Posts Tagged ‘street theatre’

Festival Edinburgh

Sunday, August 13th, 2023

Festival Edinburgh: I’ve only stayed in Edinburgh a couple of weeks over the years and only one of these was during the annual festival. Ten years ago in 2013 we were invited to share a flat for a week a short walk from the city centre with half a dozen of the family of my younger son’s wife who I think were all Scottish.

Festival Edinburgh
Tourists photograph the sign saying J K Rowling wrote some of her first Harry Potter book here. I’ve not read it.
Festival Edinburgh:
Old College, the University of Edinburgh
Festival Edinburgh:
Nam June Paik show in the College gallery

I’ve written a little about the week on My London Diary with rather a lot of pictures. We did go to a lot of events and performances, some together rather more on our own as our interests are different and there were so many things to choose from. But we also spent a lot of time walking around the city and surrounding areas.

Festival Edinburgh:
Street theatre

It was a busy week and we enjoyed it. But I’ve not felt it something I particularly wanted to do another year, once seemed enough.

Festival Edinburgh:
Calton Hill

The pictures here are from one day of that week, Tuesday 13th Aug 2013. It wasn’t a typical day as there were no typical days for us that week.

Canongate Kirk

Here’s the short text from My London Diary about what we did that day:

“I walked to the Nam June Paik exhibition, the visual arts high note of the festival, while Linda went to a concert. After that I went to hear poet Danny Chivers giving a great fringe performance. Linda and I grabbed some lunch from a street stall and then walked up Calton Hill and across to Arthurs Seat, rushing back to see a one-man play on the fringe, and after taking a few pictures along the High St before dinner.”

The quick path down from Arthur’s Seat

But I think the pictures probably make it rather clearer, certainly if you look at the larger set on My London Diary.

More on the street
Victoria Street

Many more pictures from the week at Edinburgh & the Festival and from the Tuesday here.


Mother Hysteria and Mogg

Sunday, June 9th, 2019

Starring Adam Clifford as Jacoob Rees Mogg and Jane Nicholl as Mother Hysteria the cast got together in a pub a short walk from the London Palladium where a full house of mugs were paying £38 a head to come and listen to Mogg.

Together with a small team of supporters the pair walked down to the Palladium, where early comers were queing to get into to the show and told them what they had come to see – and evening with a religious extremist.

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It was almost certainly more entertaining than anything that was coming later in the evening when they got inside the theatre, but there were a few in the queue who got a little upset at Class War. The police too showed they lacked a sense of humour and were soon insisting that Class War move further away to the other side of the road.

The protest continued there, with some longer speeches from a few of those present, including a well-known Whitechapel anarchist, although I wasn’t sure how many of those largely out-of-town punters across the road would appreciate the rhyming slang of his placard, ‘Jacob Rees-Joey Ronce.’

Nor for that matter, its accuracy. ‘Mogg-Tax Dodging Snob’ on another placard was however doubly to the point. Behind his backing for Brexit is undoubtedly both the fact that he stands to make millions if not billions from it, and as another placard pointed out, he is truly ‘Lord Snooty’ personified.

The evening then descended further into farce as the police threatened Mother Hysteria with arrest for possession of offensive weapons in the form of some novelty stink bombs. They took her to one side and held her against the wall and searched her, after which the sergeant concerned retreated into a nearby shop and spent at least 20 minutes trying to think of something to put on the notice for her that didn’t sound entirely ridiculous.

I took a lot of pictures, but not all of them were usable. It was yet another occasion when the many buttons and the two control dials on my Nikon cameras attracted my wandering digits, and I found myself suddenly having taken a series of exposures at far too high a shutter speed for the lighting or too slow for the subject movement. I had problems too with flash, and one of my cameras had a problem with the hot shoe, which I think was not making proper contact with the flash resulting in it firing at full output and totally overexposing some frames.

But as you can see at Class War protest Rees-Mogg freak show, plenty came out OK.


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