Red Mole
Angels
Revolutionaries
Dreamers
Red Mole was my forge. I gave my life happily. Inside this cauldron of artistic experimentation there was a mission. We taught each other, challenged each other, together we made a technique. We rubbed against each other, cleaning and polishing. I learned to make things with the mediums of my art and to know from its gritty and sweet interior the joy of artistic collaboration. We were practitioners of high regard. We lived for the work, travelled incessantly and performed constantly. We had a rhythm, a way we could do it together. It was enormous fun. Let us pray….for the spirits of Alan and Sally.
Vargos Circus
Vargos Circus was my first show with the Moles. We toured camping grounds and community halls in the summer of 1976. The show was loosely based on the Henri Rousseau painting The Lion and the Gypsy. In this photo Greta Campbell is the Gypsy and I’m some kind of amorous guitarist. It was an unforgettable summer of playing, romancing Greta and realising that this is what I wanted to do.
Ace and Uncle Sam
Wellington Town Hall Concert Chamber Red Mole premiered Ace Follies in the winter of 1976. It was a satirical take on the then prime minister Robert Muldoon’s recent world tour. In this photo he meets Uncle Sam who offers him a drink, a new coat and much else besides. We staged satirical scenes at locations of Muldoon’s visits including The Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris, dinner with geisha attendants in Tokyo and at the border between north and south Korea. At this location Ace jumped onto a ballistic missile which blasted off and took him all the way….home!
I leapt and summersaulted about the stage clutching a cardboard rocket bruising myself repeatedly…a bit out of control I was. We would start the performance each of us with an alter ego hand puppet so as we entered from the back of the theatre a range of surreal conversations could be heard between the puppets and the actors who wore and voiced them.
Ace Follies
In the scene set at The Crazy Horse Saloon (infamous Parisian Nightclub) Deborah as waitress would pluck from her black velvet jacket a paper mache breast into which she would pour champagne. In this photo Helen Pankhurst, Deborah and Alan.
Goin To Djibouti 1979.
Our first venue upon arrival in New York was the Westbeth Theatre in West Greenwich Village. The piece was called Goin To Djibouti and was set around the story of a Cuban mercenary who went to Angola to inspire revolution. In this photo left to right, myself, a local ring-in, Deborah, Alan and Sally. It was the first soundstage, built for the The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson. In this cavernous space there was, strapped to its interior walls, an ancient heating system. At one point I made an exit into the ducts, crawled to the opposite side of the stage to make an entrance, having changed into the lizard mask and costume on the way. The Lizard disappeared into the duct to reappear once again transformed into Tarzan who swung from a rope tied to the lighting grid.
Mutant Guitarist
Last Days of Mankind, New York 1979
Last Days of Mankind
The Last Days of Mankind. Red Mole, Theatre for the New City, April 1979.
At 4am on March 28th 1979 there was a partial core meltdown in Unit Two of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in the state of Pennsylvania near the city of Harrisburg, 249 kilometres east of New York City. This meltdown was due to equipment malfunction, design failure and worker errors, and remains to date the most serious commercial nuclear accident in the USA.[i] 12 days prior to this accident The China Syndrome, a movie about an accident at a nuclear reactor, had been released. The sceptre of nuclear meltdown haunted the streets; images of reactor cooling towers glowed from newstand displays and in the core of the Big Apple there was suddenly the menace of nuclear rot. Red Mole had been in New York for three months; our opening gambit Goin To Djibouti, seen at the Westbeth Theatre had won us enough kudos to secure a booking in the basement of the off off Broadway house, The Theatre for the New City. With our visions of mutant nuclear holocaust survivors and deformed victims of dissident herbicide warfare, we descended the gloomy basement steps. I mooched through the stale air of the pokey backstage and turned on a tap. Out gushed in coughs and shudders acrid rusty water, ‘contaminated coolant from the nuclear reactor’ I thought to myself. (Read full article)
[i] US. NRC Website retrieved Feb 4th 2010.
In the Belly of The Mole. New York New York. 1980.
We had a problem. Chelsea and Bristol have made it clear that although they will pay the rent from their cheap champagne skin trade associations, they will in no way dish out souvlaki and hero money. Spinner had long since shot the remains of his Arts Council grant, generous boy, and There Was No Food. It had been three nights since Ruby the foot fetishist Jewish restaurant violinist had appeared with leftover chicken fricassee for us, the itinerant actors from New Zealand who listened attentive to his tales of New York, galumphing down the fricassee. Therefore it had been two days since any meal and driven to this point it was clear that we needed to get some. I cased up the Yamaha 360 (like the one Neil Young was playing in the poster on the hall wall of Salamanca Rd Drama School flat and I bought in ‘Frisco with my haymaking money on my way to Mexico City some 12 months previous). I blew out the A & C harps and checked the wingnuts on the harp rack. Rooster slapped on white face, his green velour smoking jacket a green bowler and armed himself with a tambourine and a box vivid marked ‘Donations Please.’ (Keep reading)
Santa Fe 1982
Bang!!!
Christ that hurt, right on the point of the hip.
Hey here he comes again the trolley swinging free in a wide arc as I turn to avoid (is this an act, am I performing this???)
Whack! this time on the thigh the point at the bottom corner of the trolley’s wire wove grill thumping the taught muscle against the bone, ouwee that sure will bruise for a while. Should I continue this dance away from thumps, stay on till the next que at which time Chelsea and Bristol would enter as bathing suited puppeteers seductively singing a children’s song? Did I go to drama school to be exposed to The Poet ranting about Marco Polo and Books of the Dead swinging a supermarket trolley? No! So I simply disappear and leave him to it and into the curtained off supper room that suffices as a dressing room I slump in the corner. Even I heard the audience gasp when the supermarket trolley made its first hit, ouch is that part of the act? The tears stinging behind the lids is no act, the real life drama was on show for all to see and I’m wounded. The light on stage is dimming for the final couplet, applause jangles around the loft; of the four actors in the traveling troupe only three take a bow. “Are you all right?” the women ask, sure I say examining the growing angry red. “Alan you better apologise to John”. He stands in front of me; a silence choking itself between us. “Are you ok?”. “It fucking hurt”. More silence. I could wait till all souls freeze in hell before any sorries from Rooster. “Alan you should apologise” Once again from Chelsea standing in tights only, firing up a Molboro Light. “I didn’t know you were there”. Silence. “Sorry” I looked up into his face, pinprick eyes like little emeralds, a grubby towel smearing makeup from a bristly cheek, a half grin and the feeling between us of circling one another and perhaps not liking it very much but realising we can see each other in ways we might not want to. No matter what, no matter how many insults and putdowns and shabby shows that only tire you out, no matter how many hours of singing in the street for pizza and mechanical repairs, no matter how many offers of script or choreography got waved aside, (those patches truly answered for), out here on the edge of theatre, in the heart of the drama- life onstage, we seem at this moment to need each other. Our unspoken pledge made real by the active dedication of leaving all other promises and filling this one. The action of living the dream together even when it’s a nightmare, of sharing the burden, of seeing each other handle the glory and the loneliness. “Sorry”.
Outside the theatre one hour later Rooster and I are tying the trunks to the roof of the Buick. Locals have helped us pack and stack, have rolled joints and uncapped beer but at this point Rooster tells them “Stand back we got a system going here”. The ropes whip over the piled suitcases and trunks of costumes and props and do our lash into place routine. “So you guys took this car to England with you ? asks a curious local.”Yea” I say, “We drove there and back” There is laughter. “You guys are amazing” another one says, “I thought your show was really cool, crazy as all shit, but cool”. Finishing the pack-up we go inside for tacos beer and weed. I am free because I choose to be. Soon enough bruises fade, change colour, and unlike wounds completely disappear. Soon enough.
Pyramid Theatre Times Square New York New York
The Late Show; 1982
“Cut!!”
This from the Rooster.
Cut Cut Cut!!!
What the hell is he doing? The act was still only half way through, the part where the pseudo-hypnotized has-been Hollywood starlet does her phoney psychic predictions was still to come and here was Rooster in his pale green tights and witchdoctors mask, (adorned with fantastic real buffalo horns dredged from a junk shop on East 3rd Street) waving his arms shouting cut! What about my academic jargon loaded anthropological speech concerning the ancient shamans’ ritualistic hypnosis and the joke at the end where I get a backhander for bringing the TV crew to the village? That was the joke and it’s still half a scene away so why is he shouting “cut?” I shimmered in character, adjusting my Attenborough safari suit, shades on the forehead and ebony holder cigarette boot tucked corduroy military chic fashionista monster outfit. For the sake of my status inside this act I couldn’t take this. Deviation from the script was all so cha cha cha with this lot of psycodellic vaudevillians but this was distinctly unusual and spot lit robbery of my favourite fancy-pants role. Maybe Rooster was flying too high on the cocaine that Petie Boy the Italian Transport Specialist had laid on the dressing room mirror 15 minutes before showtime. Petie Boy would appear with impeccable timing, an elegant sideshow from the night gifting drugs and on odd occasion’s apparel that he had sourced from….well I wasn’t to ask. Pastel coloured French silk shirts and Italian shark skin suits and perhaps these low-heeled grey pumps? How he emboldened my own antipodean challenged sense of sartorial elegance and this particular night on The Great White Way he had laid lines of snow, smiling in a detached (stoned) way as we snorted with delight and got pumped for the Late Show. Prior to cocaine time I had done my shift on the street above where the 10:30pm Broadway post Theatre crowds swarmed through Times Square eager to flee the pimps and hawkers that prowled the pavement. I joined them dressed as a delicate lamb in grey and pink wearing a mask copied from a photograph of a Balinese cow that adorned a postcard recently received from my back-packing cousin. Between my delicate hooves an accordion, a child’s accordion you understand, that I had found in a K’rd toy shop the day before we left New Zealand 18 months previous to this beautiful nightmare. I did a slow walz-shuffle through the crowds in my grey pumps and fleecy collar; intrigued tourists would take a flyer from my normally attired companion and made their mystified way down the Pyramid Steps to the red and yellow low-lit basement theatre. The Broadway crowd was thinning out and it was almost time to descend myself. Through the open baa mouth of the lamb cow mask I glimpsed Petie Boy and knew if I wanted a noseful I’d better be quick. So now 20 minutes into the act floating in that driven cocaine way Rooster is pulling this stunt. Chelsea in the role of witchdoctor’s minder, chief fly swatter and money bag maintainer for the tourist dollar had fled the stage giggling and Bristol as the stoned-out starlet was waiting for her entrance so the moment was mine to use or lose. I rounded on the witchdoctor and gave him an earful.
“My man, (I had to begin somehow) do you know who I am? I have discovered hitherto unknown insects crawl out the earholes of entombed Peruvian mummies and studied the rarely seen twat twat bird and you dare to call cut during my broadcast! I’ll be glad to get out of your lice infested village and will bid you farewell in the language of the Lang Dok Highlanders of Cambodia. Hok bin wat snit bing!!!”
With an imperious toss of the BBC demeanor I minced off stage. In the dressing room Chelsea and Bristol lay collapsed in fits of laughter. Onstage the Rooster rocked back on his heels and gave a transfixed New York audience treats from his rare and vivid tongue.
After the show I chatted to a small group of Germans who had been to a Broadway musical at 8pm and wandering disappointed at 10:30 had seeing the accordion playing sheep had taken a chance on us.
Polite they were, bemused and generous with beer.
The Late Club. NYNY Summer 1983
“What’s on your mind Deborah?”
“Seduction”.
The jukebox had pumped its closing beats and we were walking back to the barroom long bar where gins sat cup by cup. She sipped and put a hand on my chest, her word quivering between us a long ago promise about to be filled, blossoming in the humidity. We had danced all night in Tin Pan Alley and at 3:30pm wandered off into this upstairs dive on 8th Avenue catering for the late late crowd, which tonight was us and a smattering of high heeled low flyers simmering in the shadows of the loft. The luster of heat, music and alcohol gave us an invincible glow; this was the night that would see impossibilities.
“Seduction”.
Being on stage with her was a double-edged delight. Her rhythm and timing was always impeccable, her gesture alluring, perfectly placed and graceful. Hers was an instinct that rang a bell all the way back to Sophocles, resounding in the prancing mischief of Harlequin and resting in the captivating quick of the single presence that enthralls a thousand. I became a performer through my own strength of will, she was born that way.
When we were on stage together I felt part of an eternal correctness, yet I knew that no one was watching me.
“Seduction”.
We were kids when we first clambered aboard this glory band and we had given it our all. One evening in September 1975 I had attended a performance of Cabaret Peking, upstairs in The Performers Theatre on Courtney Place Wellington at which the embryonic Red Mole was flexing its spoof. At the evenings end the players moved about with an upturned hat into which I dramatically emptied my pockets proclaiming them to be the essence of excitement. I fell in love with them that night and within six months was part of the troupe, leaving my Drama School moorings and placing full trust in their laughter, courage and idealism. In the nine years of my life with them, they never failed me. It was an endless tour, mythologizing ourselves as we went each performance a lightning rod galvanizing our energies and driving us deeper into the drama. The cheek by jowl existence saw an equal sharing of every portion, uniting us in a quest that achieved its destination each evening, Showtime!
“Seduction”
I was wearing a black vest that my grandfather Sydney Augustus Burnett had worn on his wedding day in 1917, my thin shoulders taut with rivulet muscles. The black jeans had silver medals sewn down the outside leg from belt to boot like mariachi trousers that I had bought in Mexico three years earlier. Black was our absence, our fullness and when we marched as part of the ‘All Artists In’ to protest cuts to New York State funding for the arts’ we wore our blacks, brandishing black flags. In the post hippy colour splash New England farm retreat juggler jester scene we cut a hard shape. Two men, two women, gypsy anarchists, clothed in black. You become what you dare to believe. And so we did. One evening we watched Bread and Puppet theatre perform in a Lower East side street fair which included slender stilt walkers dressed as angels and horses. Within weeks I was up on makeshift poles and I stumped on various remakes across the cobbles of Sheffield City Square, the rock-n-roll stages of the New Zealand summer festival scene, in every cabaret and proscenium we played for the next 18 months.
That night on Eighth Avenue, which within hours surrendered to rosy dawn love is just a memory like all other caper we cut. The escapades of our personal lives ran abreast of the main train.
The Big Mission.
The origins are as bright and immediate today as ever they were. The source is an inherent impulse both distant and immediate. The impulse is to be Your Own King, to be a free radical to live your own revolution. Was that what I recognised in them? Seduced at tender 21 to join the madcap crusade? Victory was never a point down the road but the moment to moment heat of adventure and performance. Deborah was my deep inspiration. I remain inspired and grateful for such a true friendship.
Raising Aphrodite. A Requiem.
New York 1983 & Wellington 2002.
Its just gone 9pm as I sidle down the three grimy steps from street level and into Tin Pan Alley, famous name, faceless bar corner 49th and Broadway. On the previous Saturday having finished our late show three blocks down in Times Square we had closed up and come in to a packed Tin Pan, the Drongos, the only Kiwi RnR band in Manhattan makin em jump and jiggle, it felt like we owned the town on those nights, but tonight I am hungry, no cooked meal for three days, no pay until the weekend, I’m grimy, and looking for my own touch of home. Sally and Alice are behind the bar, Alice serves the street end and Sally the deep end doubling as short order cook. I lean on the bar and peal the label from my King of Beers, nursing it, my last two bucks. Sally is bright, cheerful, “you look a bit thin” she says, “wanna burger?” We slip into the kitchen, an airless alcove behind the bar. I perch on a broken barstool and Sally ignites the gas grill. I’m grateful for the meal, I don’t often scrounge but Maggie the boss is never in the bar on these quiet nights so Sally can cook a freebie, at least it was for me. Her brown eyes owlish behind the round rims, her always a mess hair and her skirt bouncing on the back of her knees, her quick questions and familiar laughter eases my loneliness.
“ Can you come down to the loft on Wednesday and give Alan a hand to shift the costumes out of Charteris?”
“Yes Wednesday is cool, I’ll come after work ‘bout 5:30”.
“We need to rehearse for this show Nance has booked at a school near Croton. We’ll do The Wreck of the Moana Marie, Deb has just made some gorgeous bird puppets for an opening dance and we need a song.”
“I’ve got a little tune actually, made it up last night guitar and harmonica, just needs some…you know words”
“Sounds very Mr. Music, what’s the tune like?”
“Kind of merry and tuneful, like a country jig.”
“Sounds perfect. Oh and we thought we could do a parade before the show, cos its at a village fair so what happened to your stilts?”
“One is broken but the building where I am working on west 84th has a skip out the back with some nice bits of 3x2.”
“Poosle some and bring them down on Friday. Alan is gonna borrow some tools from Austin, what do you need?”
“Just a saw”.
“Sounds fine”.
Just the usual sort of organizing in order to keep a theatre group going, and Sally as always funny, busy, planning, drawing me in, opening me up.
“Heard from home”?
“Not really, mum and dad have sold the farm to my brother, that’s good I spose, stays in the family”.
She flips the burger onto toasted buns and drains the fries, no salad she apologies, that’s ok is my reply, meat and fries is fine. There is a short silence, Sally goes out of the kitchen and upon returning says
“Just need to check Maggie’s not on the prowl she sometimes pops in unexpected and doesn’t like people in the kitchen but no sign. You should seduce her.”
“Me? Maggie?”
“Yea Maggie, she’s rich and she fancies you.”
“She would eat me for breakfast. Isn’t her boyfriend in the mafia?”
“Probably, but he’s outa town mostly.”
“Well I’m saving myself for the girl next door.”
“Next door to who?”
I have no ready wit and she suspects this might be tender spot. I stand and murmur my thanks not able to say what is in my mouth and make my way out onto the humid street and my railway apartment on West 48th.
20 years later I travelled to Wellington for Alans Memorial Concert and alighting from the taxi walk around the corner of the Greek Community Centre heading for the stage door. Sally is sitting on an upturned box talking with a woman I don’t recognize. On seeing me she throws down her cigarette and walks with pained urgency toward me, like a body full of broken glass and I glimpse how deeply shattered she is by his death. For an instant I see myself as I hope she sees me, dependable John, travel bag and guitar in hand, summoned and arrived, ready. We stand together and I am able to do what I have never before been allowed to do, I hold her tightly, gently. Before I can stop myself, I say “I love you Sally” there is a pause in her sobbing and she shifts her head, pressing her forehead into my chest, hard. I stroke her hair and touch the nape of her neck and we stand crying. My love, along with all the love of others, was, to our eternal sadness, not enough.
Photographs: Joe Bleakley
Links: Red Mole - Art New Zealand Winter 1978
Click image below to be taken to Red Mole on the road 1979, Directed by Sam Neil for The National Film Unit.
