Stardust, carnage, and song

'When you see those laughing couples casting off into the sea of matrimony, you say to yourself, they have no idea, poor things, they just have no idea...'  Two sedately-married couples set out to deal with their offsprings' dispute with impeccable civility in God of Carnage, Yasmina Reza's 2006 'comedy of manners', in which manners wear thin to reveal rifts and ultimately chasms between everyone involved. There's some clever social satire as entente deteriorates but ultimately & slightly disappointingly the script falls back on that old standby, alcohol, to bring confrontations to a climax. Platform 8 Productions at Bath's Mission Theatre did a grand job though an elaborate set worked against the claustrophobia of confined hostilities: Jeremy Fowlds was strong as ruthless lawyer Alain with Alexia Jones his exasperated wife Anette, with Chris Constantine and Hayley Fenton as Michel and Veronique.

Feet First Theatre has been on the move again this week - up north to Shropshire, to Carding Mill Valley. Being an adamant southerner I knew nothing of this National Trust park but it's immensely popular with walkers, cyclists, families and ~ luckily for us ~ also visitors curious about a promenade theatre show about the story of the world in a thousand paces.
After a day to recce the paths, Annabelle and I were in role as guides on the Time Walk on Sunday for Arts Alive, and audiences gave us really encouraging feedback: 'absolutely fascinating... better than anything you'd get from books - and such fun!'  We had a ball too, staying in a delightful B&B in Church Stretton and enjoying the friendly community and fantastic landscape.



Back to Frome for the final note from this post, from Katey Brooks who wowed the Grain Bar Roots session with her 'voice to melt glaciers' and intensely passionate songs. Katey liked this picture of her enough to feature it in a b&w version on her page ~ always great to see my images used by musicians.

Bohemian rhapsody in the Aegean

Regular followers will remember I've been regularly visiting Skyros and returning all aglow since this blog arrived blinking into cyberspace in 2006. Recently I decided to step back from leading courses, much as I've always loved my groups, to focus on new directions but the magic island called me back in the most exciting way ~ with camera in hand, to proxy-enjoy all the creative, spiritual, and physical activities of Atistsa bay. Here the friendliest group imaginable included me in their daily life from Qi Gong on the pale beach in early morning to singing at dusk, with dancing at night under the full moon. (Thanks Mark Gunston, film-maker & windsurfer extraordinaire, for the image)

Atsitsa is on the remote, neo-hippy, West coast where pine forests creep down to the pale pebbled bays and the sun sets vermillion on the wine-dark sea: for a more essentially Greek vibe you need to cross the island to the Skyros town where life on the cobbled streets seems hardly to have changed since Achilles' days, though down on the sandy shore nymph-wear is scanty and beachbar music is ambient chill-out. I came back with a full memory, both personal & technical, of dazzlingly beautiful moments ~ over 100 posted on my facbook page ~ feeling rich in connections and reconnections.

Amazingly, Frome was also enjoying 30+° heatwave when I got back, which must have been tough for the Frome Half Marathon. Mayor Toby Eliot and Deputy Al O'Kane participated and happily our 2016 Festival Poet Laureate, John Christopher Wood has decided to take his role seriously and to honour the occasion. Here's The Uses of Mayor Ware, which features not only audacious rhyme but a really neat final couplet. Enjoy!

The Mayor is doing a 10K run. He’s doing it for charity. 
It’s to try to raise some money, And to make it feel more funny 
He’s doing the whole thing In full mayoral bling, 
Which for charity hilarity has no parity. 
A chain of office weighs a ton; Running in it’s not much fun. 
So to schlep around a whole 10K Is a feat extremely schleppity. 
But he’s not doing it all alone - He’s running it with his deputy. 
 Councillors like these are good for Frome; It’s party politics that wrecks it. 
These feisty Independents are A much more positive Frexit. 
And it’s a turnaround beyond compare, Politically it’s rather stunning 
 First to be running for Mayor, And now to be Mayor for running.

Next week Annabelle and I are heading for Shropshire with our Time Walk, to 'walk through nearly five billion years tracking the story of our home planet, marvelling at the way everything on earth has evolved from stardust' in the lovely location of Carding Mill Valley.  I've been reading David Eagleman's fascinating insights into the intricacies of the human mind Incognito, finding even more to marvel at, and still more summer ahead!

I'll end with a look back at the magic island from two of my favourite places: the headland of Atsitsa bay, and Plateia Rupert Brooke at the top of Skyros town, perfect to watch the southern rocks turn slowly from grey to lilac as the sun sets...

Forth and back: unblocked writers, time travel, and electioneering Frome-stylee

Cheltenham Spa on Saturday sparkled in sunshine with pink blossom floating dreamily, mythic sculpture, (that's a hare and a minataur in somewhat intimidating-looking embrace on the Promenade) lively busking and even a small carousel, all confounding all my expectations of a stiff, horsey, kind of town. I was there to reunite with a writers' group which formed after sharing a weekend course at The Grange six years ago and still meets twice a year, members converging from all over the UK. It was delightful sharing an afternoon session with this friendly quintet which clearly thrives through a supportive ethos as well as great writing - and there's room for two more in their scribing circle so if that could be you, contact organiser Claire via a comment on her fascinating travel blog.

A superb day on Friday too, as Annabelle and I took several families on our cosmic Time Walk, telling the story of earth in a thousand paces. Here we are in costume in the superb gardens of the American Museum in Bath where despite distractions from primroses and birdsong, and an inquisitive rabbit, the children were encouragingly fascinated and charmingly responsive.  Even though the dinosaurs did take nearly four and a half billion years to reach, and disappeared forever a few paces later.

Back in Frome on Sunday, Democracy Day began ~ late afternoon, in fact ~ with a massive meeting with all five parliamentary candidates at Cheese&Grain and ended with a party for IfF ~ independents for Frome ~ candidates standing for council election. Following four successful years since the indies supplanted the party-politicians, and with nationwide interest in how they did it (see Flatpack Democracy) it's vital to maintain, and boost, support.

As this is Frome, music and creativity is inevitably involved, with Al O'Kane telling the story of IfF policies in a brilliant song which Howard Vause has made into a fabulous must-watch video. Live music from Al too, fresh from the Lamer Tree Music Awards final, with Tess Wakeling and Fasian Al'fasir Fharrad Farrer. Talent practically oozing out the walls - which revellers found on leaving were illuminated by more than moonlight...

I'm concluding this post with Poldark (which I don't watch) on the specious pretext that adulation of (insert lascivious adjective of your choice) Aidan Turner means a second series, and it's produced in Bristol. As was the brilliant Being Human (which I did watch) in which Aidan did for vampires what Colin Firth did for wet shirts with frothy cuffs. For a  bite-size chunk of Poldark action, click here. (spoiler alert, it's a spoof. Very funny too.)

Up and away... nearly.

In 10 days time I'm off to the fabulous Greek island of Skyros to lead a writing course, then direct to equally-fabulous Cortijo Romero in Spain on a similar mission & I'm unlikely to be online much during these sessions so this week has been pressured, but in a nice way... Rosie and I have been planning our next Nevertheless production: Muffin Man and Champagne Charlotte, a double-bill of our own plays which will premiere in Salisbury Fringe Festival and then come to Frome Cornerhouse for two more nights. Excitingly, my curtain-raiser Muffin Man was the winner  in this summer's Frome Festival comedy play competition, giving me the proud title "Bard of Frome" along with a goody-bag of spoils including honorary membership of Frome Writers' Collective,  and I'm even more thrilled that Ross Scott and Fleur Hanby Holmes are taking on this two-hander. They're both currently knee-deep in other productions  but made time for a run-through so promising I can hardly wait for October...

Also looking ahead, Annabelle and I are planning to take Time Walk, our promenade narration of the story of the earth in a thousand paces, to various venues around the region.  Our first booking has come from the American Museum which has a fantastic garden that will be great for a family-friendly version of our epic voyage. Here's Annabelle enthused by a Rackmanesquely magical wooded dell, and I'm lurking in the Kaffe Fasse exhibition which was put together by Kaffe himself with theatre designer Johan Engels, a marvellous mix of Klimt-like glitz and theatricality with masks and esoteric props.

So is that it? you ask ~ a couple of planning meetings with your bezzy mates & a run-through, a little light packing, and you're 'pressured'? Well no actually, there's a whole flotilla of other projects including my next 70-minute one-act play for Stepping Out Theatre Company, as well as finding time for personal stuff like the Gaza protest march in London and a balloon trip... which was sadly postponed because despite the glorious sunshine there's too much wind... luckily there's always something going on in Frome and this afternoon La Strada was hosting a soiree for Paul Newman's superb drawings, with songs from Sara Vian. Paul finds they 'mainline people to their own memories' ~ call in to see the exhibition upstairs, and you'll see why.

Madness and mutations and massive millipedes

Byron Vincent used to MC at Bristol Old Vic's monthly poetry performance events, and he was the most surreal, raw, funny, stand-up poet I ever saw. He made you laugh till your eyes stung at the existentialist absurdity of life and weep at the pain of it. Three years ago he stepped away from the spotlight for personal reasons which he reveals in his one-hour one-man (apart from onstage technician) show ironically titled Talk About Something You Like. All profits go CALM, the suicide prevention charity, and Alma Tavern's brochure gives a snappy outline: In 2011 Byron spent his summer resting in the magnolia bosom of an NHS psychiatric unit. In this show he extends the frayed mitten of insanity in the hope that you might shake hands.  As you'd expect, then: it's painful, shocking, and horribly self-exposing. It's also brave, brilliant, and horribly funny. Byron's brochure image is gruesome, but onstage despite his pyjamas he looks neat and personable, adding even more poignancy to this stream of insightful cameos of institutional life and the vortex of mental illness. This scratch performance ("that means it might be shit" defined Byron helpfully) with script-in-hand is actually a development of a piece from last February's BOV Ferment Fortnight, and it's great to see Byron going deeper and engaging more directly with the audience, even if this does get him 'panicking like a creationist at a fossil dig.' There are rich possibilities for black humour in Byron's hospital experience ~ including the display of advice to patients from which the show's name is drawn ("No no no! That's the equivalent of psychiatric entrapment!") ~ but it's the intimacy of personal detail, right back to his childhood hobby of 'collecting fears', that gives this show such scalding impact. It's on its way to Edinburgh, I hope they appreciate him. All of the hims.

Frome Festival is now only inches away, officially opening on Friday... though by the cosmic calculations Annabelle & I are using for our Time Walk on Saturday, those 2 days would be tinier than a quark, which is a particle in a neutron, which is a particle in an atom. Time Walk, the story of the earth in a thousand paces will narrate our history from the start of the solar system as a walk round Rodden Fields at the scale of one pace to five million years.  It will take an hour, with chimpanzees coming down from the trees in the last millimetres. Virtually speaking, of course.  We've paced our route in windswept winter and buttercupped spring, waded through overgrown cow parsley and paddled by flooded river, and now in glorious summer sunshine. We've found an incredible amount of scientific data, some that seems absurdly sci-fi like the trilobites with eyes on stalks and nine-metre millipedes, and developed two cosmic guides who're a bit like Vladimir and Estragon except they don't need Godot, or even Google, and they're very enthusiastic about the awesomeness of life on earth. This morning we had a dress rehearsal, with some helpful friends coming along to give audience feedback. The walk proper on Saturday is sold out.

So if you haven't booked anything yet, here's the festival link. Rosie Finnegan and I will be talking about our personal top tips on Frome FM on Friday morning ~ our pub theatre production on Tuesday & Wednesday will obviously get a puff, (that's War Zones at the Cornerhouse) but there's also drama at the Old Bath Arms on Tuesday with Tighe O'Connor's comedy contest. I'm pleased to see my short play Muffin Man was picked for production, with two more Frome Scriptwriters in the shortlist line-up as well. And there's poetry, and music, and art... oh, get a brochure!