The Yellow Show Q & A
I always try to take a DIY approach towards everything I do, whether it is putting up a shelf, riding a bike or making love. So with that in mind I decided to interview myself for Apples and Snakes about my first solo Poetry/Comedy show The Yellow Show.
Q. Why didn’t you do a show about purple? The Purple Show. That could have worked.
A. Well I don’t really have any feelings towards purple. I quite like Donatello from Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, but that isn’t enough to write a show around.
Q. They wrote loads of shows around Donatello, haven’t you seen Turtles?
A. Yes I have seen Turtles.
Q. No not those ones. Anyway, when you were writing the Yellow Show were there things that you wanted to put in that weren’t yellow that you wished were yellow so you could put them in? Like Killer Whales?
A. Wow yes I love Killer Whales. Yes if Killer Whales were yellow they would have been quite heavily involved in the show. A yellow killer whale would be quite something wouldn’t it? Better than a yellow blue whale.
Q. A green whale?
A. No
Q. What influenced you to write a show about Yellow?
A. I was at a music festival and on the Sunday morning I went to a happiness workshop. There was a guy stood up at the front telling everybody who was sitting on the floor how to be happy. One of the techniques he spoke about was to wear brightly coloured clothing. I was sat there in my yellow coat and I was really hungover and miserable and as he explained his theory people began to look round at me as if to say “Well look at him he’s wearing a yellow coat and he doesn’t look very happy at all.” As more people turned around the guy got more and more annoyed and I was asked to leave as I was sabotaging his lecture. That made me realise that when I wore my yellow coat I felt ever so slightly happier. Not massively, but enough for me to notice it. I began to think, if wearing a yellow coat can cheer me up a bit, imagine how happy I could get if I wrote a whole show about the colour yellow and did it for a month in a cave in Edinburgh (Fringe Festival).
I started to look around for yellow things in the world and realised just how many there are. I would walk around pound shops and things would jump out at me. The more yellow things I bought the better my bedroom got. I think if you are going to spend a lot of time and energy doing something it has to be something you feel passionate about. I feel passionate about the colour yellow but more importantly it means something real to me. If I was doing a show about ghosts, I couldn’t do it because I have never seen one but I have seen the colour yellow loads. I believe in it.
Q. If you like yellow so much why don’t you wear yellow trousers and a yellow hat and paint your face yellow and live in a yellow house and have a yellow bed?
A. When it comes to yellow there is a definite line and I am determined not to cross it.
Q. If yellow became extinct do you think people would care?
A. You mean if all things that were yellow faded to black or brown or something?
Q. Yes
A. It depends on how long it would take for stuff to fade. If it was over say a fifty year period and all things that were yellow went brown like slow bananas then I don’t know if people would notice because they wouldn’t be able to remember what yellow was. They couldn’t look at photographs of yellow things because the yellow in the photographs and all the yellow memories would have faded to brown too.
A. I would.
Q. What are you going to do when the yellow has faded to brown?
A. I am going to do a show about the sky.
Q. The sky with the brown sun? If the sun was brown do you think it would make people yellow tan instead of brown?
A. Yes I guess so.
You can catch Rob at The Gallery Cafe, Tuesday 28 May, 7.30pm. stmargaretshouse.org.uk/gallery-cafe #yellowshow
indsencha’ is an ancient Irish term which relates to ‘Lore of place’, and refers to a body of early Irish poems and stories that explain place names and the mythologies of specific sites within the landscape. Taking this traditional bardic concept, poet Bob Beagrie and composer S.J. Forth created a collection of experimental, contemporary poems, all with musical accompaniment / sound effects which explores a sense of place, identity, visionary interpretations of specific locations – their historical and mythical resonances and the factors that impact upon a sense of self.
It was also very useful to be able to contextualise some of the poems relating to their inspiration and aims, and to reflect upon the different ways of collaborative working we have engaged in while producing the album. Initially we found it quite difficult to establish a tone of conversation and discussion between the tracks, and it felt somewhat unnatural and forced, though as we worked on it we felt that we tuned in to a more casual and conversational mode of introduction and discussion of the work. On the whole it was a very interesting and valuable challenge and both myself and S.J. Forth felt that we had learned a great deal from the process.
March saw the final day of the emerging artists’ workshops, which culminated in a rehearsed reading of all the new work generated by the artists involved. New Writing South were again our hosts for the day, and the event was truly inspiring. Chris Elwell, Director of Half Moon, was on hand to input to performance, and Pete and Daniela from Apples were there to video proceedings and input to discussion on taking work forward. Everyone presented great new work, which they will hopefully take forward into other settings.
Given eight artists with ten minutes each, the show was a big ask for the children in the audience, and much longer than the average performance for the age group. However, in an informal feedback session afterwards with Nicky from Apples and Snakes, the children attending generally gave the show a 7-and-upwards out of 10, which is a fantastic result, especially considering most of the artists hadn’t written for children before.
On 9th March I arrived at The Writers Place, New Writing South in Brighton, just in time to wait in the porch way for fear of disturbing Sophie Rose rehearsing her piece, and listening to it, I realised how much work the poets had put into their poems since I had heard the bones of the poems the previous week.
On Saturday 2nd March, the One Way Ticket poets – Azfa Ali, Deborah Stephenson, Michael Vidon, Katerina Quinn, Joshua Seigal, Sophie Rose, Lorianne Tika-Lemba and Jenn Hart, plus the project leader Rosemary Harris – had been in Southampton at the Nuffield Theatre for workshops and to share the half-formed pieces they were intending to present at the showcase the following week. These proto-poems were given their first airing for peer review. Everyone had managed to approach the theme of child migration from a different angle, making for varied, layered, colourful and moving pieces. Some called on personal or family experiences, whilst others put themselves into the minds and families of those who experienced the deportations. It’s a testament to Rosie’s experience at structuring workshops and to the openness of the poets, that feedback was given and taken in good faith and good heart.
On the 9th March, the group gathered in Brighton in order to share their work with the public, but first there were more exercises, tweaks and feedback. Rosie put everyone through their paces and Chris Ewell from Half Moon children’s Theatre offered his expert feedback on the run-through whilst I filmed each poet talking about the project for feedback. What struck me during the afternoon, as well as the raise in quality of the work, was the closeness of the group. The past 4 workshops had really drawn everyone together and they all cared about each other’s poems and shared personal experiences and tips and tricks for performance. As time drew closer for the showcase itself in front of … gasp! … a real audience, nerves were beginning to show and words of reassurance were shared, as, to be honest, no-one needed to be concerned about how they would perform.
Each poet had raised their game since the previous week’s workshop. The poems had been chopped and changed and honed and polished and wrestled into shape and then memorised as much as possible so that each poet could gave as good an account of themselves as possible. There were a few youngsters in the audience, who initially bore the focus of the audience participation sections of the poems until the rest of the audience were drawn in and became involved.
The ways of approaching the difficult subject of the project, child migration, were very inventive – Michaël introduced us to his family tree via the letter ë in his name, which transformed into a roving snail; Azfa shared an allegorical tale of a tortoise rebuilding its shell after it had been blown apart; Katerina became her younger self in a family who relocated to Zambia when she was a child; Sophie created a family expecting the return of a long-lost uncle who was deported in the 50’s; Lorianne explored the idea of not fitting in and how she shared her insecurities with her childhood friend – a doll; Joshua used a piece of string to help him begin to explore a family history he didn’t know he had; Jenn imagined herself being a child in a Centre For Asylum seekers , waiting for someone to claim her and Deborah introduced us to some of the harsh conditions the deported children experienced once they were in Australia.
After the show there was a great deal of chatting and hugging and congratulating amongst the poets and the buzzy atmosphere continued as we made our way to a café/bar for a winding-down drink and something to eat. Gradually everyone reluctantly drifted off, still chattering about poetry, performance and politics. There may even have been a couple of tears!
The Writing Room continues with Mark Grist and Mixy (AKA Dead Poets) 
It’s here! She’s here! It’s the big one!! Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze heads up a classy playlist at Radikal Words, 
In March we witnessed the birth of 8 new poetic pieces aimed at 8-11 year old audiences from emerging artists, as the One Way Ticket workshops lead by Rosie Harris came to fruition in Brighton. There was also a special event in Totton where Jonny Fluffypunk lead proceedings as the Headway Biscuit Poets presented their hard-bitten (see what I did?) words to a wrapt audience as part of a fundraising showcase. Voices were raised (in a good way) in Canterbury as Patience Agbabi shared her performing poetry wisdom to a full workshop, all of whom have promised to show their faces with their new-found skills at an event near you soon (possibly).
Greetings fine fellow wordsmiths and word lovers. April is a month of contemplation for Apples and Snakes SW, with preparations well under way for a busy summer – though we do have The Rememberers coming to Arnolfini 
Apples and Snakes have been working working with Writers’ Centre Norwich to develop Slam in a Box: two slam poets, Molly Naylor and Andy Bennett, spent two days with students from Caister High, giving them the skills, knowledge and tools to compose, workshop and read aloud their own poems and run their own after school slam poetry club. Check out the result in the video below!
The young poets are off on a trip round the city and its the organisers that are spending time getting to know whose who and hearing what each other are doing in their cities. There is clearly lots of common ground, regardless of programme structure or which city it takes place in. There is absolute commitment, integrity and passion from all those doing this work, they all speak about wanting to give a space for young people to be able to truly say what they think and feel. They are a dedicated and inspiring group of people, rooted in their communities and who really want to make things happen. As much as its important for the young people from other cities to meet, its also important that the organisers get to come together and build this network – and it feels good that we are involved in these conversations.
Excited, I arrive in Chicago for the first time to see Louder than a Bomb, the city’s youth slam competition now in its 13th year run by Young Chicago Authors. Disappointingly the windy city is surprisingly un-windy, although there is snow! A quick check into the hotel and I’m heading off to the Cultural Center with Jacob Sam-La Rose to see what’s going down – we’re interested in seeing how the youth poetry scene is here and what the similarities are with our scene, particularly following Shake the Dust last year.