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Unbelievable-But-True Stories Amuse Media, Public and Comedians

February 26th, 2012 | Comments Off on Unbelievable-But-True Stories Amuse Media, Public and Comedians

Ripley's Believe It or Not Is Global Franchise - Rudolph.A.furtado

Cynics would say that tales of the bizarre cannot possibly be factual. But actually, the weird, unusual and strange show that ‘you couldn’t make it up’.

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not has been thrilling people with odd and amazing, unbelievable exploits, mishaps, deformities and human failings from the ‘World of the Weird’ in museums and attractions since 1919. In effect, it’s a franchise, enabling entrepreneurs to open museums of artifacts so strange and unusual that people might doubt their claims.

The idea has also been developed into radio and TV programmes, events, books, posters and a pinball game. Over 12 million visitors a year marvel in the museum chain, confirming the fact that people like to be amazed; that the unbelievable-but-true has a place in a world where technology has made the amazing commonplace.

It’s the same curiosity that marvelled at ‘The Bearded Lady’ in carnivals of old, watched public executions, visited London’s Bethlehem ‘Bedlam’ Hospital for the Insane to stare, or who rubberneck motorway pile-ups. There is human fascination in what others get up to.

Unbelievability of the Ordinary

In his book You Really Couldn’t Make It Up (2004), former journalist Jack Crossley published his collected ‘bizarre-but-true’ stories from around Great Britain, culled from local and national newspapers. Snippets ranged from bureaucracy’s stupidity to the breath-taking wisdom of the fool.

The Moscow State Circus tight rope performer made to wear a hard hat to comply with EU safety rules (from The Times); West Midlands’ council workers called to mend a broken window in a disabled woman’s house replaced every window but the broken one (from The Guardian) and “Fifty percent of the population do not know what 50 percent is” (from former Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt, in The Observer) typify the observations many readers would scarcely credit.

Crossley guessed that people would enjoy incredible-but-true trivia. Proof of the increasing bulk of average people came from comparing 14 people crammed into a telephone box claiming a world record in the 21st century, with 19 claiming it in 1959 (from The Times). A group of people interested in fairies had over 1000 members (from Scarborough Evening News). John Wayne called his dog ‘Dog’ (from The Times).

Misprints and Unintended Humour

Despite modern technology, misprints and errors creep into the written media, and to such an extent that publishing collections make best sellers. In 1985, British satirical magazine Private Eye published The Thrid Book of Boobs, in a successful series enjoyed by people reveling in the errors of others.

A spokesperson for the Royal Ballet School was quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying they wanted young dancers who could walk into “any ballet school and stand on their own two feet”. Super Marketing reported a new group manager at a food company who had previously worked at ‘Kentucky Fried Children’, while the Times of India picked up an Irish coroner who said: “People are dying this year who have never died before”.

The Morecambe Visitor carried an ad for a photographer: “Children Shot for Christmas”; Time Out promoted a “Master of Arts Degree in Deviancy” at Middlesex Polytechnic and Spare Rib displayed an ad for “Lesbian, 35, nonsmoker, loves horses, seeks same for friendship”. South Wales Evening Post carried a classified ad: “Please save from destruction, three kitchens in desperate need of good homes”.

Sometimes it’s headlines or juxtapositions of people’s names that cause amusement and fascination. Private Eye noted from the Western Daily Press that a pig fell from a lorry on the M5 onto a car driven by Linda Hogg: “the pig was killed”. Kent and Sussex Courier announced the wedding of Benjamin Bath to Miss Sally Tubb and The Daily Telegraph reported a reservoir opened by the Housing Minister, Ian God (should have been Gow).

The Weekend Australian headlined: “One-legged Escapee Rapist Still On the Run”. The Times Literary Supplement proclaimed; “Six-Legged Sex”, for a book on insect mating systems. The Standard reckoned “Mao’s Widow Will Not Die”. An unmissable event was bannered in Northwich and Winsford Advertiser: “A Public Meeting May Give Ratepayers a Chance to Express Disgust at Level of Rats in Cheshire”.

The Darwin Awards and the Gene Pool of Life

What people do, deliberately or by accident, will always amuse/shock/sicken others and provide material to stand-up comedians who use observational humour. The australian who swam 300 metres to get first aid with a shark clamped to his leg; the Brighton burglar who stole the camera police used to take his mugshot; the Finnish taxman who died at his desk and remained unnoticed by 30 colleagues for two days; the Romanian who complained to consumer authorities at the poor quality of the rope he tried to hang himself with, and the man who beheaded himself with a guillotine he erected in his bedroom, have unwittingly caused smiles and head-shakes.

People may posthumously be nominated for a Darwin Award. These commemorate, in honour of Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory, those “who remove themselves from the gene pool, thereby ensuring the next generation is smarter by one”. The 35 year old Romanian welding a family heirloom tamper back together, discovered too late that it was a World War 2 cannon shell. He thought it was safe because his father had battered the ground with it for 40 years!

The 2010 nominees included a handicapped man who rammed his chair into closed elevator doors till he broke in; people parked on a Rio de Janeiro freeway slow lane in heavy fog “for a quickie”; two mechanics at a racing car service centre who were injured in an explosion when they raced on a barrel and the Kentucky couple who swapped driver and passenger while the car was in motion!

So it may well be true that when it comes to things people do or have wrong with them, it really can’t be made up. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s often bizarrely so.

First published on Suite 101, 19 January 2011.

Photo: Ripley’s Believe It or Not Is Global Franchise – Rudolph.A.furtado

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Life’s Aphorisms are as Good for Comedy as for Living By

February 22nd, 2012 | Add a Comment

If Something Can Go Wrong, It Will - MyName (Bantosh)
Laws, theories, principles, rules, fallacies and conundrums explain life. The most memorable maxims are the funniest and truest.

Across much of the world ‘Murphy’s Law’ or a variant is used to explain the notion that ‘if something can go wrong, it will’. It’s based on the idea that there is a perversity operating in life, and the human lot is to expect the downside. If toast falls, it will fall buttered-side down.

In Britain, such tiresome inconvenience is often styled ‘Sod’s Law’, while in the US the handy epithet SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fouled Up) serves the same purpose. It’s claimed this term began in the US military around 1941, when radio message encoding required scrambling into five letter code groups. When these groups were used to make sentences for fun, SNAFU caught on.

Beyond the random, indiscriminate whim of fate, some wisecracks believe, lies a deliberate obfuscation and malign purpose. Patrick Hutber, once City Editor of Britain’s Sunday Telegraph composed a ‘law’ in the 1970s that stated: ‘improvement means deterioration’, that was widely adopted in business generally.

Whoever Murphy Was, He Made a Lot of Laws

In his book Murphy’s Law (1977), Arthur Bloch articulated the frustration of phone ringing (this before cell phones) the moment somebody sits down, or it rains on a clean car… such ‘universal principle’ was in need of a name. He collected what he called ‘wit and wisdom’ from ‘demented technologists, bureaucrats, humanists and anti-social observers’ to fill his book, all named after fictitious and real people.

Bloch cited Andy Warhol who said (1978): ‘In the future, everyone will be famous for at least 15 minutes’ and HL Mencken who said: “Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach’. Parkinson’s Law, ‘work expands to fill the time available for its completion’ was in an essay by the writer Cyril Northcote Parkinson in The Economist (1955), based on his observations of Britain’s Civil Service at work.

That august institution also inspired Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn with their British TV satire, Yes, Minister (1980-84) and Yes, Prime Minister (1986-88) to pass amusing commentary on the system without political bias: ‘Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It is their substitute for achievement’. The civil servant told the Minister: ‘The public doesn’t know anything about wasting government money. We are the experts’.

Some of the corollaries Bloch quoted to ‘Murphy’s Law‘ included: nothing is as easy as it looks; every solution breeds new problems; everything takes longer than thought; if several things can go wrong, the one that causes most damage will be it; left alone things go from bad to worse, and it’s impossible to make everything foolproof because fools are ingenious.

He went on: ‘if you’re feeling good, you’ll get over it’; ‘if you explain clearly so no one can misunderstand, somebody will’, and ‘Murphy was an optimist’. Some are so true of life that most readers can only nod in agreement. After the last screws have been removed from some difficult cover, it will be seen to be the wrong cover! If somebody is on a bicycle, it’s always uphill and against the wind.

Toothache starts on a Saturday night; the other queue is always faster; any given computer program is obsolete; anything dropped will always end up in the inaccessible corner and enough research will support any theory. The first myth of management is that it exists; authority assigns jobs to those least able to do them; two cars approaching each other on a deserted road will meet at the narrowest point, and ‘when all else fails, read the instructions’.

Everybody Can Lay Down A Law

A similar compendium by Harold Faber, The Book of Laws (1979), attempted to give credit to the originators of laws, precepts and corollaries. ‘All looks yellow to a jaundiced eye’, first came from Alexander Pope (1688-1744). The Law of the Marketplace: ‘Change or perish’ originally came from Robert Walker, The New Yorker, 1970). The First Law of Journalism: “Any official denial is de facto a confirmation’, originated with John Kifner in The New York Times, 1969.

Peter’s Law of Politics is one among several attributed to Laurence J Peter (1919-1990): ‘The unexpected always happens’. Peter was a hierarchiologist who devised The Peter Principle: ‘In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence’. Faber himself coined a few choice ones: ‘Nobody runs for the Vice-Presidential nomination’ (1972) and ‘The First Law of Politics is get re-elected’ (1968).

Thomas L Martin published Malice in Blunderland (1973) to explain corporate bureaucracy as ‘wonderland of blunders… mishap, delay, confusion, maladroitness and induced group paranoia’. He also produced truths about hierarchiology (‘the higher you go, the fewer jobs there are’); defined glitches (inherent, built-in fallibility in design, plan, equipment or human contrivance); status quo (administration means rejection of conflict as desirable element of society) and quoted Lord Acton: ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely; great men are almost always bad men’ (1887).

Barnum’s Law, ‘you can fool most of the people most of the time’ is credited to circus entrepreneur PT Barnum (1810-1891). Many politicians and magicians have followed its wisdom through entire careers. The fact is, that people like little homespun observations, and have always done. Proverbs in The Bible is packed with wise prohibitions and commands.

If many of these old maxims were rewritten today, they’d take account of political correctness and its own comic potential. Just as with stand-up comedy that gives more than a grain of home truth via observational humour, so these ‘laws’ are funny, but contain elements of reality. Everybody needs to avoid mistakes, and if a little comic nugget can be gleaned from somebody’s made up life lesson, then so be it.

First published on Suite 101, 14 January 2011.

Photo: If Something Can Go Wrong, It Will – MyName (Bantosh)

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Unusual Medical Conditions, Their Names and Effects

February 21st, 2012 | 1 Comment

Pills Can Treat Real Conditions or Be Placebos - Tom Varco
However weird phobias, conditions or illnesses may be, somebody somewhere will come up with names to describe them, give them status and find sufferers.

The world seems full of people who suffer unusual health problems. Hypochondria has been around a long time. According to Medical News Today, people are hypochondriacs if they have ‘a preoccupying fear of having a serious illness despite medical assurances that they are well.

Munchausen Syndrome (named after an 18th century German officer who exaggerated his life’s experiences) is a ‘factitious disorder’, or form of mental illness, in which people repeatedly act as if they suffer physical or mental disorders when, in fact, they have caused the symptoms to themselves. They undergo painful tests to get the attention/sympathy associated with serious illness.

Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (MBPS) is a variation whereby a caregiver (usually mother) fabricates/exaggerates symptoms of illness in a child, again for attention and sympathy. It also is a mental condition, which the sufferer is not normally aware of experiencing.

Others recognise their problems. Kenny Rogers, lead vocal with The First Edition, took the Mickey Newbury song, Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) into the Top Ten in 1968, since when analysis or ‘shrink wrap’ treatments have become as commonplace as stress and bereavement counselling.

Bizarre, Scarcely Believable

Oddee, a website publishing weird and unusual stories, identified 10 people with conditions that defy credibility. A British woman (Sarah Carmen) suffered from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), with increased blood flow to her sexual organs that few people could experience. Another Briton, John Perry, ate unlimited amounts of absolutely anything from pies to desserts, and never put on weight, as his body had lipodystrophy, where it burned fat rapidly.

Wim Hof, a Dutchman, could feel no cold. He climbed Mt Blanc in shorts in icy wind, stood in ice bins, swam under ice and defied medical explanation, thriving in conditions that would kill most people. American toddler Rhett Lamb was the boy who couldn’t sleep at all with compression of his brain stem into the spinal column. He was finally diagnosed with chiari malformation.

Australian Ashleigh Morris was totally allergic to water; even sweating brought her out in a rash. She was diagnosed with a very rare skin disorder called Aquagenic Urticaria (AU). A 40-year-old woman, code named AJ to protect her identity, suffered ‘nonstop, uncontrollable and automatic memory’, in which she recalled every detail of any given day over past 25 years. Neurocase magazine named it: Hyperthymestic Syndrome (HS).

Natalie Cooper from Kent, UK, was sick every time she ate anything, except the mint sweets, Tic Tacs. Doctors could not explain it, but fed her required nutrients through a tube. British singer Chris Sands was unable to stop hiccoughing, possibly through a faulty stomach valve. Kay Underwood collapsed instantly whenever she experienced strong anger, fear, exhilaration, surprise through a condition labelled cataplexy, on top of her narcolepsy.

Brit Debbie Bird found herself allergic to the electromagnetic field created by cell phones, microwaves and computers, and had to live in a home devoid of the electronic equipment of the 21st century that most people regard as essential.

To Name It, Is To Acknowledge It

Before myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) was acknowledged as a medical condition legitimising time off work, it was nicknamed ‘yuppie flu’. In much the same way, any man who suffers flu is accused of suffering ‘man flu’, as if it is a made-up illness to gain more sympathy; while women tend to soldier on with flu.

It took years for the effects on women of pre-menstrual tension (PMT), or post-natal depression (PND) to be acknowledged. People seriously depressed during dark winter periods became recognised as sufferers of Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) only in 1984, prior to which the medical establishment was sceptical. In the summer, it is called reverse seasonal affected disorder.

There is a full range of behavioural disorders among children, when he/she noticeably behaves differently from what is expected in school or community. Descriptors like conduct disorders, emotional disturbances/disorders are interchangeable, characterised by aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, no empathy for others, defiance and lack of responsibility for their actions.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder (OCD) bipolar disorder (BD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) are now well established educational/medical terms to describe conditions. They lead to management and intervention plans in schools and institutions. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) explains a lot of previously misunderstood behaviour.

In late 2010, Dr Roman Gerodimos from University of Maryland published a study that found volunteers who did not tune into text messages, emails, Facebook or Twitter updates for a full 24 hours, began to show signs of ‘cold turkey’ similar to withdrawals experienced by drug addicts. Gerodimos said it wasn’t just ‘psychological symptoms, also physical ones’. The condition was named Information Deficit Disorder (IDD) in 2009.

It seems that every condition, fear, phobia, obsession or quirk of human behaviour needs a name that becomes a handy acronym. To take just two letters to illustrate the point: SA in medical terms can mean Sexual Activity, Sinus Arrhythmia, Social Anxiety, Sperm Activity, Substance Abuse or Suicide Attempt. Life by acronym has long ruled much public life in the west. In due time, there may a name/acronym for this condition of naming/alphabetising everything.

First published on Suite 101, 12 January 2011.

Photo: Pills Can Treat Real Conditions or Be Placebos – Tom Varco

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When Members of Parliament Fall Foul of the Laws They Make

February 19th, 2012 | Comments Off on When Members of Parliament Fall Foul of the Laws They Make

Wormwood Scrubs Prison: For Corrupt MPs? - David Hawgood
Speaking of laws that MPs make .., the January 2011 jailing for 18 months of former MP David Chaytor for fiddling expenses, raised interest in how many others have served time over the years and who have been caught by the laws they themselves made.

MPs have high levels of theoretical probity. In the Chamber, all are called ‘Honourable’ or ‘Right Honourable’. However, temptation to steal/lie/cheat/betray and generally break laws are as high in politics as the rest of humanity. It appears, at least in the past 30 years, the numbers of jailed MPs is less than the average in the population as a whole.

The House of Commons’ Library published a paper in 2008 in response to a Freedom of Information request, explaining the rules: ‘In cases in which Members of either House are arrested on criminal charges, the House must be informed of the cause for which they are detained from their service to Parliament’.

The cause of detention is usually conveyed after arrest, and it includes custody for trial by naval or military courts-martial, or committal to prison from a court or magistrate. The Commons’ Speaker normally announces the fact to the House, and the letter is ‘laid upon the table’. If a Member is convicted but released on bail pending appeal, the magistrate is not required to inform The Speaker.

The Oxygen of Publicity

While MPs crave publicity, most wish that the media frenzy unleashed by their arrests/convictions was not so vociferous. A few have sought imprisonment as a form of ‘martyrdom’ to make some political point. They are aware of the rule that an MP convicted and sentenced for more than a year must resign his/her seat, or anybody who is serving time at an election, cannot stand for Parliament.

Between 1987 and 1991, eleven MPs were jailed between 7 – 60 days. Ten were from Ulster, some served more than once and Peter Robinson (Belfast East) was given four sentences. They had refused to pay fines after taking part in banned public processions or failed to pay fines after motoring offences, as part of political protest.

In Northern Ireland, Bobby Sands was imprisoned, but not sentenced, for terrorist activities when he, along with other IRA members, went on hunger strike. His supporters nominated him as ‘political prisoner’ candidate in a Parliamentary by-election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in April 1981. He was elected, but died shortly afterwards. Nine others followed his example in dying.

Labour MP Terry Fields (Liverpool, Broadgreen) went down for non-payment of his ‘community charge’ in 1991, again as a political protest stunt. From the same party, John Stonehouse (Walsall North) was in a different league. The BBC reported in 1974: ‘Drowned’ Stonehouse found alive. Former UK minister John Stonehouse has been found living under a false name in Australia after apparently faking his own death’.

Stonehouse pretended to drown on a business trip to Miami Beach in November 1973, leaving behind a pile of clothes, before travelling to Singapore, Denmark, Lebanon and Hawaii and entering Australia on a forged passport in the name of a deceased constituent, to start a new life with his former secretary. Deported to London, he was jailed for 7 years on 18 counts of theft, fraud and deception. He did 3 years.

Conservatives, Too

Captain Peter Baker became MP for South Norfolk in 1950, as the then youngest member. When his business interests ran into trouble, he took to forging signatures to guarantee debts. When discovered, he was sentenced to seven years under fraud laws, and was actually expelled from Parliament by MPs on 16 December 1954.

In 1969 Jeffrey Archer also became the then youngest MP, at 29, for Louth. He climbed the Parliamentary and political greasepole, but in 1974 was ‘the casualty of a fraudulent investment scheme’. He resigned and reinvented himself as a novelist, all round bon viveur and Conservative Party Deputy Chairman. After allegations about paying off a prostitute and suing various British papers for libel, he was accused of insider dealing.

Finally, in 2001 he was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice and sent down for 4 years. True, he was not an MP at the time, but he was a member of the House of Lords. Another former MP to do bird was Jonathan Aitken (Thanet East; Thanet South). He told the media he would ‘cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play’.

Newspapers had alleged improprieties involving the Ritz Hotel in Paris and arms deals, but in the slander trial, lies and inconsistencies involving his wife and daughter emerged. In 1995 he was found guilty, sentenced to 18 months and was forced to resign membership of the Privy Council, an honour given as a member of the Cabinet.

The Right People in Prison?

Nobody feels sorry about ex-MPs. Yet more may end in prison over the abuse of expenses scandal of 2009, and people hold differing views about whether others should be in prison too. In their book Crap MPs (2009) Bendor Grosvenor and Geoffrey Hicks listed 40 of ‘the worst all-time MPs’ for poor judgements about alcohol, money, murder, forgery, drugs, sex; for having dodgy friends; running off or bone idleness, and the public will have their own favourites.

The hours most MPs put in doing their honest, almost impossible work, the fact that sometimes laws are not right or have unintended consequences, means that when something goes wrong, it’s easy to condemn. After all, they chose the stage spotlight. It’s just that sometimes, it’s impossible to make fun of people who lampoon themselves so well.

First published at Suite 101, 9 January 2011, although should be updated with more recent cases of broken laws, from fraud in office to even motoring offences!

Photo: Wormwood Scrubs Prison: For Corrupt MPs? – David Hawgood

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Verbatim Theatre Speaks for Itself Loud and Clear

February 14th, 2012 | 1 Comment

Courts, Enquiries, Forums: Verbatim Evidence - Montrealais
‘Verbatim’ is a kind of documentary theatre in which drama is made from the precise words spoken by people in evidence, witnessing or remembering.

Verbatim originated in the USA in the 1930s’ Depression where a federally funded program, Living Newspaper Project, set actors sifting daily newspapers to create theatre to inform and motivate audiences. Owing something to Brecht, it later influenced Augusto Boal in Brazil and Joan Littlewood in Britain.

In 1965, Peter Weiss in Germany wrote The Investigation which publishers Marion Boyars described as: ‘a dramatic reconstruction of the Frankfurt War Crimes trials, based on actual evidence’. Weiss edited extracts from testimonies ‘concerning Auschwitz and the atrocities enacted there’ into a dramatic document ‘that relies solely and completely on facts for its effectiveness’.

There is no dramatic writing, no manipulation of facts/figures. Evidence is simply retold, ‘allowing us to bear witness to their painful and painstaking search for truth and ultimately justice. What emerges is a chastening and purging documentary of deeply moving power’.

The Range and Power of Verbatim

Since then, it has become a genre. Reaching something of a peak in Britain and the USA in the late 1990s, its mainstream around the world. Often political, it frequently raises awareness of issues and changes (government) policy. As Brecht said: “It’s not enough to understand the world, it’s necessary to change it.’

The Council of Ontario Dance and Drama Educators published a College/University Grade 12 drama teaching course on Verbatim Theater. Units included telling other people’s stories, defining the genre, overheard conversations, creating composite characters and polishing/performing a verbatim text.

Get Real: Documentary Theatre (2009) edited by Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson, ‘confronts new socio-political realities’, according to its publishers, Palgrave Macmillan. It led to ‘an astonishing range of performance styles, ways of working and modes of intervention in varied sites of theatrical production’. Focusing on verbatim examples from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa and the Middle East, the book explores documentary and new media, technology, the body, the archive, memory, autobiography and national identity.

A Canadian example was Talk Thirty To Me by Oonagh Duncan, from interviews with people aged 29 about how they felt hitting 30. Vancouver writer Alex Ferguson created a piece on the experience of Filipinos involved in the federal government’s Live-In Caregiver Program.

Examples of UK verbatim work include: Unprotected (2006) which began life as a docudrama response the proposal from Liverpool City Council for a controlled zone for sex workers. Though the zone never went ahead, the production became what The Times described (March 2006) at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre as ‘an admirably non-sensational discussion of the sex industry through words of those whose lives are connected’.

These included prostitutes, pimps, clients and the mothers of two girls who were brutally murdered. The drama arose from the harrowing truths, articulated in monologues. Traditional tension-drama, verbatim is not. A 2002 armed siege in Hackney, in London’s east end, inspired Alecky Blythe to go onto the streets with microphone and minidisk recorder to invite citizens, and later the hostage, their responses to the siege. That later became Come Out Eli.

The Politics of Verbatim Theatre

David Hare dramatised evidence on the privatisation of Britain’s railways into The Permanent Way (2003). The Exonerated began life off-Broadway before crossing the Atlantic to Britain. It was the own words of six Death Row survivors condemned wrongly for murders and finally freed when new evidence came to light.

Reviewers described the acting as superb, but it was the words, the interwoven ‘voices’ of the prisoners, that conveyed emotion, drama, tragedy, and, in the end, the political message about the death penalty. There have been treatments about Guantanamo (2004); and Northern Ireland’s Bloody Sunday (2005);

The Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London, created Half the Picture (on the Scott Inquiry into the Arms to Iraq scandal), Nuremberg, and Srebrenica (about the 1996 war crimes tribunal at The Hague). The Colour of Justice (1999) took the literal words given in evidence at the Macpherson enquiry into police handling of the stabbing of 18 year old Stephen Lawrence at a bus stop.

The suggestion was that he was murdered ‘because he was black’. The enquiry found the Metropolitan Police to be ‘institutionally racist’, and it led to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which abolished the age-old tradition of double jeopardy, that nobody could be tried twice for the same crime if acquitted previously.

In 2007, two barristers tested evidence to see if there were grounds to indict Prime Minister Blair for aggression against Iraq. They took evidence from Members of Parliament, UN officials, intelligence experts and journalists. The result was not indictment, but a re-telling of the evidence by actors in a tribunal play, Called to Account —The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq — A Hearing.

Writer Robin Soans and director Max Stafford-Clark created Talking to Terrorists (2005), partly in response to the UK 1990s’ policy never to negotiate with terrorists, to deny them the ‘oxygen of publicity’, and partly because they were at the forefront of groundbreaking theatre from verbal witness.

They worked with performers researching for a year, talking to those who had acted violently against the state and fellow human beings from Ireland and Uganda, a Kurdish fighter, an ex-British diplomat and victims and witnesses. Statements were then written into script. Alecky Blythe recorded sound files, so actors wore headphones and copied exactly what they heard in each witness statement, including coughs and mumblings.

Like all theatre, there are as many ways of creating verbatim theatre as there are actors, writers, directors, journalists, lawyers, politicians, controversial issues. It is a vehicle in the fleet of political theatre. It can be performed anywhere. It can be highly controversial and uncomfortable. Above all, it can be riveting performance.

First published on Suite 101, 8 January 2011.

Photo: Courts, Enquiries, Forums: Verbatim Evidence – Montrealais

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Hippodrome Circus, Yarmouth: Historic, Cultural, Showbiz Palace

February 11th, 2012 | Comments Off on Hippodrome Circus, Yarmouth: Historic, Cultural, Showbiz Palace

Yarmouth Hippodrome's Stunning Facia - Nick Marshall, Gt Yarmouth Tourism
A unique, custom-built circus at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK appeals equally to nostalgists, historians, and lovers of all-round family entertainment.

‘Hippodrome’ is from the Greek, meaning a stadium for horse/chariot racing, equivalent to the Roman circus. It was neither amphitheatre (sports, games), nor theatre as such. Over the years many British theatres and places of general entertainment were named Hippodrome.

The one at Great Yarmouth is a circus. Standing just off the seafront, surrounded by the somewhat run-down faded glory of seaside entertainments and catering, the magnificent edifice of the Hippodrome rises up, proud and welcoming.

The Theatres Trust calls it a “building of outstanding importance”, pointing out there are only two purpose-built permanent circuses in Britain (the other is Blackpool Tower Circus) still in full working order, and probably only four or five operational pre-1950 circuses left in the world.

The Uniqueness of Yarmouth’s Hippodrome Circus

The “true Hippodrome”, according to The Theatres Trust, is one whose “traditional sawdust ring can be flooded for water spectacles”. The floor sinks into rising water from below, fed by sprinklers at the edges. The transformation as ground becomes water is dramatically incorporated into the show.

Don Stacey explained in his book, The Hippodrome, Great Yarmouth, how below the sinking ring, an eight feet deep asphalted well connects to a cast iron tank with a capacity of 12,000 gallons. He quoted the Eastern Daily Press on the opening in July 1903: “The water in this tank will be heated just up to boiling point and run into the ring at the same time with the cold, so the entire 60,000 gallons may be of comfortable temperature for artistes and animals”.

Synchronized swimmers, comedy routines and light shows lend themselves to spectacle under “traditional, unadorned arena seating for 3000 covered by a shallow arched roof”. The terracotta exterior is more imposing: “three bays, defined by two short outer towers and two taller, domed inner towers with Art Nouveau ornament. It has a big lunette window to each bay”.

The acoustics are praised, and other uses besides circus include orchestral concerts and dramas. Prime Minster Stanley Baldwin addressed a mass meeting in 1928. The stables used when animal circuses were commonplace and acceptable are still intact.

Hippodrome History, from Yarmouth to Lowestoft

The building was designed by Ralph Scott Cockrill, from a local family of builders and architects, for the circus proprietor George Gilbert. His Hippodrome roof was zinc to render it virtually fireproof. His interpretation of the Art Nouveau style was regarded as inventive.

He also designed Lowestoft’s Hippodrome, 10 miles south, which opened in 1904, and in the words of Peter Clements in his book Lowestoft: 200 Years a Seaside Resort, “having been constructed in little over a fortnight!” It is thought 400,000 bricks were used in what must have been a bricklaying marathon.

It offered circus entertainment with a sliding roof for fresh air, had animal displays and the sunken floor for flooding. It operated only two years as a circus before becoming a variety and later film venue. In World War 2 it was a marshalling house for children being evacuated to the countryside, and then became a bingo hall. It burned down in 1999, and was rebuilt for bingo, leaving Yarmouth Hippodrome as the lone circus in eastern England.

Circus Ups and Downs

Amidst all the breathtaking high-wire acts, wheels of death, daredevil riders, acrobats, contortionists, jugglers, animals, swimmers, dancers, and clowns who have performed in or above the ring, there have been tragedies too. In August 1987, nationally renowned wrestler ‘Big Daddy’ had a bout with Mal ‘King Kong’ Kirk, and used his ‘splash routine’, after which Kirk groaned, turned purple and died later in Yarmouth hospital.

In August 2003 experienced trapeze artist Eva Garcia (38) from Birmingham plunged 30 feet onto her head when she lost her grip on a jammed wire in full view of the capacity crowd. She died two hours later, to the shock of the entire Hippodrome and circus community.

Katherine Hamilton maintains a Hippodrome fanzine, and when asked, confirms the rumour that “the spirit of George Gilbert resides within the walls of the Hippodrome and is not afraid to let himself be known”. Several witnesses have agreed there are supernatural goings-on.

As a boy in 1948, local historian Clive Manson saw “Mr O’Brien talking to ‘nobody’ in the ring”. He believed it was O’Brien’s uncle, George Gilbert. 1980s and ’90s ringmaster David Hibling saw a chimp scream at “nothing” one night, and on another he “heard and felt ‘someone’ walk across the ring while it was being dried and painted about 2am”.

A ring boy from the 1970s, Martin Swann, reported a young worker who had seen the ghost of Swinging Billy, a former worker who hanged himself from the trapdoor in the ceiling opposite the main doors.

The Personalities

Of all the characters, performers, managers, and owners over the years, it is the Jay family that have kept the building alive. Ben Jay bought Lowestoft’s Hippodrome in 1938, his son Jack changed it to variety and ran entertainment outlets in Yarmouth. When Yarmouth Hippodrome came on the market in 1978, he and his son Peter bought it to prevent it being turned into a rival bingo club.

Peter had a successful career leading Peter Jay and The Jaywalkers, with a Top 20 hit and touring with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Tina Turner and the Beach Boys. In the early 21st century, Peter saw his own son, Jack, grow into ringmaster/compere and straight man for a clown.

So, the dynasty continues; the building thrives; circus lives. This is circus traceable straight back to the Italian commedia dell’Arte and into the classless family entertainment it is to this day.

Read On

Photo: Yarmouth Hippodrome’s Stunning Facia – Nick Marshall, Gt Yarmouth Tourism

First published on Suite 101, 5 January 2011

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Fireworks: Cultural, Civic, National Celebrations and Politics

February 8th, 2012 | Add a Comment

Australia Starts Firework New Year Bonanza - Alex Sims
Why do people love fireworks? Why did London burn almost £2m on them in 2011 to outdo Sydney’s pyrotechnic display? They’re a sign of potency!

 

According to PyroUniverse, fireworks go back to around 200BC in the Chinese Han Dynasty, when early firecrackers were chunks of green bamboo thrown onto a fire. The rods exploded because bamboo grows so fast ‘that pockets of air get trapped inside’ which expand when heated.

It frightened people, animals and, they assumed, evil spirits. It became customary to burn green bamboo during the lunar new year to ward off evil. They then added it at weddings, coronations and births. A thousand years later and by accident alchemists experimented with sulphur, saltpeter, honey and arsenic disulphide exploding in fire.

They found more saltpeter made it burn faster. ‘Gunpowder put in a container with an open end created a brilliant eruption of flame, sparks and smoke’. This was powerful knowledge as gunpowder weapons evolved. Aerial fireworks were the next step, spreading across the world, into both civic displays and domestic offerings in people’s gardens.

Historical Bangs and Whooshes

Fireworks have long been exploited as political tools, as they marked military battles (or even the awarding of a national honour, such as hosting Olympics, or World Cup in Soccer). They celebrated coronations, weddings, and religious festivals. Burning candles or torches have been fundamental in religious devotion, from primitive times to the present. Fireworks are a more exuberant version of flame.

Getty Publications issued Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe (1998) by Kevin Salatino, who argued that festivities such as those exalting the court of Louis XIV, the celebration of James II’s London coronation, and the commemoration of the peace celebrations of 1749 at The Hague ‘culminated in dazzling pyrotechnical displays’. He said that these displays were in turn reproduced as prints, paintings, and narrative descriptions, and examined the propagandistic and rhetorical functions that these printed records came to serve as ‘vehicles of aesthetic, cultural, and emotional significance’.

This significance was not confined to Europe. Barbara Widenor Maggs, then from the University of Illinois, published a paper in 1976, Firework Art and Literature: Eighteenth Century Pyrotechnical Tradition in Russia and Western Europe. She said: ‘The mutual influences of firework displays and literature in mid 18th Century Russia… is of considerable significance for the study of the cultural history of Russia’.

She examined pyrotechnical presentations as ‘highly elaborate, multi-media productions combining light and sound, art, literature, sculpture and sometimes poetry and music’. She cited literary sources for inspiration for the spectacles; the exhibitions in turn ‘had an effect upon literature’. This is an example of art feeding art, in effect.

Firework Size Does Matter

Nowadays, fireworks are the display of choice for big public events and national celebrations. In the US, July 4th commemorates 1776’s independence from Great Britain. It is marked with fireworks, parades, carnivals, concerts, sports events, fairs and of course, political speeches.

In Great Britain, November 5th Bonfire and Fireworks Night sees few knowing (or caring) how Parliament came close to being blown sky high in a treasonous plot in 1605. Nonetheless, the evening is marked with bonfires (originally burning effigies of the ringleader, Guy Fawkes), parties, marketing opportunities and fireworks.

Sonja Holverson, writing about Geneva in Nile Guide, explained how 1st August marks Swiss national pride in the coming together in confederation of different cultures and nationalities of Italy, France, Germany and Romansch in 1291. The national flag is hung everywhere, its image on every food and clothing items possible; there are long speeches, parties, barbecues, crafts, parades of bands and children, and fireworks, most spectacularly from the lakes and mountains.

Thanks to geography, Sydney sees the new year first. Their firework displays have set the standard for the rest of the world. Debate rages about whether Sydney or London was better in 2010/2011. London’s, centred on the London Eye on the Thames’ South Bank, saw 10,000 fireworks weighing about 8 tons ignited in 9 minutes.

Jack Morton Worldwide, a marketing company, organised the display from fireworks provided by British firm Kimbolton Fireworks, set on three barges, six pontoons and the London Eye itself. The whole thing was composed by artistic director, David Zolkwer who created a soundtrack of music by top British bands from the past fifty years, including the Beatles and Queen.

The £1.8 million pound spectacle in a time of economic hardship was funded by the Office of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. So public money was used in a public relations exercise that promoted not only the capital, but the UK as a whole. That is politics in the raw, and the image of literally sending taxpayers’ money up in smoke is a powerful gift for any politicos determined on using it.

The Spectacle Justifies Itself

National and local pride, history, tradition and culture are things that politicians plug into instinctively. The arguments about cost, pollution and the mess afterwards, usually follow. While it’s hard to predict the future, if the movies are any guide, fireworks are here to stay.

According to Dave Maass on the TV channel Syfy web: ‘If there’s one thing we’ve learned about sci-fi, it’s that no futurist or fantasist can imagine a world where humans don’t blow stuff up for fun. Fireworks are the original eye candy, the special effects that existed before filmmakers knew they even needed regular effects’.

He cited Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, V for Vendetta, Coneheads, The Boy Who Could Fly, Starwars: Return of the Jedi, Galaxy Quest, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; The Fellowship of the Ring and Flight of The Navigator among others to illustrate the point about the longevity of fireworks.

First published on Suite 101, 4 January 2011.

Photo: Australia Starts Firework New Year Bonanza – Alex Sims

 

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Margaret Catchpole: A Case of 19th Century Rewriting of History

February 6th, 2012 | 1 Comment

St Mary's, Wortham, Richard Cobbold's Church - Smb1001
‘Spin’ didn’t arrive in the 20th century, as the case of the woman from Suffolk transported to Australia in 1801 shows, with history and myth intertwined.

History is written and judged in hindsight. Politicians and historians always revision the past, often to suit present day agendas. Shakespeare did it with his history plays. In February 2004, The BBC published an account of the Margaret Catchpole story, which illustrates the point.

She was born at Nacton, Suffolk in 1762, daughter of a farm labourer, and quickly became an accomplished horsewoman. A newspaper of 1800 described her as ‘tall and dark’ and ‘of intelligent countenance’; yet a wanted handbill said she was ‘5 feet 2 inches’.

She worked in service for many families, including the respectable brewing Cobbold family in Ipswich, where she saved the life of at least one of their children and learned to read and write. The Australian Dictionary of Biography stated that she was more a member of the family than a servant.

Margaret fell in love with William Laud, a notorious smuggler. The Cobbolds disapproved, so she left their employ and in June 1797 stole a ‘strawberry roan’ coach horse from their stable to be with him, riding 70 miles in 10 hours dressed as a man. She was apprehended in London, sentenced to death for horse-theft, but this was commuted to 7 years’ imprisonment in Ipswich Gaol after an appeal for clemency from the Cobbolds.

Feisty Outlaw, Controversial and Inspiring

In 1800 she escaped over a 22 foot wall using a linen line prop, but was caught. Laud was shot dead on a Suffolk beach. She was re-sentenced to hang, which was then commuted to transportation for life. So, in May 1801 she was sent to Australia on The Nile, where despite the hardships endured by prisoners in the colonies, worked in service, was pardoned and became a midwife and farmer. She died in 1819.

Within Suffolk and beyond she was a figure of controversy; her notoriety persists to this day. Her letters home from Australia provided unique insight into early colonization. It’s therefore unsurprising that she inspired literature. The first was The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl (1847) by Reverend Richard Cobbold, son of the woman Margaret had served. A facsimile edition was published in 1971.

Cobbold didn’t know Margaret himself, but her tale was part of folklore and his upbringing. He made a set of water colours to serve as illustrations, with annotations and comments explaining more of his text, which were not fully used and those that were, appeared only in black and white.

They remained lost for years, but emerged in the 2000s and were acquired by the Cobbold Family History Trust. In 2009, they were published with a much abbreviated text edited by Pip Wright, A Picture History of Margaret Catchpole. Wright explained: ‘What we have here is a rattling good tale’.

Richard Cobbold called his work a ‘romantic but perfectly true narrative’. He hoped that ‘an instructive lesson may be learned from it to many who may not yet have seen the necessity of early and religious instruction’. Cobbold, as Pip Wright explained: ‘somehow contrived to make her a paragon of virtue in spite of her crimes and criminal misjudgments’, calling her ‘the heroine of these pages’.

Artistic Licence

Cobbold was accurate in using her own words from her letters. Yet he was an embellisher, too. He made her 11 years younger, and implied that she was very pretty. He put her working in a female orphanage. In the end, he had her marrying a former suitor from Suffolk and producing three children. The truth is, as a 1811 letter confirmed: ‘I am not [married] and almost 50 years old, nor do I intend’.

This kind of playing with facts is almost a law of fiction, from novels to films and TV documentaries today. Cobbold, as the Rector of Wortham, near Diss, Norfolk, intended a cautionary tale, a warning to others. The use of criminal histories, regrets from courtroom docks, repentances on the gallows were widely used devices, as was the ‘fallen woman seduced by an evil man, later redeemed by religion and motherhood’.

Commentators agree with the BBC: ‘the “repackaging” of Margaret isn’t all that convincing. Cobbold tried to recast her as the “fallen woman”, but it is the spirited bits of her story – the horse-stealing and gaol-breaking, the riding bareback and disguising herself as a man – that stand out in the book’. She clearly was an extraordinary character who experienced an extraordinary life.

No wonder she continues to inspire controversy. The Cobbold family, still something of a dynasty rooted in Suffolk, acknowledge their part in her history. Margaret Catchpole Bowls Club in Ipswich was founded in 1948 on a green built in the former Rose Garden of Holywell House, home of the Cobbolds, next to the Margaret Catchpole pub.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography called her: ‘a warm, loving, intelligent woman of great integrity…. one of the few true convict chroniclers with an excellent memory and a gift for recording events’. The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole was a 1911 Australian movie.

In 2000 Eastern Angles Theatre Company created Margaret Catchpole, what Frank Cliff in the Eastern Daily Press called ‘mixing myth and reality through drama, music and dance to create a virtuous heroine, the victim of a criminal justice system that induced deference through fear’. The sequel, Margaret Down Under (2004) was described by Ben Sharratt in The Stage as: ‘an engaging mix of social comment with a barrel full of bawdiness. And the fact that Suffolk and its accent runs deep into the narrative only adds to the play’s appeal’.

Just like with Black Shuck, a myth, a legend, a story of some truths, a few records and the passage of time, together with fertile and creative imaginations, mean that the past goes on inspiring the present and the future. What Margaret Catchpole herself would have made of her life being dramatised is hard to say; but she may be due a Hollywood blockbuster makeover soon.

First published on Suite 101, 3 January 2011.

Photo: St Mary’s, Wortham, Richard Cobbold’s Church – Smb1001

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More Older People Should Be a Golden Opportunity for the UK

January 29th, 2012 | Add a Comment

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British Theatre Is Not The Sole Terrain of the Middle Class

January 26th, 2012 | 3 Comments

Royal National Theatre Subsidised Some Seats - David Samuel
The debate about British theatre accessibility is old, but actually misses the point. Performing arts cross all class barriers & genres to survive and grow.

A sketch in the 1960s’ British satirical TV series That Was The Week That Was, showed three comedians in height order, representing upper, middle and lower classes. The middle one looked up to the upper; down to the lower, who looked up to both. Some might argue little has changed, Britain, is still class-ridden. That class influences the arts in general and performance in particular, surprises few.

Typical Audience Profile

Mintel reported in October 2010 that British performing arts are the domain of the middle classes, despite schemes to make audiences more diverse. The National Theatre, among others, tried subsidised tickets for young people, but there is concern, confirmed by Mintel’s findings, that ‘the typical performing arts visitor is female, high-earning from the 45-54 age range’.

The pantomime profile is younger because it includes more children and takes 10% of total audience. Ballet, opera and more traditional mainstream plays tend to attract older audiences, but the most popular genre is musicals, attracting almost a quarter of all performance-goers from the 42% of British adults who attended some performing arts event last year.

Mintel divided the population into three groups: ‘Culture Vultures’ (regular visitors to a range of arts events), ‘Show People’ (who focus mainly on musicals) and ‘No-Gos’ (more men, youngest and oldest extremes and those from lower-earning households).

Politics of Performing Arts

In April 1997 during the General Election campaign, Peter Lathan wrote in the British Theatre Guide: ‘the arts will be low on the list of priorities of any government, no matter what its hue….they are a generally middle-class interest, but, unfortunately, an interest for the minority of the middle class. The arts don’t have enough political clout to attract any serious commitment from any party. They all pay lip-service to the arts but no party will ever make them a plank of their election platform’.

Lathan suggested that given a choice between 1p off basic income tax or £2 off a ticket to the local theatre, the average middle classer would opt for the tax cut. In the same way, he thought the working class would opt for more on pensions, local schools/hospitals or child benefit than to the arts.

His conclusion was that theatre and other arts welcomed people only on its own terms: ‘You fit in with us and with what we think is good.’ He cited the work of John McGrath’s ‘7:84’ Scottish theatre group (named after the statistic that 7% of the population own 84% of the wealth), as set out in his book A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre, Audience, Class and Form (1997).

McGrath believed passionately that a working class audience for British theatre making demands and upholding values was no different from how middle class audiences enshrined their beliefs. He wanted working class values and traditions to build a thriving theatre-culture, rooted in working class experience ‘shorn of middle class word play’.

He argued that making theatre is a political act. An audience goes into a space and other people exert power over them to make choices with political implications about which story to tell and how to tell it. The ‘theatre establishment’ is essentially middle class, so voices, concerns and stories will be for and by them. In business-sponsored theatrical environments, there is little place for working class oriented theatre.

In The Guardian Blog (Feb 2010), Lyn Gardner asked: ‘Why is British theatre still in thrall to Oxbridge?’ She felt that with graduates of elite universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Manchester) occupying so many British top spots in politics, law, business and the arts, poor theatre diversity was a worsening problem. She argued that ‘connection’ was still vital in the small world of theatre directing and managing. Universities, like the ‘right’ schools, form natural networks enabling certain people to get on.

She included ethnic minorities as being under represented in ‘white, middle class’ British theatre. Despite social engineering of the past twenty years and more disadvantaged youngsters attending universities, Gardner said 43% of Oxbridge places go to those educated in the private sector.

Her main concern was that with networking so vital in early stages of careers for internships, job openings and opportunities, but economic constraints of recession, austerity and refocussing of public spending, theatre culture will increasingly be dominated by those from particular backgrounds.

Funding Is Major Issue

Arts Council budget reductions, reflected in all areas of public service, will impact all subsidised arts, just when corporate finance is also being redirected, where it hasn’t dwindled away altogether. Despite this, the performing arts industry has blossomed with tourism growing, more people staying in the UK for holidays, the mushrooming of talent-showcasing TV, advances in technology and the fusion of dance, drama and music art forms.

In 2010 the industry earned about £2 billion a year (up over 20% in five years) and was a major job creator, directly and indirectly. Most visitors buy refreshments, programmes and merchandising. DVDs, CDs, concerts and tours generate further business. Whether it will or should be free-standing without public subsidy is still an open question.

Theatre is an extremely broad church. While accepting the arguments about dangers of over middle classing the culture, is it true that most is middle class? The majority of playwrights and directors alive or recently dead (Pinter, Hare, Brenton, Eyre) are left-wing in outlook, even if with some element of middle class ethos in their lives.

Additionally, don’t musicals and pantomimes include all classes? Aren’t football and other big league sports, pure theatre, enjoyed by those who love spectacle? Doesn’t stand-up comedy target all classes? Isn’t circus classless entertainment? Indeed, circus, panto and Punch & Judy are traceable from origins in commedia dell’Arte, a fully classless art form. Isn’t most street theatre and political performance in general pushing at the boundaries of class rigidity to bring about change?

The continuing obsession in the second decade of the 21st century, with the 1960s, shows how the performing arts actually cross boundaries. Those who watched the revival of the rock musical Hair in London in 2010 may have indulged in sentimental nostalgia, but also realised that war, for example, cuts across all ages, all classes, all communities. Theatre both reflects and articulates that.

First published on Suite 101, 30th December 2010.

Photo: Royal National Theatre Subsidised Some Seats – David Samuel

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