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30 October 1999 - head, bbb contemporary arts, london / 18 december 1999 - toynbee hall studios, london / 23 september 2000 - theatre of memory, theatre of myth, walworth methodist chapel, london / 9 july 2001 - push festival, young vic theatre, london.
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| "March, 1979. It was going to be the big push, the ultimate offensive: 53 concerts in 69 days, an urgent assault on the brooding heartlands of America, designed to storm the union and establish Costello's commercial supremacy. But one bleak night in Columbus Ohio, Costello's world was shattered in a moment of vicious drunken madness." The text in this performance is a transcript of a press conference given by Elvis Costello in the late 1970's following accusations that he had made racist comments during an argument. It depicts a man twisting and turning with excuses to justify his descriptions of James Brown ("a jive ass nigger") and Ray Charles ("a blind, ignorant nigger"), blaming everything from drink to quotation out of context. According to Costello, "it became necessary for me to outrage these people [those with whom he was arguing] with the about the most obnoxious and offensive remarks that I could muster." The question from one of the reporters remained unanswered: "isn't it a racist term whenever it is used; in, or out of context?" Comedian Lenny Bruce suggested the familiarity with a word can take away its power to 'harm'. He conjectured as to what would happen if "...if all the niggers started calling each other 'nigger', not only among themselves, which they do anyway..." but also among the the white populace. "If President Kennedy got on television and said, 'I'm considering appointing two or three of the top niggers in the country into my cabinet' - if it was nothing but nigger, nigger, nigger - in six months 'nigger' wouldn't mean any more than 'goodnight', 'God bless you', or 'I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God' - so when that beautiful day comes, you'll never see another nigger kid come home from school crying because some...motherfucker called him a nigger." Lenny Bruce (1962) But the effect of Lenny Bruce, a white Jewish comedian saying the word 'nigger' is poles apart from somebody like Richard Pryor (often cited as a 'black version' of the latter comedian) using the term. This was similarly apparent in The Costello Show, with the effect of me screaming the word 'nigger' being different from Laurence Harvey screaming the word 'nigger'.
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