Theatre and Football

In what is my penultimate blog post (sniffle, sob) Simon has set me a challenge which should definitely earn me an 'advanced blogging' certificate (if this doesn't exist yet, it should) before I leave next week. I have been instructed to write a blog post about the World Cup. Although this may seem relatively easy considering the fact that the World Cup is happening now and everyone is talking about it, my knowledge of the Beautiful Game is limited (although at least I know that it is called the Beautiful Game, so it's not totally disasterous) and finding a way of fusing theatre and football into one beautiful combination like peanut butter and jam is not a well trodden path I fear.

Typing 'theatre and football' into Google came up with lots about football but very little about its relationship to theatre. Oh Google, you are usually so reliable but you have failed me miserably. However, I did find one little thing: a prediction that West End ticket sales will plummet by 20% during the World Cup. So clearly a fifth of people who go to West End shows are also hardcore footie fans. Who knew?

In order to increase my chances of a successful search I then tried 'plays about football'. This was even less successful than the first attempt, which let's face it wasn't successful at all, thus making this one pretty much catastrophic. This time round I was just given many instructions on how to play football. I don't really want to learn how to play thank you. After an embarrassing few years of team sports at school (turns out I can only manage solitary sporting pursuits like cross country running and swimming) I am loathe to revisit that particular kind of humiliation linked to netball skirts, muddy hockey pitches, brightly coloured airtex shirts and the like.

So on my search went and it bore very little fruit until I found out that...

The Albany theatre in Deptford - which is clearly ahead of the time - in spite of an apparent lack of enthusaism for 'theatreandfootball' across the rest of the country, is trying to bridge the gap between theatre and sport and will be screening many of the matches in the theatre. Plus they have commissioned performance poets Charlie Dark, Scroobius Pop, Kat Francois and Polarbear to present pre-match football stories. Wow.

So there you have it, at last a successful result. Let's hope England fare better in their matches than I have done in my quest...

Thanks to katie@! for the photo