Sometimes this blog will just be Three Weeks

A pull-quote. I have a pull-quote. 

 

"Jonah Non Grata" is getting another London outing! Next Saturday the nineteenth of July, at 9.30pm up the stairs of that old stalwart of the Edinburgh preview – but a duck-breaking first for me – the Hen and Chickens pub in Islingon. You can get tickets for just (over) a tenner HERE, and if you have any further questions... well, maybe I've answered them below. Maybe not. Maybe you have some questions about my answers. (And if any of them concern the penultimate anwer, I had a lovely meeting about the book on Monday: Apparently, translation rights are where a lot of the money is in childrens' writing. France doesn't like mermaids, because they're sleazy, and – possibly for the same reason – Germany does not like circuses, so take note.)

 

(Also here are some gorgeous, unpublished Hobbit illustrations from Eva Natus-Šalamounová and her husband Jiří, on display HERE, in Prague, which was yesterday. A good week.)

 

 I now have quite a few articles to to-do over the next few days plugging the show, so let's see how many more end up on here. Apologies in advance. Take it away, Caro Moses of THREE WEEKS...

As you know – because we are always talking about it – we like new stuff here at TW Towers. But you know what, we also like stuff that was first really good a few years ago and which is now getting another run. 

And all that relates to the show ‘Jonah Non Grata’, which was originally staged in London back in 2004 to much acclaim, and is going to Edinburgh this year. It’s the work of Simon Kane, an actor and writer who has worked on loads of stuff I love from various media, like ‘Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme’ and ‘Ghosts’. 

‘Jonah Non Grata’ is an absurdist solo show based on the events that befell the biblical Jonah and I wanted to find out more about it. I put some questions to Simon ahead of his upcoming edfringe run. 

Can you start by explaining the premise of ‘Jonah Non Grata’? Who is it about and what story does it tell?

 Inasmuch as it tells a story, it’s the Book Of Jonah, as in Jonah and the whale.

 A very short, possibly satirical shaggy dog story from the Old Testament about a prophet who refuses the call, tries to run away, is swallowed by a large fish sent by God, does what He wants, but is ultimately disappointed by the outcome. 

 The “premise” of the show, however, is that you don’t need to know any of this, but will nevertheless spend an hour not being bored.

 It’s a solo sequel to work I did with a beautiful immersive collective called Shunt, whose greatest review may have come from someone who’d missed the opening forty minutes of one show and so could just enjoy what they saw without worrying about being expected to get it.

 

What themes are explored through the play?

 

 Exactly the same themes as ‘Hamlet’? Yeah, I’m happy with that answer…

 Refusing the call to adventure. The comforts of inaction. Weighing one’s love for people against one’s anger at the world. The very nature of performance. Depression. Loneliness. Christianity. Extremism.

All that. But with songs and a bit where he thinks he’s gone to the moon.

 

How would you describe it in terms of style or genre?

 

 Pop absurdist clowning. A strange world on a tight budget. A church for a churchless faith.

 

What was the inspiration for this piece?

 A lot of friends were making solo shows that weren’t particularly text-based and, although I love writing, I wanted to join in making something more in the clown genre. 

 One of those friends’ shows was about the performer’s Jewishness, “although,” as he said, “I’m not Jewish, because I don’t believe in God”, so I realised that even though I’m an atheist, I’m also, similarly – or at least culturally – a Christian, and that engaging with this big mood might be a good starting point. 

 I’d also been thinking about the very first plays in English: Mysteries, which might read like spoofs but were the work of people who absolutely believed in the biblical reality of what they were performing, and so I thought about writing my own. You know, something “traditional”.

 Initially, I had considered the various accounts of what Jesus got up to after returning from the dead, but then, after reading a note about Jonah in Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark’, I opted for this Old Testament alt, as he seemed a good clown.

 I’ve always liked comedies about heroes who run away – I would later make a Radio 4 show called ‘Time Spanner’ about something similar – and a show that plays with thresholds is a good, cheap concept – every venue has doors. 

 As I mentioned, a third influence was the show I’d just been performing with Shunt, ‘Dance Bear Dance’, a clownish immersive piece about the Gunpowder Plot coincidentally devised during the opening months of the War On Terror.

 I wanted to play more both with the idea of making an audience complicit in a religiously motivated act of violence – but with laffs – and the idea of presenting a surreal church service as a basis for audience interaction – it’s nice if the audience has some clue as to what’s expected of them. 

 My work with Shunt in general also made me want to ensure every show was different and surprising, hence the levels of audience participation, as it used to be called. Basically, everything I do in the show is built upon things I’d already enjoyed doing, and had seen people enjoy me doing. 

 

It’s been quite a while since you first performed it – what motivated you to revive it now? 

 I missed it. And I’d landed an advert, so could afford to take it to Edinburgh. The show had never had a proper launch. It was just a thing I did, that people liked.

 But I’m finally now beginning to learn, not only how to make a show, but how to keep it alive, something I’d never known how to do on my own before. 

 Also, I’m seeing less and less stuff like it, and wanted to see if there was still an appetite for this kind of recklessly – if not irresponsibly – personal silliness. I think you can do anything onstage. I hope this show communicates that.

 

Has the show changed at all in the meantime? 

 Barely. I’ve written a few more jokes about the nature of audience interaction to help me get from A to B. And I might not use a real candle any more, but that’s actually funnier. One of the things that’s so exciting to me is how much it still chimes, but how differently.

 

You haven’t brought it to the Fringe before – why not before and why now? 

 See my previous answer! I couldn’t afford it. I didn’t know how. And I can now and I know how. But also, I think my confidence in the show has grown.

 There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to make a show about right now, but it turns out Jonah is still that show.

 

Are there any post Fringe plans for the show? 

 Hopes, currently, rather than plans. This is why I’ve got a producer. I very much want to just get it in front of as many people as possible for as long as possible.

 It’s my clown show. But I’m also curious how it works as a play text. Theatrical criticism is still very ‘play’-based.

 

What do you like about the Fringe? What will you get up to in Edinburgh when not performing?

 It’s people making things. I’ll see things. Sometimes I’ll see five things in a day and they’ll form into one big thing in my mind. It’s magic.

So do you have a hit list of other shows you would like to see?

 I like finding out what’s interesting once I’m up there, but I will definitely be seeing ‘Simple Town’, and I will definitely be seeing Neil Frost’s ‘The Door’.

 

What drew you to performing as a career? Was it what you always wanted to do? 

 I could do it. I could hide in plain sight.

 My Dad’s an actor and a writer, but he mainly stayed at home on the typewriter when we were growing up, which was very nice for us.

 His brother, however, my wonderful Uncle Gordon, was a proper jobbing, touring actor, and we loved him, and everyone loved him, and acting professionally seemed a very nice, fun, feasible way to not grow up.

 In that sense, yes, it’s something I always wanted to do.

I have to say that you’ve been involved to a greater or lesser extent with some of my Very Favourite Things. What would you say have been the highlights of your career thus far? 

 

 That’s nice! I don’t really think I have a career, because it’s so often work with friends, but I suspect they’re definitely My Very Favourite Things too, and it’s a broad if not hefty mix.

I think the work with John Finnemore is unique in that it has fans who will be fans until I die. Cunningly, however, it’s all been highlights.

 Even the terrible work has been with brilliant people, and having brilliant people in your life is the very best thing. I’ve only one rule: never ever work with or for the bored.

 

What aims and ambitions do you have for the future? 

 I think I still want to do everything.

 

What’s coming up next for you after this?

 I’ve no idea. The next show? I’ve written a screenplay. I’m writing a book. I guess the next thing – now I seem to have worked out how making a show works – is to work out how all that other stuff works too. 

Simon Kane will perform ‘Jonah Non Grata’ at The Assembly Rooms from 31 Jul – 24 Aug, find the edfringe listing here. 

... But you guys knew that.

? Fast ? Furious

Still in space, The ? Motorist (as I knew it back in the nineties when I was making my rounds of the Museum Of the Moving Image, where it used to play on a loop) is a film about a car made when both inventions were in their infancy, and has the narrative pace and logic of a toddler playing with a new toy, but one can still enjoy with clarity over a century later the surprising precision and ingenuity gone into realising something this stupid on film: Sixty seconds in and we've already run over a policeman, driven up the side of a building, and landed on a cloud. It's only when we reach Handover Court that the pace starts to drag. It's an odd lacuna, that court scene. You start trying to read lips. Who's on trial? Why are their eyebrows so big? I pondered these questions so intently I completely missed the transformation into a horse-and-carriage. 

 

 

 I met Gemma this evening, who's currently having to teach the Theatre of the Absurd. I realised she's one of the best teachers I know and among other things we talked about how, when playing someone simply doing a job, questions about motivation and even audibility don't actually have to apply. I suggested silent movies probably did us a favour by freeing drama from text, and showing how great an actor you could still be without an audience necessarily understanding what you were saying. The Handover Court scene in The ? Motorist is not a great an example of that. 

 Otherwise the film's a little masterpiece, and thanks to David Cairns for reminding me of it, and also for alerting me to its sequel which has a robot in it.

Unposted Photographs of October 2022 in Chronological Order

 On the first, I left Trafalgar Sqaure in bloom, happy with the city I lived in, and crossed the river to get a better view of it:

 

 In the basement of the Royal Festival Hall, three dancers had found a space outside the toilets:

 

 I've lived in Notting Hill a year now. I finally found the quickest route to the park, but it still feels like I'm finding routes, rather than walks:

 

 Trellick Tower, its green heart still commemorating Grenfell. It always appears in view suddenly, and to the right of where I expect:

 This was the first time I'd revisited the Victoria and Albert Museum since moving up the road:

 

 I suddenly remembered seeing Jennifer Tilly here, and hearing her, and tried to recall the plot of Slipstream:

 Neil and I went to see Big Ben break his News Revue cherry. Their six week run outlasted two Prime Minsters, and Fred Strangebone in a blonde wig turned out to be a very serviceable Keir Starmer. He was the only one to do a silly bio:

 In Tate Britain, I stayed in the box with the racist language for the whole video (I can't find who's this was or what. It was wonderful. Does anyone know?) Others entered the box, and left very possibly because I was in there, but I don't know how better to screen it:

 

 Over the escalators in the tube, adverts are now screened an angle, tampering with my balance over the duration:

 Here, outside the vault of the Ned, it occured to me that on Saturday we should all wear robes:

 

 Then we moved on to Greenwich peninsula, to rehearse the counting of rice:

 Our rice in situ:

 Suddenly, October was beginning to end. I mean, to finish. I caught Ilona's exhibition just as it was being taken down:

 This Flying Tiger model could have got more into the spirit of the season, I felt. I bought nothing:

 On this stage, I saw David dance and speak lines from King Lear. A good block:

 Outside on Regents Street, they were beginning to put up angels:

By this point, my phone had crashed. Everything was harder to record on Badphone, particularly Maxfield Parrish light. Why was it still Summer?

 On this stage, I saw Natasha dance and speak lines from King Lear. I was not expecting that in a production of Henry the Eighth:

 My balance tampered with, I was still happy to have to caught the last matinee, and celebrated with a walk on the beach:

 

 On this stage, I saw my former rice wife Julia cast her own legs as her parents, and her hand as her dog. I'd missed her rumbling, threatening giggle. It got messy:

 

 Rehearsals started for the Love Goddess in Marylebone. Working in daylight suddenly:

 Opposite Alfies Antiques. Everything a walk away:

 And last Saturday, like the first, saw Trafalgar Square in bloom again.

Where to Find Hippos at the North Pole

 SPOILERS: The answer's underground, and in bits, because fifty million years or so ago the Arctic was a swamp! Did elephants have antlers back then, as imagined in this engraving? Who knows? I mean, absolutely not, according to the fossil record, but unweildy tusks and supernumerary knobbly bits were abundant in the methane-rich Eocene. Also, more recent, scientifically verifiable visualisations of the epoch show a planet ruled by giant parrots, so let's not rule anything out.

 I couldn't find any attribution for the engraving, but it looks as if it might come from a children's book published in 1887 by Henry Davenport Northrop, called Earth, Sea, and the Sky (I wonder if Ursula K. Le Guin had a copy). Illustrations from it are all over the internet, and well worth seeking out. Here, for example, is a Megalosaurus where they sort of get the head right...

 Speaking of windows on the world, the reason I know the Arctic used to be a swamp is because it's one of the many things I learnt playing around with PBS' Nova Polar Lab, as recommended by Sarah Airress after her own trip to McMurdo in Antarctica. The brilliantly engaging, slightly glitchy interactive website takes you round the globe, to visit actual field scientists in their often extraordinary research stations – like David Holland's here, on the Jakobshavn Glacier, which sank the Titanic –

– and then dig up fossils, bore down miles into ice sheets, or send seals out to measure the water temperature, to learn, first hand, the history of this planet, and the stark reality of the sharp change in its climate. You can find it HERE. I really recommend it. It is probably for children.

 

You get to visit McMurdo too.

Going South at 2am

 This is a photograph of Southwark, but we haven't got there yet. The walk from my flat to Waterloo Bridge is pretty much a straight line. Last night I found this:

 

  I don't know what the sign was for, or if this person's meant to look like they're drowning, but it works on a lot of layers, so I left it alone for others to appreciate. Something else I found on my walk last night:

 

 If you deviate from the straight line, there are tiny entrances to casino car parks, crammed frantically with statues and palm trees, a small garden centre's worth. I left these alone too. Continuing south, I recorded evidence of Theatreland's devastation:

 This play had gone so wrong that literally every word of its title was now back to front. Just south of this, someone had tied the traffic lights together.

 

 I crossed the Thames, into the sanity of Southwark. Nearly every job I'd had in my twenties was here, somewhere along the South Bank. 

 

  After graduation, I got a job at the British Film Institute, working as an usher, or behind the reception desk, or in a little booth in the Museum of the Moving Image where visitors could buy videos of themselves being asked pre-recorded questions by Eamonn Homes or Zig and Zag.

 

 Later, when I moved out of my parents' flat, I worked in another museum behind the Oxo Tower. The theme varied. It was free. Everyone from Shunt happened to work there as well. We froze, and read books.

 

 The Museum Of... had great, rattly animatronics from Tim Hunkin, and a room at the top with a fountain, and shelves stacked with thousands of small Body Shop bottles filled with water from the fountain, bearing labels on which visitors had written decriptions of what made them cry. No one was using these rooms for anything else.

 

 I then worked at the London Dungeons beneath London Bridge station. Shunt coincidentally moved next door the following year. Both venues would occasionally, accidentally, and independently, shut the station down with their smoke machines.  

 

 A lot of the buildings I passed last night must have gone up since then.

 

 Once the Shard was built and the station renovated, my most regular visits to this area were as part of the Ghost Bus Tours, which was started by Big Ben from the Dungeons.

 

  If the tours had time, we'd pull up outside Redcross Way, make everyone get off, and take them into a tunnel whose walls were decorated with a kind of Dalek pelt which, the last time I visited here, I noticed had been stipped of it its nodules. But last night the nodules were back, newly tinted.  

 

 That other tunnel between the eyes is painted with swans, and takes you to the site of a pauper's grave, Crossbones – now a car park – and the memorial garden just beyond. That's is where we'd take the groups.

 

 The garden is fenced with the old car park gates, to which locals tie gifts honouring the "outcast dead" or more recent, personal bereavements. None of this looked any different last night.

 Normally I'd take the riverside walk, but I'd heard hollering from the bank, and while I know that's also what fun can sound like, I favoured the privacy of the main roads.

 

 So, that's how I saw all this shiny new stuff, and it's possible that at two in the morning, at the height of a global pandemic, is the best time to see it. I remember when City Hall was just hoops.

 

 I hope I don't find it too difficult whan I finally have to stop being alone. I turned back when I got to the giant ants.

 

Further Immersivity For Kids In Visors And Disguises

 

 Here's a fancy shot taken eleven hours before the support bubbles go up all over London, of excellent friends Story Spinner making work in the roof of the Imperial War Museum, for a family event next week called Spies And Disguise. I'm as surprised it's still going ahead as your are, but Story Spinner know their stuff, and working with them is always a joy and a relief. The details are here, so come if you are able, but not too close! Activities will include learning secret signals (without touching your face), disguising yourself (without touching your face), and looking for other spies to pass on your secret messages to (from a distance of two metres) all against the backdrop – or belowdrop? – of Ai Weiwei's History of Bombs, and with a finalé in socially distanced grids opposite the Holocaust Exhibition. Look out for me in a lab coat on Level 2, next to the large red Polaris suit that was left in a pub in Barrow-In-Furness.