No Ordinary Logie Tenement

I've been GAGGING to tell y'all about the historic theatre event at 48 Logie Place on Sunday, but can't seem to grab an hour to do it. Okay, here goes.. IT WAS AWESOME! Well, that didn't take too long, did it!

I couldn't have done it on Sunday night; took a good couple of days for the whole thing to settle in my mind. If you live locally, the show runs until Sunday, and it's FREE. GO! You will not regret it. If you don't live locally, let me give you a taste of what you are missing..

As you probably know, the National Theatre of Scotland is launching on the 25th of February, and to mark the event, a series of "groundbreaking" theatre productions centered on the theme of "Home" are taking place all around Scotland. The first was just up my street, literally and otherwise. I took Teresa, a good theatre-loving friend of mine, and headed off; it's less than a two minute walk.

it's clear as you approach the tenement that something's not right. There's a strange mystical glow coming off the place, for starters. And a wee camp fire outside, too. Add a few photographers, a contract coach, and a general buzz, and it's clear that this is the place alright. Something is definitely going on.

There's a signpost outside the block, which happily tells us how far we are from places like Queensland, Australia; and Idaho, USA. I'm not exactly sure what that's about.

The local kids have already started work on that, and soon it will be no more than an interesting piece of wood stuck in the ground, before eventually falling and finding its way onto a bonfire of some sorts. it's fun though, while it lasts.

I resisted the temptation to give the thing a nudge, but I'd wager it's not plugged in anything like securely enough to last more than a month. that's Logie for ye!

A dodgy bloke appears. You'll be seeing more of him. He says he's an estate agent and wants to sell us one of these fine Logie apartments.

I agree, the Logie architecture often speaks to me. As I wander round at night, I imagine the architects with their grand post-war vision; good, solid, functional homes for up-and-coming families. Back then, this area was the place to be, apparently. My Nana had the first house here (which still stands) and old locals will tell you all about how it used to be a bustling community, how the shops were busy and the people felt content and secure, right up until, well, Heroin, I guess.

They're like Monopoly houses now, the local council can have you moved in the same day; yet dozens lie empty while Aberdeen has an official homeless population in the thousands. Desirable, they are not. But this guy is gonna try and sell them anyway. Good for him! They are fine homes, I'd buy one.

A local appears at the rear of our group, though I didn't recognize her, and starts mouthing-off at the estate agent. "Fit's going on here?". Teresa reckons it looks like she's about to jump someone; I have to agree; and slip behind her, whispering "Shhh! it's theatre" in her ear, about the same time the estate agent comes forward to do exactly the same thing. The situation jumps about then diffuses and we head inside. The girl doesn't follow.

In retrospect, I think she was actually an actress, and I probably, erm, altered the prelude! Och well, another one for the life-and-times series!

Once in the stairwell, our property salesman's pitch takes an altogether different tone and he gets entirely carried away. "The Magic of Aberdeen". If you've forgotten what that is, head along to 48 Logie Place some evening this week and get reminded.


With a sniff, and a sigh he leads us to the first flat, which he nonchalantly informs us might be haunted.

We head along the dim, brown hall with its fascinating old photos, and into a barely lit room. Teresa gets a start, to put it mildly; there seems to be a corpse sitting on a chair!

I immediately suss that this piece must be to do with community and how we neglect our elderly (you remember my recent blog?). Prolly been dead for days or weeks, I'm thinking.

But as we huddle round the room, and the lights gentle raise, the corpse comes to life!

The phone rings! I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say, it's not her daughter, who really IS dead, and makes a ghostly appearance soon after..

The ghost really threw me, but I wasn't that far off with my initial assessment. Hopefully, you'll see, or rather hear what I mean when you go yourself. When the lights go up, and the crazy French Chef appears, some of the audience are visibly shaken, but that's only the first act! The best is yet to come, oh yes!

Crazy French Chef, who does seem to bear an incredible likeness to that estate agent chap we met earlier, leads us out of the room and up the stairs, with a tray of, erm, "pies", I think I was (but really it was sausage-rolls, I declined), and onto the next flat, the next act..

And so it goes, up through the flats of one fine Logie tenement block, each flat, each act exploring a different dimension of the concept of "home". it's tempting to give you a blow-by-blow account, but really, I don't want to spoil it too much, especially if you happen to be going along over the next few days. You can't take it all in, not in one sitting.

For instance, one of the flats had us stop in the lobby, with a mini-performance in each of the side-rooms. Really I should go back another couple of times and find out what the others were; we got the kitchen being at the front of the pack; with a pair of what can only be loosely described as mime-artists, funny stuff, and I didn't once feel the need to peek in any of the other rooms. I do wonder what was going on there, though.

Space was tight, you see. In a couple of the flats the actors were literally weaving in and out of us, and it's clear why only twenty-odd folk get to see each performance; there is simply no space for more! And of course, it's a credit to the actors that they could perform sometimes inches from "the public", and perform so brilliantly, too; it's clear from the outset that this is no "amateur" production, to a man, the crew do an incredible job. Having such great theatre right in your face like that, very refreshing; I even got spittle on me at one point!

But this wasn't just a series of performances, flat-to-flat; it was an overall experience, and even the transitions from one apartment to the next, the sounds and smells, colours and mood, all theatrically set, all part of the show.

The transitions were as good as the main pieces, though it's these gals, cowgirls, to be precise, who barged in right at the end of a truly heated family scene singing "wherever I lay my hat", leading us onwards and upwards to the final, and my personal favourite piece, well, they certainly stick out in my mind!

The singing cowgirls are accompanied, as you can see, by a rather familiar looking gentleman with a Banjo. Not a bad Banjo payer, either! Those aren't little birdies flying around his head, by the way, at least not in the literal sense; they are paper boats. Other stuff happened there, singing, and erm, well, there these cowgirls with bare belly-buttons and, anyway..

The top floor flat is home to a once sea-faring man, and there he stands with his back to us, lost in some other world. The whole place stinks of fish, I mean, really stinks. Someone dropped a dead Cod, no doubt. But all this is forgotten when whoeverthehellthatactorwas begins to tell us about Mr.. No, I'm not even going to attempt it; couldn't do it justice, simply; a magnificent soliloquy.

At the end of it, he turns his agony back to the window, and we who feel more than spectators catch our breath, just then, the most joyous noise takes over the place. It is an OM. Charmed, we slide out of the flat, leaving the dieing cod behind..

Of course it must be "Home", but the beautiful acoustics of a standard Logie stairwell, and these fine singers lining its walls, lift that word up and out of the roof; the whole place held in this beautiful joyous vibration as we dizzily pour down the stairs, our hearts bursting. We want to shout "BRAVO!", but are speechless, dumb-struck. I softly joined in the OM. What else?

I had one picture left on my digi-cam, and flipped the thing to video, didn't care much where it pointed, just wanted to capture a couple of seconds of this amazing sound1, a snippet, but I got a whole round. Check it out, a wee low quality taste of the thing, at least..



We mill around outside as the hOMe sound fades, the players make their way to the windows to receive their rapturous applause, screams and whistles. The middle four windows light up the word "HOME" (first pic, up top) so we don't forget what it was all about, because for most of us fortunate locals draining into the Logie night, it has been a fairly mind-blowing experience, one that will linger and probably take a while to sort itself out in our minds.

And that's that.

It still hasn't entirely settled in my mind. The material and performances were powerful enough, but more than that, they way the themes all meld into each other, compliment and catalyse each other. What is Home? What does it mean to me? To you? I guess I'll come back to that; for now I'm still dipping into the memory, enjoying the weird sensations of theatre-that's-not-afraid-to-bump-into-you.

I gotta wangle another pair of tickets for the week-end.
All ears-and-eyes, no camera.

for now..

:o) The Writing Entity @ corz.org

ps.. Karen! Get in touch!

pps.. I'm meeting up with the NTS photographer dude, Dom, on Saturday, I think (and hopefully, Teresa, too, because she "kens a'body!"), to take some pictures of locals. I'll maybe see about getting some of those pictures into a future blog. Oh, here's Dom, hard at work..

Karma? You decide!

Well, since I started sending death-threats to junk mail companies and switched my utilities to paper-free billing1, I don't get a great deal of paper mail, something I'm very happy about. The idea being that when I do, it's important. This one certainly is..



For those that don't know, Scotland is about to get its own National Theatre (at last, yes). This is clearly a Milestone in Scottish History and all the rest of it, but that's not what makes it special for me.

To launch the new National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) the powers that be have decided to adopt the theme of "home", one of our language's most evocative words, and they have commissioned ten Scottish directors to create ten pieces of theatre on this very theme, in ten different locations around Scotland, some to be performed in actual homes..

And of all the hundreds of thousands of streets in Scotland, the first ever NTS production will be staged.. (wait for it).. in Aberdeen! And amazingly, the venue is.. (OMFG!) my street!   48 Logie Place, to be precise.

Although, officially, NTS is launched on the 25th of February, the Logie shows run from Tuesday, 21st, and every other door on the street got a cool letter+poster through it, with an invite to the preview show on Sunday. I booked two tickets.

Something to tell the grandchildren, eh!

for now..

:o) The Writing Entity @ corz.org

Oops

Traditionally the start of the year is a slow time for me. It hasn't been this year. I wouldn't know where to begin filling you in with the details, so I probably won't. Where did this blog disappear to these last few days? Well, erm, simple human error, I reckon. That black hole for things that are supposed be somewhere else, or happen elsewhere, or whatever. I blame no one!

Not a mistake, that's different. We learn from those. Errors we just go "aww feck!" or words to that effect. And then try to pay more attention next time. And not be in a hurry. (note to self)

Avid corzblog readers (that's you and me, matee) will have noticed my wrestling with a rather challenging blog on the dev mirror. I'll come back to that, I offer by way of excuse for it not actually getting up here to the live version. What can I say? It confused even me. But I'll work on that. The confusion, that is.

Okay, you got me, this is a filler.

:o) The Writing Entity @ corz.org