It's all about the frame.......... Letter Number Two

Good Friday Morning!

I have just spent a special evening with my gorgeous daughter Phoebe - tucked into slow-cooked Irish Stew....and she stayed over in my new home with me. It's the first time we have been able to have an ordinary morning together for almost three years, just her and me, coffee, marmite toast and chatting about everything and nothing whilst she curled her hair in my bedroom mirror. Those in-between times, tiny moments of precious intimacy when not rushing from or to somewhere. Being - simply - together. 

She asked me when would I next make a piece of theatre ? ... and it's true I haven't actually directed what could be called a 'play' for over 2 years now and I am keenly aware of its absence. For me there is nothing quite like the process of making theatre, the eclectic confluence that happens with a good text, a group of actors, collective imagination and an empty sacred space. The latent potential and energy saturates the air....

But in considering this question (and I had been already) -  I have come to realise that for me making theatre is not confined to the heightened or defined experience of simply realising a text with actors in a space - sacred, seductive and joyful as this is, it's actually also about the frame I put around my life and my experiences.  

A memory that sticks with me from many years ago and that still strikes a deep chord was watching a little-known Polish film (so little-known I cannot locate it now!) in which a man and his wife were in the throes of a bloody separation and the male character (a film-maker) was compelled to do that film-makery thing of making a square with his thumbs and forefingers to put a frame around the experience. Seems pretty dislocated in a way - to be experiencing the worst trauma whilst at the same time constructing a visual narrative from it.  But the truth is that our lives and of those around us are deeply fascinating, even when we are protagonists in our own incontrovertible melt-downs. Indeed the ability to observe and store the experience for later use is a godsend - "I will use this one day" somehow puts a salve on the horrors of the moment and promises some sanity possibly at some future point. 

So what has this to do with the Boathouse or my current re-created life?  In some ways it's hard to articulate, but I guess my attempt at an answer would be that the Boathouse and all that goes on in and around it everyday is essentially theatre to me. I am like my apparently callous Polish film-maker in relishing the frames I put around my experience. Things just unfold, happen..... and in them the glorious humour and pathos of life simultaneously present themselves as my own maybe private theatre. 

To give you an example... one of the things I love best about being in the Boathouse Cafe, is that I usually position myself at a kitchen table with a good vantage point of the open door. And then I nonchalantly do whatever I need to do, speak to whoever I need to speak to whilst keeping one eye on the next 'character' who walks in.  No script, no actual actors playing a part - just people doing their thing.  And so it was on Wednesday that I was in the middle of a meeting, looked up briefly to see a man coming onto the terrace with a big board or something covered by a white sheet with pink-white gingham frills. I realised quite quickly that it was the artist Biniam Gidhe, (aka Angel Art), the wonderful local Eritrean artist whom I commissioned recently to paint a portrait of my mum and Dad and who travelled with me last week to present his faithful piece to my parents at my Dad's bedside (he is gravely ill). 

Indeed Biniam had decided to bring me his beautiful painting  A Young Woman Waiting for no immediately apparent reason, although the absurdity of the size of the painting and his walking with it was not lost on me. He had decided to ask me to take care of her. You see he has lived with her for over a year since he painted her but felt that she was rather imprisoned in his small bedroom in Dagenham, and deserved to be released from this prison to a more conducive environment. So we had a cuppa and then - I thought maybe he wanted to hang her in the cafe, but as we spoke, it became clear that he wanted me to give her sanctuary in my own new home. I must admit to having been thrilled at this suggestion (loved this scene in the play indeed)  - and so we lifted her gently into the back of my car, pink-gingham skirted and all and drove to my flat. Biniam carried her with love from the car and into the lift to bring her to the 4th floor. We both talked to her quite a lot - she remained steadfastly nonchalant.

A cuppa later he had fixed her to my wall. And that was that really. I promised faithfully to take good care of her, speak to her, love her (albeit slightly jealous of her voluptuous youth I must admit - for some reason she reminds me a little of Venus in Botticelli's painting Venus and Mars). We were both happy. 

And I so look forward to curating Biniam's exhibition Through The Tunnel - An Unfinished Exhibition  at the Boathouse opening on December 1st.  So you see - when I woke up on Wednesday morning I had no idea what the day would bring, and here it was - simply, maybe simply theatre. 

And today something special too...... tonight our 16-year old young composer/pianist Iqra Zaman (commissioned by Carl Blackburn to compose the musical theme for Barking and Dagenham's 50th anniversary) will be presented with her young person's award from the World Peace and Prosperity Foundation at a gala awards dinner hosted by Lord Carrington at the House of Lords. She will attend with her Dad  in the company of Cllr Darren Rodwell (Leader of the LBBD Council) and Mrs Caroline Rodwell with Mark Horn and his wife Danielle, Steve Drury (Chair of the Boathouse) and his wife Yasmin, Claire Bullen from Rooff Ltd and myself. 

More to follow on that one...... 

Thanks for reading -  if you have. Be in touch again next Friday I hope from the depths of North Wales! 

With love
Carole x

Stirrings .......... And with them a brand new blog. Letter Number One

Hello

What should be the first words of a new blog?  I've been planning them for what seems like weeks. Especially first words for a third brand new blog? I pondered looking at my previous two blogs to see how they began, but then decided that was a pointless exercise and I would start with a clean page.

And why a new blog - wasn't the old one working?  Well yes it was whatever that might mean -  but I have moved on from it now and it has lost its imperative for me.  It's an old cliche to say that that chapter in my life is now closed. But sometimes cliches have their place. If my life were a book, this would definitely be the start of volume three. My last blog was called A Life in Theatre -  Towards the Simple and the Sacred. I am not sure about sacred but it has moved further towards the simple thankfully. And theatre has come to mean something new to me. I'd like to share some of that.

A dear friend asked me - 'But who gives a damn what you think? and why do you need to write it?' - I like the candour of a reliable friend to ask the awkward questions. And I've thought about it and frankly have no reasonable answer. Grateful for it though I am I'm not sure I even care about the question. I reckon people can make up their own minds as to whether they want to read something or not, and my justification is simply the pleasure of writing and a deep desire to do so. It's the delight in observing life, watching others and finding the joy and fun in things. To boot I have always been a diary writer, since my first little green Letts Brownie diary in 1968. 

The thing is that after three years of living as a 'middle-aged wandering hobo' as my daughter aptly named me, I have finally dropped anchor and that feels significant. Living as an itinerant sofa-surfing woman-of-a-certain age has been bracing to say the least, and at times more of a challenge for me than climbing Mount Everest (if I would now be allowed!). And it's a story too for people of my age maybe, women in particular, that when all falls apart in your life it is possible to pick yourself up and start again. 

It's called a Letter from an East Bank Boathouse because well......it's a letter and it's from a Boathouse in East London. It will be an eclectic mix of bits of my personal and artistic story woven in with the life that shows up every day at our new and emerging arts venue jewelled alongside the River Roding in Barking, some of which is simply wonderful material. And its a story of transformation too. 

My last blog was an urgent daily missive, proof to myself that I was still alive, still an artist -  in the midst of the total dissolving of my once lived life. But more about that as it emerges. It's taken three years to still the inner turmoil and to learn to be grateful for the lessons it's taught me - it's an ongoing process.

Of course there will be no end, there isn't an ultimate destination, (well apart from the obvious). Amongst many, I have two very dear friends in particular who have travelled in convoy with me through these times and what I have learned most from both of them in different ways is about living in the present moment. I mean not just as some spiritual mantra - but really really being in the moment. It's useful when you are travelling around with a bag from place to place, unsure of where you might sleep that night. In his homage poem to the Japanese painter-  Hokusai Says the poet Roger Keyes writes 'Let life live through you', and I do now for the most part. We theatre-makers make an art of improvisation - or the 'yes....and' of communication as I like to think of it. But it's simply a reflection of how life really is whilst we all go round in an attempt to control things. It means surrendering to what shows up, remaining child-like and curious and letting go of fear. (All easily said of course  - takes a bit of getting the hang of, and not always achieved, certainly by me.)

Anyway enough of all that. This blog will be a more gentle drift down the river at no more than 5mph as is the rule of the canal. I have no idea where it will take me, but I trust it will be somewhere curious. This will be a weekly blog rather than a daily one and  probably written on a Friday, which is now my writing day (well actually today it's my cafe-serving day as my esteemed Baker Denise is ill). I may of course be writing with no-one reading as I have probably lost all my old regulars. But that's ok too. What is... is. Simply.

That's it then and hello. Lets see where this one takes us.

Carole
Ps thanks to professional photographer Shamack for permission to use his beautiful photo of the River Roding - view from the Boathouse Terrace.