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Ali Chapman,

 Ali1

Director of Danny, (FM Part 1),

Actor,  former member of Festival of Fools, Artist, teacher,

 …my dear friend.

A work, of Ali’s.

 AliPic1

(Not a faithful reproduction.)

For more about Ali’s work just prior to her death, please click

here

     and note the work, and comments on Pages (of the PDF document)  5, 18-22, & 28.

And…If you would like to see a copy of a short DVD of an exhibition of Ali’s art work, as created by her long standing partner, Mayur Bhaat, please contact me.

 In 1975, a book “Birth without Violence” (described as ‘The Book That Revolutionalized the Way We Bring Our Children into the World’) was written by Frederick Leboyer.
The Father Monologues, Part 1 ~ Danny

“~a possession of such power and presence that it grabs you~by the balls at first and the heart at the end~”

Danny’s a young apathetic gambling lager-drinking chav dad expecting his second child. Fanny’s his wife. After having watched “Richard and Judy”, she wants to make this next one a home-birth.
Meanwhile, her new “Natural Active Childbirth” buddy, Heidi is having a heavy influence on her,……… and Danny hates it.

Fanny starts pressurising Danny into seeking therapy, regression therapy to be precise, to help him understand his strange behaviour, but Danny’s resistant, to put it politely.
Then his best mate Billy steps in, but not the way Danny had hoped for.
Finally, Danny is coerced to go. . . where he doesn’t want to . . . with surprising and deeply moving results.

see a snippet

“What an absolutely amazing performance. What talent!!! I’m quite mind-blown by the whole performance. How can one man do all of that!?”

“~completely convincing ~ a fine writer and actor, and these are funny, carefully observed character studies.” The Scotsman. Edinburgh Fringe 2006

“I’ve never really seen the force in “tour de force”, and I realise now why we, in English, have to turn to another language sometimes. This performance ~ which isn’t the right word either because it is the witnessing of a possession of such power and presence that it grabs you, as a man and a father, by the balls first and the heart at the end to leave you both glad it’s over and, out of some strange affection for this man you never want to be, wanting to see it again.” Pete Taylor, writer, father.

“Danny” is dedicated to Ali Chapmanit’s director, who died in 2006

 

Some notes on ideas that inspired aspects of this play:

Greyhounds:

A Sunday newspaper claimed that builder’s merchant David Smith had killed and buried at least 10,000 greyhounds at his home in Seaham, County Durham.
The charity RSPCA said there was “no justification” for this “huge and totally unnecessary slaughter” and demanded that the greyhound industry clean up its act. The Sunday Times said it covertly filmed Mr Smith receiving greyhounds, killing them with a bolt gun and then burying them on a plot at the back of his home with a digger. The dogs were considered to be past their racing prime by their trainers. Under current law no licence is needed to put down animals with a bolt gun.
Mr Smith said it took him three years to fill the field and then, as the bodies had decomposed, he would start filling it again. He said he charged £10 a time for the “service”.
(Incidentally, The Mayor of Brighton and Hove up to May 2007 was Mr David Smith, as was the Brighton Mayor of 1880 also a David Smith.

Regression

a particular consciousness shift where it is possible for you to recall any experience or event you’ve ever had. This is usually done in a state called stage four trance – what most people think of when they think of hypnotic trance; the eyes are closed like you are sleeping; you’re either lying down or sitting, and are able to talk to the person guiding you. We’ve learned that you can remember truly incredible things in this state. For example, say that when you were five you spent one afternoon playing near the fireplace. In regression, you can “see” the fireplace and count the number of bricks in it. Subsequent to this experience, you physically go back and discover you were right (many people have confirmed this kind of experience in just such a manner).

Our birth experience is generally deeply traumatic, (these days often involving a great deal of interventions, and hospital policies about how quickly a child “should be born” before moving to using drugs, forceps or even cesarean). If the mother and the father haven’t learned deep relaxation techniques to develop endorphins in the body, large doses of adrenalin hit the child and the mother. She can become exceedingly tense and the child can get locked in. Literally. Stuck!  As the mother stops breathing as deeply as she needs and tenses and tightens up her yoni (birth canal).
If we do not “go back” and deal with/process these traumas at some stage before the birth of our  own first child, these traumas can all be retriggered again by attending the birth of our child, and we become once again stressed and act out unconscious terrors in bizzare ways.
This behaviour in the presence of the mother in labour can pass on further stress and adrenalise the mother and child during labour even more.

A National disgrace?
(Extracts from letters from Andrew Tyler to Brough Scott, Printed Saturday April 3, 2004… Guardian)

Dear Brough

When I was a kid, the BBC used to trail the Grand National with lots of footage of horses crashing to the ground, their necks and backs bending at impossible angles. The presentation suggested a kind of Tom and Jerry cartoon spills-and-thrills event: the horses fall, then they get up and all’s as it was.
Even though the BBC is careful about excising the evidence, horses still die wretchedly every year. One died in last year’s National itself and most didn’t finish. The National is a deliberately punishing and hazardous event:. My view is that it contravenes the 1911 Protection of Animals Act, which prohibits “unnecessary suffering”, and should therefore be banned.
…the National continues to kill horses routinely. They break their backs, necks and legs, and suffer heart failure. … every year, around 300 horses die from their injuries while racing or during training.
… the (enormously wealthy) industry as a whole is criminally remiss on (welfare). …the amounts currently offered are insultingly small. …the woman who runs one of the few official rehabilitation centres reported that she was turning away two or three horses every day – and that the situation is getting worse. It’s time, Brough, to dispense with the romance and confront the reality of your trade.

Andrew

Andrew Tyler is director of the national campaign group Animal Aid; Brough Scott is a broadcaster and journalist who rode (and fell at the 19th) in the 1965 Grand National.

(…in March 2007, the Argus reported that “the Queen and the Duke (of Edinburgh) joined civic leaders, including…Brighton and Hove Mayor David Smith … for lunch at Brighton Racecourse. The Queen regularly runs horses at the venue.)

Natural Active Childbirth: 

Imagine birthing at home, without any medical intervention or tests during pregnancy, with no NHS midwife, but only a doula, or a personal birthing friend, or an independent midwife; without any pain-killers or drugs, using silence, music, massage, stroking, soft lights, calm surroundings, the ability to listen to the body, using chanting and vocal-sounding, various yogic birthing positions, warm water pools and the deep belief that your body and your baby’s body knows exactly what to do.
Frederick Leboyer called it “Birth without Violence”.
In many countries, and in several states of the USA, such a choice illegal?
Does violence during the pregnancy and birth, (acts experienced by the child within/via the sex organs of a woman) of the majority of our children, have any impact on the violence so many proceed to perpetrate, subtly or otherwise, when old enough to express it, on women (and their sex organs), on the earth (“the Mother”), and on each other?