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