed by our devised sequel to the cliffhanging ending of this unlikely rom-com, The Morning After. The opener is a stand-up routine and there's a song between the two plays, both 'bonus tracks'  created by the characters to add depth to their roles. Lots of audience laughter and brilliant feedback forms, especially after the awesome Saturday night performance summed up Great entertainment - well told story - good fun! and even more succinctly Funny as f##k. (You can see them all here)
Midsummer Dusk is developing sensationally well and tickets for the extra Saturday performance selling briskly at the Festival box office. Sunday's evening rehearsal gave us a shivery sense of how atmospheric the Dissenters Cemetery will be...  our superb cast is already virtually word perfect.


And it's bang goes the neighbourhood affordability-wise, as once again Frome is in the national press:  our Share Shop is commended in Positive News, and we're now a 'Great Town' officially, as a winner in this category at the Urbanism Awards ceremony this month.

Moving briefly out of the cultural hub for two visits to Bath: on Tuesday to talk my poems, as they now say, at the Rose & Crown where lovely Speakeasy organizer Jo Butts entertained us with thoughts from Mark Thomas's People's Manifesto (Goats are to be released on to the floor of the House of Commons - no more than four) and local regular John Christopher Wood aired his views on Cheese (it is an urban myth / that Palestinians make cheeses of Nazareth)  so my chirpy appeal for provision of therapeutic gigolos in Homes for the Elderly fitted in nicely.

Also in Bath, Stepping Out have been performing The Square Wheel of Time at the Rondo. The 'big show' productions from this Bristol community theatre company are always zestful romps with dancing, song and magic tricks as well as wild comedy, bizarre characters, and a thought-provoking bite that lingers. Mark Breckon's script and an exuberant cast combine to tick all these boxes once again. Directed by Cheryl Douglas with lavish costumes and clever stage techniques to create filmic fights and atmospheric flashbacks, this show took and tweaked the company's usual play-within-a-play convention: among many highlights I'd have to pick out 'Tamas' dirty-dancing to Time of My Life (Black-Eyed Peas version of course), the urbane and unscrupulous Dr Charles Lavelle, and Cecilia the stolen daughter dancing secretly with the gipsies, but this was an ensemble piece and everyone deserves praise.  The plot, involving eco-warriors returning to the 19th Century to change history, is sublimely incredible but the intention, to prevent the dominance of chemical intervention in mental health treatment, raises a serious issue. Behind every character, laughable & lovable or outright pathetic, we begin to see a third dimension: the real person damaged by trauma, loss, emotional abuse, or even unresolved family history. More than mere diverting entertainment, these plays from Stepping Out invite audiences to take a realistic & critical look at the current 'medical model' of treatments. As the Square-Wheelers have learnt, chemical pills are not the only, or the best, way to return to health.

Whales, cows, and polar bears

Whales can hear and respond to each other thousands of miles apart, singing so loudly the sound would shatter you. I didn't know that, and I didn't know there's only one whale in the world calling higher than all the others, at 52-hertz. Dumbstruck, the new show from young Bristol company Fine Chisel, takes this starting point for a story about a marine mammal biologist whose life is equally isolated. Robin McLoughlin is totally charismatic from the opening moments to the dramatic end as Ted the lonely whale-specialist who talks to the lonely-whale, addressing it affectionately as "52".  The life-story fragments he reveals vary from moving (George Williams brilliant as the troubled reverend who explains death to four-year old Ted) to raucous as pirate radio takes over the airwaves, and takes too his hopes of a companion on his marine studies. The live music is superb, especially when atmospherically enhancing the story ~ we stray overlong from the engrossing central story after the interval with a sixties on-air pastiche ~ and the energy of this talented team never flags. The production won an award at Edinburgh and audience cheers at Bristol's Brewery and comes to Frome's Merlin next week ~ if you enjoy innovative theatre and dynamic live music, don't miss it.

Brilliant Bristol comedy duo Living Spit have been touring their new production around the pubs of Somerset: Rosie and I caught it at The Rose & Crown in Huish Episcopi, a friendly pub with no bar so you stand by the pumps to pick your tipple. The show is called One Man and his Cow, which sounds bucolic and childishly whimsical but actually has more in common with one of the Grimm's dark narratives, except it's so funny the audience's howls of mirth drowned out the England match in the adjoining room. Stu McLoughlin and Howard Coggins are impressive musicians too, so a medley of instruments accompanied their rapid-fire rhyming story of Trevor the farmer and his beloved cow Judy whose special talents are speech and hidden malevolence.  Trev is dying ~ that's the cheerful opener ~ and to choose which of his three children gets the farm he hits on a test that King Lear could have told him was doomed to dramatic failure. Howard is the obtuse farmer and Stu plays each of his children, sometimes simultaneously, plus the duplicitous cow. Rhyming become increasingly outrageous and there are more synonyms for bovine than I ever imagined as this increasingly hysterical history progresses to a satisfying end that Jeanette Winterson would appreciate. (She took vengeance on the rabbit that ate her parsley, if you didn't see the news item) The lads are moving eastwards now the Take Art rural tour is over, but will be back in Bristol at Tobacco Factory in the theatre bar in July - well worth going along.

Music and merriment too at Wallace Real's Ministry of Madness, the new community production from Stepping Out which opened at the Rondo in Bath and moves on to Bristol’s Brewery next week.  This company always delivers high-energy and hugely entertaining stories that include, along with the fun & frolics, thought-provoking comments on the perception and treatment of mental health service users. "We don't change the world here," scoffs the Mental Analysis Diagnostics supervisor, "we colour-code it." But this isn't polemic: there's an exciting adventure too, albeit somewhat baffling, as Lucy embarks with her quintuplet personality into an underground movement of meta-theatrical therapy, meeting among others the Ladyboys of Bedlam and the mechanicals from Midsummer Night's Dream until, true to Oscar Wilde's decree, the good end happily and the bad unhappily ~ with a final full-cast song and dance.  This is a real feel-good show, with some terrific individual performances, great musicality, and a sense of integrity and commitment from the whole company throughout. But I have to admit my high point was Danann McAleer dancing like a bovver-boy fighting in an alley while wearing white high heels... 

Nevertheless ventures and adventures

"Women have been taught that for us the earth is flat, and if we venture out we will fall off the edge. Some of us have ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off."
I don't often quote Andrea Dworkin,  anarchist, feminist & anti-war activist, but it seems appropriate for this posting which is all about Nevertheless Productions.  It's only three years since my amazingly dynamic, entrepreneurial and all-round gorgeous friend Rosie Finnegan asked me to join her in bringing pub theatre to Frome...  we had no funding, no production company, and no idea how this would work but nevertheless we went ahead using an upstairs room at the Lamb, now The Cornerhouse and probably the most popular venue in town.  Rosie and I made countless theatre trips to find shows with the kind of edgy writing and professional production values we wanted, and last year founded our own group, the brilliant Frome Scriptwriters, and also linked up with Bristol's inspirational Stepping Out Theatre Company.  We've now given Frome 12 productions, mostly sold out and all receiving enthusiastic audience feedback, and there's another show simmering: On Thursday & Friday December 19th & 20th you can enjoy an hour's original entertainment comprising short plays written by Frome Scriptwriters ~ and this one is definitely the best yet.  Festive Stockings features four 15 minute plays chosen by director Chris Loveless: Kate's Story by Eddie Young, Who is Santa? by Tim Addams, and Letter Home by Emma Stadon will be performed as rehearsed script-in-hand, and Ackroyd's Christmas Stocking by Alison Clink fully produced.  And we have a dream-team of actors: Olivia Dennis, Danann McAleer, Gerard Cooke, and Kim Hicks ~ so get your name on the list for a seat now!

And even before the tinsel is down Rosie and I will be deeply involved in another drama, which will be be premiered at The Cornerhouse before its 2-week run at Bristol's Alma Tavern Theatre 28th January to 8th February.  Rosie and I were commissioned by Stepping Out Theatre Company to write a double-bill, and Media Monsters is the result.  Director Marc Geoffrey is holding auditions on December 6th and rehearsals start early in the new year! Is there anything as exciting as seeing your play in a Casting Call in Theatre Bristol 'Jobs' section? Talk about Christmas coming early...

ACTORS WANTED - MEDIA MONSTERS

Salary: £300 per week Application Deadline: 30.11.13 17:00

Bristol

DREAMWEAVERS IN ASSOCIATION WITH STEPPING OUT AND CHRYSALIS THEATRE PRESENTS 

MEDIA MONSTERS

A double bill of new writing

Directed by Marc Geoffrey

MY BIG FAT TV BITCH by Rosie Finnegan

An original and comic satire on Reality Television 

and 

FIXING IT by Crysse Morrison

A complex, subtle and fascinating look at the erosion of personal ideals and the changing face of sexual mores over the last 40 years set against the background of the Jimmy Saville scandal.

Rehearsals begin 6th January 2014 

Performance dates : 

Fri 24th & Sat 25th January 2014 at The Corner House, Frome. 

Tue 28th January to Sat 8th February 2014 at The Alma Tavern Theatre, Clifton.

"Comedies of Manners become obsolete when there are no more manners," opines Crestwell, the erudite and eloquant  butler in Relative Values, Noel Coward's 1951 play of that genre currently revived at Theatre Royal Bath to critical acclaim. Topicality is evident through viewing figures for Downton Abbey, a show I've never watched (and I doubt if Crestwell would either), but the charm for this audience is clearly nostalgia, with faux Pathé Newsreels recalling of those simple days when Queen Elizabeth and the post-war world were both young.  It's not just about class distinctions, however: there's a plot-line straight from soapland and quite a lots of witty one-liners as well as Stephen Brimson Lewis's totally exquisite set. Directed by Trevor Nunn, who ensures no cushion remains unturned as emotional turmoil hits the drawing room, this production features a starry cast including Rory Bremner's Wodehouse-style butler and Ben Mansfield appropriately irresistible as Hollywood star Don Lucas, but without a doubt the production was held together and raised aloft by Patricia Hodge as the Countess and Caroline Quentin as her maid. These two are simply brilliant, their comic timing and nuance transforming this slightly stately vehicle into a flying chariot. Overall, however, I'd say Crestwell's sagacity on the matter of Comedies of Manners is valid.

It's been over a week, at least, since I extolled the extreme amazingness of Frome so here's a snap from the Welshmill Pump Track, which on Saturday hosted a Bike Jam for all-comers, a brilliant event with participants aged from 4 (!) to 18+, and a fastest lap time of 13.9 seconds. That's less than fourteen seconds round a double loop bike track with no peddling allowed...  Think about it, and be massively impressed!

Over in Bristol's Brewery, there's a special brew of madness and mayhem on tap as Stepping Out community theatre company present Hermione Steel and the Island of Lost Minds.  This complex and often bizarre story begins with a bemused writer and the polar bear who eats his characters before he can find their story  (don't we all have one of those) and ends some time later with a happy outcome and a song, and an exuberant cast convey with palpable integrity the depth of their commitment to this tribute to a much-missed member of their group. Audience feedback has been impressive, reflecting appreciation of the humour as well as the poignancy of this high-spirited story of self-discovery and redemption. Costumes were superb too.

Final footnote: with Frome Scriptwriters already planning for our festive special, and Quantock Court poised for a new series on Frome FM, the tricky matter of timing is again a hot issue as fans of word-count argue font size with proponents of page-count, so I was delighted to discover (thanks Tighe) a way to slice the Gordian Knot with this excellent timing tool for all spoken word. Worth bookmarking!

The Frome Scriptwriters' brief: write a play featuring a candle. The outcome: Flaming Crackers, 'seven short scripts with a festive twist, performed as rehearsed readings last week at The Cornerhouse Frome and the Alma Tavern Theatre Bristol to capacity - and very appreciative - audiences. This was another Nevertheless / Stepping Out Theatre Company collaboration, following our successful Festival venture last summer, and Rosie & I are delighted to have this professional input to our projects. Our writers ~ that's Morgan, Eddie, Tighe, Brenda, Paul, Rosie, and me ~ were able to follow the production process from director's first comments to public performance with costume & props, and finally with full lighting effects onstage.
Big thanks to Livi, Duncan, Danaan, Gerard, and Jasmine for bringing our characters to life, to director Chris, props & technician team Ann & Ali, and to Steve for suggesting a festive reprise for this pairing of writers and actors ~ full names for credit are listed under "Shows 2010-2012" on the Stepping Out website.
And the candle... was variously a symbol of rebellion, a scientific experiment, a song by Elton John, a moment of solace, the cause of a row, a glimmer of hope, and a gag for a failing showman, in plays equally varying in mood and style. "Light and dark, funny and touching, strange and surprising" the flyer promised, and I think we delivered.

Finally, something completely different: no account of local entertainment would be complete without a big-up for Frome's CobbleWobble, surely the only uphill cycle race held over several hours in which the winning time is 22.96 seconds. That was BMX pro rider Michal Prokop, who flashed past far too fast for me to photograph, but I did get snaps of some brave locals who managed a respectable half-minute for the slippery sprint up Catherine Hill. A brilliant event, typical of so much that happens in fabulous Frome: egalitarian, innovative, inclusive, creative, and slightly crackers.

Images for November: floods mile after mile along the Bristol trainline, and a spangly night in Bath when the storms finally abate.


Vox pop moment during the interval of The Double at Bath's Ustinov studio theatre: "It's a good play but I think enjoyable is the wrong word." Actually strictly speaking it's not even a play, it's a session of illustrated storytelling in the 'Transformation' season, adapted by director Laurence Boswell who confesses a lifelong fascination with this Dostoyevsky tale of paranoia in 19th Century Russian bureaucratic life. As with Chekhov and more especially Gogol's Diary of a Madman there's a universality about the mind-eroding frustrations of petty officialdom which stirs our pity: I also liked the minimalist set, brilliant manipulation of the life-size puppet, moments of humour and (rare) moments of stillness that allowed us ~ as theatre can ~ to engage with 'our hero' Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin rather than just observe his plight on animated pages. The cast are superb, especially Simon Scardifield as Golyadkin. Direction, with its multiple voices and wafting puppets and block-stacking, is energetic but a tad CBeebies in visual variety and determination not to let the action flag. The result is sad rather than poignant, clearly told rather than subtly shown. Worth a visit though, especially if the coming festivities make you empathise with a neurotic who self-medicates extensively and greets each new catastrophe with I knew this was coming!

Big relief and a nice warm feeling at Frome's Merlin AGM tonight as board chair Clare Hein reports the theatre has finally come through its recent financial woes. "We've had a tough time but now there's a real sense of celebration ~ it will be alright." This is fantastic news and massive credit to director Claudia Pepler and her team of tireless volunteers, and also to the new Community College Principal for his visionary commitment, and to everyone who swelled the audience numbers during that use-it-or-lose-it time. The message now is "we're here, and we're here to stay."
And so is Nevertheless Pub Theatre! our festive show Flaming Crackers features seven Frome Scriptwriters in "brand-new ten-minute scripts with a festive twist" to quote the flyer provided for us, like our top-class actors and London director, by our supportive co-producer Stepping Out Theatre Company. We're Upstairs at the Cornerhouse on Thursday December 13th then in Bristol at the Alma Tavern Theatre the following two nights and it's only a £iver for seventy minutes of original drama "light and dark, funny and touching, strange and surprising ~ a seasonal smorgasbord with a difference." Do come if you can.

Now here’s a thought. Since Shakespeare’s sonnets explore every aspect of love ~ passion, pain, tenderness, vulgarity, violence, madness, sadness, lust and loss ~ then maybe strung together they would add up to a play... or at least a theatrical performance. Swansea-based physical theatre company Volcano thought so, in fact Paul Davies deviser-director of L.O.V.E thought so back in 1992 and this twenty-year on revival is now touring with a new cast and “subtle and not-so-subtle” changes from the original. The genital rubbing & sniffing may come under the not-so-subtle heading, and perhaps also the extended snog-the-audience episode ~ not that I’m complaining, the kiss was lovely even though the Dark Lady did then swig deeply from my wine.
And this show doesn't claim to be a play as such, it's a series of dramatic cameos using Shirley Bassey songs, playfulness, balletic physicality, bawdy comedy and brutality too. The trio are amazing performers, especially Andrew Keay as the lovely boy, and bring ambiguous depths more often cruel than touching to the familiar sonnets: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? becomes a fight and My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun contemptuous homo banter. From seductive to (literally) biting, ardent to murderous, in Auden's words mortal, guilty, but entirely beautiful. There's madness, but maybe not like Will knew it, more Psycho than Ophelia, and by the end everyone is stripped to their undies ~ though white as a detergent ad and the Dark Lady's with a touch of Bridget Jones.  Back in 1993 this was hailed as dangerous theatre, obscene and erotic: maybe Beyonce videos on screen in every High Street Curries since then have redefined our terms but it’s exciting, skilful, performance with beautiful visuals and well worth seeing.

 Segueing loosely through Keats, who admired Shakespeare for his "Negative Capability, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" and inspired by a piece in the Indie, I want to suggest that people who complain Wikipedia isn't definitive or even unbiased are missing the point. We are, thankfully, moving away from the Age of Reason with its absurd focus on facts and certainty. So what if inaccuracies clamber in with more valid hypotheses? Reality is porous, truth is variable. We've all got a filter against the malicious, mendacious, or plain crazy: it's called instinctive intelligence. So bring on Wiki-world, and let's all remind ourselves how to use the mind-skills we used to have before the pernicious school system brainwashed us into believing learning meant being taught, education meant being told, and thinking meant second-guessing to conform. Scientists, or at least one esteemed geneticist, reckon our appraisal skills & hence intellect are in decline, maybe Wiki-chaos will show us the way back to evaluating situations as our ancestors did and honouring experiential learning over received wisdom.

 Looking ahead: Frome Scriptwriters are thrilled our next production, Flaming Crackers, short plays with a festive theme, will again be set alight onstage by a talented team of actors provided by Stepping Out Theatre Company ~ and this time our rehearsed-reading event will be on in Bristol too!   More details with next posting.
 And looking even further ahead, 2013 may be a vintage year for me for courses in spectacular places: check my website if you're interested, and pick between Spain, France, Greek islands, and two rather lovely venues where you don't need euros...

Where were you when you first heard Bob Marley? I was living in Edgware in 1977 when Jamming came on the charts show, and I stared at the radio on the worktop transfixed. I think that’s the only reason I remember that kitchen at all.
Marley, the powerful & moving new film from director Kevin Macdonald, picks on personal connections like that and enriches their colour & volume. It’s on general release next week but came to the Little Theatre (visited often by Haile Selassie in his exile years) on Sunday for a special premiere showing. There’s more than I needed about Bob Marley's final sad weeks, but most of the movie comprises convincing, compassionate, and appreciative tributes to his 36 years of vibrant living. We had a kind of bonus track too, a post-show discussion between Kevin, a journalist who remembered Bob from the '70s, and Benjamin Zephaniah who spoke passionately about the poetry of the songs. And the legacy of Bob Marley? All three knew their answer to that one: Roots reggae with a serious message has gone around the world, a unifying element to warring underclass communities. You don’t have to be a Rastafarian to connect with Marley ~ when the Tunisian greengrocer killed himself and started the Arab Spring, STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS was the message on the wall next day. As producer Lee "Scratch" Perry said in the movie, people like his music because "he has a story to tell and him tell it in a way you have to believe it ~ him tell it pity-full.”

You know the way when you decide to move you suddenly see For Sale/Rent signs everywhere? It’s an acausal connecting principle, Jung said, something to do with the space-time continuum and indestructible energy. And archetypes & the unconscious, naturally. It’s happening to me around my play Mascara, as the start of rehearsals approaches. The main theme in my play is the fine line between love & collusion, and one key question is about early experiences. Received wisdom is that we need the smoothest possible slide from the slipstream of childhood into the turbulent waters of adult life, and certainly we’d all prefer that for our loved ones. But I keep seeing & hearing memories which cut across that assumption. One of the most moving sequences in Marley is when Bob, considered a half-breed in his black neighbourhood, goes to find his white father and is brusquely rejected. He goes home and writes Cornerstone
The stone the builder refused
will be the head cornerstone.
And in a book of essays by Adam Phillips lent to me by Emily there’s another example of extreme resilience: Paul Steinberg, writing about Auschwitz in Speak You Also, speculates as to whether his unhappy childhood prepared him for his survival, posing the question: can a ‘good’ childhood prepare one for life?
I’m not arguing that Goethe’s maxim ~ if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you strong ~ should justify any & every kind of cruelty, obviously. But it does seem that some setbacks will feed creative determination. Mark Rylance, in a wonderful interview (on on BBC3), recalled being "the kid who didn’t speak”, unable to form consonants even with intervention from a speech therapist. It was a passion for private improvisation that got him through ~ he likes to think, he says, that being Captain Kirk and Spock was how he found his voice.
And that’s another synchronicity of thought, too, because Mark Rylance is patron of Stepping Out Theatre Company, whose director Mark has gone on record to call “one of the most inspirational theatre artists I have encountered in the last ten years… (he) does not shy away from the possibility that theatre is a transformative and healing activity which brings joy into people’s lives… “ And where the synchronicity comes in again is that ~ excitingly and luckily for me ~ Stepping Out is producing Mascara.

Finally, in this long posting: Thanks to Richard Carder for an excellent Poetry & a Pint night last night, where Rose Flint and I were guest poets. I forgot to take a photo so here's a picture of St James Wine Vaults. A good venue for boho atmosphere.