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Cirque du ArtSwarm: First Time
Wistaston Memorial Hall, Wistaston
23 November 2019

About this event

One of a series of experimental art performance, music and poetry nights at Wistaston Memorial Hall, curated and organised by Mark Sheeky and Deborah Edgeley. The theme of the evening was First Time, which was chosen at random from themes suggested at the previous event. As is typical, Mark Sheeky opened the night with something fun, a simple comic song about Neil Armstrong. Carol Finch then read three poems related to first times from her new poetry book It's All In The Blood. Maggie Shaw then sang three self-penned folk songs with acoustic guitar, and Mark Sheeky performed a poem made from the first lines of books which members of the audience had brought in. Audience members, Stephen Pennell and Brian Marsh then read some of their poems on stage in the open-mic section.

Alice Smith then performend three personal works in which she conversed with her younger self, an image of which was projected onto the back wall. Mark Sheeky then ended the first half with a silly piece of surreal entertainment called One-Der-Bar where the audience clapped a rhythm as Mark sang an alphabet of chololate bars from Aero to Zoobadedoos.

Nicholas Ferenczy began the second half with three pieces; a rendition of Joni Mitchell's Woodstock, a poem about Mow Cop peroformed to a video projection, and a song/poem accompanied by a curiously twangy guitar used for sound effects. Deborah Edgeley brought the schedule to a close with the Silent Disco; an interactive performance piece where the lights were switched off and the audience stood in the dark and danced to no music for a few mintues. Participants could see each other's outline, but no faces, creating a strangely communal and eerie feeling. For the final piece, Mark Sheeky performed the Rolling Stones' Last Time, and the audience clapped to the words Last Time.

The next theme was chosen using the medium of paper-scissors-stone. The scheduled performances finished early, so some of us tried few improvised works. Mark Sheeky made up a song about things going wrong the first time, and Nicholas Ferenczy, Maggie Shaw and Mark Sheeky improvised music on different instruments, and later Chris Driver played some classical melodies on acoustic guitar.