Three things that I made when not writing about theatre

This first one isn't really something I've made, at least not in the most literal interpretation of the words. It's a poem by Harry Giles, and he wrote it for me in return for me starting to give him money viaPatreon. I'd been meaning to do so since he emailed me about this “scary money experiment thing” in February 2015: I love him, despite having very little contact with him, and think he's all good things in the world, so of course I want to support him. And yet, it wasn't until January 2016 that I actually made that support financial. I still feel weird that there is now this financial element to our relationship.

At the time, Harry wrote an excellent post laying out his own arguments for and against asking for patronage, which I found really helpful. Like him, I worry that “it’s so clearly all a part of the neoliberalisation of arts funding: the expectation that artists have to become solo entrepreneurs” – and, the correlative of that, the expectation that art is something to be funded by its consumers, and not in common, as a basic provision of healthy civil society. More positively, like him, “I like making it clear that art is not something that just happens, is not something that other people decide to make happen, but rather something that we all have a stake in making happen, and in making happen in more radical ways.”

In an email, I admitted to him that the relationship between giving on Patreon and giving to registered charities confuses me. In a nutshell: “if I give £5 a month to Shelter and that's to help ALL the homeless people in the UK then to give £2 or even £1 a month to a single person so they can make art kind of doesn't add up; but then, I can spend twice as much on a single ticket to go to the theatre as I do on a monthly donation to Unicef which is supposed to be helping ALL the children living in poverty and plight around the world, and I could just as effectively give that ticket money to you in £2 per month donations”. In the event, that's pretty much what I decided to do.

The thing that makes me most uncomfortable with Patreon is exclusivity: the idea that, because I have some funds at my disposal, I can get stuff that other people don't get. That's how capitalism divides people and I want to resist it. But Harry's gift to all new patrons is to write them a poem, on a subject of their choosing. I decided that I was only happy for this to happen if it could be a poem that we made publicly accessible, and he agreed, in an email that also contained a gentle reminder that maybe the key problem of capitalism isn't commerce but exploitation. The word that was stuck in my head at the time was “longing” (it quite often is, to be honest), and this is what it inspired Harry to write. I like to think that his poem reflects the many conversations we've had together about class, and capitalism, and togetherness, and making; that, although it isn't something I've made, it has a specificity rooted in our relationship that means I have, in some way, made it happen – and not just by giving money.

THE LONGING FOR ONE THING INSIDE OF ANOTHER

by Harry Giles

There was a world where tokens were exchanged

for food, and when a token met your hand

a spur extended blandly into your palm

to take a sip of blood. This payment kept

the tokens bright enough to check your hair in,

cool enough to glide from purse to purse.

And in this world there were two friends who made

assemblages of wood and steel: stairways,

sunshades, simple things to see through, things

to pause on, things to touch. They worked apart,

and then from time to time they met to look

and say, "This works", and say, "This doesn't work."

One day one friend came with a gift, a question.

They bought some time discussing techniques, and then

they said, "I heard your purse was light. I saw

your building shed was empty and your tools

were sore for oil." And they held out their hand

with sixteen hungry tokens free to take.

Now, both these friends were just the kind of folk

to argue far too hard about the way

things are on other worlds, or could be, or were,

and how to cross between them without snapping

painful laws of space and time. At times,

they held that wood and steel could build a bridge

to where a body could eat without blood.

And so they laughed as they watched the sixteen tokens

pass from palm to palm and felt the prick

and wiped the reddish smears on the handkerchiefs

that all folk carry tucked in their back pocket,

the depth of the dye declaring the force of the flag.

*

This second one started as a whim but became an act of love. At Devoted and Disgruntled in January, a tall man with sandy hair wearing a checked shirt voiced a request for “someone with sewing skills to help a 6'5” drag queen”. I tweeted in response that I might be about to find my calling, and a couple of hours later I was fixing a date with Robert Beck, aka the Marvellous Miss Mimi Martini, to talk frock-making. Our first meeting was spent sharing images: Rob emailed me a few pictures that had given him some tentative notions (floatiness, a big split up the front for showing off shapely legs); we scanned google for drag queens and Adrian of Hollywood dresses, and flicked through my Schiaparelli paper-dolls book (pause to sigh with pleasure that such a thing exists in the world). By the end we had a few sketches, a vague idea to make a dress with a ribbon of chiffon around it like the pink line twisting through a stick of rock, and a plan to go fabric shopping.

Fabric shopping changed everything. To be honest, it was so exciting that after an hour I had a violent adrenaline crash. Luckily we'd already found Rob's dream fabrics: a hot-pink satin and a chiffon dyed fuchsia at one end and electric blue at the other. To show off that colour shift, we switched patterns to something more like a Greek gown (showing my roots, dears) with chiffon floating around the skirt and rippling over the bust before swooping off the shoulders. It took two fittings to get the pattern right, and a third for tweaks with the actual fabric; there are all sorts of things about it that I wish I'd done better, or differently, or more professionally, but at the same time I recognise that it's one of the most ambitious things I've ever made, and not too bad for it. Here it is on my dressmaker's doll: her figure isn't quite as buxom as Mimi's, but you get the general idea. 

 

I rarely sew for anyone other than myself, and doing so was just delightful. As in, I genuinely got teary when Mimi's frock started to come together: the magic of sewing never ceases to amaze me. I already have heaps of ideas for other things I'd like to make for her: things I'd never dream of wearing myself, but would love to construct, to bring into being. And I would so love to do this for more people. So if there are any other drag queens out there looking for someone with sewing skills...

*

This third one I made in the way I make most cakes or puddingy things: somewhat haphazardly, from scratch and imagination and vaguely retained memories of endless reading of recipes. It was for my lovely friends Andrew and Marta, who were coming to my house for dinner before flying off to Poland. I had bought tickets for the double bill at the Yard that night, and so prepared a meal then left my husband to serve it, thinking they were only going away for a couple of weeks on holiday. I found out on my return, at 11.30pm, with everyone heading for bed, that they were leaving at 8am and planned to stay in Poland for several months. Indefinitely even.

I've been feeling a lot lately that I have my priorities all skewed. Going to the theatre as much as I do means I'm almost never home to give my kids a bath, read to them at bedtime, tuck them in with a goodnight kiss. It means that I rarely have proper conversations with my friends, rarely even see them, because I put seeing theatre first. Sometimes that theatre is nourishing, joyful, inspiring; it makes me feel like I'm levitating, like my brain has expanded, that I want to write and write like it's the only thing that matters. Sometimes that theatre is Ophelias Zimmer: technically impressive but gruelling, draining, an act of intellectual violence. Either way, the strongest relationship I have at the moment isn't with a human being, it's with the collective human act of theatre. And I don't know if that's right.

The shows I was seeing at the Yard that night were by people I know and admire and enjoy chatting with; people I would love to call friends, were our encounters less transient, or insecure. It felt important to see their work, to support them in some way, knowing that for each of them it was a leap and a challenge to make this performance. But I feel sad that I sacrificed this other night of friendship for it. I feel sad that so many of the choices I make in life feel like the wrong choice. I'm writing this tonight, having been meaning to write it for three weeks now – I finished Mimi's dress on 7 May, and Harry sent me the poem on 10 May – because at 9.01pm this evening I made the decision not to watch Hannah Nicklin's Equations for aMoving Body at CPT but to come home and work. I've felt a twist of nausea ever since: guilt at not being there for Hannah, not supporting her. She is another person I admire and enjoy chatting with and would love to call a friend; this was my only chance to see the show; the audience was small; it would have been a kindness to stay. I've made the wrong call again, but in the other direction. Sometimes it feels as though the thing I make most productively in my life is worry.

Anyway: Andrew and Marta emailed me from Poland to ask for the recipe for that dessert, and as it came out quite well I thought I'd post it. Apologies to Nigel Slater if it turns out to be one of your recipes that I've unconsciously memorised and am now claiming as my own.

Pistachio and chocolate tart

Stupidly I didn't write down what I did at the time, but I'm pretty sure this was it: first I ground 150g shelled pistachios with 50g caster sugar in a blender, adding some dried orange peel towards the end (in season, I'd use peel grated from a fresh unwaxed orange I think). Pretty sure I picked up the blending nuts with sugar trick from Nigella: it helps to soak up the oil that comes out as they're ground. I then melted 40g butter in a saucepan, and stirred that together with the nut and sugar mixture, a sprinkle of cinnamon and another 50g caster sugar in a bowl until it was all nicely emulsified. I lined a 20cm flan or sandwich tin with greaseproof paper, smoothed over the nut mixture and pressed it down so the surface was flat and the mixture as tight as possible, then baked it for what I think was the equivalent of 15 minutes at about 150C or gas 2 (my oven use is never as simple as that, hence the uncertainty here. Basically: nuts burn easily, and that makes them bitter, so keep things quite gentle). The base has to cool after that for a bit.

Next step is the chocolate ganache topping, which is pretty simple: pour 300ml double cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and warm over a low heat until nearly boiling point, then stir in at least 150g dark chocolate (that's how much I used, but I wanted more – I reckon 250g would be good). I used 72% cocoa solids: you need that darkness to counter the cream. Once that's melted, take the pan off the heat and beat the mixture with a whisk for as long as you can be bothered – the more time you give it, the smoother the mixture will be. Pour that over the nut base, smooth the surface, then leave in the fridge until ready to serve – the chocolate mixture firms up in the cool temperature. We didn't have it with raspberries, but I bet a few on the side would be bloody delicious.

my head's in a haze

You'd think I'd have Shrew out of my system by now, but apparently not. I wrote the last post much too quickly, hurling it out before moving on to the next thing, so it's super-scrappy and missed out whole strands of argument, many of which emerged in the comments on the piece in G2. The one that has particularly bugged me is the idea that Petruchio does Katherine a favour: he shows her that to treat people violently, to thrash out at others not necessarily indiscriminately, but as an externalised expression of your own self-loathing, is unacceptable and merely reinforces your own unhappiness. It's one thing for her to tie up her sister's hands and clout her: that's what siblings are for (spoken like a true older sister). But Kate also smashes a lute over Hortensio's head, is unable to express herself other than rudely, demands respect from her father while showing none. Lisa Dillon was good on this: she thinks what Katherine achieves with Petruchio is “a growth and a maturity. She's disgracefully immature to begin with. Most of the time she deserves what she gets [ie the epithets of shrew and mad], because she's fuelling it all the time. But she finds a place of balance, for the first time ever in her life, because of this man.”

Approach the play with this understanding and you can read Petruchio's violence completely differently: as a show, designed to make Katherine rethink her own behaviour. Nichola McAuliffe suggests (and I think she's right, that it's there, if subtly, in the text) that Petruchio's servants are bewildered by his erratic, pugnacious behaviour: he doesn't usually treat them this way, and the point of him doing so is to reflect Katherine back at herself. And it works: Katherine, in standing up for the servants, begins to appreciate the value of respect. She finds in herself calm, and patience, and a kind of gratitude: she realises how much in life she has taken for granted before now. If Petruchio has killed something in her, it's her toxic rage at the world – and only kindness could assuage that. There was something lovely Kathryn Hunter said: Katherine's story is “the journey of a person who's learned how to play again”. To begin with, “she's rebelling against the kind of constraints that are expected of her, to get married and to conform, she's hitting against that and is angry with everyone, to the extent that she's lost her sense of humour. I think something happens in their relationship, it suddenly clicks and she gets it back, and then she's able to love him and say, 'So you want me to play that game? OK, I'll play it.' She finds a freedom within constraints. She finds freedom.” It's the freedom of happiness and security; OK, it's the freedom of a traditionally structured marriage, where Petruchio is her “keeper”, but 400-odd years ago, that was pretty much the best a woman could hope for.

I'm starting to feel like Shrew is an itch that will never sufficiently be scratched. So I'm going to stop – although first, there was something else that came out of the piece that has troubled me a lot. The day it was published I had an email from Tim Crouch, querying the assumptions projected by my throwaway comment that Bailey's production is the third from the RSC in a decade, fourth if you count his adaptation for young people. We had both agreed, while chatting on the phone, that it was really sad that only Dominic Cavendish had reviewed his production, and that this was symptomatic of the lack of value placed on work for children and teenagers. And the way I'd phrased myself, it looked as though I was collaborating in the same devaluation that I usually bemoan. I've been feeling entirely ashamed of myself: I knew I was being glib even as I wrote it, and Tim was absolutely right to call me on it.

Believe it or not, I've been thinking about stuff other than Shrew over the past week. I've been mulling on L'Immediat, which I saw at the Barbican with Lyn Gardner, and probably really annoyed her with all my fidgeting. I found the show exhausting, really draining to watch. The first sequence – Matt Trueman made a point similar to this – is like the entirety of Michael Frayn's Noises Off condensed into 10 minutes of stomach-churning chaos. When one of the performers started scrambling up a tower of cardboard boxes that I hadn't even noticed, despite it reaching up to the lighting rig, I instinctively pushed myself right back into my chair to brace myself against its inevitable collapse. Where I disagree with Matt is in finding the rest of the show a deflation of that first sequence. What follows is quieter, but all the more desperate for it. There is an extraordinary, devastating scene when the cast attempt to re-set the stage, and someone's arm emerges from the rubble. It's as though we're seeing the survivor of an earthquake, or a bomb, reaching out for help, praying to be saved – but instead of pulling the person out, the rest of the cast merely shrug and pile furniture above the trapped body, higher and higher, until what they've created is a pyre (let's burn humanity at the stake!), a tower of landfill (see the detritus of materialism!), a curiously hopeful – because it is secure, this structure, it's architecturally sound – sculpture constructed from the flotsam and jetsam of our lives (not dissimilar to the exhilarating, and themselves farcical, creations of Phyllida Barlow). With newspapers full of images of the Costa Concordia lying on its side in the sea, it was hard to watch the tilting sequence – slowly, deliberately, everything on stage, furniture and bodies and black satin curtains and lights and props, is tilted to the same 30-degree angle – and not think of sinking ships. The agonising, funny in a toe-curling way, sketch of people fighting to reach a plastic bottle, struggling against their own refractory bodies, competing and losing and yet never allowing themselves to be defeated, had the clang of Beckett about it: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” For all its humanity, it's an oddly inhumane piece, furiously demanding of its performers, so precisely choreographed that you're loathe to blink in case you miss a detail, even if that detail exposes the fragility of the timing, the vulnerability of the enterprise. My exhaustion was that of undivided attention; I found it draining because, for all the laughter, it is a relentlessly sorrowful work.

It's been a good week for extracurricular activities, too. I've made an infinitesimally small leap – more of a nudge, really – towards finally fulfilling some sewing projects, with progress on the all-new basic pattern block, designed to fit perfectly my all-new, still surprising, occasionally demoralising, post-childbearing shape. I've tried out another basic, this one from the awe-inspiring Pattern Magic books, and my Mum, who is herself a magician with patterns, from a combination of experience and formidable instinct, gave me a hand with the fitting over Christmas. There is such quick, calm efficiency about her as she folds and creases the paper to shift the darts and eliminate excess fabric; the process is as delicate, transparent, yet mystifying, as origami. On Tuesday I cut out a toile from the edited pattern; if it fits then I'll be all set for the 40s/50s dress-making class that starts next term.

Tap class, which started three weeks ago, is unspeakably brilliant. I spend the entire time there giddy and grinning and glowing fuchsia-pink, partly because it's bloody hard and I'm always getting the steps wrong (I have no instant aptitude for intricate, particularly repetitive, body movements; I had the same problem trying to play guitar when I was a teenager, although back then I had no patience for practice, either: at least I've now acquired that), partly because it's surprisingly good exercise. My route home takes me past Crazy for You, which I saw in December: it was so adorable, cheerful and spirited and depression-defying (the narrative itself is, plus I had only just left the Actionettes), that I left feeling almost effervescent and started looking for tap classes the next day. Somewhat unfortunately, the route also takes me past the Delauney; I sidled in yesterday and am relieved to report that the coconut and pineapple dacquoise didn't taste quite as good as it looked: the pineapple puree was too sweet, and made the bottom layer of coconut macaroon soggy where it should have been crisp. There's still the cheesecake and the sachertorte to try before I dismiss the place outright, but chances are moderate that it won't become a weekly compulsion, which would be ruinous in more ways than one. It's bad enough that I can't go within 200 paces of Maison Bertaux without popping in for a macaroon. I did, however, exceedingly enjoy eating the dacquoise while waiting for the bus, licking every smudge of cream from my fingers, standing outside Boots, directly in front of a large advertisement for half-price weight-watching products. It's the little things in life …

Lots of musical activity this week, too. I finally listened to the new Andrew Bird and it's exquisite, so here's a song from that:

and the Laura Gibson album, La Grande: she's not someone I've paid much attention to before, but this song is brilliant, all shooting stars and Amazon queens and wild animals prowling through the undergrowth:

After a lot of avoiding him, because on first listen (several months ago) he honestly just seemed scary, I suddenly clicked with DM Stith, and had an especially heady moment with Fire of Birds, so here's that:

A breakthrough, too, with Wilco's The Whole Love, which I'd shaken hands with a couple of times last year, but hadn't taken the time to chat to: I don't think it will ever be a close friend like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Summerteeth, but we'll keep in touch.

Honestly, no wonder I was accused this week of knowing nothing about Motown. It's in the comments below my review of Martha Reeves, a show I really tried to be positive about, but failed. I suspected disaster might be afoot when I went to the toilets before the show began and there were leopard-print tiles on the walls. One unexpected consequence of reading How To Be a Woman is that I now have a disquieting desire for a leopard-print coat (page 215, number one on the list of fashion rules: Leopardskin is a neutral. Oh, the power of suggestion). I thought it was a vague fancy that could be easily silenced, but then I met up with the magical Betty Clarke and wore hers (vintage, an ebay buy, calf-length, very luxurious, but the fur was the softest, palest grey colour – I'd ruin it within minutes) and the desire became all-consuming. Of course, when a thought like that enters your brain, you become weirdly possessed (OK, maybe it's just me): now it seems everywhere I go I spot another one. Mostly they are too short, too straight, too modern-looking, so clearly I'm going to have to make my own. The picture I have in my mind is knee-length, fitted to the waist but flaring out, with a big, sweeping collar. I've sewn with leopard-print fake fur before, making a cave-woman frock for an Actionettes show in Benidorm (a multitude of don't asks), and it's blessedly easy, primarily because it doesn't fray. Knowing me, the coat will be ready just in time for summer in 2016.

Anyway, it was fine seeing leopard-print coats everywhere, but the minute I saw these leopard-print tiles I remembered that hilarious, terrifying riff in Mark O'Rowe's coruscating Howie the Rookie, about the – was it American Indian? South American? - people who believe that your death will be presaged by some vision that will inexorably present itself to you once, twice, thrice, its import unknown until death deals its fatal blow. Like I say, I'm susceptible – and the leopard-print tiles made me pause, and shiver, just slightly.

I won't repeat what I thought of Martha's singing, there's no need. Still, one good thing did come of that show. When she played Heatwave, it was all I could do to stop myself leaping out of my chair and doing what's affectionately known in the Actionettes' camp as the Brucie; when she started demonstrating the pony and the swim and the mashed potato and the funky chicken, my heart began to ache and wouldn't stop. The truth is, the past two months of not being an Actionette have been miserable, and they haven't even been doing that much. So, I've rejoined. Yay! In celebration, here is a completely ridiculous video of go-go girls: it's from a Greek film, whose name translates, splendidly, as Ah That's My Wife.

excuses, excuses

My head is swimming with stuff I want to write about here: X the Hofesh Shechter show I saw at Sadlers on Saturday night; the lemon/rosemary/olive oil cake recipe I'm tinkering with; my slow surrender to Deerhunter (Halcyon Digest plays as I write). X I feel rather guilty for not buckling down, but all available time, and even a lot of unavailable time, has been consumed for the past few weeks by two things: preparing for the Actionettes' gig at Vintage on Saturday 30th July and the art course I've been doing at Morley.

Actionettes first: we're making new frocks for the occasion and so far mine is going disastrously. Tonight I cut out my third attempt at the lining: thank the stars I didn't go straight in with the actual fabric (spangly black paisley – looks better than it sounds) because I'd have run out by now. I just can't seem to get a bodice pattern right any more; or, as my husband gently pointed out, I've simply become fussier about fit since doing a pattern-cutting course earlier this year. We're also learning a new dance, the brilliant work of Miss Silhouette, to this song:

So that's all busy busy. And then there's Morley. I've been aching to start painting again for years and finally hit a point of such agonised frustration that I signed up for their pre-foundation in art course. Essentially it's a portfolio builder/introduction to the basic disciplines: I went thinking I might get stuck back in with oil paints, but instead have been wrestling with chicken wire and discovering what effects you can achieve by mixing charcoal with PVA. It's been exhilarating, infuriating, challenging and absorbing; I haven't much liked anything I've made, but it hasn't mattered because – cliche alert – I've loved the process, passionately.

The final two weeks of the course are going to be spent preparing for and mounting our debut exhibition, open from July 29-August 4, in Morley's Landing Gallery, which sounds almost grand until you visit the space itself: two corridors separated by a flight of stairs, in the characterless depths of the building, with no space for 3D work and a sterile glare to the lighting. Still, we all have to start somewhere. Not that I know what I'm starting, or where I'm going. Until my smallest small person is a bit less small, I don't feel I can carry on with the studying; I have grand plans to continue making work at home, but fear that without the imposition of structured deadlines it might fall by the wayside. Ot maybe it's the validation that the course provides that I need. One thing I do know is that I don't want to feel that agonized itching in my heart any more. Starting to write here calmed it a little; Morley has soothed it a little more.

Before I go, here's something lovely from Deerhunter: