A blog about art and the soul
By Joy Martin
It must go further still: that soul must become its own betrayer, its own deliverer, the one activity, the mirror turn lamp. (W. B. Yeats)
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16 December 2019. (Originally published in The Stage on 16 December 2019.) Performance collective Figs in Wigs applies its distinctive style of joyous, high-concept whimsy to the pantomime format in a fantastically imagined and enjoyable production of The Wind in the Willows at Cambridge Junction. Written by Rachel Gammon, Suzanna Hurst, Sarah Moore,…
28 February 2019. (Originally published in American Theatre magazine on 29 January 2019 under the title 'It's Noh, It's Viewpoints - It's Superdrama'.) “It is not the object of art to make life comfortable for the fat bourgeois so that he may nod his head: ‘Yes, yes, that’s the way it is!…
6 March 2018. So, where was I? My home, job and relationship had vanished overnight on 5 August 2016. After placing everything I owned into storage, at first I dragged myself and my big red suitcase to Devon, where I re-discovered that I had a list of dreams inside me,…
6 December 2017... During my stay in Branscombe, Devon in August 2016, serendipity delivered the idea for how my life might shape up as a wandering pilgrim. I had secured a four-month house sit for the coming winter: from November to March I would be staying in a closed-for-the-winter Bn’B,…
10 October 2017... It was early August 2016, a few days after I put all my worldly possessions in a storage unit at Cambridge’s Newmarket Road industrial estate and watched the Frenchman drive away in his vintage Citroen station wagon, hauling a now-empty trailer and bound for the ferry at…
31 Oct 2017. When I visited St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, in July 2016, I didn’t know that I was visiting as a pilgrim-to-be. My tall, wild French boyfriend drove me there in his vintage Citroën Mehari. Holding hands (not able not to hold hands), we walked through the hilly, winding, cobbled streets,…
23 August 2017. It just so happened that my last day of seeing shows in Edinburgh this year was entirely mermaid-themed. My middle name is Lorelei, which is the name of the siren who enchants sailors on the Rhine in 19th-century German songs and poetry, so siren stories have always…
20 August 2017. Wild Bore, the new show created and performed by Zoë Coombs Marr, Ursula Martinez and Adrienne Truscott, is creating a bit of a stir at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. I felt an intriguing, ironic frisson personally as I took my seat and pulled out my pen and notebook to…
18 August 2017. I felt as if, having come to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to drink from the magic fountain of Art, that at the end of my second day I was still en route to the metaphorical fountain at the centre of the festival, and still thirsty... Then I…
14 August 2017. When I walk into the small room where the play is showing, the stage is set with period furniture from the 1940s: an armchair, a desk holding a neat pile of white paper, a small, black manual typewriter, a liquor glass half-filled with amber liquid, hardback books,…
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