I mentioned earlier that the Forced Entertainment performance First Night hadn't mellowed much since we made it in 2001. Proof of this in a short Village Voice blog item on the piece following the recent Toynbee presentations, which says cheerily:

"Rarely has the actor/audience relationship seemed so strained, so nasty, so desperate and parasitic."

Thing is, this is a good review, by Alexis Soloski whose "ludicrously high expectations of the company.. Weren't remotely disappointed". Looking forward to the bad reactions!

I also mentioned elsewhere that everything (at least in performance/art documentation) will probably end up on YouTube sooner or later. Ironically only days later I've come across a short edit of one of my own pieces - the performance That Night Follows Day which I made this year with Victoria. Not quite sure how this clip/edit ended up where it is, or quite what levels of permission were involved but I'm not starting the lawsuits just yet. In fact here's a link. It gives a pretty good sense idea of the performance. The kids are so focused, even in close-up, they look really great.

Over at The Guardian the very boring theatre critic Michael Billington started a 'debate' about who is the best  director in the UK. I'm not mentioned in his entirely predictable text but I do scrape a nomination by jonaverage in the comments. Thanks jon. Check the comments for more interesting names and thoughts including one person flagging of the work of 80's devising companies like Impact, Rational and Lumiere & Son. 

A busy week ahead. Bloody Mess in Meltdown on Tuesday. Then Thursday I'm in Amsterdam for this.