Monday 21 September 2020

The Re-Markings, 4 (Dodgy Southwark).

Southwark is the home of Bubble. Over the years we have drenched the borough in theatre. My list shows 16 places where we have made significant performance pieces - and that’s before we get round to the schools, the sheltered housing units, the youth settings and the businesses. Yep, drenched is the right word. Has it made a difference? That’s for another day.


We’re going to visit 8 of those venues and along the way I want to big up the practitioners whose ideas we nicked. And it’s just as well we’re just doing the eight, as this particular 9.5 miles will be undertaken on what is officially ‘London’s hottest day on record’. It gets to 37.8 degree Centigrade - which is a neat 100 degrees Fahrenheit - well that was actually measured at Heathrow. But believe me when we gather at The Scoop, even though we’re beside the cooling waters of the Thames, it’s frigging toasty. 


We gather at 3pm. According to the records, at ten to three it was a mere 37C (with a 15 mph wind and a visibility of 16 km, so what are we complaining about?) Dan is waiting - he has a hat today, very sensible. Some arrivers are expected - my son Wilf, the chair of trustees Simon H, councillor Damian, Dame of the parish Simon T, choreographer/quizzist Maggie, participant Ken - who clearly can’t get enough of this, and Pip. But two are unexpected - Martin, who started with Bubble as a young theatre maker but has been a company member for the last few intergen shows. Then a strange man in beard, baseball hat and sunglasses, who I do not recognise… until… of course. Andy Serkis - actor, saxophonist, Gollum and now motion capture guru/big cheese director. I am touched - Andy and my (and Pip’s) working relationship goes back to about 1986 - when he was just out of uni and I was cutting my directorial teeth in Lancaster. He worked with Bubble in the tent, in a good production of Threepenny Opera back in 1990. It’s great to have him along - that’s until I ask him to get behind a camera - but more of that later. 


The Scoop was the site of the Bubble pancake race - notorious, dangerous, cold and wet (sometimes), hated by (most) staff, loved by participants, a bit ridiculous. An annual event of egg finding, flour gathering and pancake tossing which brought a bit of messiness to this semi-public, privatised space. It was also the site of Forty Walls and Ten Doors - a community piece which filled the Scoop with people and moving walls. 


We head for Bermondsey - along the river with Mr Hughes taking short cuts and dropping in bits of local history. We dodge through estates and across the squares of South London. It’s hot. Is that a London plane or a cactus I see through the heat haze? 



We arrive at Kintore Way and sit on the grass across from Kintore nursery. I want to talk about Vivian Gussin Paley as it was in the reception here class, that I first properly tried out her story gathering, story enactment technique. Vivan is a hero of mine. She brought simple theatre making into a kindergarten setting in Chicago, reflected on and recorded what she was doing, then wrote beautifully and succinctly about the serious business of children’s play. I was lucky to visit and observe her working, then to adapt one of her books for the stage. I was also fortunate to meet some the children at Kintore. 

There are two I remember. A girl who wouldn’t take up the offer to tell a story - and who the teachers believed didn’t speak English. And a boy who did accept the challenge. In week 1 his story was ‘my brother and I watch TV’. That was it. Week 2, when I asked him if he wanted to develop his story he extended it to ‘my brother and I watch a cop show on the tv’. Week 3 he took no prompting - ‘my brother and I watch a cop show on the tv and the baddies come out of the tv and chase us’. OK, that’s interesting. But  in week 4 ‘my brother and I watch a cop show on the tv and the baddies come out of the tv and chase us and we chase them back into the tv and fight them’.  


While the boy was playing with concepts of narrative a la Vonnegut/Beckett, the girl was building up to opening her story telling account. When she did start she told a beautiful extended story, (in English) about her grandmother, a swimming pool and the gobblers (aka sharks). 


As we sat on the scorched grass and vultures circled above, I explained Bubble sort of had a Grandmother - Vivian, and a Grandfather, who I would talk about later. I read from a letter Vivian had sent, then we set off for the Biscuit Factory and Southwark College to remember custard cream making (From Docks to Desktops) and then foraging for testimony about schools deploying a little kit of smells and textures to prompt (Primary).  


These and our next two stops - Dilston Grove and the Swedish Church were all animated by projects researched and performed by intergenerational teams of (mainly) Southwark residents. Artfully designed by Pip and skillfully scripted by Simon Startin, these were prime examples of what I call Vernacular Theatre - made from local materials, by local people, for local purpose.


At the Swedish Church I pass round a picture of Len Hatch - ex Docker, contributor, critic and the inspiration for from Docks to Desktops. We read from the play - it’s a piece taken from an interviews with Barry Albyn, undertaker. 


‘When I was a kid and I walked along Tanner Street, all I could smell was the hide, the leather. As I walked up Bermondsey Street there were other smells, because you had where they made mink, which were quite vile smells, then you walked further up and you had the perfume factory. Then you’d get to Pearce Duff’s and you had the custard stewing, you know. Then you’d get to the Blue and have Edwards or Spa bakery with that lovely bread smell, then you’d get to where the biscuits were being baked, coconut on a Thursday, Bournville on a Friday, you know. So everything in this area is summed up with smells. There are new smells now. There’s the Mogul I can smell, with the lovely spices as you go past. There is the Turkish bakery at the back of the shop opposite. The smells are still there. The smells are just different. And the people are just different’. 


Arriving at Canada Water square we step over the bleached bones of commuters who have succumbed to dehydration and are joined by Marigold - producer and maker of intergenerational projects, Lucy Bradshaw - Bubble’s senior co-ordinator and intergen performer and Marva - who not only has been a stalwart of almost all of our pantomimes but appeared, with her daughter, Georgia in a project performed here, in this very square. 


A bespoke piece inspired by the water fowl on the lake to one side and the tube and bus station on the other. Made for the expansive square with about 90 performers, a live music score, Wellington boots and a lot of plastic rain ponchos. 


On we go - across the lovely Russia Docks Woodland, where I announce ‘Bubble did precisely nothing’ - but no, someone corrects mem we did a bugs and slugs project here. There’s a lovely rolling conversation going on now, artists, friends, family talking about what happened, what is happening now, what might happen soon, it’s getting slightly cooler. A camel train lopes past, merchants with silks, perfumes, spices. Aromas of the desert are carried on the mistral. 


Then I get us lost - the only time on the Re-Markings so far. But on this long hot walk it really isn’t the time to add another half mile to the itinerary, but I do. 


Finally we locate the Pump House. This is where the ‘Grandfather’, Augusto Boal comes into the picture. He came to Bubble back in the early 1990’s to teach and talk about his practice of Forum Theatre - one of his Theatre of the Oppressed techniques. Andy, Simon Thomson and I all attended those early workshops some of which took place here. The learning impacted on all three of us and informed the work we have made since. There’s a short passage I want to share from one of Boal’s books…


‘The theatrical profession, which belongs to a few, should not hide the existence and permanence of the theatrical vocation, which belongs to all. Theatre is a vocation for all human beings: it is the true nature of humanity’.


It’s time for a team photograph. Luckily we have an Oscar winning film-maker in our midst so I entrust Mr Serkis with the task. Unfortunately it seems he was suffering from heat exhaustion and his sweaty finger slipped on the focus button. 



Several pounds lighter we drag ourselves along the riverside path to our final destination. Cath is there to meet us very sorry that she was unable to partake in the hike but she has many many good reasons. 


While The Ship has never been a Bubble performance venue it has played an important part in the story. The pub sits opposite Bubble HQ. When I arrived in 1989 it was known as the office and too much time was spent there solving the problems of the current project and discussing the the ways of the world. Times and licensees changed but it is still the go-to place for after work wound-licking/plot-making/sorrow-drowning and re-marking marking.

It’s an appropriate terminus. Today - the 31st July 2020 - is contractually my last day as Creative Director with London Bubble. But as we sit there slaking our thirst and resting our aching limbs that slips my mind.

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