Creature comforts
4:33pm Friday 21st December 2007
"There's no reason to be scared of audience participation," says poet John Hegley. "When you think about it, life is all audience participation. Audience humiliation, now that's another thing entirely."
Wise words indeed from Hegley, particularly at a time when Christmas forces us all to get involved, whether it's shouting "He's behind you" to Nigel Havers or it's humouring your granny through another game of Trivial Pursuit, In fact, should we ever need to replace the traditional Three Wise Men, Hegley might just get my vote, alongside fellow poets Roger McGough and Lemm Sissay. As it is, I shall have to content myself with Christmas Creatures, his latest show at Battersea Arts Centre, which instead of gold, frankincense and myrrh, promises songs and poems about hamsters, humans and cubism.
Hegley test-drove the material on an unsuspecting primary school class only this morning. "I asked them what they thought the word creature meant and one child immediately said an alien," he reports. "I hadn't even thought of that myself but that's the thing with children. They immediately add an extra dimension."
"I also showed them a picture of a guillemot and they didn't know what it was. But it prompted a big discussion and they all came out with all these ideas. It was like bird song."
The basic premise of Hegley's show is best summed up by the poem on the press release: "Everyone is asked to do some drawing / Then we sing about our drawings / Then we go home." It's part of BAC's innovative Studio 68 season, which has been running alongside Punchdrunk's The Masque of the Red Death and Hegley, for his part, couldn't be happier to be back at a venue that was threatened with closure earlier this year.
"Isn't it great," he says of the renewed funding. "But I think the crisis made people value it even more. The first time I performed here was in 1981 so it's been a long relationship. What I like is that you always get that extra bit of input - it feels like being welcomed into a family."
And who else would you choose to spend Christmas with? Hegley is working right through the festive season with only Christmas Day off to see his real family. No doubt they will be getting personalised poems in their cards.
"Actually, I've been a bit lazy this year," admits Hegley. "I've been sending out the postcards BAC printed for my show and all I've done is draw an extra Christmas hat on them."
John Hegley's Christmas Creatures, Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Thursday, December 20 to Saturday, January 5 (except Christmas Day), 7.30pm, mats Dec 21/29 and Jan 4/5, 1pm, £8/£5, call 020 7223 2223, visit bac.org.uk. For more information on his 2008 tour, Letters to an Earwig, see johnhegley.co.uk.