Even pent-up, stressed-out, paranoid, wannabe writers need to take an evening off occasionally.

“So, I’m in this thing, tonight,” Beck says looking up from the watching a middle-aged German man covering a Johnny Cash song.

“Thing?” My fingers type extremely slowly, forcing the words out. Writing is like getting blood from stone today*. “What thing?”

“This performance thing? Responding to the play?”

“You never mentioned that before.” I sa, but I don’t believe myself.

“You can’t have been listening.” Or perhaps I have just temporarily forgotten?

“Oh, the thing with what’s-his-name?”

In my defence you can substitute what’s-his-name with the name of a performance artist/curator whom Beck’s worked with before. Nice guy, interesting artist, shameless self-publicist through email, facebook, myspace – every conceivable form of electronic communication. If he gets your details you’ll be bombarded with a constant stream of updates. He just can’t help it, especially in the run up to an event.

The ‘thing’ in question is a series of performances delivered off the cuff by artists responding to a play they’ve just watched. Live art feeding direct back into the audience, enhancing the theatre experience.

Or something like that, at any rate.

“What’s the play again?” I ask a little later.

“I told you.” She’s talking to me, but her eyes following the flickers of the computer screen, images of Canadian front rooms reflecting outwards.

“I know, but-?”

“Moll Flanders.”

“Oh! I bet it’s the same performance as at my pub recently.”

By which I don’t, obviously, mean the pub that I own. The brewery owns it. I just pump pints, but it does have a moderately successful fringe theatre tacked on the side. Embarrassingly, despite describing myself as a theatre fan, I’ve never been to see a play there. I’ve always meant to, but never quite found the time. The things I wanted to see were always on when I had to be elsewhere. I even carried the box office number around in my phone for a year or so with the best intentions. Then the phone died and I started working nights.

“Do the flyers have a red background with a blonde woman staring up to the camera?” I’m suddenly enthusiastic.

“Eh? Probably.”

“Hey, why don’t I come along too?”

“You don’t have to. Aren’t you busy?”

“No, no. Well, yes I am, but I’d like to come.”

The play’s not quite what I was expecting, but okay, even though the stupid girl I end up chatting to afterwards thinks differently. She sounds like she was breast-fed foie gras when she says “Of course, I couldn’t possibly be involved in any theatre like that. It offends my socialist principles.”

Darlin’, I think but politely restrain myself, economics can be socialist. Justice and morals can be socialist. Plays and fiction and art with a deliberate political aim can be socialist. This was just a bit of fun. Now piss off back to your country estate.

Anyway.

The point is that if you constantly force yourself down everyone’s throat then at some point it’ll come back and bite you.

For example: How easy is it to misread ‘invitation to a performance,’ as ‘invitation to perform’?

After the play I lurk around, trying not to talk to the lady of the manor and sucking on a bottle of Budvar, when a guy dressed as a pink rabbit marches out of the toilets and up to the bar. He hands the staff a CD and harangues them to play it. A thumping dance beat fills the tiny room and he begins some sort of interpretative dance in which he appears to worship a funnel.

Beck wanders over chucking quietly. I raise an eyebrow and wonder how rude I can be. Does she know this guy? Is she laughing because it’s funny or ridiculous?

“Who the fuck is he?” grumbles the curator storming past, his face a mix indignation and pure bafflement.

“I’ve come all the way from Bristol,” the rabbit protests, looking crestfallen. “I’ve got to catch the train home in a few minutes.”

You start off from an incorrect presumption and see what happens? Everything can fall apart. It wasn’t even the same version of Moll Flanders. The fringe version is, I suspect, sillier and involving less flouncing around to harpsichords, but then who’d have thought there’d be two stage adaptations of Defoe’s novel in the same city at the same time? Who’d have thought it a good idea to travel across the country, bunny suit under arm, for a thirty-second dance slot?

*: See? I’m even resorting to tired clichés.