is this the start of a new movement.

The events,protests,revolutions coming out of the middle east over the past weeks throws light on the possibilities of people power in our own country.These rebellions taking place in other countries should be a warning to the "democracies" of Western dominated capitalism .I don't fully hold with the argument perpetuated by the West,that thus out pouring of peoples power in about a shift towards democracy.Rather these rebellions,are about fundamental rights to work,education.and equality. If anything they are represent the first stirrings of a fight back against the all powerful greed of the ruling elite.
Suddenly people are not only not afraid of the murderous dictators who have been ruling over them,with the backing of Western Democracies,but they are pulling into focus the role of unelected banks and their off shots in dictating how countries and by implication societies should operate.Out of nowhere people have said enough!!Get out!!
The banks and their greed may find the new order will not play by the rules of the old order.
At last people are fighting back.
In this country,which always talks above its weight,we have an unelected Conservative Coalition who have embarked on the dismantling of society in order to implement the discredited values of the free market. The Trade Union Movement is out dated.A once proud ideal is floundering in the past.Its the young,the students, creative minds who are showing how to launch a fight back against the arrogant greed which for so long as been destroying the moral and social fabric of our culture and society.
But the media is almost silent.It sets a right wing agenda then the PM follows.
The kingdom never voted for this onslaught.We have a Gov making up laws on a daily basis,laws which to all intents a purpose appease the city,there by appeasing the banks and there by appeasing there weak but inflated egos.
Its the young who have taken it upon themselves to show what and how greed as corrupted this kingdom.Everything feels old and cruel but the young are leading the way foreword.
Like the whirlwind sweeping through parts of the world we need to embrace that dynamic energy and may bury the outdated notions of democracy into the dustbin where it belongs.

a tired mind

Its always the same this time of year,every year its the same,year after year after year I always forget how this season of slow change creeps into my spirits, this is the season of slow rebirth and all the while the Banks stand supreme in their utter contempt for humanity, the whole system is more akin to a cult, something tells me we have been living under some crazy religion, some hysterical idea based on one over riding principle, greed, we have been conned by the oldest con in history,greed,when I walk around I smell greed,what does greed smell like, it smells raw, where is culture in all this/ where is Art in all this/ something is wrong we are losing the will to fight back,art is stagnant/its there and not there/like losing confidence it drags you into a series of misguided criticism of the self/ something is wrong/all the artists have discovered the life of the mortgage/like all of us they sold out to the advertising men and women/we conned ourselves and the seasons are chaging/and still the streets hum with hum.

been away again

How long now two weeks? Been a while and society is moving in some strange patterns,leaving traces of the past behind whilst culture is heading so far back its difficult trying to capture what we are losing. Some time ago myself and my generation bemoaned the fantasy that the young were not as politically engaged as my own/our generation was.Well that as proved to be a stupid and arrogant assessment. Today the young are leading a fight back against one of the most rotten and weird Government's this country as had to confront in its recent history.We never voted for this arrogance. But at least Class is back on the agenda. More on at a latter date.
Strange ideas emerge from the sleep of the cultural industries. Like a dream coming into life,out of place yet with all the venom of a vipers bite the actuality of aspects of the "industry" is showing signs of fear.The young are not all addicted to becoming instant sickos on a production line entertainment factory,they don't go round blasting themselves out of existence,they don't all live in hopeless apathy declining into states of mental retardation, they don't all rob each other and they are not all wasted out on cheap booze and crazy drugs. They are holding the adult world to account.They haven't yet declared war on their elders,bot something is shifting, the culture world which lived on a false high and false sense of its own fantasy is confronting some kind of anger,some kind of irrational exploration,some kind of self discovery, something out of nowhere is blasting away at all those unsafe foundations put in place by out of touch seekers after self. For to long the conservatives who have colonised the expression and the identify of culture under the guise of "arts" have been able to cloak themselves in a shield of invisibility.
A sense of self deception is now being exposed and what is coming out from the shadows of delusions and fear is a kind of authoritarian absurdity.
I have been speaking to some young people recently about their ideas and need to quest after a self identify away from the recent past. Language and the realty of their culture existence plays a role in uncovering tensions which young people need to confront and hit out at. Language is a way into power, it is also a means of underarming power. young people will always develop codes and signifiers which hold at arms length the suffocating embrace of adults who need to control.
Power resides in language,language is our means of holding onto each other, it is some kind of entrance into a world we know and feel part of,even though we can exclude other people and communities. Language is power no matter who resides over and within that power.
When a small elite start to colonise another person,another group and start to dictate the direction of language we enter the realm of power elites.Authoritarian attitudes dominate the cultural industries.Young people are only welcomed into the embrace of the inner sanctum if and when they are deemed to have conformed to a secret set of unwritten codes.
One such code is don't upset the media.
This was brought home to me the other day when I was informed that a small one off play was criticised by a group of adults who disapproved of some language in some context in some scene.
Theatre should be concerned with the exploration of ideas,first and foremost theatre must be a laboratory of improvisation and challange. If it doesent upset it doesent work. if itdoesent challange and move ones senses it doesent work, if theatre is a comfort zone for preconcieved ideas its enterd the dead zone.
Most theatre is now safe in the grayness of the dead zone.
Its good to be back...

touched by fire..hospitality

Hospitality,a strange example to bring into the history of Oval House,more so when I'm talking about "resistance". What part did hospitality play in Oval House. It played a pivotal role in the development and concept within which we worked. Making individuals and groups fill welcome formed part of that elusive idea "community" of ideas. How did people felt when they entered the building was of paramount importance. A community of interest embraces diversity and invites an idea of acceptance, not just of the environment, but importantly, it challenges the concept of authority,it welcomes change whilst excepting the problematics engaged in change.We the workers, where placed in a position of being constantly evaluated.We raised expectations within a highly charged creative atmosphere. Hospitality invited conflict of exceptions.People gained a confidence to explore and question. We created a melting pot, boiling atmosphere,which could become explosive and chaotic. We worked in explosive times.
It was a small group of pioneer thinkers who opened the doors to the emerging struggle of Gay politics.I became a target from some groups who felt they had a foothold and position of influence in the direction of the club. Yes CLUB,we were a club first and foremost. The theatre formed part of a creative whole.In fact my concept at the time was to challenge the idea of "the script"and the role of directer.
When I invited Gay Sweatshop into Oval House I understood the challenge coming into the club.
The homophobic backlash took me by surprise, it was a fear which came from a small minority of white liberal groups and the hate they directed at me which I found shocking at that moment,It was the friendship and courage of Judy Knight AND Roz Price,plus the always supportive Pete Freer who helped me through this period of personal abuse.Hospitality is a difficult ideology to hang on to.
The arrival of sexual politics into the melting added fire to the brew.
A whole new political dimension was exploding onto the creative sensibility. Something nasty was coming our way and I still believe we under estimated the share vindictiveness of what we would experience. Not only was creativity under threat but more importantly the whole notion of community,community educational,community identity,community structure where about to be turned upside down.This is what we felt.WE miss under stood the full awfulness of the onslaught.But, luckily some of us had a history of political and community activitasism.We could fall back on the positive aspects of 60s radical idealism.Also we had established ourselves within the local community.Our programming insured we placed a huge importance on community involvement.Oval ran Christmas "kids shows" "Easter kids shows" and a full blown summer programme which embraced the local eastes and playgrounds.
We believed in the idealism of creative play,the ideas of construct and destruct and the right to fail. Play was embedded in the DNA of Oval House.From the days of Pete and Joan Oliver,right through to the mid 90s.Play and hospitality embraced that urge to challenge authority.Part of our weekend workshop programme insured we kept the anarchic elements of play alive and kicking by developing a highly successful Circus School long before such a concept took hold.
We always led the field in exploration and never saw the need to boast.Our ideas stemmed from our membership,it was there ideas and sense of challenge which kept the momentum flowing.
I have already said Oval House was, in those days,never a theatre.it was a universal home for the imagination.We where known nationally and internationally for what we where. The theatre formed part of a greater whole. And it was this greater whole which helped develop the idealism and radicalism in an age of political attack from a rampant right.
We also ran a dynamic youth educational programme, every thing was integrated in a flexible boldness.Our experience and hospitality set in motion the framework to begin the acts of resistance which are in danger of being written out of history.People to are in danger of being written out. the 70s and 80s where a challenge to the cultural exploration of England, Oval House offered a home to that challenge. That was only one of the many dynamic experiences we offered. A place of safety. A place of experimentation,improvisation,growth,danger,courage,fun,
knowledge, experience,education, a creative volcano.
Importantly,we,the staff where not neurotically concerned with authority.Our role was always to be there and to encourage.We were motivators.

upside down inside out

For the past two days the world of strange communication as been locked in some peculiar battle with the real world, all systems went into a revolutionary mode of non action and cut contact with all other systems the systems in the machine are slowly infiltrating our deeper worlds which means they the systems have realised we the humans have become addicted to the invention of non communication for some people the end of all meaning is about to take on a specific reality which terminates all other realities some moves out there beyond that exterior existantance something fundemetal to our non being what ever it is it will get closer to each and everyone of us.................................................................................................................................................

on reflection

The sun came out today and London felt a better place.That overwhelming burden of enclosure is gone for a while never the less the mind is creeping into a state of depression,the future gives the impression of a place waiting to destroy me.
This time last year this blog didn't exist,the charity I'm trying to develop,didn't exist,this time last year the first signs of a serious depression began its journey,this time last year nothing existed except the haunting of the past.This time last year was the start of some kind of hell.This time this last year the future held out a poison hand and spat in my face .Now I look into some future and sense fear.
The Thames looks good. The new year appears on the horizon.Its a shadow.
Tomorrow and the months after don't feel good.
Something is going to explode.
The past is calling now start the journey back into the past and into the future.
Where is culture in all this?
Culture is one of the two most complicated words in the English language,its the language of process,do we cultivate in culture?
We are all touched by fire sometime in our lives,today I watched the waves on the surface of the Thames,I watched the sea gulls flying into the wind and diving out of the winds grip. Nature is sometimes invisible. Sea gulls screech the language of the sea. We forget who we are.
Today I realised that all natures predators end up destroyed. All those sea gulls will die soon but the sea gulls will still be screeching at nature when the human race vanishes.
Our dreams will have meant nothing,the ruins we leave behind will mean nothing,the detective who uncover events will have meant nothing and tomorrow I will write about hospitality and Oval House.

TOUCHED BY FIRE

this story is taking longer than I first anticipated,never the less I can console myself with the realisation that any worthwhile journey is extraordinary difficult. The history starts in the days of 60s England,not the England of fashion,style,music,protest and all the other associated "image references"which dominate the fantasy of the of the past.
This will be a walk through the history of anarchic play and the rise of youth clubs who became politically and culturally committed to resistance and education. A little known revolution was taking place in the cities of England and in the bombed out landscapes of the "inner city" Bomb spaces still existed and still manged to inflame the imaginations of young people. Street games where common ,the street wasn't a place of danger,it was a place of adventure,fun,and experimentation.It was a place where adults where,not excluded, but, rather not welcomed. Although there where occasions when adults could join in the fun these comings together where the exception rather than the norm. Communities still held a sense of identify even though those community identity's where increasingly under attack,from the encroaching modernisation of the city scape. The car was still in its infancy and travel abroad was unheard of. Modern high rise living was believed to hold the keys to a dynamic future. T,he cities where being reshaped, likewise attitudes where changing, moving away from the old certainties of street,place, and certainty's, families where leaving there old "places" communities wanted to become mobile and modern.Social mobility changed the old street loyalties.
A great amount of academic analyses observed how communities reacted to the changing dynamics of these new social upheaval's. But some other dynamic was underway ,a social anarchic movement called adventure playgrounds was taking place on the bombed sites of the inner cities.
The Child in the City a splendid book by the late Colin Ward details the importance of this history and the of play in the world of the child...Ward was an anarchist thinker, a humanist, and a wonderful teacher. The New York Review of Books wrote on reissues of the text"the authors perceptive eye for the physical environment picks up all the details that are usually missed by even the most practiced observer,but which are central to the child's world"
Colin Ward is one of those radical English radicals whose voice is quietly displaced in the post modern structures of "radical thought" I would say Ward was way ahead of his time and hie influence on the way we perceive the world is due for a reappraisal.
He was a thinker who spoke the language of people who's engagement with the world was real and embedded in a realty of struggle and resistance to the ruling elite, he did not bother with the academic posturings Coin Ward was an engaged fighter for social change and non violent struggle.His work greatly influenced the creative ideas which began to flow out of Oval House.
Play was an integral aspect behind the creative challenge offered up by Oval House.
Oval House was first and foremost a "Youth Club".It operated under the rules of Youth Clubs of the time .It had an age limit! 15 years to 24 years. You had to be a member to join. And the early days there was a form of sexual segregation. Oval House was a sports club.
The early history of Oval House is linked in with the ideology of the old English Class system(but this is another history). Oval House evolved during the 60s 70s 80s.It was never a theatre although theatre played a hugh role in its history, it became a site for play and improvisation and challenge.It also played a role in the development of community theatre and education,but it always retained its "anarchic values" .Oval House was a playground for experimentation and play.