A long week but a good one in Frome

We've just enjoyed an unusually music-rich week, even by Frome's standards. Wednesday's Roots Session featured two excellent acts: Garry "the slide guy" Smith from Dorset, and the Ed Goodale Band. Ed credits his Asperger's Syndrome for the insight that enables him to create his impressive songs and lyrics, and the 4-piece lineup includes brother Ollie on drums. On Friday, the brilliant Pete Gage Band returned to a crowded Cornerhouse for a fantastic evening of blues & dancing, and then on Sunday afternoon the monthly Nunney Acoustic Cafe offered a steady stream of talented performers for a full four hours.
All were highly enjoyable, and among my highlights were Frome bands We Don't Scare Easy and Goodman and the Bad Girls, both very recently-formed, and main guest Otto Wilde also from Frome, whose unique performance style could be described as indefinable...

From music to art: the Round Tower at Black Swan Arts is currently crammed with vibrant and varied images created by students at Frome College in a wide range of media, with the corridor also ablaze with colour from the work of the Middle Schools in response to the national 'Big Draw' project. Making a Mark is on till 23rd February - a must-see if you can.


No theatre news from me this week but masses of fabulous poetry: Four superb performance poets from varied corners of the southwest descended on the Old Fire Station in Frome on Saturday afternoon, to record WordPlay for Visual Radio Arts. I had the total privilege of interviewing, in my capacity as trainee presenter, the awesomely creative voices of Birdspeed, Chris White, Josie Alford, and Rhys Ashton Tucker - you can see the result online here. Here's us with producer Phil & camera-person Mags at the end of a scary (for me) but exhilarating hour.

Slight spillage now into the next bulletin, but as I'm late with the week's arts news I'll finish with the Frome Poetry 'Love' Cafe, traditional now for February, with Hip Yak Poetry Shack queen and all-round goddess  Liv Torc (I have now run out of enthusiastic adjectives but it has been that kind of week) as our popular guest. Liv's poems of passion celebrate intimate moments like the wet patch, the great kiss, and the note on the fridge, and they are all witty and poignant and powerfully performed, so the buzz in the Garden Cafe was immense. On the open mic, fourteen readers ranged widely in their responses through humour, reminiscence, social commentary, friendship, passion, and golf... Another wonderful night - here's Liv & me with Cat who read for the first time and will be back to co-guest in a future Frome Cafe (thanks Melina) and we'll do it all again but differently in May! 

Talking About Painting by Christopher Bucklow is the current exhibition at Black Swan Arts, and at Friday’s opening Chris was talking about painting and dreaming and psychoanalysis, and confirming my suspicion that theatre at its best is about creative interaction and doesn’t necessarily need a script. “The unconscious is a hidden language ~ a whole universe of things we don’t have access to," Chris says,  "I paint a room and I wait for the characters to appear. It’s like a séance."  Consistent characters in the dream-dramas of his paintings are Clement Greenberg and Mandy Rice-Davis, metaphors for the struggle within the artist's psyche:Clement an art critic who "wanted a painting to be itself, not a 'window into the world'," and Mandy the call-girl who, when the Foreign Secretary denied sleeping with her, challenged the entire establishment edifice by her calm response Well he would say that, wouldn’t he.  “She opened the skin that was closed," says Chris, "That’s the dialogue in the pictures – between the open and the closed. I didn’t set out to use these characters, I discovered them.. It’s day dreaming.  I dip in, then I sit back and think about what I’ve done. That's the pattern.” Sounds just like writing a script...

Back within the cave of these huge canvases on Sunday,  Kim's cake replaced the wine as Words at the Black Swan writing group met for our second session, this time with poet Rose Flint, who skilfully steered us away from fore-knowledge into a personal place of 'receiving' the paintings, as "both the physicality of the art and the image within the art are ways we view the world." With the challenge to 'write about the canvas that appeals or repulses you most', here's Mandy Mourning: 
Sliding through time
piece by shining piece 
shattered, 
folded like a deckchair,
your lives hanging by a thread,
How can you crawl away in those shoes?
Who will paint your struggle now 
that bloodied stump is floored?


Box of Tricks is touring Wordplay: six new short plays inspired by “Division” with a a subtext suggestion NW/SW divide may be involved, especially as this is a collaboration between Octagon Theatre Bolton and Exeter’s Bike Shed Theatre. Connections with the theme seemed somewhat tenuous but that didn’t matter at all in a production which included some very strong writing brought to life by four absolutely cracking actors: Rachel Austin, David Judge, Helen Carter and Matthew Ganley. Best of the writers were Bea Roberts and Ella Greenhill, whose sibling drama was sensitively poised emotionally and extremely moving, and Luke Barnes’ Goldilocks spoof despite not really going anywhere did make me giggle. A good piece to end an event that deserved a bigger audience.
 My account of the Cosmic Walk Annabelle & I went on last year is in the spring issue of Green Spirit ~ thanks Ian Mowll for digging it out from these postings virtually verbatim, apart from the jaunty conclusion of Monty Python's Galaxy Song: Let's hope that there's intelligent life in Outer Space, 'cos there's bugger-all here on earth.
And finally... this week's headline in the doughty Somerset Standard brags that Frome ‘according to a national newspaper’ is Sixth coolest place to live in UK. I couldn't find confirmation online but here's Sam & Paula’s party before serious dancing began... hotting up & cooling down.