Now Some Serious Talk, About Money & the Olympics

I arrived in Hong Kong about 48 hours ago, to meet colleagues and pan-Asian promoters, courtesy of the British Council, and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.  It's already proving to be more than I could have hoped for with chances to work together in the future leaping out of the woodwork thanks to colleagues like Koo Tin Lung of Chung Ying Theatre and Grace Kwok, School Principal from the Tin Shui Wai district, and just about the most amazing woman in Asia.

 But that's not what I want to talk about right now.  Right now I want to talk about money.

We all know that China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, and then Britain is following suit in 2012.  We've just heard that the cost of Britain's turn has jumped from about £2.3 billion, to over £9 billion.  Where is the money going to come from?  Lottery good causes, including the Arts. 

How will this hit in Northern Ireland?  Particularly badly says our Arts Council who has just released a statement.  Arts funding was at an all time high in 1997-98 when it sat at £ 10.3 million spend for all of Northern Ireland.  Now 9 financial years later, the ACNI say that it sits at £ 7.2 million, never mind inflation and all that.  The estimate for 2011-2012, when the Olympics take place?  A drop to £5.1 million spend.  For ALL of Northern Ireland.

As I arrived at my hotel for the conference, a lovely little pack with welcome info was waiting for me.  It contained a leaflet detailing the Hong Kong SAR Government's commitment to the Arts, and their annual spend.  They allocate $ 2.4 billion HKD per year - you'll have to divide that by 15 of course to get British pounds, but it makes you think, doesn't it?  Pretty impressive.  And the Chinese Olympics are a lot closer than the British ones.

Single & Alone, with Dan Gordon in a Dress

Last night did something I don’t normally do.  I went to the Theatre alone.  You’d think that in this day and age all the old taboos would be broken and eating in a restaurant, going to the movies, seeing a play as a SINGLE WOMAN ALONE wouldn’t be a particularly big issue.  I must be more conditioned than I thought, because the closer I got to the Theatre door the more the word ALONE loomed in my mind.

I was seeing a political farce, with an audience full of men, which was interesting, because research and experience shows that most theatre bookings are made by women on the behalf of couples or groups.  We’re not afraid of booking theatre tickets, we just prefer to turn up with at least one other person to protect us from the stigma of ALONE-ness.  These men were in groups, and they gave the impression of not being regular theatre goers, but they certainly seemed comfortable, and there they were, out with one, two or three of their buddies (they don’t like being SINGLE AND ALONE any more than we do, obviously) to see Dan Gordon die expertly 4 different times, including once in a little black dress.

As an aside, Dan Gordon in drag giving it the full man-on-man-4-stars-in-the-Guardian snog with another actor nearly brought the house down, but that’s another story…

So how was it in the end?  Pretty good.  Aside from the slightly increased stress of impressively holding in my stomach for the entire interval (when you’re with your partner, stomachs can relax into companionable plumpness), there were a lot of ups.  I had detailed conversations with the three men on my right and the two on my left, something that would never have happened otherwise, and the illicit pleasure of a little measure of baileys at half time, and quietly poking a finger into the glass to get the last bit stuck in the ice cubes while pretending to admire the photographs on the Lyric walls of the adolescent Liam Neison.  

But I noticed there wasn’t another single woman in the house.  What do widows and divorcees do?  Books as couples or groups, I guess.

Oh, A Little Tired

So many emails from my single friends about the dating jungle recently...this one's for you.

Rich Hall Ate My Personality

On Sunday night I went with a group of friends to Rich Hall's stand-up comedy show at the Waterfront.  We were a fairly disparate group: an old friend from London who's come to stay, my partner's mate who took my partner's ticket at the last minute because he was gigging, another friend who had organised our attendance in the first place, and who nestled himself in between us women, although he wasn't dating either of us.  Fairly relaxed.  Fairly loose-limbed, but unfortunately we flopped into the last few seats available....in the front row.  In fact we even moved NEARER to the microphone because my old friend, who hasn't been to live comedy since the Norman Invasion "wanted to see his face when he was singing at the piano".  In fact most of us hadn't been to comedy as punters in years, and our most intimate experience of comic interaction, aside from booking the stuff, was talking back to Eddie Izzard on the DVD over the curry on a Friday night.

 Well well.  Of course we should have EXPECTED to be singled out.  And yes, it was fine.  Hall is a sweetie in fact, and it doesn't feel painful to give him the facts of one's little life to waive about for the entertainment of strangers on a Sunday night in Belfast, the surprise was the ease with which I gave myself up to his interpretation of my life.

Rich: How did you end up in Belfast?

Me: I answered an add in the Guardian.

Rich: You came to NORTHERN IRELAND because of a gardening magazine??

Me: Yes, to run a theatre.

Rich: You ran a theatre because you read about it in a gardening magazine?

Me: Yes, yes, but now I've left!

Rich: What did they expect!  You read gardening magazines!! I bet you ran it into the ground!!

Me: Yes, yes, yes. (pointing to my friend) We did it together - I put on her play.

Rich: You can sit here, happily enjoying my show, knowing that your play closed down a theatre in Northern Ireland?

Us: (smiling up at him) Yes, yes, yes, yes.  We're happy.

And there we sat, grinning beatifically, bathed in the brainwashing glow of comic participation, immune to the evidence of the Riverside's continuing health.  Worryingly various people recognised me from this keenly accurate description of my professional life and came up to greet me after the show, saying: "I knew it could only be you!". 

Back at the Baby Grand

Yesterday I was back at the Baby Grand, Grand Opera House, Belfast dying for some of that "so close you can see their nose-hairs" theatre feeling, and I loved what I got!  I remember when Nuala McKeever and I opened there with Out of the Box last December, after several months on the road tin venues where the struggle was to reach people emotionally across the void of aisle, pit, lights and stage front, the audience in the Baby Grand seemed impossibly close.  How were we going to put the show across when they might be crawling over each other to get away from a performance that began two inches in front of their noses?

 Now as I plan for our next project, which is rooted in comedy, and definitely wants that something of that "sit on their knee and let em see yer false moustache" atmosphere, I'm really looking forward to the intimacy of the Baby Grand.  More news on this project will follow when we've put a little more flesh on the bones, but I'm hoping that is the kind of thing that might appeal outside Ireland.  And I'll certainly know what people think of the show after a few evenings in there!  As for the exact date, well we're hovering around a bit, like a plane waiting to land at Heathrow, but either late October or late November are looking promising.