In Excelsis – A Personal History Of Glam Rock
Theatre
Performance/Available for Booking
In 2012 the SHOUT Festival in Birmingham commissioned “In Excelsis – A Personal History of Glam Rock”, The piece ends with a specially-created Glam Rock band number,
Meteor Mama by Glamour and the Mamas
It was performed again in 2014 at the Cockpit Theatre in London. It is the second of my large-scale autobiographical works and uses film, image and sound projections alongside live action, to explore a section of life history, appropriately the mid-1970’s in the West Midlands, and its (absent) protagonist’s infatuation with Glam Rock.
In the original performance the piece concluded with a song “Meteor Mama” performed by a live onstage glam-rock band Glamour and The Mamas – the song was subsequently filmed as a rock video which concludes the show, but Glamour and The Mamas claimed most of the photo-attention. The original promotional copy read,-
In Excelsis – A Personal History Of Glam Rock
A multi-media performance by Mandy Romero
Directed by Cathy Butterworth
1973 – Glam Rock is beginning to blitz, rampage and hell-raise its way into the nation’s sensibility, and a young teacher begins his professional career at a West Midlands comprehensive school. Over the next four years their paths are destined to cross as that most conflicted decade edges forward through terrorist attacks, royal weddings, power-cuts and all kinds of adolescent angst.
For anyone who came late to their teens, or to Glam, or to anything, for that matter, “In Excelsis” will offer some choice reminders of growing pains and eye-liner misuse. Where did Glam come from? How do we get to be who we are? Transgender artist Mandy Romero, last seen at 2010’s SHOUT Festival with her solo show “Stevenage”, will provide some answers in this new show created especially for this year’s Festival, lighting up the map of the West Midlands from Dorridge to Wolverhampton, West Bromwich to Groveley Dingle.
Expect fish, distant constellations, patch pocket baggies and canal towpaths along the way to the show’s Apocatastic conclusion.
In Excelsis is one of my most personal works and I feel that I have not finished with it. That’s why I’m happy to talk to Glam Rock fanatics or just adventurous programmers about
performing it again.
