Oral Histories

Neri Keshet – Young Voices panel member Around the World in Eighty Days is probably the funniest [play] I’ve seen so far. It was probably the best Polka performance. One of the funniest moments is when the main character started climbing onto the audience’s seats; I had to cling to my Mum, because he spilt some wine, and he was really funny-looking. Seeing him below, because he was normally on the stage, so I didn’t know – and it was really fun. At the very beginning you just start to see it and you’re like, ‘ah, it’s going to be just one long show’ – and then you go out and you're like ‘oh, it's the best thing I’ve ever seen!’ And it makes a huge difference, I think. There was another funny bit where one of the characters – I think his name was Passepartout – he was trying to tell another person how to pronounce his name properly. The person kept getting it wrong, and pronouncing it with a ‘t’ at the end, and Passepartout kept on adding more emphasis and getting angrier and angrier, and the whole audience was laughing – it was really funny. I’ve gone to lots of workshops. I think though these are really based on the recent shows, so whenever I’ve seen one -                                         There’s been a lot where you make up your own play in a day, so you choose your very own scene, and you're allowed to get some costume and stuff and show it to the adults at the end. I really like those ones. It happened quite a lot, and that was fun – really fun. We got to interview the audience [laughs] about what they thought so far of the show. [Wind in the Willows] We got to wear the kind of like gloves, but without fingers, and we got to make a mask – I still have it – on our faces, and we pretended to be people from a newsletter from the Wild Woods, so we pretended we were weasels and badgers and stoats.   We had these little recorders that we would hold and press, and we interviewed the audience – their name, and if they were enjoying the show, and how would they rate it, what they think was funny, and things like that. And it was really fun. When we were told we would be doing interviews, I was kind of nervous, but then when I was doing it with the other girl, I felt more confident, I didn’t really feel that nervous, though yeah, it was kind of different before and after. And I felt more confident when I was going to find the next person. Because we didn’t just do it in one space, we went up and down! I remember one person, we’d actually become friends because of Polka, and whenever we'd meet, we’d be familiar. And we’d always use Outbreakterms, to play the same game that included everyone, and everyone really liked playing it. [Neri is talking about the Polka play area]I think we called it the Pirate Game, the climbing thing, almost like a ship, and we’d pretend that that was our ship.  And there were things like jails – the benches next to the ball thing – and the house was like a prison, things like that. And we’d just run around screaming, shouting, laughing, making things up on our way, as loads of different characters. We sometimes did interviews for shows, and things like photo-shoots for the brochure. I remember one time I got to talk with a man who wanted to make a play in the Polka, and he asked for ideas. That was a really fun night, because it started with three of us, from the Young Voices panel, and then one had to go really early, and one had to go later for a lesson or something, so then it was just me. I was nervous at first, but I kind of liked it, because we talked about his ideas, and I did my best to see if that would work.  And it was really fun, talking about ideas and stuff. [Distorted sound] Other people’s ideas at Polka, not just yours!  You know that it’s a really good place, so good, good ideas, wonderful things.