Why Guitar?

Rock music is an extremely well known type of music; hence a lot of people like to become skilled at guitar playing. It has become popular to spend time playing guitar. Your attractiveness increases exponentially if you play a guitar skillfully. The guitar is all around us. It’s a versatile instrument. Because of its marvelous popularity it has become a symbol of social revolution.

There are a few teenagers who’re really serious about a profession as rock stars, but in most cases most people plan to study guitar for the sake of learning. A good number of people lose hope very soon and give up their own vision, because they cannot find out the most advantageous way to learn playing a guitar.

Your View Of Guitar

How do you view a guitar? What is it that you would like to be? A guitar owner, a guitarist, or perhaps a music performer who conveys music using a guitar!

If you want to be only a guitar owner, you only need an adequate amount of money to purchase a guitar. Then guitar is just one more gadget, just like a portable play station, a computer game, or a fashion accessory. If you decide you fit in with this segment, how much time will it take you to have fun with a guitar? 30 minutes? You basically really want people to see you playing the guitar.

If you wish to be described as a guitar player, you have to be no-nonsense about it. You have got to dedicate a great many time gaining knowledge of the basic principles of guitar playing. Will you be studying all on your own or from your close friends? How Long can it take you to learn about guitar? You better understand that it �±s really a life long process.

When you are a musician who uses guitar to share his music, you also are focused entirely on your playing. At this level you without a doubt know precisely the total breadth of music. When you’re a superb music performer, you not only play your guitar beautifully but can also intelligently discuss music. People in this particular segment listen to, read, and examine all genres of music. How much time should it take these guitar players to learn guitar? They know that it is a practice for their complete lifetime.

What’s the prime variance between Individuals who would like to be guitar players, and musicians who showcase their music through guitar? Well, the guitar players are just guitar players, while a few musicians grow to be legends.

Internal Motivation Or External Influence

People who find themselves inspired by external influences commonly don’t have the discipline required to become guitar player. Whenever they understand that they should put in a significant amount of effort, they throw in the towel and proceed to a subsequent ‘smart’ activity. Work and delayed gratification are definitely not what they bargain for. In contrast, should you have an internal motivation to master guitar, you will learn it, no matter what it takes.

Learning guitar is much perspiration and inspiration, but it is equally crucial to love the process of practicing guitar. Learning to play the guitar does take a long time. The length of time, depends absolutely upon you.

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On England:
I am a big fan of Franck Lampard and to see him being lambasted around chat rooms is painful, but he knows that by his high standard he has performed below anything I have seen from him in the last two years. A big let down, sure. Yes, the English players were not only over-hyped, but failed to perform when it mattered and showed a certain lack of erm…bottle in key moments. The big money players have to deliver in the money time and they didn’t: Three miss-kicked penalties…On that evidence, it should tell you that something wasn’t together in the mental and psychological department. I have heard that France and Italy for example had blocked all intrusion from the press and family before reaching the second round, where they were allowed a day of rest and visit before going back into siege/bunker mood.
We now know who went to the finals.

The whole WAGS business/phenomenon was a real joke as well. Having your WAG making front page of the papers partying till dawn is not ideal preparation. A back to basics policy is required here. A real one that is! As for Mr Mc Laren, hopefully he will establish a more strict and austere regime, where players will think about football first and not about partying at Beckingham before the W-Cup. I hate to do that, because I really wished England would reach the semis. They did not and it is now soooo easy to throw bricks at them. But sometimes, they seem to present us with the right stick to beat them with …

Enough!

Team of the Tournament
I will agree with the proposed line-up and complaint about the Makelele omission. I would not put Viera in the first eleven, but the second. Makelele has played the whole tournament and has been a stalwart at the heart of France midfield. I can only be frightened at the sight of a defense made of Cannavaro and Thuram. Those two were truly the best performers at the final in my opinion.

Best 11
Buffon- Zambrotta, Cannavaro, Thuram, Lamm – C Ronaldo, Ballack, Makelele, Zidane- Henry, Klose
Materazzi
Just have a look at this authentic DIARY of a Dirty player:
No comment.

Zidane
Best player of the tournament? I don’t know…We will never know to be honest. Yes against Spain and Brazil he was walking on water. What is the legacy left by a man who suffered racial abuse on such a day and could not keep his cool? You may need to suffer racial abuse yourself to understand what went through his head. Some lip-readers helped us decipher what was said:
Z: “Ordinanza de tirare il costume!!”
(Stop pulling my shirt)

M: “Taciti, enculo, hai solamente cio che merite…”
(Shut-up wanker you only get what you deserve)

Z: “si e cio…”
(Yeah right…)

M: “meritate tutti ciò, voi gli enculato di musulmani, sporchi terroristici”
(That’s all you deserve, you muslim arse-holes! Bloody terrorists! )

Make up your own mind. Others publications are already handling the matter now. The war on terror was also present on the pitch somehow….
Going back to the football, ZZ was less efficient against Portugal who found a way to isolate him, however in the final he scored that incredible penalty a la ‘Panenka’ and in the second half of the final he was pulling the strings in midfield. Overall, the tournament has been poor in offensive bravado and his sight brought all the lovers of the ‘beautiful game’ together. Italy could have played Del Pierro…to give us a clash between two ‘fuoriclasse’ (exceptional players) but all Italy wanted was to reach the penalties…sad.

Footie & Politics
Well, we have seen everything. From the non-event: Iran was expected to have its president arrested or summoned to court. To the non-threat from Germans, Dutch, eastern Europeans and English hooligans: Fantastic!
To the amazing efficiency of German organization: Germany probably had one of the best organizations ever seen, although I was told that Japan’s in 2002 was excellent too. And positive results for the economy too from what I have gathered. A. Merkel ridding the ‘Klinsi’ horse and jumping on the feel-good bandwagon, linking herself as Chirac did in 98 in France to a successful World-Cup campaign: re-election beckon…Who’s to bet against her now?

The Italians are still master at the dark art of ‘combinazione’. (Corruption, bribery,…) You would have thought that after the pre-1982 World-Cup season which saw Paolo Rossi among others being suspended for a year, that they would have learnt their lesson. Obviously not. I was still glad to see their president in Englsih talk about the country’s pride in victory… They face another ordeal in their own courts now. Call me cynical, but I will be surprised if anyone’s of substance get indicted. They will be remembered though, for their amazing performance in the semis against Germany. Probably the game of the tournament with France vs Brasil…

Ach Zidaaaane….

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The Live8 concert in July this year, in London’s Hyde Park was set up to raise awareness about the Black continent issues, but before the first guitar riffs, the gig highlighted one single home truth: Africans should do it for themselves! The lack of performers from Africa in the initial line-up raised eyebrows on every side of the argument.

Cue Ligali, an east London organisation whose role is to monitor the media, act as complaint body, be active in the educational field and raise awareness on the issues that plague black communities up and down the country: gun crime, rebellion against authority, stop and search…On the same day, a day of African remembrance was staged at the Hackney Town Hall and the day-long event put together by Ligali is a “positive day to remember the struggle against slavery, our ancestors and their sacrifice in what is widely considered as an holocaust,”‘ according to Emma Pierre-Joseph, spokesperson for the organisation. She also told CEN Magazine that it is “a forward-looking day to provide a platform of reflection for the whole community and its future.”

The centrepiece of the event is the screening of a newly released DVD on the African slavery trade, the shameful human trade officially abolished in 1772 in the UK and its empire. Liverpool was the unofficial capital of the slave trade with more than 10 millions souls from the continent‘s west coast (Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal) transiting there, on their way to build the new continent, America. Other towns throughout Europe, shared that infamous tag Bordeaux, Nantes, Bristol in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Barcelona in Spain and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Winner already of the best documentary prize at the Pan-African film festival and Bridgetown film festival and with testimonies ranging among others, from Dr M. Karenga, Amira Baraka, Desmond Tutu, Dr Helena Woodward, Shaykh Muhammad Shareef and Trevor Marshall. The film, is a compelling compilation of testimonies, voices and opinions gathered around five continents and more than 20 countries on the subject. “‘We went to universities as well as into the neighbourhoods to talk to the common folk,” says Asante Jr, the talented scriptwriter and poet, who was a first year media graduate at the time when he started working on the project.

HIV/AIDS, crime, drugs, low expectation, and underdevelopment plague most people of African origin throughout the world. 500 years later, after slavery, colonialism, the cold war and subsequent neo-colonialism, daughters and sons of the continent are still suffering and cannot enjoy basic freedom or wealth. Told from the continent vantage-point, the film scrutinises the holocaust and subsequent uprooting of Africans from their homeland and culture. In the words of producer-director, Owen ‘Alik’ Shahadah, “500 Years Later chronicles the struggle of a people who have fought and continue to fight for the most essential human right: Freedom.”

Owen used to produce a stylish work of art and set up a website www.500yearslater.com to foster and further the debate, knowing that the film has already garnered interest from education bodies throughout the world, willing to use it as a teaching method.

That might be exactly what African communities in the UK need, as reveals Asher D, the rapper and member of the So Solid Crew collective in his subsequent Channel 4 documentary aired in November 2004, surfing on the same subject, but neighbouring issue of the ‘N word’ (nigger/ nigga).

“It’s definitely an issue that people of my generation don’t know enough about black history and that’s a point I raise throughout the programme.” He finishes with “when it comes to the teaching of black history, there is none” and for the first time, our rulers seem to agree with him, as Liverpool’s Riverside Labour MP Louise Ellman called for the Blair-Brown government to introduce teaching slave trade history in British schools and asked for a national day of remembrance. 117 MPs across the chamber joined her and settled for the debate to take place in the commons, during Black History month in October this year. However, on the question of responsibility, which could trigger lawsuits and potential reparations, the government washed its hands of the problem, stating that it “cannot take responsibility for what happened over 170 years ago” even if it recognizes that “the slave trade is one of the worst examples of man’s inhumanity to man” and added that it wasn’t an unlawful act at the time the British government condoned it. 500 Years Later the film’s sequel will be released in 2006, focusing on AIDS/HIV, the colonisation of the African continent, neo-colonisation, the ill-effects of globalisation with a chapter on Bretton-Woods institutions like the World Bank and the IMF.

The film has an obvious quality, for its combination of thoughtful photography signed by the director Owen, retrospective voices and using a multi-media platform to get its point across, which could see him becoming a benchmark in filmmaking history. Although filed with facts, it relies on a gripping narrative infused by the flavour and a soundtrack for poetical freedom and liberation. Showing the chains that tied their ancestors and contemporaries, it also offers a serious path outside of the plantations.

Scriptwriter, Asante Jr is a poet master with an interesting ability to transfer its art from the written/spoken word to the screen and his influence transpires throughout 500 years later. “To have people be so receptive and come up to us crying and embrace us after seeing the film is just amazing,” reveals Asante Jr. “We worked on the project for two and half years, and you just don’t know if people are going to like it; you are just going on passion and what you think is right.”

Right he surely was.

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News From Nowhere: Visions Of Utopia promises to be one of the largest art events in London this year. A number of public sites in North East London, including The William Morris Gallery, the Changing Room Gallery, The Waltham Forest Theatre situated on an island and surrounded by a moat, Lloyd Park, and a massive building site in the centre of Walthamstow, The Vestry House Museum and Walthamstow Town Hall will be used as stages for exhibitions, interventions, installations, audio visual works, music performances and public art activities during September/ October 2005.

CarnegieBased on the title of the William Morris novel News From Nowhere, and set in and around his birth-place, the project aims to re-examine the legacy of utopianism: upheld by the idealists of the 19th and early 20th century, who believed passionately in the possibilities of radical social change, with visions of a future egalitarian world, it is a distant cry from our post-modern, post-ideological times.

An international line-up of artists, designers, musicians, writers, thinkers and performers will be presenting their work in the context of the various spaces. The events, works in progress and completed pieces will be documented and published on-line in the Visions of Utopia web site. The site will also provide a global forum for open contributions, reports and sightings of utopia.

A special limited edition newspaper, News from Nowhere will be published and distributed, including essays, documentation and interviews with local and global residents, as well as those of the participating artists and organisers. The 18th-century Water House, Morris’s family home from 1848-1856 is now the William Morris Gallery. It is the only public museum in the world devoted to this country’s best known and most versatile designer with internationally important collections illustrating Morris’s life, achievements and influence.

Art Utopia For the first time, a selected group of artists, designers and writers will be given a unique opportunity to place work within the House and permanent displays, resulting in a series of juxtapositions and interventions alongside the work of Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites; featuring the legendary Tony Benn, designers Ralph Ball and Maxine Naylor, architect Meredith Bowles, artists Stephen Williams, Liane Lang, Anderson Inge, Malcolm Barrett, Luis Gonzago Barriera Bras Keith Ball and Steve Wheeler. With sonic work by Isobel Jones and video performance from Claire Robins.

Other Venues
The Changing Room Gallery
Vestry House Museum
Arcadia (a massive building site)
Waltham Forest Theatre, The Moat, Lloyd Park

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Nina considers the musical language of jazz to be one of her greatest inspirations. Her exhibition, Jazz in the City is the culmination of a life’s work for this innovative and unique artist.

It also begins a tour featuring Nina as an artist in residence, to include The International Jazz Festival in Moscow, during which Nina’s work will be exhibited at the State Museum for Contemporary Art, Moscow.

Nina was born in the Russian city of St. Petersburg and obtained a Masters Degree from Moscow’s Gubkin Academy. In 1991 after

she moved to Germany, Nina started her career as an artist where she studied under teacher and artist Margarita Budini. From 1994 to 1998 she established her studio in The Netherlands and in 2000 she moved to London where she has been living and working as an artist. Now based in Richmond, Nina finds artistic inspiration for her paintings in music, poetry and philosophy. The powerful colours and dramatic shapes in her paintings reflect her own experience of living in different cultures, while still infused within her Russian heritage. Nina says of her traveling experience, “I have found the most success in London, because London is a cultural centre and a major port. Kinky-Kalinki Transrussian Express is a tribute to London’s art scene, to show how you can be poor and foreign in London and still be accepted.”

Kinky-Kalinki Transrussian Express is a documentary film charting London’s art, music and club scene from 2000 to 2005, the length of time that Nina has lived here. “I have focused on one east London club in this film,” says Nina, “Rhythm Factory on Whitechapel road where it is possible to have live music, art on the walls and a club night all in one. East London is a buzzing area, that’s not to say that Richmond where I am based is not buzzing, but East London has a modern and contemporary feel.”
Old Vinyl.

Nina has exhibited her work in both solo and group shows and has begun to exhibit her work across Europe and overseas. In December 2003 Nina represented the UK at The Florence Bienniale and in November 2004 was invited to be Artist in Residence for Black History Month at the National Opera Studios in London. Other artistic residencies include River Walk at The OXO Tower and The Players Theatre in The West End.

Carol Cordrey will be in conversation with Nina on the 22nd of September at the Glass House Gallery and comments, “Jazz was once the music of yesteryear. Now, it is growing in popularity in cities the world over. Its powerful rhythm and improvisation have always appealed to performers with strong characters. Using instruments or voices, passion or pathos, they have used jazz to stir the human spirit. Nina Gruschwitz has an expressive personality, loves jazz and imbues all her work with a plethora of emotions. With brushes for instruments, this artist reinforces the contemporary impact of jazz. It is now seen and not just heard.”

Nina Gruschwitz’s exploration of Jazz and its influence on her art is to be exhibited at the Glass House gallery from the 13th of September.

The Glass House Gallery
2-3 Bull’s Head Passage, Leadenhall Market, London EC3, 13 Sept – 9 Oct
In Conversation: Artist talk with Carol Cordrey: Thu. 22 Sept 6 – 8pm
Special event: Kinky-Kalinki Transrussian Express: Wed 21 Sept 8pm-midnight
Rhythm Factory
16-18 Whitechapel Rd, London E1 1EW
info@thecynthiacorbettgallery.com
www.thecynthiacorbettgallery.com

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There are six awards in total – five category awards (Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s) and, from these, one overall winner – the Whitbread Book of the Year.

Ali Smith Won Whitbread Novel Award 2005 for her work The Acceidental.

This year the awards attracted 476 entries – the highest total ever – and included a record number of entries in the Biography and First Novel categories with 114 and 80 books submitted respectively. Each category’s shortlist was chosen by a panel of judges, who this year included writer and broadcaster John Humphrys; authors Philippa Gregory, Margaret Drabble and Linda Newbery; comedy writer and performer Arabella Weir and CBBC children’s presenter Lizo Mzimba.

Since the introduction of the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won seven times by a novel, three times by a first novel, four times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry and once by a children’s book.

Novel Award
Renowned writer Ali Smith won the Whitbread Novel Award 2005 for her first full-length novel The Accidental. It is the portrayal of a 12-year-old girl. Astrid is spending the summer in a holiday home with her family in Norfolk. It is a substandard house in a substandard town and she knows for sure nothing is going to happen there all substandard summer. So she starts filming the dawn breaking each morning on her Sony digital camera. Essentially a modern-day reworking of Pasolini’s 1968 film Theorem, this remarkable novel is at once dazzlingly bright and profoundly dark.

About The Accidental, Whitbread Award judges said: “This extraordinary novel of family life combined humour, sadness and mystery with a wonderful linguistic playfulness and invention.”

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. Her first book, Free Love, won the Saltire First Book Award. She is also the author of Like (1997); Other Stories And Other Stories (1999); Hotel World (2001), which was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award, the East England Arts Award of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002; The Whole Stories and Other Stories (2003) and The Accidental (2005). Ali Smith also writes for the Guardian, the Scotsman and the TLS.

First Novel Award
Tash Aw wins the Whitbread First Novel Award for his novel The Harmony Silk Factory. It is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley’s most prominent families; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loves Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.

Tash Aw was born in Taipei and brought up in Malaysia. A graduate of the University of East Anglia, he now lives in London. He began his career writing short stories. Citing his influences as Flaubert, Faulkner and Nabokov, he is now writing his second novel.

Book of the Year Award
Biographer Hilary Spurling has won the prestigious 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year award for the second part of her masterful biography of Matisse, Matisse the Master, a work which took her 15 years to complete. The announcement was made on 24 January at an awards ceremony held at The Brewery in Central London.

Matisse the Master, published by Hamish Hamilton, is the fifth biography to take the overall prize. Claire Tomalin was the last author to win the Whitbread Book of the Year with a biography taking the prize in 2002 for Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self.

Since the introduction of the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won seven times by a novel, three times by a first novel, four times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry and once by a children’s book.

Biographer Hilary Spurling was born in Stockport, England, in 1940. Educated at Somerville College, Oxford, she was arts editor, theatre critic and subsequently literary editor for The Spectator during the 1960s. She is a regular reviewer for The Observer and the Daily Telegraph.

Her first book was a biography of the novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, published in two volumes in 1974 and 1984. She is also the author of a biography of the novelist Paul Scott and of the painter Henri Matisse, published in two volumes in 1998 and 2005. The latter volume, Matisse the Master: The Conquest of Colour 1909-1954 (2005) won the 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

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Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called,

Life affirming joyride anyone? Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called, Naïve Dance Masterclass by Matt Rudkin. This self-parodying theatrical treat, with the added fun of a fantastic hula-dancing doll left the audience elevated.

It really had been what it claimed, a joyride.
Afterwards I talked to Ant Hampton, eager to find out more about Rotozaza’s new show, Five in the Morning, which will soon begin a three-week run at the Bullion Room.

Tell me about the idea behind Rotozaza?
It comes on the back of three and a half years work on a particular way of making theatre, which started with Bloke. I thought if I gave an unrehearsed actor a list of instructions that you get him to agree to follow, in advance, the performer doesn’t know anything about the show but as long as they do what they are told everything will go to plan.

Why?
What’s fascinating is to see on stage a thing that develops in front of your eyes. The actor is discovering everything the same time as you. It absolutely depends for its existence on aliveness.
The performer is an audience member the same time as being an actor – breaking down that barrier?

Rather than barriers, often I see it in terms of power, I feel a lot of theatre dominates the audience, and the audience want to be dominated, whereas this sets up an equal relationship where the sympathy is high with the person on stage because they know the situation is like this.

Describe one of your shows?
ROMCOM is played with guest performers, they don’t need to be actors. We give them headphones, where they repeat the text they hear. One voice for action and a voice for movement. The text is written by Glen Neath. I wrote the actions, strategy, sound and lights. For ROMCOM we have a video with the lights and the sound and music for the show and the two ipods for the performances so we start them all together, then we sit down and watch it.

Tell me about the new show you are directing?
Five in the Morning has three people (actors, Greg McLaren, Silvia Mercuriali and Melanie Wilson) in swimming costumes, in this strange aquaworld. There are voices telling them what to do that everyone hears – the audience as well – and the quality is as if they just walked on stage and they’ve agreed to do what they’re told to do, but there’s a very mysterious feel to it, you’re constantly wondering are they rehearsed or not. The action flicks from there to very complete, very random, intensely worked theatrical images.

For example?
For example a Chinese vendor in the street illegally selling little radio controlled cars, being watched by the pope and a bunch of bodyguards in the background and he turns into an acrobat figure performing for the pope. By flicking the scenes from one to the other we try and identify two completely different ways of reading a show and particularly what happens to an audience when you are flicking between them. So the pool is where your presence in the room is very important and you have to ask yourself what you are doing watching. Within that there’s the fact that you are wondering whether or not they’re rehearsed. In a lot of our work a sort of parallel metaphor starts rising to the surface, the part of ourselves that is rehearsed and the part that is spontaneous. Are we not actually in some way completely pre-recorded? Is what we do and say really that spontaneous or not?

It’s strange how it works?
The fact that the actors are going through the same thing with the audience means these darker scenes stand as a sort of escape from this exhausting predicament.
Rotozaza worked a lot abroad, how are you finding London?
ROMCOM has had a lot of success internationally and from that we managed to set up contact for the other shows. We do different language shows, for example in Portuguese and Italian. Because of the strategies involved we can just translate and re-record. We are doing ROMCOM in Argentina at the end of March.

Why the Bullion Room?
In the hope that it might become a proper home for east London’s alternative theatre makers. It’s pretty embarrassing to have a situation in London that there is only one house for that kind of work – the BAC.

Five in the Morning will run at the Bullion Room behind the Hackney Empire from February 23 to March 12.
Hackney Empire Bullion Room Theatre
Wilton Way
London, E8 1BH
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