Kazuo Ishiguro came on with Jonathan Coe to rapturous applause.
‘I’m missing Spurs v. Real Madrid for this?’ Mr Grigg said.
‘In the literary world, Mr Grigg, this man is bigger than Pat Jennings’s hands,’ I said, showing my age and also my ignorance of 21st century football.
Mr Grigg settled back and attempted to enjoy the interview…
A HALLOWEEN murder mystery night in Bridport proved a marvellous success for the town’s newest amateur dramatics group.
Marvellous Amateur Dramatics (MAD) cast became movie producers, directors and stars for the evening as they turned St Mary’s Church Hall into the wrap party of their latest horror flick “I’m your number one fang”.
Guests were entertained by an evening of improvised performance, on Saturday night, and then used their sleuthing skills to try and uncover the murderer in the line up.
Top detective on the night was Paul Cosser, who correctly deduced that production company boss Don Canelloni (Tom Glover), had been behind the deaths of both Gracie Dullard (Jasmine Northover) and Carla Di Lucci (Lauren Antinoro).
Also starring in the show were Ben Kapur and Zuzka Aukett as hot shot director Sam Wannital and his author wife Ivana, Roy Bowskill as former star Rex Bannister and Callam Thom as young director Nick Noble.
The group raised £150 to help fund their first Bridport Show Our House, which will be at the Electric Palace next spring.
Organisers thanked everyone who came and took part as well as everybody who volunteered their time to make the evening a success.
For more information visit www.marvellousamdram.co.uk
EIGHTY-FOUR YEARS after it first opened the Electric Palace in Bridport is returning to its original purpose: OPERA.
Yes, opera.
“The building was originally erected for dual use as a cinema and opera house for the Palmer brewing family, who wanted to bring opera to Dorset.”
So reads the citation for the Grade II listing of the Electric Palace by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 29 April, 1999.
I found my copy of this document by chance after it was first reported (on Real West Dorset) that the Palace wanted to install an expensive satellite dish so as to be able to broadcast live high-definition performances from the Metropolitan Opera in New York and perhaps also the National Theatre in London.
And I thought – fancy that…
[Note added Saturday, August 28: You can now read the Electric Palace listed building details online by clicking here]
So, even though I have almost no appreciation of opera whatsoever, I’m going to report that this Thursday evening (August 26) West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin will be taking to the stage of the Electric Palace to show his support of the venue’s efforts to reinvigorate opera and reach out to a broader public.
The opera shown will be Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, directed for the stage by Franco Zeffirelli, and starring Fiorenza Cedolins, Marcello Giordani, and Juan Pons.
Madama Butterfly
The aim of this benefit screening is to raise money for the costly purchase and fitting of the bespoke dish required to receive a season of 11 Met Live performances.
This will be the fifth year that shows have been broadcast live from New York; they now reach more than 1.6 million people in 35 countries.
Tickets for Madama Butterfly cost £15, including a glass of wine.
They are on sale now from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901.
LINDSAY BROOKS is to leave Bridport Arts Centre in September after three years as Director.
Ms Brooks said she was proud of her record and now felt it was time to move on.
“We’re in a healthier state financially, we’re artistically more vibrant and we have started a film festival,” she said.
Indeed, when we spoke she was in the course of writing a funding application to South West Screen for the next From Page to Screen festival next year. From Page to Screen is the UK’s only festival celebrating the adaptation of books into films.
Lindsay Brooks, centre in red, in a publicity shot taken for the film festival From Page to Screen by Pete Millson.
She went on: “The first stage of the centre’s refurbishment also begins this summer. I’m not going before that! I can’t wait to see it. It will be great.”
Ms Brooks said she intended to stay in the Bridport area and work as a freelance.
Other changes at Bridport Arts Centre (BAC) include the impending arrival of a new temporary Marketing Manager, an arts management graduate from Bournemouth University called Eleanor Mottram.
Numerous initiatives are also under way to strengthen and develop BAC’s relationships with schools and young people. This is a priority for the Centre’s core funders, including Arts Council England South West, West Dorset District Council and Bridport Town Council.
BAC is one of only two organisations in West Dorset funded by the Arts Council.
Support is important as competition for audiences in Bridport has increased, with the rise of venues such as The Electric Palace, just down the road in South Street, and Sladers’ Yard in West Bay.
Hence also the importance of BAC’s refurbishment plan, which is (overall) to improve the theatre with new seating, heating, lighting rig and sound system, repave the forecourt, create a new bar / café area, provide a lift to the first floor gallery, improve gallery lighting, and create a dedicated education space in the current café at the rear of the building.
“Onwards and upwards!” said Ms Brooks.
EDDIE COLFOX has been flying for 17 years. Early on he used to compete nationally and was top of the league, when he broke his back. The earthbound days following left him with plenty of time to reflect, and he decided that exploration was more his scene.
He’s since spent many winters guiding expeditions abroad, most notably in Spain, Morocco, India and Mexico.
He’s also glided through Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains (see my story “Birdmen to help bikeboys”) and, in 2008, he tried to fly in China’s Tien Shen range 2008, but he found the authorities there discouraging.
“On the whole,” he says, “I have found that paragliding has introduced me to the best new and exciting regions, and people.
“It’s an instant leveller. Most people have an interest. Whether they think you are mad or not, they have an interest.
“You see incredible landscapes, sometimes have to be very resourceful and in challenging the landscape you are always fully focused.
“You are never simply going through the motions…”
This summer it is Eddie’s intention to go with John Silvester, Alun Hughes and another film maker, called Ray Saunders, back to the Karakoram.
The group’s aim: to gain the paragliding altitude world record AND complete the first paragliding ascent over a major Himalayan peak (Rakaposhi, 7788m).
“We will be filming this and the whole event will be done using tandem paragliders and clearly no mechanical aids.
“It is this trip we’d like commissioned.”
As Mr Colfox explains in the story below, he’s hoping someone may appear at his Electric Palace event who’s interested in supporting this extraordinary adventure.
And then possibly others: “There are so many other films to be made, for instance a vol bivouac trek – that’s flying and camping unsupported along a route where you can’t be certain that you’re going to reach each evening’s destination.
“Then there’s flying from Tirisch Mir, a 7708-metre mountain half in Afghanistan, overlooking Chitral in the North West Frontier of Pakistan, to Hunza, a journey of 250km.
“The route would run along the province of Swat and we’d be bound to meet and probably be treated extremely well by various interested locals.”
For more information about Mr Colfox’s expeditions, and some truly spectacular pictures, click on this link here.
A FILM about the heights and frights of paragliding is to be shown at Bridport’s Electric Palace to raise funds for Dorset’s only indoor skate and cycle park.
The Trick Factory on St Michael’s Trading Estate in Bridport has seen countless risky moves tried out, but probably none that can really compare with chucking yourself off the side of the Himalayas with only a nylon wing to hang onto.
The Birdman of the Karakoram will be introduced by West Dorset birdman Eddie Colfox, whom many people will have seen over the years gliding like a buzzard around places like Eggardon Hill. At the end of the screening on March 23, Mr Colfox will also take questions.
The movie focuses on some of the paragliding and film-making exploits of John Silvester and Alun Hughes and other Himalayan paragliding explorers like Mr Colfox, who quotes one reviewer thus:
“Ready yourself to be thrown into the heart of a terrifying world of extreme altitude flying that few humans will ever experience.
“On the razor sharp cutting edge of adventure paragliding, The Birdman of the Karakoram takes you from armchair to the most extreme flying location on earth, when high altitude paragliding pioneer John Silvester takes Alun Hughes on the tandem flight to end all tandem flights.
“Supported by nothing more than a ten kilo nylon wing and John’s uncanny paragliding skills, the pair commit themselves deep into a remote and hypoxic world of snow, ice and previously unexplored terrain, where flying to survive becomes the name of the game.
“The Birdman of the Karakoram demolishes any ideas you may have had about paragliding being about serenely floating around the sky.”
It won the 2009 Best Film on Human Adventure award at St Hilaire, the largest flying film festival.
A clip can be seen by clicking on this link
As well as raising funds for the Trick Factory, the screening should also help the people of Hunza in Pakistan, a tribal area in the High Karakoram.
Mr Colfox says they “have recently had a landslide block off their communication link and also trap 87m of glacial meltwater in a dam which when/ if it breaks will flood their town. Twenty people have already been killed and much farmland has also been lost.”
Tickets cost £10 (£6 concessions) and can be booked by calling 01308-428354 between 9.30am and 4.30pm weekdays. Or you could pop in to the Electric Palace box office in South Street, Bridport.
“The bars will be open throughout!” says Mr Colfox.
And he adds, finally: “If anyone knows anyone who might commission our next adventure, please come or bring them along.”
BRIDPORT 1/D/09/002009 & 1/D/09/002010 Conservation area and listed building. Satellite dish Electric Palace, South Street (From the latest list of planning applications issued by West Dorset District Council)
It's amazing what you can do these days: An artist's impression of the proposed Electric Palace satellite dish. Reproduced with permission.
THIS is a cool idea. Honestly, it is. The 1.2m satellite dish proposed for the south wall of the Electric Palace is not just any old dish. It is bespoke.
It will take in feeds from the National Theatre in London and the Metropolitan Opera in New York and let audiences watch live performances on the Palace’s cinema screen. The picture quality is said to be fantastic.
First up, if planning permission is granted in time by West Dorset District Council, and if a few other issues are sorted out, there should be a new operatic production of Hamlet with “an extended mad scene… amongst the greatest in opera”. So the Metropolitan Opera promises for March 27…
Next on April 22 should be Alan Bennet’s new play The Habit of Art, about WH Auden and Benjamin Britten, from the National Theatre in London.
It was the Met in New York that first got this idea of worldwide transmission going, and it’s been copied by the National’s supremo Nicholas Hytner because he wants to provide greater access to top-class work.
His line: “I grew up in Manchester in the 60s. If I had been able to see Olivier’s National Theatre at my local cinema, I would have gone all of the time.”
Apparently it costs the National about £50,000 to broadcast a performance, and the experiment has been criticised as misguided and inevitably inferior, because there cannot be the same flow of feeling between audience and performers, but it seems to me that the Palace should be congratulated for trying to join in. Bridport needs more bold moves.