This weekend saw the culmination of our spring project at Nevertheless Pub Theatre: When She Imagines... was written by Frome Scriptwriters, performed by Sara Taylor, and directed by Nevertheless Productions' founder Rosie Finnegan.  And every aspect - scripts, acting, and direction - was picked out for praise by enthusiastic audiences on both nights. Extraordinary, professional, engaging, enjoyable, brilliant, fantastic, impressive, thought-provoking, funny, accomplished, superbly acted, wonderful words beautifully interpreted, excellent production, amazing - worth the trip from Bristol... (You can read all the feedback is on Nevertheless facebook page.) Our venue at the Cornerhouse got thumbs-up for installing more comfortable seating, and we loved all the audience responses when asked why they would recommend Frome's pub theatre. Supporting local talent and enjoying good entertainment were often cited, and these three comments probably say it all:

• The quality of performance and writing is superb, and gives the people of Frome the opportunity to experience live theatre for minimal outlay
• It’s like no other theatre - intimate, warm, cosy, and perfect
• Frome is bursting with talent and in the current economic climate Nevertheless has shown what you can do on a low budget

Here's Sara in her three roles as three very different women, age 25 in A Blue Line by Paul Ralston, 50 in Tighe O'Connor's play Hello five O, and 75 in A Long Wonderful Silence by Eddie Young. Frome Scriptwriters' competitions are always sent as anonymous submissions to an external judge, by the way, so some men, in Frome at least, can empathise with a women when she imagines....

Victoria Park on Saturday looks like a Peter Greenaway film as Frome hosts the national Town Cryer competition. I know nothing about crying, in the civic sense, and am intrigued to glean more about this tradition. Judging is on dress, voice, and cry content apparently: two cries each, separated by Morris dancing. "First cry is about the town, second cry is about a news item," explains one of the Axbridge team over tiffin. Everyone makes their own costumes but the Swindon entrant demurs when I ask if he chose his green jacket. "Some of them make it up to please themselves, but this is Great Western Railways!” I don't know who won but they all looked glorious ~ long may they cry for their towns!

It’s easy to spoof Shakespeare ineptly, baffling audience members who don’t know the plots and irritating ones who do. I approached Machamlear at Bath's nice little Rondo theatre with a trepidation which turned out to be totally needless: Dougie Blaxland’s paradic blending of three tragedies into a contemporary soap saga is a hilarious by any standards, and Live Wire community theatre company had terrific fun with it. The basic plots of each play are as recognisable as the Eastenders theme music that links the scenes, but all three are inextricably intertwined as action moves around the London suburb of Burnham Wood with plots are hatched by Mac and Beth and Claude Elsinore in the Kings' Head, the pub Ken Lear has unwisely handed over to his greedy elder daughters... “My mother’s married a total dickhead” moans Hamlet to Cordelia, the only one who understands since Ophelia dumped him, and they run away together followed by hoodies Rosie Krantz and Gill Denstone... The stories end in similarly cross-fertilised mass slaughter. “I’ve never seen so many corpses," declares the doctor ~ there’s always a doctor in a soap ~ "Things like this only happen in plays!” The cast's five youngsters add charming energy to the production and there's zestful acting all round with a superbly scene-stealing cameo as Banquo’s ghost from Jackie Eliot. Spanking script, lively direction, great night out.

I wasn't planning to blog again until after the next, rather busy, weekend, but Bluebeard finishes at Bristol Old Vic on Saturday, and everyone who cares about writing, or relationships, or ~ well, anything really ~ needs to go see it.
Writer Hattie Naylor developed this 60-minute monologue with support from Bristol Old Vic Ferment, who co-produced with Gallivant. As introduction to an extraordinary reworking of the Bluebeard fantasy I'll just quote the flyer: Will he excite you? Will he seduce you? Will he love you to death? but Hattie can tell you more here.  Her script is tautly shocking from the opening line, words chosen with knifelike precision and cuttingly delivered, poetic and visual ~ not so much filmic as a series of savagely erotic paintings. It's also a psychological study of violence ~ specifically on women but evoking the whole notion of control and complicity in human interaction. We are taken deep into the mind of predator with a chilling ability to self-justify ~ Nature doesn’t come with moral guidelines. Nature is tyranny. ~ but his insights into his victims are searing. She’ll go back there, he says of one corrupted naïf, She’ll want to attempt to understand it. Of another: She thought she could take it... she wants to know there's a worthless self deep within her, why else would she stay?' 
And there's an amazing dance half-way through, to The Night, which ferociously embodies his misogyny and rage and unacknowledged self-contempt. The ending fits perfectly this ouroboric tale but a spoiler would, in this case, spoil.

(I can't imagine anyone better for this role than Paul Mundell, which is why I've used his Spotlight picture here... so you can see exactly what I mean.)

  A 'family show' that really engages and entertains all ages is as rare as sunny afternoons in June this year.  Merlin's amphitheatre revelled in both on Sunday when Quantum Theatre brought Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, an unpretentious and delightful version of Beatrix Potter's classic tales adapted by Michael Wildmore and performed by four lively actor/musicians. The two stories combined to a running time of nearly 2 hours, ambitious for an audience compose largely of littlies, but the combination of energetic action and pantomime-style interaction kept everyone gripped and Scottish-reeling Mr McGregor had the children yelling themselves hoarse to direct him to the hidden rabbits. (Not sure if it was supposed to be the other way round, maybe Frome children disapprove of deviant rodents). The fact that all the props have a slightly here's-one-I-pulled-out-of-the-skip-earlier look detracts not at all from our enjoyment and confirms that you don't need to throw a bucket of money at a company to get a show that does what it says on the flyer: 'an enchanting experience for young and old alike.'

The Big Wedding, shown at Frome's independent Westway cinema on Sunday, has no particular connection with writing or theatre, or ~ since it's set in American Richlands ~ local culture but I'm going to include it here because I'm intrigued by the vitriolic mauling this movie met from the critics. Flippant and frankly farcical, it's a quirky take on the posh-facade-implodes-at-family-gathering cliché, well-acted and frequently very funny. Rotten Tomatoes website is near-unanimously incandescent with scorn, some of it quite inventive ( jokes squeezed from the ragged plot with the grace of an arthritic senior citizen trying to get milk out of a coconut) but mostly summed up as "the misery of watching actors you once respected demean themselves." This indignant thread runs through all the reviews, with snarling castigation of cast members because they have (Robbie Williams, Diane Keaton) or have not (Robert de Nero, Ben Barnes) played similar parts before. Robert de Nero is particularly berated. "With De Nero inexcusably using what is for many people the single most obscene swear word, this is well off target" was the final judgement from Birmingham Mail.  And I think this is the key, not the capricious and unlikely (or "chaotically disparate tones" in RotTom speak) storyline.  There's cunnilingus on the kitchen table, discussion of the length of orgasms, and a highly inappropriate one-night stand ~ all featuring the oldsters, which makes de Niro according to his anguished fans a 'sleazy old creep' and the film a 'potty-mouthed fiasco... just embarrassing'. De Nero is 69, Keaton 66, and neither is chastened in this movie for their regretlessly sexual appetites. "Sinks to new levels of horrid" as the Utah reviewer put it. Reader, you decide.


Back to proper culture, with BOV’s monthly BlahBlahBlah, a bitter-sweet occasion ~ I quote host Byron Vincent here in a rare moment of familiar imagery ~ as this is his final appearance here as a performance poet. He has no new poem for the occasion due to arm injury (not a stabbing, he clarifies, he's been stabbed five times in his life but this is not one of them) so he reads a brilliant one about teeshirt logos.  Main guests for the night are Andy Craven Griffiths and Caroline Bird.  Andy has been researching altruism and urges us all to do acts of kindness and tweet him about them. His poems, especially the first which is about snow, in childhood and in love, are brilliant. Caroline's surreal poems have won prizes and been published since she was 15  ~ she shared one about eating a parrot from her early teens. 'The early bird knows sod all about perseverance’ she suggests, strangely. It's a strange night, overall, and for Byron's many followers, a sad one.

Exeter was bubbling with performers last week for the IGNITE festival, where "Any space can be a theatre, anyone can tell a story." I took a trip down with writer-friend Jill Miller to see my short play The Human Angle at The Globe Inn in a production by dynamic young company Ripped Script as one of four Snapshots of life. Great fun to see my meta-theatrical anti-war comedy brought to life, and the other very different scripts, all provocatively engaging ~ I especially liked The River Lethe, contemporising an ancient Greek myth, written by Yannis Souris, a Theatre West stable-mate.


Frome FM Saturday afternoon chat show with Bo Bowman-Shaw and Sara Coffield featured the upcoming Frome Festival this week, with me and Gilly Waugh as guests. Gilly was there to plug Through the Blue Door, her open-house-and-garden event which sounds fantastic ~ sculptures, poetry, music, all free except the Pimms ~  and I was there to promote as many of the Words At Frome Festival events as I could cram into my half hour interview. Quite a few, as it happened, and a big puff for the Library promotion including our new flyers, and our facebook page.

And as teenyweeny Toolshed gallery closes on Georgie Manly's Our Turn exhibition (cat lit free to a good home), Gaynor O'Flynn opens up the vast Being Human exhibition space 'for one night only' to reveal an impressive array of work in various media. Within the warehouse there's projections and a creative draft game while outside ceramicist Hans Borgonjon is collecting fingerprints in clay within a bamboo circular structure and a dog wants to play frisby. It's the culmination of an residency from award-winning artists from Russia, USA, Greece, and Belgium as well as UK. Fascinating. And the festival hasn't even begun yet...

Writers take heart from the history of The Seagull, a play so catastrophically badly received at its premier that Chekhov vowed he would never put another on stage if he lived for 700 years. Two years later, in 1896, the next production met with a response described by director Stanislavski as "colossal, like a second Easter. Many people, myself among them, danced a wild dance for joy and excitement."
The new adaption by John Donnelly directed by Blanche McIntyre for Headlong deserved similar rapture in the streets outside Theatre Royal Bath. The dialogue dazzles, pain and poetry mixing with precision, authentically personal without ever becoming prosaic or predictable, and is often spotlit suddenly by quirky humour. Cast ~ especially Alexander Cobb as conflicted playwright Konstantin and Abigail Cruttenden as his self-absorbed, insecure, mother ~ are individually riveting in their private passions and in the tableau scenes Chekhov loves to create. Intimate moments are offered directly to audience, houselights rising to remind us of our complicity in these dilemmas of life and art, a device that enhances the meta-theatrical theme at the heart of the play. You have to write what's inside, even if everyone says you're wrong, Konstantin declares, like everyone in this story fearing to 'sleepwalk through life': he alone keep to his pledge I'd rather have nothing than a lie. Laura Hopkins' set supports this integrity: no attempt at lakeside landscape but a strangely blank backdrop daubed with images and scrawl throughout the action, with a plank that morphs with striking simplicity from garden seesaw to supper table. It's all simply brilliant ~ 5 stars, read more here.

The Dug Out at the Tobacco Factory is a kind-of proxy site-specific performance combining two tales in one location: the 1970s 'Dug Out' nightclub, convincingly recreated by Halla Groves, also represents a refuge from rioting in 1944. The war story is a romantic encounter but 30 years on, city life is more complex. Black American soldiers stationed in Bristol during WW2 met no racism from local people but their white colleagues found it unacceptable to see them with English girls, so there's innocence as well as ignorance in the encounter between Rita and GI Curtis. By 1974 the clubbers have more conflicts and concerns than racism to cope with: there's drugs, pregnancy, transgenderism, prawn cocktails, Germaine Greer and the IRA to name a few. Writer Amanda Whittington has researched both eras in detail, as evidenced ~ perhaps too clearly ~ in her characters' dialogue. But there's much that's thought-provoking, some excellent individual performances and a soundtrack to totally relish. (image: Farrows Creative)

Still on the subject of exploring one's own locality, photographer Edward Johnson is creating a story in images about the artistic life of Frome, and I feel very pleased and privileged to have been invited to sit for his gallery. We went to the gardens of the Blue House, abundant with indigo aquilegia aptly, for the shoot. Edward kindly took a snap on my camera so I had a preview of his pose and here it is. Here too, just because I love this place, is an evening view over the lake at Stourhead...

Why is Frome such a hotbed of creativity? It's a frequent question now that Frome is officially on the Hot List of places to live in England, and local luminary Matthew Graham was asked his view by Dan Biggane in interview for the Somerset Standard. Other than being old and hidden and hence evolving without outside interference into a unique identity, he had no solution. "Why is ultimately a mystery. Best not to question it, just be grateful for it." Matthew himself is one of those at the hub of our precious mystery, and his latest contribution to creative-crucible spirit of the town is Makeshift Musical, the stage show he wrote specifically for Merlin Theatre Company as a fundraiser. His brief ~ combining songs from widely different musicals within a storyline for the exuberant young cast ~ must have been as challenging as scripting Life on Mars but the result was a delightfully engaging tale of the city with some stunning individual performances and wonderful ensemble work, and a standing ovation on Saturday night for the final performance at the Merlin.

Sunday saw the annual Cheap Street Fun Day, this year merging with Frome's Super Market so access roads closed and the streets filled with performers and balloons and stalls selling everything from fantasy clothes to foods exotic and local,  the whole town transformed into a summer festival but with extra cheese sampling. Fabulous free music all day ~ Frome Street Bandits and Leander Morales here ~ and evening too, as another fantastic Jazz Jam at the Cornerhouse closes the first weekend of real summer...

Black Swan Arts new exhibition is a site-specific installation from Mark Karasick if you could see what i see through your eyes. Mark has created monolithic images of his parents through the ancient technique of encaustic painting of fragments carefully nailed together. Rose Flint's workshop for Words at the Black Swan focussed on the artist's theme of DNA streamed from parents making each child a new individual yet still linked to the past. We wrote relating this notion to ourselves and a fascinating range of responses emerged ~ they'll be posted on our facebook page. 

So, yes, why IS Frome such a hotbed of creative activity, filled with people of all ages ready to share their extraordinary talent with their community readily and usually with no or little remuneration...

Dan Biggane asked Rosie and me that too, in a great double-page spread about our Pub Theatre and current Nevertheless production from Frome Scriptwriters at The Cornerhouse: When She Imagines, on June 14th and 15th. We said... well you can read that on the paper's new website here!

Shortly after the start of Napoleon - A Defence, the new production by Devon-based clown group Le Navet Bete at The Brewery, the man in the seat next to me murmured to his companion "I don't think we can rely on this for historical accuracy." The cast were at the time enacting a motley group of french supporters learning to march in a manic cancan, while Wellington despatched his 'master of disguise' Major Blunt to capture the Emperor disguised as a standard lamp. History's loss was audience gain:  fast-paced slapstick, impressive circus skills, hilarious costumes and cross-dressing, fireworks and french fancies. All fabulous fun ~ definitely a company I'll be watching again when they bring their next show to Bristol.


The Bristol Old Vic website has a charming trailer for Complicite's Lionboy which gives the impression of exquisite visuals to support a hero's journey of the imagination like Pi's travels with his tiger.  It's actually more bland than that and less fantastical: an adventure yarn with a good oldfashioned Wizard of Oz ending ~ home is where the heart is. Based on a trilology for children by Zizou Corder, the story of Charlie Ashanti's quest to find his kidnapped parents and save the world from the evil Corporacy is largely narrated direct to audience by the cast of six (four men and two women, and a male drummer. I mention this because there's quite a blokey feel overall despite the female writer and director.) Sometimes there's a spoofy James-Bond-meets-Dr.Doolittle charm ~ with a touch of Harry Hill in the fight!-fight! showdown between Charlie and the Corporacy ~ but apart from a genetically modified cat called Sergei there's little humour and the script tends to repetitive explanational simplicity. Best bit is a dazzling sequence in the first half when Lisa Kerr as a pirouette creates the glamour and glitz of the circus, and atmospheric shadows often enhance the action but I'd have liked a little more tension and verve... it's a family show of course and I had none of that target audience with me, but I did wonder if they might have agreed with the little boy in the audience who, when comments were encouraged from the stage, suggested 'boring.'

In Frome, Toolshed's intimate little gallery is featuring Our Turn, Georgie Manly's collection of little fluffy balls on a catlit base, while  the new exhibition at Black Swan Arts is Mark Karasick's intriguingly entitled show  if you could see what i see through your eyes. Words at the Black Swan poetry group will gather under the guidance of Rose Flint on Sunday at 3.30 for a one-and-a-half hour workshop ~ this session costs just £4 and is open to new members or interested droppers-in so do come if you're in Frome for the Cheap Street Fun Day.

Final footnote: my short story/poetry anthology are we nearly there yet? is now on kindle.

Bristol's theatrical MAYFEST is over for another year, ending on a blue-sky high with champagne and balloons in Queens Square while sounds of Happy Mondays (live) float along the dockside. I didn't see many shows this time but did catch the Saturday matinee of utterly awesome Valentijn Dhaenens' monologue Bigmouth at BOV Studio, en route to Soho Theatre via Belgium, Finland and Edinburgh collecting awards and accolades all the way. The notion behind this SKaGen production is uniquely simple: extracts from public speeches made in situations of confrontation over two thousand years are combined in a dramatic medley of courage, bravado, optimism, resignation, inspiration and bigotry, with the only common element a passionate self-certainty.
From Socrates calmly defending love over might when sentenced to death in 399 BC, to George Bush promising vengeance for the Twin Towers (mingled with similar sentiments at the New Orleans disaster as if the hurricane too had been launched by muslim terrorists), this kaleidescope of historical fragments includes Malcolms X and Luther King,  bin Laden, Kennedy, Reagan, Goebbles and more including obscurely Pericles and Republican political commentator Anne Coulter, whose bigotry is so absurdly extreme I wouldn't be surprised if she claimed she could see Mecca from her bedroom window.  In what's rightly been acclaimed as a power-house performance, Valentijn uses only a long desk with a row of mics to recreate their words, sometimes with translation and always with extraordinarily convincing accent and tone. For coherence, there's a blackboard style projection list from which each name is erased when Valentijin moves to the next. Some speeches are given solemn gravitas, like Osama bin Laden's 1996 fatwah against America which is couched with unexpected dignity; some are darkly comic, like the contrast between Goebbles' quiet menace and General Patten's rowdy vulgarity. Some juxtapositions surprise, like the celebration of Congolese independence immediately following a sanctimonious abdication speech by the Belgian king. “We’re going to make the Congo the centre of the sun’s radiance” Lumumba promises, chillingly evoking Coleridge's ironic words in Ozymandias:"Look on my works ye mighty, and despair." Nothing beside remains...
There's electrifying musicality too, through sound design by Jeroen Wuyts (who also created the atmospheric lighting) and US presidents rattle off their histrionic pledges over a fastpaced dub version of I like to be in America...  How do you end a tour de force like this? Valentijn's choice is to descend to the audience and sing Nature Boy, acapella, following the words on his blackboard like a child at a panto, repeating the final lines: The greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.  He left the full-house audience reeling but not too stunned to cheer throughout his three curtain calls. Five stars.

By contrast the Bristol Old Vic evening show by Clod Ensemble fills the stage with people and movement for their polished, self-assured, performance Zero, wordless apart from a specially-composed musical score performed live, and occasional topical soundbites. One of these was that gone-viral Youtube clip when the guy pushes his reluctantly-rope-swinging girlfriend off the cliff, though deprived of its famous “I just got dumped!” final line. Maybe they didn’t want specific outcomes for their 'Tragedy in 5 Acts' which seemed to be generally about frustrations and accumulative damage of relationships. Life's a bitch, and then you die, as Bertolt Brecht put it. I think you can buy that on a mug, too. 

Fifty Words, written by Michael Weller and directed by Lawrence Boswell, is the final production in a trio of contemporary American plays at Bath's Ustinov Studio. It's actually, according to the playwright's notes, one of a triology of plays exploring the roles of marriage and infidelity, but stands alone powerfully as a dissection of the Icarus night of one high-flying couple. Rumi could have written the introduction:
A night full of talking that hurts, my worst held-back secrets: Everything has to do with loving and not-loving.

“Is this what couples talk about when their kid has a first sleepover?” Janine wonders to Adam as they reminisce about the blow-job in a taxi the night they met. Lust is only one word for love: Jan thinks we need more, fifty of them like Eskimos have for snow, but this couple can't seem to find the right lexicon as they explore bickering and blame, taunts and rants, recrimination and assault. Jan’s frustration has traditional roots ~ she gave up her career for his ~ but there are enough unpredictable elements to avoid cliche in this provocative insight into that familiar struggle of coupledom: to find intimacy while not stifling individuality.  

What gives this psychological case-study dramatic edge is the constant shadow of the unseen little boy at the sleepover, the final knot between them, like his parents trying and failing to hide from reality. It's a stunning show which will undoubtedly gather stars magnetically: an excellent set by Simon Kenny, superb lighting (Richard Howell) and atmospheric sound (Fergus O'Hare) all work evocatively to support heartbreakingly convincing performances from Richard Clothier and Claire Price, both mesmeric throughout. It's on till 15th June ~ recommended.

Another quick plug for Snapshots at IGNITE Theatre Festival Exeter, a Ripped Script production at The Globe Inn on June 7th of six short plays one of which is mine:

"The Human Angle is a comedy about the difficulty in using theatre as a platform for protest. It's a play with a serious intention but, as Shaw said, life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. I hope you will laugh, but I hope you'll join the Stop The War Coalition too."

And I have neither excuse nor pretext for ending this post with a burst of UST, as Mills & Boon call their special ingredient of unresolved sexual tension, in this OTT wallow in Regency romance... Watch and weep. And probably eat several chocolates...

 Shanklin town on the Isle of Wight, Yannis tells us in his welcome session on Friday night, has more sunshine than anywhere else in the UK. Shanklin clearly knows its holiday-destination USP, eschewing trivia like cappuccino and wifi to plump all its assets into long sun-gilded sandy strands topped by esplanades. The entire resort evokes one of those beach summer holidays of childhood you remember, or misremember, or maybe read about in a book published soon after the war... deck-chairs and beach games, icecream cornets and sandwiches, and sea that laps discretely against the shore as if loath to make a fuss. This entirely peaceful setting would be perfect for a Miss Marple murder mystery in fact, and I wonder if ITV has commissioned one as I'm walking the coast path to Sandown, which takes an hour including breaks to write, without seeing a single ipod or cellphone.
I haven't travelled here for the time-trekking however:  I'm at The Grange leading a Find Your Voice course that doesn’t give any of us much chance to slip into a slow-energy vibe as I've packed as many exercises as possible into the time available. Ten terrific writers all responded with great good humour and impressive skill, bonding as a group so well that by Saturday night we were all partying together like old friends. A great weekend and I hope to hear much more from these varied creative writing voices in future.

My litmus-paper exercise (I offer this freely to any writing group ~ I stole it from Mark Haddon) is a slimline description of location in perverse & inappropriate styles: this group without exception rose to the challenge brilliantly. I wish mine was as good (thanks Bryony for blogging yours) ~ I took the notion of a recipe:
Take one seaside postcard printed early 1970s (full colour). 
Enlarge to life-size. 
Animate promenaders, dogs, children ~ slowly. 
 Add sound of waves ~ low volume. 
Garnish with golden gorse and enjoy.

 
An inspirational weekend but a grim train journey home: hours of delay from a fatality on the line.  Sympathy for the driver  calmed the boistrous drunks in my carriage but they got off and were supplemented by equally drunk and less empathetic football supporters... I'm just glad Southampton drew (with Stoke, if you were wondering.)

Back home and Nathan Filer is launching his first novel The Shock of the New in Bath.  Media enthusiasm is high but Nathan seems stunned so many have turned up in Toppings to hear his reading and buy "one of 2013's most anticipated books, following an 11-publisher bidding war, a compelling study of grief, madness and loss."  Despite this dark theme summary there are flashes of Nathanesque wit in the story and in the lively Q&A ~ along with fascinating insights into his writing process, one of which is to read every word out loud to check the rhythm and beat... Trust a poet!

Nearly a week ago since I watched San Francisco receding into blue distance: touchdown in Frome has been hectic but pleasant, beginning with a meeting of Frome Scriptwriters whose latest scripts will be performed next month at the Cornerhouse. When She Imagines is a trio of monologues, directed by Nevertheless producer Rosie Finnegan, which was commissioned as 'fringe' to the Imagine events at Rook Lane. Are Frome Scriptwriters resting cosily on their laurels? No of course not: they're already deep into the next project, Tales of the Tunnels, for Frome Festival.
Apropos things dramatic, here seems a good place for the link to my newly launched theatre blog: for some reason that now eludes me, I thought a good title would be Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln...

And while I'm at the self-promotion, Frozen Summer is now out on Kindle ~ it costs a quid, but think of the postage saved! And the trees... I've been recommending this free-to-use form of self-publishing for ages so it seemed only reasonable to try it. Provided you have a correctly edited Word file (no page breaks except for essential separation like new chapters and acknowledgements etc) publication takes literally only a few minutes ~ I did it in the departure lounge at San Francisco. I know some writers fear the stigma of 'Vanity Publishing' but self-publishing these days is not only respectable, it's a valuable contribution to diversity. 'We are the Farmers' Markets in a supermarket world' I like to say, with suitable fervour, and there's now even a major award solely for 'indie' writers, as non-commercially published authors are now termed.  The Guardian Books Blog quotes wonderful Kate Tempest as good practice: she self-published her first collection and subsequently hit the headlines by winning the Ted Hughes Award for her poem-play Brand New Ancients. Kate is interviewed in ideas tap, and her philosophy is one I completely relate to: If I felt something, I’d write it down. I never knew what it was for but actually all that writing has enabled to me know my palate and my writing style. If you’re a writer, then write constantly. Not for anybody to judge it but so you’re more comfortable at the page than away from it.  

On Wednesday Writing Events Bath organised A Gathering Of Writers talking about their work in support of Dorothy House, a cause as popular as the six authors contributing so the BRLSI was crammed.   Debby Holt, Lindsay Hawdon, Andrew Miller, Lesley Pearse, Nathan Filer and Tania Hershman proved a very successful medley of different voices, each with an interesting take on their personal craft, and all picking fascinating extracts to share. I liked especially Debby's view that 'writing is a way of making sense of our lives', and Nathan's reading from his debut novel. I've been a fan of Nathan for nearly a decade, since he came to Frome to contribute to Urban Scrawl ~ a night of performance poetry I organised as the climax of my year as Writer in Residence at the Merlin Theatre ~ and it's no surprise that now he's turned his writing hand to prose there was an 11-way auction battle for The Shock of the Fall. HarperCollins won. It's out in hard-back - but you can get it on Kindle at half the price...

Blue sky days are over now. Long journey home began languorously in the posh lounge of San Francisco airport (courtesy of a musician friend who also works in the control tower) and ended with a bumpy landing direct into a war zone. Luckily however, World War II turns out to have been wildly funny and a little bit vulgar ~ at least in the slippery fingers of writer-performers Stu Mcloughlin and Howard Coggins. Adolf and Winston is the new show from Living Spit, the theatre company with a mission to "make poorly-researched historical comedy-drama about people that one of us vaguely looks like", on the grounds that Howard looks a bit like Churchill when wearing a bowler hat and a cigar. Even when that's all he does wear.

Because he's in the bath, following political events by phone, realistic crackle-on-the-line provided by a crisp packet. From 1939 to the outbreak of war there's insight into Hitler's invasion plan ~ Howard a camp Rudolf Hess as the Führer searches for ‘somewhere nobody gives a shit about’ (other than Wales) ~ and flashback with ukulele to his rejection by the Viennese Academy of Fine Art despite powerful self-expression in paintings entitled things like 'Jew with a knife in his skull.' We see Churchill haunted by the black dog of depression ~ Stu with a guitar and a fuzzy nose ~ rallying to England's call.  Insults between evil Hun and good Brit escalate into literal struggle for the spot-light until, abruptly time-aware, they decide to set a visible stop watch and tell ~ in a song ~ 'The story of the war in 15 minutes.' Ludicrous truncation brings success to the second: Howard as Mussolini, Stu with pan-brush moustache as Stalin, as Roosevelt, and in a splendid finale as 'the soon-to-be-dead dictator' in a bunker with Eva Braun, who looks remarkably like Howard, in a stomach-hurtingly funny suicide pact scene. The innovative comedy of Living Spit spills endlessly, but what's most impressive is their ability to create mercurial mood-change, terminating hilarity by producing Star of David armbands to share a genuinely moving moment of reflection on that unspeakable extermination. Clever set, witty props, great lighting, terrific musicality, no wonder the full house demanded three curtain calls, and I wish I could say still on at BOV basement, go see! but I was only just in time myself.

Is this the right time for a relaunch Strindberg's Miss Julie, a tragedy of stifled individualism from an era of rigid classism as harsh for the mistress as for the servants?  UK Touring Theatre think it is, and have spent a long time reworking the original script in a 'translation for the 21st century.' Unfortunately much of this accessibility comes across like a Carry On movie, an impression not erased by long sections of stage business with kitchen fittings. Reviewers have not been kind to the production, with one star from What's On Stage and mumblings of lack-lustre direction, clumsy translation, and some performances that wouldn't be out of place in an am-dram church hall production. He didn't think much of the sound, either. I'd agree about most of those, and throw in lighting design too, but I think good actors did the best they could with direction which, like the script, seemed over-forced into unreal realism. The result was a ponderous 'naturalism' swerving abruptly into mania, which is probably why the characters' fights were electric but their connection had no eroticism. It didn't help that Adam Redmayne was miscast as Jean, looking more Dick Van Dyke than Mellors. But, having said all that, it was a better way to spend the evening than anything on telly, and the Merlin audience were warm in their applause.

I was in America when Maria Miller made her debut speech as culture minister and, like the by-election results, found reports online depressing. "In an age of austerity, our focus must be on economic impact..." well, no. In any age the role of art for communities as for individuals is health not wealth ~ although of course by any standards other than capitalism, our health is our most valuable asset. I've started another blog (Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln...) specifically to write about theatre stuff, actually, so I'll post my further thoughts there...
... and end this posting with a last look at my Californian retreat. Lots of coastal walking ~ about two or three hours a day ~ and both my writing projects completed. And good news about two shorts reaching performance. My monologue In These Shoes is online here ~ thanks Clare Reddaway for that! ~ and The Human Angle will be in the IGNITE festival in Exeter on June 7th, produced by Jon Nash's excellent Ripped Script company from Salisbury. I hope to get to see this one!

Another timeslip week of writing and ~ mostly ~ walking along the glorious coastline here, watching the birds: pelicans cruising overhead, curlew and teeny sanderlings paddling the rim of the sea, immigrant gulls that have travelled 190 miles from Lake Mono to this shore... The wild flowers are vividly indifferent to colour co-ordination in a way that  would exasperate an interior decorator ~ orange poppies, pink and golden iceplants, yellow daisies, blue iris, maroon scabeous, and big bushes of purple-blue echium where bee-sized humming birds buzz. And as well as seals sunbathing on Moss Beach, this week I had a distant glimpse of two Big Grey whales, jetting spray and breaching the water like dolphins.
On Wednesday Mo and I went to Ocean Beach where we found hundreds of sand-dollars littering the low-tide sand. These beautiful circular formations are not shells but skeletons of animals: they're  echinoderms like starfish and sea-urchins. Live ones would have a dark red fluffy covering, a bit like a 1970s Plumbs sofa-cover, but these are definitely collectors items.

As the temperature topped 23 degrees, and I'd finished my 'month of poems', I inaugurated a 'poem space' ~ simply staring at the taffeta tones of the sky without word-shaping. My last piece in the poem notebook was a Recipe for Miramar Beach cocktail:
     1    Beat some sea foam into firm peaks and set aside
     2    Sift white sand with enough saffron to tint to the colour cappuccino icecream
     3    Take a vat of Blue Curaçao and pour steadily on the base
     4    Slowly add Crème de Violette to deepen the tone at the top of the blue
     5    Spoon the beaten foam along the base
     6    Add a twist of birdsong, garnish with golden poppies, and enjoy!


Thursday night was a trip to the city for a meal in Original Joe's and to see Beach Blanket Babylon, the world's longest running musical review, served up old-fashioned music-hall style with red-curtained stage and drinks service to your seat. It's a unique-to-San-Francisco show, billed as 'hilarious spoofs of pop culture and political characters, spectacular costumes, outrageously gigantic hats...'  and that's all true. Fast moving, funny, with gloriously OTT costumes ~ the headgear gets crazier and crazier, culminating in a massive hat comprising the entire skyline of the city in the final number. My favourite sketch was Thriller with a brilliant Michael Jackson impersonator and the English royal family as the zombies....

My last full week here ended with a great music night at Mo and Anjas, fantastic food and five hours a fabulous playing & singing from seven guitarists and a fiddler ~ including, this being California, Dylan, Paul Simon, the Eagles... today we all feel a little frail.

Meanwhile, back in my real world, good reports of the Story Friday night which included my monologue, and I'm pleased I'll be back in time to see my short play The Human Angle produced by Ripped Script for the Exeter IGNITE festival ~ it's on at the Globe Inn on June 7th, bookable here.