Tag: performance

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Friday Poetry in St Andrews

It’s the time of year for StAnza, the annual poetry festival in St Andrews. I’ve made a point of going for some years now, as it’s only half an hour away by bus.

I would normally go on a Saturday and/or a Sunday, but I could only attend the launch party on Friday instead, and this also meant missing a visit to a pal who lives nearby. Before the pandemic, I would set aside the weekend, typically staying in the town. I’ve fallen out of that habit, but next year would be a good time to resurrect it.

During the same period, the festival length has been reduced from six days to three. I’ve heard grumbles from poetry pals about this cut-down programme, this would work in my favour. By omitting weekdays other than Friday night, there’s less chance of events clashing with work, and I’d be able to attend late-night readings with a finishing time dangerously close to the last bus home.

The next email I’m expecting from StAnza is a feedback form. They’ve nothing to worry about on that front, as I enjoyed the launch. Half of it was improv, calling poets at random to read poetry themed around colours, with the other half a structured reading from Ruth Padel.

The more important aspect is that such festivals often rely on sponsors for their continued operation. The more customer reaction the organisers receive, the easier it is to convince funders to back it the following year, so always fill these in.

The other two places I would like to visit for the first time, ideally this year, are the Wigtown Book Festival and the Orkney Storytelling Festival. These start in September and October respectively, but it’s a good idea to start planning now.

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Stories That Spawned a Saying

There are any number of everyday sayings that started out as phrases in literary works.

The example that comes most easily to mind is Hamlet. The script virtually acts as a Rosetta Stone of phrases that were probably fresh when first penned by William Shakespeare, but have since devolved into clichés. We won’t have time to explore all these in this entry; besides, Wikipedia has us covered.

Before introducing the two phrases I’d like to explore, a couple of honourable mentions:

Monkey’s Paw

Last week at writing group, one of the members used the phrase monkey’s paw. Having never heard it before, I assumed this was the invention of the Internet era, perhaps in reference to some meme or another. As such, I was surprised to find it dates back to 1902, specifically a short story by W W Jacobs. With those initials, it’s a real shame he didn’t live to see the World Wide Web.

The story centres around a mummified monkey’s paw which has been cursed. The owner will be granted any wish by the paw, but always with unforeseen consequences. This has come to apply to any similar situation in real life where the positive effect is outweighed by the negative.

The Monkey’s Paw is now in the public domain and can be read on the Project Gutenberg website. On the whole, I feel it’s well-written, but I would like to have seen more time taken to ramp up the tension before the third wish was used.

Jekyll & Hyde

On Thursday of last week, I went with a couple of pals to a stage production of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; a search reveals the title is apparently not prefixed with The.

The concept of a Jekyll and Hyde character is so widely known that even those unfamiliar with the Robert Louis Stevenson novel often understand his duality. I too wasn’t particularly familiar with the story, but I enjoyed its execution and I’d be interested in reading it in full.

This particular adaptation took the source material and turned it into a one-woman stage production. Additionally, I’m already acquainted with the writer (J D Henshaw) and the performer (Heather-Rose Andrews), and we had a brief discussion after the show about the staging of it.

There was, unfortunately, just one scheduled performance or I would urge you to go and see one.

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Oh No, It’s Not a Panto

It’s widely known in the theatre industry that Christmas pantomimes often keep venues financially afloat for the remainder of the year. As such, many companies take the opportunity to stage sure-fire hits, sometimes bringing in a celebrity to play one of the leads.

There are exceptions, however, like the Dundee Rep. They no doubt face the same financial pressures as any other theatre, as the Christmas production is generally a tried-and-tested hit, but they steer clear of traditional pantomime. Previous productions have included A Christmas Carol or The Snow Queen.

This year, the Rep has taken yet another approach with Oor Wullie: The Musical.

Like a pantomime, there’s a good guy and his sidekicks, a cruel baddie intent on causing mayhem, and a focus on laughs rather than plot. The script employs a similar technique to last year’s hit film Barbie, where the audience is invited to suspend their disbelief as characters transfer between the real world and the fantasy world at will.

Yet there are few of the traditional hallmarks. There are no crowd shout-outs and the action isn’t set at Christmas-time. Instead, the three main hooks are:

  1. The character of Oor Wullie is owned and published by the Dundee-based DC Thomson, so the audience is familiar with the setting and the catchphrases.
  2. It’s one of the few festive productions where a significant portion of the dialogue is in Scots.
  3. The show has previously been staged and is a proven hit.

I’ve talked rather dryly about the production so far, but I had a lot of fun seeing this on Friday just gone. If you’re nearby and fancy it as well, there are just a few more shows left.

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Poetry Connections and Train Connections

Although it happened too late to write up in this blog, I was at the Inn Deep bar in Glasgow last Tuesday for the launch of The SpecBook 2024. One of my poems had been published by – as the name suggests – Speculative Books.

Copies of the collection had been sent out to contributors, but as mine was lost in the post, I collected one there. What I didn’t realise is that there are actually two small volumes. It was great to see my name in print other than in poetry group pamphlets.

Part one of the schedule was devoted to the published readers, so the first section lasted for a long while. The audience were reminded to support rather than heckle, which is exactly what I would say.

Part two was given over to an open-mic, where anyone could read a poem, whether they were in the book or not. I even met someone I knew from my former open-mic, but I wasn’t able to stay long enough to hear her work.

That was because I’d never visited Inn Deep before and I’d booked my travel cautiously. I’d allowed plenty of time between connections, going from one coast of Scotland to the other. As it happens, this worked out so well that I was home an hour earlier than expected.

Performing to an Audience

Flight and Fright

This morning, I attended a talk by Professor Angus Wallace. His name might not be immediately recognisable, but you’re likely familiar with his story. In 1995, he treated a passenger with a collapsed lung using improvised surgical equipment on a flight from Hong Kong to London.

Judging by the number of slides skipped, he probably brought twice as much material as he needed for the hour-long slot. The mid-air incident formed only a part of his speech, with the rest devoted to his many inventions in shoulder surgery and his later career as an advisor in major air and rail accident investigations.

All this could be a terribly dry subject, but the professor knew his audience was from a non-medical background. Any medical terminology was kept to a minimum or explained in simpler terms, and the whole structure of the presentation kept the audience engaged.

I suspect his rhetoric skill was developed through necessity. One of his earliest inventions was a tool for ingrown toenails which reportedly worked well, but was not marketed properly, so few people knew of its existence. From that point, he was sure to amplify his ideas more forcefully.

Quite by coincidence, I’ve been thinking more about my longstanding desire to start a group dedicated to helping people to overcome stage fright. I can tell you there are writers out there with some top ideas that will never make it onto a stage because they have no motive, whereas Professor Wallace did it as part of his job.

Just yesterday, I received an email from a local organiser, who brought to my attention that I’d been mentioned in an interview between two mutual pals. I started to compose a two-sentence reply, which quickly turned into several paragraphs outlining how I’d like this proposed group to look.

I have some definite ideas, such as aiming it at members who aren’t yet ready for more formal organisations like Toastmasters International. But there are many details that need input or experimentation. This organiser probably opened my reply this morning and thought What is this wall of text all about?

By writing about this proposal in such a public forum as this blog, and by speaking to the right folks, I hope to make it a reality and to help more people face their fear of the stage.

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Cycling Around

On Thursday, realising I had a free evening, I took the opportunity to see some performance art. This was hosted by my pal Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne, who was reading a series of autobiographical pieces over the span of 12 hours. I only had time to see around two hours.

I don’t want to focus on the performance itself, particularly because the aftermath is still on for the next five days. Rather, I want to look at something I did during that performance.

One of the organisers handed out pens and paper to the tiny audience with the intention that we could draw if we felt inspired. Much as Luca has tried to teach me some art, I’m still far more inclined to write by default.

I enjoy the challenge of improvising poetry on the spot, so my rough plan was to compose a rough version based on the performance I could see in front of me, and then extract a polished version from that. Yet after writing my so-called polished version, I felt it didn’t quite work, so I tried another.

I ultimately ended up with a total of seven poems. Put together, they form a cycle of sorts, each of which approaches what I want to say without being able to cut to the heart of the matter.

I feel there are diamonds to be dug out of the mess here, so I’m going to keep these drafts for the moment until I find some sort of home for them.

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The Fringe, But Not That Fringe

A few weeks ago, I announced a show called the Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee. The premise was to present an audience with ten stories about the city and ask them to guess whether they were true or false, in the style of a pub quiz.

Just over a week ago, it finally happened. My co-host and I adopted the alter-egos Magdalen Green and Albert Street – named after real locations – and took the risk. It helped that most of the audience knew one or both of us, which helped the banter to flow.

We’d built in a lot of slack to allow for chat, delays and/or technical hiccups. It ended up being too much time and we finished early. Most shows run over, so it was a refreshing change in that sense. Of course, we weren’t the only act in town – far from it.

For the last four years, Sweet Venues has run the Dundee Fringe. It’s run on the same principle as its much larger and more famous Edinburgh counterpart, in that they provide space for acts rather than running shows or dictating the content. The scale, however, is very different. Approximately 70 acts were booked, which was huge for our single venue but dwarfed by the 3,700 acts who pack out the capital every August.

I made a point of going to other shows, with highlights including the student burlesque company Marvelesque taking their show off campus for the first time, Buckets of Blood featuring Grimm fairy tales told as they were originally written, and Tango the Pain-Proof Man who performed stunts such as chewing glass and lying on a bed of nails.

I can only speak for the shows I attended, but while crowds were small, they were loyal, and I’d often meet the same people at the box office. I hope there is a 2025 edition and that the enthusiasm continues, especially as I’ve now had time to reflect on our virtual tour and understand what to do differently next time.

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Leaving Hotchpotch After Nine Years

Persons! I had a technical failure yesterday, the like of which I haven’t seen in a long time. This meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry.

I was at my weekly Tuesday writing group as usual. The Internet can be dodgy there, but it normally connects after a few tries and/or a reboot. This time, my laptop was having none of it, so I tapped out a short entry on the Jetpack app briefly explaining the situation.

However, it’s another literary group I want to talk about today. Long-term readers will know about Hotchpotch, which is a monthly open-mic primarily aimed at writers, where members can sign up for five-minute slots. I didn’t set up the group, but when I took over in 2015, it had already existed for five years.

One week ago, at the last meeting, I announced my intention to step down from running it after nine years and pass it on to Eilidh, who’s been assisting for well over a year. We’ve taken a couple of months to discuss how we would make the transition, and that process will continue into our next event in October.

The reason I chose this time is not because Hotchpotch is in a bad way. It’s arguably the most streamlined and consistent it’s ever been, and it’s precisely because it’s so strong that I feel able to step back from it in favour of new projects.

Indeed, that very Sunday, I took part in a one-off show as part of the Dundee Fringe, and in next week’s entry, I’ll cover how that went.

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Taking a Show on the Virtual Road

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a pet project. Now the proposal has been accepted and advertised, I’m finally at liberty to tell the public.

Since 2021, Sweet Venues has organised the Dundee Fringe. Like its Edinburgh counterpart, the organisers don’t run the shows themselves, but provide the venue and invite performers to apply for slots. In previous years, I’ve run a game show, but this time around, it was time for something different.

In fact, I already had a solid idea with pal who shares a similar sense of humour. One of our recurring jokes was to talk about organising a tour of Dundee but telling tourists absolute nonsense about the city instead of facts.

I half-seriously wondered whether we could actually make this happen, even as a one-off event. Then when Sweet Venues put out the call for performers, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. We didn’t need to take anyone around the city; using just a projector, the city could come to them.

Just before I made the application, I started by pulling together a presentation, making sure my pal was willing to co-host. We held our first rehearsal at the weekend, ironing out a few flaws in the script and making sure the technical side worked without fail.

If you’re in or around Dundee, you’ll be able to see The Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee on Sunday 15 September.

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The Attraction of the One-Off Piece

I make a point of seeing at least one show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year. My first one was yesterday, titled The Greatest Literary Beef of the 21st Century, hosted by Ross McCleary and Stefan Mohamed.

While I’m only familiar with Stefan by association, I’ve known Ross for a couple of years now. He has a highly surreal sense of humour often centres around highlighting a concept and workshopping possible ways to make it funnier, with a lot of help from his online followers, many of whom were in the audience.

This show followed the surreal route. It took the form of the two poets exchanging paper letters to intentionally create a feud between them both. It benefitted from its brevity, with the show itself restricted to just one 40-minute performance rather than a multi-day run. There was also a donation bucket offered at the end, so the audience could choose how much to give, if at all.

I’ve always been particularly attracted to works that are a one-off rather than part of a series or serial. For instance, one of my favourite books is the standalone Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer, while I don’t think Spike Jonze is likely to direct a sequel to one of my favourite films, Being John Malkovich.

I’m going back to the Fringe over the coming days, so I hope to see more off-one bangers while I’m there.