War is over now...

Day 6 of Frome Festival became a flurry of costumes and props as War Zones transferred to Warminster for an afternoon matinee at Wessex MS Therapy Centre ~ thanks for the welcome, the appreciation, and the cakes, guys ~ and then back for our final performance. Albare were having a run-through at Cheese&Grain when Rosie and I called in to check our ticket sales so we caught a bit of their set, paused for snaps in the sunny market yard, then up to the Cornerhouse for another total sell-out show. How did that go? you ask. Brilliant, thought-provoking, different, kaleidoscopic, true, emotional and incredible! ... All excellent. Stunning standard of writing and performance ... Brilliant – powerful writing, marvellous acting – what more could we ask for? ... Fantastic performances by the two totally convincing actors with enormously clever little plays packed with the horror of war ... Brilliant, moving, relevant – a terrific performance! – talented, sensitive writing! ... Thought-provoking, moving, entertaining,topical ... Very powerful – both text and performance. I appreciated the critical points of view often lost in the brain-washing media coverage ... Absolutely brilliant as ever! The best £5 worth anywhere... and more on our Nevertheless Productions page.   All the War Zones scriptwriters, that's Sian Williams, Alison Clink, Brenda Bannister and Nikki Lloyd as well as Rosie Finnegan and me, stayed afterwards in the bar for an informal debrief. We're all delighted with the comments on our writing, and I'm really glad the others are pleased with our direction, a first-time for me.  And now with Danann and Livi headed back to Bristol, life seems suddenly quiet... missing you already.

Festival day 5... in the War Zone

I should have realised the day would start early when I agreed to talk about War Zones on Frome FM Breakfast Show with Bo Bowman-Shaw and Sara Vian ~ the clue is in the name ~ but lots of black coffee was provided and it was great fun to chat about the doings of the day with Russ Ellingham, who's painting sensational decor for Archangel's big Prohibition Night, and with Paul Newman whose venue number 2 is a must-see stop on Open Studios trail. Then on to a day's intensive rehearsals, with Alan Campbell of Frome Film & Video Makers coming in to film the full dress rehearsal ~ looking forward to some some clips for Youtube!

The filming meant I couldn't take any production stills during the dress rehearsal, but here's Danann and Livi at the end of a long day, with a quick break before the first night performance. By 7 o'clock we were sold out and by the time the show started we'd had to turn away about a dozen walk-ups. The feedback forms tell the next bit: The performance was amazing, the acting and the writing... Superb plays and actors... Great stories... So so so so good!... Amazing. Very intense... Very engaging, very funny, strangely informative... Really good blend of drama, pathos, and emotion – light and shade... Fantastic, such talent... So thought-provoking, more people should see it. Wonderful... interesting – kept my attention... Very professional... Excellent – poignant, funny, thoughtful. And more.
Abandoning Rosie as soon as applause & cheers subsided, I scurried down to Dolly's Bar in the Old Bath Arms to catch the second half of the Bard of Frome comedy playwriting competition, results voted by audience ballot. Here's organiser Tim O'Connor announcing the winner and then I had to stop taking pictures because it was my play Muffin Man, a big surprise & delight, to me anyway. A quick dash back to the Cornerhouse where Dempseys were still playing, to end the night dancing, still shamelessly brandishing my trophy cup. Well, you would, wouldn't you?

Frome Festival Day 4... mostly words

First day of rehearsals for War Zones, the Nevertheless pub theatre's production for this year's festival: six scripts written by Frome Scriptwriters and directed by Rosie Finnegan and me. Olivia Dennis and Danann McAleer arrived on the first train and spent the day with us at the Cornerhouse getting the first feel of the three characters they will each be playing, all quite diverse requiring a range of emotions. We rummaged through costumes, mused about props, consulted with the writers, drank coffee, and overall had an exciting time.
Then on to MC Festival Poetry Cafe featuring Hilda Sheehan, an absolutely delightful guest who creates a seductively surreal world' where seals live next door and you can lick a man out of ice. One of the best Poetry Cafes we've had ~ I've never seen the Garden Cafe so crammed, and a cramful programme too, highlights including eco-poet Helen Moore who introduced the winners of the wildlife poetry competition organised by Simon Carpenter ~ special appreciation to 11year old Daniel Birch for his lovely reverie in the bluebell wood ~ and all our open-mic readers, who were so good that Jill Miller who had the task of deciding the '2014 Festival Poet Laureate' also gave commendations to Jinny Fisher, Peter Woodcock, Yvonne Brunton and Jim Henderson before awarding the title to Rebecca Brewin for a terrific poem entitled Night Walk.
Here's Hilda reading some new work, and Jill giving Rebecca Brewin her certificate and prize.

Off then with my new bezzy to join the bevy of poets (we weren't sure of the correct collective noun, but on this occasion bevy feels appropriate) at the Archangel!

Fromesbury groups

Frome Station is one of those timber buildings that look like they've come from a Hornby set. It was opened in 1850 and as one of the oldest stations still in operation it's now Grade 2 Listed. Frome is only a branch line, which if you remember your Tank Engine stories means it loops off the main line, and it's only single track now, but it has a literary claim to fame: In 1912 Leonard Woolf, who was staying in Great Elm, took the train to Paddington specifically to propose to Virginia Stephen.  He must have travelled hopefully, for according to the to-be bride's younger brother Adrian she had been visibly "a little forward" with him for some months: "Her method of wooing is to talk of fucking" he wrote to post-impressionist painter Duncan Grant, "and I dare say she will be successful."  She was, of course, or he was, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf continued as core members of the Bloomsbury set.  And now there's a move to put up a plaque on our little railway station identifying its role in shaping literary history. Not quite Adlestrop, but a small significance surely worth celebrating.

The Bloomsbury Group had much to commend it: members were anti militarism & bourgeois values and pro women's suffrage & pleasure in relationships, but its cliqueyness was criticised even at the time ~ which gives me a branch line loop back to Frome because one of the things I've always loved about living here is the way the creative groups consciously & deliberately avoid exclusivity. This is one of the reasons the Town Council was able to go politically independent, and it's reflected in the huge range of events in  Frome Arts Festival. Now a new group Frome Writers Collective has formed to bring more connectedness to the diversity of small groups working in different genres and literary forms.  Here they are on their launch day, with the Mayor in his capacity as author of Flatpack Democracy beside David Lassman who has taken over leadership of Frome Scripwriters. Rosie and I started this group in 2012 and have enjoyed working on some great productions but we're both focussing on personal work at the moment. We've stepped back not away, and at a good time, with our final Scriptwriters project War Zones in Frome Festival: six 10-minute scripts from Alison Clink, Brenda Bannister, Nikki Lloyd, Sian Williams, Rosie Finnegan and me.  If you've seen previous Nevertheless Production shows you'll be thrilled that dream team Olivia Dennis and Danann McAleer are coming back to perform these very different pieces. Only a fiver, so do book and come along to the Cornerhouse 8pm on Tuesday 8th & Wednesday 9th July.

Cows, carnage, and festival creatures

In the week Gove shocked the sentient nation by extending his megalomaniac tweaks to the Literature curriculum by a purge of international classics ~ to be fair he didn't actually demand burning of all copies of To Kill a Mocking Bird and Steinbeck's Mice & Men though he might as well have from the fury evoked (including mine) ~  Lynn Gardner gave me respite from despair at our 'spoilers for sadness' culture in a delicate demurral to Alan Bennett's view of the playwright's craft. With hindsight, the National Treasure said, he should have been kinder to the audience. The Queen Mum of theatre commentary, with due respect, shifts from agreement at the joy of 'floating out of the theatre on a cloud of pleasure' to a more vigorous view:

 I also want to come out of the theatre on occasion feeling riled, angry, fired up for action or as if my heart is breaking... Yes I love being charmed and delighted in the theatre, but I don't want to be killed with kindness by artists, I want to be provoked by them and made to look at the world differently. I want to be taken outside my comfort zone. If that sometimes means they are going to risk boring me, offending me or even being cruel to me, then I'm not going to complain. Great art is seldom easy or kind.  I so agree. As Banksy said, art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Lynn's piece used a picture of King Lear but I'm using Guernica.

Coincidentally ~ this is not one of my contorted segueways ~ Nevertheless Pub Theatre is currently preparing for our next production War Zones: six 10-minute dramas which will be performed at the Cornerhouse for Frome Festival in July, 4th-13th. We've got two great actors so Rosie & I are getting quite excited about that one. There's a line-up on the Festival website of other wordy events, ranging from Moomins for adults to Teatime Treats for children, including talks, performances, a book quiz, and poetry workshops from me and Rose Flint whose inspiring poem Elements of Healing you may have seen featured in the RUH in Bath.
Rose lives on the outskirts of Frome on a dairy farm which I rarely visit, having a psychosomatic allergy to free-ranging bovine creatures (also equine, ovine, porcine and canine... anything bigger than a cat, basically.) But this farm having recently won BBC4's Food & Farming Award for 'outstanding contribution with cutting-edge thinking and creative ideas' ~ and Rose having provided strawberry-pink Wellington boots to replace my Edina-ish high-heels ~ I ventured forth. The big thing about Lordswood Farm is that all the cows are fed on grass not grain, and even though these ones were (safely) ensconced in the dairy yard they still had plenty of grass to nosh on. So here's a happy image to conclude.