Wondermentalist

If you weren’t there I want to tell you who was and what they were like. If you were there I want to remind you and tell you where you can hear more.

The evening kicked off with me chuntering on by way of warm up, and I admit I had no idea what I was on about or where I was going with any of it, until I remembered to infotain the audience with the backstory of Empath Man and perform a new scene where he is commissioned by the police chief to try and bust a cult. I’m going to blog Empath Man later and ask for feedback. God knows I need it.

Things picked up a bit here, I like to think, and then I introduced Jo Walton and Graham Macy, who are Nomad Shuffle. Nomad Shuffle haven’t been going long enough to have a web presence of any description – their Traydio presence will be their first output and upload – but if you type “Nomad Shuffle” into Google you get a link to a blog called The Inevitable Deterioration of A Good Person which I found diverting for a (short) while.

Next up, Beryl the Feral, most excellent slam winning performance poet, had just arrived back from Whitstable (where she’s been commissioned to make a new interventional poetry-based work for the Whitstable Biennale). Nevertheless she was composed and wonderful. Her set will be up on Traydio very soon, meanwhile sneak a preview here (click on “live recording”). Beryl the Feral has a self-published cd and two small paperback collections: ‘Poims And Other Stuff For Lovely People’ and ‘Got Poims?’ and it was gratifying afterwards to see a small cluster of persons gathered round her making poetic purchases.

[Which reminds me we must get a ‘merchandise’ table for the next wondermentalist cabaret. And someone to ‘mind’ it. Anyone interested please let me know…]

There followed cameo appearances from Stephen Park, Jackie Juno and Nathan Filer. These also went very well indeed.

Stephen Park is an artist as well as a comedian and poet. Visit his website, it’s great. Look at his drawings. Read interesting facts about him. They are, truly, interesting. What intrigued me after the show, when people said nice things (very nice things) about Stephen’s appearance, was that they referred to him as “the man who took things out his bag”, a reference not to his actual performance but to his introduction where I described the first time I saw him, in Exeter. I hope Stephen will not only return to do a longer set at the Wondermentalist Cabaret, but bring his bag, take things out of it, and talk about them with the candour, insight and quirky perspicacity (quirspicacity) that is his trademark.

Jackie Juno spoke to us in different voices. A multi-cultural event in her own right, she blurred the boundaries between nations and peoples till we didn’t know which way was east, west or Abergavenny. Later Jackie was to win the Dead Poets’ Slam on behalf of Kabir, but that’s another blog posting. Jackie is our headline act on January 25th. Come early and get a seat quite near her. You can also catch her online here.

Nathan Filer has been described as a “comic genius of insatiable libido and lyrical elasticity” and I would happily have introduced him as such, only he feels he’s outgrown that persona and anyway was intending to perform a more tender “I’m on my holidays and my girlfriend’s watching” poem, so I described him instead as a “troubled former comic genius with an all too easily satisfied libido and a quality of brittle lyricism, who occasionally shows a poignant glimpse of the talent that once was his.” At least I tried to. I stumbled so much over the intro I may as well not have bothered. Nathan made witty reference to my earlier attempt to sort the audience into dog/cat, optimist/pessimist, optimistic cat/pessimistic dog/pessimistic cat/optimistic dog type people. To be honest it reminded me of my We and My Shadow poem podcasted on Traydio last month, but Nathan wasn’t to know this. He then gave us an all-too-brief glimpse of his lyrical elasticity, but rest assured he’ll be back for an extended set in the New Year. He promised. His website by the way is called www.lyricalelastic.com - it was down for essential maintenance when I went for a look/listen, but meanwhile you can visit his myspace site. Did I mention Nathan is a prize-winning film-maker? No, there’s only so much you can take in one go isn’t there?

The first half ended with Classical Hindustani vocalist Pooja Angra a noted singer trained in classical music and a regular performer for the All India radio and Indian television network. Pooja’s presence at the inaugural Wondermentalist Cabaret was quite a coup for us and I was delighted with the rapturous reception she received. You can hear more of her here on YouTube, performing with tabla player Madan Rana. Pooja was a real hit and we very much hope she can be persuaded to return some time in the New Year.

The first half ended with me saying thank you to everyone and not setting a competition (as I’d originally intended) because we’d overrun by twenty minutes. As has this post. It was meant to be two hundred words, nine of them “marvellous” with four “splendid”s and a “magnificent”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 5:09 pm and is filed under cabaret, poetry, reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.