The Re-Markings, 2 (Lovely Lewisham).

Sunday 26th July. 11am. Pip (my partner), May (our dog) and I, descend the slope of Sydenham Wells Park to find Dan enjoying the morning sunshine. Sandy and Fran, who live quite locally, bounce up. Then Ian Mac with his bike - once a ‘participant’ now a jobbing actor. Then friend of the company and local Twitterist Jane and her husband, another ‘participant’ (I prefer non-vocational artist/actor, but that’s a bit of a mouthful) Eammon. Down the slope comes Simon Startin who has written many of the scripts for shows that graced this park. A good group.

I want to re-visit the stream-side site we always used but on arriving we find the largish playing space - where Sirens of Titan bounced on space hoppers and the rattle stealing crow from Alice was simulated by a huge sheet being passed over the audience - from back to front (please enjoy Saul’s rendering of the moment below)

But this  largish, useful and lovely playing space now has what looks like a sizeable Christmas tree in the middle of it.

This is quite common in my experience - a number of clearings or greens where scenes were once played have since gained flower beds or saplings - and in my more paranoid moments I do wonder if this is a deliberated action to stamp out outdoor theatre. 

Through the stinging nettles of the nature reserve we go - am I the only one sporting shorts? And down to the wonderful weeping willows, just as Jane Nash and Dan (the second), find us - and Amanda scampers across from the playground where her two children whose father she first met at the Bubble Adult Group - are demanding her attention.

These willows spread their branches wide and drop a curtain of leaves around us, as they have actors and audiences before. 

Reflecting that last week’s walk might have felt a bit weird to the walkers, I’ve prepared a few words and a few bits of pieces to share along the way. Under the willows I read the following.

A word on the intention behind the Re-Markings

We’re re-visiting.

They say you should never go back.

But these walks are a deliberate disobeying of that advice.

The park shows and pantomimes drew an audience of all ages.

In the parks and woods the story took them on a journey.

And the walk, the promenade, emphasised that story.

Physicalised, imprinted, (weathered-in) the story.

It was strong.

Silly and seasonal and serious and skilful.

An egg running away into the distance

A dog sniffing a Gilgamesh

Mechanicals clogging

Cup cakes dancing

Bishops protesting

All witnessed by children, elders, babies, dogs, stragglers, sprinters.

Lit trees.

Wrapped trees.

Beautiful trees.

Maybe music.

Children leaning in.

Actors in flow.

If that theatre is unusual now, we must leave examples and tips, and hope it will be made again.

So this walk - these walks - are partly a tribute, a thank-you, to the writers, actors, designers, technicians, administrators, makers, funders and audience members who made that theatre. Thank you.

But

they are also intended to leave a sign

(In the hope that others might gather the generations)

To awaken images

(In the hope that other might play)

So please help me amplify reverberations.

Help me scratch and scour some markings. 

And on we go. 

This is the Lewisham Re-Marking. This is my home borough - the place we live and which has nurtured us and our two sons. The younger one - Sam, now a small child of 26 - arrives now, with partner Lukas. Sam - and his brother, Wilf - grew up with the company. They had the fortune to attend rehearsals, to watch the craft of wonderful actors, to participate and more recently to work with the Bubble as artists in their own right. These walks are for them, and Pip, too. 

The Bubble is based in neighbouring Southwark but has worked in many Lewisham venues animating at least twelve of the boroughs outdoor spaces. We won’t mark all of them but if we get a wiggle on we can visit at least eight. 

Through Sydenham woods we go. Stopping for Fran to tell us about the rare Corky-fruited-water-dropwort - a species she and other volunteers helped to save for Sydenham. Then on to the Horniman Museum Gardens where we are joined by Sophie Russel (aka Richard the third) and her husband Dennis, Charters of the Mayflower Keitha and Jane and people take on coffee and pastries and enormous burgers from the Sunday morning market - there isn’t time for this!

I take the group to an out of the way patch at the bottom of a quite severe incline and talk about slopes and wheels. Slopes because they allow better vantage points for audiences. Wheels because in promenade getting scenery and kit around the park places a good wheel at a premium. The problem is wheels and slopes don’t always go together happily. 

So stories of near misses - Titania’s bed/bower on wheels running on hyper-active fairy power, only just stopping short of the audience. The Morris van at the end of the Crock of Gold, piloted by Rachel ‘I’ve just passed my driving test’ Essex, would it start? Would it stop? But chiefly images of Mojisola Abebayo’s Oberon mixing a potion on the arched belly of Jan Knightley’s Puck - with a stream of water from his mouth supplied when she twisted his ear. For the Dream is actually the only show we played in Horniman Gardens. 

So onwards… to Dulwich Park - where Rachel ‘I passed my driving test over 15 years ago now’ Essex is waiting for us, and we will meet up with Charlotte Medcalfe - actor, musician, gardener, who lives locally and has just received a text that we are walking her manor.

In Dulwich we talk about bushes and I read a show report from Metamorphoses in which Nao Ngai has detailed the destruction wrought by a fox and the disturbance of a lone clapper, defined by Nao as ‘a person who claps when no one is clapping’. Amusing I think. Sophie and Rachel interject and give the actors side - working in costumes that have been wee’d on by a fox is not pleasant, turning your ankle running from scene to scene is not pleasant. The lack of sympathy I had shown when Sophie did this and I joked ‘are we going to have to shoot you’ wasn’t amusing. Like all directors I’d remembering the images, the moments, the impressive bodywork of a show - not the engine under the bonnet, the sweat, the risks taken by actors and crew. 

We walk the mile or so to the Ivy House at the top of Peckham Rye. After a couple of cold drinks we set off over the railway tracks and climbing to Hilly Fields - more slopes up at the top of which we find Lucy B and her mum, waiting patiently. They escort us down to Ladywell Fields. People peel off - we’ve been walking in the hot sun for the best part of five hours. But this is good, this is draining some of the past from my stomach and legs, treading the aches and the images into the pavements and paths. 

There are just the three of us left. Sandy, Fran and I, who walk more slowly alongside the Ravensbourne River which was released from cement banks back in 2008 and allowed to snake across the park creating a flood plain and access to the water.

When the restoration was completed Bubble were commissioned to celebrate the river and, working with local artists, we created a sort of park-walk-performance-experience. Rivers and People is one of my favourite projects - children at the beginning playing in pyjamas and dressing gowns, elders at the end sitting silently in pyjamas and larger dressing gowns. In between flocks of paper-reading commuters, formation dog walking, film of park users projected on to the railway arches, chandeliers made from discarded plastic bottles twinkling in trees, soundscapes of beetles, a roller-blading dragon, librarians perched in trees dressed as victorian writers, quoits of books and a storyteller sharing the long lost legend of the Ladywell Naiad. 

At the start audience members had been invited to jot down a wish, bottle it and launch the bottle into the river. Downstream they spotted the Naiad herself - sitting on the river, reading the wishes made by the audience. Maureen - muttering to herself, reading and throwing away the requests. 

But here I go again, remembering the external image. 

It was only later that Maureen - in her 70’s then - had told me that her feet, dangling in the celebrated river as the September night fell, had virtually frozen.