A reading from the Rose of Paracelsus by W.L Pickard
in Oscar Wilde's Reading Gaol cell

rough notes on a recording for isotopica on resonancefm.com

 

 

We are lucky enough to have befriended Leonard Pickard, an academic, a scientist and a prisoner of the war on drugs, serving two life sentences without parole.

Leonard has written a book during his so far 16 years behind bars much in the way Oscar Wilde did and like Oscar a victim of a moral led crusade against a non mainstream way of life.

 

We have  taken an opportunity presented by the wonderful Artangel’s ‘Inside’ project to read some extracts from The Rose of Paracelsus in the very same cell (Cell C.3.3). Dudley Sutton European Actor  , leads us in the first of these extracts, bringing over  60 years of theatrical experience (The Devils, Leather Boys, Entertaining Mr Sloane, etc etc), his voice a quiet authority brings a new dimension to Leonard’s powerful prose.

 

This is the first of many such readings, further collaborators and comments warmly received.

 

 

Diary notes to leonard…...

 

Just got home from dropping everyone off in the taxi... dudley, brian , jenna and i were the team... fun was had by all and dudley  delivered a sensational reading… actually surpassed my expectations...

 

 

so… we got off to a bumpy start… we were all on standby as the storm was due and taxi wipers barely work… dangerous on the motorway….

left it with d that we would confirm on sunday…..  i was so asleep whe dudley checked in i thought he hung up… he was raring to go….. but… we green lighted and headed off at 2 pm for reading and a party atmosphere reigned…. i made some old fashioned parcel labels for everyone… sound for brian, the biggest said taken, for dudley and jenna had film and organization…..

 

 

the jail was quite busy for a miserable sunday afternoon and we were warmly greeted and grabbed a small crew from artangel…..   we wandered around filming and recording atmosphere sounds until it closed to the public… lots of supporting material for future presentation…. i left d with the spare recorder and he interviewed a guy who has worked at the prison for 20 plus years as the handyman….. d also got quite a crowd and signed a few autographs and stood for pix etc etc …. fab..

 

 

anyway.. after five we assembled in oscar’s cell and made a set… we had roughly chosen a few sections  and had decided that today was nt about reading long sections but instead to be excerpts and association.. setting the scene for further readings at greater length…. also the staff were hanging on unpaid for us so we were also mindful of their time…

d and i had rehearsed a little last week so already we were familiar and clear about where to go…. wanted and took and nice briefing… how to handle stumbles and unknown words…. we chose slow clear yet informal for the presentations style…. and started with a reading from the russian sector….

we enjoyed the words and d broke to tell a soviet anecdote…..

next i had chose the section dealing with the 10 million dose accident…..  . we had a small crowd outside the cell by that point and jesus h… it was so so gripping and intense….  your prose carried the narrative so well and d read with a stella vitality……   i was sat at the oscars table with d and had not heard the whole story thru…. and both myself and the team had to consciously stop ourselves from making exclamations as the tale unfolded…….   when we got to the end of the section we held the silence and this time.. instead of the single loud clap to mark the tape we all broke into spontaneous applause… we had it and we had it good….  both d and i knew that that was job done for today… such power would not be repeated today and we had all we needed….. any future readings can be included as from oscars cell under the terms of the internationally recognised artistic licence…..

 

 

i'm writing this first before i review the pictures and recordings…. we all come back here to eat first and i know it's all there in the can as such…. hoorah…

i really am best best pleased.. i was getting worried that i am presently too fragile and flakey to have carried it off, but seriously we all feel it's an excellent adventure completed today….. once i edit it down we shall arrange to play it to you over the phone…. k?

 

 

now to the edit…

and thanks for letting us have such fun with your work……

x

s