Womb That is All Packed Out

FullSizeRender.jpg

Thank you so much you special 27 who were able to make it to Womb With A View this last week. Very special times for me.  Performing in this show was challenging in a way I wasn't expecting. My characters job was to play with each person openly and personally. As a result, people connected with him. And then they opened up. Initially, I wasn't sold on the whole one audience experience idea but after doing this I think it’s quite special. Arlo Gibson, I love making work with you man, everytime I do I end up being faced more and more with the universality of emotions like fear, shame, and worthlessness. It makes me braver to face these things in myself. And the less I am afraid of them, the more I can show others not to be afraid of them too. I’m so proud of you for making your own thing.

The picture is of little Ewe, unpacking now, but only to reform in another womb, another time.

 

February Update

Woo! The year has kicked off with a blast! Pilot season madness got me like:

Screen Shot 2018-02-19 at 10.03.17 AM.png

I've started back with HTA Trust, directing a piece for them that should have a showing in April.

The Sight of Stars by Jakob Twidle and Run, Shosana Productions had its premiere, along with all the other work Run, Shosana had made last year, which was really inspiring.

One of my fav shots from Sight of Stars

One of my fav shots from Sight of Stars

On top of that, I've started teaching drama at St Kentigerns, AAAAAND been making a show for the Fringe. It's called A Womb With A View and it's about experiencing being in the womb for a second time. It's on at the Basement 27 Feb - 3 March and is a show for one audience member at a time. But it's very special and gentle, you will enjoy and will not feel too on the spot, even though you don't have an army of audience at your back.

BLEEP BLOP BLERRP..----'

Womb With A View - From the Brain of Arlo Gibson

Shot guys, more sweet treats to come this year is just getting started. Love to you all. Hit me up if you are wanting to produce some short films this year. Even if you have no experience - just the desire to learn and get involved is excellent. - Opportunity to be mentored by Alix Whittaker - Producer of Candlelit Pictures.

Barbarian Productions

Hello, time to update you on what I'm up to next.

This weekend I am performing in a rad work by Barbarian Productions called GRAND OPENING. Its first iteration was at the iconic Opera House in Wellington in 2015, and now we're opening the magnificent CIVIC THEATRE wide open for a play with all of you. This work is inspired by THE CIVIC's history and will be silly, family-friendly aaaaand, it's a Barbarian Production people, so prepare to be surprised.

The show is on 11-9.30 this Saturday and 12-6.30 this Sunday. Audiences are admitted every 15 minutes and bookings are essential. Tickets $15.00 plus service fees.

You'll find tickets here.

And more info here.

Aaaaaalso coming up for the Fringe is a new THANKYOUREALGOODPARTYTIMELTD. Production; WOMB WITH A VIEW... We have some new mates joining us this time, like milo cawthorne, Saraid Cameron, Zoe Robins, Emily Campbell, and Phoebe Borwick. Whew! What a sweet cast.

Peace and love and gritty drama to you all,

Ash

Aim Me and I'll Hold them Up High for You

You are the form of woman to me,

And therefore,

I worship you.

You are the part that is missing with me,

And therefore,

I worship you.

These poems are mine b'now they're written for you,

And therefore,

I worship you.

I once had to lie, but now it's all true, 

And therefore,

I worship you.

 

So, I welcome you to be with me,

To be with me,

And worship.

And if you need another way,

Another time,

Another day,

I'm flexible but still I'll see,

A time for us to worship.

 

So party down!

Let's celebrate!

The both of us rejoice.

Maybe it's you can't stand the fate

And you've taken my voice.

Maybe I'll lose the sight of me,

No longer anonymity

But I've desire for you to see

That I gaze on you worshipfully.

Perhaps you find it hard because you're still finding the you

And when I pray, divine woman,

You see that we are two,

But also you are feeling that

I want us to be one.

I cast myself away and worship you like it's the sun!

 

See, you allowed me to be more and therefore,

I worship.

It's not an easy thing for me to be lady is such a mystery to me and I shut the lid so hard before it was closed to me but now you help to turn the key no matter it's so rusty,

You see, you're young and I have lived, time has cracked and crushed me,

Inspired, I, to shirk said suit, and worship most devoutly

You're wanting, what? I'll get it hun

See you're a Goddess with a gun

Can't longer stand the me, you've won.

And therefore baby,

therefore,

 

I worship you.

Drag FOr the Win

Had so much fun performing Now I Become Beauty Destroyer of Worlds on Thursday night at the Golden Dawn with Johnna Cecilia and these two babes..

IMG_2584.JPG

We may come back and do it again, you never know your luck..

As you can see, there was a little audience involvement here.. 

As you can see, there was a little audience involvement here.. 

And then! Last night! I performed with Murella and Drew again in drag wars all stars, and well done Murella for your 3rd place!! Podium, baby! 

Well, that’s what I’ve been up to, hope your halloweekends have been nice and spooky ☺️

Tonight was an impossible night

Tonight was impossible.

Owl though,

Even if eventuality opened up like a heart thump

And the group grew up high like a high opportunity.

There's still work to do.

But it's fine in time.

We dine till eleven.

Soul meal under heaven.

And it opened,

It opened.

While we, aping and gaping and heaping and meanwhile,

We welcome the mariner,

That deep diving Herbie,

Extraneous expert we expelled it for you.

And he, he'd help well and even,

Then he'd heap a whole treasure mound,

So far devoid of his experience

He'd stare at a mirror hoping to find a person he recognized!

Like ten tyres teaming and tired of this magnificence,

He's stuck still, killing every tadpole that comes his way.

And what would happen then?

Could he breathe then?

Could he open up his bellows and laugh with aching sides,

Chin stretched out in mirthing agony

A birth of rapturous noise

Elephantine pronouncement like,

"Hello I'm here."

I mean, it can't really be helped.

Like, it's neither here nor there.

If you were to land upon an alien ship,

Swept together by the tide,

Would you know what to do with it?

Cause that was so beyond your experience,

What would you revert to?

And if I want to ask that,

What does that mean for the rest of humanity?

Like a sly sal silver slug

In sallow.

Sylvester Stallone in the 80's with a mustache like my 90's Dad.

It's hip, you know?

And as I sit here,

Stretched over the basin in my woolen jumper,

I read these words aloud like a well tonne warlock,

Hunting up high like a ghost for the door lock.

I put my tower up too but come on it's not really that strong.

It couldn't take the weight of a lion who wanted me

Really

Let's be honest here.

And if I had a rifle,

It's gonna come at you so fast,

And all my palms so sweaty with anticipation,

That I'll damn near miss every shot,

But probably only get off one or two,

And then what?

I drop the bullet box like a bullock?

Rolls over the side as the lion presses up

And I roll and totter, grasping for a tree with nine leaves at a stretch.

What is this weird world?

What is this wine nightmare?

What am I doing in Africa hunting beasts?

What well tuned wisdom did lead me here,

Doomed and at mercy of nature,

Naked in my ignorant purpose.

And what did they do to the trains?

To the training of the spearheads and spades?

I've only instead got this gun that's no good

This gun so outside of me I've got no chance,

No pace to this alien deathgiver.

My roots let go and I blast in the right direction like a piston

Steering naught but the wheel,

And I've got lobster claws somewhat.

So,

what?

I'm better whisper to the master and filter out,

Slide along like a puddle almost dried,

And then I can whimper and rankle,

Hoping you don't really notice those high tones embellishing nothing

Now, really.

If we return we angle certain,

Open out the corner with 18 wheels and nowhere to make it.

Impossible with that peeping hand,

Reaching out to comprehend these grains of sand from a state of statues burnished down,

Down to paste

Down to pate

Down to take and frown

Down on patsy and even brown

And down on me.

Down like an even surface flat and 90 degrees

Never fuck with a 90 90 (two times)

A rabid 90 in her ninties

Untied and sprightly with two lines

Up high on her hind knee

With preachy and batty home spines but whiny.

So sound and sing slimy it might be,

Slip sidelong inside me

And nicely you pry

But likely,

I'd knock on the door but pray to you never to find me.

That simple eyed gibbon

That sign handed ribbon

Let's have it, I'll burn it

Then have at it again.

So within that is your self-hidden reverse,

Grim turns and grace will disperse this ant hiffisence,

And with stim churned the chin scatter

With this platter

Into thin chatter.

Too much coffee and a slight watered roast.

Mastering art like a kite in the sky.

Snaking with string as it's held by three hands and hope that we keep it up.

5 nights to play and then whatever happened

It leaped and grew and tangled.

Bless this show,

I wish it the best,

I love it,

I give it my cuddling love and my care and now it must run.

It's been held by my shins and it's struggling to sprint down the hall and fall wincing then pick itself up and shout.

Go you little show,

Many died to get you here

Do your stuff you new note.

 

IMG_2425.JPG

Times

Times of me and times of you and times of once before.

A time of empty people

Sadly moan

An empty swimming pool,

All standing there with their togs on and nowhere to swim.

Times of no sense

And nonsense.

Times of absolute sense.

Hesitance.

Subsistance.

Subservience.

Times - an umpteen times of happy mediums.

Some too hot.

Some too tangy.

Some too tart.

Some too spice.

Some just right.

A lot like that actually.

Its crazy how right they get it most of the time.

Like how I'm right.

Write oh write 'till you can't write anymore and your hand falls off the page.

The muscles yearn for rest.

Sweet sleep and results.

I just think this shit and write it down.

I'm proper proud.

Like look at what's just come out of me now.

Something Happened to me in the Weekend

Emotional dreamscapes exist in the daytime hours.

Perfect inescapable bliss

Fully sharpened.

 

It's been a big black time of time cum.

Accidents impossibly impenetrable,

Diatribes of inescapable complexity,

A nuance not set above

Extreme and utter carnal pleasure.

Please, bring notes to me,

Unconscious denizens of doom and despair,

An expression of light amidst the dark.

Inside the dark.

A dark so bright it illuminates itself with an utter inky wash.

A light so bright, so immensely vibrant

It pulsates with umpteen energy

The infinite and call to beyond

A time scale,

A never realm,

A feat of two feet that lock,

A similar,

An assumption,

A full wash of colour,

Bright, vivid colour,

So many colours you can't see them anymore,

They just become black.

Impenetrable.

Internal.

Infernal.

Night has

Silence.

Screen Shot 2017-07-20 at 4.45.10 PM.png

Only a Shape

When I was with others, I would be plagued by the ghost of their beauty.

I would be alone in bed at home

And they would haunt me,

Only the ones I was with of course.

Their faces would crowd in on me.

Pressing in my attachment.

And this was problematic because when they were gone, when it was over,

The ghosts would remain.

They would stay!

Hanging around so long after their bodies had gone.

Catching me out when I was alone

Making me sweat.

But here I am.

Lying here in this pitch darkness.

And I feel the pleasantness of our recent time together,

And I expect your ghost too.

But I can't see her.

It's different because in the darkness is only a shape.

I don't have your face.

I try to picture it but it's impossible.

I have your shape.

The shape is like the shape your underwear makes against your legs when you lift up your skirt.

The shape is the dimple in your chin

Your eyes in their most semi-circle grin.

But more than images,

My experience is of your lasting presence,

Like an idea;

A shape.

In the Night I Whispered That I Love You

In the night I whisper I love thee in a million ways,

My cell calls a deep echoing throb with it;

I love thee,

I love thee,

I love thee.

I love thee with lightness - a fluttering dense enlargement of my stature.

I love thee with tumult, With stark, and With apparence.

It is obvious that I love thee and yet tis obvious that you must know of it.

''Tis a secret that I love thee. For no one doth know it, but Tis true and nearly just yours own.

''Tis mental it is that I love thee. 'Tis unstable-like, 'tis waif, and gratifying.

''Tis well aimed, the shot that struck me. A wound tha'tis well earned. ''Tis well earned and yet I'm remains surprised.

''Tis aching that I love thee. My body. Tis hurts, ''tis lonely, and tis sweeping.

''Tis hurried that I love thee. ''Tis hushed, tis large and it is hardly slept.

 

So stay, remain, it's gracious, that you seem to love me so.

I arch my neck to reach your grace, my spine it's ever slow.

Internal is a faint distraction

It's a sinking flat.

Endeavour, I to make to u,

A true embalming slat.

Vous êtes un chat

et je suis une potet.

Feel like a thief

Truthfully never have I ever

Come across thoughts so morosely obscene

As the slow ebbing mute realisation

That nothing's never not going to be seen.

As much as I look for worth

In the things I do and I say,

A dishonest sorrow is held in my backpack,

And it's dying for it all to die away.

Is service the only thing for it?

Give my deaths and my loves; loving martyrs.

Pass some spark along, few more smiles and I'm gone,

A zipper on my back, like catharsis?

 

So, am I just living till death?

Or am I just living to die?

Is that a depressional fixation?

If so, why don't I just cry?

Yeah, why do I get up in the morning?

If all I've gotta do is survive?

And yes maybe there is a God

After death, and I must prepare it.

How on earth am I supposed to know,

If I aint ever been there yet?

So then, do I become God?

And make my afterlife now?

I practise and rehearse every moment

For that chance I need to know how.

So just once I don't slip and fall,

So for once, the bruise don't need healing,

So there's energy and purpose to this,

And I can gift back these gifts I've been stealing.

Non Flower Elements

For the last week I've been traveling around the South Island with my flat mates but I wanna let ya'll know about the next show I'm making. It's another with Arlo Gibson, same as SKYLOVING, but this time will be a full length work (about an hour or so), and upstairs at the Basement from 22nd - 26th August. Awesomely, we just found out that we have been accepted into the Let's Make Work Together Incubator by Barbarian Productions in Wellington (https://www.facebook.com/events/2280710245487638/?ti=icl)

So we'll get a week in Welly to work on the show with some mentorship from the Barbarian Productions peeps.

About the show: 

On the journey to gnosis, Ash and Arlo seek self enlightenment through dismantlement. Let's pick apart ourselves. How did my family make me, me? How much was who I am, by nature? How much of me is my upbringing? How much of the me that is right now, the one that is making new decision after new decision, is completely controlled by that little one I have no memory of? Inspired by dance, clowning, and game, Ash and Arlo seek to expose their own earnest self-investigation in a meditative hour of entertainment. First, Arlo performs a solo piece for 20 minutes. His solo piece is joined by Ash and for the next 20 the boys perform together. Almost without notice, Arlo slips away and Ash performs the last 20 minutes alone.

This performance will be very physical; movement and image oriented, with words and music and our family too.

Non Flower Elements will be on in the Basement Studio from August 22-26. 

http://basementtheatre.co.nz

 

Be lit, fam (draft)

Ew, gross, but I can't stop

a poem, a splash,

technique?

A lop.

Alope, to dream, a fantasy.

With my eyes shut I cannot see.

 

So simple shows finesse they say

Maturity, but come what may,

these are for me,

Of course, you think,

Of people as the letters slink

from ink to white,

metal to tree

ball to line

and thought from me.

The thoughts subside,

What's left is art

or something from which art may start.

 

It's comical, I guess from beat

but not the good, i guess repeat

until the meaning is devised

of course you will become suprised

as you create the relevance

based on your own developements

but you're one with omnipotence

and have to, thrifty, spend tuppence

and want to spend.

And so the art - it seems to me

Is not to show something pretty

Craftwork usury infinite mystery,

Simply, the inspiration's it.

Like passing flame,

For you, be lit.

It's Truest January

Get out! Get out!

I know a name.

Mistakes get ever clearer,

A tape will keep a record,

And the mask will get us nearer.

 

Too much for some

To wish for cum,

I can't stop thinking hairy.

A bait of cock, the fish shop,

Will tackle and leave em teary.

 

But they have hearts,

Oh, don't you start,

You'll bring me nought but dry.

A simple rhymers typecast.

A bakers crusty lye.

 

Are they untruths?

The ancient ones?

Or are they still a point.

Sharp in the back

But head's too blunt,

The heart's where they appoint.

 

And time again,

Will shackle me down.

And down, and down

Reverse it,

Nwod dna, Nwod dna

Nwod em elkcash

Lliw niaga emit

Worth it?

When I look at you I think that time could stop

Thim passing nights they pass away,

A passing so demure.

And when the new days passing comes to I

don’t want it anymore.

Oh freeze the moment,

Stop its change

This past with passing pace.

Please, quash the thing within me that has passing as a face.

For when I share a look of yours,

There is a feeling, quick;

That if I trust to God the passing

Time, it wont exist.

Then twist, a quiver is begun,

It’s when I look at you.

And only one thing I imagine

Knots, you do undo.

But knots they’ve been around so long,

Their patronage of me,

As they’re undone

A sort of havoc

Starts in my body.

Complaining knots! Not my attention take

This girl from me.

I’d rather gaze, her changing face

than feel your moving sea.

Your murky depths a promise not

of love, but of ugly.

In taking care of you I'll step, 

this sea is seeming deep.

- But with my best, I’ll drain the thing,

Then worlds attention keep.

I’ll have no time! No worries, love!

Existence pure and gem.

‘Nd I’ll have God and you to thank for

 

And still.

And speed.

My dearest love.

My truest friend.

 

Comments against urbanism

TEXT FROM

COMMENTS AGAINST URBANISM

RAOUL VANEIGEM

1961

 

urbanism is the most concrete and perfect fulfillment of a nightmare. 

the ideal urbanism is the projection in space of a social hierarchy without conflict. roads, lawns, natural flowers and artificial forests lubricate the machinery of subjection and make it enjoyable. As it combines Machiavellianism with reinforced concrete, urbanism's conscience is clear. 

we are entering upon the reign of policed refinement. The art of reassurance - urbanism knows how to exercise it in its purest form: the ultimate civility of a power on the verge of asserting total mind control.

what signs should we recognize as our own? A few graffiti, words of rejection or forbidden gestures, hastily scrawled, in which cultured people only take an interest when they appear on the walls of some fossil city like Pompeii. But our own cities are even more fossilised.

we would like to live in lands of knowledge, amid living signs like familiar friends. The revolution will also be the perpetual creation of signs that belong to everyone. 

IMG_1499.JPG