To all Out of Illinois State Gaiman fans:

Interested in coming to see the play, but you're from out of town?

Spend the night downtown at the luxury Hotel Allegro Chicago, a Kimpton Hotel. 

Lifeline Theatre has negotiated a special $109 rate (Thu-Sun, some blackout dates apply) for anyone who buys tickets to Neverwhere.  

Availability is limited! 

Call the Lifeline box office today at 773-761-4477 for details.

The beating of wings, candlelight and a game

When I started my reread of Neverwhere a couple weeks ago. I noticed the quotes Gaiman gives the reader at the beginning of the novel and thought it might be worth thinking about them a bit.

"I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beating of the wings of an eagle."

The first quote is from G.K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Which is a brilliant choice to allude to. Chesterton's novels blend the fantastical and the real in fascinating and disturbing ways, and although he was writing at the turn of the last century, I am always stunned by how modern Chesterton's books feel. The Napoleon of Notting Hill takes place in a future London (1984) that is much like the London of 1904, when it was written, but it is just a bit off. By agreement and lack of interest the England, which seems to have amassed more empire in the intervening years, now choice a king by alphabetical drawing. There are many analogous interests in the story. The people of London seem to have become entrenched in the ordinary, accepting of their class system and social roles. Clerk Auberon Quin is made king, and being of a whimsical (and possibly mad) nature starts requiring the provosts of the various districts of London to dress in obscure and antiquated ways. As king he also makes up some fairly fantastical histories related to London place names.

The relationship to a fantastical London in which the place names are tied to different histories than we might expect is clear. I think there is more. I confess I am a fan of Chesterton but had not read The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I am about half way through now. I have long reading history with especially The Man Who was Thursday but also The Man Who Knew Too Much and even Father Brown. It struck me how often Chesterton uses the word nightmare. Both Chesterton's worlds and Gaiman's worlds take on a nightmare-like quality in the true sense of a dream the feels real but in which normal things are displaced, distorted or somehow menacing. Both also freely mix humor with societal or personal events that are much more terrifying like say anarchists or murder. Both writers unapologetically take you to that place that is familiar and frightening and fantastic without explaining or making things easy for the reader which, I think, is a mark of respect for the reader, not to explain too much.

The second quote is the 14th century Lyke Wake Dirge from north Yorkshire

If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon

Then every night and all

Sit thou down and put them on

And Christ receive thy soul

This aye night, this aye night

Every night and all

Fire and fleet and candlelight

And Christ receive thy soul

If ever though gavest meat or drink

Then every night and all

The fire shall never make thee shrink

And Christ receive thy soul

The portions of the dirge, or funeral hymn, that Gaiman quotes all refer to the acts of charity that one might have done while living which in the last stanza protects one from the fire (presumably the fires of hell). Lyke is a dead body and wake is the watch that would be held for the deceased. Hosen are stockings and Shoon is an archaic plural of shoes. Fleet can be a small stream but I also saw a variation on the dirge that seemed to substitute hearth or home for fleet. Sleet is sometimes substituted for fleet which is an old form a salt that may have to do with early funeral rituals. The refrain with firelight and home contrasts with the judgment meted out to those who were not generous in life. It fits nicely with Richard's act of kindness that starts everything for him.

Another reference Gaiman has mentioned in interviews is a children's game with a map of London. I suspect it might be Scotland Yard. Where a group of detectives chases the criminal Mr. X through London using the bus, the underground and taxis (why Scotland Yard does not get its own vehicles is never explained.) What is splendid about the game is how much time you have to look at the map of London with all its place names. Before I had visited London I had played the board game and spent time staring at the map, not just trying to win but as if it might give me understanding of London when I should finally visit (it didn't). Nightmare, dirge, game, it is somehow right that they should all fit together.

No. Its Just Door. D-O-O-R. Like something you walk through to go places.

So a couple of weeks ago Paul emailed me about how Neverwhere was like The Wizard of Oz but turned on its head a bit. Richard wants to get home but Door sounds like Dorothy. What are the roles of Hunter and the Marquis in that party if you want to extend the comparison

I agreed but replied that Neverwhere is also like many other fairy tale quest narratives. However last week I did another reread of the book before first rehearsal and it struck me that twice Gaiman invokes the Wizard of Oz. Lamia makes fun of Hunter and Richard and Door as being like the Wizard of Oz, when they are on their way to meet Islington so Door can avenge her family and Richard can get his life back. So Gaiman both invokes the Wizard of Oz and mocks it at the same time. This is a darker fantasy than the Wizard of Oz. The revelations about Islington are much darker than discovering the Wizard is just a man behind a curtain.

Of course the story makes it clear that Door is just Door. It is not short for Doreen or Dorothy. If anything Door, because of her ability is like the physical doors in other fairy tales, the door to the wardrobe, the hole in the ground. So many fairy tales start with some sort of entrance. Of course, the old woman warns him to beware of doors.

Door's whole family are "openers" and their skills allow them to find and open doors and locks. The names of the family are all portal names. Door, Arch, Portico, Portia and Ingress. (I have to point out that Portico also refers to the colonnades where Greek philosophers met - which is appropriate for Door's father.) Richard does find a door to another world.

I was struck when I was rereading the novel how twice uses her skill in a way that shocks her once she opens to save herself from the assassin and kills him. Once she reaches out for somewhere safe then, at the last moment, thinks "someone." She calls a person not just a place and so her guilt over having gotten Richard into his mess is real. She called him.

It always pleased me when reading the novel that the story switches back and forth between Door and Richard. Certainly Richard follows the classic fairy tale or mythological model. He is forced into an adventure. He is from our world so he is our point of view character. We experience London Below as he discovers it. (Unless perhaps there are folks from London Below reading the novel). But Door is on her own journey, she has had her own loss and being orphaned and seeking revenge are also fairy tale devices.

What is trickier is that there isn't quite a direct analog for Door. She is both the entrance to this other world for Richard, but she is not just the guide to Richard. She is in the midst of her own story. Strong women in fairytales are tricky. There are a host of evil witches or bad step-mothers.

There is a clever girl like Molly Whuppie. (I had the Errol Le Cain Illustrated version as a child.) The Twelve Dancing Princesses are clever but only so they can evade their father and dance at night.
In East of the Sun West of the Moon and the Frog Prince the peasant's pretty daughter and the princess go on quest but only after they had rejected a magical suitor.

A number of years ago I read Reviving Ophelia, in which psychologist Mary Pipher examines the increasing problems facing young women. She describes how strong female characters start to disappear from books for girls when they hit adolescence and those characters become increasingly focused on relationships and marriage. Door is refreshing in that she is so unique. She is strong and skilled and independent. She has vulnerabilities but does not need saving. In fact, all the women in Neverwhere are strong.

She is not just an entrance for Richard into his story. They both have stories that are tangled together like a map of the London Underground.

First Rehearsal: Instructions, Beginnings and Tribes

At certain first rehearsals there is a sort of alchemy that happens where you look around the table at the set design and the costume designs and hear the sound designers play clips. It is magic to hear the actors start reading a script and hear the voices from the page aloud and laughter at the funny bits.

It is also exciting to feel like you are embarking on a journey with people who care about the same things. This was a good first rehearsal. The designs were fantastic and there was this feeling in the room of how excited each person was to be working on Neverwhere. Paul and the cast read aloud Gaiman's poem, Instructions, (instructions for what to do if you are in a fairy tale) which seems like a good way to start. Like Richard we are all embarking on journey, however we have the luxury of a group to help us. So here are some musings on Richard's journey and our own journey.

I have been thinking about tribes. Theater is certainly its own tribe. There are tribes in London Below (or fiefdoms and duchies).

I recently heard a discussion of the theories of the political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, they resonated with the line from the beginning of Neverwhere when the old woman tells Richard's fortune. Part of Arendt's statement that struck me, in rough paraphrase, is that a beautiful soul is not enough to live fully and securely, every human being needs the social and political status that comes with full membership. The old woman tells Richard, "You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not." Without trying to minimize or simplify Arendt's theories, I think both thoughts get at some of the key ideas in Neverwhere, that is that being having a good heart or a beautiful soul is not valued, it is in fact a liability, but also that we want membership in a social group to live securely.

Richard's decency in helping Door is not appreciated by London above, or in many ways by London below. In fact in both worlds we see acts of great selfishness it is under a veneer in London above that Jessica doesn't care about an injured girl or that Mr. Stockton doesn't really care about art or the guests. In London Below the stakes are higher, Lord ratspeaker would happily slit his throat. London below is more extreme because existence is more extreme but the motivations, selfishness among them are the same.

Richard is not only disoriented by the foreignness of London below but also by the lack of a group of friends who help give him definition. When Richard enters London below he is tribe-less. He is continually being asked to whom he swears fealty, which duchy, which fiefdom? Part of Richard's desperation to return to London above is to be part of the established and familiar social order. He breaks down and cries when he has lost his identity in London Above and when Door, Marquis and Hunter have left him. He wants to belong.

In truth, in London above he doesn't have a tribe either, but he is lulled by the normalcy of everything around him into thinking his life, his work, his fiancee are all fine. Whey he returns from his time in London below he lost again, and finds work, going out for drinks are meaningless. He tells Jessica he's changed. This is why the challenge is so harrowing. He is forced to face the loss of a group that could give him definition but also he conjures the images of his former fiancee and friend to tell him he is insane and worthless. He must decide if his live is worth living without the certainty of others to define him and yet it is the recollection of the generosity and loss of Anasthesia that recalls him to his senses.

Interestingly, Henry Mayhew, journalist, social researcher and editor of Punch, who wrote the 1851 London Labour and the London Poor, refers to the various groups that he interviews in the London underclasses as tribes. But even while his approach is anthropological he wants to understand the costermonger and the orange a lemon seller. It is that same curiosity that infects Richard Mayhew. He keeps asking, Door, the Marquis and Hunter questions about the peoples of London below, he wants to understand the world.

What interests me about Richard's journey is not just the journey (that story is familiar to us and Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey has described separation, initiation and return and it is interesting see that journey) but after then end of the journey, after the return. What happens then? Fairy tales always get us home but they don't talk about what happens after you get home.

When I was a child, I was always frustrated by children having to go back after having an incredible journey. Back out of the wardrobe, out of the rabbit hole, back to Kansas, to the Dursleys. I didn't want them to go home much in the way that I didn't want the stories to end. Richard has changed, almost without knowing it. He is back home and discovers he his allegiances have changed, in a world that may be dangerous but after technicolor who wants to go back to black and white. Richard can see a life of security in London above but he forsakes that security. It makes me think of the last line of Instructions, "And then go home, Or make a home, Or rest."

I am glad to be on this journey with a tribe of like-minded individuals, who switch from Cockney to Irish in a heartbeat and design magical clothes and sets and lights and sounds. Where else would I get the chance to exchange emails about how best to create a piece of tang dynasty pottery that can be eaten several shows a week.

Oh and one mores thought, when we left the first rehearsal the misty day had turned into a thick fog, a peasouper, which seemed auspicious for our production. It smiled as I drove (slowly) all the way home and saw the strange shapes of gravestones in the cemetery and the dangerous trees in the park and the pale yellow glow of street lamps in the fog. It is late now and I think I choose rest.

Beginning with Bravery

On a personal note, I have been enjoying this researching and information gathering and the whole evaluation process like a warm blanket. It is an indulgence, in my experience, to really incubate these ideas and notions theoretically without having to make any real decisions. Without any pressure to PRODUCE RESULTS, the experience of sitting with the material and investigating sources of further inspiration without committing to them is a delightful notion. Like bathing in the creative flow of possibility, irresponsibly and childlike.

The time has come for that process to have some closure and for realization of the ideas to become manifest.  I enter it with a bittersweet heart. Now all the ideas of this baby's realization must become guidance, authority, structure and technical actuality.  The reality of our medium and the technology available at our level of budget and space must be dealt with. 

I've taken the time in the past week to enjoy some other manifestations of similar creative works. From Hell, Beowulf (thanks again, Neil), and Alice in Wonderland come to mind. I'm also this close to finishing Watership Down. There is an element of steeping myself in these epic works that speaks true to the process of creating theatre to me and I'm compelled to share it with you.

Any journey in our life, planned or sprung upon us, involves a deeply personal confrontation with the inherent truth of the self.  We must look within, face our utmost limits of fear and identity, before we can complete our quest.  All quest stories, from Frodo to Luke Skywalker to Harry Potter echo this.  Neverwhere is no exception.  Epics or quest tales evoke our innate sentiance to see ourselves and judge our own actions, our own decisions that brought us here and confront our moving forward and realizing our true potential.  Therapeutic technique is based in this notion as well. We dig in the dirt of our past to figure out how to grow and be whole, we seek a holistic identity coupling the forbidden wounds of our past with the ideals of our present. And we become something indelibly, singularly, personal and present.

This journey takes great imagination, reflection, honesty, wit and resilience.  Our natural leneancy and laziness hopes to say NO, I wont go there, I know myself well enough thank you. It takes a huge amount of bravery to confront your reality and say this is not what I want, this does not fit me, I am SOMETHING ELSE.

Richard is helplessly thrown into this process, he doesn't enter willingly. He is tossed asea in this fantasy left and right.  Coming to a crisis of identity in The Ordeal, he finds he does have the strength to be Himself in The World. He actually does have enough self value to Go On. It is this strength that changes him in action, from this point forward he acts more bravely, becomes a Warrior instead of a Follower, finds his gumption and his resolve.  He screws his courage to the sticking place only by discovering there is a sticking place and a courage to work with.  

After arriving back in London, the current status quo doesn't seem to fit. Ultimately, there is a lie present. He is faking something that isn't true to his knowledge of himself. It doesn't matter what other people think he should be, he knows better.  He knows he is The Warrior. He believes his greater power. And he goes back to seek it.

Simply put, the experience of actor, designer, and director in a theatrical production is a similar process. There are preformed ideas of what will be. There are realities to confront. There is a strength of resolve that must be honored.  There is a bargaining process. And then there is a belief that makes everything else is unimportant.

I am here. Now. I am committed to this beauty of Truth, I am an embodiment of Honesty, I face my limitations with bravery because I am a Warrior. And I fight for Trust, Truth and the Story. My purpose is greater than me, I am humbled and at the same time exaulted by it. We are one in the same. And we are inpenetrable. The Truth will stand even if I perish in the attempt to exemplify it. Without me, where will the Truth be told?

We are always questing. I think of this process being an expression of that quest. It will be deeply personal, honorable and truthful and scary. It should be. Such demons must be present to be dealt with or we aren't doing our jobs.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED! Enter the Floating Market...

Lifeline Theatre is seeking volunteers to work at our 2010 Annual Benefit: Neil Gaiman’s Floating Market on April 19, 2010 the Chicago Cultural Center. We are recreating the Floating Market as conceived by Neil Gaiman is his bestselling book, Neverwhere. There will be food, drink, belly dancers, fire dancers, a wheel of destiny, fortune tellers, and musicians playing found instruments.

We are looking for technical people to help with set-up and break-down and performers to work the event.

Technical: Set up will run from 1:30–6:30pm and will encompass load in and set up of the market. Break down will run from 10:00–11:30pm and will encompass break down and load out at the Cultural Center. All set-up and break-down volunteers will be able to attend the Benefit free of charge.

Performers: Performers will be required from 5:30–10:00pm. You must dress up as a character from the Neverwhere world (e.g. Rat Speakers, Velvets, Sewer Folk, Salvation Army Restoration fops, Junk Yard warriors, etc) and work an assigned area (silent auction tables, entertainment areas, roaming) in character and interact with patrons. We will provide guidelines but you will be responsible for creating your own costume. Performers will be given one complimentary ticket to Lifeline’s production of Neverwhere.

There will be a mandatory meeting for all volunteers on Sunday, April 18th at 3:00 PM.

All inquiries about this opportunity should be sent to allison@lifelinetheatre.com. Please indicate how you would like to help out. First come, first served. Spots are limited. 

Sewerfolk, Ratspeakers, Anesthesia and a Load of Tosh

I have been reading an illuminating book by Stephen Smith called Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets. In it, the author investigates a variety places and histories that took place beneath the streets of London. I am in the chapter on the rivers/sewers, which seem to have been the same for much of London’s history. Many of the small rivers that were once open and flowing were covered over at various points in London’s history. Fleet street was actually the location of the Fleet River, which was slowly covered over, a process completed by the 1800s. Its fragrance had been a source of complaints since the Middle Ages and covering the river converted what was already a sewer to an underground sewer.

Apparently the gases created by the sewage built up and 1846 part of Fleet Street blew up and sewage flowed in the streets. In the 1850s, after the introduction of flush toilets, the increase in liquid sewage caused an overflow of the cesspits directly into the into rain gutters and into the Thames and various small London rivers. Increased industrialization brought waste from slaughterhouses and tanneries. By 1855, the warm summer heated the sewage filled rivers and the overpowering smell came to be known as “the Great Stink.” (There are a couple of books about the Great Stink as well here and here.) The heat made the smell so intolerable that bags drenched in chloroform of lime where hung outside the windows of Parliament in an attempt to mask the smell. Sewer reform would soon be a political imperative. By 1859, then engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, had been commissioned to overhaul the sewers of London. This is also about the same time doctors proved that cholera was being carried by contaminated drinking water. They had previously failed to understand that the waste was not being carried out to the ocean because the movement of the tides through the estuaries pushed the sewage back up into the rivers where it continued to build up.

What was fascinating to me about the chapter was the long history of people who work on or in the sewers, often the incredibly poor in earlier eras. There are a series of colorful names for those who made a living in the sewers, flushers, rakers, mudlarks, and toshers, thus the phrase “a load of tosh.” Many of the poorest sought to rake through waste to try and retrieve valuables The Sewer folk who find the Marquis certainly seem to be in this direct tradition (or perhaps they are just the same toshers).

Sewers are also the haven of rats, but Smith does much to resuscitate the image of rats, certainly they were in the sewers and blamed as plague carriers but they were also apparently popular entertainment in pubs in rat or rat/dog fights in that cockfighting and bear-baiting tradition. I find it funny that humans have such distaste both for rats and pigeons because both among the creatures that not only survive but also thrive amid human waste.

One interesting tidbit that I should mention but probably will do better in a section on Richard is his name. Mayhew. Henry Mayhew was an anthropologist who wrote a book, London Labour and the London Poor, in which he transcribes his 1852 interviews with rakers as well as many people on the fringes of society. The rakers told him some fairly tall tales about the rats in the sewers and how dangerous and large they were which seems like it can’t be coincidental to the naming of Richard Mayhew. In fact, Gaiman includes many facts and historical details about the history of London and its sewers and underground world that might seem odd in a fantasy (although history is also in some measure storytelling) but it is one grounded in reality as well, or rather, many realities some from Richard’s present and some from the 1850s and some are even more ancient. The ratspeakers are in some sense a counterpart to the rakers but they are also their own invention, particularly their code and their communication and apparent fealty to a society of rats. There is a sense that the ratspeakers operate on the border of London Above and London Below.

Anesthesia is an interesting case, I part we only know that her name is that because of Richard who hears it as Anesthesia when she says it while eating the banana she has stolen from Richard’s bag. She is unique among those in London below for having a background that we actually get to hear and it is one of neglect, abusing and running away that fits with how we understand people falling through the cracks in a society and not receiving help. Anesthesia has fallen through the cracks and found better at the hands of rats than humans. I found myself thinking about what it means that night takes her. Why her? She is also one of the few people in London Below who shows kindness to Richard in spite of her own life. She also is the only person who seems to have come from London above in any recent history.

Her name, Anesthesia, which is a means of numbing or putting someone to sleep generally before a medical procedure, is of course appropriate because when Richard enters London below he feels anesthetized. He has entered a borderland where all that he understands has shifted slightly and become dreamlike and unreal.

In addition to all these subterranean tidbits, is the story of the Beast of London. There is an historical story, one that is told to the Marquis de Carabas by Old Bailey, about a pig that escaped to the sewers of London and became enormous there living on garbage. The historical tale has him reemerge a much larger pig and sold for a profit the Gaiman version has the pig become the beast of London. Fed in the dark by the refuse of a city over centuries, it is easy to imagine how a creature of cast-offs would become fearsome and terrifying.