The Museum of Everything

The Museum of Everything, I learned this morning, is a highly diverting way of passing a couple of hours, even if you do have to spend time in Primrose Hill village as a side effect. 

Exhibition #3 is a collaboration with the veteran artist and collector, Sir Peter Blake, the man best known for creating the album cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake's wide-ranging interests include self-taught art and discovered artefacts, and there is a lot of work here, from collections of shells to circus posters. The downstairs of warehouse-style gallery space is divided into intimate rooms whose walls are covered from floor to ceiling in art. Turn one corner and you encounter a tiny room full of dolls, turn the next and you're presented with dozens of black and white photographs of midgets and bearded ladies. 

 

Upstairs holds Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosity, an extraordinary collection of stuffed creatures created by the Victorian taxidermist. Two-headed lambs, three-legged geese and miniature dogs are displayed alongside elaborate scenes involving squirrels, rabbits and even toads (not easy to stuff, we are told). It's bizarre, but somehow joyful to see.

Despite the swanky location and the smugness of some of the staff, this art is totally accessible. The wall notes, some written by Blake himself and some by the artists whose work is featured, are informal yet educative. Blake's passion for the work he collects comes across clearly, without the ego one might expect from someone of his standing. This exhibition is a chance to share in the objects he loves. Don't let it pass you by.

The Museum of Everything runs from 13 October to 25 December and is located at the corner of Regents Park Road and Sharpleshall Street, London, NW1. 

Some recent correspondence

It's not my usual practice to post professional correspondence on my blog, but the particular circumstances of this situation merit it I think.

Last month I was approached via email regarding the editing of a work of fiction. I replied, asking for more details of the task and supplying my fee for the work. I heard nothing back, so sent a further email checking that my first reply hadn't gone astray. The following is what I received in return:

"Jo,

As much as I appreciate your reply, I think this manuscript is perahps [sic] too heavy for you.
Don't get me wrong, I am not remeaning [sic] your professionalism, it's just VERY profound and maybe too much for a female to edit.
A delicate mind I do not want editing this.

Best regards,

Etc"

I shall make no comment on this email, but will leave you to come to your own conclusions about my reaction to it from my reply, which you can read below:

"Dear Etc,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Thanks too for your candid (not to mention eloquently expressed - although I believe the word you were looking for was 'demeaning', not 'remeaning') appraisal of my intellectual and professional capabilities. It's reassuring to me, as a 'female' (again, I believe you mean 'woman') of delicate sensibilities and feeble judgement, to know that considerate gentlemen such as yourself exist to protect me from that which I lack the depth of character to understand.

As to how you've assessed that I am too weak-minded to work on, or even indeed to read, your manuscript, given that we have never met, or even spoken on the phone, I can only speculate. I wish you, in any case, all the best with it.

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Jo"

Me, Myself and I (and Theatre)

Last week began with one of the most exciting and surprising theatre experiences of my life: the absurdly titled, but brilliantly conceived, You Me Bum Bum Train. Having interviewed co-creator, Kate Bond, about the show and read a lot about it by way of research, I had a better idea of what to expect from YMBBT than most of the show's 'passengers', but I still found myself in a constant state of anticipation and delight as I was wheeled and walked from scene to scene at the LBT building in Bethnal Green. 


I can't reveal much of what happens during YMBBT (if I hadn't already been unlikely to do so, the news of a fellow critic having his knuckles rapped by one of the performers for saying too much would have persuaded me), so I'll limit my comments to discussing my own response to the work. 


Despite the fact that many of the situations I was thrown into were unfamiliar and potentially discombobulating, the total commitment of the piece made it easy to respond in a way that was both enjoyable and enlightening (for me - I don't profess to have enlightened anyone else). I was surrounded by physical environments and characters that gave me a solid framework within which to respond in the way that I chose. There was freedom, but not too much, because although I was acting (or, rather, reacting) in this show, I was, in the end, a mere visitor, and the distinction between my role and that of the performers was maintained throughout. In our interview, Kate Bond called the show a "massive surprise party" and I can't think of a better way to describe the roles we all played and the joy that I felt to be the recipient of the surprise. 


Having had such a lovely time at YMBBT, I was rather excited to be offered the chance to take part in further solo theatre experiences, at BAC's One-on-One Festival. Thirty-odd British and international artists are taking part in One-on-One and each ticket guarantees entry to at least three shows. On the afternoon I went, I managed to squeeze in five shows and could have seen a couple more if I'd been paying more attention (it was hot, I was sleepy and at one stage in the afternoon I received a fairly large electric shock – more on that later – so perhaps wasn't at my most professional). With tickets starting at £17.50, that's not a bad deal. 


I found the festival's setup engaging: you're given a guide, a map and an individualised timetable to follow and you're then free to wander about poking your nose into things and generally soaking up the atmosphere. The BAC is always a jolly place to hang out and the shared sense of anticipation buzzing in the air made it even more so.


The problem came with the shows themselves. I felt the same sensation to varying degrees with each one that I saw: the absence of supporting cast or committed physical context meant that I was required to make real leaps if I wanted the show to go on. The fact that I was interacting with just one other person made each show much more dependent on my making the right choices at the right moment. I was a performer, but one without the benefit of a script, direction, experience or training. Unsurprisingly, given these circumstances, my performance was poor. I don't generally enjoy plays where the star is no good and it was no different when that star was me.


In Internal, the 2009 Fringe First-winning show from Belgian company, Ontroerend Goed, I was paired up with a charming curly-haired performer, then asked to whisper to a group of similarly paired up audience members and performers what I thought of him. The show's loosely established speed-dating scenario sought to guide me and the other audience members to some verbal confession or physical manifestation of romance, but, steered too lightly to be able to lose myself in the moment and respond naturally (as in YMBBT), I remained self-aware and uncomfortable. I can't speak for others in the group, but they looked pretty uncomfortable too from where I was sitting.


The clearer the role I was given the more I enjoyed the show. In Kneehigh's Wonder Nurse, as in Ray Lee's Electric (the show responsible for my mid-afternoon electric shock), for example, the series of quasi-medical questions provided a framework for my responses, taking some of the agency out of my role and thereby allowing me to sit back and find amusement in the characterisation and storytelling laid on for me.



I understand that part of the point of all this work is to make the solo audience member feel uncomfortable and to question their responses to certain situations or personalities, but it was never made clear why this was the intended result. I enjoyed aspects of several of the shows I saw at One-on-One, but I didn't feel that I was taking part in any great art or being made to ask questions of myself that I don't already ask.

I could probably go on about this for ages, but I've got to drive to Latitude Festival now – from where I'll be blogging for Whatsonstage.com – so I'll have to draw to a close. Lots of other people I know really loved One-on-One, so maybe it's just me. I'd be interested to know your thoughts. 

Some thoughts on theatre and politics

In the last couple of months I've seen a fair amount of theatre that addresses, directly or indirectly, the rise of nationalism in this country, particularly in the East End of London. There was A Day at the Racists at the Finborough (then again at The Broadway, Barking), Moonfleece at the Riverside Studios, Ten Years From Now, a work-in-progress presentation by young people in Thurrock, Essex, and this past Friday, Pressure Drop at the Wellcome Collection. 

Back at the beginning of March I wrote a blog post for the Guardian about the effect this type of theatre might or might not have on ordinary voters’ opinions of the BNP. I argued then that presenting plays about the rise of nationalism to liberal, middle-class people (as most theatre audiences tend to be) didn’t have much hope of changing the political landscape. I still think that’s true, but seeing A Day at the Racists in Barking and listening to the responses of the audience at the post-show Q&A (where I sat on the panel alongside the author, Anders Lustgarten, among others) was a very encouraging experience. 

The audience was more racially diverse than that at the Finborough, where the play ran before coming to the Broadway (see my review for whatsonstage.com), but appeared essentially the same in terms of its political leanings. The difference however was in this audience’s reaction to the work put before them: they were thrilled that these issues were being addressed in the environment that created them. One woman admitted to having felt the same frustrations as the characters she had just watched, as well as a leaning towards the BNP as the only party that appeared to address the needs of local people. For this audience member, the second half of the play, where the true nature of the BNP is revealed and main character comes to understand that the party’s racist ideology is at odds with all his beliefs, was extremely instructive. It opened her eyes to the political and ideological game-playing going on around her.

A Day at the Racists only performed one night at the Broadway, but the overwhelmingly feeling from the audience was a desire that it return for a proper run so that more of the local community are able to see these issues being played out in front of them. There was also a call for the play to be ‘on TV’. Just think of the number of prospective voters who would be able to see it then.

I also wrote about Philip Ridley’s Moonfleece in my Guardian blog, which led to me being asked to host a panel discussion with the playwright following a performance at the Riverside Studios. The production is a fine one and the play a brilliant piece of storytelling, but I had difficulty with the way that the producers sold Moonfleece to the media as a sort of cure-all for bigoted thinking in disadvantaged areas. 

During the Q&A Philip Ridley responded to a question on this subject that he hadn’t written the play to make a political point or to persuade anyone of anything. I believe him, but that viewpoint is certainly at odds with the producers’ implied aim as described in the show’s press release. The show’s director, David Mercatali, attempted to explain that the tour to “some of the UK's most disadvantaged areas” was just about taking the show to some more unusual venues, but I left the theatre with my sense of dissatisfaction intact. Perhaps that’s my problem, not Moonfleece’s, however, as the producers did follow through and take the production into schools at the various places they toured it to, thereby reaching lots of people they couldn’t have hoped to reach without doing so.

At around this same time the lovely Amber Massie-Blomfield of Mobius PR, having heard what I was up to, invited me along to a work-in-progress performance by a group of young people in Thurrock, Essex. Following a development process lasting several weeks and involving thousands of teenagers, a company called Theatre Is… selected 20 young people to create and present a piece of work in response to issues affecting their community. The show I saw, Ten Years From Now, included spoken word, break dance, body popping and rap. It was a bit rough around the edges, but the young people involved, most of whom had no previous experience of theatre, were clearly passionate about what they doing. Theatre Is… have found an effective way of interesting young people from deprived backgrounds in theatre, as well as helping them to engage with the changes taking place in the world around them. Taking politically-themed theatre into communities that don’t usually see it – as A Day at the Racists and Moonfleece have done – is a good start, but the work that Theatre Is… is doing looks like it actually might begin to make a difference.

All that said however, I don’t think that theatre necessarily needs to affect change directly in order to be worthwhile. Even if an audience is limited to a fairly narrow band of society, theatre still has the potential to make people reexamine their own prejudices and to be entertained while they're at it. What I think these works do, or have done, most successfully is to highlight the reasons why ordinary people are tempted to vote for the BNP and parties like them. The media reports that the BNP is gaining ground and that this is because they are managing to fool ignorant people into voting for them. This may be partly the case, but ignores an important aspect of the situation: that the people tempted to vote for the BNP have real and valid grievances that no one else appears to be addressing. 

Anders Lustgarten, author of A Day at the Racists, makes this point with his exploration of the concerns of the former-Labour-activist-turned-BNP-campaigner, Pete Case (see my review for more on this). Mick Gordon, co-author (along with Barking-bred singer Billy Bragg) of Pressure Drop, does the same thing with the character of Jack Clegg (played with great sensitivity by Michael Gould), a decent man who is nearly persuaded to seek election as a BNP councillor because he feels so powerless in the face of the changes occurring in his home-town.

By forcing their audiences to empathise with the characters they present, these plays make it impossible for the left-wing liberal arts community to continue to patronise those considering voting for the BNP. We are taken into the living rooms of those whose outlook we have previously failed to understand and asked to consider what we might do in their situation. Pressure Drop is particularly effective in this respect as the piece's promenade nature means that we are quite literally led into domestic and social scenarios where characters are expounding views alien to our own. The play also powerfully presents us with an image of ourselves in the character of Jon, the working-class-boy-made-good who comes home to Essex brandishing liberal sensibilities along with his expensive-looking luggage. Jon (played by Justin Salinger) expresses his abhorrence of the racist ideas expounded by Jack’s best friend, Tony, but we can’t help but feel that Jack has a point when he says that Jon relinquished his right to judge when he ran away from the place that made him.

It’s too late to see Moonfleece and A Day at the Racists as their runs have now finished (although there are whisperings that the play will run at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe), and Ten Years From Now was a one-off work-in-progress performance (though have a look at Theatre Is...’s website for information on further events), but you can still see Pressure Drop until 12 May and I heartily recommend that you do. And speaking of recommendations, seeing the 'part play, part gig, part installation' this weekend made me pick up the book that inspired Gordon to approach Bragg about writing a theatre piece together. It's called The Progressive Patriot and it's really very good.