Flash Mob | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Theatrical and Musical Adventures from Aubervilliers and Asnières to Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily

July 27, 2023
bradspurgeon

Academy of the Unfulfilled in Palermo Flash Mob

CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – I have been wrapped up in a whirlwind of theatrical and musical adventures over the past month that have been so many and varied that I have had not a single moment to write about them here, despite itching to do so every day. Now I am sitting high in the hills above Castellammare as I start these words, taking a break from setting down harmonies for the next song in a musical show that we will be performing at this Azienda Agricola Acquaviva this coming Sunday, 30 July, and I finally found a moment to get a few words down in the blog about these incredible experiences.

Brad Spurgeon as Einstein in TAC production

The first was my cameo role as Albert Einstein in TAC Teatro‘s next play, the work-in-progress tentatively titled “La Première Fois.” The show is in its early stages of creation, but TAC Teatro put on a show of the work-in-progress at its theater space in Aubervilliers at 164 rue Henri Barbusse. I loved creating this role with Ornella Bonventre directing, because I cannot imagine that many other wonderful true-life personalities to play than Einstein. And, surprise surprise, I discovered through the necessity of growing my hair and my moustache, that I am capable of growing a moustache that is a pretty damn convincing version of the mathematical genius’s moustache! (Now if only I discovered I could also emulate his mathematical genius.) In any case, the show went off very well, with the TAC Teatro actors demonstrating more than ever their diversity of talents, as the show is full of music, magic and illusion, along with some beautiful songs. My role is minor, opens the show at the moment, and will probably appear again later on.

TAC Teatro school performers take a bow at yearend show at Studio Théâtre of Asnières-sur-Seine

The sad story there was that this was the last show that TAC Teatro performed in the space where it has been housed for the last two and a half years, since the middle of the Covid epidemic. The owners of the former warehouse decided they want to try to sell the lot on which it sits, and so they took it back from us, and the same day we handed over the keys, they had the space demolished so that no one got the idea of squatting it. In a sad, sad irony, while the rich owners wanted to demolish our space to keep squatters out, that same night during the riots that tore France apart after the police killed a 17-year-old for no reason, TAC Teatro’s new space for the coming season, in Asnières-sur-Seine was demolished, looted, burned down, by the rioters. So the coming season poses some challenges.

In the meantime, TAC Teatro also celebrated its yearend of performances of the students of the classes in Asnières, which took place in the 200-seat, magnificent Studio Théâtre. There, I was called in to do the job of MC, and I was given the opportunity to do this by playing a song between each performance of the classes. I matched the nature of each song with the play performance. The plays of the children were Peter Pan, the Addams Family and the Petits Chaperons Rouges; the adult class’s play was “The Bear,” by Chekhov. It was a fabulous festive evening of shows with a full house spectators and a great capping to a season of drama classes for TAC Teatro and its students.

Brad Spurgeon MCing the TAC Teatro yearend show

No sooner did we finish that event than we packed the car to go to our annual summer address in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily, not far from Palermo. Here, this year, I started my first week participating in the great Chiringuito Jam session in Scopello, that I had discovered only last year, and which we learned was run by Ornella’s cousin, Michelangello Bologna. I again did a couple of songs with a complete band, and with Michelangello, who is a Michelangello of the harmonica in addition to the MC of the evening.Then, suddenly irresistibly, surprisingly, and synchronistically, after we had discovered that Castellammare del Golfo had been chosen as the location for a big crazy theater workshop by the illustrious Mario Biagini and his group called Accademia dell’Incompiuto – Academy of the Unfulfilled, we decided to take part. This workshop, or residency, lasts for the entire second two weeks of July, and in addition to consisting of working with Biagini’s troupe to create a final show – called “The Thirsty Ones” – for the 30th July, we also had two other performances of some of the work.

Teaser for the show of Accademia dell’Incompiuto – Academy of the Unfulfilled

Extraordinarily, one of those performances had been planned – without any input or prior knowledge from us – as taking place during the Wednesday night jam at Chiringuito! So for the second time in the month of July I ended up performing on the stage outside in Scopello, but now, I did first a performance of a couple of songs in the usual way with me on the guitar with other performers at the jam; then, second, I worked with the dozen or so actors and singers of the theater workshop performing the songs we had been working on, with their fabulous harmonies and many languages. I played guitar and filled in here and there with vocals.

I want to jump back a little and say why this serendipitous meeting of the Biagini group and Ornella and me was so surprising: We had met Biagini for the first time last year when we went to the Teatro Ridotto outside of Bologna, Italy in order to interview him for a project that Ornella and I are working on about some of the theater greats of the last 60 years. Biagini is known for having worked closely with the legendary intellectual figure of 20th century avant garde theater, Jerzy Grotowski. In fact, Grotowski, who died in 1999, had left Biagini and another man, Thomas Richards, in charge of the Grotowski Center in Pontedera, Italy – Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards – where Mario Biagini had worked since 1986.

Biagini and Richards ran the center until 2021, when they decided to go their own ways. Grotowski was one of the seminal figures of modern theater, and Biagini is a torchbearer of his world, along with Richards. Now this links into the next meeting, which happened a couple of months ago in Paris, when Ornella and I went to the Grotowski event at the Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris where Biagini was present to launch the latest edition that he edited of a translation of Grotowski’s theoretical – and other – writings that has just been published in French. It is a fabulous collection of the theorist’s work, including the writings that would eventually make up his famous and influential “Towards a Poor Theater” book that was first published by the Odin Teatret publisher and founder, Eugenio Barba. (Whom I have written about a few times here.

We also made a connection at one remove with Biagini at the beginning of April this year, when a group that he has directed that came out of Teatro Ridotto, also took part in the annual international residency called Finestres – see my previous post! – that Teatro Ridotto has put on for decades in Italy and that TAC hosted this year in Aubervilliers at the beginning of April. I am speaking about the fantastic Collettivo Hospites, who, incidentally, just put up a video of their memories of that week of activities.

FINESTRE sur le jeune théâtre from Collettivo Hospites

So it was quite amazing to discover that Biagini was holding this workshop in Ornella’s home town in Sicily during our stay here. And we joined in. The performance at Chiringuito was then followed by a flash mob performance a few days later in the streets of downtown Palermo. Here again we sang our songs, and I played guitar along with the musical anchor of the work, Viviana Marino on her classical guitar. There was a film production company on hand in Palermo, so you can see the work of this company, Ponte di Archimede Produzioni, in the teaser for Sunday’s show that I posted above. The teaser was also filmed partly on location at the base in the hills above Castellammare, where we are preparing and will put on the show, and where I am sitting writing these words. You only catch a tiny glimpse of me playing in Palermo, and a bit of Ornella and her daughter, Morgana, are also visible momentarily!

Segesta temple burning July 2023

I hope to have more videos and photos to follow, but this is what I have at the moment. Until then, if you can make it to the show on Sunday, I understand the airport in Palermo is open again…. Oh, yes, that’s another bit of news to follow up with: After the burning down of TAC’s new space in Asnières and the demolition of the old space in Aubervilliers, the 2,000 year old theater in Segesta, next to Castellammare del Golfo, and the neighboring 2,000 year old temple were both engulfed in flames in recent days during the catastrophic fires that we have been experiencing during the massive heatwave that lifted temperatures to well above 40 degrees celsius. A couple of years ago, TAC had been in negotiations to put on a performance on that ancient stage. The flames are following us from town to town, country to country!

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FINESTRE: An Extraordinary Week of International Theater Exchange @ TAC Teatro in Aubervilliers

April 17, 2023
bradspurgeon

Workout at Finestre

AUBERVILLIERS, France – I am still recovering 10 days later from an amazing week of work at TAC Teatro (3-7 April), where Ornella Bonventre and her company met with nine other companies or theater individuals from around the world to exchange their practices and put on a final show for the public. Finestre means “window” in Italian, and the second part of the name of this annual meeting is: “On the Young Theater:” Finestre Sul Giovane Teatro. The meeting has been held for the last 14 years at the Teatro Ridotto in Bologna, Italy, by Lina Della Rocca, the director, and usually involved only Italian companies. After Ornella and Lina met last May, they decided to hold the meeting in France this year, and for the first time make it an international festival. It was a huge amount of organizational work for Ornella and TAC Teatro, but with the support of the city of Aubervilliers, she pulled it off. What a week! What discoveries! Oh, yeah, and what a lack of sleep! But all worth it.

There were more than 30 performers from all around the world, and my job was to film and photograph the whole thing for TAC Teatro, and eventually I will make a little documentary out of the more than 1,000 files I accumulated (film, sound and photos) over the five days of the meeting. First, let me note the companies and people present in addition to TAC and Teatro Ridotto:

dinner at finestre

Filo dei Venti (ITA/BRA/SPA)

Teatro dei Servi Disobbedienti (ITA)

Merida Urquia (COL)

Collettivo Hospites (ITA)

Prof. Roberto Murphy, Paulo José da Silva e Bruna Anita Hennings (BRA)

Miguel Jerez Lopez (SPA)

Rebeka Guerrero (SPA)

The ItinerAnts (ENG)

Erika Montoya (SPA)

We were blessed by the city of Aubervilliers to have been given the use of the Espace Renaudie as a workspace all day long throughout the week, and then we dined and also performed or rehearsed at TAC Teatro’s space, also located in Aubervilliers. The artists stayed in either hotel rooms provided by Aubervilliers, or at the homes of volunteer families of Aubervilliers that are in the habit of working together to house visitors during events in the city. What a great collaboration between the city and the companies.

Ornella Bonventre (from back) directing work at Finestre

Teatro Ridotto has existed for 40 years this year, and is recognized as one of the leaders during that time in Italy in the so-called “third theater” movement. (The third theater “is a kind of theatre made by groups that create their own tradition, their main goal is to exist, resist, not trying to belong to the established theatre. Their own existence is resistance. They might work with ritual, politics, in alternative spaces like schools or prisons.” – Andrea Copeliovitch.)

There was a certain leap of faith required from all participants involved in this first ever week of the event to be held outside Italy, but with Ornella’s TAC Teatro making great headway internationally and in planning events in and around Aubervilliers, Paris and elsewhere, as well as the strong reputation of Lina Della Rocca and her renown for holding this annual event, the whole thing ran without a hitch.

Lina Della Rocca teaches at Finestre

Throughout the week the companies worked together showing their various methods of actor training, and then they worked as a complete group on a flash mob show, thanks to the suggestion of Ornella who desperately wanted to share as much as possible of the gathering with the community. Then the whole thing was again opened to the community with a final show of excerpts from the current work of each of the visiting companies, which was put on at the Espace Renaudie in a free performance for the public.

On the first Tuesday evening TAC Teatro also put on a performance of its latest show, Ajamola, for all of the participants at its home theater space, and then Merida Urquia put on her show that was directed by one of the great actors of Odine Teatret, and ItinerAnts gave a taste of its famous “Tea Lady” performance, by Cinzia Ciaramicoli.

group shot at finestre

All in all, the drawing together of more than 30 people from around the world with at one point five or six directors collaborating on a performance, was an exceptional example of how despite everyone having their own vision and ego, we can all work together when the goals are clearly defined and all leading to a show. It was quite breathtaking for me with the camera, I can assure you! And I don’t even want to mention the babel of four or five different languages being spoken every minute of the week!

painting exercise at Finestre

And the biggest proof of success is that Ornella and TAC Teatro, at least for their part (I can’t speak for the other guests), are already hungry to try to stage another such international event as soon as possible!

card exercise at Finestre

PS: I made tons of videos over the week, but they cannot be posted raw, I need to edit them. So I will eventually post another blog item in the coming weeks with an edited video of some of the high moments of the event. The flash mob performance in the streets of Aubervilliers was definitely one of the high moments, and I got some fabulous footage of it. There were some wonderful moments in the final show of each company’s “personal” productions. Not to be missed!

Lina Della Rocca and Ornella Bonventre at the end of Finestre

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Three Shows and a Theater Breaking on Through to the Other Side During a Pandemic

February 4, 2022
bradspurgeon

Ajamola

PARIS – I’ve spoken a little about how musicians have survived and challenged the coronavirus pandemic over the last couple of years, but I have barely touched on theater. And theater has arguably been worse affected, as it tends to rely on fewer ways of reaching its public than music. (You can’t call a video of a theater show a theater show – even if you are one of the Cohen brothers directing Shakespeare!) But one of the reasons I have been so quiet on this blog in recent months is because I have been devoting a vast amount of time – and loving it – to three separate theater projects all produced by TAC Teatro over the final months of 2021. And I want here to share the information and the short versions of the videos I did of each of these shows, as I think they show the resistance that theater can develop – should I call it the “antibodies?” – to a pandemic that has otherwise eviscerated much of its usually fertile grounds.

I have written about TAC Teatro several times in the past, since I have been involved with Ornella Bonventre in one way or another in her theater company since 2017 when it was based in Milan, and then through its move to France the following year. But for me the biggest achievement of the company that I have seen so far has come in recent months with the three projects for which I have made these films. (And I should actually include here the period the members of the company spent doing research in Sicily last summer, but I won’t get into that here, since there is little recorded in video of that period. And also because the work they did subsequently benefitted by the research they did there, as I will mention later.)

Just a Sunday Brunch Trailer

Three written shows on three different themes for three different purposes: “Just a Sunday Brunch,” “Respire” and “Ajamola.” But all of them were put together and performed in Aubervilliers, at a theater space that TAC Teatro managed to recuperate in the middle of the pandemic and to save the creation, especially, of the biggest, most ambitious of the pieces above: “Ajamola.” I wrote about “Ajamola” two years ago when we first began creating it, just before the pandemic began, and before it had its current name. And it is the piece that has the most merit as being a monumental creation that made it through the endless battles that the pandemic threw in the company’s way over the last two years.

But I’m fluttering on. Let me get to the point!! I’ll do it in order of appearance though.

“Just a Sunday Brunch” for the day of the Patrimony in France

Just a Sunday Brunch Poster

Translated as European Heritage Days and created by the French ministry of culture in 1984, the Journée du Patrimoine, in the third weekend of September was a huge success for TAC’s show, which the actors put together in only a few days and as a true announcement of the company’s arrival in Aubervilliers. Meant to highlight and show off the history of places and their artistic heritage, the day was a collaboration amongst many of the different artists of the space where TAC has been working in Aubervilliers, at 164 rue Henri Barbusse, and old warehouse-like space with musicians, sculptors and other artists, and TAC’s theater.

The TAC show was done with a set that was conceived by one of the sculptors of the space, Taïne Gras. She had created the installation of a feast table for a previous event, but remade it in the theater space, where Ornella and the actors of TAC created their show around it. The resulting show is a brilliantly funny and light piece that combines some elements of visual gags that remind me of the old silent cinema, and with a mixture of TAC’s usual physical theater forms of expression.

In addition to the theater show, there was a fashion show by a local designer in the courtyard of the place, and another event done by one of the other sculptors. We were blessed, somehow, with great weather, and the weekend was a resounding success, as you can see in the short version of the video that I made of the show.

From fun and hilarity to “Respire,” a project for the international day against violence to women

Respire show trailer video

November 25 is a date well-known by many as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. And TAC has done shows pretty much every year in support of this day, in one form or another – see the one at the Pompidou Center a few years ago – so this year, with the space in Aubervilliers, it was a great opportunity to continue the tradition. What was even better this year is that for the first time in France, the company put together its contribution with the backing of a subvention by the local municipality of Aubervilliers.

Respire Poster

Over a three week period, the company worked with the local community to develop workshops, shows and a documentary film – which I made, and the short version, or trailer, of which I will paste in here – with the purpose of approaching the problem of violence against women in an indirect, let’s say, “non preachy” way.

Ornella went to the local schools, youth organizations and other public and private groups to get the word out and find actors to take part in the workshops and the final shows. It was no easy matter, given the limited time between having the project approved and the official deadline for completing it, which was the end of the year. Her goal was to complete all workshops, performances and the video by the end of the first week in December, and she succeeded.

The approach was to create a show that gets across the message of the horror of, and prevention of, violence against women. The main prop that they used, as you will see, is the umbrella, which is a statement of an item that protects, but at the same time isolates, and can be used as a weapon. In the video you will not only see actors from TAC Teatro, but members of the general public with no acting experience, including children, who took part in the workshops and created the show with the actors of TAC, under Ornella’s direction.

The show was performed both inside the theater space and in the streets of Aubervilliers, as a flash mob event, notably in front of the City Hall and in front of three local schools, where we got some great participation – and feedback – from the students.

The deliverance of “Ajamola” after more than two years work through a pandemic

Ajamola show trailer video

But the crowning achievement of the TAC company really came in the half dozen performances of the show the company had been working on since the fall of 2019. “Ajamola” not only managed to survive, but to thrive through the pandemic, and to take on themes that were inherent to the pandemic, although strangely, some of those themes were part of the show from the beginning before the pandemic even hit! (I refer, for instance, to the so-called “dream constructors” who wear doctors’ white smocks! And how I remember everyone’s surprise and confusion when they first received their smock in Jan/Feb 2020 as to what should be done with the surgical mask that came with each costume! We threw them all away!)

Ajamola Poster

I will not go through the whole show here, but for a nutshell description, check out the description of the show at the end of this blog post and as translated from the French. The play is inspired also by many of Ornella’s connections with her birthplace of Sicily, including the fisherman’s song that gives the play its title, and some other songs and musical bits in the production – which themes the actors imbued themselves with on that aforementioned visit to Sicily last summer.

In any case, the show had capacity, or near capacity, attendance each time, and as I recorded it through several cameras and a sound device simultaneously during each performance, I not only never grew bored or used to it, but I felt more and more understanding, enthusiasm and respect each time for the work of Ornella Bonventre as director, and the actors Sara Baudry, Julie Lossec, Tato Moya, Constance Dolleans and Marine Lefèvre.

And I cannot wait until the show returns, with a slight change in lineup, in the months to come. Keep posted!

Back to a ventriloquial performance for me with TAC Teatro

By the way, I almost forgot to mention that I was actually an actor and part creator of the show two years ago, but as I became more occupied with other projects – mainly the Formula One book for Assouline – I pulled out. But I have contributed where and when possible, including at the moment I not only made the short trailer you find here, but I am working on a full-length film version of the show, which I filmed at every one of the presentations they have so far done of it.

Ornella Bonventre, Peter McCabe and Brad Spurgeon

In fact, on that same theme, I must not forget the activity of the company in Asnières-sur-Seine, where Ornella continues to teach lessons to a growing number of actors of every age in her acting school part of the company. Since the pandemic had killed any possibility of the three age groups – children, teenagers and adults – from putting on their season finale shows last June, Ornella decided to work with the students to put on the season final afternoon of three performances at the Petit Theatre in Asnières in November. And she invited me to present the festivities with my ventriloquial figure, Peter McCabe! It was our debut effort as presenters, and I found myself having to write and memorize our script very quickly…with the result, I am told, of my efforts to bring emotions of laughter to the spectators to actually succeeding in bringing strong emotions of sympathy for Peter McCabe, and equally strong emotions of disdain for me, his nasty master! What counted were the strong emotions! I regret also that the audience was apparently so involved in Peter’s performance that not a single spectator thought to take a photograph or video of our performance! So there is nothing to show for it here…. Maybe next time!

Description of “Ajamola”

The station of a small village somewhere in the south. The court of a king. Two parallel events that intertwine: that of Alma, Nina, Vera, and Jules waiting for the train and that of the Marquis of the Moon condemned to tell stories to a mad king.
And above all: The dream builders are watching.
At the station.
People from different parts of the world, forced to leave their homeland, meet at the station of a small abandoned village while waiting for the train. An important train that will take them to where they have wanted to go for a long time, where they hope to finally find freedom. Will it arrive?
During this long wait, friendships are born, the plots of their relationships are woven and the individual stories of each come to life: the fears, joys and emotions of those who have challenged themselves, and so many dangers to freedom.
In the King’s Court.
In the power room of the palace of a mad king, the Marquis of the Moon, condemned to tell him new stories, decides to tell him that of the dream builders. This is how the dream builders come to life. They set to work in their laboratory, interacting with the lives of the protagonists who, unaware of everything, are waiting for the train at the station.
What happens when life changes suddenly and forever?
What is the force that makes us dream?
Stories of tenderness and bravery are told through songs, dances, objects that come to life and bring back distant people and memories.

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TAC Teatro’s Paris Flash Mob and Performance for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

December 4, 2019
bradspurgeon

TAC Teatro in Les Chaussettes Rouges

We took a short break from the creation of our work-in-progress at TAC Teatro in order to put together and perform a commemoration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Originally intending to put on the flash mob and short performance in Asnières-sur-Seine, where the company rehearses, we had a last minute change of plan and did it all in Paris. So it was that putting on this performance we called “Les Chaussettes Rouges” (The Red Socks) was pure delight.

In the middle of a few weeks of desperately cold, rainy, horrible weather, our target date of 24 November, the day before the official date of the United Nations commemoration, we ended up with sun all over town. It could not have been a more beautiful day, and so it allowed us to use several different locations for the flash mob, and another location for the performance, as we spread the names of women victims of violence across the city where the day before there had been a demonstration of 45,000 people in support of the same cause.

As you can see in the above video that we made of the day, we started by rehearsing what we planned in a small, quiet backstreet of the Place de Clichy. Then we put on the first flash mob at the beginning of the Boulevard de Clichy. After that, we walked to the Place des Abbesses, in Montmartre, where we did the second flash mob.

We performed a third flash mob at Stalingrad, in the big place by the canal, and we did the performance in the park of Belleville in a kind of modern take on an ancient amphitheater. Present were all of the actors of TAC Teatro and a couple of the students from TAC’s acting school.

It was quite an emotional, but also liberating, day, as we moved through the city as a group and performed for a surprised public, looking and pointing to the sky for the victims of domestic violence. The flash mob and performance was something we all wove together in a few days preceding the event – with lots of thought having gone into it in the month before, week to week, as we continued to prepare our show.

It was, as Ornella Bonventre, the director of TAC Teatro said, the preparation for the event that was as much an act of contributing towards this cause as was the actual performance.

Now back to work on the show!

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