Puppetry of the Pennies......

September 2^nd – One of the little experiments I’d like to do (but will probably never get round to) is to put together a gender evening; let me explain.

There’s no doubt in my mind that men and women see things differently, not necessarily in the major things concerning right and wrong or suchlike, but in the nuances and reasoning of a situation or series of events. I know that, if you were to take this through to its natural conclusion we could bypass all this and say, well, yes, but then everybody sees things differently. Depending on nature, nurture and history the reading of a certain event or trail of events will be interpreted accordingly. This aside (I can do that ‘cos I’m writing this) and taken as read, what I think would be instructive is, as I say, a gender evening.

Say, for instance, if I wrote a short play, a one-acter, and put it on in a small 250-seater somewhere. It could be about the gradual break up of a marriage, say, or the problems in caring for an elderly relative and would involve four players; two of each sex. There’d be two performances, one at, say 19.00 and the next at 20.30 and the same play would be performed both times in as near as dammit the exact same way each time. Allowing for the vagaries of the actors (I mean, actors…right?) and trying to enforce on them the need for continuity (let’s face it, a big ask, but…) and ensuring that all the technical details remained constant, let’s say we have it performed under normal, indoor lighting (that’ll please the sound guys) and minimal sound F/X (that’ll please the l/x guys). Performance 1 is for men only; performance 2 is for women only. We keep them separate until both sets of folk have seen the show then we get them together and let them discuss the gig; I’ll bet, even though they’ve seen the exact same show they’d read the nuances and outcomes differently. No revelations there, I’m aware, it’d just be interesting to know. Look out for next week’s revelation when I’ll be describing an experiment where we take a dozen rats and introduce them into the trousers of six politicians and see if we can get them to talk even more bollocks.

Puppetry of the Penis (I have to be honest and say that, when I first saw a poster for this show in Edinburgh, what, ten-plus years ago, I misread it and wondered how you could possibly wring an evening’s entertainment out of a pocketful of loose change) is one such show that would certainly create two completely different takes on the message contained within the art from both sexes attending, although my guess is the women will outnumber the men four to one so a bias would be introduced. The phrase;

That’s some cock

means two completely different things depending on the sex of the person saying it and where the emphasis lies. Tom Jones elicited much the same audience response when he was in his prime (was he ever?) See? Straight away you have the jealous male gene showing up; that would immediately spoil the sample.

Teddy Pendergrass locked onto this idea I described earlier back in 1978. On this day he played a midnight show for Women Only in New York and it sold out. Now, we’ve met this guy before in this guff of mine and then, like now, I haven’t got the foggiest who he is, but he was obviously very popular with the ladies. He spoilt them by treating the audience to white chocolate and lollipops, which might be seen as something of a sexist statement if you’re really picky. One thing that will have been interesting would have been to have had a record of the comments of the men as they came to pick up wives and girlfriends after the show; even though none of them had seen it I’ll bet to a man they said it was a crap show and it was the woman’s fault…