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Poet, author, actor, director, broadcaster,
& screenwriter
POET - PERFORMER: THEATRE
Performing his solo show on American nationwide TV (CBS) |
Leo and his poetry have been the sole subject of three American nationwide
commercial television programmes (CBS). He and his poetry have also
been the sole subject of a TV program on SABC (South Africa). The BBC
has made two pilot films on his work. (Copies of the video available
from Leo Aylen)
On tour with Red Alert: this is a god warning &
Speck of Universe |
He has performed poetry on radio and TV and in many theatres, on three
continents, and in venues ranging from the Albert Hall, St Paul’s Cathedral
(first appearance there with Christopher Fry and Dorothy Tutin, second
appearance with Fenella Fielding), to New York night clubs, California
coffee bars, Soweto arts centres, old age pensioners’ lunch clubs, prisons,
a fairground, and in front of 3000 Zulus on an open hillside.
He has made fifteen tours of north America.
His one-man theatrical poetry shows include Red Alert: this is
a god warning, in which a futuristic space shuttle, whose passengers
are watching Star Trek, is hi-jacked by the god Dionysus.
This has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival (twice), Darlington,
Cricklade Festivals, in London theatres — Soho Poly, Tricycle, New End,
Orange Tree, as well as in north America. Also Nut Tree Variations,
a fairy-tale collage with gardeners, beautiful girls, and villainous
barons, based on the nursery-rhyme I had a little nut tree, with
music by Courtney Kenny, performed in St John’s Smith Square, the New
End and Orange Tree theatres, and elsewhere.
For a Black Brazilian Pianist
Hold out your hands, palm downwards. Watch.
On to each finger will step a man
And a woman beating a drum they are holding
Between them: ten couples, throbbing, who clutch
At each other's passion …
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In 1999 – 2000 he was Poet in Residence at the Orange Tree Theatre,
Richmond, where he gave a number of performances of his own work, including
staged readings of scenes from his new verse plays with the actors David
Brierley and Patience Tomlinson.
In 2001 he was Poet in Residence at the Byam Shaw School of Art.
From 1995 he has worked with Piccadilly
Poets a London poetry organisation presenting programmes of poetry
which include themed anthology shows performed by well-known actors,
compiled and directed by him.
He teaches classes in the performance of poetry at The Actor Centre..
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Speck of Universe
We solve the riddle we do not understand.
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Mining the asteroids
Remember
How, as a kid, you used to think
Astronauting was glamorous.
Well kid, I’m sitting on the rainbow —
Asteroid Pee Zee zilch. Have a drink.
Oh hell, my leg is oozing pus …
This ain’t the place to go gangrenous …
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Zulu
Homecoming
Your hands will bleed as you scrape for a stream
On the sharp rocks of winter drought,
And planting mealies is war to the death
With the locust army of desert dust.
But here, at last, you’ll fight for your home,
And every ancestor sitting behind you
Will pour his wisdom over your minds
Like summer rivers in flood, till harvests
Of stories and song burst from the stones,
And hope once more will be fat as a feast.
For now you are coming home,
My brothers, my sisters,
Now you are coming home.
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Festivals
He has performed at many festivals, including London The Word,
Bath, Battle, (2), Birmingham, Cheltenham (2), Cricklade, Darlington,
Edinburgh (2), St Ives, Kent (2), Ledbury, Nailsworth, Richmond.
Current Activities
Recent performances:
The Bakehouse Theatre, Gatehouse of Fleet, Scotland; 24.11.07
The Ram Jam Club, Kingston on Thames; Boxing Day 2007
Reviews —
| In an unusual event, poet Leo Aylen took us spiralling downwards
to a brush with death. His poem is taut, alert, deliberate. His
non-stop delivery is a tour de force. It is strong, sharp, rhythmic,
mainly fast, and punched out hard; his verbal gymnastics — the
leaping changes of accents, the sung interjections from Beethoven’s
Ninth or the Hallelujah Chorus — are incredible. |
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Ann Nugent, THE STAGE
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| At its best, live poetry reading is like super-condensed,
intense theatre, and Leo Aylen’s offering was like a mini drama
festival in itself. He writes in such a way that readers of his
printed work must hear in them some of his intended pace and accent.
But his own rendition is almost perfect, utilising all the genre
has to offer in word music, cadence, speed, and aural kaleidoscope.
His acting was superb. |
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Elaine Durbach, THE ARGUS
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| A very brilliant performance of dramatised poetry by Leo
Aylen. His intellectualism is balanced by a Zorba-like vitality
and a fine perception. The vigour of the performance and the imaginative
strength of the poetry were outstanding. The juxtaposition of
the technological limitations of Man with the boundlessness of
the power of God, was most effective. |
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Gordon Strachan, BBC RADIO SCOTLAND
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| Leo Aylen’s greatest strength is his vibrant stage personality,
which immediately wins his audience. His poetry consists of a
series of sketches which are — generally — very funny, and in
which he exploits his considerable talents as a mimic to the full.
There are messages behind the laughter, though: he achieves genuine
pathos with his poem Poor Old Jones, gently satirises bureaucracy,
and his scathing attack on South African apartheid froze the audience. |
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Graham Donaldson, THE SCOTSMAN
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| An astonishingly powerful performance, as Aylen acts out
the death throes of the occupants of a space shuttle as it plunges
into the heart of Anti-matter and the welcoming arms of the god
of Death, Dionysus. An undeniably brilliant creation, requiring
an audience suitably disposed to absorb its serious, though humorously
told, warning. |
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B.M., FESTIVAL TIMES
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| An entire TV programme devoted to poet Leo Aylen was still
not enough for me. |
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Val Pauquet, THE STAR
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