Ballad of the Burning Star at Battersea

Okay, so what's happened this week?   Most of it has been about the children's book (see pic above). that is Lazy Linda, fast asleep with her four flea-arms wrapped around her.   Met up with some of T's long lost relatives who are in the country, and I'm further on with planning the Greece trip. I was also offered an interesting trip to Tunisia, which hasn't been too easy to place because there's a state of emergency in the country, even though it doesn't apply to the bit around Tunis.  I think I've done it, though, and hope to be off there soon.  

The good vibes about my shoulder helped, and it's now on the mend!  And I've gone back on the statins, because going to the gym helped much more than cutting out the pills. Awww, what a shame, but it's true. So twice a week to the gym now. 

The sweet babies continue to play a huge part in my life. 

I love staring into their eyes. They never mind staring right back, and it's such a touching experience somehow.  There are little human beings inside there, working as hard as they can to learn about the big wide world.

We have been getting out and about, the latest trip to Battersea. Battersea was always the downtrodden little brother of posh Chelsea, just across the river. But now Chelsea's choking to death on its own poshness, turning into a sterile ghost town owned by absentee billlionaires, and Battersea is really quite cool. Part of that's due to the quirky, lively Battersea Arts Centre, (BAC). 

BAC has been in the redundant Old Town Hall for years, and I believe helped save it from demolition when the Borough of Battersea was swallowed up into Wandsworth.  They started small and raised the money to create performance spaces, a cafe, a bar, workshops, studios.... all kinds of things.  They now aim to restore the  unusual organ installed in 1901, designed by the man whose ideas led to the Mighty Wurlitzer.  (You'll see it in the background of McFly's "Love is Easy")

It's a great place to hang out and play board games, chat, drink, eat.  The main entrance hall's a triumph of marble and mosaic with a grand staircase leading to the upper floors decorated by a great big frieze.

 

It's definitely quirky.  There is a blanket box from which you can borrow a fashionable looking blanket in case you are cold.  Saves on the heating bills, anyway!  There's a little parlour with a coal fire like an old fashioned railway station.

And bees (B for Battersea) everywhere - these were built into the original Victorian mosaic floors, so the idea originally came from Battersea Council.

I spotted that someone had made a chess set out of  a cardboard box. 

 Halfway up the stairs a long carpet are benches and little tables. The pictures on the walls are 3-D collages telling of the history of the centre, and the "books" you see there actually tell the story of the centre's progress and development.  

Here's a close up of BAC's early days when the town hall was being rescued from redevelopment.  The pictures are beautifully constructed using card and photos. 

And what did we see?  It was a performance called "Ballad of the Burning Star" and here is the author and chief performer, Nir Paldi, who is Israeli.

"Balllad of the Burning Star" is a production by Theatre Ad Infinitum, looking at the psychological state of Israel.. It's a full on cacophony of energy and noise and emotion.  For me it highlighted the basic psychological truth that if you victimise anyone - a person, a whole race - you thereby teach them to frame the world in terms of that abuse, and their own torture does not suddenly stop when life improves.  Deeply compassionate, tragic, angry, sympathetic, funny at times, too, actually. Humour and spectacle are cleverly used to defuse the violence, horror and pain that makes up so much of Jewish history. The performance was in a small auditorium (and packed out), but might still work even better as cabaret, but perhaps it would have been overwhelming as cabaret because I felt shattered by the end of the evening!

The show has won lots of awards and is currently halfway through a UK tour - click the website link to see if it will be coming near you.      Here are a snap review and audience reaction for it, and here's the trailer, below,  but it doesn't really (in my opinion) give you any idea of the passion, style and life of the show.  Even if you turn the sound up to maximum.

It was great going to Battersea Arts Centre. Even though Battersea is a total nightmare to reach from where we live (public transport, car, bike, none of them are an easy journey) I'll be going again.