For those who knew, worked with, or were challenged by William Tanner : The ordinary actions of our days are as laden with coincidence and metaphor as the mourning pulpit. Thus, at about the time last week that Billy must have died alone in his room somewhere in London, to be found , as a body, days later, I received confirmation that my performance piece Shakespeares Chair had been accepted for Gipcas Live Art festival. Tanner is, at the least, responsible for the title of this piece which deals with memory and the impossible ambition to create something , anything, transcendental, an epiphany. He had returned from England - in 1973/4? - to work as artistic director for a brief spell at The Space theatre. He was a legend, partly for his success with Long Days Journey into Night, partly for having cast our friend, the untrained and inexperienced Peter Piccolo, in a leading role in this notoriously difficult play. The last time I communicated with Billy was shortly after Pics death ( last year?). To keep this short I will say simply that he challenged me, and he inspired me. I designed several shows for (or with) Tanner, and later researched the Tsafendas story for the play that he had decided to write in London. It was through Tanner that I met Sue Clark, my daughter Julias mother. Tanner lodged at that time in a shared double story Victorian building on Kloof Street, later demolished to accommodate the guard house at the back entrance to the Mount Nelson Hotel. We spent many evenings after rehearsals or performances, drinking wine and talking around the upstairs kitchen table. Tanner, apart from being very funny, was a ferocious analyst of everything and anything. Months after his return to the UK, to his squat-based performance collective Metholated Spirits, I had noticed that the old house stood abandoned and went in to explore the ruins. Some years later, perhaps while we were rehearsing his Tsafendas, with the Space on the brink of a move, the country secretly at war in Angola, and about to explode into the rebellion and reaction of 1976, I wrote Billy a letter telling of a dream in which I found myself walking through a similar ruined house. I will here avoid detailed description and cut to the end, where in a large central room, with various passages and alcoves arranged around its perimeter, I came upon a large, and apparently extremely old, armchair. This was Shakespeares Chair, or so it was believed. Either his chair, an actual relic, or a memorial that had come to be taken for the real thing. The chair was being kept for him. On his return. However, it was - perhaps, for who could know these things - available to any other, brave or knave. At this point the dream seemed to end, a figure had arrived, coasting on a bicycle, stirring up the motes in gothic shafts, and quickly circled the room , once , twice around the chair, and then, without a word, without a turn of the head, the figure was gone, down one of the many passageways , out one of the many exits.
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 20:19:56 +0000