Reviewed in the IRISH WORLD yesterday.
view all my published books @ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
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I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –
I know why the caged bird sings
Maya Angelou has died. Poet, activist, actor, writer,dancer, cook and much more besides. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950’s, where she met her friend and mentor James Baldwin. After hearing Dr. Martin Luther King speak for the first time in 1960 she joined the Civil Rights Movement, and later worked for Malcolm X.
Maya wrote seven volumes of autobiography, starting with I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, and described her writing process as ‘regimented’. She would get up at five in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff had been instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She wrote on legal pads while lying on the bed, with a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget’s Thesaurus and the Bible, and would leave by the early afternoon. She averaged 10–12 pages of material a day in this manner, which she then edited down to three or four pages in the evening. Tough going!
Maya is put here
Who will sing the praises of the poets now?
who the deeds of men?
with Maya dead the muses are silent
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom
Impressions of poverty
Our national epic has yet to be written – James Joyce
If you’ve ever listened to the song Running to Stand Still from U2’s Joshua Tree album you will have heard about the Irish town of Ballymun in the lyric “I see seven towers but I only see one way out.” Located on the northern periphery of Dublin city, Ballymun was at one time Ireland’s largest and – at least as much as my own experience has led me to hold – most unattractive public housing estate. Hastily conceived through a confluence of public and political pressure in response to a housing crisis in Dublin in the early 1960’s, the Ballymun Housing Project was missioned with providing relief from the wholly unsatisfactory conditions of the collapsing inner city slums for the region’s poorest and most desperate. Upon the project’s completion in 1966, the Ballymun estate featured seven fifteen-story tower blocks…
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TIME
TIME
Time, so they tell me,
Is a precious commodity;
Nowadays I own lots of it
(ever since the steelyard gates clanged shut)
I wonder how much a few weeks of it
Would fetch at Christies?
From my new collection of poetry ’67’, now avauilable @ http://www.tinhuttalespublishers.co.uk/67/
REVIEW TIME
First review is in for NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES. The reviewer sees the play as ‘a new look at an old problem’ and gives it a fairly decent write-up. I was pleased with it, and I think the cast can be too. There are several more reviews due out on Wed/Thurs this week. Looking forward to them!
http://www.reviewsgate.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=7449
EAT YOUR HEART OUT ALAN AYCKBURN!
OUR FIRST WEEEK DOWN AND WE LEARN THAT WE HAVE OUT-PERFORMED THE LAST PLAY AT THE VENUE – WHICH WAS AN ALAN AYCKBURN OFFERING! EAT YOUR HEART OUT, ALAN!
AUDIENCE NUMBERS HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD, AND THE RESPONSE EVEN BETTER. EVERYBODY SEEMS TO HAVE GOOD WORDS TO SAY ABOUT IT. ONE INTERESTING COMENT I MUST RELATE; A WOMAN FROM CORK WHO HAD MARRIED A BLACK MAN TOLD ME SHE HAD RECEIVED DOGS ABUSE – AS HAD MANY OTHER IRISH WOMEN IN THE SAME POSITION. HOWEVER, SHE SAID, IRISHMEN WHO HAD MARRIED BLACK WOMEN HADN’T HAD THE SAME ABUSE. NOW, THAT IS INTERESTING!
NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES
PENTAMETERS THEATRE, HEATH ST, HAMPSTEAD, LONDON NW3 6TE
TUE – SAT 8pm SUN 5pm. ENDS 7th June
box office 0207 435 3648
MISS IT AT YOUR PERIL!
NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES
NO BLACKS,NO DOGS, NO POLES
by
Tom O’Brien
World premiere
PENTAMETERS THEATRE, 28 HEATH ST. LONDON NW3 6TE
20th May – 8th June…….Tues – Sat 8pm…Sun 5pm…adm. £12 & £10
Directed by Jesse Cooper….Produced by Leonie Scott-Matthews
The dysfunctional Kennedy clan are having a re-union. There’s the father, Con, a successful building contractor in London who has had to relocate back in Ireland because of tax irregularities in the UK. Con is secretly bisexual, although not-so-secret from his wife, Marion, who has known it all along and kept quiet about it. His estranged son, Michael, turns up after five years in Australia with Cathy, his new aborigine wife. To say his parents are surprised would be putting it mildly. His nephew, Jimmy, also turns up and it is soon apparent that his racist, bigoted views haven’t mellowed any as he has got older.
We learn…
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NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH, ETC
NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES
@PENTAMETERS THEATRE, HEATH ST, HAMPSTEAD LONDON NW3 6TE
20th May – 7th June…Tue – Sat 8pm…Sun 5pm (close to Hampstead Tube station)
UP AND RUNNING
WELL, WE ARE UP AND RUNNING WITH THE SHOW. AND VERY NICELY TOO. OPENING NIGHT ON TUE WAS BRILLIANT – YEAH, I KNOW, I WOULD SAY THAT ANYWAY! – BUT IT IS TRUE. IF MONDAY’S DRESS REHEARSAL WAS A BIT OF A STAGGER-THROUGH, THIS WAS 100% BETTER. I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS WITH ACTORS BUT PUT AN AUDIENCE IN FRONT OF THEM AND THE ADRENALIN KICKS IN AND THEY NEARLY ALWAYS RISE TO THE OCCASION. AND SO IT WAS ON TUE. OF COURSE IT HELPS IF THE AUDIENCE IS RESPONSIVE – AND THEY WERE. ALL WE NEED NOW ARE A COUPLE OF DECENT REVIEWS TONIGHT (PRESS NIGHT) AND WE CAN ALL RLAX A LITTLE BIT.
NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES
PENTAMETERS THEATRE, 28 HEATH ST, HAMPSTEAD LONDON NW3 6TE (HAMPSTEAD TUBE)
TUE – SAT 8pm SUNS 5pm UNTIL SAT 7th JUNE – ADM 12 & 10 pounds
ONLY A REHEARSAL
SAW THE DRESS REHEARSAL OF ‘NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO POLES’ LAST NIGHT. IN A WAY IT WAS A VERY STRANGE FEELING, SITTING THERE IN AN EMPTY THEATRE, WATCHING THE WORDS YOU HAVE WRITTEN TAKING ON A LIFE OF THEIR ON ON THE STAGE. THEY HAVE BEEN FLESHED OUT, GIVEN A BODY, GIVEN LIFE, BEING PREPOSTEROUS, BEING OUTRAGEOUS, BIGOTED AND SOMETIMES DOWNRIGHT RACIST, AND YOU SIT THERE WONDERING WHAT THE AUDIENCE WILL MAKE OF IT ALL.
WELL, TONIGHT WE WILL FIND OUT. I THINK THEY WILL BE PLEASANTLY SURPRISED. IT WASN’T PERFECT BY ANY MEANS – BUT THAT’S WHAT DRESS REHEARSALS ARE FOR!
MY DAUGHTER KAREN AND MY GRANDSON ZOHAR
My Writing Life 