Happy Wednesday, Broskis and… Siskis?
I dunno.
l
No, but really Happy New Year, how are you doing? I’m sorry that I was very much absent in December, I focused on having a Lush Life, and helping bad husbands buy the affection of their wives with essential oils and beautiful gift wrapped boxes and spa treatments. But having recovered from New Years, I am very much back in action, and I’ve loads to tell you.
Mostly, I want to talk about Drunken Nights, a lovely little commission that I cam currently working on with a company called Drunken Chorus. Here is a link to their website:
http://www.drunkenchorus.co.uk/project.php?i=SAIDIKVK25
They put a call out in circulation in September, on the hunt for performance for pubs – work that responded to the environment, that would work in a pub setting, and that was of the live art/spoken word/theatre/ dance/. performance kind of vibe. I liked it – one of my favourite pieces that I ever made happened in a bar in Sheffield called West Street Live. West Street Live is the kind of bar, where you go in with £20, are so drunk when you leave you have to get a taxi and somehow you still get home with change. I did a show there about graduating, moving on, etc. and it was messy and raucous and shambolic, and I loved it, so working in that environment is something I’m really interested by. It also tests you as a performer. If you perform somewhere where there’s alcohol and you’re… not good, not entertaining or engaging, people have no obligation to remain polite, not really – it’s a very democratic sort of set up. They’ll go to the bar, they’ll go out for a fag or slope off for a piss, they’ll talk over you, they’ll heckle you. I like that challenge. I want to rise to it. So I was ecstatic to get the chance to put together 10 minutes of something.
I made a little piece called Tipsy Claire The Twilight Mother. It’s named after this song, by a band called the DD Coys, who I think are some South London boys/men:
http://uk.myspace.com/music/player?sid=24150868&ac=now
I wanted to look at violence in a pub environment. I was working in a bar at the time, not a massively dodgy of grotty one – but every now and again there’d be an air of malevolence to it. The first time I went in a pub, there was a massive, nonsensical fight, and I didn’t go into one again for ages. I wanted to make something concerned with that – broken glass, and downed pints and intrusive thoughts and things that are just a bit unpleasant.
So, armed with 3 breakaway glassses, a bunch of roses, a pint of lager, a large white wine and three shots of Jager, I headed into Tooting, to The Trafalgar arms, and this happened:
Photo Credit: Sheena Holiday/Drunken Chorus
That’s a great face, and I intend to pull it more often.
Anyway, after the hangover subsided, I awoke to a lovely phonecall, letting me know that I had been selected to develop the piece further. So next week, I shall journey down south, armed with more booze, armfuls of books, and my trusty laptop to develop 10 minutes of fragments into 25 minutes of something… well. I don’t know yet. That’s what the week is for.
I’ll be doing a blog everyday while I’m down there, and letting you know how it’s all going.
Stay Classy, Internet
xxxxx