Asnières-sur-Seine | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Performing For and as Multitudes for and at TAC Teatro

June 28, 2022
bradspurgeon

Brad and Peter under the spotlight

Asnières-sur-Seine, France – Now, if that headline is not an exaggeration, I don’t know what is. But at the same time, I had many roles to play yesterday in TAC Teatro’s year-end celebration of theater in Asnières-sur-Seine, outside Paris. I wanted to stamp this down here on the blog for several reasons: one is that I wanted to explain why there have been so few posts of late, the other is to celebrate yesterday’s achievements and fun, and finally, to get back in the groove of posting, period!

I do hope that readers of this blog have been missing my posts as much as I have missed posting them. But I have been working like hell on several projects that have perturbed all of this: Most of my time has been involved in working on another book, which is supposed to be published by the end of the year; as well as working for the last two months writing in a temporary, limited-time gig for the United Nations. Someday I might go further into that, but not now.

The point is, I have been occupied so full-time that I have barely had moments in the day to pick up my guitar, let alone to attend open mics. But one thing was certain: I had to help out Ornella Bonventre and TAC Teatro at the latest year-end gig at the Petit Theatre in the building of the Théâtre Armande Béjart in Asnières-sur-Seine. This year I had not one, but three roles to play.

As with last year, I MC’d the show with my ventriloquial figure, Peter McCabe. Unlike last year, someone captured some photos of these bits. So I am happy to have those to show on the blog. Unlike last year, I also played a role in one of the plays…or rather, in a way, two of the plays….

Brad as Chasuble with Ornella Bonventre and some of the children of TAC Teatro

I played Chasuble in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” by Oscar Wilde, but in the French translation. That was tough! Or rather, I would have preferred to do it in English, but I had a great time playing the character! I felt a touch of destiny as my great, great, or maybe even another great, uncle, was a famous preacher, a precursor to Billy Graham, named Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Of course, Chasuble is not exactly a flattering representative of the profession.

In the end, we did not perform the whole play, but just excerpts. I did this with the adult members of the TAC acting courses.

Peter McCabe, through me somehow, had been selected by the adolescent students to be the central figure – yes, good choice of words – in the play that they wrote themselves, called, “Ce N’est pas une Comédie Romantique.” I thought that was a brilliant title, and I am sure it will be stolen! The English translation is, of course, simple: “This is not a romantic comedy.”

Peter McCabe on stage in the ados show at TAC Teatro

Peter appeared alone in this show, although I had to wear Chasuble’s hat to cover myself and sit behind the chairs where sat Peter most of the time in order for me to whisper to him his lines, as he did not do the slightest effort towards memorisation.

It was a fabulously successful evening, with more than 160 people present. And Ornella, who deserves every bit of praise for her success for this event, was also praised by the unexpected appearance of the deputy mayor of Asnières who showed up to launch the event. This was a fine moment of confirmation of all of Ornella’s work, as this deputy mayor was none other than Marie-Do Aeschlimann, the wife of the mayor, Manuel Aeschlimann, and herself in charge of childhood and education in the town. Only the week before this, she had run in the second round of the legislative elections.

Brad and Peter with some Audience at TAC performance

From all we heard and saw, the day was a great success, and I look forward to participating again next year! With Peter, of course.

And I do hope to have some news soon from the open mics, and particularly from the success encountered by at least a couple of the bands or performers I met through my period of playing in the open mics around the world. There are a couple of recent success stories that I have been planning to write about for months, but keep getting side-tracked by the other work mentioned at the start of this post.

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Brad wondering how to deal with the kids beside Ornella Bonventre at TAC Teatro show

TAC Teatro Demonstration of the Work-in-Progress at the Petit Théâtre in Asnières

November 4, 2019
bradspurgeon

TAC Teatro company takes a bow

We had a fabulous two weeks at TAC Teatro working daily on our next show, and then crowning the work period with a demonstration of the creative process to spectators at the Petit Théâtre in Asnières-sur-Seine. There we interspersed our personal work on the next show with explanations of how we went through the creative process to come up with the scores. The whole was led, of course, by Ornella Bonventre, the director of TAC Teatro, who was also the one behind leading us towards our individual creations.

It’s a process of work that I began wondering if I would ever come out of it with anything at all. But on the very first day, with the instructions Ornella gave us, I began to create my character and his place in the show. Can there be any surprise that the character comes from a circus background and so did some juggling, tight-rope walking and…reading of the beginning of T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”?

Brad Spurgeon at TAC Teatro work demonstration

If you don’t understand a word of what I just explained there, well, you will have to come to the show when it is finished later next year. The other members of the company to perform in the work demonstration – who worked in the same manner as I just explained, but who came up with many different kinds of characters and scores – were Sara Baudry, Ioana Jarda, Marine Lefèvre, Julie Lossec, Marina Meinero, Pacôme Puech, and Janice Zadrozynski.

Marina was the only one not physically present, as she had a commitment in Italy. But she sent a video of her work, which I place below.

Ornella Bonventre speaking to the spectators during the TAC Teatro work demonstration

Keep posted for the next steps of the work-in-progress.

A New Tack With TAC Teatro – or Should it Be Called a New TACtic?

September 23, 2019
bradspurgeon

TAC Teatro

Why have I done so few posts on this blog in recent months? Let’s call it a TACtic. I have mentioned TAC Teatro a few times on this blog in the past three years, and especially my activities with TAC. But as of this summer, I have been devoting a lot more time to TAC, and am now a full member of the troupe. This is part of a decision to transform all my open mic experiences into something different, and, hopefully, bigger.

When I say bigger, I mean above all in terms of range of use of the body, voice, performance. I continue to play guitar and write every day – in fact, I am working on a very big writing project that I will finish at the end of the year – but I got to the point with the open mics that it felt as if I was repeating myself. Since stopping my travel to the Formula One races at the end of 2016, I had pretty much only Paris as my stage. And as big and beautiful and great is that stage, playing the same open mics with the same songs for the same spectators began to wear on me.

But my love of performing and my need to create are as strong as ever and always. Now, invited by Ornella Bonventre, the director of TAC Teatro, to involve myself even more than before – that is to say, with at least three meetings with the newly formed Paris troupe per week — I have found what feels like the answer to the stagnation at the open mics.

Of course, I am also continuing several other projects, such as the completing of my open mic documentary and the completing of my open mic memoir. But as far as performing goes, the idea is to build as much as possible on the physical theater of TAC Teatro. This is a kind of theater that appeals to me as it involves voice, music, physical action, acrobatics, puppetry, juggling, unicycling, text and just about every other thing you can imagine all wrapped into one.

Among its great proponents are groups like Odin Teatret of Denmark – I am also finishing the editing of a video interview with the founder of that theater, Eugenio Barba, that I conducted along with Ornella – and even the Théâtre du Soleil of Paris, and many others. TAC Teatro has existed for many years in Italy, and Ornella started up the Paris part two years ago. This year is the biggest step so far, with the recent gathering of several new performers – and you could say I am part of that wave.

In the first week of September five of us, under Ornella’s direction, put together a performance on the theme of borders, or “Frontières” that we performed on an outdoor stage at the city hall of Asnières-sur-Seine, where the French TAC is legally based in France. I am putting up on this blog page two videos connected to that event, one of which is a short video of the performance that Luca Papini, an Italian filmmaker in Paris, made.

The other video is of my own specific contribution to the writing of the performance, that did not make it into Luca’s film. All the performers created the first seeds of their own scenes, which we all then worked on together under Ornella’s directing, and so I was pleased to learn that Ornella had found in the filmed bits of our rehearsals and moments of creation, that there was a good, complete filming of my scene. (The exercise of filming the rehearsals was in order for the performers to have a more objective view of their work.) Ornella just finished preparing that segment as a video, which I post above.

TAC Rehearsal with music

We all used our personal preoccupations of the moment to create these seeds of our scenes, which were all also somehow connected to the theme of borders. My own section, called “Le Passeport,” as you will see, has to do with my personal battle with the concept of Brexit, which is affecting me to the point of madness as I wonder at how long I will be considered a legal citizen in France, as opposed to an illegal alien…. And I emphasize that word ALIEN.

So to sum up, again, my lack of presence on the blog in recent months has had nothing to do with an end to my creative projects, but rather, a reduction in the approach of the past – focusing almost entirely on open mics – and the beginning of a new approach, combining all of my interests, including playing music. I hope now I can shake myself out of the lack of contributions to the blog and back into a cycle of regular updates, but on a bigger theme!

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Singing, Juggling, Ventriloquising, Clowning, Unicycling and Acting with Ornella and TAC Teatro at the Forum des Associations of Asnières-sur-Seine

September 16, 2018
bradspurgeon

Brad and Ornella performing for TAC Teatro in Asnières-sur-Seine

Ornella and Brad performing for TAC Teatro in Asnières-sur-Seine

ASNIERES-SUR-SEINE, France – It is now a week ago, so no longer considered news, but I wanted to get down as a matter of record, the fabulous day I spent performing with Ornella Bonventre and her TAC Teatro at the Forum des Associations of Asnères-sur-Seine. Founded in Milan, Italy, TAC Teatro now also has a base in France, in Asnières. And last weekend was the annual associations forum of this city just outside of Paris. That meant it was time for the local associations to show off what they do, and try to get new adherents. We had the whole stage to ourselves in front of the mayor’s building – the Hôtel de Ville, or City Hall – and had great fun performing a little show as Ornella introduced TAC to the people of Asnières.

I was pleased to find myself on stage for the first time with the newly face-lifted Peter McCabe, my ventriloquist’s – well…o.k., sorry, Peter, I’ll just say, happy to be on stage with Peter after his recent facelift. Only problem was the facelift seems to have gone to Peter’s ego, and he announced to the people of Asnières that he was going to be the next president of the United States of America – saying that he could do a lot better than the current office holder.

We put together a short video of some highlights of our time on the stage, which I paste in here; and we were very proud to find a few days later – and this makes some sense of having not written about this before now – to find that we were picked up in the official city video of the event, very much near the place of honor, in the last 10 or so seconds of the video, at approximately the 2 minute 20 second point of the video. I am pasting that one in here too.

In any case, it was a fabulous day, and thank goodness the weather was great – as it has been all summer, but after the worst winter in recent memory in Paris (and Asnières). I hope Ornella Bonventre and her TAC Teatro are selected to do this again (as not all of the associations were selected to show off their expertise).

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