Ed Rapley

What a lovely weekend, I really enjoyed myself at the BAC, performing all my one to one shows for the Forest Fringe's two day event.

The room i got to use was great and the audience reactions were really good. I was please with the new Money Game but I think that it might work better as an open piece with more than one audience member, so that people could come and go and watch the action, a bit more like Search Party Vs.

I am going to make a show, a short 20 minute piece that is just verbatim SPAM. That is my big idea for today. Inspired by the following email I just recieved trying to sell me cheap pharmaceuticals:

Just use thoose link on picture to visit medmall
i am looking forward to a date with grant.
this image of silke stoddard's knitting is burned into my mind and tatooed on my heart.
back in a few days
here's an irish blessing from us to you...
she never looks like a senator from krypton on the red carpet.
it was super delicious.
wooohoooo!"
and you eat with your sunglasses on rid

We have a room in our house that is both nice and cheap, in fact it's as cheap as chips. At least it would be if chips were £195pcm inc Council Tax! That's right a room in Bristol for under £200 and you didn't even have to travel back in time to 1997 to get it. Yeah!

We are looking for a girl, but any nice person is in with a chance.

All mod cons- roof, walls, doors and windows plus shower/bath, toilet, sink, washing machine and a refrigeration unit in which to store your foods. Amazing. Also actual wireless/wired broadband internets with in-house computer geek technical support provided by yours truly. Bills work out at under £25 per month too!

OMG WTF IMO BBQ are you waiting for? Get in touch today.

I do bang on but Bristol is AMAZING- I get to make work in a city where every relevant cultural institution is not just forward thinking but totally supportive. With venues like The Tobacco Factory, Arnolfini and fingers crossed the Bristol Old Vic willing to give not just words and funding-tick-box style support but active encouragement by providing their skills, time and resources to develop the work of emerging artists from a wide range of backgrounds.

It has been a couple of days now since I returned from Aberystwyth, and it was a great success. The new material I tried works very well. Best of all was the Nihilist who now opens the show. Derek (on secondment from the RSC) will take some work to fully control but has great potential. My #1 Fan is a good starting point with scope to illicit laughter and then of course turn the whole thing sour, and Hugo now has a firm goal.

I just found this press release for the Forest Fringe weekender that I'm taking part. It's on the 27th and 28th of March and here you can read things about all the people who are in it and what they will be doing. Not only that but apparently I was a highlight of last year's Forest Fringe, oh it's good to get some affirmation- you never now if you're doing the right thing. Everything is opaque at best. Who knows if things keep going as well as they have done then I might just make it, here I come Heat Magazine.

I shall be showing a super dooper work in progress work in progress version of The Middle Bit at this wonderful looking event up in Aber, as the locals call Aberystwyth- http://www.show-room.org.uk/

Thats not typo back there, what i mean is that this will be the bare bones and indeed assorted fleshy parts of un-reconstituted creative process, i'm going to revel in new writing, so new i'm writing it this evening and will not doubt be typing stuff up on the train and making up bit back stage and indeed on stage. It doesn't get any fresher than that!

I'm writing this as an aide to understanding. I'm at a lost to think how I'd handle this if it happened to me and whilst I really don't want to condone his actions nor can I unthinkingly condemn then without getting bit more information and asking why?

For those who weren't there- during a performance of Spectacular by Forced Entertainment at the Arnolfini a man with a loud voice and a Russian accent, together with his female accomplice, repeatedly heckled the performers with negative comments about the show, and in the words of the woman with him- canned laughter.

At one point he was asked to leave, but refused and there was little that could be done. Arnolfini doesn't employ the sort of surly doorman that might be called in to effect an eviction.

Then almost at the very end of the show, after a brief exchange with one of the performers, he got on stage and harangued them with a manically melodramatic sense of 'rebellion against oppression', then turned to the audience, asking if they "...want to see something extraordinary?". Someone shouted Yes. So he dropped his trousers, shat in his hand, then rubbed the poo all over his face.

He ranted a bit, something about Stanislavsky, as he was politely asked to leave, which he did, shortly followed by his friend. The performers picked up the performance again in just about the most perfect way and the rest of the show was, in my opinion far better and more enjoyable for his absence.

Who was this man? After several careful re-wordings on the Internet's favourite search engine I got my answer and a short Wikipedia article to boot-
Alexander Davidovič Brener (Russian: Александр Бренер). In case you can't be bothered reading the following links, I'll condense- He's a performance artist from Russia, and he has disrupted/vandalised several events and works of art before, plenty of which have involved faeces.

ICA Interruption.

Gallery Intervention.

A letter in defence.

I guess that just leavse the why? It seems from his rather incoherent words and extreme actions that in the particular he was reacting against a perceived slight to his personal freedom to do whatever he likes wherever he likes, and that he wanted things to somehow be more than there were, only more in the sense of the Hollywood Blockbuster or the Arms Race, as applied to liberty. By which I mean More Freedom without any thought to the quality or effect of that freedom.

Yes our global society is a network of power exercised over individuals to limit their freedom so they can live more or less easily side by side and function as the batteries/cogs of the economy. But I don't see how hitting other folks' art with a hammer makes the world a better place or gives us any insight into the serious question of how can we dismantle/change the negative bits of this system without destroying the bits that work for our benefit.

Imagine the scene, Mr Brener is at a friends house...

Hey Alex do you want to play monopoly?
A:Yeah, ok, sure, monopoly.

A little later...

A: This game is rubbish.
Actually i'm enjoying it.
A: No it's rubbish, the rules are stupid. Don't you realise that there are rules? Rules are for idiots.
Maybe, but they make the game work.
A: Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish- This game is a microcosm of Capitalist society!
Duh, yeah, it's monopoly.
A: Fuck Monopoly.
Oh for goodness sake! Not again Alex.
A: NNNGGGGHHHHH* Ha! See how I shit all over the capitalist society with it's petite rules! I am a free man! See how free I am!?
*Sigh* Every time we try to play a game you end up shitting on the board.

By all means call out Yeltsin to fight you in Red Square- that seems like a worthy opponent. But maybe you need to think twice when you're attacking the soft target of contemporary art, and theatre in particular. I mean it's only children playing around, and after all, what's so wrong with that that it needs you crapping all over it?

I invite you to comment and discuss...

I'm pleased to say that even the most delicate work can survive acts of aggressive vandalism.

I will be showing the first full version of The Middle Bit as part of this years Mayfest. It will be a wild and beautiful thing, book your tickets today to avoid disappointment.

Mayfest 2009
Bristol Old Vic Studio
King Street, Bristol, BS1 4ED
Friday 15th May, 6:30pm
Tickets: £9/£6 concession
Booking: 0117 987 7877
Online: www.bristololdvic.org.uk
www.mayfestbristol.co.uk