Editorial

Feature in Issue 5-4 | Winter 1993

If you've been looking in horror at the food shelves in Tescos, noticing tinsel in WHSmith, and seeing a lot of the colours green and red, then you will have realised that the festive season is upon us once again.

Love it or loathe it, it's a busy time of year for MAG – collating information for Total Theatre, reviewing the AGM, and of course looking ahead to the new year and the annual London International Mime Festival. Listed on page 7, it is welcoming to see an abundant and thriving number of British companies performing in this year’s Festival but, with a cautionary note, Festival Director Joseph Seelig, presents the case for needing to identify a truly ‘visual theatre’.

MAG's observant ‘roving reporters’ have been discussing this, particularly since the January 1993 Training Conference, and in the New Year as part of LIMF 94, the seminar A Sense of the Visual will be addressing some of these issues.

So – why choose to struggle on in a profession that is underfunded, often misunderstood, damned hard work, and incredibly tough going at times? What motivates us all – keeps us going? Martin Gent and Lawrence Lane tell us why they gave up the day job and moved into performing, and Garl Jones of Reflective Theatre relates some of his trials and tribulations to Paul Vates.

It is obviously not just that steely ‘British reserve’ or ‘stiff upper lip’ tradition that gets us through – Mime is as prolific in Europe and Internationally as anywhere in the most stalwart provinces of the UK, as can be seen from the review by Annette Lust of Mimos '93 and the Focus On Europe.

Last but not least, do I hear distant rumblings of a new initiative for funding? Anyway, I'm off – to buy my lottery ticket!

This article in the magazine

Issue 5-4
p. 3