Viva Brighton Issue #39 May 2016

vivabrighton
Issue 39. May 2016
EDITORIAL
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It started with the Latin word ‘festum’, a feast, more than just a meal.
And then the adjective, ‘festivus’, from which we get ‘festive’. This, in
Old French, turned into the word ‘festival’, which came over with the
Normans, and, still just an adjective, got used to describe certain religious
days, which got all mixed up with all the old pagan celebrations.
As a first-recorded-use example, the OED quotes Milton, from 1598,
‘The morning trumpets festival proclaimed, through each high street’.
Once music gets involved, it’s a short hop from there to an arts festival,
a feast of culture: the oldest in England is the Three Choir Festival in Hereford, Gloucester
and Worcester, which dates back to 1719. The Brighton Festival is a relative newcomer: it
started in 1967, which means that this is its 50th edition… which calls for more trumpets.
In May, in and around Brighton, there’s an absolute explosion of festivals, of all shapes and
forms, which doesn’t start dying down until the end of summer. This month alone, as well
as THE Festival, there’s (take a deep breath) HOUSE, Brighton Fringe, the Great Escape,
Artists’ Open Houses, the Brighton & Hove Food & Drink Festival, Foodies, the Charleston
Festival, the Village of Type, the Glyndebourne Festival, and, starting off the wellies-and-tent
season, Elderflower Fields. Beyond that… how long have you got? Our theme this month, of
course, is ‘festival’. Within these pages there’s loads of festival-related stuff. We say: pick up the
relative programmes, get some tickets, and indulge yourself. Enjoy the month…
THE TEAM
.....................
EDITOR: Alex Leith alex@vivamagazines.com
DEPUTY EDITOR: Steve Ramsey steve@vivamagazines.com
ART DIRECTOR: Katie Moorman katie@vivamagazines.com
PHOTOGRAPHER AT LARGE: Adam Bronkhorst
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT: Rebecca Cunningham rebecca@vivamagazines.com
ADVERTISING: Anya Zervudachi anya@vivamagazines.com, Nick Metcalf nickmetcalf@vivamagazines.com,
Hilary Maguire hilary@vivamagazines.com
PUBLISHER: Lizzie Lower lizzie@vivamagazines.com
CONTRIBUTORS: Alexandra Loske, Amy Holtz, Bethany Hobbs, Ben Bailey, Chloë King, Di Coke, Holly Fitzgerald, Jay Collins,
Jim Stephenson, JJ Waller, Joda, Joe Decie, John Helmer, Julia Zaltzman, Lizzie Enfield, Mark Bridge, Martin Skelton and Nione Meakin
Viva is based at Brighton Junction, 1A Isetta Square, BN1 4GQ
For advertising enquiries call 07596 337 828. Other enquiries call 01273 810 259
Every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of our content. We cannot be held responsible for any omissions, errors or alterations.

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CONTENTS
...............................
Bits and bobs.
8-25. Jonny Hannah’s steamrollered
cover image, JJ Waller and Joe Decie’s
take on ‘festival’, how the Grand Central
became the Grand Central… and the
wonderful world of Gig Buddies.
13
Photography.
28-29. Jim Stephenson talks to Ali
Tollervey, who has spent months on the
road with Brighton band Dark Horses, à
la Annie Leibowitz and the Stones.
Columns.
33-39. John Helmer gets a job, Amy
Holtz gets cold feet, Lizzie Enfield gets
hot under the (dog) collar, and Chloë
King gets the festival lingo sorted.
75
My Brighton.
40-41. Brighton Dome and Festival
CEO Andrew Comben on why the
Festival is perfect for Brighton and why
Brighton is perfect for the Festival.
In town this month.
43-75. Local musos Time for T; Lauren
Varnfield on playing Myra Hindley;
peripatetic photographer Volker Gerling;
Nione Meakin on Giddy Brighton;
immersive spy stuff with Operation
Black Antler; kids’ street stories via Little
Green Pig; Jonathan Brown’s play
A Good Jew; an interview with novelist
Howard Jacobson; Complicite theatre
at the Attenborough Centre; a modern
silent movie, with an original score;
....5 ....

CONTENTS (CONT)
...............................
Spymonkey’s Complete Deaths in Shakespeare;
chap-hopper Professor Elemental;
dancer in the dark Dan Canham; author
Olivia Laing; Sussex Symphony Orchestra’s
Peter and the Wolf; author Nikesh
Shukla; cult documentary The Moon and
the Sledgehammer; beatboxer Shlomo
and Love Supreme’s Caro Emerald. That
enough for you?
9585
Art and design.
76-85. Chloë King meets digital animators
Ramjam, responsible for this year’s 3D
Fringe programme cover. Plus a meet-up
with HOUSE artist Felicity Hammond, a
rare interview with typographical graffiti
artist Gary Stranger, two fashion-blogging
siblings and a very mobile Artists’ Houses
gallery.
The way we work.
89-95. Adam Bronkhorst gets behind the
scenes, literally, at a number of the city’s
top venues, and asks his subjects: ‘what’s
been your best or worst stage moment?’
101
Food and drink.
97-101. Seafood soup at the Lord
Nelson, Dog Haus hot dogs at Patterns,
and what’s up on the Brighton food
scene, including the Foodies Festival.
Cycling.
103. We try… unicycling. Well it
seemed festivally at the time.
Bricks and mortar.
105. Angel House, gorgeous Georgian
venue for events and weddings.
79
Inside left.
106. Concrete poetry from the firstever
Festival, April 1967.
....6 ....

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THIS MONTH’S COVER ARTIST
..................................................
Photos by Katie Moorman
It all started with an e-mail from the folk at Brighton
Festival, who wondered if we were interested in
a printing project that featured in their 2016 programme.
When we learnt that a 90-year-old steamroller
was involved, and that artist Jonny Hannah was
happy to get his hands inky for the cause, we were
sold. So on Easter Monday we made our way to
the Amberley Museum to watch the process, as the
steamroller in question, driven by owner Chris Hale,
rolled over the inked-up linocuts of our two covers
(one for Viva Brighton, and a companion piece for Viva
Lewes) in front of a small but enthusiastic crowd of
onlookers. These included the organisers Lucy and
Nathaniel from Ditchling Museum, and the artist Pea
Crabtree, who came up with the idea in the first place.
The process generated significantly more excitement
than you’d imagine, considering the vehicle was travelling
at 2mph.
Jonny had designed the two covers - back to front,
of course - by cutting into a sheet of lino, creating
a pair of Festival-enthused figures, a masked man
and woman, with his trademark odd extras, such as
a stripy-jumpered cat, a hand with a heart in it, an
old-fashioned wireless, and a dancing snake and eel.
The most heart-stopping moment was the first ‘big
reveal’, when he rolled the paper off the lino to see if
the process – which hadn’t been tried before in this
country – had worked. Once he’d checked it was OK,
he held the sheet of paper up to the assembled crowd.
A success! Hurrah!
“I’m a commercial artist, and I can only do a few
things for free,” he says, “so I make sure they are different
and exciting projects. This one really fitted in
with my current way of working. I’ve started finding
Photoshop too controlling as a medium – there’s very
little room for happenstance – so I’m moving more
and more to traditional methods. If you can call this
traditional!”
“I only finished the lino-cutting at 7.30 this morning,”
he added, “and I haven’t used lino for three years. I
realised the whole thing could have been a bit of a
car crash. I love the magic of peeling the paper back
to see if it has worked. Screen printing seems to me
like a kind of alchemy.” Digitally enhanced alchemy,
....8 ....

JONNY HANNAH
..........................................
of course: Jonny later added the finishing touches of
colour on the computer in his studio.
Interview by Alex Leith
You can see the steamroller in action on 22nd May (12-
5pm) at the Level in Brighton, and 18th
June at the Ditchling Museum in the
Ditchling Fair. Jonny will be selling the
Viva Brighton and Viva Lewes cover
images as limited edition prints at
Atelier 51, Providence Place, during
Artists’ Open Houses.
And ‘Cardopolis’,
poetry
book by Duane
Kahlhammer,
a new limitededition
illustrated
by Jonny,
will also be available
to buy from
Atelier 51.
(Left and below) other works by Jonny Hannah
....9 ....

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BITS AND BOBS
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SPREAD THE WORD
ON THE BUSES #13
RONALD BATES (5, 5B, 27)
Niall Moriarty sent this picture, of him reading
our April issue, leaning up against the famous I
Amsterdam sign outside the Rijksmuseum. The
three-dimensional sign, now one of Amsterdam’s
prime photo-op attractions, had recently been redesigned
in rainbow colours to celebrate 15 years
of marriage equality in the Netherlands. Niall
was on a city break, Airbnbing in the city centre.
We love getting pictures of you ‘reading’ Viva on
your travels, so if you would like to appear in this
space, don’t forget to take the latest issue with
you and send pics to photos@vivamagazines.com.
LOVE SUPREME: WIN TICKETS
You and a friend could
be joining the jazz, funk,
soul and sun* at Love
Supreme Jazz Festival
in Glynde from 1st-3rd
July. Just tweet us the
name of the act you’re
most looking forward to seeing - using the
hashtag #VivaLoveSupreme - to be entered
into the draw to win. Alternatively, email the
same - with ‘Viva Love Supreme’ in the subject
line - to hello@vivamagazines.com. We’ll draw
the lucky winner from a (suitably jazzy) trumpet
on 1st June 2016. *sunshine not guaranteed.
lovesupremefestival.com, @lovesupremefest
See the competitions page on our website for
terms & conditions.
Should Brighton
have a festival?
Before 1967, the
idea had been put
forward ‘from
time to time’, local
historian Clifford
Musgrave notes.
But arguments
against included
the town’s closeness
to London,
and the ‘heavy losses’ made by other regional festivals.
Local opinion had been ‘strongly divided’.
However, the long-serving Tory councillor Ronald
Bates, an arts-loving solicitor and former Army Major,
backed the idea. An acquaintance, Ronald Power,
recalls him as a knowledgeable guy, who “always
smiled when he was giving advice. He was highly
intelligent. He had great personal charm, there’s no
doubt about that.” And, perhaps most importantly,
he was “a wonderful negotiator. When it came to,
you know, half of a committee wanted one thing
and the other half wanted something else…”
It’s difficult to figure out the exact details of Bates’
role in the festival-or-no-festival debate. But his
Argus obituary noted that his ‘vision and drive
helped launch the Brighton Festival’. He was head
of the council’s tourism committee in January 1966,
when £10,000 was voted through to fund the first
event. And he was the original vice-chairman of the
Brighton Festival Society. Later, as chairman, he either
“created the Brighton Fringe, or [at least] made
it possible,” Power says.
While the Festival’s original artistic director gave a
worthy-sounding explanation of its purpose, about
people ‘taking a new look at the arts,’ etc, Bates
took a much simpler view. ‘The sole purpose of the
Brighton Festival is to bring pleasure and delight to
everyone.’ Steve Ramsey
....11....

BITS AND BOBS
...............................
JJ WALLER’S BRIGHTON
We gave JJ Waller the theme ‘festival’. This photo, and paragraph, is his response:
“From village fetes and agricultural shows, music weekends and raves, we are
spoilt for choice in and around Brighton, with a myriad of summer festivals. For a
photographer that in itself presents a festival of exciting opportunities.”
This pic is from the Gentlemen of the Road Stopover in Lewes in 2013.
....13....

BITS AND BOBS
...............................
DI COKE’S COMPETITION CORNER
This month’s prize is a pair of
tickets to Funk the Format in Hove
Park on Sunday 29th May. Brought
to you by the curators of Funk
The Family, the impressive line-up
includes Soul II Soul, Norman
Jay MBE, Rodney P and Nubiyan
Twist - it’s the perfect way to spend
Bank Holiday Sunday!
For your chance to win, let us
know which three acts would
headline your dream music festival,
and what it would be called. Share
your entry on Twitter or the Viva
Brighton Facebook page using
the #VivaBrightonComp hashtag.
Alternatively, email your entry to competitions@vivamagazines.com before 20th May 2016. The most
exciting festival name and line up will feature in the July issue and win a pair of adult tickets to Funk
the Format. Terms and conditions can be found at vivabrighton.com/competitions.
Funk the Format tickets cost £30 each from funktheformat.co.uk - or buy a weekend saver for £45, which
includes entry to Funk the Family on Saturday 28th May. funkthefamily.co.uk
COMPETITION WINNER
In the March issue we asked readers to think of a
quirky phrase suitable for use by design duo One
Must Dash on their products. There were lots of
unusual entries, but Amy Inman Villanueva grabbed
our attention with this fun monochrome graphic,
and wins a One Must Dash print of her choice.
See the full range of posters, gifts and other quirky
products at onemustdash.com.
Di Coke is very probably the UK’s foremost ‘comper’,
having won over £250,000-worth of prizes. For
winning tips and creative competitions, check out her
blog at superlucky.me and SuperLucky Secrets book.
....15....

JOE DECIE
...............................
....17....

BITS AND BOBS
...............................
PUB: THE GRAND CENTRAL
The Railway Hotel opened its doors
before the railway even arrived in
Brighton: it’s first listed in the 1839
Pigot’s Directory, with a Mr Charles
Penfold its landlord. The owners knew
what was coming, obviously, and custom
must have picked up significantly when
the station opened up (for trains to
Shoreham in May 1840 and to London
in September 1841).
It wasn’t the only pub that opened in
order to mop up the thirst of the new
customers arriving in town. If anything
there were too many in the vicinity. By
the mid-1850s there were five on Surrey
Street alone, three of which closed between
1920 and 1924. The destruction
of the Terminus Hotel and Shades on
the other side of the road in 1924 meant
that the pub was now visible from the
station. It is probably for this reason
that Tamplins decided to redesign the
building in 1925, using their chief architect
Arthur Packham, who replicated
the design for the copper dome he had
fashioned for the Alibi pub in Hove, on
top of the central tower of an impressive
baroque structure.
There’s not much news of the place to
be found between then and 1986, when
a theatre was built on the first floor, and
the pub was renamed The Nightingale.
It was one of the venues where the Siren
Theatre Company – a hard-hitting,
raucous lesbian collective which grew
from Vaultage band the Devil’s Dykes
– performed drama which is still talked
about today.
The nineties being the nineties, the place got another
rebranding in 1997, when it briefly became known as
Finnegan’s Wake, after Joyce’s everyone’s-got-it-nobody’sread-it
final novel. And finally as The Grand Central, with
the Nightingale Theatre still above it, a situation which
persisted till 2013, when Fullers took over and did an
extensive, and clearly expensive refit.
The theatre is still used – we had our last Christmas party
there – mostly for comedy and burlesque nights. The pride
of the place, just coming into season, is the roof garden (a
vast improvement on the ramshackle space before Fullers
took over) which smells of jasmine in the early summer,
and fills up fast on a sunny afternoon. As does the large
space downstairs, as it’s still the first pub in sight after
leaving the train station, which means now as ever, it’s a
bolthole for thirsty travellers.
Alex Leith, painting by Jay Collins
....19....

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BITS AND BOBS
...............................
CHARITY BOX #2: GIG BUDDIES
What is Gig Buddies? Gig Buddies is an opportunity
for those with a learning disability to be able to
socialise. Everyone deserves the enjoyment of going
out and meeting new people, so why should it
be any different if you have a disability?
Do you always go to gigs with the same person?
You are matched with one person, so that you can
build a trusting friendship.
How long have you been volunteering? I joined
at the launch party at Komedia three years ago.
Do you have to have any special training?
When you join, there is a really great training session
about safeguarding and what to expect. Extra
training is encouraged which is specific to your gig
buddy’s needs.
How many events have you been to? You agree
to attend one event a month, that way it gives you
enough time to plan things you both like.
What is your favourite event? We’ve been to see
‘The Wave Pictures’ a few times at The Green
Door Store, which George (my gig buddy) loves.
It’s a great feeling seeing him absorbed in the music
and dancing without a care.
What events do you attend? Gigs, discos, DJ
events and festivals - anything that takes our interest;
the world is our oyster!
How can people help? You can become a buddy
yourself! The information on how to do this can be
found at gigbuddies.org.uk. Bethany Hobbs

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BITS AND BOBS
...............................
SECRETS OF THE PAVILION:
TURNER’S VISION OF BRIGHTON IN 1824
This exquisite watercolour my JMW
Turner entered the collection of Brighton
Museum only a few years ago. It had been
in private hands since first bought in the
1830s, and came up at an auction in New
York in 2012. We were able to purchase
it with generous help from the Art Fund,
the Heritage Lottery Fund and private
patrons. It was of utmost importance to secure
this gem, as it is one of the few paintings
by Turner that shows the Royal Pavilion.
The palace is only faintly visible in
an oil painting commissioned by the Third
Earl of Egremont at Petworth House,
and in a few rough pencil sketches. In our
watercolour Turner took compositional
liberties for the sake of the ‘picturesque’
appeal of the image, for example turning
the Pavilion by c.90 degrees, to ensure the
whole of its east front can be seen.
Compared to other paintings of Brighton
by Turner our watercolour provides a
surprising amount of detail. Many buildings
can be identified, among them St
Nicholas Church, the Duke of York’s hotel
and Marine Parade. The most prominent
building is the recently finished Chain
Pier, a bold cast-iron structure, gleaming
in the sunlight and seemingly withstanding
strong waves. It pushes its way into
the composition with the confidence we
see a generation later in a number of other
great cast-iron structures, such as railway
bridges and stations.
The reason for this detailed rendering and
the painting’s relatively small size is that it
was meant to be engraved. The print was used in Picturesque
Views of the Southern Coast of England, an important
topographical publication by George and William Cooke.
It was published in 16 parts between 1814 and 1826, with
Turner contributing 39 images. George Cooke engraved the
watercolour and entitled it Brighthelmstone, Sussex, using
the old name for Brighton.
The prints were also published individually and it is still
relatively easy to find a later print of the engraving, as it
remained popular and was reprinted throughout the 19th
century. The watercolour, however, disappeared from public
view until it was shown at Brighton Museum shortly after
we had purchased it. In 2013 it was the star of an exhibition
in the Royal Pavilion on Turner and Brighton, curated by
Ian Warrell. Because it is a watercolour it cannot be exposed
to light for very long and is not permanently on display, but
we occasionally offer gallery talks during which it can be
viewed. The shimmering painting is in demand: in 2017 it
will be lent to an exhibition at the Frick in New York, thus
briefly returning to where it appeared at auction in 2012.
Alexandra Loske, Art Historian and Curator at the Royal
Pavilion
A longer version of this article will appear on the official Royal
Pavilion & Museums blog at brightonmuseums.org.uk
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., Brighthelmston, Sussex,
c1824 © The Royal Pavilion & Museums
....23....

BITS AND BOBS
...............................
MAGAZINE OF THE MONTH: LUNCHEON
As we all know, it’s festival month,
or fiesta, or feast. For as long as we
know, people have been creating
celebrations for their community to
mark something of natural, religious
or artistic significance.
Usually, it means that people are on
the top of their game, too. There’s
not much point celebrating with
poor food or bad dancing. It’s got to
be good. Which is why if you haven’t
got Festival tickets yet it’s worth taking
whatever is still available. Whatever you think
about it, it is unlikely to be rubbish.
In some ways, our little shop is a mini-festival of its
own. Beautifully produced, independent mags that
cause people to talk about them, swoon over them,
savour them and keep them for much longer than
they might keep other magazines. And true to all
festivals, only the good ones last.
So choosing just one magazine this month is especially
hard. Fortunately, a new mag has come into
the shop that has had people swooning from the
moment it arrived. It’s called Luncheon.
Their little trick is to organise
the magazine around five themes –
Catch of the Day, Hors D’Ouevre,
Main Dishes, Classics and Desserts;
although it’s not a specialist food
magazine.
Their big trick is in the quality of
what they have produced. It’s large
format on lovely, lovely paper with
illustrations and words to die for.
They have an eye for the different
angle and every page catches the attention. And the
content is right up there at the top of the tree with
Oliver Messel, Maria Valverde, Lee Miller, Snowdon,
Frank O’Hara, Patrick Proktor and more,
more, more.
Whoever is behind Luncheon (and we still don’t
know at the time of writing) they know what they
are doing and how to do it. It’s a brilliant first edition
in so many ways and a perfect complement to
our own amazing festival here in Brighton.
Martin Skelton, Magazine Brighton, Trafalgar Street
TOILET GRAFFITO #16
With the city gripped by festival fever, and Fringe
venues getting ever more obscure, there’s every
chance that this isn’t toilet graffiti at all but actually
a playbill… and that an angry Sumo Baby is about to
burst in to the cubicle… slugging away in a participatory
piece of immersive theatre… sending the loo
paper flying and pinning you to the cistern. Awkward.
Best keep your foot on the door just in case.
But where might you meet this badass baby?
Last month’s answer: The White Rabbit
Feel free to send in your own examples of Brighton
toilet graffiti… but don’t forget to tell us where you
snapped it.
....25....

experience the extraordinary
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Become a member and help to conserve the Royal Pavilion, and also contribute
to our exhibitions and education programmes, bringing the very best of art and
culture to Brighton & Hove.
Membership from as little as £20 will give you:
• FREE entry to the Royal Pavilion & Museums
• Invitations to Private Views and a regular Newsletter
• Exclusive events programme
• Discounts in Museum and Royal Pavilion shops & cafes
• Accompanying children and grandchildren go FREE
• A FREE after hours tour of the Royal Pavilion!
Registered Charity No 275242
Become
a member
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visit pavilionfoundation.org
or call 01273 295898

PHOTOGRAPHY
..........................................
Ali Tollervey
The sixth Dark Horse
Music and photography
have a long and rich relationship.
Following in the
footsteps of some of the
greatest photographers,
and some of the greatest
bands, Ali Tollervey has
spent years documenting
the world of Brighton
band Dark Horses…
You’ve photographed
a lot of musicians in
your time, of all different genres. How does
something like this compare? I suppose it’s
about intimacy, invisibility and access. It’s more
like taking photos of your family over several years
than a photographer turning up and getting ten
minutes with a band backstage to get ‘the shot’. It’s
more of a story. I’ve tried to show them looking
iconic but also capture their vulnerable moments.
I had no idea where the band would end up when
we started and it was that journey that’s interesting
rather than waiting till a band has made it before
people document them. Becoming part of the
band, though, I must have also lost any objectivity.
What was it that brought you and the band
together? We had a shared network of friends and
influences... I already knew the singer Lisa and
we’d worked together before. It was an exciting
time, as the first album was being recorded, new
members were joining the band and I came on
board at the same time (around 2012). I believed
in the music and there was an energy that I
responded to. It started with a photoshoot, then I
joined their first tour, which took us all the way to
Wembley, and it progressed from there.
It seems like it’s a true collaboration...
Yes, I became part
of the group, documenting the
life of a band from the inside
rather than as an outsider looking
in. There’s a real history of
photographers working with
bands, from Annie Leibowitz
and the Stones, Ricky Powell
and the Beastie Boys to Ewen
Spencer’s great work with the
White Stripes. However, I don’t
know of other photographers who’ve embedded
for the whole journey in quite the same way.
My role was also to create visuals that fed back
into the band in response to the music. It was a
collaboration in the sense that each inspired the
other and nurtured a creative atmosphere around
the band.
They’re a very visual band, does this help with
the collaboration? Early on the band all had their
jackets adorned with their branding or ‘colours’,
much like the Hell’s Angels or the 70s/80s New
York street gangs. I was drawn to this gang
sensibility. It can be powerful aesthetically but also
I grew up documenting UK hip hop and skating
subcultures and tribes in the 90s, so it felt quite
natural. But it’s the characters within the band that
provide the real interest. Things are quiet at the
moment as they are locked away writing the new
album and I’ve been working on other projects.
I’m looking forward to the next chapter. I spent
several years in a shadowy monochrome world…
Ali was speaking to Jim Stephenson of The Miniclick
Photography Talks.
alitollervey.com, miniclick.co.uk
....27....

PHOTOGRAPHY
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....28....

PHOTOGRAPHY
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....29....

PHOTOGRAPHY
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PHOTOGRAPHY
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....31....

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COLUMN
...........................................
John Helmer
Reaching out
Accidentally, I got a job.
For those of you new to this column – or just a
bit slow on the uptake – I am one of nature’s freelancers.
It’s how I roll. Misanthropic, distractible
and selfish to a fault, I call no man my master and
like to work peculiar hours. I fret in harness.
And then my favourite client unexpectedly fell
pregnant (unexpectedly so far as I was concerned
at least), and somehow I was enticed into covering
her maternity leave.
So it’s goodbye to those cherished home office
rituals of nose-picking, freecell-bingeing, can’tbe-arsed-this-morning-think-I’ll-go-for-a-bikeride
and screaming obscenities at Fi Glover on
the radio.
Suddenly, I am a number, not a free man; up to
my eyes in logins, privacy policies and surprise
Skype meetings with mystery agendas where
an unshaven person from a random time
zone joins me in attempting to guess
what it is we’re supposed to be talking
about. I sign two or three birthday
cards a day for people I’ve never heard
of. When I trip across the road to
the coffee shop at 11am, I wear the
Lanyard of Shame.
“They make me start every morning
at nine o’clock,” I complain to
friends.
“Yes but you go home at two-thirty,”
they scoff.
“But I have to sit in an office. With
other people.”
“Did you talk to anybody today?” says
my wife, who tends to caricature
somewhat, I feel, my naturally diffident mien.
“Of course I did. I’m a communications expert
for fuck’s sake: that’s what it says on my LinkedIn,
anyway… I spoke to someone in Stockholm, I
spoke to someone in Luton…”
“Luton.”
“It’s a global organization, Kate. I not only spoke
to them – I reached out to them. That’s what we
do in business nowadays: we reach out.”
So overwhelming has been this sudden immersion
in the world of salaried employees that this
month’s Viva deadline crept up on me a bit. Desperate
for inspiration, I reached out to Facebook.
“Does anybody have a good idea for a humorous
520wd column in a Brighton lifestyle magazine?
Written POV a man in later years who is finding
that life on the whole has not lived up to expectations.
With hilarious results. Deadline Thursday,
don’t sit on your hands.”
This is Facebook to me...
—Man in later years digging his garden uncovers
a box of WWII grenades and uses them to throw
at people in his office.
—Man in later years goes to prison for throwing
grenades at people in his office and discovers he is
not too old to be used like a bitch.
—Man in later years plus spouse get fitbits. She is
fit he is shit. Hilarity ensues.
Me to Facebook: Thanks all, you proper got
me out of a hole there (like fuck). Don’t expect
attribution.
—If none of us gets credit we’re coming round
your house en masse to give you a Chinese burn.
—And a dead leg…
After that it got ugly.
....33....

COLUMN
...........................................
Amy Holtz
The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan
“What the hell are ‘wellies’?”
I’m on a farm, apparently,
in Somerset. Noah has just
drifted by, and, finding nothing
worth preserving, floated
on through. There is mud,
too, where the water has
managed to find an outlet.
And I keep hearing this word,
like some sort of secret code
between Brits.
My friend points to a
passerby in a Buzz Lightyear
spacesuit and green boots. I’ve seen these before,
these ‘wellies’. I don’t understand why they have
such a non-serious name when they clearly have a
very serious job to do; the weather gods brought
their party heads last night. Now, the only footwear
resembling boots left in a twenty-mile radius, for
the dumb Americans, are a pair of Dr Martens,
size 5.5.
“5 and a half,” I say, turning them over. They are
adorably bijou, which describes nothing I’ve ever
worn on my feet, even in infancy. “That’s practically
a size 9 US, right?”
Optimism is one of this American’s greatest
resources. But once my foot is in, the rest of my
leg goes rigid. There will be no ankle-bending the
rest of this weekend. Which is probably for the best
because the bending exacerbates the continentsized
blisters that form after pulling each foot, with
a slow comedy suction noise, out of fathomless
trenches of clinging mire.
“Once the feet go, the mind goes,” another friend,
who serves in the TA, informs me. I watch carefree
revellers trek across the fields
towards better stages, unflappable
in wellies, covering
mileage like marathoners.
I think I might die here,
Princess Buttercup in the
lightning sand. As it happens,
I manage a jerky, silly walk to
the top of a hill.
“I think I’ll stay here for a
bit,” I say, feigning nonchalance,
heels erupting with the
sorrow of a million steps, the
leather lasering a few last beams at the remains of
my feet, “Who’s on next, then?”
“Coldplay.”
So after the scarring from that experience bubbled
over and smoothed out, I made a list of ideal festival
requirements. Droughts - good. Cold beer, yes.
Toilets, or just a simple, well-concealed hole - better
than cold beer. Bands that no one can make fun
of, because no one’s ever heard of them - perfect. A
(my own) bed - ding ding ding!
Still gunshy, I ventured to the Great Escape on
the very premise that it was indoors, a relatively
dry walk from my own bed. There were also only
twelve of us attending this particular venue, so
the way to the toilet was illuminated even around
a considerable bulk of vintage denim. The ‘band’
consisted of a man and three plastic buckets and for
25 minutes, he battered them and shouted into the
microphone. Such beauty in grime and noise. The
bar was empty; the floor was, well, sticky - but also
not too moist. I stayed for hours, shedding not a
few tears at my good fortune.
....35....

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COLUMN
.............................
Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
Apparently the fastest selling show in this year’s festival
is Music for Dogs.
“I really don’t get this,” I say, scanning the Brighton
Festival brochure.
“It’s for dog people,” says fellow North Villager, with
an air of superiority which suggests: a) there is such
a thing as ‘a dog person’, b) I am not one and c) they
are, and are therefore somehow better.
I grew up with a succession of dogs I was very fond
of. I have friends with dogs: some are nice, some are
mad and bark a lot. I do not have a dog now because
I don’t feel the need for the loyalty of a fourlegged
friend, excuse to go for walks or want to be
tied to needing to ‘get home for the dog,’ having just
emerged from years of needing to get home for the
children. Plus there’s a danger I might start photographing
myself with the dog and posting the images
on social media. It happens.
So, for the record, I like dogs, just not the idea of
being defined by whether I own one or not.
And what exactly is ‘a dog person’ shorthand for?
Being kind and caring and looking after something?
Having a house big enough to contain more than
one? Whatever it is, who cares?
The programmers of this year’s festival, I guess.
Yup, (or should that be yap?), the show selling all the
tickets is music ‘specifically designed for the canine
ear, including frequencies audible only to dogs.’
It’s the brainchild of guest director Laurie Anderson,
who’s already taken it to Sydney and New York. It’s
the kind of novel idea you probably have to be Laurie
Anderson to turn into a reality. But she has and
it’s so popular with ‘dog people’ that the initial show
Illustration by Joda, jonydaga.weebly.com
sold out and a second has been added.
Brighton being Brighton, I know a couple of people
who have been asked to play in it. One was as
bemused as myself, both by the concept and by Ms
Anderson’s accent.
“Music for daawgs?” He wondered if this was New
York slang for jazz lovers.
“Dogs.”
“Ah!” He and I were left wondering if “daawgs”
wouldn’t rather be chasing a ball, chewing a bone or
playing with one of those squeaky toys, maybe with
other dogs and making squeaky-dog-toy jazz?
But I shall await the flood of images of beloved pets
in the Open Air Theatre, musing on the delights of
the 60 kHz Phrygian cadence and wondering if the
extra half octave, within a dog’s hearing range, augments
the augmented fourths or diminishes the diminished
sevenths? I shall imagine the dogs barking,
something along the lines of “What did you think
of that dodgy (excuse the pun) sus chord, Rover?”
And I shall start working on my pitch for next year’s
festival: Music for Fish. It’ll be on the beach and based
on the writings of da Vinci and Newton, both at the
forefront of underwater acoustic thinking. Fish people
and non-fish people welcome.
....37....

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COLUMN
...........................................
Chloë King
Guide to festival euphemisms
Family-friendly
The true meaning of this phrase depends on your
own definition of the words ‘family’ and ‘friendly’.
If family is a label that can be applied to anyone
in a straw hat who rambles over to you clutching
a warm can of beer, and if friendliness towards
drunks in hats comes easily, congratulations: you
are at a family-friendly festival.
Long-drop
If you have visited the khazi at Glastonbury you
will know that long is not nearly long enough for a
venue that boasts such frequent use. You will also
know that long drop has a second meaning: to be
applied when the toilet you have been waiting for
is inhabited by a sleeping drunk.
Dressing up
You are an expensively paid up member of what
Harold Rosenberg called ‘the herd of independent
minds’. You will make all your sartorial decisions
by committee. The trustafarians on whose land
you will be dancing have chosen the theme Outer
Space; therefore you arrive in a heavy downpour
wearing the same glitter as your friends. The rain
soon washes off your glitter, and as one of your
friends is wearing a tiny costume woven from ribbons
of tin foil and upcycled flannels, you will feel
both over and under-dressed.
Chillout tent
You’re inside a tent and listening to Sigur Rós, so
why is it still freezing, and why are you so tense?
Glamping
You spy a field on yonder hill populated with
miniature houses not too unlike the calf pens your
vegan friends post pictures of on Facebook. You
could argue that glamping sounds worse than it is,
but it retains position here because once you have
forked out for tickets, adding the excruciating cost
of rent-a-tents will leave you potless. You spend
the weekend longing for a pen. Rumour has it they
have composting toilets.
Headliner
Headliner: a verb meaning to consume a decent
meal, plenty of water and a Dioralyte. A headliner
ensures you can wake up and attend to the kids
you mistakenly brought and/or do it all again the
following day without losing your dignity, sanity
and friends. It’s a shame they’re as rare and as hard
as Guns N’ Roses comeback tours… you say Guns
N’ Roses are doing a comeback tour?
Campfire
A campfire sustained by a single giant log is found
in one of two highly meaningful states. The
first: a nugget of lava boiling away ‘twixt a mass
of humans who intermittently fall in and burn
themselves, as in Dante. The second: a lonely yet
comforting place manned with constancy by a
solitary person who speaks few words.
The past
The only reason anyone ever goes to a festival is
because they want to feel 21. Even the 21-year-olds
want to feel 21. Considering your past at a festival
is a bit like looking into an infinity mirror: you
realise with bafflement that you do feel 21 again,
except feeling 21 isn’t making you constantly
happy, just as being 21 failed to do the first time
around. And so it goes on, all summer long…
Illustration by Chloë King
....39....

Photo by Adam Bronkhorst
....40....

INTERVIEW
..........................................
MYbrighton: Andrew Comben
CEO, Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival
Are you local? I’ve lived here since May 2008,
when I started this job. Before that I was working
at Wigmore Hall, in London. One of the big
reasons I took the job was because I was taken by
the city. I was born and raised in Sydney, and I
feel - even though people look at me slightly oddly
- that Brighton is as close to Australia as you can
get. I don’t mean geographically, obviously, I mean
in a kind of spirit. There’s something about that
energetic pursuit of things that are new, that are
interesting, that are fashionable. That’s a gift if you
work in the arts.
How important is Brighton Festival to Brighton?
There are a huge number of cultural events for
people to witness and be involved in, of course, and
there’s a huge economic benefit from it. But more
than that there’s a huge reputational benefit that the
Festival has provided the city.
Festival City vs Dirty Weekendsville? I think
it’s an interesting tension and it’s one that was selfconsciously
adopted in 1967 when Brighton Festival
was set up.
Some accuse the Festival of being too elitist...
I think that it’s a lazy assumption that culture of
any sort will go over the heads of some people.
What I most want to do is to make great work, and
encourage people to look at that great work or be
a part of it. There are real areas of deprivation in
this city: it’s not all affluence and fun and liveliness,
there are people who don’t have access to any
number of things let alone the arts, yet we know
that participating in creative activity can unlock all
sorts of doors. I’m more and more interested in the
role that culture can play in society and how we can
directly benefit areas of need. So although I will defend
to the death the intrinsic value of the arts I’m
unashamedly instrumentalist as well… they can play
a really vital role in people’s health, their wellbeing,
in their aspirations, their routes to employment.
Should Brighton have a dedicated contemporary
art gallery? It would be lovely, but I think the challenge
is to make something possible out of what we
have rather than wish for something that’s absent.
Do you get to see something in the Festival every
day… what is the thing you’re more looking
forward to seeing? I often get to see several things
every day, but often not all the way through, because
I’ll go to something and then have to head off to the
next thing. So I’m slightly odd at the end of three
weeks because I’ll have seen lots of beginnings and
lots of endings but not necessarily of the same piece.
Two pieces I will watch through are Guest Director
Laurie Anderson’s Song Conversations and Slide Show,
which reflect two sides of an incredible artist and
story teller.
What’s your favourite Brighton boozer? I meet
people in many different city centre pubs, but I’d
have to say the Waggon and Horses on Church
Street, a bit of an ending-up spot for a lot of our
team at the Dome and Festival.
When did you last swim in the sea? I’m really
not a Channel swimmer. Growing up in Australian
waters means I’ve never been that keen on UK ones.
So no, I’m a sailor rather than a swimmer. Though I
had a dip last summer – in a wetsuit.
Where would you live if not in Brighton? If you
can find me Berlin-by-the Sea, then I’ll go there.
Interview by Alex Leith
....41....

LOCAL MUSICIANS
..........................................
Ben Bailey rounds up the Brighton music scene
TIME FOR T
Mon 9, Prince Albert, 7pm, £5
Their first show of the
year sees Time For
T emerge from some
winter downtime
with a launch party
for their new single Rescue Plane. Given that they
describe their singalong slacker tunes as ‘tropical
folk rock’ it seems apt that the band should only
come out to play once the sun has shown its face.
Though they’ve got a decent following in Brighton,
they are apparently quite the thing in Europe,
especially in lead singer Tiago Saga’s birthplace of
Portugal. While they may play huge festivals over
there, Time For T seem content to keep the sunny
European vibe alive and well in Southern England.
Hora de festejar!
KING LAGOON’S FLYING
SWORDFISH DANCE BAND
Wed 18, Spiegeltent, 9pm, £10/8
Dressed like a cross between
P-Funk and The Mighty
Boosh, this eleven-piece dance
band play a fusion of Afro-
Latin rhythms, psychedelic
guitar riffs and funky bass.
Going for the full multi-sensory impact, the band
even employ their own smell technician to waft
song-specific scents in the direction of the audience.
Though this show is part of Brighton Fringe,
it’s also a fundraiser for next month’s Kemptown
Carnival – which means you’ll also hear some
samba, in this case from the Carnival Bizarre drum
troupe Barulho. So don’t be surprised if you find
yourself surrounded by a 25-strong roaming gang
of manic drummers dressed like freak show characters.
Should be quite a night.
Photo by Jon Southcoasting
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Thu-Sat 19-21, everywhere, £65.50
The three headliners of this
year’s showcase weekender give
a good indication of how far
the festival has come from its
drainpipe-indie roots. They’ve
got alt-pop duo Oh Wonder on Thursday, desert
punk from Timbuktu’s Songhoy Blues on Friday
and Croydon grime rapper Stormzy finishing up
on the Saturday. But The Great Escape has never
been about the big names. Better to throw away
your programme and see where you end up. You
might even bump into some local talent you’ve
never caught before: from electronica producer Salute
and grunge trio Tigercub, to singer songwriter
Jack Watts and dark synthpoppers Miamigo.
PORRIDGE RADIO AND
THE COSMIC SADNESS
Fri 27, Marwood Coffee Shop, 8pm, £3
The buzz surrounding
this band might
be less important to
some than the actual
buzz on the scant
recordings they’ve
put out. Starting with some scrappy acoustic online
demos, singer songwriter Dana Margolin has
found herself heading an equally scrappy electrified
full band, formed in the time-honoured tradition
of having friends who happened to own the right
instruments. With separate zine and screen-printing
projects on the go, and a split-EP on Brighton
micro tape label Memorials of Distinction, there’s
no doubt Porridge Radio are pure DIY. While the
edges of their lo-fi noise rock might be smoothed
off over time, the melodies and heartfelt honesty of
the songs have emerged perfectly formed.
....43....

THEATRE
.....................................
Myra
‘Evil people don’t think they’re evil’
Myra Hindley admitted that
she was even worse and
more wicked than her fellow
Moors Murderer Ian Brady
because she knew the difference
between right and wrong.
My interest and intrigue in her
lies in discovering, exploring
and trying to find out ‘Why?’
Myra is not about trying to
shock or offend. It’s about
trying to understand. The challenge
throughout has been to
try and find the humanity of
Myra and I am still trying to
find it. My intention is to not
portray her as either victim or
villain. I want to challenge the
audience into exploring both sides for themselves.
The play is a combination of storytelling, multimedia
elements, various lighting states and
some physical theatre. I’ve done research and
more research. From looking at actual crime scene
images, reading Myra’s letters from prison, seeing
the late Keith Bennett’s mother on TV pleading
to be told where her son is buried, to trying to get
Myra’s voice accurate, hair and costume right.
The famous mug shot conveys a sinister and
emotionless woman that appears dead in the
eyes. What her eyes must have seen no one will
ever fully comprehend or dare to even try to. The
fact that she was a woman and her victims were
innocent children not only shocks to the core, but
more terrifyingly is at odds with society’s culture of
maternal instincts.
I believe that evil people don’t think they are
evil. I believe Ian Brady cleverly engineered a fantasy
world and Myra felt invincible, loved, desired,
powerful and safe in a life he had seduced her into
leading. When you agree
to exist in a make-believe
world created by someone
that has no empathy
and who is a psychopath,
your moral code can be destroyed.
Myra sold her soul
to the devil. Does that make
her evil? I don’t think so. I
believe it made her broken.
She said, “What I did was
evil, but I’m not evil.”
Our company, Pretty Villain,
was formed in 2012,
way before this play was
conceived. The name was
chosen to evoke an art deco
image and a stylish edginess.
Our previous productions of The Crucible and The
Lad Himself picked up Brighton Fringe awards.
Prior to Pretty Villain, I trained at the Oxford
School of Drama and have appeared on TV in
Holby City and Afterlife.
A lot of the time I have questioned myself and
continue to do so. There has been a personal cost
involved for me due to the very nature of the subject.
One of the most difficult and upsetting challenges
was deciding to incorporate a short segment
from the Lesley Ann Downey murder using the
original transcript and music that was played on
tape during her horrific and brutal torture. I trust
that I have treated this part of the play very sensitively
and respectfully.
I still have not reached a conclusion, and it’s
likely I never fully will. I didn’t set out to get a
definitive answer about Myra. As told to Ben Bailey
Myra by Lauren Varnfield is showing at the Rialto
Theatre as part of Brighton Fringe on May 5th-6th
and June 3th-4th
....45....

The Stage
The Times
The Herald
The Scotsman
‘…bound to hit the heights across
the UK and quite possibly the globe’
British Theatre Guide
Tuesday 24 May — The Prince Albert
Marissa Nadler
+ Wrekmeister
Harmonies
Wednesday 25 May — Green Door Store
Orchestra of
Spheres
+ Wax Machine
Thursday 26 May — Patterns
Cavern of
Anti-Matter
+ VENN + Melita
Dennett (DJ)
Friday 27 May — Patterns
Cate Le Bon
+ Alex Dingley +
Capt. Lovelace (DJ)
Friday 10 June — The Hope & Ruin
The Mystery Lights
+ support
Monday 13 June — De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill
Beach House
+ support
Tuesday 16 August — The Hope & Ruin
Miracle Legion
+ support
Wednesday 7 September — The Latest Music Bar
Karl Blau
+ support
Thursday 29 September — Green Door Store
Natalie McCool
+ support
Monday 21 September — Concorde 2
Julia Holter
+ Circuit des Yeux
Resident Music
Dome Box Office
Union Records
Music’s Not Dead (Bexhill)
Pebbles (Eastbourne shows)
The Vinyl Frontier (Eastbourne)
Venue if applicable
seetickets.com
ticketweb.co.uk
Age restrictions may apply.
meltingvinyl.co.uk
National Theatre of Scotland / Live Theatre
Our Ladies
of Perpetual
Succour
Tue 17 - Sat 21 May
Tickets from £10
brightonfestival.org
brightonfestival
brightfest #BF2016

PHOTOGRAPHY
.......................................
Volker Gerling
Portraits in motion
My flipbooks are always made up of 36 images
taken in 12 seconds because I use a film-based
Nikon F3 camera. A roll of film consists of 36
images, and my winder is able to take three pictures
per second. I really like using analogue film.
I love developing it in the darkroom, and it feels
right that it should take a long time to produce. I
always print two flipbooks – one for me and one as
a gift for the protagonist.
I first began walking in 2002 when I finished
studying and didn’t have the funds to go
travelling. Walking gave me the opportunity to
exhibit my flipbook project outside of the Berlin art
scene, so I took my hawker’s tray and set off. I soon
realised it was a fantastic way of encountering new
people. I only meet inspiring subjects about once a
week. I don’t choose them, people see me walking
by and stop me out of curiosity. If I feel that it’s
a special moment, then I ask if I can photograph
them. I think if I forced it upon people then the
encounters wouldn’t be as intimate as they are.
The appeal to my photographic flipbooks is
that they show the true face of time. Time
can be stretched and slowed down in a flipbook.
They also expose the gaps in film; time lapses
between frames are much bigger than in normal
film, so the audience sees them and fills the gaps
in themselves. The scene then becomes more alive
in their minds. That’s why most audiences feel so
deeply connected. It’s my belief that the gaps create
power and poetry.
I like humour, but I don’t try to put it in my
show. The comedy on stage happens organically,
which I prefer. People often laugh, but many also
cry because some of the stories are incredibly sad
and serious.
In the summer of 1998 I took my first selfportrait
during a trip to England. I visited
friends in Blackpool, and they gave me a free
ticket for The Big One rollercoaster. I photographed
myself plummeting into the depths of
the ride. You can really see the fear on my face. I
completely forgot I was taking my own picture!
My favourite flipbook is the one I made of
my partner when we first met. I was fascinated
by her but didn’t know if things would work out
between us. I photographed her on the train but
lost the flipbook on my first walk from Berlin to
Munich. I was truly devastated by the loss. Nine
years later I received an email from a man who
had found it, held on to it, and then seen a documentary
about me and my work. He realised it was
my flipbook and returned it to me. It holds great
importance for me now. As told to Julia Zaltzman
Part of Brighton Festival. Sat 7th to Wed 11th May,
Brighton Dome Studio Theatre
....47....

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ORAL HISTORY
....................................
Giddy Brighton
Audio psychogeography
It’s not everyone who
would agree to join
a slightly inebriated
stranger on a trip down
memory lane but Carina
Westling is glad she took
the chance (after a swift,
on-the-spot assessment
that she could probably
outrun him should it all
go pear-shaped.) Her unlikely afternoon touring
the streets of Kemptown with a garrulous elderly
gentleman introduced her to pubs “there’s no way
I’d have set foot in otherwise”, and sparked an idea
that turned into a Brighton Festival commission.
Giddy is a mobile app created by Westling, and the
two others who make up digital arts collective The
Nimbus Group, that invites users to take a stroll
through Brighton in the virtual company of (sober,
definitely benign) locals who knew the city in the
1940s, 50s and 60s. A shout-out on Facebook (“The
kids shun it these days – it’s the best place to rally
us older folk”) resulted in a huge number of people
coming forward to share their experiences with
pupils at Rottingdean’s Longhill High School, who
recorded interviews.
Giddy uses geotracking to alert users when they
are nearing a spot that has strong associations for
interviewees. They can then listen to relevant audio
accompanied by portrait photographs of the speakers.
These ‘treasure troves’ of memories lie all over
the city. The unremarkable Queen Square, now
a favourite waiting place for taxis, was altogether
more interesting in the 60s when there were weekly
shenanigans in the infamous Whisky A Go Go bar.
The back of Brighton Dome triggers one man’s
story of seeing a thenunknown
Jimi Hendrix
appearing as support act
for a band he consequently
didn’t bother watching.
Instead he found Hendrix
leaving the venue, asked
him to sign the tambourine
he’d been playing and ran
all the way home, hotly
pursued by teenage girls who wanted his souvenir.
“My encounter in Kemptown really brought home
to me how unaware I am of streets I thought I
knew” says Westling, a wry, Swiss ‘experience
designer’. “We don’t honour these memories and
experiences but they belong to people whose hearts
and souls are in Brighton.”
Giddy (“It’s the way life feels when you’re young”)
is the latest example of Nimbus’ interest in the
way audio can alter our experience of the world
around us. It follows their 2014 ‘sound painting’
app, created with acclaimed wildlife sound recordist
Chris Watson, that allowed users to do their weekly
shop accompanied by the sounds of a Mozambique
Nightjar singing on the banks of the Zambizi
or hang the washing out to the soft snufflings of
a herd of elephants sleeping in grassland. “We
can use digital technology just to trace people’s
purchase habits or we can use it to create alternative
histories, alternative narratives. The things we like
to make are designed to challenge the frames of our
daily existences. We want to shift notions of time
and space via a pair of headphones.” Nione Meakin
Launches May 7th, Brighton Festival. Plus
exhibition at the Sallis Benney Theatre May
7th–26th. giddybrighton.com
....49....

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THEATRE
....................................
Operation Black Antler
Immersive surveillance
On May 7th, nine spies will gather at a secret location
in central Brighton. They will have received
texts beforehand with a bit of background about
their mission. Once they’ve met up, they’ll be
told to go to a nearby address, a police safehouse.
There, they’ll be briefed in more detail about
Operation Black Antler.
This will take place at a pub, at a community
fundraiser which may have been infiltrated by
members of some kind of protest group. So the
nine spies will go to this pub, and try to find out
why these protest people are there, what they’re
doing, and whether they’re dangerous. They will
have a certain amount of power in deciding how
to get that information.
These spies, though, will actually be audience
members in the world premiere of an ambitious
piece of immersive theatre. It was partly inspired
by a 2013 book by two Guardian journalists, which
detailed unethical behaviour by undercover agents.
“When I read that, a whole load of ideas coalesced
that I’d felt before,” says Jem Wall, the piece’s
co-creator. “I didn’t notice these things happening
and that book, I suppose, shocked me - the
unaccountability of our security services,
and the complexity of this [issue].
“I’m very struck by… at the end of this
year, what’s referred to as a Snoopers’
Charter will come into law. When
I’ve looked at that in detail,
we’re giving away a huge
amount of our freedoms
and our privacy.
“As an artist, what
disturbs me is that we
seem to be doing
that with very little examination. I think that’s been
the drive, to get a debate going, to get people to
think about to what extent is surveillance justified.
“It’s not to give an audience a cheap thrill or
power trip. We want to give people an experience,
within a fictionalised environment; a taste of
what it is to have that power, and what moral and
ethical choices they are making. We want people
to think about what surveillance means; what it is
to lie, deceive and cheat, and to note how far, what
they’ve done in that fictionalised environment and
what that feels like.
“We thought, to put the audience in that moral
jeopardy is very powerful, to have them make
decisions. We thought that would be a very strong
way to get them engaged and reflecting on what
surveillance means.
“That is crucial to the work – there’s a section in it
that makes them scrutinise how they’ve behaved.
The hope is that having thought about that, they
realise that’s what they did, and that’s what we’re
asking our state to do, and does that change where
they draw the line?
“Which is a very different experience from watching
a play. You can’t sit there passively in this.
It’s visceral; you’re doing it; you’re making
decisions; it’s happening to you.”
Steve Ramsey
May 7th-28th, (Tuesdays to Saturdays). Part
of Brighton Festival. The Festival also
includes a debate on the ethics of
undercover security, Mon 23rd,
The Old Courtroom, 6.30pm.
brightonfestival.org
....51....

Immerse yourself in
Wakehurst’s woodland
28 – 30 May
10am – 5pm
A weekend of wild woodland activities for all
the family including tree climbing, den building,
woodland crafts, storytelling and more.
Wakehurst is on the B2028 just south of Turners Hill
and north of Ardingly (6 miles from Haywards Heath)
www.kew.org/wildwood

AUDIO
....................................
Street Stories
The things they come up with…
Tell us about your show for this
year’s Fringe. Street Stories is an
audio tour of Brighton, made up
of stories in the voices of homeless
people, written by eight to eleven
year olds, cut between stories from
two men who have actually experienced
homelessness. The children
interviewed the men, which was
fascinating for us to watch as well
as for them; children don’t have
that self-consciousness about asking
questions that we have as adults.
The tour goes to various shop doorways,
to Jubilee Library, and ends
up at First Base Day Centre. The
stories of the children are voiced by
actors, so you have to guess which
are by children and which are being
told by the men themselves.
What is Little Green Pig? We’re
a creative writing and mentoring
charity for children and young people aged seven to
18. Our mission is getting them inspired by writing
in all different forms, whether it’s poetry, stories
or soap writing. Three really important things are
that we always use professional artists and writers
to plan and assist with our projects; the projects
always have a really clear outcome, whether that’s a
book or a film or a script, so they have something
physical and public to show, and that as well as the
workshop leader, each workshop has three to eight
story mentors, so the children get one-on-one or
even two-on-one attention.
Why is creative writing important for kids?
We’re doing this, firstly, because it’s a really good
way of improving literacy, but also because it
improves self-esteem and self-confidence.
We target disadvantaged
areas in Brighton, working with
children from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds who don’t get the
chance to access the arts in the ways
other children do.
For the younger children, is
the focus more on confidenceboosting
than actual writing
ability? You’d be surprised at what
seven and eight year olds can come
up with. A few weeks ago at the
Story Conference in London we
played a game of ‘Piglet or Pig
Laureate?’ where we read out pieces
of poetry and the audience had to
guess whether they were written by
a child or a poet laureate. When you
tell children it doesn’t matter about
spelling or grammar, they come up
with some really amazing stuff.
Do they tend to become more reserved as
teenagers? No… they sometimes become harder
to recruit, but a big part of what we do is to create
trust and a feeling of being in a group, of belonging.
Once you create that atmosphere, which is so different
from being at school – especially secondary
school – it’s a chance for those quieter kids to stand
up and have a voice. It has an effect on all different
levels, not just writing skills but raising aspirations.
Even if writing if the last thing they want to do as a
job, seeing someone else who does their passion for
a living is really inspiring.
Rebecca Cunningham interviewed Ella Burns
Street Stories will run at 11am, 12.30 and 2pm on
Sun 8th, Sat 14th and Sun 15th. littlegreenpig.org.uk
....53....

THEATRE
....................................
A Good Jew
A Holocaust tale, by Jonathan Brown
I’ve been interested in the
Holocaust since visiting
the Holocaust Museum
in Houston, Texas, in 1988.
My wife, Annika, is German,
which has fuelled my interest.
In her neighbouring
village in Bavaria, for example,
many Jewish people
vanished in the war. I found
it striking that some of their
houses are still occupied by
relatives of the locals who
took possession of the properties.
There’s a Romeo and Juliet element to this
story, which starts in Frankfurt in the late
30s. Sol is a Jewish concert pianist. Hilda plays
in the same orchestra and is the daughter of an
SS officer. So their love crosses the divide. Sol
invents a new Aryan identity to protect himself,
but becomes drawn into the Nazi machine;
Hilda, thinking he’s been taken to Theresienstadt
concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, takes on a
Jewish identity to get into the camp and find him.
Theresienstadt was a strange camp. It was
where the Germans sent many Jewish musicians,
artists, actors and directors. Having first
transported many former inmates to Auschwitz,
and cleaned it up to resemble a model camp, the
SS allowed a Swiss Red Cross inspector access.
After being led along a limited tour route, he gave
it a clean bill of health. Later, the camp and famed
interred director Kurt Gerron were similarly used
to create a propaganda film. He and many of those
appearing were subsequently gassed.
There was a lot of subterfuge and identity
shifting going on, including
cases of Nazis trying
to pass themselves off as
Jewish after the liberation
of the camp. As an actor
and director I’m drawn to
all this identity shifting.
We’ve set up a crowdfunding
campaign to help
fund this project and tell
this story. Once we cover
the £3,000 of costs, the
company can start to make
a profit. So we heartily welcome more pledgers
and, moreover, plenty of ticket sales!
We’re putting it on at Exeter Street Hall, in
Prestonville. We needed a lot of room as it’s a
big story – set all over Europe – with eight in the
cast. The audience can get a one-day bus pass
along with their ticket, and visit this hidden gem
of a venue, which holds a range of community and
cultural events through the year.
In the last Brighton Fringe I did a completely
improvised show – Je Suis: A Fool’s Guide to Cliff
Edges. It was filled with comic elements, but it
wasn’t comedy. The subject matter depended
on what was brought up on the day. My mother
had been very ill and she died during the run,
which was reflected in the way the shows turned
out. I saw the performance I did the night she
died partly as a poem for her. The audience that
evening became an integral part of what became
an intense, funny and poignant journey to the very
departure gates of life. As told to Alex Leith
A Good Jew, Brighton Fringe, Exeter Hall, May 6th,
7th, 20th, 21st, 27th and 28th.
....54....

LITERATURE
....................................
Howard Jacobson
Interrogating Shakespeare
“Shakespeare reworked old
stories...” says Howard Jacobson,
“to rework Shakespeare is to keep
those stories alive.”
The author’s latest novel, Shylock
is My Name, is a modern retelling
of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of
Venice. Renowned for his acerbic
wit, astute observations and explorations
of what it means to be
Jewish, Jacobson seems the ideal
author to tackle rewriting this
play, with one of Shakespeare’s
most controversial characters at
its heart. Critics still question
whether Shakespeare was attempting to highlight
social ills or whether he was promoting anti-semitism,
which offers Jacobson rich pickings.
Refashioning these stories does more than
continue tradition, Jacobson continues. It also
creates a dialogue between past and the present in
which “by looking with our eyes at those stories
we notice how far, for better or worse, we have
changed”. This is crucial for examining historical
and contemporary social prejudices, a responsibility
from which Jacobson does not shy.
To Jacobson, the question of why Jews have for
so long inspired such loathing (evident from Shylock’s
fellow Venetians in the play) is “interesting
intellectually and theologically”, and the author
interrogates both what it means to be Jewish and
the prevailing attitudes towards the Jewish population.
Throughout the novel, anti-semitic views
are directed at its central character, Strulovitch.
The views espoused are evidently not that of the
author, but instead are used to highlight the modern
incarnations of anti-semitism.
In so doing Jacobson states the
novel’s position on “Jew-loathing”.
And this is key to Jacobson who
sees such exposition as “vital at a
time when Jew-loathing would appear
to have found its voice again.”
Jacobson also explores contemporary
ideas of ‘Jewishness’
through two Jewish characters,
Strulovitch and his own revival of
Shakespeare’s character, Shylock:
“I began writing Strulovitch as
a contemporary equivalent to
Shylock but soon came to see that
there is and can be no contemporary equivalent.
Historically he simply cannot be uprooted… I
realised that he had to be there, much like Shakespeare’s
Shylock.”
Having two characters coming from a similar
theological point of view but with 400 years of
history between them offers plenty of opportunity
for comparison and Jacobson “saw that exploring
the differences between them would be instructive
and fun”. He applies this examination to a variety
of different areas, including a shocking take on the
‘pound of flesh’ originally demanded by Shylock.
Shifting Shylock from being the instigator of this
violence to an observer has allowed both Jacobson,
as a Shakespeare scholar, and Shylock, as a character,
to examine “what is really signified” then and
now, and “speculate on what it all meant and what
his original intentions were.”
Holly Fitzgerald
Howard Jacobson, The Guardian Book Club, Sallis
Benney Theatre, Sun 8th May, 5pm Tickets: £10
....55....

THEATRE
....................................
Photos by Robbie Jack (left) and Sarah Ainslie (right)
The Encounter
An Amazonian adventure in Falmer
The London-based Complicite touring theatre
company launched in 1983 and gained a reputation
for producing “the most imaginative theatre
to be found anywhere”, according to David Lister
of the Independent. This month they’re bringing an
already sold-out show called The Encounter to the
recently refurbished Attenborough Centre for the
Creative Arts, which is on the University of Sussex
campus at Falmer. Now named after the work of
Lord (Richard) Attenborough and his family, the
building was previously known as the Gardner
Arts Centre.
Kirsty Housley, who’s co-directing The Encounter,
thought she’d only be involved for a few weeks
of research when she joined the production team
in 2010. “That couple of weeks turned into a few
months… and then the project kind of continued,
really,” she tells me. It’s part of the distinctive way
Complicite operates, apparently. “Each time a
project is created, a company is built around that
project. There’s a genuine ‘not knowing’ at the
beginning of the process. You relinquish an element
of control, which is quite scary.” In addition,
the work they do is never seen as finished. “You
never lock something down and say ‘that’s it, keep
it exactly as it is now, repeat what you’re doing.’ So
there’s always a sense of evolution in the performance
as well.”
Performing in The Encounter is Complicite cofounder
Simon McBurney, who’s known to many
as the sinister MI6 man in last year’s Mission:
Impossible film and as the often unsympathetic
Archbishop Robert in TV sitcom Rev. The story
is adapted from a book called Amazon Beaming,
which tells the adventures of photojournalist
Loren McIntyre. In 1969, McIntyre went looking
for the elusive Mayoruna tribe in South America.
Also known as the Matsés, they were popularly
referred to as ‘cat people’ because of their facial
tattoos and the whisker-like spines they wore in
their noses. He found them – but, as he followed
a group into the rainforest, he lost track of his
original route. McIntyre’s planned three-day trip
turned into weeks spent with people who shared
no common language with him. Yet much to the
photographer’s surprise, he seemed to develop a
wordless way of communicating with the tribe’s
elderly leader.
Which helps to explain why The Encounter doesn’t
tell McIntyre’s story with conventional imagery.
Simon McBurney performs it as a one-man show,
assisted by binaural headsets that blend his performance
with sound effects to put the audience
in the heart of the jungle. “A lot of the technology
had to be custom-built”, says Kirsty. “We create
the feeling of being somewhere rather than trying
to visually represent what that place looks like. You
don’t see any creepers or any green leaves. Like all
theatre, it really takes place in your imagination
rather than on the stage.” Mark Bridge
The Encounter runs from Wednesday 11th until
Sunday 15th. brightonfestival.org
....57....

CINEMA
....................................
Symphony of a City
A soundtrack to Brighton
How does the film
compare to Walter
Ruttmann’s original
Berlin: Symphony of
a Great City, which it
was clearly inspired
by? Lizzie Thynne:
Although we follow a
loose structure of a day
in the life of the city,
which is very much the
structure of the original, we also wanted to include
some archive from Screen Archive South East, at
the University of Brighton. We have some wonderful
gems, such as a ritual that used to happen
by the pier when ‘Father Neptune’ was dunked
in the sea by beautiful, muscly young men also
dressed up. It’s not really what you would expect
from the 50s, although it’s what you might expect
from Brighton!
What about comparisons with Edmund
Meisel’s original musical score? Ed Hughes:
The Meisel score hasn’t survived. However, I think
we are interested in Ruttmann’s idea of the form
of a symphony in a broad sense of an analogy as a
means to create a portrait of a city, using musical
principles of coherence and contrasting themes.
Was there a deliberate attempt to contrast the
music with what is happening on screen? EH:
There is definitely counterpoint between the music
and the picture. We’re aiming at something in
which the patterns of the silent film and the music
co-exist and respond to one another, perhaps more
like music and dance than regular cinema music.
Was the film storyboarded beforehand? LT:
If only! We made the film in four short months
alongside work (Lizzie
and Ed are both lecturers
in the School of Media,
Film & Music department
at Sussex University).
But that was incredibly
liberating because it
very much depended on
us responding to what
we were seeing. We had
ideas that we were trying
to match, such as circular motions, so the Brighton
Eye features as a kind of motif that keeps returning,
and it represents the passage of time.
Is this your first silent film? LT: Yes, and it’s
quite a joyous film but we wanted to explore some
of the more problematic sides of Brighton. It was
quite tricky to indicate the issue of homelessness
without it being too voyeuristic, as I couldn’t have
those people speaking in the film telling their
stories. So, inevitably, as with silent films, people
become symbolic.
Has making the film revealed elements of
Brighton you haven’t witnessed before? LT: It
renewed my enthusiasm for the city. Just in the
way people reacted, and how friendly they were.
I worked closely with Catalina Balan, and there’s
still the radicalism which we’ve tried to reflect,
as well as a few surreal moments that feature
the unexpected, which is something I was really
pleased with about the film in that you’ve got the
extraordinary in everyday life.
Interview by Julia Zaltzman
Brighton Festival, Wed 11th May, 7.30pm, Brighton
Dome, featuring The Orchestra of Sound and Light
conducted by Ed Hughes
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THEATRE
....................................
The Complete Deaths
A Shakespearian bloodbath
Spare a thought for
Toby Parks who so far
this year has watched
his colleagues get
stabbed, poisoned,
drowned, blinded,
smothered, beheaded,
bitten by snakes and
baked in pies, often all
in the same day. It’s
been draining, he admits.
But such is one’s
lot when one is part of a physical comedy group
making a foolhardy attempt to crowbar all 74 of
Shakespeare’s death scenes into a single Brighton
Festival show.
The Complete Deaths is probably Spymonkey’s
most ambitious work to date – and this is a group
who have performed Herman Melville’s epic
Moby Dick. So many characters die in Titus Andronicus
alone that one website created a downloadable
‘death clock’ to help audiences keep
track. There are around 25 untimely demises in a
single Henry VI play: “A lot of those are characters
no one’s really heard of though, so we crack
through them quite quickly.” Then there are the
‘big production numbers’ – the Romeo & Juliets,
the Hamlets, Cleopatra and her asp.
The challenge hasn’t just been in covering all the
deaths but in keeping them interesting. “One of
our earliest discoveries in doing this show is that
it quickly gets very boring watching people get
stabbed and falling over again and again,” says
Parks, who performs with and composes for the
acclaimed Brighton-based five-piece. So that isn’t
quite what happens. Instead deaths are reimagined
as, to use Parks’ wonderfully evocative
phrases, ‘a Butoh-inspired medley of stabbings’,
‘a Jacques Tati-style dumbshow set in a pie shop’
and ‘Pyramus and Thisbe as filmed by Ingmar
Bergman.’ When I ask
if there’s a scene with
which Spymonkey
has taken particular
liberty, Parks is at a
loss to pick just one.
“It’s very good for us
as clowns to work with
characters and situations
that everyone
is familiar with. The
stronger and clearer
the situation, the more fun we can have in subverting
it.”
The audacity of Spymonkey’s undertaking has
not gone unnoted. In a preview, the Telegraph
called the as-yet-unperformed show “ultimately
philistine” and protested that poor, innocent
(only slightly bloodthirsty) Shakespeare “does
not deserve this monstering”. And in the 400th
anniversary of his death too! One can only hope
the writer didn’t see Spymonkey’s 2012 show
Oedipussy, which gave Homer’s eye-gouging
Greek tragedy a loud, lewd, James Bond-style
makeover. But Parks does not fear the angry
academics. As he sees it, Spymonkey’s backs are
covered by the involvement of experimental
theatre-maker Tim Crouch, who adapted and directs
The Complete Deaths. Crouch, he points out,
is not only a renowned scholar of Shakespeare
(see his one-man touring show I, Malvolio) but a
bona fide ‘art bastard’ to boot. “We’re basically a
bunch of idiots whereas Tim is a highly respected
figure in avant-garde theatre circles. Tim is taking
care of the erudition, we’re taking care of the
laughs. Between us, we aim to create a show that
is sublimely ridiculous.”
Nione Meakin
Theatre Royal Brighton, May 11th–15th. Brighton
Festival, brightonfestival.org
....61....

MUSIC
..........................................
Professor Elemental
And his time-travelling trousers
Brighton has a habit of throwing up eccentrics, but
Professor Elemental must be among the most curious
and amusing of the bunch. With three shows
in town this month, the chap-hop rapper chatted
to us about time travel, the joys of steampunk and
what it means to be British.
What is chap hop? Strictly speaking, it’s a select
musical genre where emcees use traditional hip
hop for inspiration and use it to rap about unlikely
subjects such as village fetes, gentlemanly behaviour,
time-travelling trousers and splendid horses.
Although really it’s just dope hip-hop music in
fancy dress.
What’s this we hear about a time-travelling
butler? Ah yes, dear sweet Geoffrey – not just my
butler, but also my orangutan and my best friend.
Is he reliable, trustworthy and useful around the
house? Not really. Does he throw his droppings at
visitors and do unspeakable things to the postman?
Yes, yes he does. But he is mine and I am stuck
with him.
How did you get into the steampunk thing?
After my Cup Of Brown Joy video went viral a few
years back I started getting Americans writing to
me telling me I was steampunk. I had no idea what
it was at all. After checking it out, I was delighted
to find that my act fitted in really nicely with the
neo-Victorian world of the future and that the
subculture is full of the nicest people you could
ever meet. There’s even a really lovely steampunk
bar in Brighton called The Yellow Book, which I
highly recommend checking out.
Are you proud to be British? The older and
more travelled I get, the more patriotic I’ve become.
Not in a Nigel Farage sort of way, but more
a quiet appreciation for odd tourist attractions,
glorious countryside and our unmatchable sense
of humour. As for Europe, we are now faced with
the impossible challenge of either making David
Cameron or Michael Gove happy. And that is a
choice no one should have to make.
You already run a small cottage industry of
comic books, card games and cuddly toys –
what kind of merchandise would you crank out
if money was no object? Well, if money was no
object, this interview would be about the new Professor
Elemental theme park opening on Brighton
pier, but that pizza chap got in there before me
and snapped the place up.
Any further adventures lined up? I always have
several projects on at once – new novels, albums
and an endless parade of shows. The next thing
out will be issue five of the Professor Elemental
comic, followed up by an album from my old crew,
The Menagerie. Plus you can see me in Brighton
this May with three very different gigs at Prince
Albert (13th), The Wunderlich Review, Spiegeltent
(25th) and Funk Da Family Festival, Hove
Park (28th). Interview by Ben Bailey
professorelemental.com
....63....

DANCE
..........................................
Dan Canham
Of Riders and Running Horses
The idea for Of
Riders and Running
Horses originally
started with my fascination
in, and enjoyment
of, various folk events I
was going to around the
country. Things like the
Flaming Tar Barrels in
Ottery St Mary, Molly
dancing in East Anglia
(which is kind of like Morris dancing but at night
with fire and much more menacing than anything
I’d ever seen before), and Straw Bear in Whittlesea.
Events where music or dance or some other
kind of live element play a central role, and in
which the viewers are very immediate rather than
dance presented from a distance to an audience
quietly sat in a theatre.
It was always my intention for it to be performed
at night time. There’s just something
nice about it being outdoors, potentially in a place
that you might not normally be in at night time to
watch something. I wanted locations that people
would be really familiar with and regularly pass in
their daily life or areas that get taken for granted
as a functional space, but when the sun goes down,
suddenly there’s this magic of there being musicians
and dancers taking ownership of that space,
and people gathering to watch it. It’s normally
performed on a rooftop, but in Brighton the
show is at ground level in the overflow car park of
Withdean stadium. The piece ends with a gentle
invitation for the audience to join in and it turns
into a bit of a rave!
The music and dance were composed in relation
to each other.
I came up with some
moves in the R&D
period which the musicians
would respond
to, and I later set a
brief for them to write
some music, which we
then adapted during
rehearsals. The show is
about the relationship
between those two elements, and even now we’ve
created a structure which retains a kind of ‘liveness’
whereby the dancers can be responsive to the
musicians and vice versa.
If I had to nail down the style of dance, I would
say that some of the material is lifted directly from
jumpstyle dance, which I ear-marked in the early
days as contemporary folk dance. It’s rhythmic,
relatively simple, has no clear author and appeared
in the mid-90s in rave clubs in Europe. We also
use house-style steps, and a lot of steps have been
generated by the company themselves. One of the
dancers has a hip-hop background; others come
from more contemporary dance. It’s a real mix.
Using six female dancers was a conscious
choice. I was particularly interested in exploring
an energy of abandon or ecstasy of collective joy.
In a lot of of traditional dance, that will be done
by men, and I feel that more widely in our culture
we’re used to the energy of abandon being more
closely associated with men. I was interested in
allowing women to do that and to give them a
platform to invert the normal folk tradition.
As told to Julia Zaltzman
Fri 13th - Sun 15th May, 8.30pm, Withdean Stadium
....65....

䌀 䄀 䰀 䰀 夀 伀 唀 刀 䰀 伀 䌀 䄀 䰀
䄀 䜀 䔀 一 吀 䘀 伀 刀 䄀 一
䔀 堀 倀 䔀 刀 吀 嘀 䄀 䰀 唀 䄀 吀 䤀 伀 一
㈀ 㜀 アパート 㘀 㜀 㜀 アパート 㘀 㔀
䈀 漀 渀 攀 琀 琀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
“blissfully funny”
êêêêê time out
What’s on:
Bromance 12-18 May
the lamellar
project 13-14 May
Wifi wars 15 May
with a little
bit of luck 17-18 may
sleeping trees:
Western? and SCI-FI?
24-25 may
1972: The Future
of sex 27-28 May
strange face 2 jun
26-28 may
trygve wakenshaw:
kraken
see the full line-up: theoldmarket.com

LITERATURE
....................................
Olivia Laing
The loneliness of the trans-Atlantic writer
In your latest book, The Lonely
City, you posit that cities can
accentuate loneliness. Is the
countryside, conversely, good
company? I don’t think it’s that
simple. Loneliness is accentuated
by environment, and there’s
undoubtedly rural loneliness, just
as there is urban loneliness. They
have very different qualities, but
you can feel displaced and isolated
anywhere.
As a young woman you spent a
whole spring ‘living feral’ in rural
Sussex. How formative was this experience?
Pretty deeply - it made me very self-reliant, and I
think it has informed all the travelling I’ve done
since. I’ve always been very independent and liked
to go my own way - living off the land alone was a
particularly extreme example!
You have written extensively about the Downland
countryside. Does this area hold more
power over you than other, equally beautiful
areas? It deeply informed my first book, but
since then I’ve been spending much more time in
America. New York is my favourite place, and I’ve
been falling in love with LA lately, but the Sussex
countryside does still have a deep hold on me. My
heart always leaps when I see the Downs.
I’ve read you citing the likes of Ravilious,
Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf as being important
to your appreciation of this area. Do
you feel you are part of a geographical art/
literature tradition that’s inspired by Sussex?
Not so much now, but spending so long in the
area definitely informed my work, and I still feel
like my writing is very influenced by Woolf. I’m
always drawn to unconventional communities, and
I think the Bloomsbury group were
really interestingly radical in their
work, their politics and the way they
arranged their lives. I find that kind
of experimentation and resistance to
norms very inspiring
You have in the past labelled your
work as being ‘biogeographical’
rather than ‘psychogeographical’.
What’s the difference? Did I? I
don’t know what I meant by that
now. I’m interested in biography and
place and psychology, and I find the
separation of those things frustrating.
I write hybrid books because they make more
instinctive sense to me.
This isn’t your first visit to the Charleston
Festival. What’s the significance of the event?
Or is it just a big jolly? I love Charleston, it’s by
far my favourite festival. It feels like it’s a place
where conversations happen, and I find it very
exciting and nourishing at the same time.
Charleston apart, what does the word ‘festival’
mean to you? Mud!
Why did you choose New York as the setting
for your latest book? Why not London? Do
you think that urban America has more appeal
to readers/movie audiences etc than urban
Britain? I was living in New York, and The Lonely
City is about that experience, and the artists I
encountered during my time in the city. I think a
London book would have been very different in
terms of both feeling and cast.
When did you last swim in the Ouse? Too long
ago. Maybe I’ll get a swim in this May.
Interview by Alex Leith
Olivia appears at the Charleston Festival on Friday
20th May. charleston.org.uk
....67....

POPUP OPERA
Bellini’s
THE CAPULETS &
THE MONTAGUES
ROMEO & JULIET LIKE YOU’VE NEVER
SEEN IT BEFORE
7pm Sat 30 th April
One night only.
£15/£13
popupopera.co.uk
“a vividly intense and gripping
performance”
PLANET HUGILL
“a thrill to watch”
PAUL IN LONDON
THE SPIRE
ST MARK’S CHAPEL, SUSSEX SQ. BRIGHTON

CLASSICAL MUSIC
.....................................
A Musical Menagerie
Peter, the wolf, and other animals
Photo © Kate Benjamin
How long have
you been with the
Sussex Symphony
Orchestra? Well,
I started it, back in
1993. When I moved
to the area I realised
that there wasn’t an
orchestra which was
absolutely representative
of the enormous
talent we have in Sussex.
Of course you’ve
got the Brighton
Philharmonic, but they don’t exist on a day-to-day
basis. Our criterion at the SSO is that you have to
live or work in Sussex.
How many musicians make up the SSO? The
average is about 70, but that can go up depending
on the piece.
How do you communicate with so many people
at once? That’s the art and the magic of being a conductor!
When people ask what conductors do, there
are so many answers: we’re co-ordinators, coaxers,
interpreters of the piece of music, balancers... If you
really want to see what a conductor does, don’t go to
the show, go to the rehearsals. That’s where all the
blood, sweat and tears happen, where we take apart a
piece and put it back together again.
Why did you choose Peter and the Wolf and
a Carnival of Animals? They’re two of the classic
children’s pieces which introduce the orchestra
to kids – and adults too. You have this wonderful
story of Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev, where each
character has either a section or a particular instrument.
Each one is introduced at the beginning,
so you know that as soon as the narrator – which
will be Alistair Appleton, who’s a great friend of
the orchestra – says,
“Peter walks out
into the meadow...”
you’ll hear the string
instruments start to
play. Then you’ve
got Carnival of the
Animals by Saint-
Saëns, and the way
he’s managed to capture
the animals is
quite extraordinary.
We’re hoping that
all the kids and the
adults will go away humming the different parts.
Do you have to adapt the performance to suit a
younger audience? I think you have to be a little bit
more flexible. These pieces work so well because it’s
very easy to stop and interact with the kids. I absolutely
love it when people come with children who
have never been to a concert before, watching their
little faces light up. We kept with only two pieces
because the attention spans of younger children are
shorter and we don’t want them to get bored, so we’ll
play for about half an hour each section.
Do you have any favourite parts of the pieces?
I like the end of Peter and the Wolf – because it all
ends happily! And there’s a wonderful part in Carnival
of the Animals, Aquarium, which is played on a
glass harmonica. It’s heavenly, ethereal – you don’t
hear it very often.
If you were a character in the concert, which
instrument would represent you? Ha! Probably
the bassoon. It has the fantastic capacity to be very
grumpy, and the capacity to be completely and utterly
joyous. Rebecca Cunningham interviewed Mark
Andrew James
Sat 21st May 3.30pm, All Saints Church, Hove
....69....

吀 爀 愀 渀 猀 昀 漀 爀 洀 礀 漀 甀 爀 栀 漀 洀 攀 眀 椀 琀 栀 漀 甀 爀 昀 椀 渀 攀 猀 琀 焀 甀 愀 氀 椀 琀 礀
匀 㨀 䌀 刀 䄀 䘀 吀 洀 愀 搀 攀 ⴀ 琀 漀 ⴀ 洀 攀 愀 猀 甀 爀 攀 椀 渀 琀 攀 爀 椀 漀 爀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀
琀 ⸀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート アパート アパート 㠀 㐀 ㈀
攀 ⸀ 挀 漀 渀 琀 愀 挀 琀 䀀 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
眀 ⸀ 眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 戀 攀 氀 氀 愀 瘀 椀 猀 琀 愀 猀 栀 甀 琀 琀 攀 爀 猀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀

LITERATURE
....................................
Nikesh Shukla
Spider-Man and the post-Snapchat novel
How is your latest project, The Good Immigrant,
going? We’re just getting all 21 essays
to feel like a cohesive book now. It’s been a great
process, one that has surprised me. Because it’s
a mixture of people I know well, like Chimene
Suleyman, Riz Ahmed and Musa Okwonga, and
people who I only know through their work like
Coco Khan, Sarah Sahim and Darren Chetty.
And each essay has been surprising, hard-hitting
and most of all, bloody brilliant.
What was it like when JK Rowling hit donate
to your crowdfund? Great. I think she’s
amazing and I’m a Potter fan, but in reality,
she’s one of over 700 people who wanted to
fund this book nearly a year before it’s due to be
released, so actually the thing that excited me
most was the appetite for the book. It made me
think, why have we had to make our own book,
publishers? We told you the hunger was there
and you ignored us. And now look!
So you’re a big Spiderman fan? Firstly, he’s
The Amazing Spider-Man. That’s important.
He’s not Phil Spiderman. I accepted that
Indians were never the main character
in anything but there was something
about his teenage self, caught
between two worlds, super heroism
and studies, that really spoke
to me. In a weird way, it made
my teenage years, of being in two
weird environments - a mostly white
school and my Gujarati community -
more manageable. Spider-Man really
nailed what it’s like to be a teenager.
What’s your process? Six cups of
coffee, procrastination?
My writing process
is ‘argh I have
an hour lunch break, write, write dammit. Argh
I have to get six hours sleep at least, before my
baby wakes up, write, write dammit’. There’s
nothing like a baby and a day job to give you the
necessary fuel to find the time to write.
Do you feel like those who grew up straddling
both sides of the internet divide are
uniquely placed to tell stories like your novel
Meatspace? Will future generations, who
don’t know life before Snapchat, tell very
different stories to those of previous generations?
No. I mean, there’s this thing about
how there are only seven different plots. I think
people will find different ways to tell stories.
And they will be experimental and interesting.
But we’ll always come back to this form, I think.
It’s timeless. And as long as stories try to understand
humanity, as long as we remain a mystery
to ourselves, there will always be stories.
You’re delivering the New Writing South
Lecture during the Brighton Festival - how
does it feel? Being asked to do the prestigious
annual lecture is just mind-boggling.
Brighton’s literary prowess is so high
right now: Hannah Berry, Polly
Dunbar, Emma Jane Unsworth,
Damian Barr and so many more
incredible writers make this city
proud, man.
Amy Holtz
Nikesh Shukla will deliver the
New Writing South Annual Lecture
as part of Brighton Festival
on Sun 22nd May at Brighton
Dome Corn Exchange.
....71....

CCA holds 8 exhibitions
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For more details visit
CAMERONCONTEMPORARY.COM
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THE FLOWER SCHO O L
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䌀 漀 渀 琀 愀 挀 琀 䨀 䨀 䀀 䨀 樀 䘀 氀 愀 甀 渀 琀 ⸀ 椀 琀 愀 渀 搀 洀 攀 渀 琀 椀 漀 渀
嘀 椀 瘀 愀 䈀 爀 椀 最 栀 琀 漀 渀 昀 漀 爀 愀 氀 愀 甀 渀 挀 栀 攀 瘀 攀 渀 琀 椀 渀 瘀 椀 琀 攀
www.theflowerschoolbrighton.co.uk
info@theflowerschoolbrighton.co.uk

CINEMA
....................................
The Moon and the Sledgehammer
Field of dreamers
“I was absolutely fascinated by them the moment
I got there,” says Philip Trevelyan, of the Page
family, the subject of his 1971 documentary The
Moon and the Sledgehammer, which is being given
a rare screening as part of the Brighton Festival.
Trevelyan, then a young ambitious film-maker
(he now makes artisan farm tools) was introduced
to the Pages by a friend. The family consisted of
patriarch ‘Oily’ Page and four of his grown-up
children, two men and two women, who lived together
in a field near Chiddingly in a ramshackle
house set amid a few acres of woodland.
“They were threshers by trade,” he continues,
“so they needed a lot of land for their machinery.”
They also ran a couple of steam engines,
which the two sons are constantly tinkering with
throughout the film, as if the twentieth century
has passed them by. Their father is building what
appears to be a submarine. For entertainment
they sing round an old piano. They eat rabbits
the father shoots in the woods.
The beauty of the film lies in the fact that the
family, while they appear on the surface to be
dysfunctional, also make the audience realise that
the modernisation they’ve avoided hasn’t necessarily
made ‘normal’ people’s life better.
“[Oily Page] realised that a lot of ordinary people
he saw [when he left his wood] didn’t have time
to enjoy things they once had; they didn’t have
enough time for the family. They would get on
the train to London, get a paper, go to the office,
leave the office, get another paper, and get on the
train again. The only time they’re with their family
was when they’re asleep, and it’s very sad.”
The Pages might have had more time together
than most families, but it wasn’t all harmonious.
The domineering character of the father comes
through more and more as the film progresses.
Despite the bickering he captures, Trevelyan
wasn’t aiming to portray a negative image of the
family. “I was looking for the riches within the
characters,” says Trevelyan. “For that reason I
didn’t try to make a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
I wanted the people I was filming to put forward
what they had to offer.”
What they do have to offer is a lot of home-spun
philosophy which makes you realise how far we
have moved on from the world they are so comfortable
in, which predates the oil age, let alone
the computer age. And what makes for uncomfortable
viewing is that even though you know
that their way of life is doomed, you can see that
in many ways it all makes sense. And that the
family are masters of their own universe, however
eccentric that universe might be.
It’s a beautifully made film, with no narration or
extraneous explanation to distract you from the
strange world that you become immersed in from
the moment you meet Oily Page, playing up to
the camera, reciting an old cockney rhyme, with a
shotgun in one hand, a rabbit in the other.
Alex Leith
Brighton Festival, Duke of York’s Picturehouse,
Sun 29th May, 4.30pm, followed by a Q&A with
Philip Trevelyan
....73....

MUSIC
....................................
Shlomo
King of the jam
When did you start beatboxing? I started
learning when I was eight and I first did it on
stage when I was about 18. I was obsessed with
beatboxing and the culture around it, and in 2002
I entered my first competition, King of the Jam.
It was in the park and the winner got a jar of jam
(Bonne Maman, the good stuff) and I won the jam!
I was quite chuffed. It snowballed quite quickly
from there.
You’ve said that using anything other than your
voice on stage felt like cheating. I’ve now learnt
that if it feels like cheating, it’s probably what you
should be doing. The creative restriction of using
only my voice pushed me to get really good at
making lots of different sounds, but then I reached
a point where I was using it as a safety net. Eventually
you need to break the rules and create new
restrictions for yourself.
What else do you use? I’ve just finished creating
my own machine… A traditional machine can only
do whatever the manufacturer has programmed it
to do, but with this I can programme the buttons
to do whatever I want: I can loop and manipulate
my voice in loads of different ways, I can record
the audience and use that sound like an instrument.
Are you still discovering new sounds that you
can make? Not as much as when I was younger.
For me it’s become less about finding new sounds
I can make and more about putting together a
complete piece of music. I spend less time touring
and travelling than I used to and a lot more time
composing – every day I’m writing music.
Have your performances changed as a result?
They take people on a bit more of a journey; my
family show is this purely joyous celebration of
music where kids and adults are expected to take
part, maybe come on stage, and I create this big
imaginary world. My grown-up shows go to a bit
more of a dark place with the music and stories.
Can you beatbox to any genre of music? I’m yet
to come across any style of music that doesn’t work
with beatboxing because, really, it’s just another instrument.
It’s like saying ‘is there a genre of music
that doesn’t work with piano?’ It depends how you
play it. Interview by Rebecca Cunningham
Shlomo is performing at Elderflower Fields on
27th and at two Brighton Fringe shows on 2nd
June. shlomobeatbox.co.uk
....74....

MUSIC
....................................
Caro Emerald
‘English is the language of jazz’
How would you define your music? They are
jazz vocals, with a 40s or 50s influence, and the
nostalgic feel that that has. But it’s definitely not
old-fashioned music, I want to be very clear about
that. We don’t just want to be a copy of anything.
We want to update the sound and make it something
else… it’s definitely modern music.
You’re Dutch, but you sing in English. Is that
hard? When it comes to my music, English is
my first language. In Holland, from the start,
all of the music we hear is English, so it’s pretty
normal. Plus, I’m schooled in jazz singing and
there aren’t many Dutch jazz songs. English is
the language of jazz.
Do you write any of your own songs? Yes, I do.
I’m a co-writer. We’re like a collective. There are
two producers and a Canadian songwriter, who’s
a genius, with a witty story-telling thing going
on. That’s the core of the team. My speciality is
the top lines. Sometimes the idea for a song starts
with me creating the melody, then we’ll create a
lyric on top of that.
Did Amy Winehouse pave the way for your career?
She was one of my biggest inspirations. She
created a place for jazz singers within commercial
music. I mean she played real music, and was a
real singer, and she’s unique because her lyrics are
great. Before her there was no place for jazz singers
in the charts, it was all about singing in little
jazz bars. Also vocally she was an inspiration. But
her music was way more retro than mine. Her
lyrics are very contemporary, but her music was
more old school.
What’s it like singing at a festival, rather than
in a more intimate jazz setting? An intimate
setting – let’s say of 200 people – is scary. It calls
for more intense facial expressions, because the
ones at the front can see every bead of sweat on
your forehead. Outside at a festival it’s important
to grab everyone’s attention. You can do a lot
with lighting and the choices of song – in a less
intimate setting I’d do all the big hits and miss
out the dark ballads. Keep the tempo high.
I hear you want to record the Bond theme…
It is a big ambition of mine. Ever since I started
making this sort of music, with these guys, when
we were discussing what music we should be
doing the word ‘Bond’ got repeated over and over
again – music that’s very atmospheric and filmic.
I think me doing a Bond song would be a match
made in heaven.
Who would you like to see as the next Bond?
[She hasn’t, it turns out, heard of Tom Hiddleston].
Sean Connery isn’t possible, I guess. How
about a Dutch Bond? There’s this guy called
Michiel Huisman, he’s in Game of Thrones. He’d
be great. The campaign starts here… AL
Caro is on the bill (with Grace Jones, Burt Bacharach
and a host of other top names) performing at
Love Supreme, Glynde Place, 1st-3rd July 2016
....75....

DESIGN
......................................
RamJam
Augmenters of reality
I meet Tom Jackson from digital animation
studio RamJam over coffee. My flat white
has arrived with a sign swirled into the
top that Tom refers to as ‘seaside humour’.
Without meaning to sound rude, it’s a neat
coincidence. Tom and colleagues Phil Hart
and Toby Funnell spend much of their
working lives realising the integration of
hidden games and jokes into other media,
just like a digital version of my cuppa.
The project I’ve come to talk about is
RamJam’s design for the Fringe festival
programme. The digitally illustrated cover
featuring a white rabbit, a full English
breakfast and the Brighton Eye is based on
the idea of synesthesia. The image is full of
visual puns, but most impressive is the way
the design extends throughout the programme’s
pages, as a series of augmentedreality
experiences.
Augmented reality, Tom tells me, “is about
seeing something in the real world that
isn’t there”. It’s an inspiring device to work
with because it “plays with people’s excitement
and imagination”.
Having downloaded the Fringe 3D app,
I point my iPhone at the ‘see this in 3D’
logo on page 37 and find myself playing
a game of ‘save the kitten’. I’m not sure
whether sending a cat into the stratosphere
attached to a bunch of helium balloons
constitutes a rescue, but it’s certainly
a step up from my previous AR experiences,
which have been underwhelming.
Tom says “it’s got to a point now where
it just works” and like all things in tech,
it’s changing rapidly. The next stage, he
says, you’ll be looking at the logo on your
tumble dryer and it will show you how to
change the parts. “Augmented reality won’t
....76....

DESIGN
......................................
rely on holding a device; you’ll wear it.”
I imagine AR being like a canapé before
the Virtual Reality feast, but Tom tells
me they’re actually “part of each other”.
“When it’s really going to break,” he says,
“is when they’re both fully together.”
Back at the office, Tom lets me have a
go on his virtual reality headset, now
available from about £80. A mobile phone
is slotted into the front and suddenly
I’m inside the Fringe programme cover,
standing on an egg and looking at a large
rabbit. It’s an intense, discombobulating
experience and I share Tom’s enthusiasm
for its potential.
“Microsoft HoloLens shows what’s possible,”
he tells me, “where 3D motioncapture
allows mixed reality so you can
walk around a hologram of yourself… it’s
just bizarre. It’s all going to happen,” says
Tom, “it’ll be just a few years.”
I can see why RamJam were chosen for
the Fringe: their work encapsulates the
playfulness and diversity of the festival.
I can’t help but wonder, however,
whether our embrace of these fictional
digital worlds might in time detract from
enriching real-life experiences like the
Fringe. “I don’t,” says Tom. “Technology
will always influence things but it’s still a
sterile environment. It’s not seeing people
and talking to people. It’s just something
to play with; that’s how I see it… Our
motivation is to have fun.”
Interview by Chloë King
ramjam.co.uk
....77....

圀 愀 渀 琀 琀 漀 倀 氀 愀 礀 㼀
䌀 甀 猀 琀 漀 洀 椀 猀 攀 搀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 挀 愀 渀 栀 攀 氀 瀀 礀 漀 甀 猀 漀 氀 瘀 攀
琀 栀 攀 洀 礀 猀 琀 攀 爀 礀 漀 昀 最 爀 攀 愀 琀 最 甀 椀 琀 愀 爀 瀀 氀 愀 礀 椀 渀 最 ⸀
䰀 攀 愀 爀 渀 昀 漀 爀 礀 漀 甀 爀 猀 攀 氀 昀 琀 栀 攀 琀 攀 挀 栀 渀 椀 焀 甀 攀 愀 渀 搀 琀 栀 攀 漀 爀 礀 渀 攀 攀 搀 攀 搀 琀 漀
瀀 氀 愀 礀 眀 栀 愀 琀 攀 瘀 攀 爀 礀 漀 甀 眀 愀 渀 琀 ⸀
䘀 爀 漀 洀 愀 戀 猀 漀 氀 甀 琀 攀 戀 攀 最 椀 渀 渀 攀 爀 猀 琀 漀 最 爀 愀 搀 攀 搀 洀 愀 攀 猀 琀 爀 漀 猀 Ⰰ 昀 爀 漀 洀 㜀 琀 漀
㜀 礀 攀 愀 爀 猀 漀 氀 搀 ⸀
䐀 攀 氀 椀 瘀 攀 爀 攀 搀 戀 礀 愀 昀 爀 椀 攀 渀 搀 氀 礀 Ⰰ 攀 砀 瀀 攀 爀 椀 攀 渀 挀 攀 搀 Ⰰ 焀 甀 愀 氀 椀 昀 椀 攀 搀 Ⰰ
䌀 刀 䈀 愀 渀 搀 䐀 䈀 匀 挀 栀 攀 挀 欀 攀 搀 琀 甀 琀 漀 爀 ⸀
眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 琀 昀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
琀 栀 攀 漀 䀀 琀 昀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
㜀 㠀 ㈀ 㠀 㤀 ㈀ 㤀 㐀 ㈀
眀 眀 眀 ⸀ 昀 愀 挀 攀 戀 漀 漀 欀 ⸀ 挀 漀 洀 ⼀ 琀 昀 琀 甀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀
MELANIE MANCHOT
PEOPLE PLACES
PROPOSITIONS
16 April - 10 July 2016
Free entry
www.townereastbourne.org.uk

ART
....................................
Felicity Hammond
Sculptural photographer
Felicity Hammond
is all smiles when we
meet outside the
newly-acquired
Brighton University
building on
Edward Street,
opposite the old
Amex Wedding
Cake. “I love this
space,” she says,
pointing out the
interesting use
of pastel yellow and orange inside and out, and
telling me that she’s been upstairs to explore, and
though the downstairs is all flash and smooth
and new and shiny the upper floors still haven’t
been refurbished from their days in use by Amex,
and it’s all old furniture and peeling paint, and it
makes her feel like the place is decaying before
it’s even been completed. Which she loves.
Felicity is wearing paint-spattered cords, a check
shirt and a baseball cap, and has a drill in her
hand. Having arrived earlier the same morning,
she’s busy installing one of the two site-specific
pieces she’s been commissioned to produce
by HOUSE. Felicity is notionally a photographer,
but that allows for a wide brief nowadays,
and what she’s preparing for May is more of a
sculpture, with photographic elements. ‘Site
specificity’ (I stumble over the word, she doesn’t)
is extremely important to her work, she tells me:
both her pieces will respond in different ways to
the other site, on Circus Street, and the fact that
there used to be a fruit market there.
These two works, like much of her recent stuff,
have been influenced by architectural ‘renders’:
artists’ impressions of what new developments
will look like, often blown up large on hoardings
in front of the building site in question. “At
Photo by Ellie Rose
first glance,” she
says, “they seem
to be portraying a
perfect world, but
if you look closely
you see that they
are pixelated and
warped and the
perspective is all
wrong… Maybe
this is pointing to
the future of the
city, and the fact
that the buildings they are portraying are not
sustainable. The digital ruins of the render are
pointing to the future ruin of the city.”
“In a way this is an emotional response to my
home territory,” she continues. “Back in time my
father lost his job in a factory due to the rise of
technology making his trade obsolete. I always
associated this with his decline in health.”
I’ve disturbed her from her work of putting
together the installation that’s going into the
Edward Street site, which will be ‘a 3D photo
collage, made of industrial materials… two metres
wide, four metres forty high… an immersive
space like a room made of panels.” The materials
she’s using will reflect the fact the building is still
being refurbished: “I’ll include expanding foam,
and insulation tape within the sculptural work
to point to the fact that the building has worked
hard to maintain its exposed features.”
It’s impossible to envisage exactly what she
means, even though I’m familiar with her previous
work, which makes me all the more intrigued
to see the finished version. She’s all smiles again,
as I take my leave, but there’s a determination in
her eye: she’s got plenty to do.
Alex Leith
House Festival, housefestival.org
....79....

....80....

ART
..........................................
Gary Stranger
Typograffiti artist
Were you into graffiti first or typography first?
I became interested in graffiti first; at age 15 it was
pretty much all I cared about. My appreciation for
typography has been growing since my college days
when I studied graphics. I think an understanding,
if not an appreciation of typography is useful if you
intend to paint graffiti that looks any good.
Why did you choose the name ‘Gary’? Choosing
a name in graffiti is more important than you might
think. You need a name that stands out, grabs attention
and sticks in the mind of fellow writers and the
public. An awful lot of people write graffiti for years
and are never really noticed, partly because the
handle they chose is forgettable. I have had dozens
of aliases over the years, too many to list. Choosing
a real name initially was just a way to get noticed.
That, and I’m a Gary Numan fan.
How has your style changed over those years?
Over the years my painting has become much more
type-based and I’ve drifted away from painting anything
that looks too much like traditional graffiti.
I’m finding I’m only really satisfied with letters that
look like letters. As a graffiti writer, if you intend to
communicate with the public as well as other writers
then making legible letters is one way of doing
that. A lot of writers, however, have no intention of
communicating with the public.
If you’re creating prints, do you work digitally
or still by hand? I’ll have an original hand-painted
version and produce the screen prints from that.
Sometimes I’ll need to rework or tweak things digitally,
but there is always a hand-painted element. I
don’t separate the different elements of what I do;
painting large walls in spray paint, print-making
or brush-work painting, they are all just a medium.
I enjoy painting in the studio just as well as I do
painting walls. That said, there’s huge satisfaction
from completing a large wall piece.
What’s your favourite era in typography? It’s
very hard to commit to a favourite era, but the
early-to mid-twentieth century saw the creation
of some iconic fonts, the Johnston font being an
obvious and topical example with the centenary this
year. The neo-grotesque aesthetic is what I’m a fan
of, I suppose. I’m not as knowledgeable as I perhaps
should be when it comes to type design, I just know
what I like.
Despite your artwork becoming so well-known,
you’ve stayed reasonably well out of the public
eye. Painting graffiti is all about shouting ‘notice
me!’, which is something that in my everyday life
I’m keen to avoid. I find accepting and dealing
with attention is much easier if it’s via an alter-ego.
Rebecca Cunningham
See Gary’s work round Ditchling in the Village of Type
festival till 30th May. ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk
....81....

Sculpture Exhibition 2016
1 May - 30 September
Kindly sponsored by
Beautiful art, affordable prices
Borde Hill’s 17th annual Sculpture Exhibition
transforms the garden into an outdoor gallery
with figurative & abstract works in bronze, resin,
stone, metalwork, stained glass and ceramics.
www.bordehill.co.uk T: 01444 450326
Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 1XP
Blackcap – by featured artist Carlina Oliver
A friendly
welcome awaits
you at the
Chalk Gallery
Chalk Gallery
4 North Street
Lewes, BN7 2PA
t: 01273 474477
w: chalkgallerylewes.co.uk

ART
.............................................
Dreamliner Arts Club
Camper Van Gogh
Who says you need to have a house to have an
Open House? A young group of artists called the
Dreamliner Arts Club are transforming this 1980s
Talbot Dreamliner Vogue into a multi-functional
art gallery on wheels. Cameron Lee, the owner of
the van, says “I always thought I’d love to have a
van, like a really cool VW or something, but this is
what I got.”
At under 150 square feet, it might be the snuggest
of the houses on the central trail, but the
group have big plans for this small space: “There
are going to be ten of us exhibiting; sculptors,
ceramicists, weavers, illustrators, print makers, film
makers... everything you can think of really.”
To accommodate this array of art works, the
Dreamliner will be divided into three main areas.
The back of the van, which houses the kitchen
and en suite, will be curtained off and will become
the ‘observatory’, displaying a fish tank filled with
glowing, neon pieces and some illuminated resin
jellies. The main living area will be transformed
into a gallery space where their prints and illustrated
pieces will be exhibited. During my visit – two
weeks before the Artists’ Open Houses kick-off
– three of the group are painstakingly scrubbing
and scraping clean some wooden boards which
will become the gallery walls, covering up the van’s
melamine units and retro upholstery. The driver
and passenger seats will be curtained off, creating
the third zone: a two-person cinema where the
work of the film makers will be screened.
It’s an impressive endeavour; even once the construction
is complete the group will have to face
the near impossible task of parking a 20-foot-long
vehicle in central Brighton on a weekend, five
weekends in a row. And this might be your only
chance to see it. During the next year the artists
will be off travelling around the world, but unfortunately
it seems like the Dreamliner is just too big
and heavy to come along for the ride. Cameron
says, “I’d love to do more exhibitions in it, but
then what sort of event really calls for a gallery in a
van?” Rebecca Cunningham
The Dreamliner will be parked near 92 Buckingham
Road. Weekends between Sat 30th April and 29th
May. aoh.org.uk. Instagram: dreamliner.arts.club
....83....

FASHION
....................................
2MNYSBLNGS
Fashion City Africans
“We first started our blog to document our
style; we have since evolved and branched out
into fashion philanthropy.” Velma Rossa is one
half of the brother-sister duo 2MnySblngs [two
many siblings], whose Tumblr site showcases the
diversity, not only in fashion, but in architecture,
art and culture, of their home town, Nairobi. The
pair have styled four outfits for display at Brighton
Museums’ Fashion Cities Africa exhibition.
Co-curator Helen Mears says “There’s been a
surge of interest in contemporary African art and
design in Europe and the US in recent years, but
this is the first major UK exhibition dedicated to
contemporary African fashion. We want to reveal
the diversity that exists across the continent, and
show that wax print is only part of the story.”
Velma says that African fashion is experiencing
“a sort of re-emergence or rebirth” in the global
fashion scene. “People are now interested in what
the continent has to offer; its energy, culture, food
and people all contribute.”
She and her brother Papa “like to shop anywhere
we can get good deals – flea markets like Toi and
Gikomba market are ideal.” These flea markets
have been a source of controversy in Kenya for
some years. The ‘mitumba’ – second-hand clothing
imported from Europe and the US – offers
many people on lower incomes the opportunity to
buy decent quality clothing at a reasonable price,
as well as a chance for style seekers to pick-up
something unique. But others have blamed it for
the decline in the local textile industries, because
local manufacturers struggle to compete on price.
The East African Community has made plans to
phase in a ban on mitumba over the next three
years in a bid to boost local textile manufacturing.
2ManySiblings have embraced mitumba as a part
Photo by Sarah Waiswa
of their style, mixing up second-hand items with
pieces by their favourite Kenyan designers: “We’ve
just discovered Ami Doshi Shah for quirky eclectic
adornment and impeccable jewellery, and underground
designer Hephziba - she works miracles
with organza.” This is where the aforementioned
‘fashion philanthropy’ comes in. As well as showing
their own fashion ideas to their online followers
and offering styling tips, they hold themed
Thrift Socials, creating a platform for hand-picked
local designers and dealers to sell, and a space for
like-minded creatives to get together.
That sounds like the kind of event you’d expect to
find in Brighton, doesn’t it? The good news is that
the siblings will be putting on a one-off Brighton
special at the museum on Thursday 16th. They
will also be in conversation with journalist and
author Hannah Azieb Pool on Saturday 18th. RC
Thurs 16th, 7-10pm, £10/8. Sat 18th, 11.30am-
12.30pm, £8/6. 2manysiblings.tumblr.com /
brightonmuseums.org.uk
....85....

Summer 2016
festival round-up
Love Supreme 2015
If there are two things that turn festivals into a
bummer, it’s the rain, and the long journey back.
We’re not able to promise you a barbecue summer
in 2016, but we can offer you a wide range of festival
choice within an hour’s drive from here, whether
you’re looking for old cars or wild electronica.
May, of course, is all about culture, and this edition
of Viva is full of the sort of stuff you can expect to
see at the Brighton Festival, Brighton Fringe,
HOUSE, Artists’ Open Houses, The Great
Escape and the Charleston Literary Festival. But
the end of the month has become the kick-off for
the tent-wellies-and-live-music season, with the
family-friendly Elderflower Fields festival, which
enjoys its fifth edition (and its third at Pippingford
Park, in the Ashdown Forest) from May 27th-30th.
There are loads of activities for both kids and adults
with music from the London Afrobeat Collective,
the Resonators and many more.
Next up, in a rather different vein, is the Floral
Vintage Fair, at Knepp Castle in West Grinstead,
on June 4th and 5th. Billed as ‘an eclectic, quirky,
foodie, arty, plantaholics’ wildlife event with a vintage
twist!’ it’s open from 10.30am to 5pm.
It’s fair to say that the Wildlife Festival (June 10th
and 11th, Brighton City Airport) is aimed at a
younger audience. Hosted by DJ teams Disclosure
and Rudimental, it boasts an eclectic plethora of
DJ acts from Ice Cube to Annie Mac, all aiming
to knock your flip-flops off. If you’re looking for
more oral than aural gratification, the Hastings
Midsummer Fish Festival, June 26th and 27th,
could be your thing. In the Stade open space, where
fishermen used to dry their nets, all the fish on
sale (fresh and cooked) will be seasonal, and locally
caught by the fleet operating from the beach just
yards away.
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, meanwhile (July 1st-
3rd), is starting to feel like something of a veteran:
this is the fourth year the organisers have brought
jazz and soul to Glynde Place. In the past we’ve
seen the likes of Brian Ferry, Chaka Khan and Van
Morrison headlining; this time it’s the turn of Grace
Jones and Burt Bacharach. Believe us, if last year is
anything to go by, it’ll be fabulous.
Eridge Park, near Royal Tunbridge Wells (August
5th-7th), is the setting for the second edition of
Forgotten Fields, which will feature the likes of
Suede, Dizzee Rascal and, for lovers of old-style
rapping, The Sugarhill Gang. Much nearer home
(so near there’s no camping) is the Together the
People festival at Preston Park on Sept 3rd and
4th. Acts are yet to be confirmed: last year’s line-up
included Super Furry Animals and Billy Bragg.
Finally Boundary Brighton makes its debut at
Stanmer Park, (September 17th). Again, acts are
tbc, but we’re promised a mix of dub, techno, drum
‘n’ bass, jazz, bashment, house and break, with four
stages, two of them run by Brighton clubs Concorde
2 and Patterns. Sounds like a scorcher.
....87....

THE WAY WE WORK
This month, Adam Bronkhorst faced his fear of heights as he clambered,
camera-in-trembling-hand, to the top of Brighton Dome and beyond, capturing
five different venues’ stage crews at work. Anything for a good photo...
We asked each of them: what’s been your best - or worst - stage moment to date?
adambronkhorst.com | 07879 401 333
Setch, Deputy Technical Manager at Theatre Royal Brighton
“Years ago I accidentally turned a revolving part of a set too early, causing extensive
damage to scenery, props and stage furniture. Suffice to say, I’ve never done it since.”

THE WAY WE WORK
Beth O’Leary, Senior Technician at Brighton Dome
“I was once naked in a bath on stage for a university production...
but mostly I prefer to stay behind the scenes.”

THE WAY WE WORK
Matt Jones, Senior Technician at The Old Market
“During a show someone forgot to hand the leading lady her prop gun. When it came to the
moment where she had to kill the bad guy she kicked him in the shins and exclaimed ‘now
you will die from the poisoned dagger hidden in my shoe!’”

Dog Day Care
Dog Hotel
Hydrotherapy
Training
Grooming
T. 01273 463 223
www.houseofhugo.com

THE WAY WE WORK
Nina Sarfas, Theatre Assistant at the Marlborough Theatre
“Watching a DJ I had booked be escorted out of the venue for drunk and disorderly behaviour...
definitely the most embarrassing moment of my career so far. I guess you live and learn.”

IMAGINATION
It’s what sets us apart from the
merely good.
It’s what makes the ultimate
difference to a construction project.
It’s what turns a great job into an
excellent one.
It’s what our clients expect.
It’s what we deliver.
If you have a building requiring
renovation, restoration or
reinvigoration, and you want the
end result to look stunning -
call Nutshell on 01903 217900
info@nutshellconstruction.com
www.nutshellconstruction.com

THE WAY WE WORK
Lex Hollingworth, Production Manager at Komedia
“It actually happened backstage; a member of our staff brought a performer a banoffee pie for
the interval, and left it on a chair in the dressing room. The performer came back and sat down
directly on their pudding. They still had the second half of the show to perform.”

SATURDAY 25 JUNE
from 11am - 8PM
&
sunday 26 JUNE
from 11aM - 5PM
STADE OPEN SPACE, OLD TOWN, HASTINGS
FREE EVENT
Kick off your summer with tasty fish, food and drink!
The whole family can enjoy the treats on offer with non-stop
live music from the best local talent, demonstrations
by chefs and fishermen and craft activities.
www.hastingsfestivals.com
Except
assist

Food & Drink directory
ADVERTORIAL
Black Radish
If you’re looking for
something a ‘little bit
different’ and have
a passion for quality
food, visit Black Radish.
Organic fruit and
vegetables, handmade ice cream, fresh bakery
bread, it’s an artisan ‘food boutique’ with a
small but creative café serving dishes with an
emphasis on flavour. If you love food, you’ll
love Black Radish.
149 Portland Road, 01273 723392, blackradish-organic.com
MAW
MAW Pop Up restaurant
is open Thursday, Friday
& Saturday nights serving
an eight-to-ten course
tasting menu by chef Mark
Wadsworth, in the heart of
Brighton Lanes.
£40 per person and BYO.
Bookings through tabl.com
Also open as a café during
the day, closed Mondays.
14 Brighton Square, BN1 1HD, maw-restaurant.co.uk
Edendum
Edendum is a slice of Italy
transported to Brighton, with authentic flavours,
fragrances and freshly-cooked recipes that will
give you a chance to discover some less known
Italian dishes, a selection of Italian wines and
artisan beers and a range of traditional products.
A part of our menu will change according to the
time of year, so that seasonal ingredients are always
included in our recipes. The new summer
menu will be available from mid-May!
Italian & genuine: better eat better.
69 East Street, Brighton, 01273 733800, edendum.co.uk
Terre à Terre
‘Big and Bravas, Brekkie in
a Bun, Sweet and Savoury,
Run Rarebit Run, Arepas,
Patatas a Scrunch and a Munch, Grapple our
Granola it’s time for Brunch!’
Terre à Terre is now open for ‘BrunchyLunchy’
daily from 10am–1pm, where diners can pick
from a selection of hearty brunch dishes from
‘Brunchy Rosti’ to ‘Big Muffin Butty Buns’ or
enjoy tea or coffee with a sweet side like Pastel
de Nata. Dishes start at £6.
71 East Street, Brighton, 01273 729051, terreaterre.co.uk
Market
Situated in the heart
of Brunswick village,
Market, now open nearly
six months, serves modern tapas, innovative
small plates (great for sharing), freshly landed
fish and a great choice of steaks and burgers. At
weekends you can also pop in for brunch and/or
Sunday lunch. Sit at the kitchen bar overlooking
the chefs, take a table or book their fabulous
private dining room and be cooked for by your
own private chef! Open all day every day.
42 Western Rd, Hove, 01273 823707, market-restaurantbar.co.uk
The Better Half
The Better Half pub has
put the heart and soul back
into one of the oldest public
houses in the city, just off
Hove seafront. There’s a
superb wine and spirits list and some great ales
and ciders on offer, as well as a hearty and wholesome
menu to enjoy, making the best of local
ingredients. The Better Half is relaxed, friendly
and easy-going, making all feel welcome and
comfortable when you visit.
1 Hove Place, Hove, 01273 737869, thebetterhalfpub.co.uk

FOOD REVIEW
...........................................
Lord Nelson
Fish soup on Trafalgar Street
As I put my fork
towards a mussel
that I spot in the
abundant fish stew
that sits before me
I think: “Bloody
hell, I’m in the
Lord Nelson.” I’ve
chosen the fish stew
over the vegetable
jambayala or the
pan-fried gnocchi with wild mushrooms and
blue cheese because it includes rouille, that
difficult-to-perfect sauce made from egg yolk,
garlic, saffron and red pepper.
I have eaten in the Nelson before. I must have
tucked away a bag or two of pork scratchings
during post-match post mortems, supping ale
with Albion or Rooks fans on an early Saturday
evening. I once went to a 50th there, and there
were some rather nice sandwiches. But fish stew
with rouille? Pan-fried gnocchi? The place has
had quite a makeover.
What happened was this. Harveys, who’ve
owned the pub since 1980, bought out the two
adjacent shops immediately down the road and
converted them into a couple of ship-themed
restaurant rooms. The place already had three
different bar areas, so they’ve managed to keep
the pub as a pub – just as well as it was a great
boozer, well loved by CAMRA-types – and add a
decent-sized ship-themed eatery on the side, too.
It’s Maundy Thursday, the city’s winding down
for Easter, and the place is packed.
We get a seat by the big window – the best in
the house, we’re lucky a couple are leaving as we
arrive – and mull over old times, sipping Moretti
as we wait for the food.
I’m with my oldest
friend, which means
we’ve got 46 years of
acquaintance to chew
over. He reminds me
of a time he hitchhiked
from Zurich, where
he lived, to Bologna,
where I lived, getting a
lift over the Alps on the
back of a motorbike. We realise nothing like that
will ever happen to us again.
The food arrives, and neither of us are disappointed.
I try a couple of his gnocchi - a bit
chewy for my taste - but don’t let him anywhere
near my fish, which seems less shareable, somehow.
It’s tasty soup, especially when I’ve added
a dose of salt, with squid, prawns, mussels, cod,
spinach and potatoes swimming in a pinkish
sauce. The rouille adds an umami dimension.
The Nelson is two weeks into its new incarnation,
and the waitressing is more enthusiastic
than skilful – I’ll never forget the face of the
hipster who watches in dismay as his Harveys
hop and ale sausage and spring onion mash is
dropped onto the floor before it gets to him.
No matter – after a delicious lemon and ginger
tart (served with a beautifully chopped strawberry)
and a filter coffee, I’m asked by the card
machine if I want to add a gratuity and the two
girls serving have been so sweet and the food
so good I push it over the 10% mark, turning
£47 into £52. More than I’ve ever spent in the
Nelson before, but hey.
Alex Leith
36 Trafalgar Street, 01273 695872
....99....

FOOD
...........................................
Edible updates
Foodies for thought
The month starts in the best possible way for
food lovers in Brighton – the Foodies Festival
kicks its countrywide tour off, as ever, on Hove
Lawns between April 30th and May 2nd. There
are celebrity chefs galore – including MasterChef’s
Ping Coombes and Tony Rodd – as
well as stalls offering concoctions from round the
world, booze tents of all sorts and, of course, the
famous Chilli-Eating Challenge.
We’re delighted to welcome the latest branch
of Mexican street food purveyors Wahaca in
the space Strada used to trade, on North Street.
Wahaca was started by 2005 MasterChef winner
Thomasina Miers, whose mission is to sell genuine,
seasonal Mexican street food to Brits who’ve
been brought up on greasy tortillas.
Sampling a good pop-up before it becomes a
fully-fledged restaurant is the culinary equivalent
of watching a band before they became big,
which is why we urge you to try out Maw (on
Brighton Square every weekend throughout May,
see tabl.com) to sample chef Mark Wadsworth’s
(formerly of Ginger Man) amazing tasting menu.
Look out too for imaginative themed nights
(which started with a 30s Berlin event in April)
from the Secret Door Supper Club, and, in June,
the Polygon Pop-up in Seven Dials.
And finally, another chain that’s done well in
London and sees Brighton as the logical first
step in a colonisation process. Baker & Spice specialise
in artisan bread and home-madey cakes,
and set up in up-market destinations. So it’s
Selfridges, Maida Vale, Chelsea, Belgravia and,
um, East Street. Plus ca change.
you order
online and
Sussex we deliver
farm to your door
sourced:
Veg & fruit
Meat & charcuterie
Milk, cheese & yoghurt
Juices & cordials
Raw honey
Oils & vinegar
Sussex beer & wine
Locally packed small batch spices
See detailS on our webSite:
www.finandfarm.co.uk

FOOD REVIEW
...........................................
Dog Haus
Happy days at Patterns
“The last time I was here, it was The Escape,” I
say to Pauline, as we approach Patterns, on Marine
Parade. It’s 6pm, we’re going on to a show,
and we’ve come for one of their ‘Dog Haus’ hot
dogs, and a beer. “I remember it as Ted Potters
Jazz Bar,” she lies. She doesn’t go back that far.
The upstairs bit has changed some: at this time
of day it looks like an adult youth club, with a
table-tennis table centre stage, above which,
attached to the ceiling, there’s a strange circular
mirror, like an inverted wok. We are invited to
play musical bingo. We decline.
Pauline goes for a ‘Hand of Dog’ (a veggie
option, oddly, with tofu, metsovone cheese and
chimichurri, £6). I go for the classic ‘Happy
Days’ (‘a pork frank stacked with caramelised
and crispy onions, classic ketchup and Frenchies
Mustard, pictured, £5). Because it’s Happy Hour,
we get a free portion of chips with our frothy
pints of Estrella.
Whilst we’re waiting we have a go on the
PhotoBot machine we’re sitting next to. The
subsequent fifteen minutes (constituting giggling
at the photos and videos and gorging on our
dogs) count among the most entertaining I’ve
spent this year, though a word of warning: don’t,
whatever you do, try to eat one of these numbers
on anything approaching a first date. The combination
of pork and mustard and gherkin and
ketchup and bread and beer and salty chip is a
taste sensation, but it doesn’t half leave you with
a messy face. Eating a Happy Days and looking
smooth? Even the Fonz would struggle. AL
A new dining experience for
Brighton and Hove
Fancy an East End Knees Up or being
transported to 1920s Berlin?
Join us this summer
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twitter.com/SecretDoorSC

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瘀 愀 氀 椀 搀 愀 琀 攀 搀 琀 攀 挀 栀 渀 椀 焀 甀 攀 猀 昀 漀 爀 㨀 猀 琀 爀 攀 猀 猀 Ⰰ 愀 渀 砀 椀 攀 琀 礀 Ⰰ 瀀 栀 漀 戀 椀 愀 猀 Ⰰ 椀 渀 猀 漀 洀 渀 椀 愀 Ⰰ
眀 攀 椀 最 栀 琀 氀 漀 猀 猀 愀 渀 搀 愀 眀 栀 漀 氀 攀 爀 愀 渀 最 攀 漀 昀 氀 椀 昀 攀 挀 栀 愀 氀 氀 攀 渀 最 攀 猀 ⸀
刀 攀 最 甀 氀 愀 爀 最 爀 漀 甀 瀀 眀 漀 爀 欀 猀 栀 漀 瀀 猀 愀 氀 猀 漀 愀 瘀 愀 椀 氀 愀 戀 氀 攀 ⸀
䘀 刀 䔀 䔀 䤀 一 䤀 吀 䤀 䄀 䰀 䔀 堀 倀 䰀 伀 刀 䄀 吀 伀 刀 夀 匀 䔀 匀 匀 䤀 伀 一 伀 䘀 䘀 䔀 刀 䔀 䐀
䘀 漀 爀 洀 漀 爀 攀 椀 渀 昀 漀 爀 洀 愀 琀 椀 漀 渀 漀 爀 琀 漀 洀 愀 欀 攀 愀 渀 愀 瀀 瀀 漀 椀 渀 琀 洀 攀 渀 琀
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WE TRY...
...........................................
Unicycling
Wheely wobbly
To get in the mood for festival season, I’m trading
two wheels for one and learning to unicycle.
There aren’t as many unicycling schools in
Brighton as I’d imagined, so I call Oddballs on
Kensington Gardens – the place to go for unconventional
modes of transport – to ask for advice.
Zak, their resident unicycling pro, says, “Just come
down to the shop, I’ll teach you.” I’m reassured by
his claim to have taught a 64-year-old to unicycle
in just two hours. How hard could it be?
“First I’m going to show you what you shouldn’t
do” says Zak, bringing out his own unicycle which
I’m going to be learning on. Standing with the
unicycle upright in front of him, the pedals jutting
out at diagonals, he explains that usually people
naturally want to step onto the front pedal. But if
you do that, the unicycle rolls forward and away
from you. It’s also tempting when stepping up onto
the pedal, to take a bit of a jump onto it, but this
will send you flying over the top. He demonstrates
all of this while rolling effortlessly around the
shop, never actually falling off the unicycle.
Here’s what you should do: stand the unicycle up
straight, with the back of the saddle just touching
you. Line the pedals up so that the pedal you
naturally want to step onto first is angled straight
downwards, parallel to the seat post. Standing still,
you have to roll the unicycle forward enough that
you can slide the saddle underneath you. Then the
tricky bit, you step onto the pedal, slowly, so that
the unicycle rolls backward and lifts you up.
It doesn’t look nearly as cool when I try it, clinging
onto the shop’s wall of skateboards for balance. It
takes a few goes for me to actually get up onto the
seat, and once I’m there I’m reluctant to let go.
But with a bit of encouragement, I manage to turn
away from the wall to face the other side of the
shop, take a deep breath, and…
Fall. Flat on my face. This isn’t a success story
– I spend much of the next hour falling down.
But when I finally manage two complete pedals
before toppling over, it all seems worthwhile. You
need perseverance, Zak says, but if you spend five
minutes a day practising, it’ll get much easier. So
that’s my goal: five minutes on each of the 21 days
remaining before the Fringe launches. Keep an eye
out for a wobbling one-wheeler coming to a stage
near you this month: that’ll be me.
Rebecca Cunningham
24 Kensington Gardens, oddballs.co.uk
....103....

䈀 䔀 䄀 唀 吀 䤀 䘀 唀 䰀
䠀 䄀 刀 䐀 圀 伀 伀 䐀 䘀 䰀 伀 伀 刀 匀
氀 漀 挀 愀 氀 漀 愀 欀 ∠ 挀 漀 渀 琀 攀 洀 瀀 漀 爀 愀 爀 礀 漀 爀 琀 爀 愀 搀 椀 琀 椀 漀 渀 愀 氀
挀 栀 漀 椀 挀 攀 漀 昀 ǻ 渀 椀 猀 栀 攀 猀 ∠ 挀 甀 猀 琀 漀 洀 挀 漀 氀 漀 甀 爀 猀 愀 渀 搀
戀 漀 爀 搀 攀 爀 猀 ∠ 搀 漀 洀 攀 猀 琀 椀 挀 愀 渀 搀 挀 漀 洀 洀 攀 爀 挀 椀 愀 氀
˻ 漀 漀 爀 爀 攀 瀀 愀 椀 爀 猀 ∠ 猀 漀 甀 渀 搀 ⴀ 瀀 爀 漀 漀 ǻ 渀 最 猀 攀 爀 瘀 椀 挀 攀
攀 砀 瀀 攀 爀 琀 氀 礀 ǻ 琀 琀 攀 搀
䜀 攀 渀 攀 爀 愀 氀 焀 甀 漀 琀 攀 漀 瘀 攀 爀 琀 栀 攀 瀀 栀 漀 渀 攀 漀 爀
漀 渀 氀 椀 渀 攀 攀 猀 琀 椀 洀 愀 琀 攀
匀 琀 愀 爀 琀 氀 攀 搀 䔀 氀 欀 䌀 愀 爀 瀀 攀 渀 琀 爀 礀
㈀ 㜀 アパート ㈀ 㘀 ㈀ 㤀 㤀
㜀 㜀 㐀 㜀 㤀 㘀 㜀
猀 琀 愀 爀 琀 氀 攀 搀 攀 氀 欀 䀀 礀 愀 栀 漀 漀 ⸀ 挀 漀 ⸀ 甀 欀
圀 攀 愀 爀 攀 瀀 氀 攀 愀 猀 攀 搀 琀 漀 愀 渀 渀 漀 甀 渀 挀 攀 琀 栀 愀 琀 倀 愀 爀 欀 攀 爀 䈀 愀 琀 栀 爀 漀 漀 洀 猀 ☀ 䬀 椀 琀 挀 栀 攀 渀 猀 愀 爀 攀
昀 椀 渀 愀 氀 椀 猀 琀 猀 椀 渀 琀 栀 攀 䬀 椀 琀 挀 栀 攀 渀 䐀 攀 猀 椀 最 渀 攀 爀 伀 昀 吀 栀 攀 夀 攀 愀 爀 䄀 眀 愀 爀 搀 猀 ⸀ 吀 栀 椀 猀 瀀 爀 攀 猀 琀 椀 最 椀 漀 甀 猀
瀀 爀 椀 稀 攀 爀 攀 昀 氀 攀 挀 琀 猀 琀 栀 攀 漀 甀 琀 猀 琀 愀 渀 搀 椀 渀 最 眀 漀 爀 欀 倀 愀 爀 欀 攀 爀 ᤠ 猀 栀 愀 瘀 攀 愀 挀 栀 椀 攀 瘀 攀 搀 猀 椀 渀 挀 攀
漀 瀀 攀 渀 椀 渀 最 漀 甀 爀 匀 攀 瘀 攀 渀 䐀 椀 愀 氀 猀 猀 栀 漀 眀 爀 漀 漀 洀 樀 甀 猀 琀 琀 眀 漀 礀 攀 愀 爀 猀 愀 最 漀 ⸀
圀 栀 礀 渀 漀 琀 倀 漀 瀀 椀 渀 愀 渀 搀 猀 攀 攀 琀 栀 攀 搀 攀 猀 椀 最 渀 椀 洀 瀀 愀 挀 琀 眀 攀
挀 愀 渀 愀 挀 栀 椀 攀 瘀 攀 眀 椀 琀 栀 椀 渀 礀 漀 甀 爀 戀 甀 搀 最 攀 琀 㼀
㘀 㐀 ⴀ 㜀 䐀 夀 䬀 䔀 刀 伀 䄀 䐀 Ⰰ 䈀 刀 䤀 䜀 䠀 吀 伀 一 䈀 一 アパート 䨀 䐀
吀 䔀 䰀 ⸀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート 㠀 㜀 㔀 㠀 㜀 ⼀ ㈀ 㜀 アパート アパート㈀ 㤀 㠀 ㈀ 㤀
䤀 一 䘀 伀 䀀 倀 䄀 刀 䬀 䔀 刀 䈀 䄀 吀 䠀 刀 伀 伀 䴀 匀 ⸀ 䌀 伀 ⸀ 唀 䬀
圀 圀 圀 ⸀ 倀 䄀 刀 䬀 䔀 刀 䈀 䄀 吀 䠀 刀 伀 伀 䴀 匀 ⸀ 䌀 伀 ⸀ 唀 䬀

BRICKS AND MORTAR
...........................................
Angel House
Gorgeous Georgian venue
My first encounter with Angel House was in
2013’s Brighton Fringe when its high-ceilinged
Regency grandeur was the backdrop for a series of
events so booze-soaked that I’ve always questioned
my memories of the place. There was a
harpist on the landing (I think) and moustachioed
gents in Victorian attire in the upstairs drawing
room. I feel there could have been a peacock in
the courtyard.
It transpires that this slightly hallucinatory
experience was just one of many incarnations No
1, Brunswick Terrace has been through since it
was built nearly two centuries previously, the first
house on the Hove side of the Brighton and Hove
border. Current owner Phil Haiselden, who has
restored the building, knows these previous lives
better than most.
He’s dealt with the alarmingly flimsy construction
that comes of the house’s origins as an upmarket
showhome, one of six built in 1825 as part of
Charles Busby’s Brunswick Town development.
He’s battled the unpredictable plumbing installed
when the house was turned into nine bedsits in
the 1960s. And he’s confirmed that yes, this is the
place where Nigel Richardson wrote his brilliant
if unreliable 1998 travelogue Breakfast in Brighton,
which detailed his stay in a louche seafront lodging
house run by a theatrical landlady allegedly
called Fredda Hayworth.
Haiselden originally rented a room in the house,
then owned by a pair of antique dealers who had
bought it from Richardson’s theatrical landlady
– actually the Z Cars actress Sidonie Bond. A businessman-turned-singing
teacher, Haisleden spent
a happy period sharing the house with a yogi
and a Feldenkrais practitioner before the owners
announced they were intending to sell. He joked
that he might be interested and ended up the
owner of a slightly faded seafront townhouse.
Life continued much as it had before until the
ceiling of his neighbour’s house collapsed, nearly
taking the rest of the terrace with it. “The structural
engineer said it was a known fault in these
properties – they were notoriously badly built and
were never expected to last more than 60 or 70
years.” It was a wake-up call that the house needed
serious attention and Haiselden embarked on the
daunting process of restoration. “We thought it
would take twelve months. Three-and-a-half years
later, poorer and wiser, we’ve emerged.”
Using information produced by the nearby
Regency Town House and library resources,
Haiselden pulled down walls and pulled up carpets
to return the house to a close approximation of
its original glory. Amazingly, many of its original
features had survived over the decades, including
fireplaces, fitted cupboards and an elaborate plaster
bedhead in the master bedroom. In 2014, the
house was reborn as a wedding venue - couples
can marry in the drawing room and spend their
wedding night upstairs - and this month it will
have a starring role in the Brighton Festival show
At Home, when its rooms will host music, poetry,
theatre and art. Haiselden feels his work is nearly
done. Nione Meakin
angel-house.com
....105....

INSIDE LEFT: BRIGHTON FESTIVAL, 1967
...............................................................................
The first Brighton Festival, in 1967, was a fairly highbrow, often avant-garde affair, with
debates about the future of art, performances by the likes of Laurence Olivier and Yehudi
Menuhin, a ‘kinetic labyrinth’ on the West Pier, and, most strikingly of all, a trail of ‘concrete
poetry’ installations, curated by Stephen Bann. Concrete poetry, all the rage in the
late 60s, set text in an unconventional manner to turn it into the framework of visual art
pieces. This example, Ein Text Passiert (‘A Text Happens’) by West German artist/dramatist
Claus Bremer, was installed in the Pavilion Gardens; other examples included random
three-word poems framed in the windows of Brighton buses. The Festival put Brighton,
by then largely known as a ‘dirty weekend’ destination, on the cultural map, though we
imagine much of what was going on went above the heads of many of the townspeople.
Sadly we can’t interview these three locals, to find out their opinion on concrete poetry.
....106....

7–29
May 2016
Our city streets come alive for the
50th year with art, music, theatre,
dance, debate & more...
VerTeDance / Jirí Havelka / Clarinet Factory
Correction
Imagine a world where you can’t progress
despite your best efforts. The multi-award
winning Czech dance company present a
poignant piece about our lack of freedom
Tue 24 & Wed 25 May
With over 150 events, look and then look
again. You won’t want to miss a thing
brightonfestival.org
01273 709709
brightonfestival
brightfest #BF2016