Confirmed Residency at BAC / Ideas

Kings of England have a confirmed residency at Battersea Arts Centre in January (26th-31st) as part of their New Year, New Spaces initiative, which gives me space for a week and open doors on the last two days so that Audiences can see our process and a showing.

So I need some ideas. I have been working on some new texts for K of E, concerning decisive moments in our family's history, the things that escape ellipsis and make ot into the chronology.

How to leave or get left, and how to recover (the work has already begun to concern recoveries). And I want to show that some were possible, were achieved. But each recovery we make is miraculous, singular and exceptional, learnt from experience, so consequently it is hard to teach how-to-recover.

The 2008 scratch shows (BAC / You and Your Work 5 / Greenroom / Bluecoat / Custard Factory) concerned loss of memory. We performed to raise a question against the forgotten. So father sang for us "The Aeroplane Over The Sea", whistling in the wind.

But my interest is turning toward other, earlier recoveries. John Berger wrote something like (and I'll check this later): "the world of circumstance and contingency into which I had been born long ago". I can look at my father's life and see the proprieties, circumstances or contingent events that had to occur in order for the story, or the chronology, to be what is is. Were it not for ABC, no XYZ. And that chronology, at a certain point, permitted me.

See the Kings of England Blog and BAC website for more.

London Dogsitting Residency at my friend Christine's (this Weekend)

Good News!
I am off to The Big Smoke on Friday. My friend Christine Entwistle (who also did Rules and Regs) has asked me to look after her dog, Spanner, and I have accepted, since Spanner is a dog I greatly admire. We will have the full run of Hampstead Heath, and I will be furnished with a per diem for tube fares and ale. I am thoroughly looking forward to it.
I shall be treating it as a residency, and have set myself the brief to compile a two-page piece of writing for use in future lectures.

I will post extracts up here of whatever text I write, on my arrival back on Tuesday.

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