performance

If my own reading with Phil Hall represented a kind of conversation then last night’s reading at The Apple Tree was something else entirely. Here were two modes of performance that might have been poles apart. Stephen Emmerson was a classic ‘ranter’, rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet and, at least in the first part, reaching near terminal velocity. Holly Pester on the other hand drew us in initially with the quietness of her ‘News Piece’. Many of the syllables on the printed page were no more than aspirations. There was a great deal of wit in her timings and deadpan eroticisms. If you want to see some of these texts for yourselves, Hoofs has just come out as an if p then q classic.