Hercules and his task series!

 I went to the theatre last night

I had filled my pockets with a selection of herb sweets to suck on during the performance. I even remembered to unwrap several of them before the performance began and again during the interval. I desperately wanted to avoid that disturbing rustling of paper that always reminds me of pantomime days and boxes of Fruit Pastilles. I was in the studio theatre in Nürnberg last night and not at the London Palladium. In such a tiny studio theatre you could hear a pin drop, so the rustling of sweet papers would not have gone unnoticed on the stage!

I got through to the end without disturbing the performers or my neighbours in the audience with my still racking cough.

I had purchased two tickets months ago for this, the premier of the latest play performed by the senior theatre group, Tempo 100. This is a theatre group organized by the city for retired folk. My dear friend Boss used to perform with them and I am still always made to feel so very welcome. I saw my first performance by this group in 1992, so I suppose that this was not only the celebration for the premier of their new play but a twenty-year anniversary celebration for me too.

Hercules in the cow shed of Augeas, a comedy by Friedrich Durrenmatt

I had already heard from a couple of the performers that this was not one of their favourites but I enjoyed it very much. I was surprised to see that since last season’s production there were a lot of new actors in the group and one or two of them are very good. There were also some new people working behind the scenes and this seemed to make the performance flow very well.

Out front one could see that team work was the name of the game between the actors, but that was not what was happening with Hercules in the play. He appeared to be having problems with different council departments' not deciding who is responsible. Just like we do with conductive services!

The play began with Hercules on his descent from Mount Olympus, having completed the fourth task for heroes! He had set out to kill a boar and seemed on the lookout for his next heroic deed.

Symbolic

The next task for heroes was to clear the dung from the stables belonging to Augeas. I understand the symbolisation here to be that he was to bring some order to the town or perhaps change the way of thinking a little. Even make some transformations! Moving from one council office to the other to get permission to carry out his plans Hercules went from one newly formed department to the other, all of them putting new obstacles in his path.

Hercules left a happier town behind him as he went off to his next task of ridding a different part of the world of its man-eating birds

The townsfolk with the dung decided that by remaining dissatisfied with their lot they will keep on fighting to achieve their goals. By patiently working the dung into the ground flowers would begin to grow. Of course there were many parts of the text that could be related to the present state of Europe and the relationship between Greece and Germany; these brought a few extra laughs and a few groans!

But for me the symbolisation reflected my work and our continuous fight, being pushed from one office to the next after being given a very good reason why it is not their responsibility to pay for Conductive Education.

Slow and steady wins the race

At the end of the play Augeas the President of Elis tells his son:

 “… one must make the best of life: politics cannot fashion miracles, but just as manure can with patience be transformed into fertile soil, so human beings may transform themselves as individuals even in the midst of manure. While this may seem a small accomplishment, it is the only one definitely open to us and therefore essential.”

"Slowly, slowly" has always been my philosophy in my work. I think many conductors who work alone often have to tell themselves often that what they are doing is a small step in the right direction, and that we must not try to take leaps and bounds to soon. We must wait patiently for transformations.

I know that I must not push too far and fast when planning to increase the size or number of groups ,for example. I wish to move forwards but at the same time I must not to destroy what is already there by moving too fast.

By far the most important people are those with whom I work in this moment and not those whom I could reach when I have one extra group or a couple more conductors beside me. We have to build within our resources and find the strength of Hercules when we have to visit the council offices!

Even when feeling poorly, and even when out at the theatre, my conductive lifestyle continues, my conductive learning continues, and people from the past like my dear friend Boss continue to be an enormous influence on me.

Boss took me out to dinner one evening in 2008, just a few months before he died. He gave me some lessons on voice-projection and acting. It was just a few days before I was to give a presentation in Augsburg on Parkinson’s disease and conduction. Boss gave me the strength of Hercules that day!

Notes

Read more about Durrenmatt’s “The Theatre of Manure” here –

http://language.home.sprynet.com/theatdex/manure.htm

And here:

http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/product_info.php?products_id=1964

Tempo 100 Theatre, Nürnberg -

http://www.theater-tempo100.de/

Bits-in-between for conductor and Sis

" Spooky Landscape" by Susie Mallett, September 1st 2011

Just what the doctor ordered

A trip to the theatre, the first for ages, was just what the doctor ordered and with my sister for company too, that made it even better.

My sister had asked me a long time before the performance if I would like to go with her and we had both, independently of each other, Googled to see if it would be worth the expense of the tickets. There were a few You Tube recordings on offer and my verdict, after listening to a couple of them, was that even if we did not find the performance very funny the singing was of a very high standard so we would enjoy that at the very least. Sis agreed so the tickets were purchased.

Lots of spooky men from Australia

We discovered that in real life the Spooky Men’s Chorale was indeed a group of exceptional, albeit very peculiar looking, singers and occasionally between the serious pieces they were also funny, with a humour as dry as the one that we are used to in Norfolk. I am not sure how well they would go down in Germany, where my dry humour often gets miss-read!

The accent of this group of spooky men fitted in quite well too, Norfolk and Strine are not so dis-similar.

Making the every-day situation funny

With many of the phrases from their self-penned songs printed on magnets and button badges we were able to take some of the oddities home with us:

“Spooky gardeners cause mass wisteria“

 “Happy…just haven’t told my face“

“The mess gets worse all by itself”

Other snippets remain in our memories and are already getting triggered when we find ourselves in a situation that was mentioned in a song as well as on a badge. Here is one example: a thing does not work and a newly purchased thing is incompatible and an adaptor is needed, but the thing works differently now than it did before. Those were words of a Spooky Men’s song but could have been all about my dongle that sort of works and my sister’s dongle with her new adapter aerial thing that makes hers work better than mine. This persuaded me that my thing also needs a new adapter thing so it could work as well as Sis’s thing does. I am still struggling on without an extra thing adapter and smiling as I remember the daft song.

There were amongst the jokey original songs a good many adaptions of well-known songs, from the Beatles, Abba and Earth, Wind and Fire. However, it was a rendition of our Mum’s wartime favourite, Don’t fence me in, that made the evening for my sister and I, we joined in every word.

I also particularly enjoyed what the Spooky conductor described as Georgian men’s songs and I wonder if they were adaptions of Gregorian chants or music for men from Georgia. Not being able to Google at the moment to find out, due to not having that adapter thing like my sister has, I cannot be sure about this but whatever the songs origin they were lovely to listen to. It was obvious by the skill shown in performing these, what brilliant musicians the Spooky Men are.

I found the whole evening all quite conductive really, apart from someone who I have met through conduction sitting in the row behind me! Watching this group of performers putting everyday life into perspective made me think a lot about my own work. The singers were enjoying moments of everyday life and this was the motivation for the song writing and singing, and just in the same way that taking part in everyday life in a meaningful way is a huge part of the motivation that my clients bring with them to learn conductively.

Thanks to Sis and Spooky Men for creating a lovely bits-in-between evening!



Now lucky I am

St. Sebalds Church, by Susie Mallett, 1st August 2010

This posting is old, I just unearthed it. It had been lost somewhere during a busy two weeks.

Leaning on a lampost....

Sometimes I can not believe that I live here. Especially when I lean on the corner of the house where Albrecht Durer lived and where on the top floor he painted his famous rhinoceros, while I listen in the Sunday-sunshine to live rock-music from the nineteen-sixties and seventies.

All just a five minute walk from my front door. If it were not for the thick city walls surrounding the whole of Nürnberg I could probably hear it all from my balcony.

It is that time of year again

On Saturday I had the windows of the flat thrown wide open as the music school opposite performed its end-of-school-year concert. Despite a few rough patches, this personal live concert that I listened to as I painted was delightful.

On Sunday I went to the Bardentreffen

That is the annual weekend of free music in the streets and on fifteen special stages, all within a stone’s throw from home. There are several other make-do stages about the city too. The steps outside the Industrial Works Association, the steps of the Lorenz Kirche, the peak of the Museumsbrucke, all make perfect venues and gather the crowds.

There are children, teenagers, young, middle-aged and elderly performers. They include rock bands, folk musicians and digeridoo-players. There is the official programme, with many performers invited, this year many coming from Africa, and there is also the extra-programme of the buskers. All the buskers know to stand at least two hundred yards away from each other and to do twenty-minute sets to allow the audience to move on to the next artist.

It is one of the nicest weekends of the year in Nürnberg, especially when the weather is like it was this year.

I missed Saturday night’s programme

I missed Saturday in the city because I was painting and in the evening I was at an open-air theatre performance in a village about ten miles away. There I saw a skit on the Nibelungen Sagas. It was really satirical with lots of really topical and political jokes, there was an amazing stage and surrounding scenery, and all produced by amateurs, both adults and children.

These sagas are quite complicated and my friend and I had quite a job beforehand understanding what Google gave us to read about them. We should not have bothered wasting our time on it, we were much better informed after the show! This was the perfect Nibelungen Sagas for foreigners and children! It was brilliant.

Sometimes I cannot believe how lucky I am. Nürnberg is a feast of cultural delights and in September the theatre season begins again!

What more could I wish for on my doorstep.

Notes

The Nibelungensage -

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungensage

Altenberger open-air theatre -

http://www.altenbergerbuehne.de/