Sunday 11 October 2009

Alive, alive, I got out alive. We all got out alive

Alive, alive, I got out alive. We all got out alive
Vancouver, September 20, 2009
Wow…
Lost my shirt, though.
And blimey, what a night … and what a long long day.
I spend the day flyering like crazy, singing Chuck Berry and imbibing a lake of coffee … and see Catherine Montgomery's show for the third time … She's still getting not much audience though Vancouver has probably gone better than anywhere else, though still rubbish for a show that good.
Then it's my last show and it is beautiful, truly beautiful, the audience are in for everything, like everything, like all of it like every last bit of it, like every nuance and facet of every facet and nuance of every last bit of it... and it's a great way to end the tour. I could have had a few more punters than the 140-150, but I can't complain and blimey, it was lovely. Superlative adjective after superlative adjective after... Best show of the tour. And the biggest turnout. Not bad.
So …
Then I have to restrain myself from diving into a lake of beer … and it's not like I don't deserve one … but I'm running the Cabaret, the running order, etc … and we've run them before here but, not quite like this, in the Performance Works, with the Fringe communication machine behind us and … WOW … INSTANT BLOODY CLASSIC … IT WILL HAPPEN EVERY YEAR FROM NOW ON … long after all of us have stopped fringeing.
So it was, mister kinski's CABARET OF BS, see blog below for its superswift inception. We had no idea what would happen, especially if there would be any audience. I was first there and it was obvious from the moment I saw the line-up it would be a raging success. Wow … 200 gorgeous punters? … two whole hunred... Wow … It was very like the Winnipeg Cabaret me, Jonno, Chris, TJ and the Pajama Men have run … the audience lit it with their own flashlights and were crazy for it.
Dwayne Morgan, Jonno and Sarah Edwards, Peter'n'Amitai, had particularly good ones … (I detected the hand of Jacob Richmond in the excellent writing of their piece) The wild Gordon Campbell finale, featuring Eric Davis, Lana Schwarcz, Chris, and Jonno dressed as Red Bastard, was like some cathartic Greek theatre piece with a certain fundcutting BC politician meeting a very sorry scapegoatish end indeed … Wow...with fake blood, custard, an edible member, and a thousand marshmallows sticky under the feet when we took the bows afterwards.... Wow... [though, to be honest, i'm not quite sure what hapened in what order...
They were working on it all evening and I could sense a growing excitement amongst them as it got bigger and longer and more people got involved … till Dan and Anders suggested it should be the finale.
Wow... Those clowns maaan, they're so free … and make me think that when I'm being brave on stage, I'm not being anything like as brave as I might be.
An intense palpable excitement you can reach out and grab. I'm not sure I'd want to eat or drink or inject or snort or smoke that excitement, but I can imagine plugging it straight into my neural circuit.
One more blog, Tuesday, before I fly.

And it's a good thing the tour's over. Obama has made the bit in my show about the missile defence shield, in "The Twelve Step Road To True Pessimism," kinda redundant. It might be good for the world, but it's bad for my bloody poem. Boo.
Still, the essential depressing dynamic goes on. "American Empire" is based on the biggest military machine the world has ever seen. This machine has to be manned. And therefore American society has to be so harsh that the military seems a good idea for a million or so poor souls. (European societies couldn't have affordable militaries that big because their societies just aren't that ugly.) Therefore a health care system for all is a threat to a harsh society. And therefore to Empire.
And that's still suitably depressing.

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