A report on the inaugural Not Television festival at Chelsea Theatre, a weekend of shows involving collaboration between performers and audience members and the special atmosphere that resulted
The Not Television Festival – this weekend!
The Not Television Festival is almost upon us! It doesn’t seem long ago that I was chatting to Francis Alexander, the artistic director of Chelsea Theatre, about the spirit of engagement that underpins Come With Me If You Want To Live, the cabaret night we’ve put on at the theatre twice now. Why couldn’t we […]
Introducing the Not Television Festival!
One of the joys of doing a blog is that you get to celebrate the things you like just cos you like them. Since Not Television launched at the end of 2013, I’ve had the chance to do a bit of that in real life too, programming some of the acts I admire at Come […]
Come With Me (again), blogs about cabaret for Exeunt and WhatsOnStage, a QX Q&A
This Friday it’s the second edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m producing and presenting for Chelsea Theatre. The last one was a belter – we had to turn people away! – and this one should be every bit as good. By way of plugging it, I’ve […]
The dog ate my homework
It’s been more than a month since I lasted posted on here. This ends now! Not that I’ve been idle. Over the past month or two, I’ve been keeping BURN‘s monthly residency at Hackney Attic going (that’s the platform for moving-image work by cabaret artists I started in 2010), and doing a one-off mini-BURN […]
The Anxiety Box speaks!
Last night was the first edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m putting on for Chelsea Theatre. I was really chuffed at how it all went: there was an incredible pop-up exhibition of David Hoyle’s paintings, with guided tour; cheeky vegetable sculptures by Rachel Porter; typically brilliant lip-synchery […]
This machine kills anxiety: cabaret vs late capitalism
As you’ll have noticed, there’s a good bit of anxiety around these days. I’ve got loads. You probably have too. I’m anxious about global things, like geopolitical instability and climate change; societal things, like employment prospects and dodgy urban planning; and personal things, like having a substandard body and shortchanging important relationships. Most people, […]
A bit of a whirl
Dear me, it’s been way too long since I was on here. I know it’s a cliché about blogs that you start enthusiastically and then let them tail off, and in that respect I seem to have become a cliché pretty quickly. My excuse for such negligence is that I’ve been doing lots of other […]
Come With Me If You Want To Live
Excitement! I’m producing and presenting a new quarterly cabaret night for Chelsea Theatre, starting on April 11! The event link is here. We’ve made a press release so I’m just going to paste it in here and let it speak for itself. Oh, also thanks to Adrian Kinloch for the amazing background photo (which will be […]
