CHRONICLING CHRONICLE: I

Memory is an unreliable historian. Despite it’s only having been a week or since the last performance of “No Particular Place To Go”, this is no less true than if I were trying to record events from a year or a decade ago. How quickly we contrive to mythologize or edit the events of our lives to give them a significance or even a structure that they would not naturally possess is almost a thing of wonder in itself. However, having failed to make concurrent notes, I shall have to rely upon that unreliable historian when trying to record matter and not myth.

So to the beginning, and even now that’s not true because there is a prologue to all this but I’ll try to explain it as we go along or we’ll never get started. My constant partner in theatrical crime James Weisz and I were in a rut. Various plans but no direction. Mock-celebrity tributes to dead film stars, sketch shows, two-man plays: we were active, certainly, but formless. The only attribute these activities seemed to have in common was that we two were involved. It was James who complained about this first. Strange, as I thought he was happiest amidst this frantic confusion.

There are certain local companies I admire as companies, even if I disagree with some of their methodologies. One, for example, has created an identity for itself by staging short plays from unknown writers that range in tone from the surreal to the hilarious to the poignant. It has a high quality threshold. However, due to the economics of fringe theatre, the authors have often gone unpaid (or relatively lowly paid) for their input. Meanwhile, promising troupes of actors have often disassociated themselves from the company following disputes over money.

This situation may be changing, with the company performing more devised and commissioned pieces, but the fact remains that – no matter what its internal/teething/financial problems - the company stands for something. When people come to its performances, they know what they are getting. As a result, it sells to packed-out houses in Brighton and Edinburgh, has been nominated for various prestigious awards, and is developing its portfolio.

Naturally, I wanted some (if not all) of that.

Taking an overall view of the work James and I had orchestrated over the past few years, there was one small thread running through it all. Small and simple: we were telling stories. This was glaringly obvious when it came to the plays, less so with the other activities. Yet the tribute to Dennis Hopper had been an opportunity to indulge the various mythologies of Hollywood’s bad boy, while the best of our sketches were narratives in themselves.

As an inveterate, some might say intolerable, punster I naturally ran through the various definitions of story-telling within my precious Chambers Thesaurus. This may not be strictly true; it may have been the Roget or just the on-line version. Again memory’s lack of reliability, but the principle remains the same: I was seeking synonyms.

Story n. account, ancedote (sic), article, chronicle…

I don’t feel the need to take you through "novel, plot, recital..." and the rest. Chronicle had a pleasing ring to it. I think it’s the consonants: a symmetry of three and three. Thus was Chronicle Theatre born.

Now all I needed to do was work out what that meant.