The Cat In The Bag: A Fairy Tale

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A prince was held captive in a tower. His captor was an enchantress who wished to gaze on his beauty. The prince could never leave the tower, unless led by his captor on an enchanted sliver chain. To all the world, it looked as if the prince was leading his pet cat by a silver chain, but the cat was the enchantress's shape-shifting disguise, and in truth there was a manacle around the prince's wrist, that burned him if he pulled away.

One deep midwinter, a lady minstrel came to the village near to the prince's tower. From his window the prince heard the minstrel sing and play. He begged the enchantress to take him down to the village so he could see the minstrel. So the enchantress manacled the prince's wrist with the silver chain, and they descended the tower.

The prince became so rapt with the minstrel's song that he didn't feel the pain at his wrist when the enchantress tugged his silver chain. Blisters and burn marks covered his wrist before he reluctantly got up to leave. The enchantress saw this and was displeased.

The next morning, the prince watched the minstrel depart the village. She would not return until next midwinter. A twelvemonth went by, and the burns on the prince's wrist left a scar behind. The enchantress was angry that her captive's disobedience had marred his beauty.

Then one evening the prince heard the minstrel's song once more, and knew she had returned. He begged the enchantress to allow him to go down to the village to see her, but the enchantress refused. Instead, she shut the prince in his tower and went alone.

The minstrel saw a cat approaching, and did not know it was the enchantress in disguise. She moved to stroke the cat, and the cat clawed her face. The minstrel was furious, so she picked up the cat by its tail and swung it around her head. She let go, and the cat flew high into the air and straight through the window of the prince's tower.

All the villagers saw and reported all, and those they reported to reported it again, until all the land knew the story, and this was the origin of the name "cat fight" for a fight between women, and also of the saying "enough room to swing a cat."

Then the minstrel's anger left her, and she feared she had done a bad deed, for she had thrown the animal inside a tower from which it could not escape. So she resolved to go to the tower and release the cat.

The prince, meanwhile, acted swiftly when the enchantress, in cat form, came flying through his window. He leapt from his bed with his pillow case in his hand, and caught the cat inside. Then he bound the silver chain that had been his own leash around the top of the pillowcase, so the cat was trapped inside. If the cat tried to claw at the chain, the chain burned her.

The price carried his own captor down the stairs to the door, just as the minstrel picked the lock with a tool from her instrument case. The minstrel had this tool because all musicians must have at least one other trade if they are to survive from one midwinter to the next, and the minstrel's other trade was opening locked doors for people who wanted them opened. In this case, the prince wanted his door opened, but the minstrel didn't know that. She was only looking for the cat.

The prince and the minstrel met on the doorstep. "Thank you for letting me out of my prison," he said, "Will you play for me again? All year I have heard your songs inside my head."

"I will gladly play for a man so beautiful, if you will let me look upon you as I play," said the minstrel.

"So be it," said the prince, as he began to walk away from the tower where he had been imprisoned for seven years. The minstrel saw the bag he carried over his shoulder squirm and writhe, and she knew the cat was inside.

"Wait," said the minstrel, "Won't you release the cat from captivity first?"

"No," replied the prince, "I will never let the cat out of the bag."


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The End
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Reviews for Calamitous Liaisons

Here's a collection of reviews and audience feedback for my solo ukulele show, Calamitous Liaisons:

Calamitous Liaisons at Wilton's Music Hall, London, 4 March 2014

"The opening song in Tricity’s performance was 'The Men I've Had Before', a fast paced, playful number about, well... the men she’d had before.  I’d listened to the song already, so my excitement was piqued well before she appeared from behind the red curtain; first came the eyelashes, then the woman herself!

Tricity seamlessly guided her audience through the trials and tribulations of a colourful love life, using only her ukulele, fabulous voice and downright charm. Her original songs feature stories that are easily relatable to anyone who’s ever had a few romantic woes of their own, but are told with far more candour than most of us dare. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Calamitous liaisons, and found it to be wickedly funny, full of energy and wholly enchanting....."
Nicola Grant, The Mahogany Bar, Wilton's Music Hall

"Loved last night. Still humming Ladylove for some strange reason. Very catchy."
R Sykes

"So very good it earns T.V. the forgiveness she'll need if it turns out she lied outrageously when she said it was the last outing for this show. So very glad I made it if she was, in fact, being as grippingly honest as her performance!"
Caroline Grannell

"The dark and atmospheric Mahogany Bar was a perfect setting for this deliciously naughty frolic with the ever delightful and glamorous Tricity Vogue.

Entering from her boudoir behind a red curtain Tricity began with a saucy tale of her various conquest’s Nebuchadnezzars and get-jiggy skills!  This prompted many a blush and nervous giggle but certainly broke the ice!  After a quick swig from the wine bottle she then led us sometimes gently, sometimes poignantly, often riotously but always with immense charm and wit through her many calamitous romantic capers.  The final song went a little off-piste with a tale of giving Lady Love a whirl!  I, for one, sincerely hope this is a path she chooses not to follow as it would surely limit material for an equally entertaining follow up album (or perhaps not ;) )!

Calamitous Liaisons, another triumph from the original, beautiful and most talented Ms Tricity Vogue!  Do buy the album and enjoy the rest of her romantic escapades."
Tim Jefford

Calamitous Liaisons at the Coach & Horses Dining Room, Soho, 16 February 2014

"This was such great fun - the intimate setting upstairs at the Coach and Horses added to the atmosphere of the show, and Tricity's Calamitous Liaisons were by turns risque, laugh out loud funny and painfully familiar to anyone who ever felt unlucky in love. As the show ended with stunning new song "Ladylove," I felt we had been steered through troubled waters back to port in steady and capable hands. Can't wait for the next instalment!"
Gill Wilkinson & Chris Westwood

"Witty, honest, elegantly refined and sometimes exceptionally rude, like being flashed by the Queen during the amuse bouche. Warning: Not suitable for first dates."
Ahmed, Flaneur & Engineer

"We had a wonderful night out at Tricity's one woman show "Calamitous Liaisons". Great songs and entertaing anecdotes ensure a very amusing journey through the life of Tricity Vogue."
Steven Tagg-Randall, Video Archivist

"Intimate surroundings in a fab little pub in Soho, with Peter O'Toole's stool - would have happily paid extra if I'd known I was going to be in the same room as celebrity furniture!  Intelligently crafted songs beautifully sung. Tricity plucked and strummed the ukulele creating a wave of audible honey over the assembled punters. Fun frivolous and frolicking in all the right places, it could have only been an evening with the fabulous one and only Tricity Vogue."
Zoe Denham 
  
"Charming, sharp, witty and fun!"
Michael Barry 

"This was a wonderful evening - charming, witty, and moving. I smiled and laughed throughout and was left wanting more..."
Charlotte Ginsborg  

Calamitous Liaisons at the Coach & Horses Dining Room, Soho, 20 October 2013
    
"Beautifully naughty, disarming and funny, and the songs stayed with me for a week. (Ok it hasn't been a week but I'm confident. Ladylove was in my head as I cycled around today and I was itching to listen to it. I haven't had that about any tune at all for years to the point where I was wondering if I'd ever feel like that again, so thanks)." 
Rosa Conrad, musician

"I raise my glass to Tricity Vogue for charming, alarming, sustaining and entertaining me! What a lovely night with a fabulously talented and beguiling sassy, strumming songbird. This liaison, for me, was far from calamitous xxx" 
Lana Shelley, musician

"Loved the doodahs tonight. Let me know when you do them again because, dear me, it all works."
@mister_meredith via twitter

"Lovely night! @tricityvogue was fabulous sans mic & on great form! Great venue at coach & horses- All Veggie Pub!"
@AlexCarter001 via twitter

"Refreshing, cheeky, fun, and utterly original, the glamorous Tricity Vogue delivers a fabulous night's entertainment."
Alex Carter, singer

Calamitous Liaisons at the Coach & Horses Dining Room, Soho, 13 October 2013 

"I accepted Tricity Vogue's invitation to come into her boudoir, and I did not regret it. With delightful tunes and soulful voice, she took us all on a beguiling ride of heartbreak and ecstasy."
Audience member 

"Hilarious and intimate, like my insides are being tickled"
Sahar, milliner

 "I loved the show: a scintillating and captivating performance with very memorable songs." 

Richard Link, composer 

"Just wanted to say thank you for a lovely time. You touched us. We laughed and we cried. You are one talented lady." 

Audience member 

"As much fun as you could hope to have on a Sunday evening with your clothes on or off or with a ukelele and not get arrested. Music and passion always in fashion with Tricity Vogue's heart warming lust for life and love reminiscences."

Pete Saunders, pianist

"Great way to be amused early Sunday Evening. Tricity's infectious humour works perfectly in this intimate dining room and her calamitous liaisons seem to ring a bell with most of the audience. Raucous applause was well deserved," 
Coach and Horses Landlord 

"Thank you so much for a brilliantly entertaining night, such funny & charming songs & stories. We went home humming & happy!"

@em_threadneedle via twitter 

"It was really special. I don't think you could have picked a more perfect venue to debut your show. When I saw it was unmic'd, I was worried how it would come across, but it couldn't have been any more suitable. Your voice is exceptional - it was such a great experience to hear your voice live, especially as I already know most of the songs. The show felt very intimate, you had everyone so spellbound, my mind didn't wander at any point. I actually forgot I was holding a wee in for over an hour haah..."

Audience member 

"How wonderful to see the delectable Tricity Vogue in an intimate show with riotously witty songs that also include true soulfulness and poignancy." 
Audience member 

"Charming and warm, Tricity Vogue puts humour and hilarity into heartache."
Audience member

"A really warm and uplifiting show. Stopped me mithering over my own stupid relationship for 5 minutes! Hope there are plenty more West End outings for C.L."

Audience member

Calamitous Liaisons at Bom-Bane's Cafe, Brighton, on Thursday 12 September 2013
 
"Far from a calamitous liaison. Our evening with you was a sweet delight. Lovely to meet you in such a fabulous setting"

@clivejholland via twitter 

"Thank you for a fantastic evening, I am still smiling & singing about pineapples! Hope our paths cross again soon."

@emmiebobo via twitter 

"Oh what a delightful evening I had. I'm off to work now with a smile on my face singing the pineapple song. @tricityvogue #unmissable"

@clivejholland  via twitter 

"Great performance. Your lyrics are poignant, funny, profound, and rhyme in unexpected witty ways. Congratulations."

Audience member 


Calamitous Liaisons at Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 1-18 August 2013

“Sporting boudoir chic, swigging from a bottle of white and exuding conversational warmth, Tricity makes a virtuoso virtue out of the ukulele’s simplicity. Charming, accomplished and thoroughly loveable. ‘Calamitous Liaisons’ soars.” ****

Ben Walters, Time Out London  Read the full review here

“We’ve all had our share of love stories gone bad, but not all of us have the talent to turn those heartbreaks into a delightful cabaret show.” ****  
Delphine Dallison, SGFringe  Read the full review here  

After seeing the show, I did feel as though maybe you'd gone through my diaries and written songs about me!

audience member 

"Calamitous Liaisons - sly and saucy, melodically inventive, emotionally supple. Her best show yet?" 

@not_television via twitter 

"Charming, sexy, blithe and smart. And plays a ukulele. Go!"

@TimBenzie via twitter 

"TRICITY VOGUE'S kick ass show about her delicious love life. 'Calamitous Liaisons' #hotticket @edfringe" 

@RusseLucas via twitter 

"MUST SEE SHOW - @tricityvogue's Calamitous Liaisons 6pm The Counting House. Marvelous songs, fast paced, funny AND poignant. FREE! #edfringe"

@heidibangtidy via twitter 

"Cannot sufficiently recommend @tricityvogue Calamitous Liaisons. Wry, wistful, funny and warm and musically exquisite. Go see!"

@DustyLimits via twitter 

"Me and my girlfriend loved your acts at the fringe, really fantastic; every one should see them!!"

@heloisewithanh via twitter 

"Today I see and enjoy very much @tricityvogue at The Counting House, she plays and sing so well and also she wear amazing red shoes"

@La_Harlotta via twitter 

"The new show from ‪@tricityvogue 'Calamitous Liaisons' at the ‪#edfringe is a joy. Terrific songs - funny, clever & sometimes touching. See it" 

@KeithJ_gmb via twitter 

"You'd be batty to not spend a portion of your #EdFringe weekend in the company of @tricityvogue and her Calamitous Liaisons show. Go go go!"

@JohnnySetlist via twitter 

"Delightful show from @tricityvogue Calamitous Liaisons, The Counting House 5pm. Mae West meets a ukulele!"

@Liberty_Sweet via twitter 

"Very jolly, very friendly, and just a little bit rude. Can't ask more than that."

Catherine Monelle via edfringe.com 

"We really loved @tricityvogue's Calamitous Liaisons. Fantastic songs from a fantastically witty and talented woman."  
@madelinedances via twitter

 


 

Bad Girls At The Ball: Debutantes Gone Wrong

Bad Girls at the Ball

First published in Erotic Review in November 2011

As the Blue Stocking Society prepare for their Bad DebutanteBall on 23 November 2011, co-founder Tricity Vogue hunts down some real-life bad debs.

A debutante is a young lady coming out into society for the first time. Until the 1950s, the female offspring of the British social elite were kept under wraps at home or in all-girl schools until it was time to unleash them on the marriage market, like prize heifers. And then they were dolled up in white dresses and paraded for the duration of the Season, by the end of which, hopefully, they’d be snapped up by a husband.  The social season ran from April to July (so as not to clash with the hunting season), and smart families would take a house in London to attend a round of luncheons, tea parties, and, of course, balls.

The Debutante Season kicked off with the presentation of the young ladies at court. Only a lady who’d been previously presented herself could present a debutante to the monarch (to keep out the riff-raff), and the dress code was rigorous. Strictly white dresses only, or, at a push, ivory or pale pink, with three feathers in the hair, to represent the crest of the Prince of Wales. Young ladies took punishing lessons in the court curtsey, a particularly convoluted manoeuvre, which also had to be conducted at the same time as walking backwards out of the royal presence.  In Victoria’s reign, the heyday of the debutante, the girls and their escorts had to wait for hours in drafty corridors without food or water, or access to the lavatory, for the privilege of kneeling before the queen and kissing her hand. The ordeal sounds uncannily similar to today’s Britain’s Got Talent auditions.

The Decline And Fall Of The Debutante Ball

It was the current queen who ended court presentations in 1958, claiming the practice was undemocratic. Her less tactful sister Princess Margaret was said to remark "We had to put a stop to it - every tart in London was getting in." Undaunted, the society mothers came up with an alternative ritual. At the annual Queen Charlotte’s ball, which traditionally kicked off the season, a bevy of debutantes, pulling on ribbons, towed a lavish tiered cake into the room. An obscure European royal was installed next to the cake on the dais, and the rest of the debutantes approached the platform and dropped their curtseys. The presence of the token royal was of course to deflect the all-too-obvious pagan implications of virginal girls paying obeisance before a huge phallic object, which they would later eat.

Coming-out pageantry corralled high society young ladies down the track their elders had decreed for them: straight out of finishing school and into marriage, after one brief summer of shopping for partners. The eligible young men lined up for them were known as ‘debs’ delights’; although girls approached the romantic possibilities of the season with their eyes open. In her book Last Curtsey  (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Curtsey-Debutantes-Fiona-MacCarthy/dp/0571228593) debutante-turned-literary biographer Fiona MacCarthy records the secret acronyms debs devised between themselves for their various beaux: MSC (“Makes Skin Creep”), NSIT (“Not Safe In Taxis”) and VVSITPQ ("Very, Very Safe In Taxis, Probably Queer"). At some point, a deb would have to decide which of the acronyms she was prepared to settle for, because the season wasn’t about romance so much as family business: make a good match, become a society hostess and beget the next generation of social elite. But of course, there have always been women too wilful, or too nonconformist, to accept their fate. And when debutantes went bad, they really went bad.

Debutantes Gone Bad

The most spectacularly bad debutante has to be Rose Dugdale. After attending Miss Ironside's School for Girls in Kensington, and a finishing school abroad, the millionaire’s daughter was presented at court in 1958, then given a debutante ball in 1959, which she described as "one of those pornographic affairs which cost about what 60 old-age pensioners receive in six months." By the 70s she’d become a revolutionary socialist, donating her share of the family fortune to the poor. But she didn’t stop there. In 1973 she and her lover were arrested for robbing her own family home, and stealing paintings and silverware worth £82,000, to raise the money for the IRA. Dugdale received a suspended sentence, as the judge thought it was unlikely she’d re-offend, but she immediately set off for Ireland to join the IRA.  In 1974 she went on a helicopter bombing raid, dropping bombs in milk churns, and appeared on “Wanted” posters across Britain and Ireland.

Dugdale then turned her hand to art theft once more, this time with a violent twist. She and three other IRA members broke into Sir Alfred Beit’s home, Russborough House in County Wicklow, pistol-whipped, bound and gagged him and his wife, and stole IR£8 million worth of old masters, including works by Gainsborough, Rubens, Vermeer and Goya. Their ransom note demanded IR£500,000 and the release of two convicted IRA bombers on hunger strike in Brixton Prison. The paintings were recovered in a car boot in County Cork and Dugdale was arrested and charged with both the helicopter bombing and the robbery. Dugdale pleaded "proudly and incorruptibly guilty", and was sentenced to nine years imprisonment. Dugdale was pregnant at the time of her trial, and gave birth to a son in Limerick prison in 1974. The father was Eddie Gallagher, an IRA member later jailed for twenty years for kidnapping. In 1978 Dugdale and Gallagher married inside Limerick Prison. It was a far cry from the match her parents hoped for when they orchestrated her coming-out season twenty years earlier.

A dangerous liaison with a freedom-fighter is not every girl’s cup of tea, but other debutantes’ rebellions against the sexual mores of their times seem quite mild today, even if they once rocked the boat dangerously. Fiona MacCarthy, biographer of Lord Byron, appalled her family by working as a journalist (becoming a 60s poster-girl for The Guardian’s female writers campaign: ‘Should women have teeth?’) then marrying ‘working class hero’ and master metal worker David Mellor and moving to Sheffield, a debutante desert. Their disapproval was ironic, considering that MacCarthy is the great-granddaughter of bricklayer-made-good “Concrete Bob”, the founder of construction company Robert McAlpine & Sons. But by the 1950s two generations was all it took to acquire social respectability. MacCarthy was among the last debutantes presented at court in 1958, and remembers that she wasn’t the only rebel: many of her contemporaries were boat-rockers too.  "A few fast girls were quite notorious. People were scared of getting pregnant then because it was a terrible scandal, but a couple of girls in my year did.” Fellow debutante Nicolette Powell married pop star Georgie Fame, and Sally Croker-Poole married the Aga Khan, while MacCarthy’s “docile” friend Teresa Hayter became an outspoken International Marxist, penning in 1971 her book Hayter of the Bourgeoisie.

My own favourite bad debutante dates from further back. Leonora Carrington was presented at court to George V and subjected to a debutante ball at the Ritz. Exactly how much she detested the ritual is evident from her surrealist short story The Debutante, in which the heroine persuades a hyena to take her place at her coming-out ball. Despite several school expulsions, Carrington seemed on course for a respectable future until she went to London’s first surrealist exhibition in 1936 and fell in love with Max Ernst on the canvas. She met the (married) artist in person at a dinner party and promptly eloped with him. Carrington family gossip recalled that “she went to Paris to become an artist’s model” but this belittles the truth. Leonora Carrington ran away to paint, and to become a surrealist in her own right.

Carrington and Ernst hung out in Paris with Picasso ("A typical Spaniard - he thought all women were in love with him,") Dali (“He certainly wasn't extraordinary then: he looked like everyone else. It was only when he went to America that he started looking extraordinary,") and Miro (“He gave me some money one day and told me to get him some cigarettes. I gave it back and said if he wanted cigarettes, he could bloody well get them himself.“) The couple then moved to Provence, where photographer Lee Miller captured their mutual creative idyll as they painted each other in the sunshine. Until the Nazis turned up. Then Ernst was interned as an enemy alien, Carrington ran away to Spain, had a mental breakdown, and ended up in an asylum. Her family sent her old nanny to fetch her, but Carrington gave them the slip a second time, by marrying a Mexican diplomat friend to secure a visa to the States. Dissolving her marriage of convenience in New York, Carrington headed down to Mexico, where she found the perfect environment to paint. She also met new artistic inspirations: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera (“I liked her better than him”), and her close friend Remedios Varo. Her family remained ignorant of her international reputation as a leading surrealist painter until four years before her death in May 2011.

Modern-Day Debutantes

Leonora Carrington went to the other side of the world to escape her own debutante fate, but ironically, while the coming-out ritual is long gone in England, it’s thriving on her adoptive continent. The British debutante tradition struggled on through the swinging 60s and female emancipation, becoming less to do with match-making and more to do with charity fundraising, until it petered out in the UK in the 80s. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico the debutante is still oppressively alive and well, as I discovered at a dinner party a few months ago, when my Puerto Rican dinner companion regaled me with stories of her absurdly lavish ball gown, and ceremonial grand entrance over an ornamental bridge, into the arms of her appointed male escorts. She may have looked like a princess on her big day, but the ritual was anathema to my lesbian friend.

Nor is the tradition extinct in Australia. Chatting to burlesque performer Tallulah Mockingbird at the book launch of The Domestic Burlesque, I heard about her debutante experience down under. “I remember feeling like a very awkward teenager rather than a beautiful young woman being released into society. But my mum did make me a beautiful frock, and I seem to recall that was the most important bit for me. Still is.” Tallulah Mockingbird continues to love dressing up, as her photo in Elsa Quarsell”s book The Domestic Burlesque reveals. Not that she could have attended her debutante ball in the risqué outfits she masterminds for her burlesque routines. Fortunately there is a ball coming up next week at which Ms Mockingbird can wear exactly what she likes.

When I set out to research real-life bad debutantes, I never thought I’d find one among my own cabaret and burlesque circle. I bet a burlesque dancer is just about the worst sort of bad girl those stuffy society mothers of the ‘good old days’ could have imagined. But to me it’s the best sort of bad girl. Exactly the sort of bad girl that Wednesday’s Bad Debutante Ball is intended for. I can’t wait to see what Tallulah wears to it.

The Night of the Blue Stockings: Bad Debutante Ball. Wednesday, 23 November, 20:30. Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 42-46 Pollard Row, London E2 6NB. £9 (£7 advance).

Special thanks to novelist Josa Young, author of One Apple Tasted (http://www.oneappletasted.co.uk) for sharing two chapters of her new, currently unpublished novel charting the debutante experience over several generations.

Tricity Vogue's Ukulele Cabaret - Edinburgh Fringe 2013

TRICITY VOGUE'S UKULELE CABARET returns to the Edinburgh Fringe for its fourth year in 2013 - 9-10pm nightly in the Ballroom of Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, from 1st to 18th August (except 12 August). A star-studded line-up of special guests battle to win the coveted Uke of Edinburgh Award.

LINE UP DETAILS BELOW:

Thursday 1 August
Desmond O'Connor, Joby Mageean, Shit Theatre
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: DESMOND O'CONNOR

Friday 2 August
Vicky Arlidge, Bob and Jim, Oliver Meech
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: VICKY ARLIDGE

Saturday 3 August
Owen Niblock, Liberty Hodes, Jo Stephenson
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: JO STEPHENSON

Sunday 4 August
Johnny Setlist, Tom Harlow, St Andrews Review
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: JOHNNY SETLIST

Monday 5 August
Melissa and Tnee, Eleanor Morton, MJ Hibbett
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: MELISSA AND TNEE

Tuesday 6 August
Katrina Smith, Tomas Ford, Luc Valvona
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: KATRINA SMITH

Wednesday 7 August
Emily Scott, Doug Segal, Myra Dubois
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: EMILY SCOTT

Thursday 8 August
Helen Arney, Calum MacAskill, Paul Gannon
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: HELEN ARNEY

Friday 9 August
Vanessa Knight, Stan Skinny, Colin McLeod
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: STAN SKINNY

Saturday 10 August
Laurence Owen, Ellis and Rose, Mat Ricardo
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: MAT RICARDO

Sunday 11 August
Alistair Greaves, Stuart Bowden, Lady Carol
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: LADY CAROL

Tuesday 13 August
The Frukes, David Pickering, Steve Bennett
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: THE FRUKES

Wednesday 14 August
Emily SneE, Sharnema Nougar, Uke Hoot - Edinburgh's ukulele jam and singalong
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: SHARNEMA NOUGAR

Thursday 15 August
Catharine Rogers, Dusty Limits, Champagne Charlie
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: CATHARINE ROGERS

Friday 16 August
Ria Lina, Lord Hicks, Sarah-Louise Young
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: RIA LINA

Saturday 17 August
The Great Aziz, Ukegnome, Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: WELLINGTON INTERNATIONAL UKULELE ORCHESTRA

Sunday 18 August
Ria Lina, Johnny Setlist, Helen Arney, Eleanor Morton, Steve Bennett
Uke Of Edinburgh Champion Of Champions: STEVE BENNETT

TRICITY VOGUE'S UKULELE CABARET
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Ballroom, 38 West Nicolson Street Edinburgh EH8 9DD
AUG 1-18 (not 12), 2012 at 9-10pm
ENTRANCE FREE

Here's the show on the Fringe website.

Tricity Vogue also has a solo show:
CALAMITOUS LIAISONS
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Lounge,  38 West Nicolson Street Edinburgh EH8 9DD
AUG 1-18 (not 12), 2013 at 5-6pm
ENTRANCE FREE
More details on the Fringe website.

And Tricity also hosts a FREE UKULELE WORKSHOP on Saturday 3 and Saturday 10 August between 12pm and 2pm at The Third Man and Rae Macintosh Music shop. More details on the Fringe website.

Casting Call for Heels Of Glory, A Drag Action Musical

Auditions

'Heels Of Glory': A Drag Action Musical by Tricity Vogue & Richard Link

Heels of Glory is an original musical with an action movie plot, a ’60s comic book aesthetic, and the kind of tunes that would have graced a vintage James Bond movie — if they’d ever made one with song-and-dance numbers and a drag queen spy.

The Artistic Team:

The show is written by composer Richard Link (Two Blondes With A Passion, Watch Me Shine, A Little Princess) and cabaret performer Tricity Vogue AKA award-winning screenwriter Heather Tyrrell (Byker Grove, My Family, Totally Frank).

Direction & Choreography will be by Russell Lucas (Julie Madly Deeply, Goldsmiths New Musical Festival)

Heels Of Glory will be staged at The Albany Theatre, Deptford on Friday 5 July 2013. We have secured research and development space at the theatre for six days prior to the scratch performance which is when we will explore, direct and choreograph the show. An intense few days - not for the faint-hearted!

This is the third version of the musical, following a rehearsed reading in April 2012 and a sold out work-in-progress performance at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in January 2013. Please note that at this stage everyone will be working for free but a professional approach to the work is paramount. This will be an incredible opportunity for networking though, building experience and being part of an exciting fast paced week, plus the chance to add to the genesis of an innovative piece of musical theatre.

Cast requirements:

We are looking for three “triple threat” drag queens, a “triple threat” diva plus two “triple threat” drag kings.

You do not have to have been a drag queen/king at any point. We are seeking confident performers who will be versatile enough to play anything we throw at them.

Character names and minimum requirements:

- Splendorella. International drag queen superstar (and spy). High baritone singer with star quality. A first class bitch.
- Allura. Creative Director of Supreme Cosmetics, every drag queen’s go-to brand (and evil villainess plotting the annihilation of all drag queens). Singer with strong belt and a heart of pure evil.
- Honey. A drag queen wannabe and Splendorella super-fan. A baritone singer, and a baby bitch with upstart attitude.
- Jay. Honey’s best friend. A vintage James Bond geek and reluctant drag queen. A tenor singer and an innocent with hidden talents.
- Albertina. Allura’s henchman, hit man, barman, backing dancer, bodyguard, and thwarted showgirl.
- Bertilda. Allura’s henchman, hit man, barman, backing dancer, bodyguard, and thwarted showgirl.

Auditions

Auditions will be held on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 May, at a pre-allocated time between 10am and 5.30pm. Venue TBC. These will be workshop style auditions.

When you have sent through your details we will contact you to let you know if you have got through to a workshop audition.

Call backs will be held on Sunday 12 May - time TBC.

Please note that your audition will last 90 minutes and you will be in groups of eight. Although you will perform solo, sometimes other actors will be in the room. We are looking to create a company of artists that are open and supportive and wish to encourage a safe, risk-free environment from the outset. The artistic team will also be leading exercises, games and giving you specific direction.

Material

We ask that actresses bring a song from the 60's and actors bring a song for a female voice from the 60s.

Please also bring a prepared piece of text that you may need to use in the workshop. This can be from theatre, films, poems, books - anything that you love!

Rehearsal dates:

Thu 27 June, Fri 28 June, Mon 1 July, Tue 2 July, Wed 3 July.

Time: 10am to 6pm

Performance is 5th July

The whole company will be needed from 10am to 9pm.

All rehearsals and the performance will take place at The Albany Theatre, Deptford (Deptford or New Cross station, zone 2)

If this sounds like you then we would love to hear from you. Please send a Headshot of yourself a CV or Spotlight number and a one-page covering letter telling us all about you to auditions@heelsofglory.com

Application deadline is Monday 6 May by 12 noon.



Poster art by Steve May

How The Blue Lady Became - A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time a princess lived in a castle in a cold mountain land. The castle was very warm inside, but the princess longed to explore the beautiful mountains, even though everyone in the castle told her she would freeze to death if she went outside, as her mother the queen had done when she left the castle with a mysterious traveller one night so many years before. Yet every day, the princess would sit in the window of her tower and look at the long empty road that led away through the mountains into the lands beyond, and sing a song of longing.

One day as the princess was gazing out at the long road through the mountains, and singing her song of longing, she saw a traveller walking towards the castle. He sat under her window and listened to her song. Then, when she stopped singing, he went away. The princess was sad. The next day when she came to her window and began to sing her song of longing again, the traveller returned, and sat listening to her song. On the third day the same thing happened. But on the fourth day when the princess sang nobody came. Sad, she went down to the banqueting hall for the feast, only to find the traveller warming his hands by the hearth. Her father the king told her that he had found the traveller outside the castle walls while out hunting, and offered him a meal and a warm bed for the night.

The princess sat beside the traveller all night, listening to his tales of the lands over the mountains. The traveller was on his way to a magical island in a deep blue ocean, where it was always warm and where beautiful flowers grew, and every tree was heavy with fruit. The princess had never seen flowers or trees, or the ocean, and she longed to go with him. “Why don’t you?” asked the traveller. But the princess told him sadly that if she ever went outside the castle, she would freeze to death. “Oh no you won’t,” said the traveller, and told her he had a gift for her that would stop her from freezing. He showed her a beautiful fur coat. The princess tried it on and felt warm from head to toe. “What can I give you in exchange?” she asked the traveller. “Sing me a song,” he said. So she did. And that night, when everyone in the castle was fast asleep, she put on her new fur coat, and followed the traveller out of the castle and onto the long empty road. But in her fur coat she didn’t freeze. She didn’t feel the cold at all.

The princess and the traveller walked for many days and many nights, all the way through the mountains to the other side. Every day the princess saw marvellous things she never new existed, and every night she sang to the traveller as he built them a fire and cooked the food he had foraged and hunted along the road. Eventually they reached a deep dark forest and the princess was frightened, but the traveller held her hand and promised to keep her safe. As they walked through the forest they heard the crackle of branches as something came towards them. The traveller unsheathed his knife, but it was only an old lady in a long travelling cloak and hood. “I am all alone and the forest is a dangerous place,” she said. “Please may I travel with you?” But the traveller told the old lady to keep away and leave them alone. The princess was sad, but the traveller said he could only look after one other person, and the old lady would slow them down. He wanted to get to the magical island as quickly as he could.

As they travelled on, the forest got warmer and warmer, and became a jungle, and the princess became very hot in her fur coat. But the traveller wouldn’t let her leave it behind, because it was too precious, and one day she would want to return to her mountain homeland, and then she would need the coat again. So the princess struggled on, carrying the coat under her arm, but it became a heavier and heavier burden. One night as the traveller slept, the princess was woken by the sound of weeping. She followed the sound and found the old lady sitting crying in a small clearing nearby. The princess thought the old lady was crying because she had no food, so brought her some of the stew from their own stewpot. But the old lady said the real reason she was crying was because she was lonely. The princess felt ashamed that the traveller had turned the old lady away, and told her to travel with them to the magic warm island. But the old lady said she did not want to go to the magic warm island, she was tired of the heat. She wanted to go back to the beautiful icy mountains where she came from, but she was so old and so frail that she would freeze to death on the road before she ever reached the castle. So the princess gave the old lady her fur coat. The old lady thanked her for her kindness, with tears in her eyes. The princess slept soundly that night. The next morning she told the traveller nothing of what had happened the night before.

The next day the traveller and the princess reached the edge of the jungle and walked out onto a beach of golden sand. In front of them was a deep blue ocean, and rising out of the ocean was the magic island. They could just see tiny people waving to them on the shore. Eagerly the traveller threw off his clothes and waded into the water, ready to swim across. He held out his hand to the princess. But the princess would not follow him into the water. She had never seen water before and she was afraid. She could not swim. The traveller was impatient to reach the magic island, but he offered to teach the princess how to swim so she could come with him. The princess was afraid, but she followed the traveller into the water, because she had followed him all the way from her frozen homeland and he had kept her safe until then. The traveller held the princess up in the water and showed her how to move her arms and legs, but as soon as she let go she would sink under the water, again and again, and the traveller would have to pull her back to the surface, choking and gasping. All day he tried to teach her, until the princess was so tired and afraid of the water that she could bear no more. So the traveller helped her back to the shore, where she sat shivering on the beach, despite the heat. “Put on your fur coat and warm yourself,” said the traveller. But the princess told him she no longer had the fur coat, because she had given it to the old lady. Then the traveller was very angry. This is why he had sent the old lady away, because she was a trickster and a thief. The princess had concealed from the traveller that the old lady was following them, and the old lady had taken the most precious possession that the foolish, trusting princess owned. If the princess did not trust the traveller to look after her, and did not follow his lead, then he would not help her to reach the magic island. With that, the traveller dived into the sea, swimming to the magic island and leaving the princess behind.

The princess sat on the beach alone, watching the traveller swim away from her, while the tears ran down her cheeks. She sang again the song of longing she had sung before from the window of her castle room as she looked out over the long empty road into the mountains. Then the old lady came to her again, and wrapped the fur coat around the princess’s shoulders to stop her shivering. “Do you really want to reach the magic island?” asked the old lady. “More than anything in the world,” replied the princess. “Then,” said the old lady, “because you have given me a gift, I will give you a gift.” And the old lady gave the princess a jar of blue paste. “This paste is made from the shells of the creatures that live on the ocean floor,” she said. “I have been collecting them for many years, and for many years I have been crushing the shells to paste with my pestle and mortar, but now I have enough, I no longer want to reach the magic island.” “But what does the paste do?” asked the princess. “Cover your whole body with the paste,” said the old lady, “every inch of it. And the blue will protect you, so that you can walk right under the waves and into the water, without drowning.” “Oh thank you!” said the princess, reaching for the paste. But before the old lady would give the paste to the princess she had one more warning. “Once you have covered yourself with this paste, it will never wash off again. You will always be blue.” “What do I care what colour I am,” said the princess, “as long as I can get to the place I long to be more than anywhere else in the world?” So the old lady gave the princess the blue paste, and the princess gave the old lady back her fur coat once more, because now she was filled with hope again she had stopped shivering, and the two women said goodbye.

The princess covered herself in the blue paste from head to toe, and then she walked into the water. Sure enough, as soon as the waves closed over her head, the princess discovered she could still breathe, and she could see everything under the water too. The princess walked along the seabed towards the magic island, and along the way she travelled through the most beautiful world she had ever seen, full of sea anemones and brightly coloured fish. When she reached the island she walked out of the ocean onto the beach, and there, sitting on the shore, was the traveller. He was staring across the ocean to the beach where he had left her, and there were tears pouring down his cheeks. The princess walked over to the traveller. “It’s all right, I’m here,” she said. But when the traveller saw her he leapt away from her in horror. “It’s me,” she said, “the princess!” But the traveller said, “Get away from me, monster!” He did not recognise the princess. The princess thought of a way to show the traveller it was her, so she began to sing. But the traveller put his fingers in his ears. “Stop that ugly sound!” he shouted. “And get away from me!”

Heartbroken, the blue princess walked away from the traveller, through the flowers and the fruit trees of the magic island. But she didn’t see them, because her eyes were full of tears. The blue princess climbed to the top of a rock by the water and she sang her song of longing, as the tears fell down her face. But although the tears trickled down her skin, they didn’t wash off the blue, because the blue was there forever. The blue princess didn’t even try to rub the blue away, because she knew the old lady had been telling the truth. She would always be blue now. It was only when the sun had set and the princess climbed down from her rock that she discovered a crowd of island people gathered at the foot of the rock, all on their knees before her, and offering up trays laden with fruit and garlands of flowers. As she walked among them they lifted her up on their shoulders and hailed her as their blue goddess, who came to them from the ocean and healed their pain with her song.

The island people carried the princess to a beautiful garden palace full of flowers and fountains, music and joy, where everyone danced and laughed and feasted, and where she lived happily among them for many years. But sometimes the princess would dream about the frozen mountain land of her childhood, and as the years went by she began to long to return there. So sometimes the blue goddess would walk alone into the waves and gather tiny blue sea creatures from the ocean floor, then she would carry them back to her palace and crush the shells into a paste, until, after many years, she had a whole jar full of blue paste. Then she said goodbye to her people and walked into the waves, never to return.

When she reached the other shore, the blue princess concealed the colour of her skin beneath a cloak and hood, and walked into the forest. After a few days travel she met a man and a young woman travelling together. The man did not trust her and sent her away, but the woman was kind to her and offered her food, so the blue princess followed them, keeping out of sight. One night the blue princess found the woman crying by herself in a clearing. She asked her what was wrong and the young woman said that she wanted to reach the magic island, but she couldn’t swim. The blue princess offered the woman her jar of blue paste, and the young woman accepted it gratefully. In exchange she offered the blue princess her fur coat, so the blue princess could travel to the frozen mountains. Before the blue princess left the young woman she warned her that once she had covered herself in the blue paste, although she would be able to walk under water without drowning, she would be blue forever, and her companion might reject her. But the young woman smiled. “When you are a traveller,” she said, “everywhere you go and everyone you meet is strange and foreign. So you must accept them all. Or you will always be alone.”

So the blue princess put on the young woman’s fur coat and walked towards her frozen mountain home, knowing that her island people would soon meet their new blue goddess from the waves, and that waiting for her in a warm mountain castle far away was the old lady who had helped her so many years before, and who was also the blue queen, her mother.

Tricity Vogue's Ukulele Cabaret - Edinburgh Fringe 2012

TRICITY VOGUE'S UKULELE CABARET returned to the Edinburgh Fringe for its third year in 2012 - 9.30-10.30pm nightly in the Ballroom of Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, from 2nd to 26th August. A star-studded line-up of special guests battled to win the coveted Uke of Edinburgh Award. Each winner chose a topic for Tricity to write a song about for the next show.

You can listen to Tricity's songs on Soundcloud here.

LINE UP DETAILS BELOW:

Thursday 2 August
Desmond O'Connor, Ria Lina, Dusty Limits
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Lins McRobie of Edinburgh Uke Hoot (audience contestant)
Tricity's song topic: Bowler Hat


Friday 3 August
Dusty Limits, Audacity Chutzpah, Miranda Kane
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Audacity Chutzpah
Tricity's song topic: Goats


Saturday 4 August
Ben Jones, DeAnne Smith, Emily Scott, The Stillhouse Orchestra
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winners: Ben Jones and DeAnne Smith
Tricity's song topic: Aubergine


Sunday 5 August
Eleanor Morton, Katrina Smith. Bob and Jim, Albert Spink
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Eleanor Morton
Tricity's song topic: Mothballs


Monday 6 August
Ria Lina, Stav Meishar, Myra Dubois, Eleanor Morton
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Ria Lina
Tricity's song topic: Awards


Tuesday 7 August
Sarah-Louise Young, Billy Wagg (Susan Harrison), Howard Read, Molly Beth White
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winners: Billy Wagg and Sarah-Louise Young
Tricity's song topic: A happy song about the death of a pet


Wednesday 8 August
Joby Mageean, Audacity Chutzpah, Josh Richards, Amelia Robinson
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winners: Joby Mageean and Audacity Chutzpah
Tricity's song topic: Nintendo Wii (with actions)


Thursday 9 August
Ria Lina, Jane Bom-Bane, Robert Inston, Jax Braithwaite
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Jax Braithwaite
Tricity's song topic: Alliteration...and Fanny


Friday 10 August
Helen Arney, Mark Wallington, Molly and Me, Gareth and Misha
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Molly and Me
Tricity's song topic: Sunglasses


Saturday 11 August
Lady Carol, Mark Wallington, Ashley Frieze, Sophie Steel
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Lady Carol
Tricity's song topic: Mental Block


Sunday 12 August
Jo Stephenson, Eleanor Morton, Mat Ricardo, Uke Gnome
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Eleanor Morton
Tricity's song topic: Lady Pirates


Monday 13 August
Tim Clare, Jess Guille, Uke Gnome, Formby (Ewan Wardrop)
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Formby
Tricity's song topic: Bells


Tuesday 14 August
She Makes War, Roland Dootsan, Gareth Ellis, Leela Bunce
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Leela Bunce
Tricity's song topic: Harry Potter


Wednesday 15 August
Jonny Woo, Josephine Shaker, Callum Scott, Dan Woods, Mr Mistress
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Mr Mistress
Tricity's song topic: My Drag Queen Wet Dream


Thursday 16 August
Ria Lina, Sh!t theatre, Peter Buckle, Desmond O'Connor
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Sh!t theatre
Tricity's song topic: Funemployment


Friday 17 August
Helen Arney, Ben Jones, Owen Niblock, Amie Amis
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Amie Amis
Tricity's song topic: Pineapple


Saturday 18 August
Holly Penfield, Dan Woods, DeAnne Smith, Bob Slayer
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Dan Woods
Tricity's song topic: 29 Espressos


Sunday 19 August
The Curious Couple From Coney, Tom Harlow, Rosy Rebel, Mat Ricardo
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Tom Harlow
Tricity's song topic: Glitter


Monday 20 August
DeAnne Smith, Dave Bear, Joe Black, Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: DeAnne Smith
Tricity's song topic: Gentlemen


Tuesday 21 August
Jonny Woo, Bethany Singh, John Lane, David (Audience Member)
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Bethany Singh
Tricity's song topic: Paper Cranes


Wednesday 22 August
Johnny Suave (Chris Young), Dave Nelder, Josephine Shaker, Jamie Bowen
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Josephine Shaker
Tricity's song topic: Penguins Drinking Beer


Thursday 23 August
Ria Lina, Cera Impala, Michael Munnik, Jolly Boat, Tom McDermott
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Ria Lina
Tricity's song topic: Alternative Universes


Friday 24 August
Helen Arney, Molly & Me, Miranda Kane, Shit Theatre, Vanessa Hammick
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Helen Arney
Tricity's song topic: Beaker from the Muppets


Saturday 25 August
Lisa Kenny, Johnny Setlist, Ben Jones, Mervyn Stutter
Uke Of Edinburgh Award Winner: Mervyn Stutter
Tricity's song topic: Varifocals


Sunday 26 August
Gareth Ellis, Tricity Vogue, Ria Lina, Amie Amis, Josephine Shaker, Shit Theatre, Johnny Setlist, Ben Jones, Lins McRobie, David (Audience Member)

TRICITY VOGUE'S UKULELE CABARET
Laughing Horse @ The Counting House, Ballroom, 38 West Nicolson Street Edinburgh EH8 9DD
AUG 2-26, 2012 at 9.30-10.30pm
ENTRANCE FREE

Here's the show on the Fringe website.

Tricity also hosted a FREE PAINT AND PLAY UKULELE WORKSHOP every Saturday in August between 1pm and 3pm at Rae Macintosh Music shop. More details on the Fringe website.

Extracts from "An Incomplete Manifesto For Growth" by Bruce Mau

In 2004, while I was staying in Edinburgh, my friend Paul showed me an A4 photocopy of some advice for designers which I liked so much I copied extracts from it into my notebook.

I thought of it again just yesterday, while I was toiling over a cover version of a Tom Waits song, and decided to dig it out and have another look at it.

You might find some or all of these ideas interesting too:



1) ALLOW THINGS TO CHANGE YOU
Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it.

2) FORGET ABOUT GOOD

3) PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUTCOME

4) LOVE YOUR EXPERIMENTS (AS YOU WOULD AN UGLY CHILD)
Joy is the engine of growth. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5) GO DEEP
The deeper you go, the more likely you are to discover something of value.

6) CAPTURE ACCIDENTS
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question.

7) STUDY
Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8) DRIFT
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgement. Postpone criticism.

9) BEGIN ANYWHERE
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10) EVERYONE IS A LEADER
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11) HARVEST IDEAS. EDIT APPLICATIONS
Ideas need a dynamic, fluid and generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigour. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

120 KEEP MOVING
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13) SLOW DOWN
Desynchronize from standard timeframes and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14) DON'T BE COOL
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15) ASK STUPID QUESTIONS
Growth is fuelled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16) COLLABORATE
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17) _______________
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven't had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18) STAY UP LATE
Strange things happen when you've gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19) WORK THE METAPHOR
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20) BE CAREFUL TO TAKE RISKS
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

4) REPEAT YOURSELF
If you like it do it again. If you don't like it, do it again.

22) MAKE YOUR OWN TOOLS
Tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23) STAND ON SOMEONE'S SHOULDERS
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24) AVOID SOFTWARE
Everyone has it.

25) DON'T CLEAN YOUR DESK
You might find something in the morning that you can't see tonight.

26) DON'T ENTER AWARD COMPETITIONS
Just don't. It's not good for you.

27) READ ONLY LEFT-HAND PAGES
Decrease the amount of information and leave room for your "noodle".

28) MAKE NEW WORDS
New conditions demand new ways of thinking, which demands new words, which generates new conditions.

29) THINK WITH YOUR MIND
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30) ORGANISATION = LIBERTY
The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a "charming artifact of the past".

31) DON'T BORROW MONEY
By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control.

32) LISTEN CAREFULLY
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires or ambitions, we fold their world into our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33) TAKE FIELD TRIPS
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV, or the internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic simulated environment.

34) MAKE MISTAKES FASTER

35) IMITATE
Don't be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable.

36) SCAT
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else... but not words.

37) BREAK IT, STRETCH IT, BEND IT, CRUSH IT, CRACK IT, FOLD IT

38) EXPLORE THE OTHER EDGE
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the pack. We can't find the leading edge because it's trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39) COFFEE BREAKS, CAB RIDES, GREEN ROOMS
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces - what Dr Seuss calls "the waiting place".

40) AVOID FIELDS. JUMP FENCES
Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. It's our job to jump the fence.

41) LAUGH
Use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing oruselves.

42) REMEMBER
Without memory, innovation is merely novelty.

43) POWER TO THE PEOPLE
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free angents if we're not free.





Bruce Mau runs a Toronto and New York based design studio. The full manifesto is on his website here:
http://www.brucemaudesign.com/4817/112450/work/incomplete-manifesto-for-growth

But I thought it was more fun to copy out the bits I'd written down in my own notebook eight years ago. It looks like I jotted down most of it in the end, but then, according to point number 35, copying might be a good thing to do anyway.

TV
xx

Tretchikoff and the Real Blue Lady

Cabaret singer Tricity Vogue finds the artist who inspired her hit Edinburgh show, and the woman who was his muse
This article was first published in the Erotic Review: The Art Issue in February 2011 http://www.eroticreviewmagazine.com/

On my bedroom wall is a 1960s framed print of a woman with a blue-green face, a golden Chinese gown, jet-black hair and startling red lips. I bought it on the Essex Road in North London from a shop called Past Caring. It cost me £70. My mum remembers when the same print sold in Boots the Chemist in Derby for 11 shillings and sixpence. She also remembers that it was the picture everyone wanted on their walls. The Chinese Girl was once better-selling than the Mona Lisa. Vladimir Tretchikoff, the painter, was compared to Picasso and Van Gogh: primarily by himself. The ubiquity of the image for over two decades was also primarily down to the artist himself, thanks to a combination of tireless self-promotion and bullet-proof self-belief. But then, when you’ve survived a revolution, a shipwreck and a Japanese prison-of-war camp, artistic world domination wouldn’t seem beyond you either.



I’ve spent two years painting my face blue in homage to Tretchikoff’s iconic image for my cabaret show The Blue Lady Sings. I had a sneaking suspicion that the man behind this stylised, high-impact portrait might be larger-than-life too, and I was right. Tretchi, as he was affectionately known, has all the ingredients for a quintessential artist profile. Deprivation and adversity: check. Volatile, quixotic temperament: check. Exotic muse and mistress: check. Plus vivid extras, including some uncannily accurate predictions at a séance, and a couple of brushes with death in a pink Cadillac. Tretchi lived his life in brighter colours than everyone else.



It was a long journey to the self-designed mansion in Cape Town where Tretchikoff died in 2006, and one that took in all five continents. It started in Kazakhstan, where he was born in 1913 to landed gentry, before the Russian revolution drove the family to China. There the now-penniless boy earned his keep as apprentice scene painter at the Harbon Opera House until he was sixteen, when the Chinese Eastern Railway commissioned him to paint portraits of Lenin and Sun Yat San for their headquarters, for the princely sum of 500 Roubles. Tretchi used the money to move to Shanghai. In the “Paris of the East” (as near to studying art in Paris as he ever got) young Vladimir bagged both a plum job, as cartoonist for the Shanghai Times, and a wife – fellow Russian émigré Natalie Telpregoff. The couple moved to Singapore in 1936, where Tretchi drew cartoons for the British Ministry of Information’s anti-Japanese propaganda. In 1938 he represented Malaya in the New York World’s Fair, and his daughter Mimi was born. Then the Japanese invaded Singapore and things took on a darker hue.

Natalie and Mimi made it out of Singapore, but Tretchikoff’s later boat was torpedoed while he was stoking the furnace. As the ship sank, he bagged the last place in the lifeboat when a woman thrust her baby into his arms. The forty two refugees rowed for their lives for Sumatra, only to discover the Japanese had beaten them to it. So Tretchi and a bunch of other survivors turned the boat around and rowed another nineteen days to Java, risking drowning, scurvy and starvation en route. Legend has it that Tretchi used drawings to barter with island tribesmen for the coconuts that kept them alive. Their safe arrival in Java palled somewhat when the terrified locals handed them straight over to the Japanese invaders, who’d got there first, again.

The Japanese hauled the whole boatload off to prisoner-of-war camp, but the five-foot-three artist was, like many small men throughout history, pugnacious by nature. Tretchi protested that he was a Russian citizen and the invaders had no right to hold him. They promptly threw him in solitary confinement, where he was stuck for three months. Then the prison camp general offered him conditional freedom – if he turned set-painter for a Japanese gala show. Tretchi basically painted his way out of jail.

Tretchi was living as a free man in Jakarta, and not only free, but also footloose, since his wife and child were somewhere on the other side of the world, if they were alive at all. Enter the beautiful Leonora Moltema, AKA Lenka, half Dutch, half Malaysian, and all woman. The Tretchikoff website describes Lenka as “a woman of culture and intelligence… an artist herself, and mistress of five languages”. The choice of word is apt, since Lenka was indeed Tretchi’s mistress as well as his muse and model. An elderly Tretchikoff told documentary filmmaker Yvonne du Toit in the 1990s that she was the love of his life.


Lenka told her own story to Uri Geller, a firm friend in later years, thanks to their shared interest in the supernatural. Her husband, a Dutch pilot, was, like Tretchi’s wife, somewhere overseas in limbo, and, on the night she first met Tretchikoff, he looked at her across the dinner table in an uncomfortable way, then asked her to pose for him naked. When she bridled at the suggestion, he laughed at her prudishness, telling her that only if every part of her figure was perfect would he consider painting her, and if he did, she would be a lucky woman. Lenka knew “the Mad Russian” already by reputation: by night he painted portraits for 40 guineas a canvas, but refused to sell the canvasses he painted for himself by day. She posed for him every Sunday in his tiny lodgings. It took longer to finish the picture than it did for Tretchi to get Lenka into his narrow bed.

The artist moved in with Lenka, but would only make love at weekends, because he claimed he was unable to paint for twenty four hours after sex. Even less congenially, their love-nest was continually raided by Japanese soldiers, convinced that Tretchi was a spy. One night he was arrested on suspicion of blowing up an oil tanker, and slashed with a ceremonial sword during the interrogation. The superstitious Lenka visited a wise-woman and promised to give up what was most precious to her in exchange for Tretchi’s freedom. When he was released without charge two days later, she gave the old woman her most valuable batik.

But was the batik Lenka’s most precious treasure, or Tretchi himself? It wasn’t long before she had to give him up too. It began when she took him to a séance, at which the previously sceptical painter asked the spirit guide where his wife and child were. The answer came back: S.O.U.T.H. Tretchi subsequently put the Red Cross on the trail of the supernatural tip-off and tracked down his family in South Africa. But before leaving the séance, the artist had a few more questions for the spirits. “Will I become a famous painter, and how far will my fame spread?” W.O.R.L.D. “What will be my most famous painting?” O.R.I.E.N.T.A.L. L.A.D.Y.

Lenka disappears from the official biography of Vladimir Tretchikoff as soon as he set off for Cape Town to be reunited with his wife and daughter. But that is no way to write out a muse from any artist’s story. Luckily she herself has shared a little more with her friend Uri Geller. Tretchikoff went to South Africa with her blessing because, she said, she could compete with any woman but not with his child. She even helped him pack his canvasses, which he’d been hoarding for years ready for the one-man exhibition that he was certain would make his fortune. Lenka extracted one promise from him: to give a canvas to his wife Natalie. He did, and the canvas she chose was the portrait of Lenka wearing a red jacket. “Wearing”, that is, in the loosest sense, since all it covers are her shoulders. Did Natalie know that Lenka had been Tretchi’s de facto wife throughout the war years? Why did she choose to have her love rival’s triumphant breasts pertly waving at her from the wall every day?



Tretchi’s portrait of his mistress is in stark contrast to the portrait of his wife. Like so much of the artist’s work, subtlety doesn’t come into it. Whereas Lenka is a feast of warm naked flesh set off by a “scarlet woman’s” jacket, Natalie The Artists Wife is clad in brown, with skin of a blueish tinge, in arguably Tretchikoff’s drabbest colour scheme ever. Vladimir boasted that living with him was sometimes heaven, sometimes hell, but usually purgatory. “Longsuffering” is the word that springs to mind looking at the portrait of his wife. Who knows? Perhaps his muse Lenka had other reasons for “giving him up”. Maybe two years of keeping house for a fastidious and demanding artist were enough for her.

What’s more, when Tretchikoff took off with his hoarded canvasses on his phenomenally successful world tour (as predicted by the spirit guides, and funded by the spiritualist Rosecrucian Order, in a self-fulfilling prophecy), he was not constrained by the need to paint during the day, and was therefore able to cast off sexual abstention. So Tretchi hooked up with his old flame again in London in 1958. While over 200, 000 people flocked to his one-man exhibition in Harrods, Tretchi took Lenka to bed for what she described as a four-day lovemaking marathon. That’s when Tretchi confessed to his mistress that he had sold the Red Jacket painting, even though theoretically it belonged to his wife so wasn’t his to sell. Lenka was appalled and warned him he would have bad luck without her portrait.

Tretchi took no notice of his mistress’s warning, but not long after his return to South Africa, his pink Cadillac overturned in a road accident. It took a transfusion of 20 pints of blood to bring him back from death’s door. Still Tretchi didn’t buy back the portrait of Lenka until he was nearly killed a second time in another car crash. Then finally he conceded his muse might have a point, reacquired Red Jacket for his wife, and lived to be 92.

As for the Chinese Girl - the painting I bring to life in my cabaret show, and the one looking down at me mysteriously from my bedroom wall – it isn’t Lenka. At least, not officially. The first model for the painting was said to be a member of South Africa’s Chinese community. But according to other accounts, the painting, completed in 1950, was begun in Java in 1946, before Tretchikoff got to South Africa. To complicate matters further, the portrait we know is not of the first sitter anyway. The original canvas of the Chinese Girl was slashed, along with 14 others, when intruders broke into Tretchi’s Cape Town home, enraged by the artist’s controversial drawing Black and White, which caused outrage throughout Apartheid South Africa.


The second model for the Chinese Girl was reputedly the daughter of a restaurant owner in San Francisco. Yet there is something Eurasian about the features of the woman with the blue-green face in the painting. By 1950 when he finished the picture, Tretchikoff had been apart from his half-Dutch, half-Malaysian muse for four years. And South Africa was a long way from the oriental lands where he had first found the inspiration to paint. Tretchikoff himself said his paintings were not real women’s portraits, but a fantasy of womanhood from his own imagination. Whoever sat for him in a golden Chinese brocade gown, whether in South Africa or in San Francisco, the real “blue” woman who epitomised longing and absence in the artist’s imagination wasn’t either of them. It was Lenka, the woman who wasn’t there.



Tricity Vogue’s debut album, The Blue Lady Sings is available from her website: tricityvogue.com
Her one-woman show will appear at the Brighton Fringe Festival in May 2011, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2011.

Photograph of Tretchikoff and Lenka by kind permission of Yvonne du Toit

All other pictures by kind permission of the Tretchikoff Foundation