{"id":17651,"date":"2016-01-18T01:05:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T01:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=17651"},"modified":"2016-01-18T01:16:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T01:16:15","slug":"pierrot-in-turquoise-or-the-looking-glass-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2016\/01\/18\/pierrot-in-turquoise-or-the-looking-glass-murders\/","title":{"rendered":"Pierrot in Turquoise, or The Looking Glass Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pierrot.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A final Bowie post included here as much for its connections to Derek Jarman. Pierrot in Turquoise<\/em><\/a> was a pantomime by Lindsay Kemp based on the characters of the Commedia dell’arte<\/em>, and broadcast by Scottish Television in 1970. David Bowie is “Cloud”, a non-commedia<\/em> character who provides songs while perched atop a step-ladder. The smaller independent TV stations like Scottish often used to fill out their end-of-day programming with oddities such as this, the kind of thing that would have been screened once to a bewildered audience then forgotten.<\/p>\n

Kemp’s production reverses some of the commedia<\/em> traditions by having his Pierrot challenge Jack Birkett’s Harlequin, the exchange of roles taking place after a Cocteau-like journey through a mirror. Pierrot lacks a hat but otherwise his costume resembles the one that Bowie wore in the Ashes to Ashes<\/em> video. Two years and a gulf of reinvention separate this little pantomime from Kemp and Bowie’s next encounter in Mick Rock’s video for John, I’m Only Dancing<\/em><\/a>, a film the BBC found too weird and\/or queer, and refused to show.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Flowers: A Pantomime for Jean Genet<\/a>
\n\u2022 Lindsay Kemp\u2019s Salom\u00e9 again<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A final Bowie post included here as much for its connections to Derek Jarman. Pierrot in Turquoise was a pantomime by Lindsay Kemp based on the characters of the Commedia dell’arte, and broadcast by Scottish Television in 1970. David Bowie is “Cloud”, a non-commedia character who provides songs while perched atop a step-ladder. The smaller … Continue reading “Pierrot in Turquoise, or The Looking Glass Murders”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,3,19],"tags":[1301,511,1374,1178,7943,123],"class_list":["post-17651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay","category-music","category-television","tag-david-bowie","tag-derek-jarman","tag-jack-birkett","tag-lindsay-kemp","tag-mick-rock","tag-salome"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-4AH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}