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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Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Ancient Shrines and Half Truths by Binge Culture (Interactive Whimsy)

13 August 2017. The rise of technology as an artistic material in performance has facilitated a new sort of kaleidoscopic theatre in which each individual audience member, via an interactive format similar to a video game, has a different and unique shake of the show. Ancient Shrines and Half Truths by New Zealand…

The Emperor and the Nightingale at Theatre by the Lake

2 December 2016. The Theatre on the Lake in Keswick, Cumbria sits on the shore of Derwentwater, encircled by the snowy peaks of the Lake District National Park. On Saturday night I went to see their new Christmas show, The Emperor and the Nightingale, written by award-winning playwright Neil Duffield and directed…

Singing with the Whales at BAC: I review WAIL! by Little Bulb Theatre Company

14 April 2016. I have always been curious to see Little Bulb Theatre Company, because I have noticed that whenever their name comes up, people who have seen them perform will pause for a moment, put their hand on their heart, close their eyes briefly, take a deep breath and…

Snow White and Rose Red: RashDash’s Dazzling Alternative Panto

15 December 2015. Snow White and Rose Red, one of the lesser known fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, has two sisters as the heroes, making it a natural choice for RashDash. The result is entertaining, brilliant and feminist alternative panto. In the original story, the sisters welcome a friendly bear…

Rotterdam, a new play by Jon Brittain

6 November 2015. Jon Brittain’s Rotterdam is a play which makes you contemplate the nature of labels – ‘gay’, ‘queer’, ‘lesbian’ and ‘transgender’ – and the way language clusters around our self-definition, the different ways we say ‘I am this’ or ‘I am not that’, and the fixity or fluidity of actually being or becoming…

Without Stars/There We Have Been: this bird has flown

24 October 2015. The Cambridge Junction presented a double bill of dance pieces last week by the James Cousins Company, and when I found out that the show was based on the novel Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, I went to buy the book a few days beforehand. The first, longer piece…

The Artistry of Stand Up Comedy

1 October 2015. I think there is a quiet prejudice against comedy as an art form circulating in our current cultural environment, and I think I unconsciously absorbed this prejudice without realising it. The Arts Council does not fund comedians, and in August The Independent reported on a letter sent…

Of Riders and Running Horses: the roof under our feet

17 September 2015. It’s Thursday night in Cambridge, and the way into the show I am about to see,Of Riders and Running Horses by Dan Canham’s dance theatre company Still House, is a long climb up a winding, breezeblock stairwell to the top of the five-storey car park next to the…

The BE Festival: Democratic and Delicious

3 July 2015. The BE Festival is a gathering of contemporary European performance and takes place at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre; when my mate Nicky and I arrive we are told to go around the back of the building. It’s a strange, deserted alleyway that we walk down at first, and then,…

The Watch Out Festival at Cambridge Junction, A Review

On Saturday 23 May 2015 the Cambridge Junction presented Watch Out, a day-long festival of contemporary performance which follows in the footsteps of their previous festivals Night Watch and Sampled. I studied the line-up ahead of time, and it was interesting, as always, to consider the different dimensions of theatrical experience: The Before, The During, and The After.…

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