January: this month I am mostly seeing...

I have a feeling this year theatre will make or break me. On the one hand, I’m going to be attempting to make a go of it as an independent producer (those words scare me terribly but if I say them often enough I might believe in them a bit more) and will be seeing as much of it as I can. I’m back in London and suddenly it seems as though a whole feast of delights has been laid on just for me. However on the other, this may give me indigestion: having got into indulgent habits as a staff member receiving free or cheap tickets at regional theatres I’ve already booked more tickets than I can afford for the first couple of months of 2012 and if I go on like this I may well be bankrupt before the year end. However, until that happens, I plan to enjoy myself. Here's what I'm seeing this month - I think this is the full list but you never can tell.

I'm definitely booked into:

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU 
Royal Exchange Theatre in association with Told By An Idiot

Interesting in itself for being a rare co-production for the Royal Exchange, I skipped (figuratively. Literally I took the train) up to Manchester yesterday to start my theatre year with this entertaining show. In many ways not really my thing: quite apart from anything else, and I don’t know whether it’s just being from the newly attention deficit generation, I often find what you might call more traditional “plays” – scripted playwright-driven two-act-with-an-interval never-out-before-ten dramas – hard work. I wanted to see this because though recognising it as a very high quality production I was never quite grabbed by The Fahrenheit Twins but have always heard excellent things about Told By An Idiot. So, as I’ve said, I found it entertaining and often extremely funny; I really enjoyed some of the physical comedy, particularly Sophie Russell’s hopeless but fervent dancer, Essie; and the audience were enjoying themselves mightily which, you know, should be high up there as an important thing with something that's meant to be a comedy. Personally, still not quite convinced, but interested to see what comes next.

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE
Southwark Playhouse in association with Arts Collective

This is tomorrow’s treat – I was looking for theatre which uses film and projection innovatively and someone suggested this on the new Guardian Culture Professionals Network. Diana Wynne Jones is probably my all time favourite author (if you haven’t read her yet, please do right now, and the book of this name, also adapted for film by Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Spirited Away, is a good one to start with) so I had to go anyway, but I also checked out some film footage of the creative team's last project The Ice Book and was intrigued. Haven’t been to Southwark Playhouse before yet either so all the more reason.

BLACKBIRDS
London Bubble Theatre Company

I was given the opportunity to book for this, the end result of an intergenerational project about people who experienced the Blitz, alongside the Ages and Stages conference on intergenerational theatre. I’m going to that because I'm keen to do more intergenerational work at some point – excited, for example, that Rosemary Lee is on the panel as I thought Common Dance in 2009 looked like a really excellent piece of work – so this will be interesting.

JERUSALEM
Royal Court

Well, I have to, don’t I, given any possible chance? After all the reviews about Mark Rylance’s performance in particular and what everyone’s said? And I almost left it too late. 

A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS
Little Angel Theatre in association with Kneehigh Theatre

I’ve always been intrigued by how Kneehigh balance their really local origins – which still seem core to what they do - with being a professional and nationally (internationally?) successful theatre company. I’ve also wanted to see something by Little Angel for ages. I haven’t seen a lot of puppet theatre but would like to, and from what I’ve heard this should be really good. 

LOVESONG
Frantic Assembly and Drum Theatre Plymouth, in association with Chichester Festival Theatre

More and more I love physical theatre – if I was a performer myself this is what I’d like to do - and Frantic Assembly are so good at it. Have heard great things about Lovesong. The company are also dead nice. Not important for the quality of the theatre – arguably, anyway - but always good to know.

I'd like to see these too but not sure I can...

SURVIVOR
Anthony Gormley and Hofesch Shechter

I don't know that much about dance (though this isn't a dance piece, by the way) but I do know Shechter is a brilliant choreographer: I saw a couple of his pieces in Plymouth. I was impressed by the total muscle control of the dancers and exhilarated by the music. I also really liked the way he thinks so carefully about the audience experience of the work as well as the work itself: he uses very simple things like house lights and blackouts to manipulate this so that one moment it is as though you're watching a film and the next you're ultra aware you're in a theatre with a live experience. More recently I really enjoyed his audio piece for Fuel’s Everyday Moments series, in collaboration with the Guardian: I really recommend experiencing it particularly if you quite enjoy dancing with your eyes shut and losing yourself to the moment. You can also read what he says about it here. So, this musical collaboration with Gormley is a step in a different direction which I’d like to hear, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to this time round, at least (the money thing again, oh and time).

FRANKLAND AND SONS
John and Tom Frankland

Mainly because I read a lovely article on Exeunt by Tom Frankland on working with his father. Again I’m not sure I’ll make it, but I’ll be sorry not to.

100 things: Baker Street tube station

Baker Street is obviously most famous for its associations with Sherlock Holmes and I'd almost forgotten there was a tube station there until being driven past it last week and coincidentally also dropped off there today, returning from Oxfordshire where I'd been for New Year's Eve.

I spotted this plaque on the wall and it reminded me that however much I hate the tube sometimes, it's pretty amazing that here we are, still using the world's first underground railway. This platform, now home to the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, is the oldest at Baker Street tube station, which was originally built for the Metropolitan and St John's Wood railway (now of course the Metropolitan Line) and was later also a terminus for the Baker Street & Waterloo railway: now the Bakerloo line. For comparison there is a nice chromolithograph of the platform as it looked in 1863 here.

100 things: Reformers' Tree monument

Just happened across this yesterday when randomly walking across Hyde Park (because the Circle Line was down and District Line closed between High Street Kensington and Edgware Road leaving no sensible way of getting from Chiswick to Lancaster Gate on the tube, grumble grumble). It's to commemorate a tree which was burned down in the Reform Riots of 1866, the stump of which then became a noticeboard for political demonstrations (all from the Press Factsheet on the Royal Parks website). Apparently a new tree was planted in 1977 but I couldn't tell if that had since gone or if this monument was not actually on the site of the tree.

My historical knowledge being appalling I didn't know about the Reform Riots but here's some info from the National Archive website:

Following the 1832 Reform Act, periodic demands for the extension of the right to vote continued. Further attempts at parliamentary reform took place in the 1860s. By 1865, both Liberal and Conservative leaders, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, were convinced of the case to extend voting rights. In 1866 reform demonstrations turned to riots in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 extend parliamentary voting rights: firstly in 1867 to the urban adult male householders and male lodgers paying £10 for unfurnished rooms, and secondly in 1884 to men living in the countryside (under the same conditions).

Having a lovely time at the theatre, darling

So, here we are the day before Christmas, and I haven't done anything on my list since the Rivoli Ballroom, but it's not because I've been sat inside my house refusing to enjoy anything that London has to offer. Apart from the run up to Christmas taking up time in itself (especially when it comes with various obligations which are too insanely traditional to be believed, including choir robes, candles, trebles singing 'Once in Royal David's City' and having a handy bottle of brandy in my pocket for carol singing round the streets) this month has largely been about theatre. And I am ENJOYING what London (and the locality) has to offer theatrically wise. I think I'm subconsciously forgetting that all this costs actual real money, unlike my halcyon days working at the country's best attended regional theatre where seeing something different every week came for free, and I'm just booking in for things left right and centre. In fact, I haven't even yet seen half of the theatre I've planned, but I have been thinking about, talking about, dreaming about and practically eating theatre for breakfast.

Taking my cousin's older son, who is nearly three, to two different but equally excellent children's shows has been a real pleasure - he is very sweet when watching a show. He narrows his eyes slightly and watches intently but with a considering look, and asks pertinent questions if he doesn't quite understand what's going on. We could all hang on to a bit of that mindset. I'm hoping I can carve a role for myself in the family generally as the cool aunt / first cousin once removed (if we're going to be accurate) who takes the next generation to amazing theatrical events. Even my cousin's six month old enjoyed himself.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to theatre as they grow up. For the last few years there has been a huge push from those arts organisations who might be seen as elitist - mostly big building based companies creating theatre in traditional forms such as 'straight' theatre, opera, ballet - to change their image, and hopefully their actual working methods too, while equally some of the smaller independents as well as education, youth and community theatre have all gained status within the theatrical world. However there is also a divide between those latter kinds of theatre and "popular" theatre: the musicals, mostly. The theatre I find most interesting is exploring and testing those divides: what makes theatre high quality, accessible, enjoyable, challenging, entertaining? Is it possible or even desirable for it to do all those things at once? It's not a new question I know.

I think the most exciting thing for me right now is that I'm finally in a position where I might be able to start exploring some of this for myself, rather than through the policies of the companies who employ me, and for real rather than through academic papers. I've learnt a hell of a lot and continue to through the people I work for, and I realised the other day through both a session at Devoted and Disgruntled and the Improbable Mentoring Fete that the journey as an independent producer, which I've been finding so bemusing as a prospect, might not be so different. Find the people and the theatre that interests you, see what you might have in common, try and work with them if you can, and see where that takes you. It's enormously exciting, though not a little scary too. It might well not work, but I've been on wild goose chases before and survived. So, this Christmas, for me, it's "here's to the occasional wild goose." May we all enjoy the chase.

100 things: Rivoli Ballroom

Behind an unprepossessing bingo hall style frontage, deep in South West London, is the Rivoli Ballroom, a red-tinted world of gilt, velvet and dancing. It's over the top, down to earth, camp, cliquey and accessible all in the same breath.

We went to Jacky's Jukebox, £9 entry, a night which happens on the first Saturday of the month and which has a mix of all sorts of music, mainly heavily romantic. There was an exhibition dance taking place as we arrived and then it featured everything from an Argentinian Tango to waltzes, the polka, line dancing and even seventies disco. We'd gone for a girls' night out dancing. It was really completely the wrong place for that: there were a lot of quite formal couple dances and almost everyone knew all the moves, so we spent most of the evening watching from the sidelines. However, people seemed to be having a fabulous time and on the odd occasions (the easier line dances, Saturday Night Fever, and one of our number who was a little bit more skilled and so could dare to ask someone to polka) we did get up and have a go, everyone was perfectly friendly and put up with our ineptitude.

The ballroom features in Elton John's original 1983 video for I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues but to really experience it you need to go. It's a gem.