Poetry : Mon 21 Aug
One of the things which makes the Fringe special is the potential for close contact between actors and audience members outside the context of a show in a theatre. A chance meeting with Budapest-based actor and director Alexis Latham yesterday led me to change my plans and go and see the play he's in - 'My Chair - Your Self' at 7.30 at the Roman Eagle Lodge Studio (Fringe Venue 21, on Johnston Terrace near the top third of the Royal Mile).
You know that feeling of having a ticket with a reserved seat on a busy train and getting to it after having rushed to catch the train only to find someone else sitting in YOUR seat? Frustrating, isn't it? You manage to get them to move and settle down, arranging bags and coats, getting yourself comfortable. The seat is more intimately YOURS now. It is now a physical extension of you, in a way, it's become part of you - a projection of yourself into the reality of physical space, rather than just being YOURS within your mind. The company (Scallabouche) take this idea one step further and venture across the boundary in their production played out in a steel framed cube by a chair and two actors. I deliberately describe the chair as a player, because the actors make it come alive, skilfully depicting and challenging notions of self, self-definition (sexual / political / personal / religious / social) self-awareness, relationships and self-image through a masterful use of space, under the subtle direction by Andras Ery-Kovacs. Definitely one to see - a small show, but in a class with the award-winning Ketzal and Sclavi. A five star must-see in my opinion which inspired the following poem.
The chair becomes an extension of me.
A projection of myself into space.
Then you come along and want to sit in it.
You say, 'I think this seat is mine.
Look, the number's on my ticket.'
I look at the ticket
And I see you more clearly than when I looked you in the face.
Those empty-tunnel eyes,
Leading to the black hole
Where the nothingness you've made of your soul resides - survives,
Sitting in YOUR chair,
Buried inside,
Too deep inside for you to sit on.
I slept in and, unusually, decided to have a sausage roll for breakfast. That incident, combined with recent conversations about Lorne sausages, a Scots delicacy served in square-shaped slices, and the fact that the 'Topic of the Day' in our daily poetry competition today is 'Pies', inspired me to come up with the following poem just for fun
(Dedicated to the creators of Weebl and Bob
I bite into a sausage roll
Round inside, flattish outside.
A circle within a flattish square.
A cylinder within a flattish cube.
I think about Lorne sausage
And whether these are gastronomy's attempts to square the circle
And if so, what about Pi squared?
Between a stint of poetry admin at the Dome and a relaxing time at the Courtyard, I managed to go and see the St Petersburg-based Derevo dance
company perform Ketzal at Aurora Nova - primal, innovative, transformative, elemental, divine, it achieved on a monumental level what callabouche did on an intimate one and inspired the following poem
Into light nothingness
And in the blackness within the white
You will find yourself.
In the Pleasance Courtyard, I was struck by two incidents - both of which I happened on by chance. The first was when I passed by a pair of guys passing the time away between shows by building a house of cards each.
Try, try, try again -
Turrets thrust higher
Supported on plain platforms
They grow at different speeds
On a slanting table
With the wind blowing
And despite all the odds, one makes it to completion
But I fail to photograph it before it falls
But they chose to put kings on the top layer.
I wonder whether it would have been stronger
If they'd deployed the monarchs lower down
To support the structures of their houses, castles, states.
The second scene was a more meditative one
An electric cable lies haphazardly on top.
Four lads take a peaceful rest, sitting side by side, each on his own.
I join a girl in a pink hairband.
Together, we see life in a different perspective
And noone realises what we're doing
As we silently try to decipher the inscriptions on the gravestones.
The winner of yesterday's poetry competition out of over 20 entries on the topic of 'Booze' was John Chambers with this poem which was judged by members of Momma Cherri's team, and was deemed the winner because it made them laugh.
I choose to booze.
Please don't be confused if I choose
to schmooze with 'yooze'
in the middle of a 'booze-cruise'.
I'll drunkenly acquire your number
While later I will conveniently
lose.
I choose to booze.
Congratulations to John, who wins two free bowls of Soul Food from Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack.