Thursday 19th January 2012, 8.00pm
St Barnabas Church, Shacklewell Row, Dalston, London, E8 2EA
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We asked Oakland based Indie musician and artist John Ringhofer (aka Half-handed Cloud of Asthmatic Kitty Records) to join us in making a show as part of the Monday School Project. He brought with him several unreleased songs and his extensive back-catalogue of compositions about Bible stories. We decided to use a recently reopened Modern Romanesque church in Dalston (St. Barnabas) for a processional show.
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There were several different layers of revelation, as we took the audience on what was basically a walking tour of the Bible narrative. As the audience arrived in the packed vestry we did the first of two prints on a poster they carried with them throughout the show. It depicts Moses and a group of Londoners crossing the Red Sea in a Red Routemaster Bus. John then played some solo numbers with some audience participation.
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A team of cinema ushers (a metaphor for angels guiding human history?) took everyone through the darkened processional spaces to a brightly lit chapel where some of the ushers picked up instruments and joined John to play more songs retelling Old Testament stories.
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As the audience left the chapel Moses’ face on their poster glowed in the dark sanctuary. Some more lights went on revealing this section of the building, a third set of music with new usher/players, and then a picnic for the intermission.
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During the intermission a second print was added (the bus) opening the New Testament section of the show, and lights came on in the Nave revealing the rest of the church.
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By now all the ushers had become a full band and we played out a set of songs based on gospels and epistles.
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The response to this show was phenomenal. It sold out twice over, there were people outside trying to persuade us to let them in and even a couple of journalists trying to blag tickets on the phone! We’d love to have taken it on tour, but it was beyond our resources at the time.