Jonathan Oldfield through the mirror
Jonathan Oldfield is transporting a giant mirror on the underground for art. He speaks to us about caffeine, pasta and developing a relationship with the audience.
For Christmas, I was given a weighted blanket, which is the heaviest thing I own. I literally can't pick it up. So now waking up is like waking up whilst being crushed to death. But the most glorious crushing to death you've ever felt in your life; it’s so calming. I wake up with my body just. So. Still.
If it's a day of the show, I'm immediately thinking about it as soon as I wake up. Like, full blown immediately. It's just me on stage for an hour, so I'm going over the order and the content of the show in my head. If I'm honest, I’m also scouring my brain for any good ideas that I haven't put in the show yet, because it's just me, I never really stop changing it.
There's been multiple times where I'll live edit the show during the performance. Then I finish and think to myself “I should write that down!" Then I don’t and completely forget it. Then I live edit the line in again next time. It's a continual repetition of learning my bad writing and then live editing it into OK writing on stage. I really have to get out of that…
After sliding out from under the weighted blanket, I have a shower straight away. I’ll run bits of the show in my head in the shower; phrasing that's kind of awkward or that I feel doesn’t really work for me currently. I'm a sucker for a really, really long shower, so it also gives me an excuse because I'm working.
The next thing I need is strong coffee. I've got a stovetop coffee maker that I’ll put on. My partner's New Year's resolution is: "stop being a bitch about coffee". We spent a lot of 2023 worrying that we were having coffee at the wrong time of day and that the caffeine was going to make us crash. Now we've decided to not worry about it and instead just drink it all the time. Being performers we work late so we need to keep our energy up. A regular person's caffeination schedule wouldn’t suit us. Anyway, the post show come down is enough to knock us right out at the end of the night.
The difficulty with a show called One Way Mirror, is that it has to include a giant mirror and that has to be moveable. I have a large Perspex screen/mirror prop on a very heavy industrial metal clothes rail on wheels. So moving it to the venue and back involves persuading a kindly friend to help carry it on the London Underground. It's a real ordeal and not how I would choose to start a show day: sweating on the underground. I've been told off by so many station staff for it being too big to get onto the tube. After convincing them it’s fine, and getting out on the other side, I'm inevitably picking up a meal deal from Tesco or Sainsbury's on my way to the show, using the mirror as a table.
Timing meals is a massive problem for me. If I eat too early, I’ll get hungry and I don't want to go into a show being hungry. But inevitably, I’ll time it wrong and I'll either feel too full for a show or too empty. If the latter, then I'll have to have a massive meal after the show.
When I'm nervous I get hungry and sleepy. I don't know why that happens. I feel like it is the opposite of what adrenaline should be doing. Adrenaline for most people is like a shot in the arm. I just yawn. I yawn a lot. Is that a thing? Should I be worried about that? Like medically?
Getting ready for the show, I think it's important to have a distinction between the clothes that you wear on stage and the clothes that you wear offstage. There's something mental about it. It’s literally like putting a show in a bag, taking it to the venue, taking it out the bag, doing the show, putting it back in the bag. It creates quite a nice separation mentally from the show for me.
I take a lot of positive energy from my partner, Lorna Rose Treen, especially with One Way Mirror. I take even more positive energy from Lily Woodford Lewis, who did the lighting design for the show. Lily can't be with us for Soho but has been with us operating the show for much of it. As well as being an absolute genius they are also the calmest, cheekiest presence to have around. To have somebody who I’m able to throw around my anxious, silly voice at and they will respond with positivity and also a sort of innate sense of calmness is really, really nice. Kind of like a service/anxiety dog. I don't want to call a human being a dog but I mean it in the best way.
When the audience is coming in, I'm really nosy, I'm the one poking my head through the curtain trying to see if I recognise any faces. I think when I was younger, I was a much more serious artist, I thought it was a bad habit. I was like, "no, I'm backstage, I'm doing my thing." Now it's the bit I love; I build these shows where I'm talking with an audience for an hour. So it feels odd not to want to know who, what and where.
In the right shows and in the right circumstances I like building in a pre-show moment where I'm on stage and I can say hello to people as they come in. I think with One Way Mirror that’s not quite right for it. We've learned that the hard way. I really like to just get a vibe for an audience quite early, then disappear and come back.
I think there's maybe some kind of child inside me that's like, "Welcome to the show! I'm gonna do a show now!" It’s like a sort of innocence that I hope comes out. I like to be really present with the audience, it feels like you've taken a car or motorbike to full speed, and then you're opening up the engine and you're like, "oh, here I am. Let's do this''. I'm really present and it forces my brain to be present. There's no space for anxiety. It's that absolute high which is why every performer is ultimately doing what they're doing.
Having put everything into it, I'm often feeling a lot of emotion at the end of a show. I end up feeling a bit scatter-brained. My shows are often quite late and there's a lot of pressure from friends to say hello, even though people need to start going home and it can feel quite overwhelming at those moments.
At this point I've also likely rapidly sunk a pint at the bar and then got hungry immediately. There's two options that happen next. One is to find literally the nearest place possible to get chips. I don't care where it's from: give me chips. Option two is that I go home and make myself an unholy large bowl of pasta. The largest bowl of pasta you've ever seen in your life. It has an ungodly amount of garlic in it, parmesan, chilli flakes, and lemon. It's a pasta that I call “sad pasta” because it was invented when I was sad. It now lives on for me and for a few others who know the mystery and the mystique of sad pasta as the best thing that you can eat after a late night. It's a whole other level of garlicky, chilli, lemony, peppery, cheesy goodness.
As soon as I finish the last mouthful I must lie down immediately. I’ll get heartburn and a stomach-ache, but I find security in the crushing heaviness of the weighted blanket and that's how the day ends.
If you liked that, try this:
Lorna Rose Treen A Night In her Favourite City
My day starts just after show time around 5:40 pm, kidding, I wake up at like noon, and I prance around till like 1pm. I have to eat some form of carbohydrate and some form of protein and then caffeine, I must have coffee, at this time it is absolutely fundamental. I shower, and always listen to the same two songs.
We saw what you did in the dark:
31/01/24 Tales at the Tavern
"Fairies can’t ride the tube, it’s for the non-magical only."
A fairy, a clown and a clumsy giant walk into a bar and the barman says: "Tales at the Tavern is upstairs".
Tales at the Tavern, now steadily making its way into its fourth year, is a storytelling night that feels like it knows what it’s doing. Host and founder the marvellous Niall Moorjani, used this stage (amongst many other places) to perfect their craft to the point they are now performing at the Southbank Centre. Which makes it all the more special that this has stubbornly stayed a free night in the face of such high calibre.
It’s an evening steeped in quality and experimentation, aimed at allowing established storytellers to try out new material but also act as a welcoming space for people new to storytelling and performers who want to experiment with the fringe of the medium: clowning, poetry, monologues are also encouraged and welcomed by the warm and considerate night.
As such performance slots get filled early so if you’re interested in taking part yourself (and you should) make sure to follow Niall on Instagram to book in a place. The crowd on the night was a healthy mix of regulars and newcomers.
If you are ever feeling like you need to break away from the pace of the city, go to this monthly night*, and you’ll be whisked away to several different universes all at once and, when once you return, things might not be quite as you left them…
Tales at the Tavern regulars and ones to watch: Niall Moorjani, Minnie Wilkinson, Laura Sampson, Diana Redgrave, Aaron James Oliver, Emma’s Earth Tales
*disclaimer, this night has lived many lives across London and further afield but currently lives at UAD’s home turf of London Hospital Tavern. And yes, we’re pretty chuffed with that.