Event

Improv Night: Cars
Mash Guru, Macclesfield
6 March 2019

Detail from Improv Night: Cars by Mark Sheeky Detail from Improv Night: Cars by Mark Sheeky Detail from Improv Night: Cars by Mark Sheeky Detail from Improv Night: Cars by Mark Sheeky

About this event
One of a series of experimental art performance nights at music venue Mash Guru, curated and organised by Sabine Kussmaul and Mark Sheeky. The theme of the evening was Cars.

The evening began with a mock car advertisement performed by Bryan Riley, followed by a karaoke of five car related songs sung by Liam Read. Mark Sheeky's contribution was 'The A to Z of Cars' where Mark played improvised music on guitar and synthesizer, with Linda Towell playing bongos. Every so often Mark invited the audience to shout out a word related to cars beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Deborah Edgeley then read a poem, Ode to a Motorway, handing out a toy car for the audience to pass around.

After a short break, newcomer Gaeran Southern read some of his poems with a car theme. Simon Ross then took two car related novels: the utopian On The Road by Jack Kerouac and the dystopian Crash by J. G. Ballard. He chose a page at random from each with the help of the audience, then read across both books to create new prose made from both novels.

John Wilson read three John Betjeman poems with a car connection, and Linda Towell read a car poem too. The night ended with a general music jam, with Mark Sheeky and later John Wilson on keyboard, Gaeran and Simon on guitar, and Liam singing, notably a rendition of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water.