23rd August, 2009

NO booking required: FREE event.

The sight of tree houses on the banks of the boating lake in Regents Park has made us go all weak in the knees. Join us on August 23rd for an evening of slushy love under the canopies. Warhorse Theatreworks will stage a performance of Chaucer’s ‘Parliament of Fowls’ and other luscious verse; the Beekeepers have buried mystic tales of love and temptation between Merlin and Vivien, the lady of the lake, in magical staffs; write the love note you’ve been dying to send; start a game of kiss chase; make a paper crane to hang in the trees and , if you’re lucky, get invited on a fantasy date.

With romantic nooks, elderflower wine and a swing for two, it’s the perfect place to bring a date or perhaps find a new mate… anything is possible with trees, birds and bees.

Phone Tim on 07905 277719 for more details, or email info at thebeekeepers dot com.

Find the treeHouse gallery:

Which looks like this.

The treeHouse gallery on Google Maps.

Pirate Day from Bee Keepers on Vimeo.

When we first visited the treeHouse gallery, under construction in late July beside Regent’s Park boating lake, we thought: let’s have a day where everyone turns up dressed as pirates!

So on September 9th we organised some piratey adventures around London with friends from the Institute of Collapsonomics, Warhorse Theatreworks and the Oxford Waits.

Thanks to everyone who helped and turned up. It was a lot of fun and we hope to do something similar before the end of the Summer.

This is a quick run down of the day…

Exploration of the “lost” Fleet River

This is the crew at the end of an exploration of the Fleet River (which – once it gets to the Thames is now the Fleet Sewer – buried beneath Farringdon Road). We found ourselves at Smithfield Market, at the gate to St Bartholomew the Great Church.

Here’s a treasure map of the places we explored, and some of the secrets you can find there…

St Bartholomew’s gate is one of the few structures still standing in London that every English pirate would have know: from Queen Elizabeth I’s time through to the 1720s.

Here’s the science… show

It seemed like the appropriate place for our crew of vagabonds and bag carriers to lay anchor. Appropriately, the Oxford Waits musicians entertained us with some sea shanties and beautiful 17th century music. A splendid conclusion to a few hours of urban buccaneering.

We’ve written more about the Fleet and other lost rivers of London here.
Next page…

9th August 2009

(09.08.09)

The lost rivers of London – Meet at Blackfriars Bridge, 2 p.m.

(On the Victoria Embankment side).

Treasure Island - Meet at the treeHouse gallery, 5 – 8 p.m.

(Directions below. Eye patches provided for early birds).

On 9th August, join the Beekeepers and assorted seadogs as we mount expeditions along the dark arteries of London’s past, recovering tarnished treasures buried beneath the City’s streets. Wearing an eye patch and going ‘yarrr’ makes you feel like a pirate, but real pirates also have adventures.

We’re all headed for Treasure Island: a pirate village that’s sprung up, as if by magic, on the banks of the Regent’s Park boating lake. We’ve moored two mighty vessels there: the Queen Bee with its precious cargo full of books containing the world’s knowledge; and the Sea Hawk, with a viewing platform from which you can see London anew. Who’s with us, ye landlubbers?

There are other rivers of London which lie concealed, encased in tunnels or in pipes, occasionally to be heard but generally running silently and invisibly beneath the surface of the city. To name them in order, west to east – Stamford Brook, the Wandle, Counter’s Creek, the Falcoln, the Westbourne, the Tyburn, the Effra, the Fleet, the Walbrook, Neckinger and the Earl’s Sluice, the Peck and the Ravensbourne.

It has always been said that enchantment is bought in the burying alive of great waters, yet the purchase may be a perilous one.
Peter Ackroyd, ‘London’ p 555

“Where’s all England’s men now? I dunno. Where’s Flint’s? Why, most on ‘em aboard here, and glad to get the duff – been begging before that, some on ‘em. Old Pew, as had lost his sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pound in a year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he’s dead now and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers, the man was starving! He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and starved at that, by the powers!”

“Well, it ain’t much use, after all,” said the young seaman.

“‘Tain’t much use for fools, you may lay to it – that, nor nothing,” cried Silver. “But now, you look here: you’re young, you are, but you’re as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I’ll talk to you like a man.”
Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’

Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.
Daniel Defoe, ‘Robinson Crusoe’.

The City of London is built on burial sites, on entombed rivers and buried treasure.

In the ‘Golden Age’ – from about 1650 – 1720 – pirates operated from London, many licensed by the State. Pirates were lodged in Deptford – right next to Greenwich and the Royal Navy who often pursued them on the High Seas – and on the other side of the Thames, at Wappingside.

The Neckinger – a stream that ran from Bermondsey Abbey to the Thames, part of which is now St Saviour’s Dock – took its named from Neckinger Wharf where pirates were executed, according to folklore. The rope used to hang them became known as the Devil’s neck-cloth or ‘neckinger’.

Pirate loot was carefully reinvested. Many of London’s great institutions built their foundations on pirate plunder: the silver of the Incans and the gold of the Aztecs. Stolen from civilisations of the New World, seized again from foreign ships of the Old World by British privateers, and brought back to London. This money paid for the growth of the City.

The history has been paved over, buried beneath the streets and the every day by bricks and mortar. Dark subterranean veins – associated with crime, alcohol, deformity, disorder, stench and agues – run through London’s financial heart.

The lost rivers have become repositories for discarded and forgotten objects. An anchor was recovered from the Fleet as far North as Kentish Town. Their silted arteries yield coins, daggers, brooches, medals, keys and pins. Things dropped between grates, by accident. Sentimental keepsakes washed into the underworld by the wind and the rain.

• Discover the lost rivers connecting London: we will be processing along the routes of the Fleet, Tyburn and Walbrook, looking for clues revealing their progress through the City and finding buried treasure along the way.
• Unearth the City’s past: we will visit the sites of City institutions that did very well out of piracy. Bring a spade and an open mind.
• Spin a yarn: there will be readings at the Treehouse Gallery from Robert Louis Stevenson, Daniel Defoe and other writers inspired by the piratical past.
• Recover the loot: make your own treasure. The Beekeepers will run workshops to make precious things – rings, bracelets, bookmarks, you name it – from recycled materials, ingenuity and pluck.
• Hunt for treasure: the treeHouse Gallery is a treasure-trove of knowledge and ideas. We’ve buried some clues around the place.
• ‘X’ marks the spot: Pirates operated a kind of anarchist democracy. We’ll be staging a debate: should piracy be renationalised? Join in and cast your vote.
  
  We’ll be joined by Eric Priezkalns of the Pirate Party of the UK.

Phone Tim on 07905 277719 for more details, or email info at thebeekeepers dot com.

Find the treeHouse gallery:

Which looks like this.

The treeHouse gallery on Google Maps.

Next page…

Using temporary space to revitalise Britain’s streets and cheer everyone up

By Tim Anselm

View this document as an Adobe PDF.  

The idea’s been suggested – in a Guardian article quoted below, this overview of artists’ squats, this piece in the Evening Standard and various places online – that during the recession empty commercial and office property could be used as temporary spaces by artists and community groups.

This could prevent high streets from becoming dreary aisles of boarded-up shops, which is in all communities’ interests. It would be great for community groups and creative people, who always need cheap space.

An official legal arrangement would also help property owners in many ways. By taking tenants on peppercorn rents – for a brief period – they would avoid the problems with being illegally squatted, while making sure their property is kept warm, wind and water tight.

So long as tenants understand that they have to vacate in reasonable time once people with money want to take on the lease, it could work in everyone’s favour. (Of course it’s quite possible that things could go so well that the temporary tenants take on the lease at a commercial rate, eventually).

I’m looking for free or cheap space for some projects so I’ve collected information and opinions about this idea. I thought I’d share this as a short document, with some observations on how a national strategy could work and some things to consider.

My main observation is that there isn’t really a “slack space movement” as such – this is a bit of wishful thinking by a journalist – but full credit to Robert Booth for trying to give life to the idea. An organised movement would be a very valuable thing at the moment.

Update 30/04/09: There is a network of people using dormant space or who want to, which the Revolutionary Arts Group (who, like me, are based in Sussex but the other side of Brighton) is coordinating on a voluntary basis.

A month into research on this, the thing that is most heartening to find is common agreement that no one individual or organisation can own the idea. In fact the whole point is it should operate on nomadic principles.

In the way of these things, Dan at RAG and I only made contact this morning – the contact being made through Google and the net initially, despite being an hour away from one another – and once we got talking found ourselves pretty much 100% in agreement.

This article outlines things that a general movement should be aiming to do, in terms of energising and exciting people, and drawing experiences and ideas from a lot of disparate sources.

Some of the activities of this movement could almost be art projects in their own right, like documenting how buildings look and where they are, their histories and stories associated with them.

The New Work Network has kindly offered to put this article out to their membership for discussion. I’m very happy to act as a general sounding board for any effort to pull a national response from artists together like this, but am not into reinventing the wheel so will also be supporting RAG where I can in what they are doing.

To most, the ring of hammer on nail as shop windows are boarded up on Britain’s struggling high streets can only mean unemployment and decline. But for a growing band of optimists, it heralds a golden opportunity.

Artists and curators have begun colonising “slack space” freed up by the recession and are transforming vacant shops into “creative squats”, galleries and studios […] The slack space movement has echoes in previous slumps when many now successful architects, magazine publishers and artists moved into vacant premises.
‘Artists’ creative use of vacant shops brings life to desolate high streets’ Robert Booth, Guardian ¹

If ever there is an image that symbolises the times we are in, it is desolate town centres with rows of empty shops where once there were small local retailers, a Woolworths or a Zavvi. Decisive action must be taken to stop our high streets turning from clone towns into ghost towns.
Cllr Margaret Eaton, Local Government Association chair ²

Next page…

Workshops at The Performers’ Playground
Mondays 7pm – 9.30pm
19th January – 16th February 2009

Five sessions of two hours and a half hours
£40 for all 5 or £12 if booked individually.

All workshops take place in at The Thanet, Herbert Street, NW5 (near Chalk Farm tube). Map.

We’re teaming up with our friends Warhorse Theatreworks and Monique Squeri to run a series of workshops in London that will give performers the opportunity to get back to their roots.

Over five weeks we’ll be rediscovering some of the most important skills and traditions of European popular theatre.

Each week you learn a new skill, challenging yourself and attaining new levels of clarity, subtlety and grace as a performer as we build to a dazzling masked ball in the final week.

Not only will you get something from it: we are searching for the right performers to join a commedia troupe for various site specific theatre projects in development. (One is ‘The Manuscript Found in Saragossa’).

How excited are we to be doing this? This is a dream project for The Beekeepers and the main reason we set the company up. If you’ve ever secretly wanted to be Arlechinno, Columbina, Panatalone, Punch or the Capitano Fracassco-brise-tout, then we hope we find you at these workshops.

However, you don’t need to be interested in joining a troupe in order to attend: it will be a lot of fun, and we’ll pack in plenty of the history of the tradition – and even the odd bit of scholarship – along with practical exercises and some serious workouts for your mind and body.

Commedia dell’Arte is the wellspring of the European imagination from which Harlequin, Mr Punch and the Ballerina leapt, fully formed.

Opera, clowning, the circus, puppetry and stage magic all share common roots in Commedia. It was popular theatre that drew on classical Roman and Greek sources, and ended up influencing Shakespeare, Molière and the Music Hall.

If you’re a performer then these characters, stories and techniques belong to you.

Book early as spaces are limited. Email your C.V. and photo to hayley at warhorsetheatreworks dot com to be considered for a place. Your place will only be confirmed once payment has been received. Details will be given upon your request for a place.

More about Commedia…

The workshops…

The Mystery of the Masks – January 19th

Wearing a mask is an instant way to pretend to be someone else.

“Maschera” is the Italian word that the Commedia dell’Arte performers used to describe both the mask you wear, and the role that goes with it: Punch, Columbina, Pantalone, the Capitano, etc.

The workshop will give performers the chance to exercise their jaws and face muscles, learn about Commedia’s archetypal roles, and improvise some instant characters, comedy and melodrama.

The Book of Spells – January 26th

Every Commedia dell’Arte troupe had a book that contained stock skits, speeches, magic routines and musical numbers. They would improvise a show without using a script, just these linking pieces.

The workshop will explore complexity arising out of simplicity in performance: how the magic of words and improvised scenes can unlock both the audience’s and the performers’ imaginations.

The Duellists – February 5th

It’s time to get physical. Commedia dell’Arte was physical theatre: we get the term “slap stick” from Arlechinno’s staff.

Knock-about comedy, acrobatics, sword fights and dances were part of every show.

This workshop will explore how you can create character, mood and story through posture, gesture and movement. It will draw on Commedia’s archetypal roles, flexing performer’s muscles and minds to create improvised scenes and situations.

Capturing The Spirit – February 9th

In this workshop, led by Monique Squeri, we explore rhythm, energy and spirit.

To get us ready for performance, we will look at the practical elements of staging a Commedia performance – grounding, largeness, precision, rhythm, entrances and exits, serious play and communication – as well as being specific to Commedia: gibberish, mask technique, playing the play.

This workshop will add dynamism and subtlety to your repertoire.

Prospero’s Magic – February 16th

For the final workshop we’ll combine all the skills we’ll have explored together to create a unique event: a masked ball where the performers are also the audience and guests, invited by an enigmatic host. (Don’t worry, if you haven’t been to the other workshops you can still join in).

Over two hours you’ll improvise a story, unite some star crossed lovers and solve a mystery or three.

What is the secret of Prospero’s magic? Is it better to be happy or wise? And how do you make a Venetian blind?

Don a mask, follow the clues and all will be revealed.

More about Commedia

Commedia dell’Arte is Italian for “the comedy of artists”.

The “Arte” bit meant “the professionals” as well because it referred to the actor’s Guild.

It was the main form of theatre on the Continent for nearly four hundred years, from the Renaissance to the era of Vaudeville.

Unlike the English stage at the time, both male and female performers played comic and tragic roles.

Commedia troupes used stock characters, dialogue and business to create mostly improvised performances.

They didn’t have a script, they used a scenario, with the main plot – or Argument – at the start and then a scene-by-scene description.

The shows were hyperreal narratives, where – through the alchemy of improvisation – the magic space between performers and audiences was filled with amazing feats, fantastic scenarios and epic melodrama.

Here are some titles of Commedia scenarios:

‘Rosalba, Enchantress, A Royal Opera’

‘The Mad Princess’

‘Flavio the Fake Magician’

‘The Alexandrian Carpets’

‘The Fortune of the Solitary Prince of Muscovy’

And (a particular favourite of The Beekeepers):
‘The Bear, A Royal Opera’ (in three parts).

(‘The Bear’ features the Temple of the Great God Pan, a Prince of Hungary this time, a nymph, another Prince who’s half human and half bear, and out for revenge, a lion and – most importantly – a bear.

This and the other scenarios are from a 1611 collection of plays compiled by the Commedia actor and impressario Flaminio Scala).

Traditional Commedia looks like this:

And this:

But it can even be like this…

Blimey, you wouldn’t want to be a Barbary Coast pirate ashore in Naples with that crime fighting duo on the case.

There’s so much stuff about Commedia online it’s hard to know where to start with links, but we like Brian Foley’s blog. He’s collected loads of images and YouTube clips. As Brian notes, the quality is variable but – to us – that shows the range and popularity of these characters and techniques, from amateur college productions to some very slick Italian companies.

(Brian has also been a true gent and given us a shout on his journal. Ta matey!)