Land of Nod - at HEART

The Land of Nod is a Leeds-based comedy sketch show that’s been running since Spring 2010. They have performed in a number of venues in Yorkshire- Bradford Playhouse, Hebden Bridge Fringe Festival, Wakefield, York and regularly at Seven Arts in Chapel Allerton. The show consists of seventeen quick fire sketches ably performed by four actors (2 female/ 2 male) with a wide range of performing experience.

The sketches range from the topical- Our Tribute to the Diamond Jubilee- to the macabre, surreal and satirical. Influences range from Peter Cook, to Big Train, to The Day Today. They cover topics from waiting for god to ‘Airlock Holmes’ a modern day wanna-be detective who never seems to get it right.

They are appearing in the HEART Café in Bennett Road on Friday 11 May at 7.30pm. Tickets on the door - four pounds.


Feel free to click on the poster below and print it out.

For further information visit the website www.landofnod.org.uk

Three Friday evenings, soon...

 The café in the HEART Centre has just the right sort of atmosphere for poetry, music – and comedy. Now, we are responding to your requests and organising three follow-on events for the Headingley LitFest which will take place in it, all of them starting at eight pm.

There will be more detailed information soon on this blog (have you bookmarked us yet?), but for now please put these dates on your calendar:

May 11 – MIKE NELSON – stand-up comedian who ran a successful workshop for the LitFest in March

May 25 – IAN PARKS – poet who appeared at the Flux Gallery with others in March, with JAZZ from Destheminer

June 8 – MICHELLE SCALLY CLARKE – charismatic performance poet who was the driving force behind the Lawnswood Poetry Slam, with musical friends

City of Leeds Poetry Slam

Vivian Lister writes:

WOW!- the Wonder Of Words!

 -Wham–Bam- City of Leeds SLAM

City of Leeds School students hit the ground dancing with this their first ever Litfest slam. Supported by the excellent Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows, these talented young people dazzled us with an evening pulsating with drive, energy and full-on pizazz.

Strong political poems confronted world issues - of women’s oppression, of the futility and pain of war -  in language that was both reflective and heartfelt. There were flamboyant assertions of identity, of the pride of race and gender and the determination to be, to live and to grow.

The great comedy duo, Pinky and Za ("Don’t call me babe!" "Yeh babe!") delighted their fellow students with an energetic, fast moving dispute about language use and dignity - at least we older audience members think that’s what it was about as we were swept along in the slip-steam of this fast flowing dialogue. There were also plenty of poignant moments, personal experiences described in accurate, truthful language and performed simply and conversationally.

Faced with this wealth of exuberant talent, the judges retired to make their decisions whilst we were entertained by Michelle Scally Clarke, the event’s brilliant facilitator and Stella Petris, her wonderful collaborator who gave us their tribute to Nina Simone. There  was also  spirited playing by the Silver Steel Sparrows.

The judges - Amanda Stevenson, Head of English at Lawnswood School, poet Becky Cherriman and song writer Bob Green, expressed their delight at the flair, skill and also courage of all the performers. They were also impressed by how well the young people had worked together and looked after each other.

The judges awarded the prize for best poem to Farzad Ahmadi for the poem, ‘Shattered Dreams’, praising both its wonderful imagery and Farzad’s strong performance.

They gave special mention to Maryam Dodo’s poem, ‘Happy Day’, to Pinky Sibande for the beautiful, ‘Silence in the Room’,  to Antonio Bessa’s poems which dealt with serious world issues with power and clarity and to Natasha Gogwe’s ‘Climbing’ in which the energy of the rhythm emphasised high aspiration. 

The winner of the best personal achievement award was Neelam Chohan who impressed the judges by the  direct , conversational tone  of her poetry describing the trials of her life and also her reflections upon what writing has meant to her.

The judges also praised Luke Edgar for the courage and honesty of his writing.

The award for best overall performance was given to Za Nyamande who combined lyrical word play with commanding stage presence and style. Special mention went to Elijah Phillip for the beautifully performed, ‘Getting Older’.

Bob Green addressed the slammers: ‘Each of you has written your own truth- and that is poetry!’

City of Leeds Slammers! You are poets. We salute you!

The Slammers – Winners all!

All these young people attended the slam workshops and/or performed at the slam:

Farzad Ahmadi; Ikra Ahmed; Jeffrey Antwi; Antonio Bessa;Neelam Chohan; Maryam Dodo; Luke Edgar; Natasha Gogwe; Shirquilla Grant; Za Nyamande; Elijah Phillip; Unique Ruddock; Pinky Sibande 

Calligraphy at Left Bank

Simon Hall writes:
What is the relationship between the spoken and the written word? What is the relationship between the written word and the way we write it? These questions were bubbling under the surface as I picked up a piece of wood shaped into a primitive nib and tried to make a shape approximating to an Arabic letter. I was sharing a table with a very diverse group of punters - all complete novices - as we tried to get our minds and hands round the ancient practice of drawing words.

What made this particular session remarkable - in addition to the beautiful surroundings of Left Bank - was that the art was being done with a unique purpose. Gillian Holding is Jewish and local and Iman Meghraoua is an Eastern European Muslim, but they came together not just to teach calligraphy, but to demonstrate the common origins of Hebrew and Arabic script. If we share a script, can we not share our lives, they asked wordlessly as they gave unceasing encouragement to our group of faltering amateurs. As we hamfistedly tried to make beauty from the most basic of instruments we were being shown how much the romantic, flowing Arabic script has in the common with its precise - almost digitally precise - Hebrew sibling.

Just a few hours earlier, Gillian and Iman had welcomed young people from their own communities to share together and create huge collages of script to be taken to Israel/Palestine as a sign of peace and reconciliation. We, too, were able to make our own tiny contribution to the work. It felt hopelessly inept, tiny and insignificant, and yet here were two people from communities who are supposed to be at war with each other asking us to play our part. How could we refuse?

On your marks! Get set!

(Free House Event- Sunday 25 March)

Doug Sandle writes:

When I was a teenager I had pictures from an illustrated sports magazine on my bedroom wall alongside pictures of work by the likes of Paul Klee, Mondrian, Picasso and Magritte. While sport and the arts are often seen to occupy different and oppositional realms, as  portrayed in the popular stereotypes of the super fit  sports ‘jock and the arty ‘aesthete’, for me the arts and sport are twin passions. As an adolescent I wrote poetry and also ran cross country, played rugby and was a middle distance runner.  

So as a 'Beck Arts' contribution to the Headingley LifFest, following on from our 2011 Food for Thought, for this Olympic year it had to be the literature (and some songs) of sport as the subject of our presentation. As luck would have it, LitFest guest Anthony Clavane in his Sunday afternoon session talked about the often perceived divide between mind and body and the stereotypical assumptions that arts and sport necessarily inhabited different worlds. He argued that arts and sport had much in common and as an example cited author David Storey, who had been a Rugby League player for Leeds.  As I research the relationships between the arts and sport it is surprising how many artists, writers, dramatists, film makers, composers, dancers and poets have used sport not only as a subject  to be celebrated (and sometimes critiqued) but as a rich expressive and symbolic narrative of human experience. For Anthony Clavane, sport is theatre and a dramatic spectacle. For conceptual artist Martin Creed, whose piece entitled Work No. 850 in which every 30 seconds a runner ran through the galleries of Tate Britain, there is the implication that our experience of, and engagement with, art and sport may  have much in common. 

So in our sporty clothes and entering slow motioned to strains of Chariots of Fire we entered our arena (the welcoming front room of Richard Wilcocks's abode) to perform On Your Marks! Get Set!  to a full house. The performers who joined me were Sheila Chapman (who stood in generously for Lis Bertolla, who was unable to attend as advertised), Richard Wilcocks, John Milburn and Maria Sandle. The programme included poems on tennis, running, football, cricket and golf and readings of prose works on football and cricket featuring both well known and perhaps not so well known poets and authors. 

Richard also revealed in suitable dramatic style (in his piece The Führer's First XI) that Hitler had once had an interest in cricket and that he attempted to rewrite the rules and characteristics of the game. Following some particularly lyrical poems on cricket, John performed the poetic Roy Harper song When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease. Maria concluded a section on football with an example of a song that had had become ‘appropriated’ and associated with sport by singing The Fields of Athenry. This has become a feature of several sporting events and is performed by fans, notably for Celtic and Liverpool football clubs and also for Irish Rugby games. 

Some works, such as Lis Bertolla’s own poem Team Spirit (especially written for this event), reminded us that school experience of sport was not a comfortable experience for some, while nonetheless recognising its metaphorical import later in life. Other readings playfully poked fun at being too obsessed with sporting prowess and physicality or critiqued the celebrity culture of commodified sport. The performance concluded with a song and a poem about boxing, and we then moved on to indulge in the refreshments provided by Anna. It was a very enjoyable event for the last day of the main LitFest programme.

The Lingo of Sport in New Headingley Club

Richard Wilcocks writes:

Sunday Mirror sports writer Anthony Clavane spoke about his best-selling Promised Land: A Northern Love Story which is about the city, its football club and its communities, and about what it means to be a writer who wants to celebrate Leeds. We need to relish our ‘Leedsness’!

His heroes were not all taken from the sporting world: Mick McCann’s How Leeds Changed The World was mentioned, and David Storey was flagged up, even though he came from Wakefield, which according to Clavane is “almost Leeds, well all right, it’s West Yorkshire... well anyway he’s been a big influence and he wrote This Sporting Life on the train to London... every time I go down to Kings Cross on the train, which is often, I am reminded of how he wrote the novel sitting in a seat just like mine, on the train. He played Rugby League at weekends and was a student at the Slade School of Art during the week.

“The worlds of sport and art can be brought together. There are so many connections and so many false dichotomies.” He went on to illustrate his point.

There was Brian Clough, the manager who did not actually burn Don Revie’s desk, even though David Peace had him do it in The Damned United (look up David Peace in the search box above to find his contribution to the 2010 LitFest), and there was mention of Matt Busby, who once managed a certain bunch of footballers on the other side of the Pennines, and who described football as theatre: “...in which case Elland Road is the Theatre of the Absurd.”

“The Kop at Elland Road – remember? A Greek chorus!” We shared our memories of chants. He did not mention all of them because he considered that we were “a family audience”, which provoked one or two surprised looks.

Clavane aired personal anecdotes, of which he has a great archive, drawn upon extensively for the book. He once sold lollies and ice creams in the old Leeds Playhouse, one half of a sports centre. Quiet, significant moments in plays were often less than tense when the audience could hear the clink-clink of weights being hoisted and dropped by those training at the other side of breeze-block walls. “I saw Comedians by Trevor Griffiths and Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of An Anarchist when I worked there. Fo’s play changed every night because the actors had to react to contemporary events. You never knew exactly what was going to happen. As in a match.”

Questions and Answers was interesting, given equal time with the talk. He tackled a lengthy one about all sport being too male-orientated with professional skill and declared that he had given adequate space in Promised Land to the violent and racist elements who once gave Leeds United such a bad reputation, back in the seventies. “It’s changed such a lot. It’s more family orientated now,” he said. Someone pointed out that rugby had been like that for decades.

Promised Land is about to be adapted for the stage this summer by Clavane and co-writer Nick Stimpson. The adaptation will tell the same story through the eyes of Nathan and Caitlin, two young idealists growing up in mid-1970s Leeds, living in the same city but on opposite sides of a cultural and religious divide. Nathan is a third generation Russian-Jewish immigrant and a Leeds United obsessive who dreams of making it as a writer, and Caitlin is a political campaigner and a third-generation Irish Catholic immigrant. Against all the odds, they fall in love, united by their hopes and dreams – the kind of aspiration that drew their grandparents to the industrial city in the first place.

The play, which is going to be full of music and dancing, with a large community cast and a band, is a co-production between Red Ladder Theatre Company, Leeds Civic Arts Guild and The Carriageworks. It will be performed at The Carriageworks between 22 and 30 June 2012.