Okay, so maybe I shouldn't be writing about this until I get safely out of the UK. But I don't think anyone I am involved with over here reads my blog any way. So here goes. I won't mention names just in case.

I am performing in a show of 13 contemporary artist who are presenting their own “time based art” at the opera house in Manchester. `”Time based art” is the new term for “performance art”. You know the kind of performers who stare at a piece of cheese on stage for an hour and call it drama.

I am in the company of some of the greatest artist in the world. I am actually the “project” of one of the artists who is directing the show. My job is to be the ringmaster/emcee of this show trying in words to make sense of it all, while not moving my lips. Yeah, I have to communicate this complicated metaphoric symbolism with out the use of my lips. The microphone is a huge magnifying glass that makes my lips look the size of my head. It is like a magician sawing a woman in half using a clear box and an exacto knife.

One very famous American artist is presenting the longest piece of the show. It involves a 50 foot tall ramp coming down from the back of the stage . The stage is set with a wrecked car, Grecian pottery and what seems to be a junk yard of stuff. Several people carry in a dead body on a stretcher, a real bull is lead down the ramp dressed in a golden crown making three circles around the car and then mounting (yes in the sexual way) the wrecked car, while two half naked contortionists do back bends. The artist (wearing a dog in his head.. yes a real dog) and a squad of people dressed in Egyptian costumes look on while one of the contortionist urinates. I could not make this up. I watched them rehearse it for three hours yesterday.

I am not biting the hand that feeds me, but here is what I am learning about art. Art is mostly the guts to make people believe that what you are doing is important. While the bull is being lead around the stage yesterday 50 stage hands are watching in silence and a film crew is making a documentary of the experience. You would think this was a demonstration of the cure for cancer.

This was only day two of four rehearsals. I have been asking for a script to learn for about a month. I didn't get it until last night. One French lady said, “Are you really quick at learning a lot of material?” Yipes, why am I writing this and not studying.

As you were,
Jay