Catch Up!

Time is speeding by now in the build up to Christmas and there barely seems to be a moment to take stock. On Thursday Patsy, Ben and I went with the Applied Theatre students over to Rich Mix in Bethnal Green to see Tongue Fu, another packed evening of performance poetry and rap. The event had less variation than the previous gig back in September, but there were some class acts including the rather brilliant A F Harrold.

Friday was full on in preparation for the A Political Cabaret in the evening, which went really well - the Dolche full to bursting. Afterwards I crossed over to the theatre to catch Level 3 Theatre Arts production of Love and Money by Dennis Kelly (see above). Just as with The Blue Room a couple of weeks ago the work really demonstrated the huge strides that has been made this year.

On Monday night I headed down to Heathside School in Weybridge to work with their year 13, developing ideas for their exam verbatim theatre piece which explores the role of letter writing. We had a really good session using mobiles and headphones to record and playback stories about significant letters and correspondences to each other. Interestingly a couple of them had never handwritten a letter and those who had, had only ever done so to grandparents. Inevitably it's a dying art and this began to frame some of the discussions. Are typed or texted missives less valuable or romantic than those that come from the flow of a pen and if so why? Is it because they're less spontaneous, easier to edit, less sure in authorship? Why is signature so fascinating?I'm going back in in a couple of weeks to see how the work has developed.

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