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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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.…

Guest Reviewer-Poet Rosalind Bouverie on Gandini Juggling’s ’4×4′ at Cambridge Junction

20 May 2015. The dancers dart and glide between the patterns of falling and rising juggling clubs, gently varying their steady geometry. These airy diamonds hold the dance momentarily in a live force field. Then there is flow and escape. The violins, viola, cello, and double bass make a harmonious landscape…

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