Introducing UNBROKEN...



AN INVITATION FOR SUBMISSIONS TO A NEW MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MINI-FESTIVAL IN AUTUMN 2016

Have you written a short play or a standalone scene – or created a piece of spoken word, music, movement or dance – dealing with mental illness, its effects and consequences, or the realities and myths surrounding the subject? Would you like to? Or would you like to direct one?

As part of my tiny theatre company's longstanding commitment to the issue of mental health we will be staging UNBROKEN, a mini-festival on that very subject, in London this October and we would like to invite anyone interested in getting involved – either as a writer, director, choreographer or composer – to get in touch.

UNBROKEN will showcase a number of new short plays and performance pieces, all dealing with the issue of mental health from different angles. It will also include at least one or more panel discussions.

As mentioned above, we are open to both short plays and scenes/extracts from a larger work that are able to stand alone in performance, as well as pieces of music, movement, spoken word or dance. Each of the chosen pieces will deal with some aspect of the issue, but the precise approach taken or subject explored will be up to its creator – for example, living with someone suffering from mental health problems can, in some ways, be just as difficult or alienating as suffering from the condition yourself.

UNBROKEN is an entirely voluntary event which will be staged in connection with one of the UK’s main mental health charities. This mini-festival will be the first of its kind for Shadow Road. Given our enduring concern with the issue of mental health, however – particularly when examined in relation to the military, as was the case with our original full-length play, Dreams From The Pit – we do hope that it may prove to be the first of many.

If you are interested in getting involved with UNBROKEN, there is plenty more information available – including submissions details and dates etc – here on our website: www.shadowroad.com/page6.htm

Please have a read and then drop us a line at shadowroadproductions@gmx.com.

We look forward to hearing from you! :-)

Hello Again & Happy Christmas!

We all know that one of the definitions of insanity is 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'.  I will understand, therefore, if anyone's tempted to call me insane upon learning that, after a few years' away from it, I'm thinking about giving this blogging lark a bit of a go again.  I, however, remain happily assured of my own sanity since I am, much to my own disappointment, not really expecting different results.  As ever, though, I remain open to the possibility of being pleasantly surprised... ;-)

In keeping with ancient (at least on this blog!) tradition, I am posting a poem for Christmas.  In these turbulent times, this one - in which Longfellow acknowledges the depths of the darkness he sees in the world around him but goes on to speak of the eventual triumph of the light over it - struck a particular chord with me.  I hope you enjoy reading it and I wish you a very Happy Christmas. :-)

CHRISTMAS BELLS

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
 

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

 

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

 

 

Happy Christmas 2011!

A Child of the Snows
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That in the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth is a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red
For the flame of the sun is flown;
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

I hope everyone has had a very
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Happy Easter 2010!

Wow, this is really getting ridiculous now - if this blog were an animal, I'd be prosecuted by the RSPCA for rampant neglect. I can only console myself with the fact that I did warn people - thoroughly and often - that I have always been terrible at keeping diaries, journals and anything that in any way even vaguely resembles either of those!

SPRING
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring -
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. - Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Happy Easter!

Happy Christmas 2009!

A Christmas Carol
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The shepherds went their hasty way,
And found the lowly cattle shed
Where the virgin mother lay:
And now they checked their eager tread,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,
A mother's song the virgin mother sung.

They told her how a glorious light,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,
Around them shone, suspending night!
While sweeter than a mother's song,
Blest Angels heralded the Saviour's birth:
“Glory to God on high! and peace on earth!”

She listened to the tale divine,
And closer still the babe she pressed:
And while she cried, “The Babe is mine!”
The milk rushed faster to her breast:
Joy rose within her like a summer morn:
Peace, peace on earth! The Prince of Peace is born!

Thou mother of the Prince of Peace,
Poor, simple, and of low estate!
That strife should vanish, battle cease,
O why should this thy soul elate?
Sweet music's loudest note, the poet's story,
Didst thou ne'er love to hear of fame and glory?

And is not War a youthful king,
A stately hero clad in mail?
Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;
Him earth's majestic monarchs hail
Their friend, their playmate! And his bold, bright eye
Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh.

Tell this in some more courtly scene,
To maids and youths in robes of state!
I am a woman poor and mean,
And therefore is my soul elate.
War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled,
That from the aged father's tears his child!

A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,
He kills the sire and starves the son;
The husband kills, and from her board
Steals all his widow's toil had won;
Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away
All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.

Then wisely is my soul elate,
That strife should vanish, battle cease:
I'm poor and of a low estate,
The mother of the Prince of Peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn:
Peace, peace on Earth! The Prince of Peace is born!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Happy Easter!

There is a Green Hill Far Away
Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895)

There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven, and let us in.

O dearly, dearly has He loved!
And we must love Him too,
And trust in His redeeming blood,
And try His works to do.

HAPPY EASTER!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sonnet 116
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Twelfth Night

It is Twelfth Night or Epiphany tonight, so I shall be enjoying my family's traditional Twelfth Night dinner to mark the end (sob!) of all things Christmassy for another year. For me, 2009 begins in earnest tomorrow...

An extract from Journey of the Magi
T.S. Eliot (1885-1965)

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet...

...Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Read the complete poem or listen to T.S. Eliot himself reading it to you here, courtesy of the wonderful Poetry Archive, a wide-ranging collection of recordings of major poets reading their own work.

Happy Christmas!

An Extract from Christmas
Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)

And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea

Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,

Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this simple truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Lest We Forget

Aftermath

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same — and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz —
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench —
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack —
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads — those ashen-gray
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget!

(March 1919)

Picture courtesy of The Royal British Legion

Happy Hallowe'en!

THE HAG
Robert Herrick (1648)

The Hag is astride,
This night for to ride;
The Devil and she together:
Through thick, and through thin,
Now out, and then in,
Though ne’er so foul be the weather.

A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spur:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
Through Brakes and through Briars,
O’er Ditches, and Mires,
She follows the Spirit that guides now.

No Beast, for his food,
Dares now range the wood;
But hush't in his lair he lies lurking:
While mischiefs, by these,
On Land and on Seas,
At noon of Night are a working,

The storm will arise,
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Called out by the clap of the Thunder.

I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of Hallowe'en these days. The mini trick or treaters tottering around the neighbourhood with one or more suitable adults in tow are sweet enough, but there are always those few absurdly large and suspiciously old callers (please, you probably earn more than me - by the look of it, you might even be older than me - and yet still you're here demanding sweets/cash/my first-born child...) who seem to consider the entire festival a licence to solicit various goods with menaces.

The whole thing reminds me of another set of unwelcome visitors whose company we can expect to enjoy in the not-too-distant future: Bad Carol Singers. Now, I've got absolutely nothing against good carol singers - I've even been one myself on numerous occasions - but I'm afraid that the bad ones make me want to do extremely unseasonal things, both to them and to anyone else unfortunate enough to stray across my path at the time of their visit.

These caterwauling carollers hammer away at the door until you open it - no use hiding in the back room and waiting for the tenacious blighters to go away - and then regale you with three or four terrifyingly tuneless lines of 'Good King Wenceslas', before holding out their hands for payment. Muttering with resentment, you rootle out a quid or two and press it into their palms, all the while cursing yourself for your weakness and praying that you've given them enough to make them go away. After all, that is what you're paying them for - leaving. It's the 'leaving' that makes surrendering your money so worthwhile, not the 'music' that precedes it. As for where that money might be going, well, I usually find it advisable not to ask - discretion being the better part of valour and all that.

However, I digress. My 'atrocious carol singers' rant is several weeks premature (rather like those chocolate advent calendars that have adorned supermarket shelves since mid-to-late September) and I have sweets to pile by the door, pumpkins to carve and spooky lighting to arrange. Let the annual onslaught of witches, monsters and assorted other mythical creatures begin...

From Ghosties and Ghoulies
And long-leggity Beasties
And all things that go bump in the night -
Good Lord, deliver us!
Anon

Happy Hallowe'en!

Happy Easter!

Easter
George Herbert (1593-1633)

I got me flowers to strew thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree;

But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought'st thy sweets along with thee.

The sun arising in the east,
Though he gave light, and the east perfume,
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Visits and Valentines

My lovely god-daughter, Lilia, and her mother have been staying with me for a couple of days and yesterday we spent a few hours at the London Wetland Centre. The weather was as perfect as possible for the time of year – crisp, blue-skied and sunny – and the Centre itself was starkly beautiful. I am always amazed that a place like this, 43 hectares of wetlands – wide open stretches of water and grassy walkways, teeming with wildlife – can exist in a corner of one of the busiest cities in the world. I love taking visitors along there to see the surprise in their faces when they enter the observatory, a glass-walled room, two storeys high, that looks out across the main lake. On a day like yesterday, so bright and clear, the view really is breathtaking and each new visitor’s astonishment at the sight mirrors my own. If any non-Londoners out there are planning a trip to the capital soon, then I recommend that you pencil a visit to the Wetland Centre into your itinerary. And if there are any Londoners reading who haven’t yet paid it a call, then what are you waiting for?

I have just booked this year’s trip to the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival and I am already looking forward to it. Just as last year – which was, astoundingly, my first ever visit to a literary festival – I will be staying in Christ Church College, at the heart of the action. And again, just as last year, I’ve booked more events than are probably good for me: in the space of a day and a half, I’ve committed myself to five different events and a Carvery Lunch! It’s bound to be a hectic couple of days, but also, I’m sure, extremely interesting and great fun at the same time. Another experience that I can highly recommend!

‘Sonnet: For the 14th of February’
Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

Thy bright eyes govern better than the Sun,
For with thy favour was my life begun,
And still I reckon on from smiles to smiles,
And not by summers, for I thrive on none
But those thy cheerful countenance compiles;
Oh! if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine!


Happy Valentine’s Day, one and all!