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‘...there are consequences to what we say...’ Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files

30/7/2019

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The world has gone mad, and it feels like the only appropriate response is to get madder. I, however, am in a love bubble. So I am shaking my fist at the world from inside my bubble. I thought I’d lost my writing mojo until last week; even the morning pages that I remembered to do felt hollow. Where had all my ANGST gone?! I did a spot of open mic for Poetry Platform and FAP with Friends in the Attic in early June, and rather than reading any of my own stuff, I shared an extract of ‘Belinda Blinked 2’ by Rocky Flintstone. It involved a particularly ludicrous sex scene in which Jim Stirling reveals his penis transplant result to Belinda. Fun. Boundary-pushing. LOLS. I was a guest performer for ‘Moving Voices’ at the Art House at the end of June. They got the first half hour of ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ and some of my cold germs too. My band and I got to go to Barking for Clout! Festival a few weeks back, and it was the loveliest theatre and the most fantastic people. Studio 3 Arts is a great community centred theatre in Barking that is headed by my good friend of many years; Liza Vallance, so naturally she had to read the Brain Haiku.  AND, I was on a PODCAST! A podcast made by and for Tom Waits fanatics. When I was writing ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ I often listened to the Song by Song Podcast, in which Sam Pay and Martin Zaltz Austwick set themselves the monumental task of discussing and analysing Tom Waits’s entire back catalogue, song by song. I wrote to them a couple of years ago to tell them about the show, and got a lovely reply, but heard nothing else until a couple of months ago, when Sam asked me to come and discuss ‘The Black Rider’ with them. This was the first Tom Waits album I listened to,  I remember I borrowed the CD from Lewisham library, something like 20 years ago...We also discussed Robert Wilson, The Tiger Lillies, it was me ‘on a stick’ as one friend commented. So far summer has been excellent!

The New Stuff Update: What was 8 new bits in May, is now 18. That’s not too shabby for someone who thought she’d lost her mojo. I finished 3 poems that had been hanging around my notebooks last week, and even arranged all of the bits into an order. I still don’t know what I’m looking at, but I found out yesterday that I had been given a 5-15 minute slot in Cabaret Playroom at The Albany in November, so that at least gives me something to work towards.

My only plan is to keep writing, keep sharing the new stuff at the lovely open mics in Winchester and Southampton, and have something more or less finished by the end of the year. I’ve been asked to perform an old burlesque act here and there at recent or upcoming events, and it feels like a gift to still be able to offer up ‘Past Jeu Jeu’, who I loved, but who needed to grow up. Bringing ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ around again has been wonderful, finding new audiences for it, as well as recognising the familiar faces who championed that show from the start, and never deserted me, though I felt totally alone and lost until only a few months ago. 

Last week, when I was having a few ill days, I read something vaguely poetic I’d written back in April about passing my ex-partner on the street that day. A restraining order keeps him out of my neighbourhood, and two further non-molestation orders mean that he isn’t allowed to contact me, but at the time he was still at large in my home town, and I didn’t ever feel safe. That poem will never be performed I don’t think, but it prompted me to write something else about the last time he emailed me, long after we had separated. I called it ‘Famous Last Words’ and I decided that it was the last thing I was going to write about him, about the last thing he wrote to me. I’ll include it at the end here.

Things are better these days, but I’ve been changed by it all. For a start, certain song lyrics upset me in a way they didn’t before, I wince, and then I get angry. From my own experiences with domestic abuse, and the research I carried out when I tried to make sense of my experiences, I have learned two things: 1) I was very lucky, it could’ve been far worse. 2) I am one of many, far too many. And so in writing this new thing (18 bits of a new thing) I have been looking more outwardly, seeing intimate partner violence as part of a wider, systemic issue, as well as an experience I am still trying to personally process. I think that is probably where my writing is headed next.

Xxx


Famous Last Words


My famous last words aren’t flowing today
But the lines of pursuit
And the sordid promises
The endless gifs and google translations
Objectionable compliments
Double-speak and fake news
Blatant infidelity, pretend empathy
They’re on chrome spun display

The truth isn’t showing up today
But the lines of self-pity
And the shattered sentences
Suspicious forward slashes, dot dot dot
I miss her, still nothing
Bubbles break and views are bleak
A pile of charisma slumped by the bandstand
The truth is on full beam
It’s just pointed a different way

I read something I shouldn’t have today
The lines wove like a net around me
And the words were utter filth
Twisting flesh, ploughing the need
Pitiful cries, I’m struggling to breathe
You fed me burnt chicken and red wine
Tentative messages and tender rituals
Until I was within your grasp again

It’s fine, honestly, I’m OK
While the lines around my eyes deepen
My chest tightens
My nose and tongue grow, my ribs start to show
Stomach lining spews and vents
Instagram feed, a sickening need
Bargaining tools, re-established rules
I’m in deep shit now, but what’s worse is the shame

The power is in knowing today
I tell more lies when I’m chased by you
And my words can murder
Jealousy sucks and whimpers on speed
Fabric strips taunt and a sniper points
A pressure cooker spews hot pink liquid in the road
Your dilated pupils spell out horror 
Playing a reeled timeline of constant pain

There’s some peace in remembering today
Some lines can be cut before they take hold
And though word snares are rare
Submitting of will and fractured ego
God’s voice or a damaged psyche
I take comfort in knowing at least I’m not you
Bolted doors and the cocooning paper
They steer me away, keep me clear of your gaze

I really had to hand it you today
That one line email really got up my nose
Five carefully selected, your famous last words
You knew it would rile me, I nearly replied
A voice said stop, the mist retreated
I skip for joy having nothing to say to you
Sticky lies slip, the net slackens
I reported your arse
Now get the fuck out of my face






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‘Every sentence a crossroads.’ Lauren Elkin, Flaneuse

12/6/2019

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I’m nearly at the end of the notebook I started back in January and inscribed with ‘Early writings for Jeu Jeu la Foille’s New Thing.’ Later on this year I added underneath ‘A show about defeating a monster.’ I’m not sure if it’s about that anymore, I don’t know what the new thing is about. The notebook began sensibly enough - with lists - but it’s recently devolved into my usual ranting space. The pages in between have all the poems. I’ve written three more pieces since the last blog, and three short monologues - in French. It turns out that a book I’ve needed to read for some time finally found me (see title), and this inspired me to write something in French, and to explore the idea of protest. I have set myself a very difficult task if I want to perform this successfully. I gave my new character, with the beginnings of a costume, an introduction at Poetry Platform this month. It was a bit of a disaster, but I promised to get better. A friend in the audience told me that I spoke French with an Italian accent....
Full ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ came back to life on June 1st, and though I was nervous as hell for the first ten minutes, and it was hot and sweaty, I got through it and I couldn’t be happier. The audience were mostly the friends of FAP in the Attic, and many had performed already that day. I have a lot of respect for these people, and I didn’t want to let them down. I also had my youngest ever audience member that day; an eight year old girl, who attends FAP regularly with her Dad. I have an age guidance of 16+ for ‘adult themes’ as although it’s harmless enough (I think) it’s not really a show for the kiddies. The girl held up the brain model during the lobotomy demonstration, she was thrilled, as was I.

The full show runs at 50 minutes, I’m happiest with this trimmed version, it’s tighter and less fussy than me trying to stretch to an hour. As I was rehearsing for this performance, I found myself comparing the writing in Frontal Lobotomy to what I’m working on now. My new stuff feels more confident and less clunky somehow, but I am still very fond of rhyming. I’ve popped my head up at a few poetry open mics recently, and it feels very different to be holding my words in a folder, wearing ‘normal’ clothes. No one is getting covered in lipstick at these events, and in an odd way it seems this is what I’m known for now; a trail of (consenting) victims, myself included.

I have incorporated a prop into one of my pieces of writing. Last November I was lucky enough to meet the writer Tom Sharp at a Halloween party. During one of his spooky poems we passed around a smooth wood carving of a raven. I was taken by this idea of something tactile for the audience to experience alongside the words, and liked the low-level, non-threatening participation. It was probably in January, during a discussion on how the media portrays women in one of my Freedom Program sessions that a woman from the group said “Barbie is such a slut!” Me being me, I piped up with something along the lines of “Well I saw a documentary on Barbie not long ago. When she was originally made it was because before then little girls only had pretend babies and kitchens to play with. Barbie was the first adult doll made, she had loads of jobs, Barbie is aspirational!” I wasn’t all that interested in playing with dolls as a kid, and I think I’ve always been slightly suspicious of the idea of Barbie into adulthood. But here I was defending her. And so I did some research into Barbie, with the question in my head; Who taught us to be threatened by Barbie? I found out about her jobs, pets, education, relationships, height and weight, and I tell the audience these things while they pass around my naked Barbie-doll prop. I keep adding to this section, and I like to say it through a microphone if available - I don’t usually use a mic in any performances, but it feels right for this part. The last time I performed this monologue, a woman in the audience plaited Barbie’s hair for her.

I have a performance at The Art House in Southampton, as part of Moving Voices at the end of this month, where I’ll be doing a half hour version of Frontal Lobotomy. And on July 10th me, Bobby Cool and the band are off to London, to perform as part of Clout! for Studio 3 Arts in Barking. Then I’ll be reading naked with wonderful women on July 25th at Fontaines, again in London. The theme for this Naked Girls Reading is ‘Trash Fiction’, and I’ve chosen two extracts (not my writing!) that are very funny and very filthy. As ever, I’m proud to be part of the naked club. My body, my choice, and all that.



I’ll say goodbye to you for now with a new poem. Is it sad? I find it sad.
JJ xx



Where will I go?



The front door is painted white

We live at number one
A crunchy pathway running alongside
Overshadowed by a pylon


The hallway is so narrow
We can’t fit more than two
Shrilling phone on the wall, treacherous stairs
It echoes everywhere you go


There is a table laid for four
We always have some mess
The gap dividing houses closes over the years
Replaced with a slab of wood, crumbling step


The vocal chords of the house are there
And we have little privacy
Those three walls have stories to tell
The shabby windows say it publicly


The garden goes on for miles and miles
Stopped by a tin shed
The bones of passed on pets slowly sink
And rotten cooking apples play dead


There is a constant dripping tap
The floorboards don’t dare creak
The open fire leaves dust in every splinter
The roof is just starting a 20 year leak


The front bedroom tempts me with perfume and high heels
The middle room is warm and dark
Our bedroom is only accessible by passing
Through a portal into Narnia


It’s the place we can escape to
When the shouting gets too loud
A multiverse can be created with bunk beds and wardrobes
Just wish the toilet wasn’t all the way down


I can fit inside that drawer
I’ll roll you up in a quilt
Let’s pretend to be radio dj’s
You’ve ruined another perfectly good story
Steps on stairs indicate guilt is coming this way
Let’s pretend we didn’t hear


Passing the baton of blame
The vocal chords gone slack
The house heaves a sigh of relief
The dust settles, the sticky soup of secrecy sucks back









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‘It’s been too long, a little too long.’ Otis Redding, Change Gonna Come

6/5/2019

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Perhaps some things are better left unsaid. I was able to say some words that I needed to get out at an intimate performance afternoon this weekend. I’m still not really sure how I feel about it all, although the gig was lovely. I know I fluffed some words, but some of it landed I think. The words were seven new poems, with the unimaginative titles of ‘Introduction’, ‘Bumbling Along’, ‘September 3rd 2017’, ‘Cornwall Sonnet’, ‘I Plead My Belly’, ‘The Rules of the Game’ and ‘We Will Not Be Silenced.’ The titles are for my reference, it’s unlikely I’ll ever state the title of a poem before saying it, as I hope these poems will part of a larger anthology exploring a central theme - as ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ was. When I co-devised with ‘The Mist:We Are Not Cakes’ (pictured), we used an anthology style of theatre too; taking various writings and ideas from the Russian Surrealist OBERIU authors, and weaving them into an anarchic cabaret of sorts. I think we gained as many enemies as we did friends with that show, but the three of us had agreed when we started working together to not be boring at all costs. I read the poems in one go on Saturday, like a monologue. I explained to the audience beforehand why I wouldn’t be stopping to introduce each poem like we often see poets and musicians do. I also said that I had tried to keep Tom Waits out of my new stuff, but that he had crept in a couple of times.

There was one poem that needed the title said out loud, and that’s because its a past date. I wrote that very short poem on September 3rd 2017, in response to a moment, as I was processing it alone later. I posted it on facebook, a distant cry for help. It was a pivotal moment for me I now realise, and although the poem is not ‘new stuff’, it’s the reason I’ve carried on writing. Shortly after this date I began ‘The Artist’s Way’, in some attempt to recover my creativity, and had completed all of the morning pages and artist dates I could manage by the end of the year. I didn’t write a new poem or story for a whole year, and I probably didn’t get my writing mojo back until March of this year. All of 2018 feels like a stain that won’t come out. 

When I first starting writing ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ I ploughed through the ENTIRE back catalogue of Tom Waits; collecting phrases: ‘Tom Waits on Women’, ‘Tom Waits on Heaven/Hell’, ‘Who is Tom Waits to Me?’ And so on. And these phrases were what I hung my ideas on. I joke about the plagiarism, and there are references to other sources too; I’ve quoted a small chunk from ‘JD Salinger’s ‘For Esme - with Love and Squalor.’ Tom Waits was the focus I had before, he’ll probably appear in my writing again and again, but I’m not making him a feature this time. No, this time the primary source that I’ve had to refer to are the diaries I kept from when I began ‘The Artist’s Way’ and still write. Diaries that capture my frustration and anguish, grief, hope...but are ridiculously mundane. Or at least I think so.


I watched a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert ‘Your Elusive Creative Genius’, where she describes her creative process as being her turning up to do her job, doing all the legwork, and waiting for the ‘creative genius’ to appear. I’ve paraphrased it badly, but it reminded me that waiting for inspiration to strike is only half the battle, and most of writing a new ‘anthology show thing’ is very hard work that you have to do. So I did my diligent research, picking out words, phrases and images from those diaries. I wrote ‘Cornwall Sonnet’ a while ago this way. I’ve focusing recently on diaries from January to early March of this year, and there I am, asking urgent questions, and starting to relate my experiences to a wider context. There is a whole lot of ‘Why Me?’ In those pages, even makes me cringe to write it.

I think when I finished The Freedom Program, having found a kind of warped solidarity, and the blackest of humour with those women, and when I went on the End Violence to Women and Girls March on March 9th, and had to fight back tears...of what...joy? Too painful for joy, but oddly joyful. I finally got over myself at that point. And now I’m afraid of what I’ve written in those diaries; one line said ‘I feel like a copy of a copy of a copy.’ Particularly frightening are the dreams I’ve written about while the abuse was happening, and I was in denial. All the flesh falling of my legs, a cow biting me, burn scars and bandages. But thankfully all that is behind me now, and I’ve even been caught smiling when I think no one is looking.

It’s also been oddly joyful to rehearse ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ again, just trying to remember it all, and which prop goes where, alone in my living room. I cut one of the poems that I’d recorded as a voiceover, I decided it slowed everything down, and its now an orphan that I might adopt into the new anthology. I’m performing the full show again for the first time in eighteen months, at the Railway in Winchester on June 1st. I’ve performed the 15 minute extract there a couple of times, but the last time I did the whole show in the Attic was July 2017. I’ve had to change a bit of wording in the introduction to cover the gap in time, or draw more attention to it, I don’t know. The show has been stuffed back into the suitcase for now, I’m hoping to receive a bit of outside eye feedback from a friend who has worked on the show with me before I perform it again in June. I have no more full show gigs booked, but Winchester is a good place for poets, as is Southampton, and I just need to see if I can get through this one first. 


With love JJ


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‘I am beautiful, and I can do whatever I want.’ Lucifer, from ‘Alchemy of Archetypes.’

16/2/2019

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I want to this blog to be about my creative process again. I feel like it’s become too focused on my inner world and outer issues, and not really connected to my output...which has been sorely lacking. Although my fifteen-minute version of ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ was a hit for a small but appreciative audience on a snowy afternoon earlier this month! And it’s being unleashed again at Chaplins Cellar Bar in Boscombe this Tuesday. So no one is safe. And I’m thrilled to be performing the full show again on June 1st at my spiritual of the The Railway in Winchester. A quick annoying plug there.! When I’ve read back my morning pages from last year I’ve sometimes been annoyed by my own voice. And I try to reassure myself that it’s ok; I’m clearing the debris, floundering in the fog...It’s ok to be rusty. I find that writing on this public platform helps me chip away at what has been nagging at me, but in a crafted and proof-read way. And that in itself is a creative process.

For me there is nothing better for blowing off the cobwebs than taking part in a three day theatre workshop, and I’m grateful to ‘past me’ for having the wherewithal to book up for Peta Lily’s ‘Alchemy of Archetypes’ - which happened last week. Peta’s opening question for our group of twelve was that if we had a magic wand or ‘stick of curiosity’, what would we want to have appear or be led towards by the end of our three days together? We answered individually, and I was so touched by the responses. Mine was that I NEEDED TO KNOW what I was going to write about in the new show I WAS DESPERATELY TRYING TO WRITE. I didn’t shout, but I think my frustration was clear, as a few of the participants (we soon became good friends) approached me to ask about the show I WAS TRYING TO WRITE. Why have I not learned by now that I don’t NEED TO KNOW anything? I knew I was doing the workshop for fun and laughter and connection, and I got plenty! We explored nine mythical archetypes using movement, masks and voice, they were; Mother, Child, Trickster, Fool, Devil/Lucifer, Lover/Romantic, Death, Crone and Hero. Each archetype has a centre or physical focus, and a mantra that they can repeat internally and externally to create an overall ‘feeling.’ What struck me about how the workshop was structured was how well Peta built in opportunities for us to check in with ourselves and each other throughout the process, allowing us to give each other bits of feedback and encouragement. This was important as the work was experimental and often felt quite otherworldly and heightened. I felt challenged, but never unsafe. The importance of feeling over knowing was with me throughout. And since then, the dreams I knew I was having but couldn’t remember, are hanging around for a bit longer in the morning. 

There was a particular archetype I had in the back of my mind, and it wasn’t on the list above. I wondered if there would be something in one or several of the masks that would help me encapsulate it neatly, write from it freely; all the while keeping the veneer of my carefully constructed Jeu Jeu la Foille character, so audiences would never know how ‘true’ my writing actually is. A good friend who has seen ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ several times asked me recently how much of me was in that show. It was a difficult question to answer, because it’s all me and also nothing to do with me. I remembered last week that I’d unknowingly worked with archetypes for that show; they were reoccurring characters from Tom Waits songs, and the all the costumes I switch between during the hour represent them, visually at least. Those costume changes became the arc; my background in burlesque saw to that, where in a sense the costume IS the narrative. Anyone who has ever rehearsed a strip-tease act knows that it’s ten per cent artfully getting undressed, and ninety per cent grumpily, fussily and fumbily getting dressed again and again. What the costume is, and how and in which order it is removed, and most importantly WHY, is the whole point...otherwise keep it on and do something else. An afterthought on editing this is; Maybe the WHY is that you love your body and want others to see how much you love your body? I yo-yo’d between scrawny and somewhat ‘fleshier’ throughout the time I was regularly doing burlesque gigs. I panicked over not fitting into my costumes which I either couldn’t afford to replace, or didn’t have time to remake. But whatever shape I was in, whatever I thought of myself that day, the audience still got a performance. Shit went wrong all the time, and I always made it difficult for myself with thousands of props. Looking back I was incredibly sloppy, or nervous. But I mostly got away with it because I was often ‘the funny one’ in a line up of Glamazons!

The archetype of Lucifer has a mantra; it’s, ‘I am beautiful, and I can do whatever I want.’ I 
found playing this archetype very special, but I chose to play the Trickster mask in the final part of the workshop, I needed his energy back in my life! Lucifer’s mantra I can use to help with the sloppiness and nervousness. I’m not getting rid of the props.

In truth the archetype that has been nagging away at me, is far messier and grotesque than I would like. Everything thing I’ve written so far for this elusive new show seems to have a glaring trigger warning or health advice,  “CAUTION: MAY INDUCE CRYING IN READER.” So, I needed to know the path I was on with this, and whether it was worth my sanity to persevere. Plus, funding applications, ugh. They need a description. I wrote the ‘blurb’ for ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ before I’d finished writing the show, but a ‘blurb’ for what I’m working on I just cannot see. Ugh.

I am halfway through a course called The Freedom Programme. It’s based on a book by Pat Craven calling ‘Living with the Dominator.’ The course is for domestic abuse survivors, and the Dominator character is an abusive man. It’s very gendered, though recognises that domestic abuse is a broad and complex crime. All of the people on my course are women, whose perpetrators are men. The Domestic Abuse Bill is currently going through Parliament, and you can read the draft proposal that begins with the statutory definition online.
​

The Dominator is the Archetype, but ‘he’ has several different ‘masks’ which characterise certain behaviours or tactics. These are; The Bully, The Badfather, The Headworker, The Jailer, The Sexual Controller, The King of the Castle, The Liar and The Persuader. The Dominator puts rules in place to control their ‘submissive.’ These rules constantly change, and so do the tactics to keep them in place. Not always, but often the Dominator resorts to physical violence when the constantly changing ‘rules’ aren’t obeyed. Even as I write this I’m making notes in the little book to my left on how each ‘mask’ might be physically represented or played....see....this blog....creative process...ha! As well as the Dominator masks, are the counter-masks; The Lover, The Partner, The Goodfather, The Truthteller, The Negotiator, The Confidence-Booster, The Liberator and The Friend. “Not a Saint that we are seeing, just a Decent Human Being.” So the Decent Human Being is also an Archetype...? I also started thinking about the female other to the Dominator, and arrived  - perhaps too quickly  - at Dominatrix, and was reminded of a conversation I overheard, where one person was saying to the other that she knew of a dominatrix who made her clients read feminist literature out loud in their sessions....and I thought back to ‘The Scum Manifesto’ and the latest series of ‘American Horror Story.’ Could this character be recalled like the Doctor is in ‘Frontal Lobotomy’? In any case this is whole rabbit hole of research (nice choice of words?) that is completely out of my comfort zone, but then again, so was brain surgery! 

A few weeks ago my mind was spinning, and not with juicy creative thoughts, but horrible paranoid, and often violent flashes of panic. With what took seemingly colossal effort, I wrote the following poem. It’s new and raw and came from a place of desperation. But I felt better as soon as I started writing it that night, and so I’ll leave you with it.

The rules of the game are
We play until you lose
You’ll do what I say
Come when I call
The rules at school don’t change
Mine do
I’ll tell you stories about demons and ghouls
Until you obey my rules
The rules are
They aren’t the rules
Until I say it’s cool
Fool
As a rule of thumb
You’ll lose if you ignore
The Rules
The the sake of your soul 
You better follow my rules
Don’t spread the news
About you breaking my rules
I refuse to excuse
My need of these rules
Your ignorance of the rules
Only fuels my desire to crush you
Cruel woman
Have you any idea
How much?
I love you

​Xxx

Photo credit: Gemma Betts 2012






















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‘In the beginning there was sound...’ Plagiarised and adapted by Jeu Jeu la Foille

3/1/2019

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I’ve tried to make a new addition to this blog for several months now, but every extended piece of writing seems to turn into a diatribe of some sort. I got my Performing mojo back. It was forced upon me at Dice Festival in October; a unique performance art gig where six acts each have a number and a dice is rolled. Last time I did a burlesque act for the festival, and my number didn’t get rolled, this time it got rolled three times. On the second, third and sixth roll. Between the second and third roll I had barely got my costume back on. The amazing stage management team stepped in and got me set up. I really had a chance to play with the ending of that 15 minute extract, which is largely improvised depending on the setting. This time the audience had seen the same extract twice already by the final showing, and I really wondered what more they could get out of it. I hope that I delivered a bit more each time, or that something I said dug in deeper. The people who run Dice Festival are truly wonderful, and I hope it continues.


It’s been well over a year since I performed the full Frontal Lobotomy, but I’ve enjoyed breaking it into chunks and seeing if it works better over a shorter duration. I performed some sections of it completely stripped down, no costumes or props, at the Art House in Southampton, this November. It was for the album launch of Grant Sharkey’s and Dave Allon’s ‘Beasts.’ An album of no words, and Grant is famous for his extensively researched words; so I was to be the words. I hardly ever use a mic, I’m a teacher. When I used to use a mic in my early versions of the show, it felt wrong, and it got in the way. I explained to the Art House audience that I’m normally in a costume, surrounded by props, but that as my first public reading of my poetry was standing in that very same spot, where I was drunk and humiliated, I felt it fitting to be more naked than usual for them. Two nights before that ‘Beasts’ gig I had sight-read and brought two of my own choice of readings to ‘Naked Girls Reading’ in Fontaines, London. They were ‘Song of my Returning’ by Phil Ochs, and an Extract of ‘The Poetry of the Red Shoes’ from the Kneehigh show. I cannot describe how it feels to read for an audience naked, and I always come away from these gigs feeling different. 


There had been an eruption building in my personal life behind the scenes of all of these outward looking ventures. In a weird way the gigs have kept me tethered to a reality, kept me looking beyond these four walls. I found a kind of incredible life in secret, but it was unsustainable, and eventually exploded. And I feel relief for the first time in a long time. Knowing what once burned brightly has been dowsed. What could be healed was healed in its own way. 


And with some respite from work-related stress and a bubble of safety and familiarity in the place I call home; I’m gathering momentum for a new show, and a new tour of ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Frontal Lobotomy.’ I learned so much previously from the creation process and subsequent tour of that show, and I’m on the lookout for festivals and quirky venues. The morning/evening/anytime pages I’ve methodically kept since September 2017 are slowly becoming more loaded with metaphor, and I sense patterns and reoccurring images when I read them back now. Plenty of themes but no form yet. Last time I immersed myself in the world of Tom Waits, and the show structure and writing came easily. This time I feel like I’m making my ‘difficult’ second album.

Pictured below is the ‘Fraggle Rock’ lighthouse, Falmouth, Cornwall. Xx


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‘Silence is a source of great strength.’ Lao Tzu

27/8/2018

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Dear People... 

Trigger warnings for this post...Domestic violence and sincere - bordering on self-pitying -  outpourings.

It’s been over a year since my last blog, and I’ve been prompted to write this one by accidentally reading the last one I wrote, in which I gathered together what I had learned from the experience of writing and performing my first full-length solo show. Here I attempt to gather what I have learned in the past year.

I finished touring ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ on July 22nd 2017, and since then I have performed the whole show for my Andover College HNC students (on their request) on October 31st 2017. I think they were suitably bewildered. I constructed a 15 minute version of the show to perform (again on request) for FAP in the Attic at my favourite Winchester venue The Railway, and again for largely the same audience for Periscope in Southampton. The shortened version has the first doctor monologue where I explain what a frontal lobotomy is, then goes into my ice-pick seduction, followed by my burlesque beat poem take on ‘Pasties and a G-String.’ I finish with my Tom Waits lip-synch and introduction of my ‘band’, who predictably do not play along with my next poem, and I round off the extract with a clownish apology. It’s been well received, and I’ve always been quizzed afterwards about when I’m going to perform the full show again. Always I didn’t know. In truth I’ve dragged myself through every performance I’ve done in the past year, with not enough preparation and more stage fright than ever. 


I was asked to speak a few poems at a poetry night I’d rocked up to earlier this month. I knew I wasn’t ready, but the audience were sweet, and I’d downed two strong ciders. I tried to perform ‘Soar Dirge’, ‘The One Who Got Away’ and ‘Tit Tape and a Tiara’, but could only remember the first two thirds of the first two poems, and didn’t have the script with me. I garbled into the microphone, and it was seriously squirmy for everyone, or at least that’s how I saw it. I wryly admitted to my friend and the host for the evening afterwards that my performance revealed my current state of mind. That same night I fell off my bike in the dark and walked the rest of the way home bleeding. I have a kind of performance amnesia, I’m wallowing in a serious lack of mojo. That ‘show’ reminded me of my first drunken and humiliating attempt at spoken-word in March 2016 at the Art House in Southampton. It was awful, but exhilarating, and I’ve spent the past month learning to sit with those emotions, and trying to remember where they propelled me to not long after my first run in with that ‘hilarious’ combination of wine and words.

When I began the tour in January 2017 I had fallen into a more depressive state than I’d ever known. Thankfully it was short-lived, and by the time I’d finished my run at Vault Festival in February the picture was getting brighter. Meanwhile trouble was brewing at home, it worsened and eventually erupted at the start of Summer last year. It erupted in an unprecedented and I believe completely unnecessary torrent of hatred directed at me, to which I didn’t retaliate. I still to this day cannot figure out why or how it got as bad as it did. The tour was going with a bang, it was varied, the show kept developing, and it gave me a focus in the middle of a growing shitstorm. But I couldn’t escape the criticism of my own family members who dubbed my ARTS COUNCIL FUNDED TOUR A...wait for it...A HOBBY!! I’m over it now...just about!

I fell in love, madly and foolishly in love, in May 2017. Maybe it was fuelled by the ‘us against them’ mentality, but this was unlike anything before, and I yearned for the kind of connection that just wasn’t possible in a darkened room of strangers and friends, where I’d don several costumes and chat about trauma. Here was a person who embodied trauma, and I’ve always been drawn to darkness, I’m obsessed with Tom Waits for Chrissakes! That person broke my heart repeatedly over the next year, until, in the early hours of June 20th of this year, they broke my face too, in yet another unprecedented torrent of hatred. I ran. I reported it to the police the following day, and then I ran. I should’ve run many times before, and I did try to. I should’ve ran when they turned up late and high to my first show at the Railway in June, when they chased me down the street this time last year, when they smashed my map of America, when they beat me to the ground in a wet car park in February this year....But I stayed, I stayed until I couldn’t any longer. Darkness can’t exist without light, and there were sunny adventures, cosy evenings, awakenings, and many, many laughs. We marvelled at our unexpected creation, she was called Nora, but I ended that dream. He never forgave me. Maybe one day I will finish writing the story of ‘Bi-Polar Bear.’ There are two sides to every story, and no one observing from the outside can ever truly know. There is a scar above my left eye to remind me of what I now know.

I’ve been fielding phone calls from various domestic violence agencies ever since, I’m in a new home where he can’t find me, and I’ve been swinging between fear, anger and grief. I’ve discovered that all the agencies want to help, but getting anything actually followed through requires a lot of personal legwork, and I’ve had to relive the same horror again and again to strangers. And no one even applauds - ha! I’ve come to understand trauma on a whole new level.

Throughout all of this past year I’ve been journaling, just mundane diary entries where I lament the situations I’ve found myself in, and try to talk myself into positive action. Swimming against the tide, and no lyricism has returned to my writing. I started having counselling in February, but so terrified was I of the awful cycle I was in, that I didn’t even tell my counsellor what I was going through until my love relationship had ended. My counsellor and I have parted now, as my new job prevents me from attending our regular Wednesday session. We both cried in that final session last week, as I showed her a stack of naive paintings I had produced. One of them showed me climbing a set of stairs towards a monster with my arms outstretched. I’ve learned that monsters get much smaller when you look them square in their scary eyes and tell them to fuck off. Though getting them to disappear completely is a longer process. And maybe they need to show up now and then to remind us of our own resilience.

So in the light of what I’ve learned from keeping silent until now, will performing Frontal Lobotomy again at this point feel like a shallow exercise? Will I be frightened of what it could now unearth in me? I’ve not been inspired to write another poem since my map of America was destroyed - I’ll include that poem at the end here - but yesterday I ordered the exact same map. I’m going to tape it to the wall above my desk where I’ll see it when I’m journaling. I’m going to start from where I left off in my final performance of the tour on July 22nd 2017, where an audience member asked me what I was intending to do with the show next, and I replied as I was packing my props away; ‘I’m hoping to stick it to America, the way Walter Freeman did with his ice-pick.’ I shouldn’t speak to people straight after a show. But I needed to speak about this one.


That American dream has gone
Pins fallen, scattered
What it takes to be pushed to the limit
The indomitable spirit
Chipboard and cork, fragments
It’s only paper, but it took weeks, even months
And yet we’re too weak
To speak, without repeating.


Xxx
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“But it isn't easy,' said Pooh. 'Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” A.A Milne

3/3/2018

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I was a mostly silent clown for several years, and my reaction to that was to make a show that was nearly all words. Now it's all about the linguistic acrobatics. I 'proclaimed' during an audience feedback session on Monday night at the Cockpit Theatre, that there was nothing shocking, revolutionary or empowering about a woman taking her clothes off onstage. Was it better when I just got my boobs out and said nothing? That was a rhetorical question. I've read yet another feminist journalists response to the Emma Watson boob fiasco this morning, and I'm feeling snippy. There was a famous burlesque performer called Gypsy Rose Lee who recited poetry while stripping, and in doing so made potent commentary on the male gaze. Did/would anyone actually pay attention to the words? Or would we all be too distracted by the flesh, the artful disrobing and cheeky knowingness of this gorgeous woman to notice the power in her subversiveness? The uneventful striptease I do happens early on in 'Frontal Lobotomy', almost like I want to get it over with, and move onto something more useful. A friend who saw the show in Leeds recently (this is someone I trained at LISPA with, and who saw Jeu Jeu doing her 'Crossroads' act in Edinburgh 2015, so they know my work in context) said the semi-nude section was important because of how I don't 'make a big deal out of it' - "Yeah, we've all seen flesh before, we know about burlesque, let's move on from that, and do something more interesting with it." Certainly the nudity in Frontal Lobotomy is intended to be more about being exposed and vulnerable; 'stripping away the layers of reasoning to that which is unknowable'. It's definitely a post-burlesque show for me, I loved making and performing Jeu Jeu's funny skits, but in giving her a voice, I've made her a grown up. She'll be 6 years old on April 1st, and I'm celebrating her birthday this year for the first time, almost as if I've finally acknowledged her existence, and need to ritualise it somehow. More and more I find myself consulting her when I need to make creative decisions.

A comment from the Theatre in the Pound audience on Monday night, was that my stance on frontal lobotomies and mental illness was neutral and rooted in the 1950's. The question was raised that where was my opinion on all of it? This is bearing in mind that I'd only performed the first 15 minutes of the show, and I think an opinion does develop throughout the 55 minutes of the whole show - one that is not in any way in support of experimental brain surgery to 'cure' mental illness. Should I have an opinion? Or allow the audience to form their own? Another comment I had recently when I performed the whole piece at The Albany in London, was 'Why didn't you say "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy?" I was waiting for that line!' Yes, the whole show hinges on the zinger Tom Waits dropped on a 1970's chat show, and the truth is I did say it during the Edinburgh run. But it always felt too clunky, that I was subtitling, and not allowing space for the audience to work it out for themselves. I'm still figuring out who this woman is, and why she's here, saying all of this stuff. I got put on the spot the other night... strangers demanding answers, it was interesting!

So I'm coming to realise, with every performance and every conversation, that I'm crassly dividing audiences into two camps: those that want to know what it's about, and those that haven't a clue what it's about, and welcome that! However, I've sat through a lot of shows that I didn't understand, and knew that the company didn't want me to understand, and that just made me angry. If you've ever seen a Forced Entertainment show, then you'll know what I mean, and maybe you love them - I don't, but I've made myself go and see them several times. There's something infuriating about the black nosed clown, it's an arrogance that's very fun to play, but can lead the audience into all sorts of negative emotions. I know this from my work with The Mist: We Are Not Cakes - there's a fine line between a celebration of absurdism, and being deliberately, nihilistically annoying. I don't want to alienate an audience by making them feel that I'm withholding any form of explanation on purpose.

I had a very useful and balanced review written about the show from my performance in Leeds, where the reviewer from Theatre Bubble had expressed frustration at not being able to work it all out, but mused that maybe that was the point. She said that my characters were more sketched out than being fully formed, a convention commonly seen in cabaret performance, and that this provoked a more cerebral response in her. Read the review in full here.

A line from the opening speech from the show goes; 'We're going to take an inebriational stroll through the bowels of my grey matter, and rest somewhere between the pre-frontal cortex and limbic system, suspended between rationality and sensation.'

Are we thinking, or are we feeling? A transorbital lobotomy severs the connections between the 'human' and 'mammal' parts of the brain, (to massively oversimplify the most complex and mysterious organ in the body) and somewhere in that brain tissue is where I believe is our sense of self resides - the two halves that need to be integrated.

A quote I loved from the Theatre Bubble review was; 'I was swept along through dreams and images, as if in a dream, from which one wakes up bemused, but happily so.' I had three stuttery dreams last night; one was like an episode of 'Black Mirror', one was rude(!), and in another I was talking to foxes. I'm not innocent when I dream, and if I took them all literally and at face value I would be seriously worried about my state of mind. As my teacher at LISPA practically screamed at us when we frowned, rubbed our foreheads and whined 'I don't know' during the final neutral mask session on the IMPP course in Berlin "YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW!!" But we want to know don't we? We want to work it all out and then file it in the 'dealt with' drawer. I remember going to see a production of 'Cleansed' by Sarah Kane years ago, that left me so emotionally distraught immediately after, that I had to go and hide in a toilet cubicle until I'd calmed down. My boss at the time who I'd gone to the theatre with, said he felt jealous that I'd been so affected, when his response was cerebral and objective. I felt horribly embarrassed of my response at the time, and longed for more objectivity. Neither reaction to the show was the 'right' one to have, in hindsight both of us enjoyed it in our own way, but it was our self-judgement and comparison that could be seen as negative.

I think what I'm trying to say here is that I can't tell you anymore about what my show is about, anymore than I can interpret my dreams for you, read your mind or control your imagination. Someone said to me once that dreams are like your brain taking a shit. My brain has a shit every night, a beautiful shit. Your brain has beautiful shits every night too. And that's all this show I made is - my beautiful shit, made as visible and audible as I can make it, with as much care and craft as I can manage. I'm not ready to 'know' what it's about yet, and maybe I never will. But you are most welcome to tell me what it is about for you.
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The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, In a bookshop called October Books, on a January Day

27/7/2017

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Dear

The last performance of 'Jeu Jeu la Foille's Frontal Lobotomy' for the foreseeable future was in Buxton last Saturday. The invoices have been paid, props and costumes put away or repaired/retired, and that final review should be here any day. And as I write this I'm in a state of turmoil, thoughts rushing through my head, thinking on the events that have happened in my personal life in the past 7 months, and remembering that the show was a kind of anchor through all of that.
I heard someone say recently that whatever you go out to attack, comes back to get you. I hope that the show helped to gently persuade people of what they already thought they knew. Certainly I have felt attacked in my personal life, but the audience responses to the show have been very loving and supportive. If anything has kept me going it's this show.

But what do I do with it next?

Some possible ideas that have come out of various audience responses, working with directors and experience of solo touring:

Ask for more funding next time. I should've asked for a higher sum. Over this 7 month tour, because I was lucky enough to receive a small grant from the Arts Council, it opened me up to these kind of conversations with other artists I knew or met along the way. And their grant was always bigger than mine! They were often surprised at how little I was working with. Costs did add up, and though I made just enough in hat donations, and saved some other already budgeted for pounds here and there - I just about broke even. And I didn't pay myself any sort of wage or expenses. All of my full shows, bar two, were free. I've learned from this that I have consistently undersold or undervalued myself, feeling that I somehow wasn't worthy of money. Doing this tour has begun to turn that around for me.
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Believe in yourself more. At the start I was doubting everything about touring, but the run at the Vaults was the turning point, and the show got a second wind in May at Chaplin's Cellar Bar. April was a bit of slump audience and energy wise. I got a bit monotone in my delivery, and once this was pointed out to me by a friend or two, I worked hard to turn that around. I loved Brighton Fringe! I also worked hard on the transitions and characters of the show with the help of Pepe Gudino in June, and July was a busy month in terms of shows and audiences. Before the start of the tour in January I performed an extract in a cabaret show called Le Chien Noir. All of the acts were themed around mental illness, it was very moving. I felt I'd done a terrible performance and was mortified, but quickly cheered up by those around me. All those I've worked with and met since conceiving this show have been nothing but caring and supportive, and the audiences have been up for it! Positive reviews and blog posts, some nice personal thank you's and acknowledgment on some level from my peers have been an added bonus.

It has become clearer than ever through the process of performing this show, that the decision I made to operate my own lighting and sound as part of the show, is brave but misguided. It does make the show seem really solo, I'm completely on my own with no one to help me. In May I experimented with a foot pedal to change the tracks, and uploaded my music onto a go button app - I should've done this long before, although I broke the foot pedal in my solo tech rehearsal in the first performance I tried with it. I want it to appear like I'm changing the needle on the gramophone, rather than pressing the screen on my ipad. It looks naff at the moment, and I've thought through every option I can think of to change it.

Get to know your performance persona and be careful when dealing with the media. I've got to know who Jeu Jeu la Foille is more over the course of seven months. Or over the fourteen months since I first let her speak onstage. I've let her do the talking far more this year, and BCC Radio Surrey only wanted me to tell them where she had come from, they didn't ask me anything leading about the actual show! She's not French!!! I've had more interest in my facebook page than ever before, and it's made me think about the work I did before this, and what I might go on to try next. I don't think I'm finished with this show yet, and certainly now it's at least more visible, I need some time to think and try to choose wisely what the next version is, and how visible I want my browsing history to be. This show is niche for one thing, I don't know where it could go.

The show works best on a small stage with the audience up close, but not too close to each other. Comedy audiences need to sit close together. The show at Guildford Fringe was a good example of this, although it was in some ways my freest and smoothest performance of them all, the stage was larger and higher than I'm used to, and the audience were far away and in complete darkness. This threw me a bit, and I wasn't expecting it to. I discovered that looking at people while you're performing to them is really important. Sound obvious, but I found many ways of looking at people who were looking at me. And I tried to really see them too. For a bigger stage I'll need bigger props, but I'm very tied to the idea that the entire show (except a chair) goes into a suitcase that I cart around myself on a stupid trolley. I've discovered that I'm very determined when it comes to being on time for shows, and (except for Latitude that I'm still weeping over) I've made it to all of them, and done a fairly decent job of largely doing this on my own, with only myself to blame and then try and sort it out. There have of course been many annoying things about moving that suitcase around, but I probably needed the exercise.

I'll write more when I think of more,

Yours faithfully,

Jeu Jeu la Foille c/o Vicky Hancock
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Happiness consists in realising it is all a great strange dream. Jack Kerouac

21/6/2017

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My Frontal Lobotomy is an oddity, it's non-conventional, encompassing many different styles. I'm usually in a small space, and that space becomes more and more filled with stuff as the show continues. I travel within this small space; I go from a bar to a house to a lecture theatre, to a psychiatric ward...By the final stages of the show it's clear to the audience what a lobotomy is, but there is a lot of information, it's too much to process in one sitting. I call upon the audience to be fully alert, and yet I encourage them to relax at the start. People tend to find that it's only in their conversations after the show that anyone can piece together the experience that they've had. And that's where it gets interesting, different people see different things, and it can play on their minds for days afterwards - so they tell me! The audience make their own world based on the aftermath of whatever they have just witnessed. The show demands a free mind, if you focus too long on one aspect it will be gone, and we're already on to something else.The through line is Tom Waits, it's strange to discover that he was born in a taxi, he is an oddity himself. The different characters I play need to be more defined, each poem or story needs its own personality. I use costume to introduce each character, but I could do more physically and vocally to prepare the audience for the change, to introduce the new theme. There is a lot of text - and for a performer who trained in physical theatre, and as a burlesque performer who hardly ever spoke, this is a big departure - maybe the audience who already know me don't expect that? I can choose the key words and deliver those, look at 'All That Jazz' for inspiration. The technical aspects are clunky, I need to either fully own doing my own cues or have someone else do it for me. The operating my own music and controlling my own blackout came from necessity when I couldn't find a technician at Edinburgh Fringe. And gradually I realised that this was a solo show, and I was on my own, and that was ok. It was just me. I made it a feature. Theatre is collaborative, at least in my experience - but how far could I take the solo performance? I didn't want to time the sound cues to fit in with my performance, I felt that could limit my play, but I don't feel that I should hide it either - I need to find a way to hit that button. Maybe limit the music changes to three moments. I could play more with the doctor character at the start, I don't need to be so afraid of the audience, perhaps set up the convention of interaction right from the word go. Could I be polishing my ice-pick as the audience enter? They first see it when I'm in the red dress for the moment, and I love that reveal, but maybe they need to see it earlier? The Brain Haikus are too difficult to read, I need to print these, maybe shine a torch. I need to really mark my territory in those doctor moments, use the audience at the back more. Audience interaction terrifies me, how do I overcome that? The audience at the front should want to look behind them, see what's going on. Every space I perform in is different, how do I figure this out? I could play with my mistakes more, there are moments when I almost trip over my dress, and I have no help, as I'm on my own - it's just me. Could I really fall? The ending of the show is cute but weak, the audience are waiting for more. Could I use the black dress I wear at the start to cover everything over again? Almost as though everything is covered and neural, waiting for the whole thing to begin again? Could I disappear into the dress? I made the black skirt for a black hole installation at LISPA. The installation didn't work, but I was left with a gigantic skirt I'd made that I knew had to be used again, for something, and it found it's use here. How can I bring it back in? And then there's Bobby Cool, the Tom Waits puppet. Named after my grandmothers first boyfriend when she was five years old, and modelled on the outfit Tom Waits wore in the the 1974 interview when he dropped the zinger 'I've rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.' I made the Bobby Cool puppet, he's a bit shit, I need a decent one. Could he change at all during the show? So far he is only used at the beginning and at the end. Is there a way for him to change his costume and position along with mine throughout the show? So much of this piece I found by experimenting in rehearsal, and listening to the audiences that came to see it. I've had very little direction, but a whole lot of encouragement. I'm so grateful to the strangers that have taken a chance on me, to the friends who have returned over and over again, to the time when NO ONE turned up and I performed to an audience of empty chairs, imagining that each of them were Tom Waits himself, and I had to give the best ever performance or he'd sue me! I don't take anything for granted, every performance is sacred to me, whether it's full (thank you Brighton) or only a few (many of them!) and I love those shows just as much. I could never imagine performing this piece to an audience larger than 50, it sounds daft, but I have to see each of those people. I'm always amazed when anyone actually shows up, I'm nobody, I always feel that I have no right to be there. But I should, and I'm going to keep trying to be better.
 
With all of the loves, Jeu Jeu la Foille xx

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Brains are delicate, The Mind's an empty vessel. Linking synapses. Brain Haiku One, Jeu Jeu la Foille

23/5/2017

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A year ago today Frontal Lobotomy had its first public viewing, in a preview for Edinburgh Fringe at the Canal Cafe theatre. At that stage the arrival of the 'band' was mimed, as I didn't yet have the props, the doctor character didn't exist, there were three poems in that showing that I no longer use, and two that hadn't yet been written have now appeared. Still, I had a show of sorts. This morning I re-read the review I received from The Scotsman in Edinburgh, that spoke of a 'relaxed and self-assured stage presence.' A year ago that first performance was anything but. The next two previews happened in July, where in the meantime I'd been travelling and teaching in Italy and had done very little towards the show. Still, it had changed quite significantly. Working without a director or any outside input was hard, and I very much relied on my gut, and comments from friends. Without the initial guidance and continued encouragement of Peta Lily, and the amazing support and friendship from Susanna Jeffery it may never have happened. I was mortified onstage in those first two performances, though I feel I had finally got somewhere by the final preview. Edinburgh Free Fringe is great for new shows, I got the chance to really develop Frontal Lobotomy in the moment, and many of the problems I encountered and immediate reactions I received, have ended up contributing to the overall feel of the show. And twelve performances into the tour from December, and numerous extract performances later, it's starting to make more sense to me. I'm much freer than I was at the start, and I've finally realised that it doesn't need to make complete sense, the audience will try to follow me anyway. I've been lucky to receive so much praise for it, but I don't think it's finished yet. I'm taking a break from the show this August to give myself some time to figure out what I want to do with it next.

I added another section. I agonised for a while about how I could work at least one haiku into the show - it seemed I'd referenced every type of poem except for haikus. I thought about finding a haiku on a piece of paper and reading it, or making it into a letter from Dr Freeman from Jeu Jeu, but decided that the audience had heard enough of my voice, and that I would ask an audience member to read it for me. Audience interaction is still something that unnerves me still, it's the part I can't control or plan for, and I have to remind myself that this was what my training at LISPA was really for. The ability to let go and trust myself. Having the Brain Haikus has allowed me to interact more fully, rather than just pretending to lobotomise myself and others! I've been posting the ones that get read out on my facebook profile, and it's become something I look forward to doing, both in the show and afterwards. Brain vocabulary is difficult to pronounce, my hand-writing is difficult to read, and the Haikus make absolutely no sense. But I've had so much fun writing and sharing them for the past three shows by the sea.

It occurred to me today from the conversations I've had with complete strangers and people I barely know who have come to see the show, that many of my audience have taken a complete gamble on me. In the audience I've had mental health practitioners, burlesque fans, neuroscientists, Trump protestors, non-native English speakers, Waits obsessives/virgins/non-believers...I'm very grateful.

Something I attempted for the first two previews, but then scrapped, has re-surfaced again. Tom Waits has an uncanny ability to capture a scene in his writing; I'm thinking of tracks like '9th and Hennepin', 'Circus', 'Potter's Field', 'Small Change.' I tried a similar kind of thing based on my home town, which I'd been coming to terms with living in again, after everything in London ended in October 2016 ('Last October everything turned on a dime...'), but could never quite find it.
I want to collaborate with the use of sound for this one, having done some further research into the effects of music on the brain, I'm not sure I will ever perform it live. It's about a mythical place not far from where I live.

Xx
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    Jeu Jeu la Foille

    Tom Waits and puppet obsessive. Loves clowns, performs burlesque striptease on occasion, enjoys crafternoons.

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