Arts – Page 3 – Hannah Nicklin

Well, I did it. I’m sitting on the train back from what feels like 6 months of quite substantial things. Moving to London, having never really lived in a city. Running a marathon across a mountain. Passing my PhD viva. Making a solo show. Sustaining/scraping a living as a freelancer. And learning and performing 65-70 minutes worth of material for a 10 day run at Edinburgh Festival. I should feel proud, I expect. And in ways I am. But really all these are difficult in the anticipation, but once you get there, it’s just a case of putting one foot in front of the other, one word, or one line in front of the other, and trying to mean them.

The show itself was reasonably well received critically. A really intelligent 4 star review from Broadway Baby, 4 stars and a ‘hot show’ feature in the Scotsman, and a couple of lovely mentions from Lyn Gardner in the Guardian. Some very generous lovely tweets from people who saw it (some screencapped below). People who grasped my hand, who cried and hugged me, who said ‘we baby boomers are retiring, now, we who got our education for free, well we’ve got time on our hands now, and we’re fighting for you’, people who sent me messages talking about how talking about being allowed to be afraid is ok was very important to them, that made them think about the Troubles in Ireland, about a couple who lived between two police officers in during the Steel strikes – one who was up for the fight the other “the kind of police officer that was more like a social worker”, the older woman who told me about how her family had been victimised by the far right for years “actually, they are scum” she told me in reaction to a scene in the show where I talk about my difficulty with slogans. An senior arts council officer who told me afterwards he couldn’t work out why it was moving, that the quote of my flyer ‘unexpectedly moving’ was just it.

Some people didn’t like it. Some walked out with hardly a glance as I handed them something to take away with them. Others fidgeted, sighed in frustration, fell asleep. sat in stony silence when I show a funny picture of a funny jumper, and spent the whole time tapping into their mobile phone. I have become a much better behaved audience member after seeing how much you see and hear from that side.

And the show? I’m proud of it, I think. It does what I wanted it to. It fits together right and is as finely balanced as I could make it. I’d like to get it out to people who might more naturally side with the police if they were asked who ‘us’ and ‘them’ is for them. I did a lot of learning about performing. A lot about how each night is different, about when an audience doesn’t know you think you did it better last night, I started getting stubborn, not hurt, by people who demonstrably weren’t engaged, and that was a useful energy in that moment. I learnt about how tired I get, how much else I can sensibly do in a day, and that actually, things that engage my body and not my mind are fundamental to my being able to work well. Also the nerves of the first night make it feel like the best thing you ever did, and you won’t hit that again, but it’s ok. I felt like that anyway. Also, next show, make one that doesn’t require writing a thing out for every individual audience member. (spoiler).

And finally – massively supported again by Alex Kelly, technically, theatrically, and emotionally, throughout the two weeks. Thanks, Alex.

Where next? The lovely Gloria of Little Mighty is going to be booking me a tour for Autumn/Spring ’13/’14 (mostly the latter), and there’s been some other interest in it that might give it a life in other ways. More info if it actually happens.

Otherwise, I go into a couple of new interesting projects in October – as well as the Digital R&D project, I’m going to be working alongside an artist to help make a show about teenage girls and the internet (I’m sort of a digital/arts consultant artist), might get to work as producer on an exciting thing I can’t name yet, and am going to be making over at least a week and a half a NEW SHOW. One that this time is angry. And that will contain punk music. Stay tuned. And in the meantime here’s a screen cap of a section of the tweets about ACW on Twitter. I only know Jamie in real life, and Catherine as a brill thoughtful reviewer, the rest are genuine audience members. Imagine! People who paid to see me say things.

A Conversation With My Father - photograph of Hannah and Roger Nicklin

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for a long time. 3 weeks or so. OK, so not AGES, but a while. A bit. It has a title: “A Conversation With My Father: final, Bradford week”. But I’m not really sure what to write. Because unlike all the other things that I write about – on my blog, or for zines and reviews, my PhD and academic papers, I’m not looking at this from the outside. I’m in it. Properly buried deep inside it, and it, in turn, in me. I think of two images when I write that. I think about a song that used to play off a tape my mum kept in the car. Dusty Springfield. And her grainy sounding voice with the crunch of tyres on gravel.

“Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever spinning reel”

That stationary smell of the inside of the black car with the grey patterned seats on a hot day. The song my dad used to sing every time we came back from a long drive, from Scarborough, Whitby, Wales on holiday.

“Here we are again
Happy as can be.”

And I think of that Ren and Stimpy* gross-out kids cartoon, that was on in the 90s, on Nickelodeon. Satellite TV! Imagine that. And this one episode (I can’t find a still from it you’ll be glad to hear) where Stimpy turns himself inside out. I think of that, too. I think of how I felt standing in front of gently house-lit friends, family, and strangers at the end of the Bradford week and telling them this story. I think of the bits of the show, the quiet bits that stay behind my eyes – that Alex, my collaborator, that he knows, but probably, he’s the only one. Some of the things I’ve seen, and the things I feel, most of them I tell you… and to stand there and tell you what I do, what I’ve done, in situations where I’m scared, cold, angry, frightened, or about the rationalisations I draw out of myself, that allow me to step back out of danger, to walk away from the symbol I’ve tried to be. That’s what it feels like when I tell you about those memories. Inside out. Raw. In the same way when I sit across the table and look at the empty chair where my dad was when I did the interview, empty, now, though, in the theatre. And I describe him to you. As he appears to me simultaneously across 28 years. A shimmering reality of a person.

I set out to make a piece of theatre about the space between them and us. In order to do that, I stand in that inbetween, set-aside space of the theatre and tell you about Hannah and Roger Nicklin. One of us a policeman, the other a protestor. Both of us more than that. Me and my dad. I’m proud of us both. I’m scared of when we might let ourselves down.

In Sheffield, at the very end of the third week, we did a MAJOR rewrite. Except it wasn’t major. It felt major, until it lay there in front of us, and then suddenly that was it. The story. Muddled, woven, difficult and true. Exactly in the same way life is. Rachel from Third Angel saw the uncut show on the Wednesday of that week and had said ‘you need to decide whether this is political, or it’s personal, which is the thing that matters most’.

It’s personal. It has to be. Through that it will – of course – be political, and the subject area, inevitably so. But the show Alex and I made; with the very great help of my dad, with the generous support of 4 theatres in the North and Middle of England; the show Alex and I made together is one only I can tell. It’s a true story. I can prove it, if you’ll consent to listen to me.

Also, I totally wrote an hour long show, learnt it all, and then remembered it in front of an audience.

I hope you’d be proud.

Here’s two things audience members said:

“Totally beautiful, affecting evening: A Conversation with my Father by the inestimable @hannahnicklin #Recommended in the strongest terms” – @discoverbrevity

“’A Conversation with my Father’ by @hannahnicklin – a terrific thing. The personal and political blend with charm and incisive thinking, win” @ADatMill

It’s going to be in Edinburgh from the 14th–24th of August. 8.05pm start. I’d love it if you could come. Venue announcement coming soon, and of course, I’ll definitely bring it to The Cookie in Leicester on the way up to preview, maybe somewhere in London and Leeds if I can too. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, forgive me for some thank yous: Thank you, Alex. Thank you Third Angel. Thank you to Arts Council England, ARC Stockton, and Theatre in the Mill. Thank you to Embrace Arts, Leicester, and to Sheffield Theatres. Thanks Lawrence for filming it, Lee for making some proper good (forthcoming) print work for it. And thanks, Daddy, for all that you are, and all you helped give me.

The end of week four. C’est tout.

*that was a weird show. You know what was weirder? Googling it just now and discovering the slashfic.

Tag: Arts

A Conversation With My Father, post Edinburgh Festival 2013.

A Conversation With My Father: final, Bradford week.