Prim-Raf Theatre Murder Mystery Evening......

Maybe I should confess. When I was a small child, I discovered the arts in the following order:

• Ballet at age 3 (I must have seen it on TV, as that is the year we got our first one and I teased until they broke down and sent me for lessons!)
• Literature/Reading (shortly thereafter)
• Drawing as a serious pursuit at age 5 when my Kindergarten teacher tried to convince my parents that I should go to art school  (they declined, as I was already in ballet, and it was LONG before the over-scheduled child era)
• Theatre at age 9, when my grandmother took me to see West Side Story, the original original, on Broadway (yes, now you can calculate my age)
• Music at age 16, when my mother insisted I take piano lessons, which I loathed, as I had long since given up ballet, and she thought it would be useful to me as I was an avid theatre-goer by then, and acted in school plays.

So naturally, I became a journalist when I grew up, writing both arts and business, and spending a miserable year as editor of a large American agriculture magazine--odd enough since I was raised in New York City and on Long Island, where the only agriculture was to be seen in parks and consisted mainly of grass and ornamental trees.

From where to eternity???

I went to art school as an adult, and now do as much painting as writing. But old loves never really leave one, so I've gotten back into theatre, in a way. I accepted the task of doing promotion for Prim-Raf Theatre, Callington, Cornwall, UK. It's a job I did for a couple of years in the 1990s for a world-famous theatre in the US, Barter Theatre, which produced Gregory Peck, Larry Linville (Maj. Frank Burns on MASH), Frances Farmer (Titanic), Ernest Borgnine, Patricia Neal and more. At Barter, it was both a labour of love and of money in the bank; at  Prim-Raf, since it's a community theatre, is a labour of love.

Worthy love object

Prim-Raf is worth loving. Among the stars who have graced its stage are Edward Woodward and Michele Dotrice. It owns its building, highly unusual for a community theatre in any country. It has a store of costumes most professional theatres would drool over (and it hires them out to groups for productions and to individuals in need of fancy dress). And it gets high marks from the critics for its annual pantomime. The most recent one was an adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes--as it happens, a favourite fairy tale of mine when I was little, along with The Twelve Dancing Princesses with whom I naturally identified. Prim-Raf's version of Clothes saw a King who wanted to become a top model in the modern world, so all the songs were current. But that didn't mean the production lacked exploding cakes and all that sort of thing, and the ultimate baddies and the charming goodies, and of course a perfect ending.

Currently in rehearsal for presentation May 2 and 3, 2014 is Blood Money, an interactivie murder mystery evening written by Prim-Raf member Paula Beswetherick. It's Cornish all the way to the ground, with the action taking place in a pasty factory, and the audience being treated to pasties and a pint as they unravel who dunnit. At the end of the evening, one audience member, drawn from those who correctly provide the killer's identity, will be rewarded for his or her efforts with a prize.

No mystery about it

If you live in Cornwall or West Devon, pass it on. It will be a fun evening, as the interactive mystery evenings always are. It isn't Shakespeare (too high-falutin') nor Eugene O'Neill (too problematical)....but it is Paula Beswetherick, who has a deft feel for comedy and is a dab hand at food, having been a professional chef for no less that Madame Tussaud's some years ago. (So, of course, food WOULD have to be a part of her art.....)

Take a peek at the poster above. Click it and enlarge it and pick up your tickets in Callington, or on the door (if available). Frankly, for ten quid per person, it's a heck of a deal if I do say so myself.

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Below, bonus video from a couple of years back.....

Regatta at Cowes (1934) Raoul Dufy (Wiki Commons)

Here's the quandary: Do I want to create art, or view it?

It is the same quandary I've had about writing, although to a lesser degree, but only because I have been reading since I was three, living in houses full of books, a world full of the written word. So I really cannot help reading. One reads to be entertained, to become informed, to find out about places to visit, about new foods, about why one's family acts that way...all sorts of reasons.

One does not view art for any of those reasons. Well, all right, possibly to find new places to visit, although even that function has been diminished first by colour photography becoming widely available to everyone, and now by instant colour photography being practiced by everyone in the universe via smartphones, I think, except my husband and me. (His mobile phone is an artefact; mine is somewhat newer, but it's a pay-as-you-go because the ONLY reason I have it is in case the car breaks down and I need to call AA.)

Those who can, do....etc.

So: the quandary, particularly poignant this week of Cornwall Open Studios, is to go and view or stay home and create.

There is one artist whose work I very much want to see. She's a glass artist. She creates stunningly beautiful stuff. I'd like to own a piece.

But is it worth taking a day off from painting, writing and promoting to do it?

I honestly don't know. I could ask the New Age goat-from-sheep question: What would I do if money were no object?

Oddly, it doesn't apply to this. I can afford the tank of gas, and even lunch. And possibly a piece of glass art.

What would I do if time were no object: maybe that's the better question in this situation.

Yes, it is. I KNOW what I would do. I would stay in my studio/office painting and writing (while trying to shift the promotion tasks to my long-suffering spouse), and make an appointment with the glass artist when I happen to be in the area for other reasons, thereby not wasting any of my time or hers.

This begins to sound like I don't care for galleries and museums, surely an odd attitude for an artist.

But not for me. I loathe libraries, really loathe them. Aside from the damage the internet did to freelance journalism income, it was in many ways a godsend. I never had to go to libraries after that. (Well, not often.) And the arrival, in the US, of bookstores with coffee shops--Barnes & Noble, the late, lamented Borders, Books-A-Million--meant I could browse the NEW books and magazines, the things I really needed to know about and that the library rarely had. And I could have a cup of coffee and a bagel at the same time. In the UK, I was happy to find Waterstone's: same reason. And I admit to having been in both of them in Plymouth (and their coffee shops) many, many times, and one in Norwich.

A New York state of mind

But back to art. When I lived in New York, I would stop in galleries as I passed them. Noortman & Brod was on one of my east side shopping treks, and I have a little Henry Bright drawing I bought one day. (He was a British artist, so the work has now been repatriated.) I would stop in Hammer Galleries on West 57th Street; there I only looked. Too pricey by half.

I stopped once in a tiny gallery on West 55th, behind a newsagent's. There I saw a Dufy for which I could have taken a loan...really, not THAT expensive, but certainly more than I had on hand. And oh, to own a Dufy. (It's true; we only regret the things we DIDN'T do, as a wise man told me at the start of one of my careers or other.)

Ancient art got some face time

Anyway, gallery and museum-going was part of my life, and I saw lots and lots of things without effort. Lazy? Maybe. But driving for hours to see things I can see on the internet, when I have things I want to do and, yes, put up on the internet (where so much is sold anyway)...well, it won't happen this year. I feel slightly guilty about it. I did spend a day going to Chedworth Roman Villa a few weeks ago. But then, I couldn't see Roman ruins in New York City. And having studied Latin for six years in my youth, the whole Roman milieu had got under my skin.

I expect I'll spend the drive-time this week visiting either the Chalk Horse (you may recall I'm something of a horse nut, so it combines two things, ancient history and horses) or a grand house. Not Saltram; it's filled with Canalettos, but I've viewed them a good number of times already. A new collection at a new house, I think. And it will have to be in Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset or Gloucestershire, because I've spent the last seven years haunting the grand manses of Cornwall and Devon, having started visiting National Trust houses on holidays in our flat even before we moved here permanently.

Perhaps I should apologize to all the wonderful Cornish artists whose work I probably won't see in one fell swoop. Or I could put it another way: I'd rather join the ranks than gawk at them, and the easel beckons.

Thanks for your understanding.