‘Their Theatre and Ours’ – exhibition events
Alongside Joey Simons’ solo exhibition Their Theatre and Ours, there was three coinciding events at Market Gallery.
The People’s Luminaire: lighting the workers’ theatre
Wednesday 5th November, 6-8pm
Artist and theatre lighting designer Laurie Paul led a practical workshop experimenting with the construction of a ‘People’s Luminaire’.
Working with salvaged lenses and projector parts, they attempt to start building mobiles and lanterns to illuminate a speculative workers’ theatre, drawing on the revolutionary design legacies of Josef Svoboda, Alf Armitt and the Shanghai theatre of the 1930s.
They though dead still liveth: the Calton’s radical culture
Sunday 16th November, 2 – 4pm
An afternoon of songs, music, readings and talks celebrating the tangled red threads of the Calton’s radical culture.
Poets, playwrights, pamphleteers and balladeers have long reflected the area’s life & struggles, from the strikes and massacres of weavers in the 1780s to the Chartist riots of 1848 and the unemployed demonstrations of the 1930s. Drawing on these traditions, we will explore where we stand in relation to the Calton today and the representation of the city in Glasgow’s 850th anniversary celebrations.
Featured readings from Freddy Anderson’s The Weaver Lads. Ann Kerr’s The Last Threads and Willy Maley’s From Calton to Catalonia, and contributions from artists and musicians Doctur Normul, Rebecca Morris, Keira McLean, Jemima Vaughan and Stuart Murphy.
Book launch: Thomas Muntzer: dramatic depiction of the German Peasants’ War of 1525 by Berta Lask
Saturday 22nd November, 2 – 4pm
In 1925, Berta Lask (1878 -1967) wrote a play to mark the 400th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War. In it, she imagines Thomas Müntzer waking up every hundred years to address the contemporary political situation. Originally staged with hundreds of performers, massed choirs and worker-drama groups, Lask used the play to draw direct parallels with the situation facing the German proletariat in the 1920s. Accused of high treason and sedition under the Weimar Republic, with the rise of the Nazis she was imprisoned and exiled.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the play and the 500th of the Peasants’ War, Rab-Rab press has published Thomas Müntzer, translated into English for the first time by Sam Dolbear in collaboration with Esther Leslie, Joey Simons and Charlotte Thießen.
Featuring talk from Thomas Müntzer contributors Hannah Proctor, Sam Dolbear and Joey Simons.
