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| The Launching of Negative Thinking - Brian Watson |
Caxton Street Hall, 5th October.
The highlight of the evening was short piece of Poet's Theatre. Most of what Peter Anderson said during this was inaudible because of bad sound in the hall, but the action seemed clear.
He tore off large pieces of newspaper that were pasted on a wardrobe on the stage, then climbed inside and closed the door after him.
Afer speaking unintelligibly from inside the wardrobe for a while, he tumbled out naked, slashed in the air with a pair of scissors, which he then used to cut off most of his hair.
He then started stabbing at the mirror of the wardrobe in what appeared as a violent attack on either the hiding place where he had closeted himself or the mirror reflecting his own naked image or both.
Eventually the mirror broke and simultaneously the lights were switched out by Robert Whyte who had been sitting in front of the stage beside a conspicuous power switch.
With most theatrical experiences there is the knowledge that the performance will be repeated time after time. The intensity of this particular experience was increased by the nature of the event: the once-only occasion of the launching of a book.
Peter Anderson's behaviour was anything but glib and confident. The result resembled more the making of a statement than the giving of a performance.
The shouted repetition of the word Remember accompanied the breaking of three major personal taboos that most of us abide by -- we don't go naked in public, or hack off our own hair, or break large mirrors.
On the night that his first book was launched, the author seemed to be using powerful imagery to say good-bye to a former way of life. -- Brian Watson.
This review appeared in Semper Floreat.
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