Friday 18 July 2008

Dr X Redux


A short film, 'Dr X: A Version of Events', has just been posted on YouTube - it was put together by Howard Walmsley and features excerpts from three separate performances of 'Dr X': a recasting in text, visuals and electronic sound of the old Lionel Atwill movie. Based purely on scrappy recollections of seeing the original Dr X on late-night TV, I composed a text that brought together electricity, cannibalism and murder into a dark parody of old 1930s radio serials - Howard Walmsley supplied the visuals and Graham Massey laid down the original electronic score.

Excerpts from the first performance at the Royal Institution in London May 22 2004 have been combined with material shot during a follow-up performance at the Green Room Theatre in Manchester that same summer and at a subsequent show in the vaulted basement of Manchester's Museum of Science and Industry as part of Futuresonic 2006. The picture above was taken during this last performance.

Last year Simon James made an excellent recording of me reading 'Dr X' unaccompanied at the Permanent Gallery in Brighton - courtesy of Jay Clifton at the Hammet Story Agency - I hope to have this put up on the blog at some point in the future.

To see the 'Dr X' documentation, either click here or go to the Biting Tongues MySpace Page - they both lead to the same dark place.

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