The dog ate my homework

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  It’s been more than a month since I lasted posted on here. This ends now! Not that I’ve been idle. Over the past month or two, I’ve been keeping BURN‘s monthly residency at Hackney Attic going (that’s the platform for moving-image work by cabaret artists I started in 2010), and doing a one-off mini-BURN […]

What Makes You Anxious?

The Anxiety Box speaks!

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 Last night was the first edition of Come With Me If You Want To Live, the quarterly cabaret show I’m putting on for Chelsea Theatre. I was really chuffed at how it all went: there was an incredible pop-up exhibition of David Hoyle’s paintings, with guided tour; cheeky vegetable sculptures by Rachel Porter; typically brilliant lip-synchery […]

This machine kills anxiety: cabaret vs late capitalism

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   As you’ll have noticed, there’s a good bit of anxiety around these days. I’ve got loads. You probably have too. I’m anxious about global things, like geopolitical instability and climate change; societal things, like employment prospects and dodgy urban planning; and personal things, like having a substandard body and shortchanging important relationships. Most people, […]

Myra as Maggie on a merry-go-round

A bit of a whirl

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 Dear me, it’s been way too long since I was on here. I know it’s a cliché about blogs that you start enthusiastically and then let them tail off, and in that respect I seem to have become a cliché pretty quickly. My excuse for such negligence is that I’ve been doing lots of other […]

Come With Me If You Want To Live

Come With Me If You Want To Live

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  Excitement! I’m producing and presenting a new quarterly cabaret night for Chelsea Theatre, starting on April 11! The event link is here. We’ve made a press release so I’m just going to paste it in here and let it speak for itself. Oh, also thanks to Adrian Kinloch for the amazing background photo (which will be […]

10 things to see at BFI Flare (formerly LLGFF) 2014

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 Who doesn’t love a makeover? For more than a quarter of a century, it’s been the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival but last year, the British Film Institute decided it was time to change things up and went looking for a new name for the capital’s biggest queer screenfest. The result is BFI Flare […]

Waxie Moon image © Tim Summers

Five reasons you need to meet Waxie Moon

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 Glamour, tragedy, gentleness, fierceness, masc, fem, a leather flogger and a magic wand. Waxie Moon has got it all. Seattle’s favourite “gender-blending queer lady boylesque performance art solo stripping sensation” is a truly phenomenal one-off who can rock a dive bar, classical dance stage or riverbank graveside with the same mix of grace, camp and […]

Nir Paldi stars in Theatre Ad Infinitum's Ballad of the Burning Star

‘Play the Nazi music!’ Why cabaret and drag are ideal for a show about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

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 During their period of compulsory national service, which kicks in at the age of 18, most Israelis serve in the military. When Nir Paldi was conscripted, he didn’t undertake combat training. He directed a production of Hair, the musical. “It’s hilarious,” Paldi says. “There’s this youth regiment in the Israeli army that works in collaboration […]

Timberlina

12 alternative Valentine events

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 Valentine’s Day. Ugh. Can you bear it? Well, here’s a dozen fun things to do in London this weekend that involve neither trying to book an overpriced set-menu dinner nor having to avoid smug couples on their way to overpriced set-menu dinners.   Ideas Tap Takeover: Love Lots of cabaret, theatre, film and spoken word […]

Sharia Law photo by © Adrian Kinloch

Out in the Manor with Sharia Law

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 As well as being the brains behind the web design for Not Television (and innumerable fantastic sites elsewhere), Adrian Kinloch is a stellar photographer. British born, living in New York and often in London, he has an acute, intelligent, sensitive and witty eye for a range of situations, from political protests to derelict borderlands, always managing to […]