feel your bat boy

I finally fulfilled a lifelong ambition and saw Bat Boy: The Musical which was highly entertaining (hold your bat boy! feel your bat boy!)...props to Bat Boy himself who was really cute in spite of the teeth and ears.
On the way to see the batshow I think I became part of some lame performance art or candid camera show...I was taking photos of a fire spinner when this lardy middle aged guy approached me and started talking about my camera, and then started fiddling with my camera, and then started talking about his admiration for George W., and sorrow that a ceasefire had been called in Lebanon because, after all "they're only Muslims" at which point I muttered "fuck off" involuntarily and left. He was talking like Sean Cullen which is why I think it was fake.

I went to see this Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht opera thing one night...an actor was playing Brecht. I was too cheap to shill out for a programme but as soon as he started talking I was like..."is that Don McKellar? that sounds like Don McKellar...that kind of looks like Don McKellar..." This bothered me throughout the performance until I was able to look over someone's shoulder and determine that yes indeed it was the star of Highway 61. Funny.

Walking through Edinburgh's High Street during the festival is all about pushing through an enormous crowd of tourists and performers, a sea of paper cuts from the endless flyers pushed in your face...a guy who looks like Cillian Murphy's ugly twin wanders along a queue asking, in the most exaggeratedly bored voice "would you like to hear about our play Bitches and Money? No? It's really rawther good...excuse me sir, would you like to hear about our play Bitches and Money? It's Reservoir Dogs set in the Victorian Era...No?".

One afternoon I got half price tickets to see Girl Blog from Iraq: Baghdad Burning which is a dramatization of the writing of Riverbend, a young woman writing from Baghdad. It covers from the early days of the occupation until right now (they update the play as she updates the blog) and it was incredibly affecting. Anyone who thinks the war was and continues to be a great idea should read her blog.

Speaking about the war, I also miraculously managed to get tickets to a forum called "Reporters in the Field" which was to feature Robert Fisk but who had to cancel his appearance because he's still in Lebanon, which is why I suspect I was able to get a ticket at the last minute. The other guests were Asne Seierstad who wrote The Bookseller of Kabul (which I read in french so I didn't quite get everything but regardless it was interesting), and George Packer who wrote The Assassin's Gate about his time in Iraq. He was asked about all this tiptoeing around the use of the phrase "civil war" in Iraq. He said that right now, in Iraq, it IS a civil war and any avoidance of the term is simply politicking and semantics. It was very interesting...in Iraq it seems a great deal of the 'reporting' is actually done by Iraqi stringers because western reporters are too afraid to go into many parts of Baghdad and the rest of the country to talk to people.

And then, because one cannot think about war all of the time, I went to watch other people dance.
One, called Knots is about marriage and ends with a stage covered in booze and fake blood.
The other, The Wild Party which was based on this poem and features a great live three piece jazz band...very very fun. Unfortunately the performance was at 12:30 in the afternoon. That's just wrong. You need time to get a little gin in you before you go see something like that. And irresponsible and frivolous as I may be, 12:30 is still too early for cocktails.

Finally, Jeanette Winterson was absolutely brilliant. I've never heard her read before and was amazed not only by the speed at which the words left her mouth but also the wide range of topics she was able to cover. It was like being inside someone's brain.