Autumn Equinox is coming, and so is a special performance… Queer Amusements writer-in-residence Jane Claire Bradley is sharing brand new material developed during her residency.
Once upon a pre-pandemic time, I did a lot of live performing. I hosted a monthly spoken word night, I performed at Edinburgh Fringe every year, and I headlined some incredible events and arts festivals all across the UK. Then we had a global pandemic and… in the three years between 2020 and 2023, I barely performed at all.
My relationship with performing has changed a lot in the decade-plus that I’ve been doing it, but one thing has stayed consistent: my love for the ephemerality of live performance. That each performance only exists in a specific real-time moment, for that specific audience. No two performances, readings, gigs or whatever else are ever entirely the same.
The adrenaline and magic of live performance – whether it’s theatre, music, spoken word or something else altogether – is a specific, unparalleled experience, and one that’s been a big part of my creative journey towards building trust in my voice, along with being a way of connecting to a community. Not being able to do it for so long during the pandemic gave me a weird existential identity crisis, so I was grateful when the Arts Council gave me DYCP funding to develop this trilogy of spoken word films, collaborating with a director, sound artist and actors to learn how my performance pieces could be transferred and adapted to another format and made more accessible beyond that ephemeral, in-person experience.
As lockdown restrictions were lifted and live performance returned, I found myself reflecting on what I’d missed most about performing, realising that I’d been using performing as my ticket to see other performers in action. Although technically that’s something that could be available to me anyway – if I knew where to look, and was able to get my arse in gear enough to set aside the time and energy to get to them – for all sorts of reasons, I don’t always manage that anywhere near as much as I’d like.
Being a performer unlocked an entire Narnia world — one which continually excites me and makes me want to make my own performances more ambitious, authentic and weird
So being a performer became almost like a loophole, a secret password unlocking an entire Narnia world where I get to experience so many acts of courage, creativity, catharsis and innovation — one which continually excites me and makes me want to make my own performances more ambitious, authentic and weird. I’ve gone through lulls of being bored by reading from my books, but last year I performed with a live band for the first time, and that was an altogether different experience from anything I’ve done before.
I found myself crawling around on the floor of a clandestine venue in the shadow of Strangeways prison on the night of a lunar eclipse
I found myself crawling around on the floor of a tiny clandestine venue in the shadow of Strangeways prison on the night of a lunar eclipse while four sonic powerhouses collaboratively weaved a real-time sound spell over and under my words. I did it with fragments lifted direct from my journal pages — the most intimate, hopeful, confessional things I’d written for no-one other than myself — and shared them with no sound check, no song sheet, no rehearsals, no real other plan than to giving ourselves the permission and chance to experiment… for me, those were all firsts. I wrote about the experience here, or you can watch the video of that experiment here.
Over the course of my Queer Amusements residency, I’ve been developing some new performance pieces, using my research into local mythology and lore as my starting points. And I’m excited to be able to showcase some of that work-in-progress with you next month. The Dead, the Divine + the Diabolical will be a night of weird and wonderful spoken word featuring performances from me alongside some very special guests.
Together, we’re inviting you to join us to celebrate the Autumn Equinox, one of only two moments annually where light and dark are equally balanced in a day and night of equal length. From Autumn Equinox, the nights get longer until the longest night of the year at Winter Solstice, from which the days start to lengthen as the light returns.
The balance and interplay of light and dark is a theme that’s been on my mind as I’ve been developing this new material, and with the equinox being viewed as a liminal and even magical time in a multitude of places and cultures, I’m excited to be sharing this new work at such a synchronous moment. From imagining the experience of queer Viking ancestors to material inspired by local myth, folklore and ghosts, I’ve loved the explorations that have led to this writing, and I can’t wait to share them with you in a few weeks time.
The Dead, the Divine and the Diabolical takes place at Bootleg Social and via livestream wherever you are in the world on Monday 23rd September 2024. You’ll find all the details and booking info here and via the Queer Amusements website. Between now and then, you can also catch me performing in the Fancy a Turn Showcase Revue on Friday 6th September, a night of brand new cabaret performances being developed during a forthcoming week of Queer Amusements workshops.
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