Paint It Black

I first discovered the intricate performance art that is black light theatre at the annual Morris Hall school eisteddfod. I'd call it a talent display but I don't want to mislead you. For those of you not as culturally advanced as I, black light theatre is where you turn on a UV light and a series of phosphorous objects glide magically across the stage held in place by a series of performers dressed in their best drama blacks. It's basically like using Twilight Zone stickers as a form of theatre.

Now all you cynics might think that isn't enough to sustain one's interest and justify a night at the theatre but we thought the same thing about model trains once and all it took was the great mind of one Andrew Lloyd-Webber to prove us wrong there with the seminal Starlight Express (it hears your distress!).

So as an 8 year old having to sit through all number of tiresome calisthenic (more commonly known as calispastics) routines including endless rod displays to the theme from Gremlins and odd homages to the Seekers, there were only 3 things that got me through these evenings.

1. The hope that they might throw confectionary at the audience. This occurred more often you'd think in the less health conscious 1980's.

2. The promise of catching a glimpse of the grade 4 teacher who looked a lot like Angelica Huston in The Witches. A striking lady, I'll leave it to your fertile imaginations as to whether she resembled her with or without the latex mask and wig.

3. But most of all it was looking forward to the grade 3 teacher's consistently dazzling use of the much maligned art of black light theatre. After sitting through hours of barely co-ordinated girls in unbecoming outfits, I could always rely on the vision of a woman who had clearly found her creativity repressed by Australia's private school system but allowed it to explode across the stage annually. Her breathtaking creations reached a dizzying peak in 1988 as she celebrated our bicentenary (celebration of a nation, give us a hand, celebration of a nation, let's make it grand!) with an assault on the senses that covered everything from the Great Barrier Reef to Lindy Chamberlin. If you didn't think such differing subjects could be covered all at once by a series of pre-pubescent girls with thongs on their hands (and this time I do mean flip flops) then you're sorely underestimating the magic of black light theatre and it's ability to comment on our times.

So that brings us to the present day. The 90's seemed to bury black light theatre or at least relegate it to late night performances at Teriyaki Anarki Saki or window displays at Ministry Of Style. But wandering the streets of Prague, I discovered that it's still very much alive and embraced by the Czech Republic. I guess the communists didn't let them explore it in the 80's. And we all know how anticipation can make things twice as sweet.

So I decided to "treat" myself to a night of black light theatre. The options are plentiful in Prague, almost one on every street corner, and I considered a black light production of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Cats (nothing like making a good thing better, right?) but then I realised I didn't hate myself nor did I want to put myself through great mental agony so I opted for the more conservative Cabinet. Cabinet is a new work about a professor exploring great inventions of the modern era, fittingly told using the greatest invention of them all - black light theatre.

Alarm bells started ringing the minute I stepped into the theatre. A sign at the entrance read "NO MEALS SERVED DURING THE PERFORMANCE". The fact that they felt the need to warn me of this filled with the kind of dread I feel when I'm watching a movie and realise Renee Zellweger is the lead character. I don't go to the theatre expecting my stomach to be fed. Not anymore anyway. Only perhaps for them to throw my soul a morsel it can gnaw upon. So the fact that the show had this sort of warning made me think they were expecting the sort of audience one might see at Witches In Britches or The Swagman and thus would be pitching their content at that level.

The programme promised/warned me that I would be "helpless in the power of music that will touch your soul". If the great synthesiser scores of 80's fantasy films such as Ladyhawke had the ability to touch my soul, then by all means surely this music touched mine. I've always thought that all one needs to create great music is one man and his drum machine (In The Air Tonight proves this point) and the dastardly team behind Cabinet clearly agreed.



Cabinet seemed to have a plot about a mad scientist type and his beautiful-beneath-the-glasses assistant who work on all number of wacky inventions and seem to have a magic wardrobe that sends its unwitting participants into a sort of neon Narnia where black light shapes dazzle and spin around them. After having seen black light used to reveal how Australia's judicial system let down Lindy Chamberlin, I couldn't help but feel Cabinet was a little light on for plot. And my blood ran cold when I discovered that their main way of advancing the plot was to draw upon the handicapped little sister of narrative - audience participation. As they drew one hapless soul after another up on stage to be the butt of their vaudeville jokes, I died a little in side. You'd think by now I'd learn my lesson not to seek out ironic forms of entertainment particularly after seeing that production of Chess starring Daryl Braithwaite where they decided to eliminate all references to the Cold War reducing it to a musical about... chess. But I can be a slow learner.

As I stumbled out of the theatre after a thoroughly bewildering hour and an elongated curtain call, I realised that black light is to theatre what Renee Zellweger is to acting. Or Andre Rieu to classical music. Or John Wayne Gacy Jnr to childcare. It takes something beautiful and destroys it forever.

I Feel The Earth Move

I'm back on the interwebs and ready to rock this blog.

I've left Amsterdam, moved through Poland and have now reached the Czech Republic. I've decided to go all non-linear on this blog or just show things in the order I find them most interesting or pertinent (I take the same approach when showing Showgirls to the uninitiated) so I won't cover Poland just yet and how my calf muscles will never be the same. It'll come - don't worry.

Instead today the most important thing on my mind is youth hostels or how I have grown to hate them.

Maybe it's the time, maybe it's my age as I hurtle toward my fourth decade (wow - that makes me sound a hell of a lot older than I really am) or maybe I'm just a plain old crank but after one night in a hostel in Prague, I'm ready to torch the place.

I didn't always feel this way. In 2000 and 2001 when I travelled, I had nought but good experiences in youth hostels. But things were different then. The World Trade Centre towers loomed proudly over the New York skyline. New Orleans thought they were invincible and Ann Rice would always watch over them. You could travel on planes with a bottle of water and get through security wearing your belt and shoes. And most importantly, mobile phones hadn't quite infiltrated our lives.

Sure we all had them (heavens - it's not like I'm talking about the 90's!) but global roaming was still a confusing issue, people hadn't quite twigged to the fact that they could swap SIM cards from country to country and battery lives were unreliable and stunted. Hell we were still getting our head around that new concept of being able to send these things called text messages to somebody who wasn't even on the same phone network as us. What a strange futuristic time we seemed to be living in. If you'd added some jet flames and a moving Asian billboard we would have all thought we were living in Blade Runner.

So back in the halcyon days of travelling, pre September 2001, it was possible to go to sleep in a hostel dorm without expecting numerous SMS messages and wacky ring tones to ensure you never reached deep REM sleep. Maybe I'm looking at things through rose-coloured glasses but I couldn't help but long for this not too distant past last night as one of my roommates, I forget his name so we'll just call him Mr Cocksnaggle, took not 1 but 3 phone calls between the hours of 2 and 5am. Don't you mind the rest of us, Mr Cocksnaggle! We're just lying here because our blood sugar levels are low and we can't quite work out how to stand up. It's not like we want to use these beds for sleep or anything.

I have a little less contempt for people who put their phones on silent during the night but there's an important distinction between "silent" in 2001 and in 2009. In 2001, it meant exactly that. Your phone didn't make a sound. In 2009, "silent" actually means "vibrate". And these fuckers have got some buzz in them. So if you're sharing a bunk bed with somebody and their phone vibrates, there's every possibility the whole room will shake and it will sound as if a plague of locusts are descending upon you in the night. Unless, of course, you're staying in Cambodia where both of those things will really be happening.

But I also discovered that mobile phones aren't the only things that will make your bunk vibrate as I awoke at 4am to a couple going at it hammer and tongs as they say in the top bunk. Now I'm all for sexual experimentation and livening up your sex life by trying it in unexpected places, but really? The top of a bunk bed with 5 other people in the room trying to sleep? At 4am? Is that really the best time to try the reverse cowgirl position? You sure now? You don't want to rethink that? As I listened to them testing Ikea's fine workmanship, I hoped neither of them got vertigo. But then I realised I actually very much wanted both of them to get vertigo. And when our young Valentino's phone rang and he reached to grab it, knocking his lady love off the top bunk where she plummeted naked to the floor landing face down next to my bed, a nasty voice in my head that I'm not at all proud of hissed "who's eating carpet now, sweetie?".

And I must admit my own hypocrisy here as I caused the bunk bed I was in to vibrate too. Vibrating as I lay there shaking with silent laughter.

The whole incident became even more dignified when Valentino's friend knocked on the door to let him know they had to leave so he did the considerate thing and turned on the bright fluorescent lights so that he could find his pants, slowly dressed while talking loudly to his friend and left leaving Lady Godiva to fossick around for something to wear as we all pretended not to be watching her. It was the most undignified exit from a hostel room I've seen since Reyjkavik 2001 when a drunk British backpacker didn't realise she had walked into the male dormitory by mistake at 3am until she had stripped down to only her thong - and I'm not talking about flip flops, It seems you can feel 7 pairs of eyes staring at you particularly when it's 3am in an Icelandic summer as there's still daylight filling the room.

But Lady Godiva didn't seem too fussed by her soulmate's less-than-honourable treatment of her as I found her the next morning in the hostel common room with her head in another guy's lap. I guess she thought - Valentino's been gone for a whole 4 hours now. Why wait?

I've often wondered at what moment should you no longer stay at youth hostels. My answer just became clear. When the idea of spending a night with Mr Cocksnaggle, Lady Godiva and Valentino doesn't fill you with joy. In other words - last night.