Vault Festival 1 – 5 February, then on tour. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
When Jolie Booth moved into a Brighton squat in 2002, the flat had been left untouched since the death of its last owner. Amongst the clutter, diaries, letters, pictures – and a hip bone were found. Booth started reading these letters, and developed this personal and nostalgic show about the life of Anne Clark.
Born in 1939, Anne lived in 1970’s Brighton and was the “herb lady” at Infinity Foods, and Booth found items in the flat documenting her hedonistic life. But there was a long period of silence before her death at 59. Booth’s mission to find out what happened to Anne revealed a descent into alcoholism and a lonely death. The links Booth feels with Anne are obviously profound, and her attempt to create a sense of place using incense, 70’s drapes and nibbles, and a wonderfully simple but evocative descriptive introduction to the flat is wonderfully convincing. The sense of connection and ideas of tribes are explained through aboriginal song lines, and Booth lays herself bare talking about the parallels between her life and Anne’s.
Using a gloriously low-tech OHP, photos, drawings and timelines are displayed as Booth shares Anne’s life with the audience. Letters and diaries (of both women) are passed around the audience, and the musty smell of the old paper will probably cause a few Proust moments. Members of the audience are asked to read some aloud, bringing a different slant to every show. The audience also gets to choose which aspects of Anne’s life are shared by picking from a selection of paper bags labelled with mother, lover, hedonist, artist etc.
At first, you feel like an intruder in this life, but the stories and objects draw you in, and you feel like you are getting to know a friend. In an hour. That takes some doing, and Booth’s show is balanced perfectly between psychological and sociological investigation and celebratory storytelling.