2009/10: Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man -- Norah Vincent

Self-Made Man -- Norah Vincent

I don't really know what it's like to be a man. I never could. But I know approximately. I know some of what it is like to be treated as one. And that, in the end, was what this experiment was all about. Not being but being received. (p. 273)
( review )

[theatre] 'The Voyage of Charles Darwin'

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge
Written and performed by Geoff Hales, this is a monologue set in 1858: Darwin, ageing and plagued by ill-health, receives a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace which spurs reminiscences about his great voyage on HMS Beagle.

This was the first performance and I think Hales could do with more interaction with props: the desk in front of him was covered in intriguing things, but apart from the letters he merely gestured at a chunk of lava. That said, it was an interesting hour's edutainment: plenty of direct quotation from Darwin (who, yes, did call the flightless birds in South America 'ostriches': I was just reading about it in National Geographic) and a sense of Darwin the man -- sickly, his faith lost, loath to publish, fascinated by barnacles.

Nostalgic to sit in an old-fashioned lecture theatre, wooden desk in front of me scored with illegible graffiti, staring at institution-green walls and wondering why the computer monitor on the desk was switched on (it was covered with a cloth, but the light from the ?screensaver reflected on Hales' face.)