Forget Rio! Duran Duran are heading to Scarborio next summer
HER name is Scarborio and she dances on the sand…
Oh yes, Duran Duran are to play on the Yorkshire coast next summer, signing up for a July 7 outdoor show at Scarborough Open Air Theatre, when Rio, Girls On Film, Save A Prayer, The Reflex and the rest will be paraded alongside their first new material since 2015.
Tickets go on general sale via scarboroughopenairtheatre.com at 9am on Friday, November 6. Duran Duran VIP Fan Community members will have first access with a pre-sale from 9am on Tuesday, November 3 via www.duranduranmusic.com
Named after Milo O’Shea’s character, Durand Durand, in Roger Vadim’s cult 1968 sci-fi film Barbarella, Duran Duran formed in 1978, joining Culture Club and Spandau Ballet at the paint and frills front of a new wave of glam pop in the early Eighties.
In all, singer Simon Le Bon, 62, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, 58, bassist John Taylor, 60, and drummer Roger Taylor, 60, have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and scored 21 UK Top 20 smashes and 18 American hit singles.
In the freshly minted words of their Scarborough OAT press release: “Consistently fusing art, technology, fashion and a signature sense of style with their unique and infectious brand of music, Duran Duran have proven themselves timeless, always innovating and reinventing, to remain ahead of the curve.”
The Birmingham band last released a studio album in 2015 when Paper Gods peaked at number five. Produced by Mark Ronson and Chic leader Nile Rodgers, alongside Mr Hudson and Josh Blair, it featured collaborations with Janelle Monáe, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante, Kiesza and Jonas Bjerre of Mew.
A global, three-year, sold-out arena tour followed, and now the two-time Grammy, BRIT Award and Ivor Novello winners are working on their 15th studio album, set for release next year when their continuing 40th anniversary celebrations will take in the Scarborough OAT show and headline spots at the Isle of White Festival and Lytham Festival.
Until 1986 Duran Duran had a third Taylor, lead guitarist Andy, in their line-up. Now a fourth Taylor, promoter Peter of Scarborough OAT programmers Cuffe and Taylor, says: “Duran Duran are global superstars and we are so excited to be bringing them here to Scarborough next summer.
“Their live shows are simply epic and fans have been asking us for some time now to bring them here to the Yorkshire coast. It is another massive headline show for Scarborough OAT 2021!”
Next summer’s line-up so far comprises: June 12, Lionel Richie; June 19, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and Astro; June 20, Ru Paul’s Drag Race: Werq The World; July 7, Duran Duran; July 9, Keane; July 10, Olly Murs; August 17, Westlife, and August 20, Nile Rodgers & Chic. More dates are to be added very soon. Watch this space.
Clap 2, Boris Johnson, by WeFail, posted on Facebook on April 24 and now on show at Art Of Protest, York
THE art of horror is not only for Halloween, protests York gallery owner Craig Humble as he opens a timely exhibition of shock-horror works by the controversial artist known as WeFail.
Hogarthian cartoon collages by WeFail, alias Martin Hughes, from Manchester, chime with the gallery name as Art Of Protest settles into its new home at 11, Walmgate.
In May, WeFail’s “Blood on their hands for PPE failures” collages of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock, each clapping for the NHS, made the pages of the Daily Mail Online.
Art Of Protest owner and curator Craig Humble outside his new gallery premises in Walmgate, York
Why? After being posted on Facebook, they subsequently appeared on the Havant Labour page with trenchant comments about the Government “completely mismanaging” the Coronavirus crisis.
“Disgusting”, “Disgraceful”, came the Conservative outcry, and Havant Labour subsequently removed the post and apologised fully.
The paintings had been premiered on WeFail’s social media and website , and in response to the reaction to the Labour Facebook post, WeFail posted: “‘Disgraceful art’, what’s really disgraceful is having the highest death rate in Europe, by choice.” “Never apologise for my art”, tweeted WeFail, whose website says he “paints monsters”.
Four Horsemen, by WeFail, at Art Of Protest Gallery
In the window of Art Of Protest is the artist’s statement, WeFail On The Covid-19 Crisis, as he explains: This Is Why I Paint.
Its closing paragraphs read: “At the most crucial time when lives could have been saved, this Government did nothing, in fact on the advice of ghouls like ‘too bad’ Cummings they actively sought to spread the virus and gain the mythical herd immunity.
“Thousands have died needlessly. But it’s pointless debating this, they see what they want to see and when this has passed they will try to rewrite the history books.”
The Art Of Protest Gallery window set up for WeFail’s works of political satire
Welcoming WeFail’s works to Art Of Protest, Craig says: “Political satire has a long history in the UK: WeFail’s work is in the tradition of James Gillray and William Hogarth via its satirical attack on those in power but stylistically is nearer the horrors of Francis Bacon, Otto Dix and Francisco Goya. For this reason, it seems an ideal exhibition for the Halloween weekend.
“Art Of Protest Gallery prides itself on art that makes a viewer look. WeFail soars above this bar. As the first gallery to dare to exhibit original work by WeFail, we’re proud to share this cutting edge of contemporary political satire.”
A digital catalogue is available of WeFail’s hand-finished collages by emailing info@artofprotestgallery.com to provide the opportunity to be “one of the few to own this portentous series of original works”, with the artist making works individually to order.
Clap 2, Matt Hancock, by WeFail from the “Blood on their hands for PPE failure” triptych of works also featuring Boris Johnson and Michael Gove
Art Of Protest has re-located from 16, Little Stonegate after nearly four years, following what Craig calls “a fraught series of unfortunate coincidences and Covid-themed interventions” that led him to declare he was the subject of a “Catch-22 eviction”.
Putting a sense of injustice to one side, the rent he had set aside for staying at Little Stonegate has enabled him to move to Walmgate instead. “There’s a strong relationship with the landlord who owns the building,” says Craig.
“The neighbours have been welcoming and vehicle access to the gallery has made a noticeable difference to the overall experience for collectors.”
WeFail’s exhibition will run until the third week of November, to be followed by a solo show by Dan Cimmermann, opening on the last weekend of November.
“Cimmermann has created a show built on portraiture from the 12th to 16th centuries but melded with the stags and hens that occupy the streets of York today,” says Craig.
“Dan is one of the northern artists whose work is predominantly exhibited in London and Japan but the Art of Protest Gallery likes to champion him a bit nearer his roots in Middlesbrough and where he works in his day job as Art Master of Pocklington School.”
Phone…home: The red phone box outside Dr Christopher Newell’s house near York
A VILLAGE red phone box near York will house probably Britain’s smallest performance on Halloween night.
Dr Christopher Newell, from the digital media department at the University of Hull, sent an intriguing email to CharlesHutchPress out of the blue on Tuesday morning.
“You may remember me as a very short-lived artistic director of the Grand Opera House. What a fiasco that was!” it started, triggering memories of Chris tempting fate by opening the Cumberland Street theatre after its £4 million renovation with a Balinese version of Macbeth, theatre’s most unlucky play, on September 28 1989.
Sure enough, within two years, the theatre gods had played their accursed Macbeth hand, and the Grand Opera House closed so suddenly, crippled by mounting debts, that staff arrived to find the doors locked.
Hold the line: Dr Christopher Newell in his phone box
“Anyway, here I am years later, bit of an academic, bit of a cancer patient, bit of a director – with a project to share,” the email continued.
“This Saturday, Halloween night, at 8:00 I will broadcast a 20-minute audio collage of very personal detritus, truth and lies from a telephone box outside my house near York, using a computer-generated version of my voice.
“The audience will probably be one, me.”
Explaining the audio collage content, Chris wrote: “I guess it’s something to do with ghosts, it’s certainly timed to be so. When I was diagnosed with incurable cancer, I thought I had had it.
“I wanted to make a show and as my academic specialism is computer-generated speech and how it relates to acting, I built myself a stage. I bought a phone box and set about equipping it with technology from 1937, the year it was built, and cutting-edge speech synthesis provide by colleagues in Edinburgh.
“An obsession was born that has kept me happy through several bouts of chemo and extended periods of lying in bed. I have been tinkering for five years and on Saturday it goes live. I think this is interesting, do you?”
“My Guilt”: Dr Newell’s caption for this close-up of his apologetic notice in the phone box
CharlesHutchPress does indeed, and so a list of questions has been fired off to Chris – rather than taking a call in the aforementioned phone box – to discover more.
Where is the telephone box near York?
“Outside my house.” (Chris preferred not to reveal the location but here is a clue: think of a rosy autumn fruit and a deer).
On what medium will you broadcast…and how can people tune in?
“It’s on a web radio channel, GISS Global Internet Streaming Support: a platform for experimentation and research on free technologies in the era of internet media.”
Mouth piece: A close-up of Dr Newell’s mouth, on display in his phone box
Is this the smallest arts space you could ever perform in?
“I can’t think of a smaller one but there is bound to be someone who has performed in a barrel or something.”
After Halloween, what happens to the recording?
“I will make it available from my website and then continue to add new performances of new material at Christmas, Easter, Midsummer. I dislike rituals and festivals, so this is my attempt at a subversive counter culture. Yo Ho Ho.”
What does Halloween mean to you?
“Not being dead yet but I thought I was about to be – phew! I am obsessed with Thomas Edison’s paper on The Realms Beyond: he thought he could make a machine to communicate with the dead – I reckon I have.”
On a technical level, how do you computer-generate your voice? Does it change your voice?
“No. It uses parameters from your real voice to remap them to a computer-generated clone. It’s mega-clever, done by my colleagues at CereProc [a speech synthesis company based in Edinburgh], not by me.
From the outside: Dr Newell’s phone box lit up
“It means the voice can say all the things I can’t – of course, sometimes it can’t say the things I can – this is both a literal and metaphorical statement.”
What are you required to do to maintain the condition of the vintage phone box?
“Not let if freeze – it’s amazingly resistant to extreme weather. It’s got some electronics in it that I have to fix from time to time; paint it every three years; polish the woodwork; chuck out the spiders.”
Is it locked or permanently open?
“Currently I can’t let people in – hence the broadcast – but up until Covid people could pop in any time and did.”
Looking back, did you ever regret your bravura decision to open the Grand Opera House, after 33 years without a play there, with the ever ill-fated Macbeth?
“Not as much as I regretted taking the job at all – I was not the right person. It wasn’t Macbeth that did for it; it was combo of me and the people who owned it.”
Matt Woodcock: From news to pews, from York to Hull and back again
THIS is not a good time to be infectious, but Matt Woodcock is exactly that. In a good way and in a God way.
Back in the day at The Evening Press, his cub-reporter enthusiasm brought him exclusives that escaped all others. He loved a story, he loved people, and he had a gift, shared with his journalist dad John, for easing his interviewees into opening up before they knew it.
He was Woody, Oasis fan, York City fan, and suddenly, to his own surprise – and even more so to his “extremely non-religious” father – Jesus fan.
His Damascene conversion came on the road to Selby [Magistrates Court], forced to pull into a layby when struck by dizziness, brought on by “an overwhelming sense that God had something urgent he wanted to tell me”.
The priesthood is a vocation, and Woody had been called. Exit journalism, enter a new path for the rookie Rev that has taken him to Hull and back to York as the Reverend Matt Woodcock, C of E curate, daily diarist, book writer and Pause For Thought broadcaster on Zoe Ball’s BBC Radio 2 show.
John was so furious at Woody “throwing away his career”, he refused to attend his leaving party – as Matt recalled with fond laughter this afternoon – yet if journalism and the priesthood overlap, it is in the mutual ability to communicate, to use words, in impactful ways.
The difference is putting those words into action, his flock Revved up by the curate’s egging-on. Then add Matt’s boundless honesty, humour, even irreverence, to his love of God, and Dr John Sentamu, who ordained him when Archbishop of York, is moved to say: “Spirit dwells in him, taking him on an adventurous Jesus-shaped journey.”
That quote can be found on the sleeve of Being Reverend, Matt’s diary book follow-up to his 2016 bestseller, Becoming Reverend, out today (29/10/2020) in paperback, eBook and unabridged audiobook, recorded by Matt over two days.
“It’s already sold out on Amazon on pre-orders,” says Matt. “People have been ringing me to say they can’t get it.” Demand will grow even higher after the Daily Mail runs extracts, likely to be in Saturday and next Monday’s editions.
In a nutshell, Being Reverend is the story of newbie vicar Matt Woodcock trying to breathe new life into Britain’s biggest yet emptiest church, the 700-year-old Holy Trinity in Hull’s Old Town, while trying not to ruin his home life with Anna and their teething twins. It is a story of faith, real ale…and camels.
What a first posting post-training for Reverend Matt, who had earlier made his mark at St Paul’s Holgate in York, when running The Lounge nights with such guests as Dr Sentamu and booking Shed Seven for their first gig after re-forming.
Out today: Matt Woodcock’s diary of a vicar at “God’s Aircraft Hangar”
“Holy Trinity is the largest parish church by area in the country. I called it ‘God’s Aircraft Hangar’,” he says, at a socially distanced meeting at Dyls, sporting an Oasis face mask in vicarly black and white. “It’s so massive, I used to go for a cycle ride around the aisles on the way home from the pub!”
From the start, he named his dislikes as pews, dull sermons and organs, and his philosophy is constantly uplifting. “I just think my job is to raise a few smiles, make people think and spread the joy that faith can enrich your life,” he says.
“I’m on a mission to stop making church and faith a thing of dullness. We’ve done dullness in the Church of England for centuries, but I say, ‘make it interesting, make people respond, even make them angry, make them think about their faith’, when somehow we’ve made it dreadfully dull.
“I think Jesus would be turning over tables now, not because of money lenders, but because church is dull.”
Being Reverend collates Matt’s diary entries from his first 18 months at Holy Trinity. “I’ve written a diary every day since 2009, when all this ‘From News To Pews’ stuff happened,” he says. “I was told do so by Sister Cecilia Goodman at St Bede’s [Pastoral Centre in York], where I’d sit in a room for six hours and I’d come out floating.
“She’d give me questions to think about and I’ve kept a diary ever since, 650 words every day, good, bad or ugly.”
His growing passion for poetry, fuelled initially by the works of University of Hull librarian Philip Larkin, has informed his own writing. “I love the pithy way poets write: there’s so much power in a sentence with a real directness to it. That’s why some people said reading my first book was like being hit by a blunt instrument because you’re not prepared for it.
“My style works for quips but when I write about sadness or tragedy, there’s no warning. I go straight in. Journalism taught me that the editing part is the most important, deciding what to take out.”
In younger days, Matt had written diaries, but never sustained them through a year. “I started a few but it was all about girls and my terrible failures, so they always ended pretty quickly. But now I couldn’t let a day go by without doing my diary. It’s become an obsession.”
Big church. Tiny congregation. Freezing cold. Welcome to Holy Trinity, Matt, taking on a church in the last-chance saloon. “They were about to mothball the church; the congregation was only ten to 15; they were losing £1,000 a week,” he recalls. “You have to remember it was right in the middle of Hull, so it would have been like mothballing York Minster, but it had become a blind spot to the city.”
Enter Reverend Matt, in the role of “pioneer vicar”. “My job was two-fold: Engage with the community outside the church and start using this building in a creative way,” he says. “For Holy Trinity not to be at the centre of the community was a travesty.”
“They said, ‘how about asking that nutty vicar at Holy Trinity?’,” recalls Reverend Matt Woodcock
Gradually, the church became both a cultural and spiritual hub, home to a theatre group as much as prayers in the chapel. The first headline-making big hitter was the Real Ale Festival, drawing 4,000 pint punters. “Hull CAMRA had previously held it at Hull City Hall but said ‘it’s too hot in there, it’s ruining the beer’,” says Matt.
“They said, ‘how about asking that nutty vicar at Holy Trinity?’, and when I told the church council it would generate £3,500 in three days, all their hands went up! That put us on the map, so did the theatre shows, artisans’ markets, and Ralph McTell played a concert there too.”
Holy Trinity participated in Hull’s year as the City of Culture, further momentum for the church. “At the same time, the congregation started to grow because people were thinking, ‘hey, what’s going on here on Sundays?’,” says Matt.
“What I learnt was that when you have the courage to make changes, beautiful things happen.” So much so that Dr Sentamu re-dedicated Holy Trinity as Hull Minster in 2017.
Matt would leave his “labour of love” after seven years to return to York. “It was the wildest, most beautiful time. We were part of this revolution in Hull,” he says, but it came at a cost. “At times, I barely saw my wife, and it could have ended in divorce.
“The irony in those first 18 months was the people closest to me saw me least. Anna nearly left me during that time. She’d had enough, and I’m ashamed to say that. There was a massive cost to my personal life in the work I was doing.
“I wasn’t around enough for my children, but I wouldn’t change anything in the world for being a dad. Anna is a real saint in all this. I now realise you have to find a balance in life and I’ve learnt about that.
“I always promised Anna, who’s a real family person, that one day we would move back to York to be close to her family, and we have done that.”
Matt is now employed as a “Multiply Minister”, charged with building church participation for the under-50s at St Barnabas, Leeman Road, and St Paul’s, Holgate.
“I always say my calling is to bring the average age down from 108,” he says. “I have to build a new church community of 20 to 40 year olds, to do church in a new way.”
From mountain-walking to volleyball, pub gatherings to theatre trips – before Covid restrictions – Matt has built up a sense of belonging to a community that turns into an exploration of faith.
Camels alert: Holy Trinity Church’s Travelling Nativity Play in Hull city centre on December 22 2012
“The biggest lesson I’ve learnt is that being cautious gets you absolutely nowhere. Jesus calls us to the full life and that means being brave enough to take risks and to be people-centric,” he says.
“I just love people. They are a constant fascination. They are my oxygen. They are why I get up in the morning. Every morning, I read a bit of Jesus and every day I try to be a little more like him. Keeping it simple.
“If I’ve got this faith thing wrong, I still believe trying to live life like Christ brings you the most joy, the most fun, but sometimes we’ve lost that simplicity of purpose.”
Matt describes the task facing priests as “being like a tragi-comedy”. “But if you don’t have positivity, what’s the opposite? It’s minus four in the church, the average age is 108, and I’ve been in a pulpit looking out at a dozen people trying to sit as far from each other as possible.
“So, you have to have positive vibes, hope; hope goes a long way. So does humour; being given permission to laugh.
“I know I’m a loudmouth and I’m too much for some people – I remember kicking a ball around the aisles at a baptism and trying to kick it into the font…that was going too far! – but I love getting alongside people and trying to enrich their lives, and loving people is a non-negotiable part of being a vicar.”
Becoming Reverend closes the diary after 18 months because it is always good to go out on a high, that high being the day the “nutty vicar” excelled himself by arranging for camels to participate in a Nativity Play through the streets of Hull on the busiest shopping day of the year.
“I realised no-one was coming to the church at Christmas, so I said ‘let’s take a Nativity Play out of the church with actors, and why don’t we have camels?’,” says Matt. “I think the council gave us £5,000 and someone found this place where you could hire camels, sheep and a donkey. It became this massive thing, parading through the streets – and we made the pages of the Hull Daily Mail.”
Matt is already planning his next book. “It’ll be about male friendship, how buttoned up we are, how we struggle to open up to each other about our soulful side,” he says. Who better to stir up that discussion than the frank and fearless Reverend Matt?
Being Reverend, A Diary, by Matt Woodcock is published today by Church House Publishing.
As you celebrate the tenth anniversary of ASFF in York, what fills you with pride, Cherie?
“BRINGING a celebration of creativity, film, digital media and culture to the wonderful city of York, where I’ve been for nearly 20 years now.
“We’ve done something that no-one else in the country has done, fusing a cutting-edge festival with a city’s history, creating a bone-fide festival that last year drew over 26,000 people to York, which shows that we’ve got it right.
“The programme is right; the city of York is right, as we create an experience for both visitors to the city and people who live here, while also supporting York’s status as a UNESCO City of Media Arts.
“It’s been a heck of a journey and it took a lot of vision when nothing like this had been done in the city before, then growing it further and further each year. So, here’s to the next ten years.”
Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2020 runs online from November 3 to 30. Go to asff.co.uk to download the full programme.
Deborah Tracey: Semi-performed reading of Alison Carr’s Dogwalker at the SJT
NEWSFLASH 3/11/2020
IN light of Lockdown 2 starting on Thursday, this week’s semi-staged readings of Alison Carr’s Dogwalker are moving from Friday and Saturday to tomorrow (4/11/2020) at 6.30pm and 8.30pm. “And we have some availability!,” says the SJT. “Your last chance to get your live theatre fix for a little while… http://sjt.uk.com/event/1066/dogwalker
QUESTION. Whose testing play, The Last Quiz Night On Earth, should have been performed at a sold-out Stephen Joseph Theatre in March before you know what struck?
Answer: Alison Carr, award-winning playwright from Bishop Auckland. Good news for Alison comes next week with the November 6 and 7 semi-staged debut reading of her new play, Dogwalker, at the reopened Scarborough theatre.
Performed by Deborah Tracey in The Round at 7.30pm each night, Carr’s dark comedy forms part of a season of pared-back work that permits the SJT to operate at social distance.
In Dogwalker, Helen’s main responsibility since losing her job has been to pick up her dog Harvey’s poo. When she finds a dead body in the neighbourhood dog park, suddenly everyone is paying attention to her. At least for a little while.
Now she has had a taste of the limelight, however, Helen refuses to fade into the shadows without a fight.
Box Of Tricks Theatre Company’s promotional picture for Alison Carr’s The Last Quiz Night On Earth
Dogwalker’s dark hue of humour should appeal to devotees of Fleabag, I May Destroy You and I Hate Suzie, as well as those who encountered Carr’s play Caterpillar, either in the SJT’s 2017 season of play readings or a full visiting production there in 2018.
Dogwalker was submitted through the SJT Open Script Submissions window and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting. Now, the SJT is developing it for a potential run at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Deborah Tracey has pursued a wide and varied career in television, film and on stage, last year performing in artistic director Robert Hastie’s production of Richard Hawley and former York student Chris Bush’s Standing At The Sky’s Edge at the Crucible, Sheffield. Dogwalker is directed by the SJT’s Carne Trust associate director Chelsey Gillard. Tickets cost £10 on 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com.
Oh, and if you had to miss Box Of Tricks Theatre Company’s production of The Last Quiz Night On Earth in March, Carr’s immersive, innovative pre-apocalyptic comedy was aimed at theatre and pub quiz enthusiasts alike, with its promise of “a very different experience of live performance”.
The Stephen Joseph Theatre artwork for Alison Carr’s Dogwalker
“Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2020 will be the most exciting yet,” says director Cherie Federico
TWO of York’s four cinemas, Cineworld and the City Screen Picturehouse, are temporarily closed but the Aesthetica Short Film Festival is responding to Covid-19’s 2020 challenges to the film and events industry with its biggest programme yet.
What’s more, the tenth anniversary edition of this annual autumn highlight of the York culture diary will run all month, from November 3 to 30, rather than the six days first planned before lockdown. No wonder, director Cherie Federico calls it “this beast of a festival” that promises to be “the most exciting yet”.
ASFF 2020 will be held on your phone, TV set, tablet and computer, at home rather than around the city of York, in the necessary concession to taking the festival online for digital and live-streamed events.
“I gave myself an August 1 deadline to decide what festival we should hold, so what I was doing all the time was planning two alternative festivals: a hybrid one, both live and online, or a fully virtual one,” says Cherie.
“So, I’ve been doing double the work. August 1st came and I’m really glad to have made the decision then, as this is now going to be a massive, massive event with more than 100 events taking place online.
“My idea was that it would have to be a bespoke and special experience, something that people would invest time in, which is why we’re extending it to a month, with a month’s pass letting you have a festival in your front room, where you can connect with this amazing independent film content.
“Our festival supports creative industries, brings new to the attention of audiences and continues our ethos of the past nine years, but this year you have to log on online.”
Cherie had no qualms about making the festival digital for 2020. “Most people have a smart TV now, so the concept of watching films at home was already happening,” she says. “Running a festival that can be seen on your TV is almost keeping up with the times, so our festival is transferable, though it’s not replaceable as a live event.”
Films in competition at ASFF 2020 will span animation, documentary, drama, dance, fashion and thriller. This year they will be released in six strands from November 3 to 8, with no fewer than ten programmes per day under the strand titles of Just Another Day On Earth; Humans And Their Environment; Connections: People, Places and Identity; Breaking Down Barriers; Reclaiming Space: Universal And Personal and Keep On The Sunny Side Of Life.
That adds up to 60 films a day, 360 screenings in all, with festival viewers invited to acquire a Festival Pack comprising a festival bag, printed programme, lanyard, the latest edition of Aesthetica magazine and VR [Virtual Reality] cardboards.
“If you’re wondering how you can experience VR films at home, you can order a VR Aesthetica headset for £5.95 online from our website,” says Cherie.
“We’re also probably the only festival that has printed a programme this year, but we felt it was important to mark the tenth anniversary that way.”
Cherie hails another plus point of going digital. “You can pursue your particular interest like being able to watch all the documentaries in the festival if that’s your specialism, so you can create your own festival, but we also want to encourage people to do something they would not normally do, by watching all six strands, each chosen to raise important questions about the world we live in today,” she says.
These cumulative strands of short and feature-length films will be released to virtual passholders from 8am daily and will be available via the festival’s online viewing library until November 30.
ASFF 2020 also will feature 21 guest film programmes, taking in such themes as the climate crisis, new technology, Black Lives Matter and human rights. “Basically, we’re covering every topic that we’re facing as a society, so it’s a really poignant look at the world we live in now,” says Cherie.
Further highlights will be ten showcases for new talent, an online industry market and an industry programme of more than 50 masterclasses, spotlights and panel discussions, giving insights into film productions and exploring filmmakers’ motivations and expertise.
Actress and writer Maxine Peake will give a masterclass, and among the guest speakers will be Oscar-winning director Andrea Arnold; BAFTA-winning filmmaker Sarah Gavron; BIFA-winning and Emmy-nominated documentarian Jeanie Finlay; Oscar- winning sound designer Glenn Freemantle and double Oscar-winning VFX supervisor Paul Franklin (Inception, Interstellar). So too will be animators, cinematographers, editors, production designers and representatives from Film4, BBC Films and Framestore.
One name leaps out from the masterclass programme: York-born Dame Judi Dench discussing her career on screen and stage on November 8 at 4pm. “I’ve been trying to get Dame Judi involved ever since we started the festival, and she said ‘Yes’ this time because of her connection with the city,” says Cherie.
“She’s very happy to lend us her support and expertise to our programme and we’re delighted she is taking part. It was confirmed six weeks ago when normally our programme would have been signed off.”
Looking ahead to next week, Cherie says: “The best thing with ASFF is that you always get a memorable experience, and 2020 will certainly be that with 300 films in competition and 200 other films showing.
“No stone has been left unturned in thinking about what the visitor experience should be like this year and how we can make it special. The digital festival is well designed, navigation online is easy, and we even have an instructional video on how to use this platform.
“Tickets are sold per house, so it becomes very good value for a family of four, and we’re still doing programmes for young children and young adults and still working with schools, where films will be screened this time.”
Tickets are available for 24-hour, seven-day and one-month film and industry passes, as well as a film-only pass for November. Go to asff.co.uk for tickets and to download the full programme.
Steven Isserlis: “Infinitely elegiac encore that seemed to crystallize these sad times”
THE floodgates are beginning to open and performers of stature are returning to our concert halls – those that remain open, that is.
Steven Isserlis brought his cello and his regular pianist, Canadian-born Connie Shih, to become the latest in LeedsTown Hall’s Artists’ Choice chamber music series. Their programme was French or French-inspired, the thrilling exception being Adès’s Lieux retrouvés (Rediscovered Places) of 2009.
The original last movement of Saint-Saëns’s First Cello Sonata of 1872 is not the one normally heard today. He replaced it at the instigation of his mother, who possibly found its themes hard to discern. It still made an energetic opener. A page-turning error near the end (by Isserlis) brought it to a brief halt, but he resumed with redoubled fury. No-one could have minded.
The four Adès sketches contrast aspects of nature – water, mountain, fields – in the first three, with a frantic cityscape at the close. The smoothly flowing waters gradually took on more challenging currents, with heightened cross-rhythms. The mountain proved an arduous ascent to an oxygen-free summit, followed by what sounded like a sudden, disastrous return to base (denied by the composer).
The sweet repose and gently leaping lyricism evoking open fields disappeared into the stratosphere. It was only in the finale – described by the composer as a “cancan macabre” – that we had a moto perpetuo of energetic turbulence, taking both players to their limits. These paintings are not pastels, but brilliantly vivid in their detail. The duo took up the challenge with riveting conviction.
Lullabies by Chaminade and Fauré provided a welcome antidote; they were tenderly delivered. Fireworks returned with Franck’s sonata, originally written (1886) for the violin but here in an authorised transcription by cellist Jules Delsart, published two years later.
Since the piano part remains unchanged, it needs to be handled with care since the lower-voiced cello can easily be swamped. Shih pushed Isserlis hard in the finale, where he tossed his tousled mane without great effect on the balance between the two.
No matter: there was plenty to savour elsewhere, notably in his rich, yearning tone in the second movement and the rambling Fantasia that followed.
Duparc’s only foray into chamber music was a cello sonata, written at the age of 19. Its Lento movement made an infinitely elegiac encore that seemed to crystallize these sad times.
Martin Barrass: Back in pantoland for Strictly Xmas Live In The Park
MARTIN Barrass will be starring in a York pantomime after all this winter.
Dame Berwick’s perennial comic stooge may be missing out on the Covid-cancelled Kaler comeback in Dick Turpin Rides Again at the Grand Opera House, but now he will lead the pantomime section of Strictly Xmas Live In The Park.
Presented by the Bev Jones Music Company in a Covid-secure, socially distanced, open-air performance at the Rowntree Park Amphitheatre, the show will be a one-off on Sunday, December 13 at 2pm.
Martin Barrass as Queen Ariadne in his last York Theatre Royal pantomime, Sleeping Beauty, last winter
“I met Lesley Jones, widow of the formidable York producer and director Bev Jones, five or six weeks ago about doing a Christmas show to get people out and about on a crisp winter’s day,” says Martin.
“I’m thrilled to be taking part, and if you’re wondering why I’m wearing black and pink in the publicity picture, they were Bev’s favourite colours.”
Producer Lesley says: “We are delighted to welcome Martin into our company for this special guest appearance and he fits in so well to the company personality. He will lead the audience in the Christmas song with a drop-down song sheet.”
Martin Barrass, right, with AJ Powell, Berwick Kaler, Suzy Cooper and David Leonard at the February 14 launch of their debut Grand Opera House pantomime, now put back to 2021. PIcture: David Harrison
“I’ve chosen the first song-sheet I ever did at the Theatre Royal…about Yorkshire Puddings!” reveals Martin, as he breaks into song from memory: “‘You can’t beat a better bit of batter on your platter than a good old Yorkshire Pud!’
“I did that with Berwick in Sinbad The Sailor in 1984, and I always remember thinking, ‘Are they going to respond?’, but of course they did!” Nobody does it batter, Martin!
Expect a few seasonal jokes too from Barrass, who will be joined in the festive concert’s panto sequence by Melissa Boyd’s Princess, Terry Ford’s villain and Charlotte Wood’s Silly Billy.
“In addition, we’ll have the Dame, the Fairy Godmother, Prince Charming, Jack Ass and other characters,” says Lesley.
Charlotte Wood as Silly Billy for Strictly Xmas In The Park
“The concert will include all the favourite Christmas songs, such as Santa Baby, Jingle Bell Rock and Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, as well as the fun panto section for all the family.
“There’ll be a visit from Santa Claus for all the children, followed by a moving Carols By Candlelight finale, encouraging a sing-along for everyone.”
Rowntree Park Amphitheatre will play host to a non-alcoholic Festive Mulled Wine Van, selling hot drinks for all the family, whether tea, coffee, hot apple juice or children’s drinks, served with light complimentary snacks.
Melissa Boyd’s Princess and Terry Ford’s villain for the Bev Jones Music Company’s Strictly Xmas In The Park
Rehearsals will be held at Rufforth Institute Hall , socially distanced and under a full Covid risk assessment.
All audience members will be temperature tested on arrival and placed into family private bubble areas.
Family bubble for Sunny Side Up!: John Godber with his wife Jane Thornton and daughters Martha and Elizabeth
“BUMPING” into Britain’s second most performed living playwright as paths crossed while stretching a lockdown leg at Pocklington Canal Head in early July, one question had to be asked.
“Must be plenty of material for a play about Covid-19, John?”. “No comedy there,” replied John Godber.
Nevertheless, the waiting for Godber’s new play is over. Presented by the John Godber Company and Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, the humorous and moving Sunny Side Up! will open in The Round at the SJT tonight (October 28).
Depicting a struggling Yorkshire coast B&B and the people who run it, the world premiere of the former Hull Truck artistic director’s holiday drama will be a family affair, starring the Godber lockdown bubble of writer-director John, wife Jane Thornton and daughter Martha. Elder daughter Elizabeth – who has just enrolled for a PhD at Hull University, studying the poetry of Emily Dickinson, by the way – is participating too as the company stage manager.
“What a strange time it’s been,” says John. “Shortly after I saw you at Pocklington Canal Head, I got a phone-call from Paul Robinson [the SJT artistic director] saying, ‘We want to open in October; I know you’re in a social bubble with Jane, Liz and Martha; would you like to do a new play together this autumn?
“It was like winning the Oscar, to have the opportunity to do your trade again – we’ve not received any Arts Council funding – and just to be clear, we could only do it in these circumstances as a family bubble.”
Reflecting on life in lockdown and beyond in Covid-19 2020, John says: “If we are following the science, which science is it? Watching all the news coverage on TV ends up making you feel ill,” says John.
Stephen Joseph Theatre artistic director Paul Robinson: Invited John Godber to write a play for the autumn season. Picture: Tony Bartholomew
“We live in a significant property with a lot of space but we’re still going mad, climbing up the walls. What’s it like for those living in a cramped apartment with no garden in lockdown? It must be like [Jean-Paul] Sartre. Do politicians understand that?”
John, the son of an Upton miner, has “always voted Labour for lots of reasons”. “We know Covid has been a challenge, but the Government can find all this money for Test and Trace and to pay nine million people’s wages in furlough, yet what an own goal to refuse to support free meals for schoolchildren in the holidays,” he says.
Sunny Side Up! is not a political comment on Covid times, but more so on how we have reacted to lockdown. “When Paul asked me to write a play, we’d been doing lots of family walks, going to the coast, walking on bridal paths, by canals,” says John.
“I thought there might be something in thinking about what our seaside towns might look like to people going there for the first time or going back after a long time.
“You have to take Scarborough and Filey out of the equation, but I wondered what the function of our seaside towns and villages is. I think they remind us of where we’ve come from, in terms of families enjoying simpler times.”
Fraisthorpe Beach, four miles south of Bridlington, has been one such coastal haven for John. “Have you been there? Mile after mile after mile of unbroken sand, which is just amazing,” he says.
“We’ve started to look at places locally through Covid eyes. I’m certainly looking at simplicity in our lives now. In the early part of lockdown, going on walks from the house, you’d look at a field for the first time that we must have walked past for 30 years and you suddenly think how beautiful it is.
The poster for John Godber’s new play Sunny Side Up!
“Or through walking along the Pocklington Canal, you start looking at the Industrial Revolution and the growth of Pocklington at that time.”
Summing up his philosophy brought on by Covid restrictions, John says: “It’s not about regression; it’s about simplicity.”
This set him on the path of writing Sunny Side Up!, wherein struggling Yorkshire coast B&B proprietors Barney, Tina and daughter Cath share their stories of awkward clients, snooty relatives and eggs over easy in a “seaside rollercoaster that digs into what our ‘staycations’ are all about”.
“This is not a play about Covid, though it has references. It’s more about social mobility,” says John.
“Sunny Side is a fictitious East Coast Yorkshire resort that is so small, you wouldn’t find it on the map, where B&B owner Barney is very much a Brexiteer, a little Englander.
“Graham, a retired university pro-vice chancellor who’s done very nicely through education is invited there by his sister, Tina, and coming up 70 he’s going back to where he came from – a very ordinary background – but he’s never gone back since…until now.
“He sees it’s a place where they have turned the oxygen off. No jobs; no trains; two buses to get there; the nearest dual carriageway 15 miles away.
“But these are fantastic places, almost mythical, where the colouring and the sweep are incredible, so it’s a play about this guy coming to terms with ‘why haven’t I been back here, because it’s amazing?’. He realises his separation from his small-town roots doesn’t match with his reading of the world.”
On a bicycle made for two views: John Godber and Jane Thornton’s clashing cyclists in The Scary Bikers, Godber’s 2019 play about Brexit, bikes and bereavement.. Picture: Anthony Robling
A fast-moving one-act play, 64 minutes straight through, Sunny Side Up! is a “funny, fish-out-of-water story, but it has pathos and there’s magic realism too”, says John. “It’s not rubbing anyone’s nose in it, but those who get it will know what it’s about.
“You can go anywhere in the country and see places that are suffering, places that have been left behind, places that need water…but many of us wouldn’t spot a real person if we passed them in the street, like Graham wouldn’t.
“But here he’s confronted by people he thinks he’s been addressing [in his academic work], only to find he’s not been able to change that world. Just as the Westminster bubble dilutes the politicians from the reality.
“But having said that, this play is also a very humane, very touching, very funny story of a relationship between a brother and a sister.”
Against the backdrop of Covid-19 and renewed talk of a widening North-South divide, John says: “I think we are becoming divisive. There’s a line in the play that says, ‘we have to start again’. We’ve reached that point where we do have to re-start. I’m 64 now and you would have thought this would have been sorted out when we were younger men. Has it ossified, with social mobility no longer being a thing, but why?”
Rehearsed at home, Sunny Side Up! is the second John Godber work in lockdown. “The first one was in May, when I decided to write a 15-part radio drama for BBC Radio Humberside called Essentials, about a family needing to talk to each other,” says John.
“We recorded it in Liz’s walk-in wardrobe, with Martha’s boyfriend, Henry, doing the technical stuff, and we were all in each eight-minute episode.
“It was like The Archers, set around the family breakfast, with the father being a delivery driver for Tesco, delivering essentials.”
“It had a lot of politics in the early version, with them all saying ‘I think you’ll have a legal problem with that,” says John Godber of the writing process for Sunny Side Up!
When the invitation came to write a play for the SJT, John initially saw it as a chance to “draw anything on the canvas” in the prevailing Covid circumstances. “It had a lot of politics in the early version, with them all saying ‘I think you’ll have a legal problem with that’, and I decided, ‘I don’t think people want to sit there in a mask with me ranting about Boris Johnson.”
Under social-distancing measures, the audience capacity is heavily reduced: a new experience for Godber. “It’s fascinating because I’ve had a career of trying to fill theatres, but now you don’t have to ‘fill’ theatres,” says John, whose seven SJT performances have sold out.
“So it’s a bit like the early stuff: Happy Jack, September In The Rain, which I was going back to with The Scary Bikers last year. It’s that meta thing: taking in politics, self-analysis, class, all neatly told with four chairs and a suitcase.”
Those four chairs and a suitcase will next travel to Hull, after Hull Truck artistic director Mark Babych asked Godber to bring Sunny Side Up! to his former stomping ground. “It’s like Back To The Future; all the props in a suitcase and all our stuff in the back of my car,” says John.
As for working in a family bubble: “Martha’s all over me like a rash about the play! She and Liz don’t let me get away with anything. I can take it from Jane, but now it’s from my kids too!”
John Godber Company in Sunny Side Up!, in The Round, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, October 28 to 31: 7.30pm, Wednesday; 1.30pm, 7.30pm, Thursday and Friday; 2.30pm, 7.30pm, Saturday. All sold out. Hull Truck Theatre, November 17 to 22: 7.30pm, Tuesday; 2pm and 7.30pm, Wednesday; 7.30pm, Thursday and Friday; 2pm, 7.30pm, Saturday. Box office: 01482 323638 or at hulltruck.co.uk/whats-on/drama/sunny-side-up/
