A city of creativity

Glastonbury is not my thing. That’s what I always said.

People are sometimes surprised that in three and a half decades of doing what I do, I’ve never performed there. But I never had, until last weekend. Now don’t get me wrong, they asked, but every year I politely declined, listing them the reasons why I thought I wasn’t the right booking. And they were real reasons. The older I get, the more I learn about myself, the more I know which situations are kind to my mental health, and which might bully it – and Glastonbury ticked a lot of the bad boxes. Being in the middle of nowhere surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people, unable to run away? Tick. Socialising with friends, colleagues and, frankly, not friends from all over the world? Tick. Camping? CAMPING? Bloody TICK.

But, apparently, what I’d been doing by saying “no thank you” annually, for decades, was playing hard to get, because they started making better and better offers. And I don’t mean monetarily, I mean emotionally. They understood my fears, and valued me enough to try to lessen them, and honestly, that alone made me much more interested.

The final straw came when they offered three things:

I could arrive the same day as my show;

I could leave the same night;

There would be good coffee waiting for me backstage.

They knew what was important to me. I said yes. And I’m glad I did.

So, if you’re unfamiliar with Glasto – or to give it its full name “The Glastonbury Festival of contemporary performing arts” – it’s, well, a city. A city that appears for one week only, on a farm in Somerset, England. A city made out of tents and caravans and food trucks and venues and fields and art installations and megalithic stone circles and overpriced beer and terrifying toilets. A city that was founded, and continues to exist, because of creativity.

The 200,000 tickets sell out almost instantaneously, and they’re not cheap. AND YOU HAVE TO CAMP. But people snap them up for one reason – whether they know it or not. I mean, sure, it’s a five-day party, and you hang out with friends, and get drunk, and get other things, and have awkward and regretful hookups in flooded tents, but the real reason it is what it is, is simple. People go to Glastonbury to see, hear, feel or whatever, something they haven’t seen, heard, felt, or whatever’d before. Something artistic.

And the beautiful part is that this is just as likely to be something like Elton John bringing thousands together in a perfect moment of everyone knowing the words to every song and sharing the now, as it might be an odd little forest glade of home-made automaton sculptures. And, of course, literally, actually, everything in between. I only had a couple of hours to wander around, and even in this short time, I saw kinetic art projects, flamenco ping-pong ball mouth jugglers, acrobats doing handstands on the roof of a cocktail bar, traditional African dance troupes, fake Australian life guards pretending the field was a swimming pool, crusty old folk singers covering Taylor Swift, a strolling Bhangra band who had become pied pipers for an ever-growing following of people lost in the drums and the dancing, a pretend grandpa with his walker decked out like a mod’s Vespa, and Blondie.

Even if you only go to Glastonbury to see Elton and wear funny sunglasses, you’ll find yourself wandering around, and you’ll discover something unplanned, that you love. There’s just too much going on, and too much wandering around required for that not to happen. The whole thing is a machine for organic artistic discovery.

Sometimes it’s easy, as someone who has eventually learned to feel alright with calling themselves an artist, to feel like it’s all a bit of an affectation. We call Imagination & Junk the “podcast about the hard work of creativity”, but occasionally, when I’m feeling less than, my mind lets those questions seep in. You know the ones: “It’s not really work though, is it? You’re not down the mines.” “I mean, is it actually of worth?” But Glastonbury shuts all that shit down really fast.

200,000 people who look forward to this all year, who barrage that website with clicks on ticket release day, with their fingers crossed so tight they turn white. All because they know that when they’re there, on top of the warm beer, pricey burritos, sunburn, mudslides, and TERRIFYING TOILETS, they’ll see some things that they haven’t seen before. Things people made.

/MR

OK, so... the thing with the hat

Like I’ve said before, sometimes I like to show the effort – to make sure the audience knows how difficult something is, so they feel more connected to me through the struggle, and root for my eventual success. Other times, though, it’s fun just to make something look effortless. And that’s so much harder. Unless you’re doing it for a camera.

Part of circus (and by extension variety, cabaret, burlesque.. and most of the shiny little worlds in which I rent a space) is to convince the outside world of our differences. Of how we’re not like you – we’re cooler, more colourful, and able to do things you cannot. We’re a different race of people, who do things differently. It is of course, as we say in London, bollocks. But it’s the kind of bollocks showbusiness has always been based around. It’s the kind of bollocks that sells tickets.

I often think that circuses are like zoos for low-level superheroes.

Anyway. The hat thing. The plan, of course, as Bill correctly surmises, was to make it look completely effortless. As if that’s just what I do whenever I take my hat off. That’s just how someone like me does something that someone like you would do in a less cool way. The truth? Well, I can land the hat on a hook pretty much every time if I’m facing the hook. But blind? While talking? When the hook has to be in a very specific place for the camera shot? Let’s just say that may or may not have been the first take.

And of course, I put it at that point in the video because otherwise it’s just a guy asking you to subscribe to his YouTube channel (and if you haven’t then stop reading this right now and rectify that, you absolute monster) and the chances are that you’ve had someone asking you to that before. But if I can throw something in (sorry) that will both be different to every other time someone asked you to subscribe to their channel, and at the same time perk you up and give you a little reason why you might want to click that button, well, then that seems like a smart thing to do.

Street performers often do a little trick up front to help convince their crowd that it’s worth sticking around for the bigger tricks later on in the show. Same deal. Trust-earning, I guess.

Two of the takes of the hat trick that I didn’t use were of me landing the trick perfectly, but being so surprised that I had, that I fluffed the next line.

I once worked with a magician who did a trick with a piece of food. It was a complicated trick, and a lovely little effect for the audience. You could tell that the crowd, every time, would be trying to work out how he did it. The only way they could figure that it would be possible was so time consuming and convoluted, and would have involved so much almost impossibly complicated preparation, that they immediately dismissed it. But I was the one sharing a dressing with him, watching him spend literally hours, painstakingly doing exactly that, for a 5 second moment on stage. A lot of what we do is patience and practice.

George Carl is a huge hero of mine. I even once got asked to go to Japan to help a TV star recreate his act. Owner of the funniest 9 minutes in the history of everything. Honed over a lifetime. I wish I’d met him, but I never did, even though I was technically in a film with him.

I have some friends who did, though. They did a season in a variety show with him. Every Friday night, he’d cook spaghetti for the whole cast and crew.

/MR

The F word

Listen – only an idiot says it’s fake.

The slams are real. Diving from a turnbuckle to crash and burn, folded in half across a steel guardrail is real. The blood is real. The injuries are real. The passion is real. The emotions are real. The moments of high drama, low comedy and can’t-catch-your-breath spectacle are real. The sacrifices are real. All the important stuff is real.

If you fixate on the little bit that isn’t, then you’re missing the point of wrestling.

I mean, come on now, it was 1938 when American newspapers stopped reporting the results of wrestling matches, when it slowly dawned on them that it might not be, as they used to say back then, “on the square.”

It’s theatre. And it’s one of the most unique and fascinating theatre forms in the world. If it wasn’t so populist and working class, more people would realise that, but just like my beloved street performing, people who should know better are often guilty of judging the quality of an artform by its venue.

All you have to do is look at its roots – carnivals and music halls. It shares more with circus and carnival acts like me than it does with the sporting events that it emulates. A cast of performers – beautiful, muscular, athletic – performing feats of strength, or dazzling acrobatic tricks. Clowns selling the hell out of slapstick schtick. Grumpy ringmasters trying to keep order in the ring. People – real people – performing death-defying stunts in return for a cheer from the crowd. Families who have grown up in this bubble of superhuman spectacle and know nothing else. A travelling show, seemingly populated by people of a slightly different strand of humanity, who live by alternate rules. Wrestling is circus. And circus is theatre.

All good theatre – of whatever type – strives to achieve one simple thing: To make you, while you watch it, forget everything else. To enchant you into the moment. Its moment. To erase your mind of your worries and stresses, to hypnotise you into forgetting that you’re sitting in a seat in a theatre that you travelled to by train. To take out of your mind the idea of past and future, and instead to grab your head in both hands and point your eyes only at what is unfolding in the now.

When wrestling is good it can do this better than anyone else. (And it’s not always good. Not by a long chalk. But then again, I once saw Derek Jacobi in a theatre production of Cyrano De Bergerac which was so bad I had to literally bite the inside of my mouth to stay awake, so... )

The unique thing about wrestling is that, at every point, at every level, it’s real and not real at the same time. There are weeks, months, sometimes years- long storylines about the characters of wrestlers, travelling around the world from show to show – performed by real wrestlers, often with the same names, who really are travelling around the world from show to show. The outcomes of the matches are predetermined, so the storyline can continue to play out, of course. Yes, the people in the ring are working together, rather than against each other. But they’re still doing the things it looks like they’re doing. They’re still high-level athletes, working to exhaustion, and, putting, literally, their necks on the line, to tell a story.

Sure, it’s people in tights, pretending. But have you seen Shakespeare?

When someone tells you how much they enjoyed The Avengers, do you snarkily say “You know Iron Man can’t really fly, right? It’s just special effects”?

Wrestling is fact and fiction dancing together to the music of your suspension of disbelief. When a character climbs the turnbuckle and leaps off, gracefully spinning in the air to land, hard, but somehow safely, on their opponent – you cheer and clap the person for what they did, and the character for why they did it, all at the same time.

When a villainous scumbag does something fittingly despicable – you boo the character because you hate them, but your boo is also secretly a cheer, telling the performer they’re doing a good job in making you hate them.

You’re in on it, and that doesn’t ruin the illusion, because it’s not about the illusion. Like any good magic trick, it’s really about the performance.

At the top levels, the matches aren’t choreographed. They’re improvised. Wordless plays created in the moment by the performers. Like a jazz band listening to each other, giving space for solos, a chorus, and knowing how they’ll take it home. It’s astonishing.

Wrestling, just like theatre, takes the complicated terrain of real life and simplifies it into something that tells resonant stories with familiar archetypes, who sometimes get hit by a steel folding chair.

And who hasn’t wished that real life afforded such clear solutions to its problems?

/MR

(And to hear more about wrestling, art and life, don’t forget to subscribe to “Imagination & Junk” wherever you get your podcasts!)

What am I?

Bill sent me a message, and asked me if I fancied writing something about how he still can’t really describe what I do. Look, I’d be annoyed about that, but I can’t easily sum up what I am either, and I’ve been doing it for 33 years, so I have no high ground here.

Whenever I work a new venue, or with a new MC, they will, invariably, ask me how I would like to be introduced. “What should I say?”, they’ll ask, and I’ll shrug like it’s my first time doing this. (Although I do have to mention, my favourite ever intro, from my friend Ophelia Bitz – “Our next guest is a cabaret legend. A very big fish, in what is, admittedly, a puddle”)

So – let’s take a run at this.

I’m a juggler. Of sorts. Kinda. But it’s complicated.

See, when I say juggler, I know what you think – either a baggy-trousered dubious-looking children’s entertainer, or a spandex-clad, even more dubious inhabitant of some kind of grating cirque. But these are just what juggling has become – they’re not what it was. Back when jugglers headlined the biggest venues in the world, it was a more varied, theatrical and interesting artform.

Take modern comedy, for example. Many styles, right? You have your observational, your satirical, your one-liner merchant, your improvisers, your physical comedy acts, your sketch troupes etc… right?

Well, back in the day, juggling was like that too. No, really.

There were strong man (and lady) jugglers, who performed dangerous feats of dexterity with heavy things. Real life superheroes who could toss cannonballs around like tennis balls.

Restaurant jugglers, who would have a stage set like a restaurant, and be waiters, chefs and customers on a date, as they played out a scene where every element of a night out was a trick. Like a play viewed through the lens of circus.

How about tramp jugglers – a comedic reaction to the well dressed playboys who they shared the bill with – shabby clowns who stumbled through tricks with cigar boxes, bottles, etc.

Bonus points if you can tell me which international movie star started his career as a world famous tramp juggler, and is pictured here. You’ll have to ask me for the answer on Twitter.

And then there were gentleman jugglers. Dapper, stylish, cool characters who would casually flip their hat around, twirl their cane, maybe pull a tablecloth or two…

I’m a nerd. I used to scan through archives of Victorian newspapers in Westminster library to search out the occasional review of a touring juggling act. That’s where I found gentleman jugglers, and also found my inspiration. I loved the idea that in the world of this character, tricks weren’t tricks, they were just the cool, clever way things were done, because the person doing them was cool, and clever. The circus equivalent of Fonzie smacking the jukebox to play a record.

At the time, I wasn’t cool or clever. I was nervous and shy. So, if I could learn some of these tricks, and maybe wear a suit, and perhaps even learn how to be a cool gentleman on stage, well, then maybe I might get a little less shy off stage, too.

So that was that. Or at least that was my starting point. But since then I’ve meandered off on theatrical tangents. I’m still a juggler at heart, and manual dexterity still forms the centre of what I do, but my last theatre show also contained lockpicking, and knife throwing, and a trick with a golf club, so. Yeah…

The other half of this, of course, is that I’m a comedy performer. Regardless of what I’m doing – juggling, or something more esoteric and less describable – I try to be funny while I’m doing it. Please note the word try. Otherwise it would just be the worst kind of showing-off, right?

As an audience member, I’m not really interested in watching something where the whole message is “Here’s something I can do, that you can’t.” It seems like a waste of theatre. There’s so much more that can be communicated. Tell me why you learned it, tell me why I want to see it, tell me more…

I do tricks, sure. And I love tricks. But they’re just a reason for me to be on stage – and once I’m there, I want to have a conversation with you, tell you about myself, learn about you, make you laugh, and yeah, ideally, gasp, maybe.

Have I answered the question of how to describe what I do yet, Bill? No. I don’t think I have.

Back in the day, I would have been a vaudevillian. A speciality. People would have known what that meant, but not so much these days. I’m a gentleman juggler, but nobody knows what that is. I’m an entertainer, except that conjures up images of sequined jackets and Neil Diamond covers. One of my past shows was called “Showman,” and that’s vague but accurate. Circus artist? Well, sure, except I don’t work in a circus. Magician? Nope. Carnie? Yeah.

We’re no closer. Maybe we should crowdsource this. Tweet me. What am I? Be nice.

M

Far Away

I am currently far away. Wait, that explains nothing as I don’t know where you are. I’m far away from where I usually am, and in all probability also from you. Where I actually am isn’t important, especially as I am contractually prohibited from telling you (really!), but I am far away. On a trip. For work.

My usual job – which Bill can’t describe any better than I can – is usually all about being close. I’m not often happier than when I’m in a small venue, where the front row is close enough to be directly affected if a trick goes wrong. But also close enough that you can have a real dialogue with them – that’s a big part of what I do and why I do it. But, as you may or may not be aware, circumstances have, in the past year or so, prevented that from being a legal or healthy thing to be doing. Hence, the internet has become the only venue still open.

But the internet, whether you’re at home or wherever the hell I am, is as far away as it is close.

Here’s what I’m trying to say.

When I work live, if I do something good, the audience will immediately let me know by making noises that have been culturally decided to signify approval. Equally, if I do something they don’t like, they will let me know that, too. I’ve been doing this long enough to have had decent amounts of both. But the internet doesn’t really have that kind of immediate, visceral, in the moment feedback.

I mean, sure, for a podcast like “Imagination & Junk” there are stats you can look at. Numbers of downloads, subscriptions, likes, shares etc – but they seem basic to me. They show you how many people came into your venue and sat down to watch, but not so much what they felt as they saw the show. The audience seem close, and far away.

The more cynical of you might surmise that this is nothing more than an overly-wordy way for me to beg you for approval, comments, reviews, and well MY GOD HOW DARE YOU

Also, you would be, to a not insignificant extent, bang on the money.

But along with that, there’s this weird “message in a bottle” kind of feeling to making things for the internet. Me and Bill have been planning, writing, editing, recording and mixing “Imagination & Junk” since January, and then this week, we rolled it up, put it in a bottle, and threw it in the ocean with our fingers crossed that people might find it.

Partly, that leaves an old stage-shmuck like me feeling incomplete, as there have been no audible laughs or applause, but also I kinda like it. It feels like a relief. Well, it’s out there now. It doesn’t belong to us any more. Go! Fly free, little thoughtful podcast!

Anyway. I’m far away, but hopefully the podcast finds you in the front row.

MR