MARGARET ATWOOD at Edinburgh Festival

Margaret Atwood came across as a very eccentric lady indeed.
She is a very sharpe;perceptive ; astute and extremely funny person.This event was an early phase of an extraordinarily ambitious and very long tour.One facet , performed earlier in the day involved a musical programme set to the various poems in her new Book The Year of the Flood.I managed to read the first 3 pages , it gets straight to the point and seems to be shaping up into a cracking entertaining read.Im hoping to get a loan of a copy sometime later in the year.

Atwood has also recently written a wide ranging and exhaustive , and astonishingly highly entertaining , Book about the topic of debt called " Payback: Debt and the shadowside of wealth" and how it shapes society.It is based on a series of very well received lectures she gave , the timing could not have been better for the publication date as the first signs of a major debt crises began to manifest themselves.

Hear her discussing the issues in the video below:


At the end we managed to worm our way through the snakelike crowd to get the Book autographed.

GILLIAN SLOVO at Edinburgh Festival

Gillian Slovo comes from a highly politicised Family.Her father was a very prominent member of the ANC , participating as a leading member of the military wing.Gillians mother was executed by the South African secret police when she opened a letter bomb which exploded in her face.The influence of her parents have rubbed of on her strong commitments to social justice and state oppression political stands.She co-wrote along with Victoria Brittain a chillingly brilliant play about the mistreatment of captives at Guantanamo Bay , a hugely impacting successful play which was a smash hit in the UK and also enjoyed a successful run on Broadway.Gillian is also a signatory on the Jews for Justice for Palestinians based in the UK , also amongst the signatories are the late Harold Pinter and Will Self , along with over 1500 others.

She has also written Books about the South African Truth Commission ( The Red Dust)and a superb story of a womans survival during the siege of Lenningrad ( The Ice Road).

She gave a very sharp and alluring performance , relating her specific techniques to get a feel for the environment she is writing to capture , describing Sri Lanka ( the part location of her new novel) to a paradise.It looked for a while the meeting would get an entirely non-political account of the Island until the gifted Scottish Poet Jim Aitken asked a question concerning her on the ground understandings of the situation involving the Tamils.Suddenly Gillian burst forth like an orchid , which forms the title of her current Book , and gave an intricate ; fully detailed precise account of the situation that showed of her political senses to a rapturous degree.

Her main point was the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict started during the time the British were training a Sinhalese only elite to gain the reigns of power when they ultimately left.The Sinhalese , for their part , made the cardinal folly to elevate the Sinhalese language as the official language to be used by the state bureaucracy and the school system.This virtually relegated the Tamil Language and culture to an inferior sub-status , hence creating the roots that led to a bitter conflict making the paradise landscape Gillian describes in her Book into a living Hell for the People in the North.

Here is a interview she gave recently on Al-Jazeera:



Near the end she made an observation that many immigrant children could heartily agree with , when she went to South Africa in the 90s the phenomenon of feeling a stranger in the land of her birth and a stranger in her adopted home , a feeling many can entirely understand and empathise with.

NOT SPAIN by Sheffield Firemans Room Theatre Company

Not Spain is based in the Balkans at the height of the media interest in the conflict.The director mentions the myriad of understandings which the break up of the region fostered.Each based on heartfelt nuances of various ethnic groupings relations with others , some working to forge a multi-ethnic society capable of thriving into the new century, others led by ancient bitterness , making fertile pleas for a situation nothing short of ethnic cleansing.

A Man suffering Balkan style meets a Western reporter he assisted by , apparently, relieving her of the camera she carried ,at a checkpoint where the possession of a camera at the time may have resulted if her being relieved of her life had she been spotted by the gun-totting guards.She , herself, is suffering in a very Western way , everything is waiting for her at home materially ( including a boyfriend) , but emotionally and spiritually all in empty inside , a void that no material possessions can fill.

He relates a situation that occurred in Littlehampton.A Macedonian restaurant he was working in at the time Karadzic was standing trail at the Hague for the massacre of several thousand civilians at Srebrenica he was most surprised whenever the name of the war criminal was mentioned the staff would chant in a pro-patria manner "Serbu!, Serbu!".This makes the director wonder , not surprisingly , why Macedonians would be so partial to Serb nationalists killing members of non-Serbian populations in Bosnia.The director is caught between wondering if colleagues have a more nuanced sensitive understanding of the region. Maybe it is a parallax-mystery , or maybe still that the colleagues the director worked with were appreciative of any , even non-Macedonian that killed and murdered Muslims was worthy of the highest acclamations and cheerful appreciation.

The playwright , in his case, seeks to explore the pornography of suffering style intrusion for voyeuristic purposes the western media engaged in as well as the condescending lack of depth analysis of the conflict , this exploration is summed up when the local admits to having given the journalists an account that is closer to the "story" the media editors want as opposed to the truth " You want to me to tell you that the way you live is right , the way we live is wrong , and if only we were more like you , everything is right.".The drama also looks at the hypocritical attitude of Western Democracies which allowed a situation in which large European cities were surrounded by armies enacting world war 2 style bombing and sieges for over 2 years whilst the entrapped population appealed for rescue to much public empathy , though no political will.I wonder how long it would have took the West to mobilise if a Christian city of a quarter of a million was being besieged by a Muslim Army?

The set is sparse , as one would expect , and the acting is constrained by the audience forming a large arc around the stage.This makes the standing positions the gallant actors are compelled to adopt extremely difficult to affect the closeness between them the play demands.Though crueler persons than i would say this play would have been ideal to stage in mid-December , so that the actors could be chopped up to make a warm homely fire , i have nothing but admiration of these fine students performing a piece in trying circumstances.

THERESE at Edinburgh festival

A quite remarkable and sharp rendition of the classic Zola tale of betrayal and guilt by a highly talented and superbly marshaled bunch of girls from The Cheltenham Ladies College.

A highly innovative production which shows a level of sophistication that would be a challenge for a professional drama company is carried of superbly.The degree of difficulty of the delivery of lines , each participant is required to deliver a clause at a time to narrate the story,makes hard work for the students , the few occasions where the metronome was slightly awry was glossed over with delicate grace, thus the actresses never allowed the odd missed note to faze their performance in the least.

The story itself is one of the punishment for the crime is the crime itself , the protagonists can never rationally come to terms with the action taken , guiltridden and emotionally weighed down by crippling remorse, they suffer a miserable existence instead of the harmonious escape the action initially promised ,which they can only escape by killing themselves.

DIARY OF A MADMAN at Edinburgh Fringe

This one man play had an excellent pedigree , having won a best play of 2007 award.

The dialogue faithfully follows the Gogol short story.As with one man plays the acting is intense , with rich flowing movement.The simple set and touchingly emotive lighting also give a wonderfully complimentary emotional garment to the piece.

The St.Petersburg of Gogols day was an artificial town populated by a vast hierarchy of bureaucracy.An environment of craven social progressing laced with a deadening void of alienation.Certainly not a place to Gogols taste.

The Pain and suffering , both within and outwith , for the poor unfortunate plaintiff , of a deliberately grinding and mindnumbingly perpetual stalled bureaucracy designed to be a barrier to any trends challenging the status quo of the ruling order is also examined in mindsplitting irony.

The story itself is said to be one of the first recorded cases of schizophrenia , the real question is whether it is a disease of chemical imbalance or a disease of modern living.A question that seems to come up today with an added urgency as contracts take over from careers.

TARIQ ALI at the Edinburgh Bookfest

Tariq Ali is a very Charismatic and Engaging Speaker.Always stimulating , challenging.

This was a rare occasion to see his analytical skills applied to Literature and how it can never be detached from the political currents of the time.The definition of a classic work is one that articulated the sentiments of its time and managed to break out to universal appreciation.He perceptively identified the literature of today has a difficult task to express itself politically because of the corporate nature of publishing , leading onto the requirements to fill mass markets.An opposite reading to Zafons understanding that writers like Cervantes or Dickens were popular in their time.The faultline in the two theses appears to be the definition of being popular , as regards to being populist.Todays market can stifle the former and manufacture the later.

Tariq started , after a few ubiquitous ribald observations of the Festival sponsor the RBS , by mentioning post-reformation poets such as Milton were very much Politically active , even , like Schiller enjoying roles in the post-revolution cabinet.

Tariq thought Miltons dismissing of Shakespeare on the very narrow grounds that he tolerated the Monarchy , or rather the systems of Monarchy , was somewhat ungenerous if not extreme as , in Shakespeares day there was no other system that could even come close to a viable stable coherent alternative.Such a narrow parameter to dismiss the work of a master was unkindly unkind.Marxs , certainly , was a great admirer of Shakespeare , heavily quoting the Bard when describing the excesses of elites of his day.

The historical conditions in the time of Cervantes were also cited to allay the false understanding his work was non-political charades.Cervantes was operating at a time when Jews and Muslims had recently been ethnically cleansed , yet others had been made to forcibly convert , yet still the inquisition was diligent with an astonishing zeal to find and discover those that had converted , though not quite enough to convince they did not closetly retain the old Semitic beliefs.Cervantes was one such forcibly converted citizen and , according to Tariq , his work has to be seen in that light to get a full appreciation of his work.Even to this day , the relevant Spanish Ministries are very touchy about even acknowledging , yet alone admitting , the Semitic ancestry of Spains greatest literary figure.

He also discussed the French figures Stendhal and Balzac , The Scarlet and the Black was highly praised by Balzac in public though he confided to Friends in private that Stendhal mentioned everything except the one those mattered to French society most at the time...Money.

Having chided Milton, albeit mildly , for dismissing Shakespeare on a very narrow margin , Tariq then seemed to use the Milton Doctrine to fault Tolstoy portrayal of Kutuzov.Tariq main objection is that Kutuzov owned Serfs.It has to be said in those days , just like in Shakespeares days Monarchy was the system , even the lower middle class had Serfs.Dostoyevski's wedding dowry contained an allowance of serfs.It is ungenerous to find fault with Tolstoy on that narrow point as it was unkind of Milton to do so about Shakespeare.Tolstoys portrayal of Kutozov had to reflect the unassailable fact he was the Commander-in-Chief , and he was placed to defend the Slavs from a foreign invasion.Tolstoys real political contribution is that he replaced the genuinely hagiographical history taught in Czarist Russia with a realism merging events and narrative to try get inside the heads of the protagonists in order to understand and explain root causes to such things as War without exciting the censor.

HILARY SPURLING at Edinburgh Book Festival

If there was reincarnation Hilary Spurling would certainly come back as a bunny , not only has she written a quite superb biography of Henri Matisse , she also mastered the Art of rabbiting on and on.She had the skill so well honed , even the masterful , experienced Chair Ruth Wishart was unable to interrupt for the first 40 minutes of the talk.The special quality in the technique of Hilarys soliloquy is that she seems almost at the point of hitting the punchline at any time , though that time ,like catching your shadow , never quite comes.

But that is merely an observation and should at no point detract from the remarkable achievement of a biography which helps Henri Matisse to claim his rightful place as a genuine and highly influential Master Artist.

She explained the difficulty of hunting down the story of Matisse , an endeavour of Sherlockian investigative proportions with , in typical French style , of little assistance and a lot of stinging snooty objections.But to her eternal credit she delivered something vital ; correcting a mass of misinformation masquerading as fact and most importantly digging Matisses reputation from the six feet of mud and dirt laid on him by foe and so called friends alike in what was an early use of negative spindoctoring.

It did not help for the case of putting Matisse back to his rightful place , that some of his finest work was only known as titles , but never seen for many decades,in some cases not until the 1990s.This was because a mass of his early work was bought by Russian collectors based in St.Petersburg , after the revolution their collections ended up in Soviet Archives , viewed very rarely.Another massive archive of his work was bought by an eccentric billionaire called Barnes , he stipulated when making his Foundation very strict criterion that more or less made the works owned by him to be keep from public view.

One slight disappointment was , unlike her informative biography , there was not a presentation of his work with vignettes of the background history behind them.This is covered in glorious detail in her two volume biography , along with breathtaking print quality.

Strangely , Matisse is not regarded with the respect and honour one would expect in France even today.It may well be that a French Translation of Spurling is what changes that appreciation.

So to honour Matisse here is a mini-gallery of some of his astonishing work.

CARLOS RUIS ZAFON at Edinburgh Book Festival

Carlos is a very modest looking and unassuming Man.He gives an air of comely grace mixed with an effervescent manner.A casual easy-going insouciance is shown with his arrival wearing the same rugby style top in the picture attached.

His attitude is to be a teamplayer with the interviewee , giving full anecdotal answers , though never crossing the point of surfeit.He is an Excellent English speaker as well as Spains biggest selling author since Cervantes.

He declares himself a storyteller , in as much as storytelling is a craft, a craft which Carlos determined to master from a very early age.Execution of a marvelous story is the goal , substance is most desired , but a well executed story with limited substance is what matters in the end,If it is told well, it is a good story.

His Father had a very eclectic taste in Books ranging from Penny Dreadfuls;Gothic Thrillers and the works of Steinbeck , sitting cheek to jowl with Harold Robbins.From that grounding Carlos learned the craft which has led to his recent big sellers and also an early appreciation there should be no snobbery in Stories/Books.

He paid his dues in the field of writing with jobs scribbling advertising material , which helped him sharpen the need to capture the reader early on , screenwriting , which he enjoyed a lot more and then established popularity as a writer of older schoolchildrens Books.Being a professional craftsman he stock to the only rope available in a world in which fellow writers would find a degree of success only to be wiped away like a short-lived pitiful patina on the shores of an unforgiving industry.Eventually he managed to elevate his readership and fame with the hugely popular and critically acclaimed Shadow of The Wind.

The very strengths which made Shadow a universal best seller , imagination; innovation ; re-packaging an older classical genre and a slow fuse thriller are being used for what will be a Four Part Quadrilogy from " four differing entry points" , this , according to Carlos , makes the second part The Angel' Game a prequel and sequel at one and the same time.There are concerns the strong points of Shadow can become the very weaknesses in the rest of the coming parts , yielding to lack of imagination ; repetitiveness and a parody of an old genre. .Heres hoping he can pull it off.

To his credit Zafon is adamant that he will never allow the Shadow Books every be made into Films, " over my dead body " he says.

To exemplify his down to earth humble approach , as we were leaving Charlotte Square , we saw Zafon sitting at an outside Restaurant sipping a Pint.

WALDEN at Gillmorehill12

There are no hiding places in a one man play , which makes it the most stimulating and rewarding interaction between the espousing , almost an expurgation , of an idea.To be communicated psyche to psyche.A way of effortlessly passing barriers any other form of presentation would flounder upon and getting to the very marrow.

A blessing , albeit a brilliant furtively disguised one ,of the cutting of funding in the arts , and the corporatisation of the funding bodies which routinely attract as members shocktroops whose self-imposed diligent duty is to extract the political from "culture".To entertain and educate has been streamlined to entertain.Engagement with the audience is seen as challenging the doctrine of "impartiality" a la BBC , balance has hit the stage , making observations that are not of the observational situational medium taboo for general mass funding.This has meant meaningful statements are of necessity obliged to look for one man stage shows to articulate thoughts , the equivalent of the age of pamphleteers with all the wit;satire and wisdom that such a medium can provide us.

A quite remarkable subject for a one man play is Walden performed by Magnetic North , based on the account by Henry David Thoreau on a spell spent on the edge ( not necessarily detached) from society.An effort to "Simplify;simplify;simplify" life , have two or three things to deal with , not hundreds and thousands.An effort that is more difficult to accomplish today , with debt and contracts controlling the show called life.

According to the Magnetic North Blurb "On 4 July 1845, Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods near his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts and decided to stay. He built a hut next to a lake called Walden Pond and for the next two years attempted to live entirely by his own resources. As well as discovering the thrill of living life at no-one's behest but his own, Thoreau found something else - himself. Walden, Thoreau's account of his life in the woods, is one of the most extraordinary and unclassifiable books ever written."

As i sat for the play to begin , suddenly the person next to me starting moving about in a stimulated robotic trance , suddenly jolted into a charge of life , seemingly having a fit, starting uttering the strangest of disconnected semicoherent musings.Only when he stepped in the centre of the space i realised he was the actor and the performance had begun.Occasionally he would venture from the centre and park his butt next to me as the stage directions merited.I did find him looking at me when telling the story of an "old man" he would observe on the other side of the lake a little offputting somewhat.

The play itself is quite brilliant , touching upon the Human and natural spiritual values of the Book.Scottish Theatre has been producing superb work of late and this is a very worthy gem on the crown of this successful rich seam , long may it continue.

Particular passages really hit the spot for me , one goes " We could be blessed if we always lived in the present and took advantage of every accident that befell us , rather than spending our time atoning for the neglect of past opportunities.we loiter in winter when it is already spring."

Another one is " Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger , or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around this continent , that we should seek?
We could be a Columbus to whole New Continents and Worlds within us , opening new channels , not of trade , but of thought."

These two are only near the end , there are many more in this quite remarkable and superb piece of inspirational work.

MARK THOMAS at THE STAND EDINBURGH

The latest tour by social justice supporting comedian Mark Thomas is called Manifesto.He is going around the country getting democracy on the ground up and running as he gets audiences to suggest policies that will be eventually presented to Parliament using formal procedures.In this particular leg he was collating a policy to present to the Scottish Parliament on August 19th.


The last 2 tours i seen of him had extremely funny though limited material concerning the exclusion zone around protest restrictions and painful bureaucratic registration limitations around whitehall.

This time we enjoyed a wider zone of flexibility and saw a fuller range of his rapier Swiftian Action backed satirical wit.

Here he is in typical blistering form:



You can keep abreast of a range of issues and developments in his website.

GO TO GAZA , DRINK THE SEA

One remarkable , and most welcome , process during the Gaza offensive and War of annihilation by the Modern Weaponry of Israels western armed force that petered out when the spirit of the Gazans refused to be cowed was the rapid reaction in the alternative media to the events of late December and January 2009.In almost real time the world wide web was filled with stories , meticulous analysis,live feeds, as quick , if not faster than the established state propaganda sleek machines could belabour the public conscience with the usual hype about War on Terror , precision strikes, attacking military targets only and the usual hyperbole that passes for unbalanced reportage of the bombing of civilians and civil infrastucure ( electrical supply grids ; water pumps;food storage areas , not to mention centres run by the Catholic Church Charity Cavitas as well as UN food distribution centres and schools).

Right from the off the mainstream news sources carefully embedded in the Israeli IDF information locations , were miles behind in getting on the ground coverage from Al-Jazeera ( with news teams within Gaza itself) and especially the blogosphere both from within Gaza and from those linking to in-depth resources homed from the Lebanon War of 2006.

As the Israeli army were busy earning the epaulet "have failed in their military objectives" to replace the torn tattered reputation of the glorious 60s, so too did the Mainstream media have to deflect their editorial course to follow the blogosphere logic as it been clear the Human spirit would see off 21st century live ammunition.The fight in the media was not dissimilar to comparing the means of a 21st century Military machine competing with RPGs.The ability for independent internet sources to react quicker than the Mainstream media made a telling contribution.Suddenly even the BBC had to change the impartial relating of Israeli spokespeople pontificating ,as the civilian toll rose , every Hospital and School bombed brought Stability and Civilisation closer and closer , to showing images of the destruction of civilian life and homes.

For Israel the hurting defeat was not the Military one.The really sore one was the defeat of the Image of Israel in the media.They were beaten simply because the Palestinian got an ever small ;still marginal airing of their side of the story in a time of War.

Go to Gaza , Drink the Sea was one such rapid reaction , this time a artistic and cultural one written whilst the conflict was still ongoing.

For a brilliant review of the play go no further than this piercing piece by Eileen Fleming

My Pal noticed right away the set design using the imagery of Piles of shoes , Zionists has been quick out the traps trying to copyright this metaphor of suffering and Human Misery , as if to say the Palestinians have no right to use Shoes to convey their plight , as by doing so they are trying to equate Israeli Treatment to the crimes of the Nazis , which by the Zionist apologists warped logic is another unacceptable wanton example of Anti-Semitism.

The play is a powerful articulation of the tragedy suffered by the Palestinians , far more eloquent than political speeches of academic lectures could ever be.This is because it is a Simple Human Story told by Humans.

If you already sympathise with the suffering of the Palestinians it will re-invigorate one , if you have not encountered the issue , then this play will in the introduction that will bring you round.

I LIKE TO BE A PLAY EVERY AFTERNOON by GERTRUDE STEIN

A segued piece by the CalArts School of Theatre combining 2 plays , the first segment has 3 brash confident looking roaring twenties dudettes entwined in pregnant pauses ; pulling faces and other almost but not quite there communications.Not a little different to social networking sites style we have today.Superficially they seem to be almost together , but the substance is a freefall.

The second half provides the other great counterpoint to modern communication as the characters are joined by some others obliged to make a spectacle of themselves.Loud incoherent shouting replaces the silence , but the lack of substance shines on like a lamplight left in a dark deserted corner."Look at us! Be with us! We are fun AND useful!" is the running theme as the protagonists veer from the Facebook style non-contact contact sport to the Big Brother style "your in my face , get out of my way , but please dont leave , i need you to be the screen to my film".

The Play and cast do pointingly capture and convey the theme of "the Need to be with" with a light , though stimulating thoughtpiece staging.Very apt and highly amusing play , though its main strength is a bitter aftertaste of aching Angst it leaves one with when they consider their own modern scoreboard on relationships needing tinkering and a whole lot of work in one direction or the other..