Soul Exchange!

This week, I'm very busy rehearsing to be in National Theatre Wales's SOUL EXCHANGE, in which I play a 1930s nan from Butetown/Tiger Bay. It's a really interesting exsperience, meeting people from all walks (and runs, and sprints, and -in my case, stumbles - of life)! Specifically, I am working with an actress called Pauline who, a while back, co-wrote this pretty great film about the landing of The Windrush, the ship that brought the first immigrants from the West Indies to Britain. You can watch this here:

ME REACH (White Lantern Films)

The Soul Exchange itself is the culmination of 2 years' work, researching into the history of the once-Tiger Bay, interviewing residents, collecting stories, and so forth. I have written a spoken word piece based on true incidents: basically, about a white woman (as I am!) who doesn't want her mixed-race grandson to be given a Muslim name... Can you guess what she does to achieve this??? Well, you'll have to come along if you want to find out...!!



Hope to see you there!!!

FIND OUT MORE / BOOK TICKETS

Cardifference

(italics in a strong Cardiff accent)

I say tomato, you say tum-AH-toe
I say potato, you say spud
I shop at Sainsburys, you shops at Tesco
I can’t stand their value brand
But you can’t get enough

Between us there’s a difference
I’m middle class – you’re not
My family think that you’re a dunce
Yours think that I’m high maintenance
But viva la Cardifference!
We’re going to tie the knot

I play the clarinet, you plays Nintendo
I like the theatre, you prefers the box
I admire Fred Astaire, you acts like Rambo
Particularly in the bedroom with me
Though I wish you would take off your socks

Our love inspires incongruence
They say we shouldn’t wed
Your family hates intelligence
Mine hate your constant flatulence
But viva la Cardifference!
We get on well in bed

I read the Telegraph, you reads the Metro
I’d like a country house, you gorruh council flat
I’ve got a PhD, you’ve gorrun ASBO
When we go out if people shout
You swing your baseball bat

At times I feel ambivalence
You’ve got a nasty streak
I’ve seen your taste for violence
You’re put blokes in the ambulance
And even punched my face in once
For giving too much cheek
But love, is love, is love, is love…
So viva la Cardifference!
The wedding day’s next week

Blog The First

First blog demands: extraordinary! Momentous!! Fantabulous!!!

First blog is precursor of all blogs to come, it is the mother and the father, the Adam and the Eve, the Alpha, the Originator, in the beginning were these Words... All future blogs are progeny of this first and, therefore, the first has got to be something - amazing. Like - really super-dooper....

Unfortunately, I live in Wails, armpit of the earth: and today is a day as grey and glamour-less as an old man's scants... This in turn affects the affectation I call "personality", and makes me feel all drab, and droopy, and durrrrr...

I am a performance poet, living in the capital shitty of Cardiff, and "on stage" I seem to breathe fire, of a sort (or I try to)... Away from my friend Mic I am as colourless as a drool of spit. I sit in the office, now, writing this away from the terse glare of boss-woman's eyes, computer thankfully at "an angle"... At 11pm I will drink a coffee with "the girls" and we will ogle Sandwich Man's slightly flabby rear end... At 1pm, I will enter the Break-Out Room, therein to eat and sip at another machine-spewed caffeinated drink... At 5pm, Fred Flintstone-style, I will yabba-dabba do outta the office and away, home, to my little flat-packed-furniture-filled flat, flat-screen TV, flat little existence, in fact...

Yes, I hate working in an office!! I want to be a free bohemian spirit, writing in woods and wandering lonely as a raincloud...

The only plus, is, I get to use office time/facilities to write things, including this all-important Blog The First. Hopefully future blogs, like future generations, will be more upbeat and age-of-aquarius-ish....

Nice to (not) meet you, anyways.

Mab x x x