Sunday, August 01, 2010

In Which I Fail To See Hotel Medea

A couple of months ago I drew a comic to be used in Hotel Medea, an overnight theatrical production devised by and featuring Persis-Jade Maravala, a colleague at the University of the East. It was a chance meeting: I had gone along to talk about my music at a get-together about research, and had taken my drawings to accompany me and make me feel more confident.
She had been looking for an artist to make a comic that described Medea's exile, and I spent about ten days drawing non-stop to get the comic ready for the production's visit to Brazil (some of the drawings are posted here, a few pages back).
The boat trip carrying the audience to the production left from the O2 in North Greenwich, travelling to Stratford, so I decided to leave my car at Stratford, travel by tube to North Greenwich, and pick up my car at 2 a.m. when the first part of the Trilogy finished (unused to theatre, I though that Part One would be enough even though the comic appears in Part Two when the audience is put to bed in pyjamas with hot chocolate and the comic).
It was fun getting ready and exciting to have an event like this to go to.
The problem was that after I had parked in Stratford, I then had to negotiate several huge groups of drunk young men (one group of more than ten) who were shouting, standing in the road, and hovering in a way that surely did not feel menacing to them but that certainly made me feel afraid.
I got halfway to the station before the thought of meeting the same guys four times as drunk on the way back to my car in the wee small hours entered my head.
I couldn't do it. I don't know whether it's Offsprog Two's mugging a few weeks ago, or the effect of being away from the ferocious urban buzz of night-time London for a week, but I actually felt frightened.
Back to the car, and back home I went.
I do wish I had been able to see it; I know it sold out and so maybe there will be another chance, when I will be able to collar one of my pals (they are all out of London on holiday) to come with me.

1 comment:

frayedattheedge said...

How awful that their behaviour stopped you from going! I despair sometimes of what will happen to this country in years to come!!