A Leap in the Dark 28

A Leap in the Dark 28   8pm  Saturday 4th July 2020

   Nuit Américaine   

The Fourth of July Leap includes a performance of "U S", a long-lost Auden filmscript from 1968, a conversation with independent film-maker Beth Harrington and a welcome second appearance by writer/artist/musician David Greenberger. We’ll have a reading from Lucy Ellmann’s acclaimed novel Ducks, Newburyport by Stephanie Ellyne (the voice behind the epic audiobook version), Roland Bates on Ezra pound and a reading of Ray Bradbury’s Mister Electrico. Plus a guide to making an imperfect martini.

There's no charge for taking part in A Leap in the Dark, but please make a donation, no matter how large, to The Trussell Trust.

The Programme

1 The Pale Usher welcomes you

2 “U S” by W H Auden read by Stephanie Elleyne and David Collard

3 Beth Harrington, film-maker

4 An extract from Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann read by Stephanie 

  Ellyne 

5 Roland Bates on Ezra Pound

Interval 

6 David Greenberger - Duplex Planet and beyond  

7 Ray Bradbury’s ‘Mr Electrico’

9 The Pale Usher mixes a martini

The Company

Roland Bates has been a bookseller in more or less salubrious locations since about 2000. He can be found in Kirkdale Books in South London: https://kirkdalebookshop.com

Stephanie Ellyne is an American actress, singer, and voiceover artist based in London. She recorded Lucy Ellmann’s Duck’s Newburyport for Whole Story Audiobooks, released in February this year. More on that here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/28/how-a-1000-page-novel-became-a-45-hour-audiobook-lucy-ellmann-ducks-newburyport

Beth Harrington is an independent screenwriter, director and producer. www.bethharrington.com

David Greenberger Born in 1954 in Chicago, Illinois, David Greenberger was raised in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1974 he moved to Boston to attend the Massachusetts College of Art. In the early eighties Greenberger set aside painting to explore other media. Starting as a periodical in 1979, based on his conversations with nursing home residents, The Duplex Planet, evolved into audio works, both as recordings and performances with music. A musician as well, Greenberger was the bass player in the band Men & Volts through the ’80s, co-writing many of their songs.

Greenberger has consistently drawn on fractured narratives where emotional memory derives from the mood of the moment. Encompassing recordings, performance, drawing, and books, his work holds up a mirror to reveal that aging is not a broken version at the end of a life lived; it’s a continuum, a vital and up-to-date version of the self. In his return to drawing over the last decade, he delves into accidental poetics and limitations and rules, using circular causal approaches.

He has been the subject of four documentaries, and his work been adapted into comic books, short films, and one act plays. His essays and performances have frequently been broadcast on National Public Radio. He continues to be a keynote speaker at universities, museums and conferences on aging. He lives and works in upstate NY.

The Pale Usher is David Collard, who organises these gatherings.

The pale Usher—threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world. He loved to dust his old grammars; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality.

                                                   Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

The next Leap in the Dark will be on Friday 10th July and will feature:

- Spring Journal canto XVI by Jonathan Gibbs read by Michael Hughes

- David ‘Guru Dave’ Holzer, the Yoda of yoga 

- Wendy Erskine marking the UK paperback launch of her debut collection of 

  short stories Sweet Home

- Sam Mills, author of The Fragments of my Father, in conversation with 

  Susanna Crossman

- Marie-Elsa Bragg on the Chilean poet Gabriel Mistral Chilean 

Stay well!

The Pale Usher