Meet Hieronymous Proctor!

[imomus]

Last night's performance at Richmond Library (photos courtesy of kineticfactory, who blogs his account of it here) was a rather magical and encouraging extension of the "site-specific storytelling" and "improv vaudeville" I've been doing recently -- a blending, in fact, of my rock shows with my art shows, and a promising probe into future possibilities (like the Hide and Seek Festival event I'll be doing during the last weekend in June, turning London's South Bank into Tokyo).

In the gathering darkness of Richmond Library, between the hours of eight and nine, for an audience of perhaps twenty souls, I appeared in the persona of Hieronymous Proctor, a Scottish "spirit medium of print media" or "procurator spiritual". Dressed in black and sometimes draped in a yellow blanket, I sought to reveal and release the spirits of dead people trapped inside the books, leading members of the audience over to specific volumes to choose and read a sentence at random, a message I would then parse for its hidden spiritual contents. "Peggy turned on her heel and walked away" was thus revealed to mean "Here on the endless plain of eternal anguish, we the gibbus dead are forever crossing the threshold into new realms of suffering and degradation. Help us!"

Using the stage door torch from the production of Madame Butterfly going on next door, I lit my own features from below, spun round with a scream, pointing the beam at a creepy fan window high up in the wall and claiming I'd seen a face there, or spotlighting shelves ("like the charred branches of lightning-blackened trees, on which crows and ravens perch") and explaining how the Dewey decimal system will be used to classify us in hell, or how book bindings in fact bind unwilling spirits into the books, trapping them there. I even performed a mini-exorcism on an accountancy textbook.

In between, there were songs -- Beowulf, Ichabod Crane (a new Joemus track, premiered live here, and compared by Kineticfactory to Talkshow Boy), Robin Hood, Scottish Lips and Lucretia Borgia. More pictures here. Oh, and I played the solos on a white Stylophone! HMV are selling them for fifteen quid.

Comments

Great show!

[rob-kun.livejournal.com]

I was there last night too - my first Momus live experience! I loved the inventiveness and energy of your act and the intimacy of the venue. Like kineticfactory, I thought the new song was great (I hope you stick with that version), but my favourite was probably your rendition of Beowolf stooped and hidden underneath a yellow blanket.

The tour guide performance would have been draw enough without the musical accompaniment, but was it actually intended to scare? It was very funny - loved the joke about the dewy decimal system in Hell, and your explorations of being a 'spirit medium of spirit media' - however, I wondered if you intended to create a creepy atmosphere? Quite difficult when jokes tend to relax people...

Also, if you don't mind I'd like to give you a brief tour guide assessment since I'm a (more conventional) tour guide trainee:

* Audibility & Clarity of Speech: Great! Only drop-off was during Lucretia Borgia when you got the lyrics mixed up.
* Variation of voice: A very melodic voice to listen to. Full marks.
* Vocabulary: Impressive.
* Addressing the Group & Rapport: Faced the group, involved group in reading out random passages. Aside from this (and an attempt to elicit questions which fell a bit flat), I wasn't clear if you welcomed participation, or if it was more of a performance to be viewed?
* Group management, positioning & indication: Excellent... perhaps could have moved us around the library more?

Overall: Well on the way to becoming an unreliable blue badge guide...

Anyway, I'm gutted I'm going to miss your Tokyo in London Southbank tour. Good luck!

Re: Great show!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

To those who didn't attend, Richmond Libraries -- diligently bureaucratic -- handed out official "Performer Assessment" forms at the end of the performance with categories like these on them! Even I was given one!