I’m now a year into my three-year long project to catalogue the archives of Forkbeard Fantasy. I have successfully cleaned, repackaged and catalogued the objects, which means it’s time to do the same for the physical documents. Rather than starting with the production material (a gargantuan task that will take many months), I decided to start with the smaller pile of material about Forkbeard’s foreign tours.
Between 1977 and 1997, Forkbeard Fantasy travelled to sixteen different countries to perform. Many of these tours were sponsored by The British Council, who were eager to promote British culture abroad. Usually on these tours, Forkbeard performed as The Brittonioni Brothers, two high-flying film producers who occasionally entered the films themselves. However, foreign tours were also a good opportunity for Forkbeard to perform some of their street theatre pieces, as many of these pieces didn’t require spoken language or a knowledge of English.
Many years later, Forkbeard made a book, called The White Book, documenting their early history. While researching this book, they covered the archive with post it notes, noting what they felt should be included in the book. One of these reads “mention the life on tour. Sometimes fun, sometimes terrible.” According to the notes, their favourite place to visit was the Netherlands. They went at least eight times. In 1977 they travelled to Rotterdam with performance group The Crystal Theatre of the Saint to take part in the Festival of Fools. This festival was organised in part by Melkweg Theatre in Amsterdam, where Forkbeard would go on to perform many times. Why did they return so often? Melkweg was one of the few theatres they encountered who paid their acts in advance, meaning the Forkbeards had ready cash to spend on their trip.
Not all tours went well. On a tour to Mexico in 1991, their set and props were damaged in transit, forcing Forkbeard to improvise with whatever they could find. As a result, when they travelled to Colombia and Argentina in 1994, the Forkbeards wrote detailed instructions for how to package and transport their materials. In 1990, Forkbeard travelled to Canada to perform at the Vancouver International Comedy Festival. The post it note stuck to this material reads “Canadians have no sense of humour.” As a Canadian myself, I couldn’t help but be a little offended! However, it could be worse. Any time there is reference to their tour of Norway in the archive, there is also a post it note reading “HELL!” I’m guessing their performances in Oslo and Bergen were not well received…
I was most intrigued by Forkbeard’s various trips to Greece. In 1989, they were invited to Athens and Thessaloniki by the British Council to perform various bits of street theatre. Forkbeard created a new work called The Statue in which two museum workers place a statue in the middle of a public square. The statue is unimpressed with their choice of position, so as soon as the museum workers aren’t looking, he moves. The piece descends into chaos as the statute repeatedly runs away from his assigned spot and is forced back by the staff. During one performance, they combined The Statue with The Great British Square Dance, allowing the statue (who has a plinth instead of legs) to dance one of the parts in the square dance. I am really hoping to uncover a recording of this performance in the archive!
The plan in Greece was that the British Council would invite their students to Forkbeard’s performances, giving them a ready-made audience. This did not work as very few of the students showed up. Instead, the audience was made up of people who happened to be outside anyway and stumbled across the show. Many found it hilarious, and Forkbeard felt they had been a success. This was a great surprise to the British Council in Greece. In a letter to Forkbeard a few weeks later, one of the ambassadors wrote that there was no culture of street theatre in Greece. Forkbeard were invited back in 1994 to see if their popularity was a fluke. It was not!
If you would like to find out more about Forkbeard’s foreign tours, why not come a look through the archive for yourself? I’ve heard it’s all been recently catalogued and repackaged and is ready for researchers 😉