Event

Improv Night: Crash
Mash Guru, Macclesfield
31 January 2017

Detail from Improv Night: Crash by Mark Sheeky Detail from Improv Night: Crash by Mark Sheeky Detail from Improv Night: Crash by Mark Sheeky Detail from Improv Night: Crash by Mark Sheeky

About this event
One of a series of experimental art performance nights at music venue Mash Guru, curated and organised by Sabine Kussmaul and Mark Sheeky. The theme of the evening was Crash.

Mark Sheeky opening the night with Running, a six minute video of a running wolf intercut with modern life and 1950s nuclear test engineering footage, to which he improvised music while the audience read various texts that appeared on screen. The piece accelerated and built to a dramatic ending. Claire Bassi read a poem with the theme of Crash to a video of cars in tunnels.

Helen Kay contributed two new poems on the theme, and Lavinia Murray read three texts, inserting the word 'crash' at various intervals. Simon Ross played music, then read a poem, accompanied by Nick Puttick and friends who shouted out FTSE company names, and enacted loud business conversations in Russian.

Sue Mascarenhas contributed a video with music, and participants played the soundtrack to a story which they had compiled via Facebook one sentence at a time, to create a group stream-of-consciousness work. Mark Sheeky played a video of The Monster Mash, and audience members shouted "CRASH!" when the lyrics sang Mash, Smash, or Flash. Becca Smith, Sabine, Simon and Mark jammed to a 17 minute BBC film, Crash by J.G. Ballard. Michael Chisholm read poetry, Andy Hughes sang a song with acoustic guitar, and the musicians and Michael reunited on stage for one final jam to explosion sounds.