Theatre Of The Other Side
“Do they frisk you thoroughly?”, a woman asked me, as we bounced along the dirt track in the shuttle bus towards Latitude Festival. Of course I was supposed to respond, “Why, what have you hidden, DRUGS?”, but I don’t like being manipulated so I just said, “I don’t know.”
We’d made a connection and she felt inspired to tell me everything about her spiritual outlook on life. She saw no hint of irony as she explained that she lives only for other people, whilst painfully boring me to tears. At least I learnt there might be an afterlife, or there might not be, I got to take that away.
Other peoples’ spiritual spaces are generally uncomfortable and unfathomable. That acknowledged, I’ve had some fairly spiritual feelings of my own in the past few years and this blog is about beaming them at you. Like a bore on a bus, I want you to know some things about my experiences on stage. Like a dream I had where I discovered a new staircase in my flat.
Never Try This in a Tent - Goodbye Latitude
It’s been an incredible week at Latitude Festival. We brought back the inimitable, indestructible, inappropriate, “Never Try This At Home” for one final performance in their vast Theatre Arena. A space so big I almost died screaming at the top of my lungs and waving my arms around. Near to passing out in scene two I was brought back from the brink by a self-inflicted bucket of water to the face. The festival audience responded well to this level of subtlety and we loved them for it.
Never Try This At Home Hits London
We’ve made Time Out’s critical choice this week! 4 stars. It certainly makes up for the 2 stars that The Times gave us when we were in Birmingham. What would they know anyway? The show’s changed since then, it’s better now. Not that I read the reviews anyway. But If I did, this is what they would look like…
Dudley Rees is an actor and director living in London. This blog is his online scrapbook, a place to explore the big questions of theatre - note down the good times and complain about the terrible, slow, agonising times.
Some entries will be more technical than others but hopefully all will be reasonably entertaining. At least as entertaining as the film, "Chappie".