Week One: Speechless at the Albany

Speechless was a unique program from Apples & Snakes, and the British Council, which brought together artists from Southeast Asia and the UK in a tour that spanned 9 cities, 4 weeks, 6,000 languages, and endless memories (mostly concerning tons of luggage through the railway system).

When we first got in the UK, we stayed in Catford, an area in Southeast London. A gigantic cat was perched quite confidently on an arch welcoming us to Catford. My, how thoughtful, I thought. The people of Catford erected a massive cat for people prone to drinking themselves dead drunk and waking up with no idea where they are. In Quezon City (the part of Metro Manila where I reside), I live in an area called “Diliman”, which, research and local history has told me, is short for “kadiliman”. That literally translates to “darkness”, I kid you not. Quezon City used to be one big hacienda/plantation, and “Diliman” was its armpits, an overgrowth where runaways disappear. I’m thinking, if the people of Diliman were tasked to come up with a huge structure similar to that fo the Catford Cat, we would draw a blank.

So, there was the cat, and I really should have taken a picture of it. I can not, for the love of me (and that’s pretty serious, coming from a self-aggrandizing narcissist), remember why we did not take a photo of the Catford Cat, but posed confidently, almost haughtily, inside a Tesco.

There's a Tesco everywhere, and in everyone, is a Tesco. Also, there's some great bargains on Aisle 15.

For the first few days of the program, we would go to the Albany in Deptford to work with Mike Kirchner, our director, Jennie Bradbury, the stage manager, and Francesca Beard, who, aside from MC’ing the show, also served as dramaturg. Geraldine “The General” Collinge (Director, Apples&Snakes) and Rebecca Gould checked on us regularly to make sure we were warm, and kept the stock of flapjacks coming, and the tea flowing. (I had coffee mostly, though, having built a dependency on caffeine upon my parents’ realization that my lethargic nature as an awkward boy of 7 could be remedied with a regular regimen of government-approved stimulant.)

Siege Malvar stands by his lonesome outside The Albany. You couldn't tell it from this photo, but he just had some amazing curry from the Indian restaurant down the road. Or could you?

The Albany in Deptford is a wonderful art space/venue where there’s ALWAYS something going on ALL THE TIME. You can randomly drop by any time of the day and find the place buzzing with so much creative energy. A low building with color coded spaces, The Albany houses Apples & Snakes, the UK’s largest performance poetry organization (among other equally vibrant and dynamic institutions, organizations, and a cozy cafe run by lovely ladies led by a woman named Allison; “You have that American thwang going, you do,” she told me, at once assessed for me the status of my agenda, which was to acquire a convincing English accent, regardless of its regional unaccountability).

The cafe at The Albany, Douglas Way, Deptford. A couple of years ago, Wi-Fi was developed by mad geniuses so that Ms. Pooja Nansi could check her Facebook in between our rehearsals.

Pooja was getting good at randomly taking photos of unwitting poets enjoying the quiet bliss of checking their Facebooks.

On our first day, what we did was play games, and worked on getting comfortable with everyone else. I have worked before with Francesca when she came to the Philippines, but it was the first time I got to join the company of the wonderful poets of Speechless.

First, we played a game which involves one player as “IT”, and the rest  creeping towards the wall the It was pressing his/her sorry face on before he/she turns around to call out anyone he/she caught moving. This game involves skills in the art of stalking, and is played all over the world through different variations, mostly in borders between adjacent nations, and involving patrol guards.

The key to winning is pretending Bulgarian gangsters will break your mom's arms if you can't make it to the wall without alerting the guards. That, and impresive muscle control developed through years of walking for miles with a watermelon clenched between your thighs.

As part of the plan to facilitate the development of a harmonious community of poets in a matter of minutes, we also played a game which can be summed up as the slowest race in history of human mobility. To win, you have to lose the race, and you lose if you win the race. This is the same basic principle governing the marketing schemes of some companies that call you while you’re in the middle of having your dinner to inform you that you have just won a ridiculously large amount of money, but you would have to first verify your identity by coming to their store and purchasing a new washing machine with your credit card. So, the slowest race basically involves the participants moving as slowly as they could, and aiming to finish last. We had a lot of realizations through this activity, including (a) the importance of paying attention to your body’s internal rhythm, (b) the concept of “winning” in the context of a deconstructed game, (c) contextualizing one’s space in relation to the progress of the adjacent participant, and (d) really, it’s all about muscle control and why clenching exercises will make you live longer, happier lives.

To Be Continued…

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