n quentin woolf

not me now at sadler’s wells

Thursday the 8th of July saw the performance of Not Me Now at Sadler’s Wells as part of a festival themed around movement and spoken words. The audio track for Not Me Now is a combination of music by Canadian composer Jack Hurd combined with the voice of Laurie Lewis reading my script. Her performance is effortlessly poignant. You can hear it for yourself and see the debut of the piece (from a couple of years back) using the link here.

It’s by no means a cheery piece, dealing as it does with old age, the onset of dementia, and failing and false memories. It’s not always easy to gauge its success from the audience’s immediate reaction. However I think it went over well: after the performance, the dancers reported the audience members approached them to talk about their experiences of the themes of Not Me Now. The Tempered Body dancers were reliably brilliant. Johnny Autin, Mel Simpson and Jose Campos reprised their performances, whilst Pauline Huguet took on the role previously performed by Amy Mathieson and made it her own.

It’s no little feat to visibly age by fifty years as the music grows discordant and the side lights falter. But it’s only that compression of time that makes it seem remarkable. One of the recurrent comments in the feedback on Not Me Now is how many people have seen that same transformation take place in people they love and have loved, and the excruciating length of time it took.

A previous performance of Not Me Now

body language – the outcome

Fran Isherwood

The point of convergence between words and movement was the subject of my collaboration with Tempered Body Dance Company on December 11^th 2009. This experimental event, the first of its kind for me, but, judging by the feedback it received, not the last, was held at Chisenhale Dance Space, an important hub supporting the development of practicing dance artists, where Tempered

Steve and Selina McGregor

Body is based. A movement improvisation workshop with Ming Hei (Ronny) Wong had impressive results: a writhing mass of bodies, rolling around each other, using one another for support in movement, crawling on the floor in twos and threes; twenty-five dancers in all. Not something one sees every day. Post lunch, it was my turn to lead a workshop, in signification. Among the many topics crammed into an hour and a half were multiplicities of meaning, the Saussure matrix and the effects of personal experience on a text, all via Magritte and Roland Barthes. All this might sound a bit lofty, but we

Ticket Desk Attendant Reading Depraved Book

approached it in what I hope was a grounded way and besides opening up new avenues of approach for the dance/text transaction, we also had a lot of laughs. The dancers were an insightful bunch and their mix of ethnicities also brought to the fore the issue of different forms of alphabet as well as vocabulary. We got into the differences between Chinese and Korean ideograms, as well as letters as depiction. Choreographer Maddy Wynne-Jones explored with the dancers the ways in which words, both spoken and written, may be represented physically, and how a mutually supportive collaboration can be found between these two disciplines.

Steve McGregor

The performance that followed the workshop saw novelist and former army captain Steve McGregor read from his novel about a G.I. in Iraq whilst the dancers gave a physical interpretation of his tale. The effect was resonant and images from it (I’ve included one on this post) create a thought-provoking vignette. Fran Isherwood’s performed poetry, by contrast, had a lightness of touch and a knowing sense of humour to it, and the dancers’ behaviour changed accordingly. We were also treated to several prepared pieces, including a solo by Ming Hei Wong, in complete silence – an absence of words – that I found very striking. With the exception of a display of self-importance from one audience member, response to this improvised performance was warm. It was generally agreed at the bar afterwards that the difference between a text and a performed text – something that we’d discussed at length throughout the day – was perhaps a distinction that the audience may not readily recognise, nor perhaps should not be obliged to accommodate.

A number of people were eager to sign up for the next edition of this workshop, by dint of which it seems we may be speaking Body Language again.

the book launch in brick lane

Helen Gilbert

So the launch of ‘The Bookshop in Brick Lane’ was, by all accounts, a roaring success. We happy anthologists had really pulled out all the stops to get the thing onto the shelf for Christmas, cutting both corners and things that weren’t really corners but had to be cut also, for expediency. Our proof-reader, Warren Davis, worked his tail off turning our early efforts into grammatical, well-spelt pieces of prose. Marybel Moore did a phenomenal job of turning round the factual pieces of the book. Sarah Pidgeon deserves huge credit too, for work that is currently undetectable but which we hope will be introduced in the second edition.

Jill Young

Marybel Moore

And then, suddenly, many months of planning and scribbling and collecting came to fruition: the publisher’s truck rolled into the parking-lot and out first bulk order of the anthology was delivered. They looked pretty good, we were pleased to discover (some serious type setting problems in the proof copy had left us a little nervous). The text looks authoritative; the short stories – 18 of them, look professionally set out; the pieces of non-fiction, woven in among the tales,

Troublesome Trio

Kate Ellis

Mark, Madeleine, Jill

are a pretty good balance of size and content. Russ Willey’s foreword, to quote Camus, gives ‘the whole thing a more official air’. By the way, thanks Russ, for reading our book and believing in us enough to put your name to it.

Kerry McCarthy

The question had always been how to celebrate the delivery of our group effort

It was clear that the venue of choice should be Eastside Books – how could it be otherwise? But the fact is that not all of our group are keen on public readings. Marybel had the inspired idea of bringing the bagels chapter to life and consequently there were bagels a-plenty at the launch. We met at 7, with newly married Tera arriving well ahead of everyone else,

Nicloe Tattersal

Peter Mahon

along with her new husband. They didn’t stick around for

Kiki Otto

the celebration for the very understandable reason that they are on the first day of their honeymoon. It was great to see Tera again after so long and especially good to see her looking so full of beans. And then the crowd descended. I’d say there were 30-40 folk present and the red wine flowed. After thank yous to all concerned we settled down for some storytelling. Mark Dubois, Gareth Storey, Warren Davis and Tim Howard all read for us, some from their anthology contributions, and others from works in progress. Jane Miller read two poems which reflected

Linda Chapple

on the importance of seizing the day and not taking life and time for granted. They were very moving. There was a wonderful moment when I looked

Tim and Ced

Maddy Wynne-Jones

around the room and saw a bookshop full of adults all sitting on the floor enthralled by someone telling a story, and I though yes, this is what it’s all about.

And so, with charming inevitability, to the Brick Lounge, an establishment whose comfy couches and delicious beer have been in no way neglected by our happy band these past two years. It was great to catch up with everyone, particularly those of our group who have moved further afield. 2010 holds all sorts of promise and as the year turns it’s also

Mark Dubois

good to reflect of the accomplishments of the group and its members over the last year, not least of which is the continuation of the group itself. A good note on which to end 2009.

body language

On Friday December 11^th I’m going to be collaborating with Maddy Wynne-Jones’ Tempered Body Dance Company in a day-long workshop investigating the relationship between words, texts and dance. The workshop is almost fully booked. If you’re a dancer interested in participating, please email admin@temperedbody.com. There will be a performance in the evening which will combine improvised words, improvised dance and a combination of pre-written texts and improvised movement along with some performance from members of the Tempered Body Dance Company.

in the envelope

Karen Andrea

The raison d’etre of The Arts Show is to showcase current talent, particularly acts and artists who defy easy classification or fall between genre-types. But we permitted ourselves a few guests who work within categorisable forms, this week, and may devils eat our socks for having done so.

I haven’t seen Karen Andrea in a couple of months, so it was great to see her looking so well. She’s currently taking the kids’ story market by storm with her novel The Enchanted Library. I heard parts of it read, during its incubation phase, in the critique group I run in Brick Lane – since then it’s taken on a life of its own. KA’s done a sterling marketing job; especially impressive given that she’s quite busy enough with her day-job as a lawyer. The Library has natural appeal, given its themes of inclusion and using one’s imagination. Sea Fire, her current project, blends several even bigger themes – I can’t wait. Given the amount we both have on, it might provide the excuse for our next meeting.

There was a wealth of music to play into Luke Styles’ interview, each track using

Tim and Luke

different instruments – far too great a selection for us to give an accurate representation of the breadth of his musical output. I really enjoyed what we heard. That uncomfortable, jerky sound seemed to be a recurring motif. During the sound-check, Tim Orpen, the clarinettist (and boy, that man can play) explored the upper range of the piece, an ear-splitting screech like a terrified goose. Horrible, said one of the sound techs. That’s the point, said Tim.

Jacob Sam La Rose is an accomplished poet, clearly. His second poem, the one that dealt with a distant father, really spoke to me; it was moving and understated, and I’d strongly urge you to keep an ear or eye out for Jacob’s words.

I expect big things of The Darlingtons. To my mind, for a band that’s been together for so short a time (just a year) they’ve created a surprisingly mature, rich and self-assured sound. Glitch, the song I played, is their latest release, but they sent me a couple of others – one pretty lively and one built for chilling out, and listening to those I feel like I’m in the hands of musicians who know what they’re doing.

Francesco and Jacob

We returned to ‘alternative’ form with our final guest, Francesco Benenato, a visual artist who uses different materials each time he works, and who revealed that he once asked all his friends to give him their pubic hair in order to fashion a hirsute reclining nude. Francesco is engaging not only because he has a genuine passion for finding original and meaningful ways to express himself, but also because his perspective as an ‘art brut’ artist – that is, an auto-didact – is refreshing and incisive, untrammelled by convention.

Which I think returns the show to its familiar turf.

Listen to this edition of The Arts Show.

drumroll, please

Nathan Penlington

Our technical challenge on this week’s show was to get a great sound from drums in a very small studio. We were riding the faders as the drums sang. Malik Tebrizli really knows how to play: using the various parts of his hands to coax a beautiful range of sounds from his drum, he drifted into that other place musicians go when they’re caught up in their music. It’s easy to see what Nihat Tsolak meant when he talked about the almost spiritual aspect of percussion. His words linked closely with those of choreographer Maddy Wynne-Jones, who several weeks ago described the natural movement every one of us has in our body. For Nihat, and I think for Malik too, that movement is a rhythm, with which they connect when they drum.

Maddy and Steve

The quantity and scale of Rosie Cooper’s projects interested me very much. She talks about her work with great earnestness and thoroughness. There is no gimmickry in what she does. I loved that she’d turned the Savoy café into a place where art could be ordered from the menu; the idea sitting in a retro joint watching men in brown coats wheel in a Brancusi is exactly my idea of a good time. At the end of Rosie’s interview I went to play one of the station idents – jingles, if you prefer – and instead the studio was filled with the voice of Peter Griffin from Family Guy talking to Meg about something completely indecent. Rosie looked to me for explanation, for which I had none. Thank God for post-production: now no-one will ever know it happened. I certainly won’t mention it.

Incidentally, I meant to ask Rosie why she’d brought a five-metre, four-socket extension cable with her to the show. It seemed a little odd, given that she had nothing to plug in, and reminded me of a man I met, once, at the top of the Empire State Building, who had a goldfish in a bag. No funfair or pet store anywhere close. “He likes to get out and about,” the man told me. My best guess, given all Rosie’s got going on, is that recording the interview was a momentary diversion from a much bigger mission, one requiring power – entirely reasonable. If she’d had a goldfish instead, I’d have started to question myself.

Malik, Rosie, Nihat

Nathan Penlington sounded to me like a good, fresh voice in poetry; not over-stylised as some younger poets can be. He has an engaging, almost confessional quality, both in subject and delivery, and I liked the inventiveness of his experiments on street lighting, as well as the poignancy of that poem’s conclusion. Following Nathan, Steve McGregor was on fine, self-assured form. His war anecdotes – including the story of the time he believed he was about to die at the hands of a suicide bomber – had me so gripped that we almost failed to get around to mentioning his writing at all. A strong guest to round off the show. Now we get to find out whether that work on the faders did the trick.