I know Gareth Calway‘s work from his novel, River Deep Mountain High, which I loved. But he and I share a stubborn refusal to limit our work to novels only. So when I discovered that he was beginning a tour of masked theatrical events about Boudicca and King Arthur, I seized the opportunity to ask him about them:

Gareth, can you discuss how this project came about and how you decide which genre is appropriate for which idea?
Excellent question.  I was thinking about it in a café in Bristol recently when a chorus of early season colds had me fearful for the hygiene of my breakfast and apprehensive about the season of flu and yellow phlegminess. A phrase came into my head ‘ staccato coughs and sneezes in an October cafe/ opening exchanges in an imminent Great War’ and it occurred to me that when I was a kid, I would have grabbed such a line and used it as it was – an image (or complete imagist poem) dramatising, somewhat portentously, my separate existence. Most of my ideas – if they’re any good –  still bleed out of me first as poems. It’s just that with the distance of age, and the confidence of publication in various genres  – I would now consider whether this line is better dispersed in a narrative (quite a few of my early poems were really stories crammed into lyric.) Given to a character in a novel, or even (if appropriate) to the narrator, (both of whom would be revealed by it) this same line would have a different – because more distanced – meaning. If it was given to a character in a play, it would have to be – with the extra exposure of a lit stage – a very marginal and portentous character whereas in a novel, even as the narrator,  he is only a prism for filtering a narrative. He is not the narrative itself.

Applying all this to your question, both Arthur and Boudicca were born – out of a long painful love-labour and yet ‘as natural as leaves to a tree’ – as a narrative sequence of poems. There was never any question that they could be novels. They each tell a bardic story, using all the persuasiveness and word-lyricism of poetry declaimed on the air to a live audience (with props and large masks  to support but not limit the burden carried by the words.) Yes, reception theory shows that readers recreate novels as they read but a live and present theatre audience takes this one stage further. If the narrator of a novel is legitimately dead – his work handed over to the reader – the bardic storyteller is very much alive, because the reception is present at every recreation. Any actor will tell you how an audience response shapes the telling and performing. If the audience is shocked or excited, my written for speaking rhythms will pick up on it, if they’re laughing, my consonants and vowels will laugh with them. This is a very naked but exhilarating experience. But that edginess fits these stories.  The verse lines, alliteration, assonance, drum beat/heart-beat metres – as well as the epic, archetypal masks – of One Man and His Masks are designed to evoke, in and for a live audience, the heart in the mouth, tongue in the throat primal stories – breath-taking stories at the living root of Britain – that I want to tell.

It’s the oldest trick in the book – it even predates the book. The Greek poets wrote plays and the Celtic bards told stories to happen like this in the divine, enchanted, primitive and yet mystical, performance space. And as far as I am concerned, unlike the Celtic drum I use to punctuate my battle lines in both shows, you can’t beat it.

Amazing.  Now tell me about this play.

It’s two 45-minute shows, actually:  “Never Mind The Testosterone” and “Here Comes Boudicca.” Boudicca’s revolt is told as a punk rock tour and Arthur’s story uses the invasion games, flags and bunting of sport. The same props are used for each of the two shows – eg a wheelchair for Boudicca’s chariot becomes Arthur’s throne.  The shows are very visual and theatrical – combined-arts verse storytelling, one man, two masks, a wheelchair, three flags, a rattle, a megaphone and a drum – taking a lively and modern approach to early British history. They are ‘alternative’ in foregrounding the Celtic and matriarchal side of Boudicca’s story (in addition to and as opposed to the more standard Roman view) and in exploring the Celtic/ West country roots of the Arthur legends (in addition to and as opposed to the Norman English retellings.)



    Here are some of his tour dates for 2011, but I urge you to learn more about it all if you’re interested here.

Tues Feb 22: 11am King’s Lynn Museum: part 1 Boudicca
Weds Feb 23: 11am Thetford Ancient House Museum: part 1 Boudicca
Weds Feb 23: 7.30pm Norwich Puppet Theatre: part 1 Boudicca

Fri Aug 5- Saturday Aug 27 inclusive (not Sundays) 8 pm The Surgeon’s Hall, Theatre 3, Edinburgh:
part 1 Boudicca and part 2: Arthur on alternate nights.