All 7 entries tagged Arts

Temcymbelphosis

Tomorrow night I am going to see Metamorphosis at the Lyric (free tickets and everything!) and on Saturday I am going to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the RSC’s The Tempest and Kneehigh Theatre’s Cymbeline.

Very excited about all of these productions. So excited that I threw my mobile phone into a cup of camomile tea in my sleep the other night, and it has only just started working again (albeit with bubble sound effects). It’s been a long long week.

: 28 Sep 2006 21:15 |  Tags: Arts London Shakespeare Stratford Theatre |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Elephant dung and monkey business

Anna and I went to the Tate Britain on Saturday, where I was very much taken with Chris Ofili's The Upper Room, a series of thirteen paintings of rhesus macaque monkeys that
glow as intensely as stained glass windows, shimmering with carnivalesque exuberence (and sparkly elephant turds!) while projecting ghost–like traces of the animals on to the floor before them.

Ofili uses identical designs, based on an Andy Warhol print from the '50s, in twelve of the paintings. Yet although identical in fundamental design, the monkeys venerated in these twelve paintings each have twelve very distinct characters through the different colour palates that are employed in each. Some of the monkeys seem to have a playful character, but others are subversive, anarchic, even sinister.

At the end of the room in the thirteenth painting the Chief Monkey presides like a giant Buddha, resplendent in gold and dripping glitter – excessive, grotesque, simultaneously corporeal and spiritual.

The twelve toast him with their elephant dung goblets in the midst of the frenetic patterns and organic rhythms that boldly swirl and leap around them. A stark contrast to the cloistered calm of The Upper Room.

: 14 Aug 2006 23:21 |  Tags: Arts Chris Ofili London Monkeys |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The puppets, the porn, the bard and his lovers

Had a theatrical rather than an alcoholic weekend for a change, which kicked off on Friday night with a preview of Avenue Q the musical, fresh off Broadway and due to officially open in London at the end of June.

Whereas Sesame Street – the educational series which Avenue Q parodies – teaches children basic life skills such as how to cross the road safely and healthy eating habits, Avenue Q uses a combination of puppets, animation, and live actors to teach somewhat more grown–up children about the fundamentals of life for a 20–something year old living in a less–than–salubrious New York neighbourhood.

Princeton, the main protagonist, is a bright–eyed college graduate who rolls up on Avenue Q eager to make new friends and find his “purpose” in life. Yet as he stands out on the sidewalk, desperately trying to find a vacant apartment that suits his meagre budget, he can’t help but ponder:

What do you do with a BA in English?
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge
Have earned me this useless degree!

The songs themselves are a clue to the somewhat more dubious educational focus of Avenue Q, with titles such as Everyone's A Little Bit Racist, You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Like When You're Making Love, What Do You Do With A BA In English?, The Internet Is For Porn, If You Were Gay and my personal favourite – The More You Love Someone The More You Want To Kill Them (sung by Japanese expat Christmas Eve)

The teachers for this illuminating journey through the world of unemployment, drunkenness, internet porn, one night stands, anti–political correctness and friendship are a whole host of puppet characters such as Lucy the Slut, Kate Monster, the Bad Idea Bears, Trekkie Monster and Mrs Thistletwat. There are also three characters portrayed by actors, including Gary Coleman, whose apparent celebrity status in the US went largely unrecognised by the British audience.

All in all, this was a fun production – catchy songs, captivating characters and funny situations. I found the “full puppet nudity” and “graphic simulated sex between puppets” of which we had been prewarned ever–so–slightly shocking (seems a little wrong to see what are essentially children's puppets really going for it like that!). Neverthless a hilarious scene – who would have thought that those naughty muppets had it in them?

As a contrast to puppets and porn, on Saturday I went to Stratford–upon–Avon where I saw two RSC productions: Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

More to follow shortly on these 2 plays when not so tired…

: 13 Jun 2006 22:46 |  Tags: Arts London Play Theatre |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Quarter of a century

My birthday tomorrow – I will have been alive for quarter of a century and so, according to Andrew S, am about to enter my LATE twenties. This doesn’t please me but it doesn’t do to dwell on it – in my mind I am a perpetual teenager, certainly no older than 20. Haven’t blogged for ages, partly because I’ve been really busy but mostly because it took ages to sort out my WGA login post-Warwick.

Good news is that I got a distinction in my MA! Bad news is I didn’t particularly care (not being snotty about it, just had enough of academia for one lifetime)...

The novelty of being in London is definitely starting to wear off. I had a wonderful three months before xmas – it was exciting and busy and bustling – such a contrast to the monotony of my MA year! But now reality is seeping back in and I’ve been feeling strangely vulnerable, lonely, sad… Having said that, I took myself off to the Tate Modern this evening after work and enjoyed wandering round by myself for a couple of hours. It was nice to be alone but not lonely, and to not NEED other people in the desperate, anxious way I sometimes do.

I spent quite a lot of time roaming in and around the fantastic new sculpture in the main hall – “Embankment” by Rachel Whiteread. It consists of hundreds of plaster casts of boxes heaped up into a sprawling landscape that is both urban and organic, ordered and disordered, impersonal and intimate, not to mention strangely mystical and pure – the “ghosts of interior space” piled up into an immense monumental structure in the Turbine Hall. The scale of it is quite deceptive. From the bridge above, the sculpture appears solid and reassuring, self-contained, almost neat (if that’s not too trite a description), but once immersed within the labyrinthine passages and spaces of the structure itself the boxes start to loom precariously, threatening to smash down and engulf you at any moment.

I also went into a couple of the other galleries and spent a while revisiting some of my favourite pictures – most memorably Matisse’s Snail, Dali’s Persistance of Memory and a whole roomful of Rothko – and watched Un Chien Andalou as well as a couple of other Surrealist films. I then started feeling dizzy (possibly at the prospect of someone getting their eyeball sliced open with a razor), so my visit to the Tate Modern had an abrupt finish and I rushed home immediately to cook lemon prawns and mange tout.

Tomorrow I’m going bowling in Lewisham (ooh the glamour!) followed by dinner at Zizzis on the Strand – part two of my three-week-long series of birthday celebrations! I’m really looking forward to it, especially seeing my out-of-London friends. Martin is coming from Oxford, Naomi from Rugby, Rebecca and David from Birmingham. And then of course there’s all my friends who live in London – friends from school, Oxford and Warwick. Then it’s off to Warwick in the evening to see Adam. I feel so very lucky to know them all. I love weekends, especially birthday weekends!

Oh god. Quarter of a century. Happy birthday to me.

: 20 Jan 2006 23:12 |  Tags: Arts Diary London |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Uncle Vanya

Writing about web page http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/?page=wac_event_details.html&event_id=2209

Saw this last night with Anna at the Arts Centre and thought it was just fantastic. I didn't know the play at all until about 4 o'clock yesterday when I sat down and read it in Xananas. I thought that since it was going to be in Russian (thankfully with subtitles) it might be wise to at least figure out the characters and basic plot before I went along.

I found it a little slow-going until the interval (Russian seems to take a hell of a lot longer to speak aloud than the English translation would!), but it certainly succeeded in conveying a sense of the languid and suffocating atmosphere of provincial life, redolent with the characters' secret longings, frustrations and dreams never realised.

Both the first and the third act started with lights up in the main auditorium, with the lovelorn cast wandering listlessly onstage, addressing their soliloquies to the audience and gazing back out at us even whilst speaking to each other, suggesting a dissolution of the division between 'us' and 'them'.

Similarly, the acts themselves flowed together in a way that challenged conventional spatial and temporal parameters, as the actors themselves changed the scenes and moved props around. The simplicity of costumes and sparseness of the set emphasised the cast's superb acting, with actors making effective use of the few props on stage and moving the production beyond the original text outline.

For example, at the end of the second act, when her invalid husband forbade Ylena to play the piano in the middle of the night, she retaliated by using a spoon to create a quirky, obstinate little tune on his medicine bottles, laughing softly to herself before knocking them over like a petulent child. I thought this was a nice touch, simultaneously invoking humour, vitality, despair and desperation.

The online Guardian review of the moment when Vanya discovered the doctor kissing Ylena link sums up this moment perfectly, recalling an awkward and painful situation and encapsulating both its comic and tragic elements:

…the moment is not just great – it is perfectly sublime. Entering with a bunch of roses, a gift for his beloved, Sergei Kurishev's gentle giant of a Vanya is so appalled, embarrassed and shamed to discover her in a passionate clinch with Astrov that he becomes rooted to the spot and tries to hide his huge body behind his own small, dripping bouquet.

At the end of the play, Sonya's passionate speech 'We shall rest! We shall rest!' burst forth with desolation, frustration, sadness and rage, nevertheless retaining a grain of dogged stoicism (which I understand is the conventional interpretation of these lines). As the haystacks that had been ominously suspended over the stage for the duration of the play descended, representing a return to the 'normality' of farmwork and provincial life, we realise that she and Vanya will – and must – continue to endure the unexplained agony of their fate.

: 11 Jun 2005 14:23 |  Tags: Arts Literature Play Uncle Vanya |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Le Journal de Ma Yan

Writing about web page http://enfantsduningxia.uk.over-blog.com/

Have just started reading 'Le Journal de Ma Yan: la vie quotidienne d'une écolière chinoise', a book my mum brought back from France. I'm trying to get my French reading skills back up to scratch, and starting with the writings of a 13 year old girl seemed like a good idea!

It's the journal of a young Chinese schoolgirl from a remote mountainous province in NW China called Ningxia. The journalist Pierre Haski, a correspondent for the newspaper 'Libération en Chine' was visiting her village, and just as he was leaving a woman handed him a letter written on the back of a seed packet, as well as some notebooks containing the writings of her daughter, Ma Yan. In the letter Ma Yan had written: 'Je n'irai plus à l'école cette année. Je viendrai labourer afin de payer les études de mon petit frère. A chaque fois que je pense aux rires et aux plaisirs du campus, c'est comme si je me retrouvais à l'école. J'ai tellement envie d'étudier, mais ma famille est si pauvre.' (No more school for me this year. I have to labour in order to pay for my little brother's schooling. When I think of the laughter and happy times at school, I can almost imagine myself there. How much I want to study! but my family is so poor.)

Haski was moved by this letter and returned to the village to help Ma Yan and to listen to her story. He published an article in Libération in September 2001 entitled 'Je veux étudier' (I want to study), which attracted the attention of many French people, who sent Ma Yan letters and money. Haski established a foundation called 'Enfants du Ningxia' to raise money to help the children in Ma Yan's village and province, which allowed her to return to school and become the first girl from her village to go to college.

The diaries were initially translated into French and became a bestseller in France, and have since been translated into German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Czech and English. As Haski writes on the foundation's website, 'La bouteille à la mer est arrivée à bon port!' (The message in a bottle arrived at the right port).

Anyway, it looks like an interesting read, and it will certainly get the French cogs whirring in my brain again…

: 04 Jun 2005 22:02 |  Tags: Arts Books Literature |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Perception, memory and Proust

Proust shows perception to consist of a multiplicity of layers, some of which only become salient retrospectively. The importance of the past as an unseen dimension of perception, separated from the present by a gulf of time and forgetfulness, is illustrated by his depiction of the Combray church and the young Marcel's sensitivity to its history. He appears able to apprehend the unseen fourth dimension, celle du Temps, suggesting that time and memory serve as a filter to colour perception. Voluntary perception results in only partial representations of memory, recalling the essential features of a situation for dramatic or practical purposes. Thus the narrator's initial perception of Combray is that of deux étages reliés par un mince escalier gives way to involuntary memory as illustrated by the Madeleine episode. Yet this involuntary memory is dependent on a sensory evocation or stimulus (e.g. the limestalks, the madeleine cake dipped in the tea), and its release is an arbitrary, fleeting sensation, both ephemeral and immortal, difficult to capture and futile to seek deliberately.

Our perception of time throughout Combray is a fluid, flexible one, rather than a fixed state where past and present remain firmly divided and one event clearly succeeds another. The fragmented narrative itself reflects this disjointed nature of experience and subverts the linear temporality of the traditional narrative discourse. This is symbolised by the jerky projection of the magic lantern in the child narrator's bedroom, depicting legends comme un vitrail vacillant et momentané. This image forms a key illustration of the complex and disconnected nature of perception, suggesting a Cubist combining of several perspectives, angles and times within the same work of art and implying a multilayering of perception, a fluidity often transferred to Proust's imagery. One of my favourite images from Combray is that of the old church steps, as that which is initially perceived as solid is worn away in an impressionistic dissolution of lines, from the cloaks of the generations of peasants sweeping in and out the doors:

comme si le doux effleurement des mantes des paysannes entrant à l'église (...) pouvait, répété pendant des siècles, acquérir une force destructrive, infléchir la pierre et l'entailler de sillons comme en trace la roue des carrioles dans la borne contre laquelle elle bute tous les jours.'

Proust questions our means of expressing experience and perception. While the child narrator's instinctive response to the reflection of light on the rooftops is a cry of 'Zut zut zut zut' the adult narrator is able to push the experience further and acknowledge the discrepancy between the initial feeling experienced and a more sophisticated mode of expression. Cultural background is shown to be an inhibiting factor in terms of achieving accurate perception, but it is also an enriching one. The world of the mind is depicted as being like un corps incandescent, which sheds its own heat and light as a means of judging reality (c.f. Abrams - the Mirror and the Lamp). The difficult of perceiving the material world 'accurately' is stressed, since narrative techniques (e.g. use of simile or metaphor) actually colour and distort reality. Poetic transformation of the narrator's initial perception occurs through simile and personification, such as the Martinville steeples that are alternatively depicted comme trois oiseaux posés sur la plaine, comme trois fleurs peintes sur le ciel and comme trois jeunes filles d'une légende. This determination to seek equivalents for the pleasure derived from the fluctuating reality of the steeples could be seen as superior to the actual perception because it is art. In this way Proust introduces us to a viable and colourful alternative to the problem of accurate representation, perception and memory – mere sensory perception is not enough, but rather extra effort is required to extract the hidden secret of memory and represent it using stylistic features, artificial in their very nature.

Writing this has been like my very own madeleine moment – Oxford in the summer term, mmm… I've only just come to the realisation that I actually quite enjoyed my BA. Writing this was also a good way to avoid doing the work that I should be doing for my MA :(

: 08 May 2005 14:18 |  Tags: Arts Books Literature Proust |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem