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Summer In The City: Film

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away our film recommendations are…

• David Bowie Is Happening Now

• Singin' In The Rain at Kenwood House

• ICA Offsite: Contemporary Middle Eastern Film  

August is always a bit of a dead month when it comes to new releases. We are madly excited about Only God Forgives - Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling, the dream team, director-actor combo that brought us Drive, plus the genius casting of Kristin Scott Thomas as a mega-bitch matriarch. Otherwise August is looking a bit sparse so here are three really exciting film events to look forward to instead:

David Bowie Is Happening Now, 13th of August, Nationwide: The V&A’s David Bowie Is… is one the year’s biggest exhibitions. If you didn’t get the chance to see it then fear not, for a tour of the gallery will be screened live across 300 cinemas, before the exhibition heads off on its international tour. Stephen Little reviewed the Royal Academy’s Manet HD screening for us and came out feeling that documentaries were best seen on TV and art in the flesh. Will the Victoria and Albert go further and add value to the exhibition experience given the multidisciplinary element of the exhibition?

Carefully marketed as ‘an event’ rather than a screening, some exciting elements are in place: curators, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh introduce the exhibition, special guests (including Terry O’Neill and Jeremy Deller) will offer an insight into the stories behind some of the 300 objects from the David Bowie Archive and BAFTA winning director, Hamish Hamilton who directed the live TV coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympic and Paralympic Games is at the helm. David Bowie Is… has been maddeningly busy most weekends so this will be, at minimum, a chance to escape the hordes and tour groups. We hope it will be something more, pushing the potential of the rather puzzling form of exhibition screenings.  

Singin’ In The Rain, 30th August, Kenwood House: Outdoor cinema screenings are somewhat two a penny over the summer months, with pop-ups cropping up in all manner of places. This open-air cinema event stands apart from the crowd with a truly unusual and awe-inspiring setting in the grounds of Kenwood House, Hampstead Heath. Part of the Live By The Lake concert series, the iconic film will be accompanied by a live score from The Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, bringing to life the classic sing-along tracks and bringing an element of glamour and grandeur to the occasion. The celebration of Hollywood and the movie-making industry will be further glorified with clips from classic MGN films ranging from Fiddler On The Roof through to When Harry Met Sally. The site will revel in vintage nostalgia with dance lessons from London Swing Society, make-up tutorials from Aida's Parlour and much more.

ICA Off-Site: Cinema on The Steps: Contemporary Middle Eastern Film, 20th-22nd August, Duke of York steps: The ICA is our go-to venue for offbeat and intelligent film programming. We love their regular Artists’ Film Club (screenings and discussions around video/film artists’ work). The programme for this series has yet to be announced but the calibre of the curators - Alia Al-Senussi (Generation Three and Art Basel), Abdullah al-Turki, Abdellah Karroum (Director of Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha) and Ahmed Mater (Saudi Arabian artist) – attests to it being an exciting showcase of cinema from an oft-neglected region. Also did I mention this cinematic event is 100% free.

Posted By Kate.

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Summer In The City: Comedy

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away our comedy recommendations are…

• TWENTY SOMETHING LONDON'S TIP: The Alternative Comedy Memorial Society

• Nathan Caton

• Phoenix Fringe

Looking for a laugh in London?! Get yourself to one of our top three recommended comedy gigs this August.

The Alternative Comedy Memorial Society, 6th August, Soho Theatre: The Alternative Comedy Memorial Society (ACMS) is an evening of experimental comedy, where alternative comedy is not a break from the norm, but becomes it.  Once a month, and for the reasonable price of around £12.50, Soho Theatre presents a stage upon which brave comedians try their unusual, avant-garde material to a willing crowd, and the only thing to expect is the unexpected. Evenings escalate into barely contained hilarity - alcohol fuelled bleep tests and talcum powder roller discos have ensued on previous performances. 

With the crowds’ energy, coupled with the theatre's dimly lit basement bar there is the feeling from audience and performer alike that anything goes. What you'll see is probably the only time it’s been performed, and the only time it ever will be. Experimental, often crazy but always comical, ACMS knows what it likes and does it well.

 Nathan Caton, 9th August, Top Secret Comedy Club/Africa Centre: With a host of accolades under his belt including Black Comedy Awards Best Young Comic 2011 and Chortle Student Comic before that, Nathan Caton is one to watch. He is perhaps easily defined by his background as one of few West Indians to break into the UK comedy circuit, as well as being a previous architecture student whose parents were initially highly dubious about his decision to jack in designing buildings in favour of inventing gags. To define him by these things however doesn’t do him justice. His routine is influenced by the black American jam style but his charisma, confidence and delivery are all his own. Top Secret Comedy Club have comedy every single night of the week – enough to keep you chortling all the way through the month.

Phoenix Fringe, 3rd-11th August, The Phoenix Cavendish Square: If you’re seeking a varied programme of both established names and rising stars, new material and experimentation then, contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to hike up to Edinburgh this August. This central London festival has its fair share of works in progress, one off shows from big names and imaginative and entertaining content. Imaginadium’s highlights have to be the latest from award-winning sketch team Pappy’s – Pappy’s Flatshare Slamdown is a panel game show with special guests in which a disgruntled landlord and unruly tenants battle over domestic tasks. Shappi Khorsandi’s work in progress presents a fantastic opportunity to see her unique thrillingly feisty act for just £8.

Posted By Kate.

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Summer In the City: Dance

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away our dance recommendations are…

• RACHAEL NANYONJO & MICHAEL P JOHNSON'S TIP - West Side Story

• RACHAEL NANYONJO'S TIP: Random Dance and Timepiece

• Touch Wood

West Side Story, 7th August-22nd September, Sadler's Wells: Growing up West Side Story was one of my favourite films, originally a musical and book by Arthur Laurets, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and choreography by Jerome Robbins. The musical was set in the fifties and is inspired by Williams Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. This adolescent tale of love, gangs and rivalry has survived the test of time and is coming to Sadler's Wells this summer. The show will not only provide an older audience with a euphoric sense of nostalgia but younger viewers can also relate to it. Critics have praised Joey McKneely for his energetic, pristine and vibrant restaging of this classic musical in collaboration with a live orchestra lead by conductor Donald Chan.

Wayne McGregor | Random Dance & Conrad Shawcross Timepiece installation, Sundays in August from the 4th-25th, Roundhouse: Dance works marvellously within the realm of fine art, a good example being Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer Wayne McGregor’s collaboration with British artist Conrad Shawcross. The two creatives worked on Metamorphoses: Titan 2012 as part of the Cultural Olympiad at the National Gallery last year. Now at the Roundhouse London Wayne McGregor | Random Dance will be juxtaposing their work Azimuth with Shawcross’ Machine to present an installation consisting of a series of interventions and drawing in the Roundhouse’s main space.

Touch Wood, August 4th-September 9th,The Place: There is a lot of hard work and experimentation going on behind closed doors at The Place this summer and Touch Wood is your opportunity to see the unpolished, volatile result of all that graft.  Four choreographers have been working on their Choreodrome programme of research and development which allows artists the organic space and freedom to explore ideas without the often constraining pressure of an end performance to work towards. Touch Wood will take place on a raw wooden floor with minimal lighting effects, presenting unconfirmed fragments of choreographers work. This is a rare chance to witness dance in scratch, becoming privy to artistic development and offering your audience feedback to the choreographers. These events promise nothing, other than their own unpredictability.

Posted by Kate.

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Summer In The City: Spoken Word

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away our spoken word recommendations are…

• Black T-shirt Collection

• CATHY GALVIN'S TIP: Stucto Launch Party

• The Lonely Arts Club

Inua Ellams' Black T-shirt Collection, 9th August, Battersea Arts Centre: With something of the Shakespearian tragedy about this unassuming and immaculately delivered tale, Ellams’ Black T-shirt Collection charts the rise and fall of two Nigerian brothers, divided by religion and united in their commercial enterprise. At 70 minutes and combining spoken word with animation, this production will serve as a testament to the gentle power of the solo performance. William’s has moved away from a more complex and epic style in favour of something more natural and parred back – perfect for delivering this economic but impressively powerful fable.

Structo Launch Party, August 3rd, The Society Club:

Structo is a bi-annual British literary magazine publishing international new writing -  short stories, poetry, essays and author interviews – with an emphasis on ‘the slipstream’. Don't miss the chance to see Structo magazine come to life at London's coolest bookshop - The Society Club, Soho. The young literati will be celebrating their tenth issue with stories, cocktails, poetry, music and cake. Entry free from 6pm. 

The Lonely Arts Club, August 7th, Il Cicchetto: This is a bit of a funky one, that doesn’t fit strictly into ‘Spoken Word’ but as it will hopefully be an effusive meeting of minds and flowing conversation, we thought we’d stick it in here! An awesome idea in its very infancy, we suggest you all get in on this early. Splicing the format of a networking event with the informality and frivolity of speed-dating, The Lonely Arts Club is a meet-up for creatives in search of collaborators. For anyone with an idea which requires skills extending beyond their expertise, this event will provide an inspirational platform for throwing ideas around and finding potential partnerships. With a policy of strictly no recruiters or freelancers searching for work, it has the potential to be a creative hothouse.

Posted by Kate.

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Summer In The City: Music

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away our music recommendations are…

• London Contemporary Music Festival

• Two Opera Festivals: Tête à Tête and Grimeborn

• The Shadow Of Heaven, MONEY.

London Contemporary Music Festival, Until 4th August, Bold Tendencies/Franks Campari Bar: Aisha Orazbayeva, Sam Mackay, Igor Toronyi-Lalic and Lucy Railton are Sound Four and our caps are well and truly tipped. These young innovators have embarked on an incredibly intrepid project. LCMF is the perfect anecdote to the stuffiness that surrounds The Proms; hosted in the Peckham multi-storey car park on everybody’s lips, two long weekends of free events and impeccably sharp programming have the potential to enthuse a younger, achingly hip, new crowd with the joys of contemporary, experimental (‘new classical’) music… a lot of it brand spanking new. This event will only appeal to those hipsters with their heads screwed on – the events are complex and challenging, making the festival all the bolder. Read Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s – new composition blogger – thoughts here. We will be taking a break from our summer break (for an event this exciting we couldn’t resist) to give you our impressions of Drone Day and Keyboard Breakdown… so stay tuned and get yourselves to Bold Tendencies.

Issues of exclusivity and access around opera is a theme we have been exploring for a while so we thought we’d sign off for the summer by recommending two event series that do all they can to tear down the barriers associated with the form as well as showcasing and pushing boundaries for the future.

Grimeborn, Until 31st August, Arcola Theatre: Positioning itself diametrically opposite Glyndebourne, now in its sixth year this East London has forged its own prominent place on the classical music calendar. Its calling cards are the intimate 200 seater and 100 seater venues, removing the grandeur and impersonal nature of more traditional outings to the opera. The festival showcases both new work from emerging stars and radical re-workings of established classics by Mozart, Monteverdi, Debussy and Handel. This year fourteen new productions make up the programme. Imaginadium recommends Black Sands by Samantha Newton and Na’ama Zisser - a horror opera, using electronically enhanced voices to explore that time when you fall asleep and your mind begins playing tricks on you. Nope - you sure as hell aren't at Glyndebourne!

Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, 1st-18th August, Riverside Studios: Tête à Tête is about the public, experimentation and new ideas – elements one may not instantly associate with opera. It is a totally unique opportunity to see new work, including free ‘Lite Bites’ which will be exploding out of the theatre space into the foyer and public spaces around Hammersmith and Fulham. If the longevity and expense of a night at the Royal Opera House put you off, then this could be just the ticket with all but one show costing just £7.50 and the option of fitting up to three into one evening. Amongst the mind boggling array of productions there’s edible opera, remote controlled opera, puppeteering opera but we’d recommend checking out Silent Opera’s Lament.

THE SHADOW OF HEAVEN, MONEY, released 26th August:

We couldn’t rightly round up August’s music recommendations without spotlighting an album release. Since catching their unique audio visual show at the Union Chapel back in 2012, MONEY’s beguiling sound has occupied our eardrums and haunted our hearts. Despite their stubbornly ungoogle-able name, penchant for anti-populist religious and mystical subject matter and air of aloof pretension it seems that MONEY (signed to independent label Bella Union) will be deservedly hitting the big time come late August, which will see the release of their album, The Shadow of Heaven.  Their sound is hard to categorise so I shall hand over to The Line Of Best Fit to tackle their music and philosophy. Virtually untraceable online, Money’s gigs tend to be in churches and abandoned warehouse space but that might all be about to change. Check out their new video, directorial debut from Cillian Murphy with choreography from ENB dancers, follow the band on twitter @lonelysexydeath and most importantly take a listen.

Posted By Kate.

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Summer In the City: Cabaret

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away our cabaret recommendations are…

HANNAH YOUNG'S TIP: Silencio, London Wonderground

Carnesky's Finishing School

BURN, Hot August Fringe

Josephine and I

Silencio, Every Saturday in August, London Wonderground: Put on your headphones and enter a spectacularly silent choose-your-own-soundtrack adventure of live music, disco, b-movie film footage and a curious collection of live acts, from the strangely beautiful to the downright bizarre. Hula-hoops from outer space? That's the very least of it.This is an extraordinarily experiential, multi-sensory journey - a journey that leads you to a time-warped, genre-defying, duelling-DJs dance party. Leave your sense of reality at the door.

With a silent disco after-party, you definitely won't believe your eyes or ears.

Carnesky’s Finishing School, 20th-23rd August, Bethnal Green Working Man’s Club: Anyone who saw Carnesky’s Tarot Drome at the late Old Vic tunnels last year will agree that this live art, new circus, experimental theatre production company are the toast of the town when it comes to subversive and experimental cabaret. Want in on the act? Go on, we dare you…

Marisa Carnesky, the company’s founder has 20 years of experience in the field of devising left field performance and will lead this four day course alongside other big names from the international cabaret scene. To sign up to her finishing school all you need is an initial idea, preferably a little stage experience and £150. We can’t say it better than the strapline -  “…here new cabaret is recognised as an art-form that draws on a variety of traditional disciplines and yet is in no way constrained by them. This is a place where formal training is not as revered as an inspired idea, meaning that it is not only broadly accessible but brimming with subversive potential.” The course, which uses a range of eclectic non-traditional training methods and draws on many madcap disciplines from butoh to karaoke, will culminate in your own show night at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club on the 23rd August!

BURN, 1st August, Royal Vauxhall Tavern: A “hot mess of comedy, music and documentary shenanigans”, Time Out editor Ben Walters created BURN back in 2010 as a celebration of cabaret and the moving image. Low production costs and the toast of London’s underground cabaret scene have been known to make for a combustive mixture at this experimental show

This particular offering  will feature new live work from Ophelia Bitz, Vicky Butterfly (pictured) and Ernesto Sarezale, all of whom will be experimenting, in very different ways, with what happens when you project moving images onto the body. Intriguing right?!

BURN is programmed as part of Hot August Fringe which will also see exciting stuff from RVT regulars such as David Hoyle and Lorraine Bowen.

Josephine and I, Until August 17th, Bush Theatre: See a West London theatre transformed into an intimate cabaret venue, complete with show tune pianist, for Cush Jumbo’s solo show celebrating the extraordinary life of Josephine Baker and the influence this heroine has had on her own life and practice. None can dispute the innate fascination of both Baker’s stage presence and fast paced narrative of multiple husbands/lovers, Parisian decadence and civil rights campaigning. In this show Jumbo (directed by Phyllida Lloyd for whom she played Mark Anthony in the Donmar’s all-female production of Julius Caesar) brings this colourful figure to life in exuberant dance and song numbers, as well as exploring Baker’s contemporary legacy, by addressing the impact that the show girl who captured the hearts and imagination of Picasso and Hemingway has had on her. Critics claim that the show excels at expressing the magic of the historical narrative but that one loses interest in the contemporary sub plot. Nevertheless this show is on Imaginadium’s must see list for August.

Posted by Kate.

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Summer In The City: Theatre

We are celebrating our first birthday and taking a small offline holiday in August – we’ll be back with exciting developments in September. Whilst we are away, our theatre recommendations are…

·         A Season In The Congo

·         Biped’s Monitor

·         Home Theatre (UK)

With the majority of theatrical hype concentrated on Edinburgh this month, it is easy to forget that there are fully functional theatres operating alive and well in the capital. 

A Season In The Congo, Until 24th August, A Young Vic: This production is impossible to ignore, if purely for the big names at its core: Joe Wright (director of film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina) collaborates with acclaimed choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui on the UK premiere of this 1966 decolonisation drama, by Martinican poet, playwright and politician Aimé Césaire's starring Olivier Award winning Chiwetel Ejiofo. Pause for breath!

Personally, I have an inherit distrust of Wright who has tampered with some of my favourite literature, opting for style over substance, yet the reviews of A Season In The Congo have made me desperate to see this play that appears to triumph in both simultaneously. Capturing, as Dominic Cavendish puts it in the Telegraph, “a glimmer of hope” in the Congo’s blood stained and traumatic history, the play is an ambitious political portrait of a man who tried to bring democracy and freedom to an ill-fated nation. Set in 1960, between independence and the notorious dictatorship of Mobuto, it follows the democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba through his one year in power, to his grisly end. Praise for Chiwetel Ejiofo’s subtle yet magnificent performance has been universal making this positively un-missable. It is also interesting that the play manages to balance its sharp satirical eye with flamboyant set-design, dance and neo-naturalist motifs, to create something that is both entertaining and hard-hitting.

Biped’s Monitor, Until August 4th, Nunhead Cemetery: Arbonauts are based in the artistically fecund Nunhead/Peckham area and their latest production re-imagines and fragments Italo Calvino’s magical folktale The Baron In the Trees.  They describe their practice as follows… “[we] create theatre that is inspired by unusual narratives and places”. We were intrigued by what this means in practise so asked Helen Galliano, director and co-founder of the company (with Dimitri Launder), to tell us more…

“The aesthetic and abundant nature of Nunhead Cemetery [ one of the Magnificent Seven Cemeteries of London] was a huge influence on this performance, in particular the idea of a kind of 'battle' between nature and structure. As our work is highly visual and physical, the features of the site are crucial - they inform the way the performers move, relate to themselves and each other and also the overall aesthetic and structure of the piece.

In terms of surreal narratives - this is where we distort Calvino's original tale. I haven't returned to read the book for a year now, which is actually a really good place for me to be in! It means I'm not bogged down in the detail and instead I can focus on what I would call the poetry of the novel - certain physical and emotional elements of characters, the sense of determination that overcomes Cosimo, the loss that the ground-based family feel and the final, joyful abandon into nature. We only use a very small amount of text, and for this I've blended Calvino's writings with Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Blake. That's why the performance is 'inspired by' and not 'based on' the novel.

Home Theatre (UK), Deadline for submissions 23rd of August, Stratford East Theatre: Whilst we are on the subject of theatrical space let’s move from ‘unusual’ to ‘familiar’ locations - our last recommendation is a bit of a wildcard. Site-specific theatre is one thing, but how about hosting a performance in your own home?

Home Theatre (UK) is a collaborative endeavour between Festival Internacional de Cenas em Casa in Brazil and Theatre Royal Stratford East – artistic director Kerry Michael and the project’s creator Marcus Vinicius Faustini, directed nine plays for residents of favelas north of Rio de Janeiro. The UK festival feeds from this and is a genuine community effort, aiming to increase access to performance and link the theatre’s resident borough of Newham with the rest of London. At the same time the enterprise will explore interesting questions about the nature of audience, home and performative space.

So how can you get involved? Stratford East Theatre are looking for 30 hosts to partake. If you are selected then artists will tailor a bespoke performance to both your home and the story you would like to see told. This will then be performed by an actor on the 26th of October to an audience of your family and friends, and broadcast live in the theatre. Interested? Submit an application here.

Posted by Kate.

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Catalyst Q&A: Jen Walke (Part 2)

Jen Walke has had a fascinating life and career creating and organising live art. Since part one of our interview went up on Monday she's told us that she has taken on a new role as Producer for Inside Out Dorset! If you think you can do what she does the position of General Manager at Pacitti Company (best known for organising SPILL Festival of Performance) is now free. In this, the second part of our interview, Jen tells us about the hard graft and creative decisions that have got her to this point....

Rock a Hula, a 1950s rock n roll, hula hooping and swing dancing event for which Jen was awarded a Smirnoff Creative Bursary.

Have you ever been a performer yourself? I know you produce for your own events company. Tell us about your creative and professional background, where the two overlap and inform one another and how you ended up doing what you are doing now.

At University, I made my own performances, yes. I was particularly interested in rituals, superstition and folk culture, food and altruism: being a host and giving the audience a gift. I liked interventions and blurring the boundary between my practice, using everyday settings, formats and materials. I was often performing on my own, offering a service like ‘marriage divination’ or tea and cake, and through these I was quite industrious in what I was providing and in its organisation. After I left university, I decided to focus on the organisation side and creating events with and for other artists, rather than solely try to make my own work as what I would describe an artist. What I describe next are two pathways that happened concurrently over the next few years: one in paid employment, and one as an entrepreneur. For both of them to make sense I have to describe them separately.

To get paid employment, I volunteered at the Centre for Performance Research in Wales for 6 months to get some professional experience in an arts organisation. I then managed to land a series of temporary jobs marketing at Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Sheffield Documentary Festival. My passion for marketing came from my focus and attention on ‘the audience’, who have always been central to my motivation. After this, I landed my (then) dream job at Artsadmin as a Projects Assistant, working with two of the Producers. Alas, it was short lived, but on my last day I got a job at Pacitti Company as Administrator. I’ve been there for 5 years now, and progressed to General Manager, building up and developing the organisation through a hugely busy and excited period which has given me experience of leading on the admin of one SPILL Festival, management of three SPILL Festivals, the set-up of a new building, and an huge Cultural Olympiad project. I could not have predicted the journey I’ve been on with Pacitti Company, it’s been epic and an incredible experience for me whilst still relatively young.

Alongside this full time paid employment, after leaving University I set up and developed my own independent projects. These have ended up being for a range of festival contexts across the UK (and a London club night) engaging with art, history and cultural traditions called The Fete Encounter (a live art village fete), Rock a Hula (a 1950s rock n roll, hula hooping and swing dancing event) and Lah-di-dah (a 1920s exercise class to music). It was a very hard slog over the first few years, but over time (with a couple of good press quotes) I built up a reputation and following for these events, which meant I’ve been asked to do events with the Barbican and Wales Millennium Centre. In 2009 I was awarded a £10k Smirnoff creative bursary for Rock a Hula, and made an Old Vic New Voices Coming Up Later Creative Director. I’ve also secured National press coverage in the Sunday Times, features and previews. In one year, I had a £20k turnover (not all profit) on my events alone, I was working every lunch break, evening and weekend, and I was exhausted. For these reason my own projects have taken a bit of a rest in the past year or two, but I’m still doing them.

How these two different roles inform each other I think is hard to answer, but the main thing is that they both allow me to see things differently and do different things. In my day job, I am highly culpable, ridiculously organised and quite serious a lot of the time. In my own projects, I’m more creative, and a bit more relaxed, because mainly, I only have myself to answer to.

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Impressions of The Black Cat Cabaret

If we had known of the splendour that awaited us when stepping down the stairs to Café de Paris, then losing the sun evening may not have seemed such an ordeal. Once below ground The Black Cat Cabaret was ‘underground’ only in a literal sense; the central London location and clientele means the illusion of seedy, dangerous, absinthe soaked Montmartre is never truly evoked.  This disappointed feeling of being a bit too safe was soon drowned out in laughter and wonder – the show delivers in conjuring a romantic and raucous ideal of a sultry Parisian bohemia. Decadence without the comedown… what it lacked in grit and compere Dusty Limits’ undelivered promise of hellish delights, it made up for in heavenly mischief and skilled craftsmanship.

The Black Cat Cabaret is the illicit love child of two of London’s premier cabaret troupes - Boom Boom Club and La Rêve. The eclecticism of the acts we saw made for a variety show of exquisite contradictions, taking us from the lavish to the louche and back again. From a palpably erotic aerial performance from Katherine Arnold, through to the downright ludicrous/hilarious David Armound, whose intelligent madcap mime routine to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now could have kept me crying with mirth all night.

I’d second guess that the crowd at Café de Paris weren’t all cabaret regulars, perhaps stepping outside their comfort zone and feeling up for anything. This was exemplified when Dusty demanded that everyone make the sound of their orgasm on the count of three, and a surprising number of people complied! The jovial atmosphere created by dipping toes into something new on mass, made the laughter at the onstage antics all the more titillating.

Personal highlights would have to include the outrageous East End Cabaret who make a big old drama out of both commonplace and obscure minutia of the contemporary every day. Deviant diva Bernadette Byrne and half-moustachioed musician Victor Victoria are lovable rogues singing raunchy ditties for the binge-drinking, misadventure-seeking, Facebook generation. A departure from traditional cabaret singer material, their songs are about the danger of accidental anal rather than the powers of seduction! This charismatic double act really capture the audience with their ability to take a long hard laugh at themselves. I also can’t write about this night without giving Chrisalys a shout. A disturbingly feminine, pig-masked, tattooed hulk of a man brought the audience to their knees as he ate fire, trapped his tongue in a mousetrap and paraded his sinister self around, adding a much needed edge of wild weirdness to the evening.

Amid this motley crew stands Dusty Limits. Stradding smut and class with serious aplomb, Dusty held the evening together, as only he can. His rendition of Noël Coward’s Mad About the Boy was absolutely divine as he strutted through the seated ticket holders tables and his closing drinking song was just what the doctor ordered, to send us back out into the balmy Soho night.

Posted by Kate.

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Catalyst Q&A: Jen Walke (Part 1)

Jen Walke has had a fascinating life and career creating and organising live art. She is General Manager at Pacitti Company (best known for organising SPILL Festival of Performance) and has produced many of her own projects including The Fete Encounter (a live art village fete). In this, the first of our two part Q&A, she chatted to us about her Grandpa, 'Four Seasons' thinking and SPILL. Next week we'll be posting more from Jen later this week so stay tuned...

Heather Cassils Becoming An Image - Jen's SPILL 2103 highlight.

Where and when was your love of performance and live art born?

When I was little, I was inspired by my Grandpa who told me fantastic made up bed time stories. He inspired my imagination and got me reading and conjuring my own stories. As I grew up, I was keen to try anything: playing the piano, making things, exploring new places and making new friends. I developed a love of art at school, which developed in a big way when I did my Art Foundation at Reading College. There, I learned about video art, installation and 1970s performance and conceptual art. At University, a turning point for me was going to the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow in 2004. That was it, I was hooked and knew it was live art, in any location as well as performance and cross-arts practices that made me tick.

In your daily work which side of your brain would you say you use more - assuming we’re going in for the whole left = logical, analytical, right=emotional, creative? Tell us about the balance between artistic and organisational capacities needed in your role.

I think I use them all, but recently learned I am naturally an ‘autumn’ type thinker in a model called the ‘Four Seasons’, which means I like detail, planning, deadlines and more planning! My job as General Manager [at Pacitti Company] means I need to think creatively, but always with a logistic, financial, justifiable hat on which sometimes means I am a voice of care and caution, and sometimes means I have to be demanding, forceful and often, braver than I perhaps like to be.

Reflecting on this year’s SPILL Festival, tell us about the most rewarding moments, near catastrophes and/or logistical nightmares. What is it like working on a festival that programmes such innovative and boundary-pushing work?

Heather Cassil’s piece Becoming An Image at the National Theatre Studio in April 2013 was amazing. To get a sense of why it’s best to watch this.

SPILL is a fantastic festival that opens up so many exciting possibilities for so many artists, venues and producers. Working on this requires meticulous planning, very careful messaging, a dedicated team and infinite amounts of energy and enthusiasm. No two SPILL Festivals have been the same.

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Imaginadium's Indian Summer

Finally, it seems we don’t have to keep desperately clutching our fingers crossed in the hope of an Indian summer… we’ve got a full scale, all guns blazing British summertime AT LAST. Now that the weather has sorted its act out, here are Imaginadium’s top tips for a cultural Indian summer… a veritable feast of events celebrating the subcontinent:

London Indian Film Festival: BFI Southbank and other cinemas, 18th-25th July.

When we think of Indian cinema, the mind leaps to the dazzling colours, high drama and spectacular costumes of Bollywood. Celebrating the 100 year anniversary of Indian cinema, this year’s festival will prove testament to the country’s gritty and adventurous, independent film scene. The broad genre spanning programme defies stereotypes and assumptions, by presenting a cinema as richly diverse and contrary as the continent itself. Imaginadium recommends Tasher Desh (Land of Cards) from experimental Director Q – a complex and hallucinogenic exploration of what it means to be free. See it at the ICA on the 21st of July, where the film will be followed by a Q&A with actor Soumyak Kanti De Biswas and production designer Opashona Ghosh.

Indian Tempest : Shakespeare’s Globe, 27thJuly-3rd August.

Footsbarn are an international touring theatre company with a multinational cast. Their take on one of Shakespeare’s most imaginatively rich and intellectually stimulating plays, draws from street theatre, circus, carnival and mime. Performed in English, Malayalam, French and Sanskrit, this isle will truly be full of noises; we are excited about the prospect of seeing Footsbarn’s famously improvisational and eccentric theatre in one of drama’s most famous homes.  Furthermore the production promises “a strong flavour of Kerala” and as my experience watching traditional Kathakali dances in this state is still one of my most vibrant performance memories, I will be expecting something truly special.

Charles Correa: India's Greatest Architect: RIBA 66 Portland Place, Until 4th September.

A celebration of one the world’s most distinguished practising architects, this exhibition encompasses images, drawings, photographs, models and films from Charles Correa’s international signature projects. Celebrated for his involvement in Post-Independent architecture in India, he was famously sensitive to the urban poor and held a unique philosophy deeply indebted to people and climate. He has famously said “just as there is writing and then there is literature, there is construction and then there is architecture. Great architecture can change society." Imaginadium urges you to take a change from your average gallery visit and check out this influential and inspirational body of work.

Posted by Kate.

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Impressions of Memory Palace

Memory Palace, at the V&A until 20th October, brings together a new work of fiction by Hari Kunzru with 20 specially commissioned installations by graphic designers, illustrators and typographers to create a walk in book.

The story is set in London hundreds of years in the future, after a colossal electromagnetic storm has entirely wiped out the technological infrastructure. In a dark, dystopian age known as The Withering, power has been seized by The Thing, who intend to bring about The Wilding - "a joyful harmonising with nature" - but where recording, writing, collecting, knowledge and art are all outlawed.

Filled with illustrations which are the concept sketches for the exhibition installations, gorgeous font, exquisite paperstock, tactile quasi-gilded cover, the physical incarnation of The Book itself is as much a work of art as any of the installations derived from the narrative.

Part science-fiction, part 19th century "dictionary of received ideas", part hark-back to the oral "jongleur" tradition, thick with wordplay, misremembered memory fragments, the thing it purports to be - a first person narrative by a reliable and sympathetic narrator - is the one thing it cannot possibly be. Who could have written it down, printed and published it in an age where the resources and freedom to do so no longer exist?

Is the book a piece of propaganda for a return to the Booming - the time before the Withering, a celebration of the Memorialists and their martyrdom, a social and political indictment of The Thing?

Or, does the narrative exist, not hundreds of years in the future, but thousands? Is it, in fact, a document from the beginning if a new revolution, from the resurgence, phoenix-like, of the Memorialists as they gradually rise back up, the written form, the "sign" reinstated?

Are the installation pieces art or artefacts?

CJ Lim, the "exhibition" designer, creates the installation as a Memory Palace itself, a building within a building, made up of spaces all containing a part of the narrative, between which one is able to wander at will, creating - or recreating - the story over and over through the connected, yet vastly different, visual responses of the 30 or so practitioners, each chosen for their work in graphics and illustration, and paired with passages of text according to both a strong visual resonance with their previous work and events in the story.  The installations themselves, whilst textually and narratively faithful to the book are exuberant, exquisite, terrifying, tactile and poetic, by turns. And yet there is no need to have read the book, or to know the story, in advance, though you will almost certainly want to by the end.

My response to the installation was very different to my response to the novel. As a student of languange and literature, in terms of my academic studies, I sought to pick apart the novel, to frame it and reference it and understand it in an academic context. My response to the installation was much more visceral and immediate, my sympathies entirely different. Whether because of the route I took through the installation, or whether purely because of the make up of my brain, the installation became less like the book for me the further I travelled through it. I delighted in recognising some elements from the book, I felt genuine fear on behalf of the narrator - who I felt I had come to know, through reading the book - from some of the installations. The element of surprise at each turn was not lessened at all through a thorough familiarity with the text, which was extremely pleasing and at the same time highly disconcerting.

Mostly, though, finally, after so much searching, this was installation art that really grabbed me - sometimes by the soul and sometimes by the throat, but above all by the mind. I get it now. This, for me, was genuinely, intellectually, immersive; pushing the format of The Book to its very boundaries. This is more than a walk-in-book: This is Experiential Reading.

Posted by Hannah

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A rookie roaming around Punchdrunk's The Drowned Man

I have not candied my words in previous posts when it comes to immersive theatre; I find myself wary of its claim to involve audiences (when it in fact sometimes alienates them) and weary of its gimmicky, en vogue omnipresence in urban culture. It was thus with relish that I set off to have my Punchdrunk virginity broken – if they couldn't do it for me, then I was prepared to accept that interaction didn't engage me and that being ‘immersed’ perhaps wasn't for me.

Boundary-decimating theatre company Punchdrunk are the grand-daddys of the game. They formed in 2000, taking promenade performance one step further into a form of theatre where the audience member is free to roam around the set and decide what they watch and when, interacting with performers en route. Productions such as their 2007 The Mask Of The Red Death residency at Battersea Arts Centre  and Faust have earned them both a reputation for creating uniquely complex and dark theatrical experiences and an almost cultish loyal following!

River Carmalt, Adam Burton and Jack Laskey in The Masque of the Red Death at BAC. Photograph: Tristram Kenton.

Where some seasoned Punchdrunk fans have been voicing their disappointment around The Drowned Man’s lack of sinister punch and narrative cohesion, I was honestly overwhelmed and highly impressed. Intensely holistic production means that, for once, you are genuinely transported to a fine tuned surreal alternative universe – complete with a forest, a dessert, a cowboy salon and all manner of other magically ‘real’ environments. The site is 200,000 sq foot and spans four (or five?!) sprawling floors which would probably take a lifetime to fully explore.

The audience wear creepy raven like masks and are asked to remain silent throughout – a stroke of utter genius. The figures of other voyeurs form an unsettling part of the action, circling predator like around scenes and breaking off to pursue the characters of their choice. Furthermore your anonymity removes the main barrier which I have wrestled with in other immersive performances, that being your self-conscious awareness of both your own actions and the fact of the fourth wall which you are being asked to ignore. Suspending ones disbelief is much easier when you cannot see others sniggering at nude scenes, or conspire with your mates about the best course to take. Isolated you are free to let your imagination take flight and “choose your own path”.

When it came to choosing my path, I found it hard to decide on a definitive best-practice model; you are constantly torn between the desire to see as much of the Goliath site and interlocking narratives as possible and a lingering curiosity which urges you to stick to the details and see things through to their conclusion. As a result my personal journey was a bit of a hotch potch of both following the carrion-like crowd to witness epic set pieces and taking tangents off on personal adventures. Nevertheless I kept a firm enough grip on the ‘plot’ throughout to feel that I wasn't just ambling around an adult adventure playground.

None of the technical complexity of the looped narratives nor the magnificence of the set design would count for anything if it wasn't for the sheer beauty and mesmeric quality of the action, which competes with anything else I have seen on a more traditional stage this year. Where some productions have seem to take immersive as a synonym for quality (as though this were enough to hold our attention alone) The Drowned Man was heart-renderingly stunning. A fan-imposed boycott on spoilers and revealing reviews has developed around immersive theatre so I won’t go into details. However the highly physical choreography, peaks and troughs in the pace and intensity of the piece and subtle, multifaceted characterisation were what ultimately made this a memorable experience.

If you want to know more about the bonkers world that awaits you when you step inside ‘Temple Studios’ then head to the fantastic PunchDrunk Lovers’ Content Discussion Group, were those who have seen the production are actively unraveling its myriad mysteries. As for myself I have discovered that, when done like this, immersive theatre can be a truly phenomenal experience – I am already planning my second trip back. 

Posted by Kate (bitten by the Punchdrunk bug!)

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CUT PRICELESS: The Paper Architect

If you just happen to find yourself hanging around on a street corner in Leytonstone anytime this week (and we’re not judging…) take a closer look at the blacked out window on the High Road where it meets Church Lane.  Peer through the gaps and you will see a number of miniature white paper models, painstakingly crafted and beautifully detailed, light and hollow, like papery husks of the world around you.

Impressive as they are, they are merely a hint of the delights within and which, until 21st July, are well worth arranging (quickly mind, as there are only 15 seats per performance) the trip out east to see.

photo: Benedict Johnson

Part of the Beyond Barbican season, which sees the Barbican busting out of its concrete bunker and scattering cultural happenings across east London this summer, The Paper Architect has been conceived by Davy and Kristin McGuire and is the first full Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award  winner since You Me Bum Bum Train in 2010. This intimate, delicate combination of animation, projection mapping, theatre, film and papercraft couldn’t be more different!

We find ourselves in the home of an old man, asleep in his chair, where on every flat surface in an otherwise simply furnished room there stands a beautifully and elaborately constructed paper model: a lighthouse; a mansion; a row of townhouses; a model cemetery, with graves eerily lit from below; a large forest scene on top of a chest of drawers .

A knock on the door heralds the arrival of a letter containing news as ominous as the deep rumble with which the old man, played by John Cording in a spare performance of moving subtlety, delivers the opening line. It is a notice of eviction.

The letter is dismissed and neatly folded into a basic origami bird (no exquisitely crafted destiny for this piece of “80gsm - cheap rubbish”) and joins a flock of warning letters gathering dust on a shelf. This is a man who has constructed a fragile, miniature world within his apartment so he needn’t confront reality outside - or within. But he starts packing the cemetery into the first removal box and, easily distracted, finds a tiny cut-out figure of a woman he thought he’d lost…

What follows is a tender exposition of the intricacies of those inner worlds created by the lonely to sustain their own splendid isolation - and a technically brilliant combination of projection, paper architecture, shadow play and performance, each interplaying with the other to create ever more wonderful effects as one thing becomes another and anything may come to life.

For all its visual inventiveness the production does lack in dramatic drive and the ironically passive nature of the man’s relationship with his own creations means that Cording is left with little to do for long periods. In a vortex of nested realities, we share in his melancholy illusion, Russian doll-like: the audience in the theatre looking at the man in the room looking at the girl in the forest looking at the bird in the cage.

It is a relief to step out into the sunshine.

The Paper Architect runs until 21st July

posted by Mark

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Impressions of Brilliant: A dream-filled sleepless night

"I looked at the sky

And I saw the moon

And the moon looked back

And the moon saw me"

Images: Keith Pattison.

Brilliant - at The Young Vic until 13th July - is billed as "a glittering, magical introduction to theatre for 3-5 year olds and their families, combining movement, live music and captivating imagery to create a dreamlike world made of light".

I take my just-turned 4 year old daughter, Chessie, and we are both very quickly of the opinion that that description does not go nearly far enough.  There is something very special about taking very small people to the theatre, because all the normal conceits of the theatre are knocked on the head. No need for suspension of disbelief for a four year old, because there is no disbelief. From Father Christmas to the Easter Bunny, from dragons and unicorns to monsters in the wardrobe, and - in Brilliant a double-bass playing stag-man and a moon that can be switched on and off at the light-switch and caught and carried and touched - virtually nothing is out of the limits of their imagination or credulity.

Brilliant tells the story of one girl's dream-filled, sleepless night. It treads that margin between sleep and wakefulness, a kind of continuous lucid-dream, the prosaic details of "bedtime", lights off, torches under the covers, a toy stag to cuddle transformed into a huge, looming dreamscape of light, mirrors, mirror balls, music, dry ice - and in incorporating those things, harks back to a child's very newest days, when light, mirrors, light switches are disproportionately fascinating to their barely-yet-focussing eyes. It is surely no co-incidence, either, that exactly those same things are called upon in adulthood to deceive, disorient, create magic: we speak of "smokescreen", "a trick of the light", "they do it with mirrors".

Initially a little slow to get going, the children are nevertheless captivated. Not silently captivated, it has to be said, they squeal and giggle, even exclaim "catch it", "turn it on again" - but whereas I, as an adult, try to make boring, adult sense of it (is she awake, is it real, or is she dreaming?) the children never ask "what's that, why did that happen, what's she doing?" - the magic of Brilliant is that they accept it just as it is presented, with wide-eyed wondering, for sure, but unquestioningly.

And The Clare at the Young Vic is the perfect stage for this. It's a very intimate space, and, sat, on a level with the performers, barely any higher than the ground, the stage seems, by contrast, huge and looming, larger than life. What it must look like to a four year old is anyone's guess, but certainly this immediacy is a great virtue when playing to the children. The actors, both marvellously engaged with the children, are so close, and so present that the children cannot help but verbalise and engage right back, and if not directly encouraged as part of the performance, it is nevertheless embraced and visibly enjoyed.

By the end, Chessie has tears in her eyes (and seeing this, of course, immediately, so do I). As the curtain closes, she whispers to me "Mummy, I don't want it to be over". In my head, I grapple for the right adjectives to describe what we've experienced - enchanting, captivating, charming, spellbinding, entrancing - fairy tale adjectives and indeed, we just lived a fairy tale.

Of course, one brattish six-ish year old who, really, is probably too old for this, threatens to break the spell by demanding, loudly "Mummy, I want a moon EXACTLY LIKE THAT ONE, NOW".

Chessie, bless her debut-theatre-critiquing socks, counters, equally loudly and articulately "Mummy, THIS is what my dreams look like" - a sound bite thoroughly deserved by this fantastical, heart-swelling, dream-space.

Postscript: on a more practical note, the performance lasts for 40 minutes, with no interval - ironically less time than it takes to put my two children to bed. Children are thoroughly welcome in the café/bar and there is plenty of room for buggies. There are a marvellously plentiful eight cubicles in the women's toilets reducing normal theatre waiting times considerably.  Hey, these things matter if you have pre-schoolers.

Posted by Hannah.

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In No Great Hurry

Saul at lunch © Tomas Leach 

Tomas Leach’s In No Great Hurry portraits reluctant photographic pioneer Saul Leiter; a documentary film with a difference, its subtle and crafted form perfectly reflects the nature of its subject. As Leiter places no value on fame or success, so Leach abandons all trace of ego and grand narrative to give emotionally intelligent insight into an incredible artist and even more fascinating human being.

First let’s talk Leiter's photography for a sec – if you don’t know his work then get to know! Creating bold and abstract colour street photography in the early fifties, before William Eggleston had so much as a look in, Leiter’s monograph Early Color looks radically modern in 2013. Exhibited at MoMa in 1953, Leiter and his work then faded into a self-enforced obscurity, but he has continued to take astonishing pictures in and around the 3 block radius of the same Lower East Side Manhattan flat he has occupied since the fifties.

Selecting the above to showcase Leiter's work for this post was an impossible choice - please check out more of his phenomenal pictures. 

Said flat is a chaotic den of buried memories – boxes upon boxes of negatives and images and mountains of miscellanea sprawl over every surface and the film follows Saul trying to clear out all the junk. There is something profoundly moving about watching an old man recollect his life as he finds abandoned images on the floorboards and it is both surprising and perversely satisfying to see the work of a genius left out to seed and collecting dust, having escaped commodification.

 In No Great Hurry doesn’t provide a backstory or include praising monologues from art historians or Saul’s contemporaries as such fact-verifying seems wholly unnecessary. Instead we are having an intimate conversation with a man whose unusual attitude to life, love, religion and art is gently arresting. Notions of ambition, success and progress don’t factor into his philosophy and his speech, so full of “maybe”s, “I don’t know”s and “sometimes”s, reveals a languid yet incredibly appealing intelligence. These monologues are peppered with flashes of never before seen photographs and the vibrant extremity of Saul’s art seems wildly at odds with his cat-like personna!

It is almost as though the notion of art itself with all its baggage is unimportant to him; he loves photography because “it teaches us to look”. His creative genius is a happy mistake. If you are raised aspirational and constantly encouraged to see merit in hard graft for hard graft’s sake, Saul Leiter’s laissez faire views may well be music to your ears. A big two fingers up to received opinion on how one ‘makes it’ and whether ‘making it’ is worth anything after all, followed by Saul’s characteristic chuckle. 

...Just because I cannot resist including another image!

I saw ‘In No Great Hurry’ with directors Q&A at the ICA and we are told they will potentially be screening it as few more times in the coming weeks – keep track here.

Posted by Kate.

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Catalyst Q&A: Cathy Galvin

In the first of our Catalyst Q&A's with people who make things happen, we chatted to Cathy Galvin - founder of the Word-Factory,The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award and a trustee of Poet in the City.

We have long been in awe of the Word Factory, an informal and extraordinary merging of writers and readers over short stories...and wine! They put on salons and master classes and also have an online platform dedicated to the form. 

Where and when was your love of short stories born and what does the form have above longer forms of literature?

I can trace my love of short stories back to childhood: Angela Carter, DH Lawrence, Sean O’Foalian, Edna O’Brien .. they were simply there and because I wasn’t aware of any artificial division between shorter and longer forms of literature, I still don’t see a divide. Good work is good work. The rest is marketing.  

You’ve had a long career writing as a journalist but do you also write fiction? Tell us about your creative and professional background, where the two overlap and how you ended up doing what you are doing now.

I haven’t written fiction but I do write some poetry – though this hardly qualifies me as a poet. I’m also not a literary journalist: my background is in news and features and I particularly love interviewing. I’ve always been passionate about good writing, wherever I find it and working with some of the best non-fiction writers in the world has shown me how much they read and are influenced by literature. My own work is taking me in to that place often inhabited by people caught between two worlds – literary memoir - but I have a long way to travel down that road yet!

I’m growing the Word Factory as a literary channel with events, opportunities to meet, masterclasses and hopefully a magazine because my life changed a few years ago when I introduced the short story to the Sunday Times for the first time and founded the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. I see things as an outsider .. for good and bad. Again, I don’t see the marketing divisions that dog the publishing industry.

Hanif Kureishi is just one of the high profile writers who have been involved with the Word Factory.

In your daily work for Word Factory which side of your brain would you say you use more -assuming we go in for the whole left = logical, analytical, right=emotional, creative? Tell us about the balance between artistic and organisational skills needed in your role.

I’m currently more left brain than I want to be. This is a fledgling business and it needs a strong foundation or the right brain thinking will have little chance to survive.

Tell us a little more about Word Factory’s ethos and how this spirit translates into the atmosphere at your events.

I’ve realised that at the core of the Word Factory is relationship: with the audience, amongst the writers and others who come and between me and everyone who participates. This relationship is about trust and about breaking down some of the barriers that can separate some audiences from writers at literary festivals for example. People comment to me on the informality and warmth and that’s something I never want to lose. 

The next salon from the Word Factory on the 27th of July, in its regular haunt The Society Club, in Soho.