Woke this morning with this thought I clean my teeth and I wash my face… Why can’t I wash my teeth and clean my face?. So I washed my teeth and I cleaned my face.
I've spent the weekend in Leeds. Something Dark, my play, was on at Transform, a theatre festival curated by Kully Thiari and Alan Lane at West Yorkshire Playhouse. I met old friend and writer Kev Fegan who’ll soon be boarding a plane to Kenya to meet George Obama the half brother of president Barack Obama. When George’s autobiography was published the only country to refuse him visa entry for the subsequent book tour was America.
I had the honour of meeting Zdenka Fantlova, an holocaust survivor and author of Tin Ring a work-in-progress theatrical adaptation of her eponymous book as performed through actor Jane Arnfield and director Mike Alfreds. It's an incredible piece of work.. In the afternoon I spoke at a a symposium with them called From Where I am Stood. I learned something. In Kurdistan amongst the oppressive conditions and genocide there is this saying If a man tells his story he can not die. The saying encapsulates Transform. It shows the power and vitality of story and of Theatre. If a man tells his own story he can not die.