I meant to write this up a while back and was reminded by Polarbear appearing on Radio 3’s The Verb (click here to listen again, he’s on at 11mins) the other night.
I’ve gone on a bit about how good I think Polarbear (Steve Camden to his mum) is and a few weeks back I went to see his show ‘If I Cover My Nose You Can’t See Me’ at the REP (who joint-commissioned it with others). In short (and I’d be prepared to go on at length if you really want) it was brilliant.
After the show everyone was ushered up to the REP’s mezzanine where musical partner Afrosaxon was manning the decks and graphic designer Goonism was sketching characters from the show. We also had a reading from one of Polarbear’s inspirations – a fantastic lady whose name, I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t get.
The photo below might need a bit of explaining. Polarbear works with the West Brom-based Multistory on arts projects with kids, doing all sorts including making these masks (his black eye is make-up from the show, by the way).
Anyway, it was great and if/when he comes back it’d be well worth checking his show out. For that matter, I reckon spoken word in general is a hugely underrated artform. I know there are a few things about but if you know of/organise anything of that ilk around Birmingham then feel free to hit the comments below with detais of your next event.
All photos by Lee Allen of Front Row Photos.