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Mezze

image of Tea is an Evening Meal

Image shared by Third Angel on Flickr via a CC license

Every time I come to Leeds I’m more and more impressed with what the venues and companies here are doing. This Thursday it was the turn of the Mezze festival, from the brilliant team at the Leeds Met Gallery and Studio Theatre, hosted by and in the Northern Ballet building. A mini festival of participatory and intimate performance, Mezze was transforming and importing spaces in and around the venue, 3 of which I was able to get to see.

Running on Air was the first piece I saw/did, a piece from the comedian Laura Mugridge performed in her yellow WV T2 camper van, ‘Joni’. In a break from tradition I am going to try and describe a small performance I enjoyed without using the words ‘intimate’ and ‘gentle’; it was both these things, but they don’t do justice to the feeling that her storytelling imparts. Instead I would compare it very much to feeling of camping as a child. Quietly magical, slightly wild, with a feeling of ‘playing house’; made of plastic cups and tiny sinks and a tin opener that doesn’t quite work; everything a brightly coloured representative of real-life counterparts. Mugridge’s cried tears as Joni repeatedly breaks down fill glasses that become musical instruments, paper mâché hills stand in for the real thing, memories seep into the cracks and suddenly the driving wheel is a paper plate. A warmly told story about always being a bit lost, I left Running on Air feeling like Laura was one of my best friends. Which is a cheat-y way of saying ‘gentle’ and ‘intimate’.

Lecture Notes on a Death Scene was the second piece I took part in. A piece for one audience member by the emerging company Analogue, Lecture Notes was a more challenging piece to decipher (no bad thing). A story that traces it’s route like the tree branches of life it describes, occasionally letting you glimpse the paths that branch off, the versions of yourself that fall by the wayside. A piece about feeling lost, strangely visited, and bereaved by a version of yourself you maybe wish you were, played out using mirrors, angles, reflections and in a hoody that smelled like Boy. Continue reading Mezze

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Keep Breathing/Like You Were Before

One of the zines Chris handed out after Keep Breathing

I really love taking non-theatre-people to theatre. Not that there’s in essence ‘non-theatre-people’. There’s just a lot of people who don’t go see/do/to theatre. But hopefully you know what I mean; nothing in the world feels like theatre does, and it’s such a thrill to bring people to that.

I took an old school friend, and non-theatre-person to see the double bill of Keep Breathing/Like You Were Before at Stoke Newington International Airport (as part of the excellent London Word Festival) this Thursday. Two intimate, and at the same time widely reaching pieces, gentle, but at times painful. They did what theatre does best; make you remember yourself, and your body, your breath, and the people you’re made up of.

Like You Were Before by Debbie Pearson is a simple piece of storytelling about her moving from Toronto to the UK several years ago. Murmured words on video are played out in front of us, as Pearson traces herself, her movements, the gaps, the places where she used to be; physically, vocally, narratively. Following on video her last days in Toronto, Like You Were Before stumbles through an awkward dance, private conversations, a swig of vodka, details that only she could know. A gentle piece that focussed on the peculiar and inimitable relationship between female friends, conveyed with a sense of being let into a box full of memories, but with the holder’s occasionally snatching certain painful ones – as she fast forwarded, paused, and skipped sections – away. Simple, and everyday; in the best kind of way.

Keep Breathing is a new piece of work from Chris Goode. This (I believe) was the first outing of this work in progress commissioned by the Drum Theatre Plymouth about breath – and the things you can do and say with it. Simply begun as the question ‘say what you would like to say to the world, anything that you can say in one breath’ sent out to 6 people. Keep Breathing traced the journey of this question, through responses, conversations, meetings, and the questioner’s own thoughts, reactions, tellings. Held in a particularly conversational style – but supportively guided by the structure of the questions and Goode’s beautiful little linguistic refrains – Keep Breathing was a passionate tale about the things people put their breath to, and Goode’s realisation that much of his own work is scored by it. This realisation is made doubly poignant by revelations about his mother’s struggles with a respiratory illness.

As we were walking to the venue before the show, my engineering-PhD friend asked about theatre: ‘does it not feel, I don’t know, I don’t mean the word pointless, but to put all that work in, and then for it to end, finish, and there not be anything afterwards?’ I muttered something about life, and existence, and beauty not always being defined by usefulness.

My friend’s question was directly and indirectly answered by both Like You Were Before, and Keep Breathing. Debbie’s murmured traces connecting her past and present selves, Chris’ piece about life, death, and moments built of shared, collective breaths. Keep Breathing finished with an audience member (Debbie, in fact) blowing bubbles as Chris presented a spoken montage of the hour passed, as each image flashed before our ears, a bubble had a brief, beautiful little existence. “Breathe in, breathe out… It’s alright, isn’t it?”

I took an old school friend, and non-theatre-person to see the double bill of Keep Breathing/Like You Were Before at Stoke Newington International Airport (as part of the excellent London Word Festival) this Thursday. And I was proud to do so. They were perfect.

This cross between a blog post and a review is re-posted on the GoodReview site that I also write for sometimes. When I have the time. Which actually isn’t very often.