See the workshop, know the maker.

I have been thinking for some time about re-designing the supports for my stage.  The current system (which I designed) is too ponderous.  It takes a long time to set up and take down and at the end of a long performing day it is the final job I have to do. Finding the energy to do it is becoming increasingly challenging.  In fact I often leave it till the next day.  OK sometimes but at others it is good just to put it all away and hit the road.

So I did a little research and found a local engineer who I had been told took on challenging jobs.  I would rather Tegid had done it but Tegid retired a few years ago.  Going into Tegid’s workshop in the pretty North Wales town of Llanrwst was going in a place where you knew the end result was going to be of a high quality.  It wasn’t that the workshop was particularly tidy. In fact, like many metal workshops, there were bits of metal, tools, a layer of red rust dust on every surface.  But there was an air of perfection in progress about the place and about the man.  A solidity to be trusted.  English was not his first language but he spoke carefully and precisely, his words lined up like two pieces of metal ready for a fine weld.  So before long you knew the end result would be as reliable and exact as he was.  His workshop reflected that.

The new man is very different.  It was his confidence that impressed me.  His workshop was huge with many vast lumbering metal working machines.  Broken vintage tractors stood around awaiting their call to be renovated at some future time. A mysterious and cavernous series of barns and outhouses piled with metal and machinery of all kinds. The man has that same solidity. 

I left the trailer in his yard, an anomalous art statement in all that ferrous ferocity.  I was to hear from him.  I didn’t.  Weeks went by and only eventually after several phone calls, two visits in person to hear reasons or maybe excuses and the job had still not begun.  I sat with him on one of the occasions as he manipulated design software on an ancient pc.  It didn’t fill me with great hope, but at least it was progress of a sort.  The aluminium was to be ordered and while he fiddled I sourced the new telescopic feet.  I sat on a broken chair and flipped through a dust-covered catalogue from a dilapidated shelf unit in his office, surrounded by discarded paper notes with unfathomable hieroglyphics, small fabricated widgets forgotten on every surface and the detritus of years of working just like that.

My next and most recent visit was the most depressing to date.  He told me the frame was being constructed in yet another barn/workshop. I crept into the gloom to find another man welding pieces of aluminium box.  Now I have heard that aluminium is difficult to weld, so an opening gambit was words to that effect. I wish I could remember his exact reply.  They were not the words of a man who loved his work.

The small sockets that would take the new support legs for the stage were on a bench covered with stuff.  Above the bench was the nude calendar. I should have known this would be a workshop where there would be a nude calendar.  The small sockets being welded had not been cleaned up (so their edges were covered with sharp finger-ripping burrs) but that did not seem to be important.  It would have been to Tegid.  I offered to do it and was told there should be a file ‘somewhere on the bench’. I filed the edges with the nude gazing provocatively down. I avoided her gaze.

When I left the welding machine had broken down.  I glanced at the welds which were untidy and uncared for.

I await the next call to say the frame is finished so I can assist in its attachment to my beautiful stage.

I am in a state of turmoil and will let you know what happens next.  Tegid, please come back.  I miss you.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Sharing the limelight

When I see energy and passion in a performer it fills my heart with joy.  Sadly it happens only rarely and then more often than not I’m sitting in the cinema or the theatre.  There are very few performers I see in the street or at open air events who excite much more than a passing academic interest.  There are very few who I would watch to the end of their shows. There are even fewer who I would welcome to join with me on my stage to explore working together.

Of course there are exceptions.  I wrote last week about being drawn into the performance of Martin Orbidans at the piano in Ilfracombe and how his wonderful talent made me invite him to become my accompanist this year.  I also want to tell you about the wonderful talent of another performer who I meet with occasionally and whose passion for his work, whose skill and expertise in its presentation is remarkable, inspirational and rare. In 2011, juggler, comedy performer, escapologist, unicyclist and writer Greg Chapman (www.condensedhistories.com) was looking for a subject for his next show. While sorting kit, he came across an envelope containing his History Degree. The idea of combining variety performance and history was instantaneous, and the shows expanded to become Greg’s main form of event performance. Beyond the shows themselves Condensed Histories has moved into books and a podcast hosted by Greg with many special guests.  Greg is now directing and shooting a steampunk film series. I love his enthusiasm and performance style.  A style very, very different from mine but I think the two are compatible on the same stage and it has been great fun exploring this compatibility.

Greg and I meet up from time to time and at the Isle of Wight Steam Show in August perform alongside each other in a daily finale to the shows on my stage.  That we only rarely rehearse but seem always to be able to pick up from where we left off the previous year is testament to the faith I have in his ability and enthusiasm.

This year I also met a young couple who have the same passion and dedication to their art as Greg does.  The Old Time Rags (https://en-gb.facebook.com/theoldtimerags) comprise of Laurence and Phoebe.  Laurence is a one man band and has a remarkable and captivating style.  His partner Phoebe is a tap dancer in the Appalachian flatfoot style (Google it) and shows such energy, passion and big-hearted enthusiasm in every tap that I just had to invite them to join me at some of my events this year.  They performed with me on the stage at Wallingford BunkFest and at York Vintage Fair.  Together their infectious love for performance make for a wonderful time-stopping experience for everyone (including me).

It is a very different experience having others onstage with me.  The reactions from the audience are very different.  Instead of being part of the relationship with me as solo performer, the audience is, in addition, an observer of the relationship I have with those other performers, and that they have with each other.  A subtle yet key difference. 

It is a difference which I have played with previously but have, more recently, avoided.  Working with others has implications as well as rewards.  You have to agree.  You have to share the artistic vision and at a very basic level, you have to get on with each other.  In the past I have found this has often been challenging.  But at least for the present I am very happy to continue to explore an occasional liaison with these talented and exceptional people. For 2018 I am planning a show which commemorates the end of the Great War and will include some of these performers in a Variety Show with music, dance and physical theatre.  It is still at the ideas stage and I will keep you informed as it grows.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Back to Blog

Well it’s been a long while since I last wrote so some explanations are required.  Just over a year ago when I stopped writing this blog I was going through some personal challenges and felt the blog had been acting as a kind of therapy.  I then, almost overnight, found it all too much and just stopped along with participation in all social media.  So I apologise to anyone who thought I had died, or far worse, retired.  I have done neither and don’t intend to, at least for the foreseeable future.

So the news is that I am now back to normal (whatever that is) and I have been asked over the summer by a number of friends and erstwhile blog readers to start again.  It’s taken a while but I have decided to listen and to restart the blog so this first one will try and sum up some of summer 2017. I will then try to keep you all informed weekly about the strange and wonderful life I live and the adventures of a travelling showman and two little dogs caught up in the twenty-first century.

Summing up a year in one page is totally impossible so this will probably have to be spread over a few episodes.  I couldn’t sum up the year without mentioning Martin Orbidans who became a close friend and collaborator during the year so let’s begin with him.

To set the story properly we have to go back to June of 2015 and what I had hoped to be a wonderful new chapter in the history of Mr Alexander as artistic director of Ilfracombe Victorian Celebration.  Of course those who have read the story will know that liaison ended abruptly in antagonism and antipathy, but the one good thing to come out of it was my meeting Martin.

Ilfracombe has a sweet little High Street, or perhaps what was once a sweet little High Street, having succumbed like many to the decline brought about by the out of town shopping spaces where most of us now buy our stuff. It has a little walk through arcade; a Victorian-style market which has a number of people occupying booths and doing their small scale trading.  I happened to be walking through it during the Celebration and heard a piano being played.  There was something about the quality of the playing that attracted me so I followed my ears and found a man in a striped blazer paying songs from some of my favourite musical shows.  There was no-one there so I stopped to chat to him and that’s how it all began.

Martin had learned piano from his mother and was one of those children who was musically gifted and had the good fortune to have that gift recognised and encouraged.  Like me he had experienced an unhappy time at school and took refuge in music.  Later he joined the Royal Marines as a musician and travelled the world and was commissioned to be the cocktail pianist aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, including the time when the yacht was used by Charles and Diana for their honeymoon base. 

How he ended up in the little tatty Victorian market is a long story but we got on well from the start and a winter of emailing saw him out on the road with me for some of the key summer events playing a range of music on a range of keyboards sitting in a red gazebo alongside my stage.

Those who have heard him with me will testify as to how brilliant he is at improvising as well as playing from medleys of marches (reflecting his military heritage) to tunes from shows and musicals.  Having a live accompanist at those gigs has changed the style of my performance and the audiences have enjoyed the performance relationship between us as we have rehearsed and performed new shows through the summer.

I have worked with many people in performance over the years and although I had reached a point where I felt I wanted only to be a solo performer, working with Martin opened my eyes again to the potential of working with others and meant that when I met the Old Time Rags, a dance/one man band combo from Leeds I immediately saw the potential of expanding Mr Alexander’s Travelling Show even further.  More about them next time.

It’s good to be back on a road near you,

Mr Alexander