Kim Noble Is Unwell

The average male ejaculate contains
3 cubic-centimetres of semen, despite
what you may have heard elsewhere.
Kim Noble is a man who knows a thing or two about cubic centimetres.
His latest one-man multimedia performance contains a lot of semen.
And it’s semen all of his own making. No Methyl cellulose at work here.
No egg whites mixed with icing sugar and a splash of condensed milk.
And all because Floella Benjamin beat him in the London Marathon.
Kim Noble trained in fine-art at Sheffield Hallam University.
10 years ago, he won himself a Perrier award for “Best Newcomer”.
More recently, Kim’s been spending time at
the Maudsley hospital in Camberwell South London.
The Maudsley has it’s own Morris dancing team. I know that for a fact.

The Maudsley is where my dead friend Sarah
once spent time as a voluntary patient.
Kim Noble once threatened to jump from London's Waterloo Bridge, but didn't.
Kim Noble once threatened to jump from Edinburgh's North Bridge, but didn't.
Many people diagnosed with a Bipolar Disorder threaten suicide,
but on average, only about 0.4 percent
of them successfully go through with it.
Personally, I could have done without the sad-faced clown's make-up
and the crumpled Superman costume with the Max Wall bald cap.
I felt it only served to hide the real Kim Noble. The raw Kim Noble.
The unyielding and unshakeable Kim Noble
that was supposedly being lain bare before us.
Is it a cry for help? Or base autoeroticism for critical-acclaim?
'Time Out' saw fit to issue Kim with 6 stars out of a possible 5.
But what do they know? I mean really? Personally, I wouldn’t trust
‘Time Out’ to know the difference if it suddenly jumped up,
and scored the flesh on their forearms with a Stanley knife.
And yes I am only saying that because they gave me a bad review once.
The average male ejaculate contains 150 mg of protein.
The average male ejaculate contains 11 mg of carbohydrates,
6 mg of fat and 3 mg cholesterol. Aswell
as traces of potassium, copper and zinc.
And all because Paul McKenna didn’t post him a signed photograph.

Kim Noble's Official Website

'Bipolar Disorder Magazine' Website

The Spirit Of Old John Barleycorn

Do you believe in giants?
Jez Butterworth surely does.
Cornish giants in particular. The likes of
Cormoran and Blunderbore, and lovelorn Bolster -
who once stained the sea waters red with his blood.
I've fond memories of Mister Butterworth,
for it was he who taught me how to roll the perfect
Peking duck pancake with hoisin sauce. But that was many years ago.
Jez is older now. And wiser. And time has tickled his beard with frost.
One of five siblings, he grew up in suburban St. Albans.
These days however, Jez lives in rural Somerset and raises pigs.
And good luck to him I say. May Queen Mab bless him always.
The West Country soil has helped him to relocate his muse,
whilst mine remains stubbornly mired
in the deepest dankest pile of hogshite.
Set in the fictional Wiltshire village of Flintock,
Jez’s new play ‘Jerusalem’ features a masterful
and mercurial lead performance by Mark Rylance.
An actor with all the poise and fury of a Raging Ballerina.
An actor who rolls his own cigarettes and drinks 8 raw eggs a week.
Based on a real-life “local” character called Mickey Doo,
Rylance is the living, breathing, belching embodiment
of an angry, disenfranchised and gelded olde England.
For amongst all the talk of of bric-a-brac and tombolas,
and floats and fetes and whirley-swirlers, the play reaches out
to the ancient lay-lines that criss-cross our faded realm
and seeks to summon up the totem spirits of Jack-O-The-Green
and poor John Barleycorn - the Christ-like lord of the hops.
The play resonates. It hums. It dances upon telluric currents.
It reminds me of blowjob I was once given
in a crop circle near Alton Barnes in 1992.
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in.
They throwed clods of dirt upon his head.
But Johnny Rooster Byron shall rise again.
Just like the Harvest. Just like the holy Nazarene.
Here’s to the revels. Here’s to the ruckus. Here’s to the
fracas almighty and the sweet blessed Merrie-oh.
We leave the theatre with the scent of gasoline still in our hair.
And with the Wyvern dragon flying proud upon gold-tipped wings.

Royal Court trailer for 'Jerusalem'

Dedicated To My Darling Violet

A Cheyenne Indian reads T. S. Eliot
in the attic room of a large rambling
family home 60 miles northwest of Tulsa Oklahoma.
The homestead is more than a century old.
Papers and manilla envelopes litter
the floor of the first floor study.
Broken plates and china litter
the floor of the nearby dining room.
In the sitting room, next to the hi-fi turntable,
sits a vinyl copy of Clapton’s 1977 album ‘Slowhand’.
This is the home of Beverly Weston. A man with a girl’s name.
Just like Duke John Wayne.
Like the guy Johnny Cash sang about.
Like the American playwright Tracy Letts.
Beverly hasn’t published any poetry for 40 years.
Beverly is a habitual drunk. A sot. An old rummy.
His wife Violet is struggling with her equilibrium.
His 3 daughters all have man troubles of their own.
It’s clear now to all these women, that their pater familias
will never-but-never be coming home again.
Beverly’d been in the water for 3 days before they found his body.
The fish had eaten his eyes.
The fish had eaten his eyes.
The fish, I’m sorry to say, had eaten both
of his eyes.

Steppenwolf Theatre present 'August: Osage County'

Eric Clapton and friends sing 'Lay Down Sally'

The Last Pause Is The Longest

There are two kinds of silence in this world.
And no-one knew that better than Harold Pinter.
Beckett may have started it, but it was
Pinter who made the pregnant pause his own.
‘The Homecoming’ contains 224 of them.
‘The Caretaker’, by comparison, a mere 149.
I don’t owe it all to this son of a Jewish tailor,
but I certainly owe him a lion’s share.
I saw him that once in the flesh; leaving his seat
following the posthumous premiere
of my friend’s suicide-note of a stageplay.
He was taller than I’d pictured him.
With a stature befitting of a Nobel laureate.
The black cells were in his gullet even then;
steadily multiplying, though not yet diagnosed.
How I wish now that I'd asked to shake his hand.
Afterall, in the end it’s all about the ferret
under the cocktail cabinet. Or is it a weasel?
Blackout. Curtain. Applause.

Harold Pinter: official website

Take Me Back To Medicine Tail Coulee

“Nutskaveho!" came the cry on
that hot summer's afternoon. "Nutskaveho".
"The Bluecoats are coming! They are coming!"
And the Hunkpapa, they spoke the truth,
for there were indeed plenty of pony-soldiers,
and I could clearly hear the music of their bugles.
The fighting men of the Sioux swarmed
at the Bluecoats like bees from a hive,
and very soon the smoke
of the shooting and the dust
from the many horse's hooves
began to somewhat cloud my view of the hillside.
The white Starchief was dressed finely,
in buckskin, coat and pants, and was
kneeling down with his hands resting in the dirt.
His hair was long and loose, and somewhat
like the color of the grass when the frost first comes.
He had been shot through the side, and there was
blood trickling from the corner of his open mouth.
He seemed to be watching the red figures
as they moved slowly all around him.
Then the Indians closed in, and I did not see any more.
The old men say that only the Earth and the Sky last forever.
They spoke truly. They are right.


Trailer for the stageplay 'Yellow Longhair' (2000)

The Smelling Of The Greasepaint. The Roaring Of The Crowd.

Over the past 4 weeks
I’ve developed something of a routine.
Between curtain-up and my first entrance,
stage-right, I like to make myself
a cup of fairtrade gold blend tea
and sit on my own in the basement, listening
to the crackling ripples of laughter over the intercom.
After my first exit, stage-left, I push through the
double set of heavy doors marked; “Push This Door Only”
and follow the signs for; “Toilets, Studio Bar, Cloakroom”.
Whilst waiting for my second entrance, stage-right,
I find time to plan my escape route in the event of a fire.
Our designated Assembly Point is Trafalgar Square;
beneath 1st Viscount Nelson’s Corinthian Column
and across approximately 6 lanes of fast-moving traffic.
In the gap between my second exit, stage-right,
and my third entrance, stage-left,
I return Understage to collect a bunch of flowers
and a pair of sunglasses that I bought from
a Premium Outlet Mall in Cabazon, California.
Leisurely re-ascending the 10 concrete steps,
I push through the spring-loaded door marked;
“Private, Authorized Personnel Only”
and tippy-toe through the crossover and vomitory
back to the airlock between off-stage right and the thoroughfare.
Past the photograph of Samuel Barclay Beckett (1970).
Past the photographs of Alan Bates (1962) and Brendan Behan (1952).
Past the photograph of Sir Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi CBE (1960).
Inbetween my third exit, stage-right,
and my fourth and final entrance, stage-right,
I undress and lay down on the rough dark blue carpet
to pull some sit-ups in my American Apparel underpants
and my UNIQLO vest. My record is 161 (during a Thursday matinee).
After my fourth and final exit, stage-right,
I pull my clothes back on, tuck myself in,
and fasten my belt using the Flash Gordonesque buckle
I bought from a hipster store in Williamsburg NYC NYC.
I return the flowers to their vase of water downstairs.
I return the sunglasses to the prop-table.
All this helps kill a little more time.
Whilst waiting backstage for my curtain-call,
I’ve been known to skin a rabbit or two.
Sometimes I turn an imperial unit of base metal into gold.
Sometimes I fold a thousand multi-coloured origami cranes.
Sometimes I memorize Pi to its 722nd decimal place.
Mostly I remotely update my social networking status.
On a good night we can be in the pub by a quarter past nine.

Breaking A Leg

It’s opening night at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios,
and someone’s seen fit to hang a noose outside the stage-door.
On the winding concrete stairs down to the basement,
I pass the acclaimed American film-maker Neil LaBute.
I recognise him from his thick wirey beard,
his Mormon lumberjack shirt, and his two wedding rings.
In passing, I wish him well for his show this evening.
As I do so, I’m careful not to let out a whistle
or to mention the names of any Scottish plays.
Trust me, it’s so much easier that way.
It means neither of us have to waste time
spinning around, spitting over shoulders
and reciting lines from ‘Hamlet’ Act 1 Scene IV
or ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream’ Act 5 Scene II
or ‘The Merchant of Venice’ Act 3 Scene IV.
Down below, in the bowels of the building,
me and Bill Juniper are sharing a dressing room.
Bill’s busy tucking himself in
and rolling down the sleeve of his pink
Marks & Sparks "easy-iron" shirt
to hide the Trojan Records tattoo
on the inside of his right wrist.
I can tell that he's nervous about tonight.
I can tell by the bead of sweat on his upper lip.
And by the way he keep combing his hair and brushing his teeth.
Bill’s about to make his West End theatre debut.
Which makes two of us.
It’s opening night at Whitehall’s Trafalgar Studios,
and someone’s seen fit to hang a noose outside the stage-door.
Still, It could be worse. It could be a green noose.
Or a noose made entirely out of peacock feathers.
I draw a tree-of-life upon my belly button
using mascara, and prepare to tred some boards.
Trust me, it’s so much easier that way.

'Lifecoach' at Trafalgar Studios

A City Inside Of Me

Before me, I see a blank place and a blank time.
And it's my blank place. And it's my blank time.
And also. And this is the thing. It’s your blank place too.
And it’s your blank time also. Do you see?
I see a man and a woman. And they're both heading towards 40.
For the sake of argument, let’s call them Christopher and Clair.
For the sake of argument, let’s call them Benedict and Hattie.
There’s no visible fire. And neither of them are sitting.
For the sake of another argument, why don’t we just
call them "me"? And why don’t we just call them "you"?
Christopher and Clair. Benedict and Hattie. Me and You.
All of us heading towards age 40. In a blank place.
At a blank time. In a blank city just like this one.
I see a blank diary in a plain paper bag.
I see a bloodstain in a plain coat pocket.
And I see a neighbour. And a little girl.
And the neighbour and the little girl I see
are dressed identically. Dressed like nurses.
One grown-up nurse. And one pre-pubescant nurse.
Emotion is detached. Dialogue is astringent.
Cryptic unease abounds. It’s all in the nuance.
In a blank time, in a blank place, blackbirds build their nests.
In a blank time, in a blank place, forget-me-nots are in bloom.
It’s okay though. It’s not real. None of this is real.
What I mean is this; they’re just actors. Really. It’ll all be okay.
And the blank place is probably just Richmond Upon Thames.
And the blank time could easily be today, or yesterday or tomorrow.
Neurobabble. Slight pause. White noise.
Franz Schubert's 'Six Moments Musicaux'.
Number 3. In F minor. Do you see?

'The City' by Martin Crimp

Metamorphosys

A man hangs upside-down from the ceiling.
The upside-down man’s name is Gísi Örn Gardarsson.
He’s a founding member of Iceland’s Vesturport Theatre
and comes from a Mid-Atlantic gymnastic background.
Gísi son of Gardar is using his aerial prowess to bring to life
Franz Kafka’s nightmarish tale of unsuspecting
travelling salesman Gregor Samsa;
who awakens one morning
transformed in his Czech bed
into a quite monstrous vermin.
Kept permanently visible in a topsy-turvy Escheresque
upstairs room, Gísi son of Gardar’s transform-ed salesman
is two-parts cockroach to at least one-part Chris Scharma.
Constantly contorting, campusing, mantle-shelving and swinging,
quite literally, from the rafters of The Lyric Hammersmith’s main house.
Chris Scharma, by the way, is a famous American rock-climber. I looked it up.
Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ was first published in 1915.
That’s less than 10 years before his slow painful death from TB.
Kafka was a man who felt “condemned” to write.
But a man unwilling to view writing as a viable profession.
A man who simply didn’t believe it was
something which should be done for money.
He is known to have given strict instructions to his friend
and literary executor Max Brod, that all of his manuscripts
and all of his papers were to be destroyed upon his dissolution
(may his glorious soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life).
But luckily for us, Brod chose not to comply with those dying wishes.
Not so long ago, I attempted to visit Herr Doktor Kafka’s grave,
in Sector 21 of Prague’s New Jewish Cemetery. Alas, I arrived too late.
Finding the iron gates closed and padlocked shut for the night,
I had to content myself instead with a trip up the nearby Žižkov TV Tower.
From the observation deck, at 328-foot above the city,
I watched the sun disappear behind a Bohemian cloud
and collapse into a red dwarf on the horizon.
I took note of the oversized and faceless sculptures of black babies
which were crawling up and down the polished steel
of the Žižkov TV Tower's Soyuz 7K-11 pillars,
but not one of the black babies looked much like Gísi Örn Gardarsson.
Or, for that matter, the famous American rock-climber Chris Scharma.

Vesturport Theatre Company

watch Chris Scharma in action

Kafka's grave

The Nature Of Sūn Wùkōng Was Irrepressible

I don't like opera.
Never have done. Never will.
I dislike it's pomposity and its smugness
and all that declamatory prima-donna
haute-contre Monteverdi stromentato-ing
for no good reason.
Infact I dislike musical theatre in general
(I learnt too much Stanislavski in school is what it is).
But this? Now this is different. For this is 'Monkey'.
I grew up with the story of Sūn Wùkōng;
the Stone Monkey God made of primal chaos,
who journeyed to India during the Táng dynasty
to collect religious sutras from the blue hand of The Living Buddha.
It was Nippon Television who first adapted it for the small-screen.
And it was David Weir and the BBC who bought the rights
to 39 of the 52 episodes
and then dubbed them into English. Badly. But badly on purpose.
Friday nights in 1980 were all about fish & chips and 'Monkey'.
Friday nights were the undisputed highlight of the week.
Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett
were both born in the Chinese year of the Monkey (1968).
I always wanted to be a Monkey too, but I'm not.
I'm just a dog. And a good-for-nothing Steel Dog at that.
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully forgive my parents on that score.

Monkey: Journey To The West

Albarn & Hewlett's BBC 'Monkey' Olympics Trailer

'Monkey Bee': a short film by Jamie Hewlett

A Comedy In Four Acts

When one of the lead characters is off-stage
playing a melancholy tune on a piano keyboard,
you know you must be watching a Chekhov play.
I say that, but I've never actually seen a Chekhov play before.
I know! It's ridiculous. I'm 36 years old,
and I've never seen a Chekhov play before.
I have a degree in theatre studies
and another in playwriting
and yet, somehow, I've never before
seen a play by Anton Chekhov. Never even read one.
I'm not entirely sure quite how that's happened.
The Royal Court's production is one of gentle expanse;
the ensemble performances measured and fully-rounded.
The seagull is a metaphor. Clearly.
Beyond the talk of unrequited love
and the painful artistic struggle for new forms,
I am drawn to the smaller off-the-ball moments;
mesmerised by the way
Katherine Parkinson (Masha) eats fresh cherries.
Moved by the way
Pearce Quigley (Dorn) lingers in a doorway.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Trigorin) could do nothing but
pack away fishing-tackle for 2 hours and 50 minutes
and I'd happily sit here and watch -
my tongue slowly freeze-drying to the roof of my mouth.
Mackenzie Crook (Konstantin) looks perfectly at home
amongst the long shadows and the over-sized wooden floorboards.
In another world that might've been me up there
with a blood-stained bandage wrapped around my forehead.
In another world the Russians might've made it to the moon first.
In another world Chekhov might not have succumbed to tuberculosis
and been transported back to Moscow in
a refrigerated railway car normally reserved for oysters.
In another world I might be able to get through
a whole day without thinking about that girl as much as I do.
The seagull is a metaphor. Clearly.

The Greatest Playwright Of Her Generation

It may surprise you to know
that this isn't the first time
I've sat through a German-language
production of an English stageplay.
The last one hadn't been written
by a dead friend of mine however,
so tonight certainly qualifies as a new experience.
When I first met Sarah, she was wearing shades.
The sun was shining.
We were on the other side of the globe.
England had failed to qualify for The World Cup.
The actress playing Cate (Katharina Schüttler),
with her hoodie and her bare feet and her st.. st.. stammer
reminds me of Sarah just a little.
It's the nose mainly
but also the hair
and the way she holds the gun.
"Lesbo" read the surtitles. "Gash"... "Spaz"... "Wog"...
The stage spins.
Rubble falls from the roof.
Giant fluorescant striplights hum.
Even now, some 12 years later,
that line about Man Utd beating Liverpool still grates.
She'd've been happy about that.

zerbombt

Brute Force At The Roundhouse

Here, in the footsteps
of The Doors, Hendrix,
Pink Floyd and The Stones,
come the gravity-defying ballerinas
the besuited running man
the gym-slip water-nymphs
the estranged tin-foil lovers
and the mad dancing corpses
of the murdered Russian Romanovs.
Now, I don't know much about
contemporary physical theatre,
but I know this much;
someone clearly watched a lot of MTV
whilst they were growing up
in Buenos Aires during the 1980's.
Like a raw and life-affirming force of nature,
like the bastard child of
'Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome'
and Duran Duran's 'Wild Boys' pop promo,
like an intoxicating mix of
aerial acrobatics
carnival atmosphere
street theatre
and Manumission club culture.
This is Fuerzabruta.
Clearly no-one's told them there's a hosepipe ban in force.

www.fuerzabruta.net