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Our hope is that by creating cabarets, music and performance events, meeting fellow performers and musicians, comedians and dancers, poets and jugglers - OOOO the magic of cabaret (variety, variety, variety, variety...) - will generate a set of connections within the SW. Of course not-only the South West arts community... so come and exhibit/perform at the Surreal Saloon – and by you being there we will produce a more vibrant South West arts scene.

Which sets-up vast potential for creating 'performances', (I use the word broadly); corporeal (bodies/flesh), still (statues, maybe), in motion (performance, clowning, mime, music, sound, poetry), 2D (fine-art/or not so fine-art!), 3D (sculpture)etc.

Surreal Saloon Productions gives ‘creative individuals’ the authority to play. Come and show us what you have?

We would like to be in a position within the arts arena in the South West to re-define/re-create ‘living performance’ - in the context of a promotional live performance open to the public within an environment of sophistication and 'chill'.

The Saloon will be structured with the flexibility to construct the unimaginable, analogous to impulsive and natural composition.

This is a starting point; it precedes prohibition and so allows and welcomes the unbelievabe. The cutting edge of creativity does not, as everyone knows, occur within the 'establishment body', but rather, one might say, on the fractal edge of the marginalised. The Surreal Saloon will be this ‘stage’.

Expect the professional and the daring - a veritable feast of; creators, makers, art practitioners, promoters, artists, musicians, the weird, the graceful and the bizarre.

Belinda:

oh, all kinds of everything, jazz mostly (Chet Baker, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Lester Young, Anita O'day, Chris Connor - Impro stuff, oh the MJQ etc), some drum & bass/break beat (some Pendulum, Hype, Zinc, Shy FX,etc), Four-tet, swing (Gershwin), reggea (Back Uhuru, Mutumbi, Drummy Zeb, old Aswad etc), original R&B (Fab Thunderbirds), blues, ska... World Music (I realise it's huge - not sure of specific bands, players etc. but I love what I hear), African music; I was born and spent my childtime in East Africa. Bangra (is that how you spell it?). I'm not a great fan of 'rock' - but I like some of NightWish... I like Schubert (Unfinished symphony) and I like noise/sound like the waves? laughter - a kind of music?

Josephine:

Jimmy Hendrix & Rolling Stones. Authentic Eastern

Belinda: 

much and much more - weird, graceful, home-made, block-buster... Gladiator - Matrix - British Films: The Business, Football Factory, Sexy Beast, Layer Cake, Snatch, Lock Stock & 2 Smokin' Barrels - I loved Sin City and V for Vendetta, Fight Club... I also LOVE musical:  Fiddler on the Roof, Yentle, Calamity Jane, My Fair Lady, Seven Brides of Seven Brothers... Python films and art film, cartoons (Family Guy makes me laugh!).  Waking Life is awesome...

Josephine: 

One Giant Leap & The Life of Brian

Documentaries about famous people.

Belinda:

  Prison Break, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Jazz documentaries... The Sopranos, I don't watch TV very much - I do love movies ...

Josephine:

Monty Pythons, Bottom, Audition type Competitions; like X FACTOR, You could
be JOSEPH, Make-overs, the 100 top "whatevers" e.g. PUNK ARTISTS or BLUES SINGERS or COMEDIENS etc. Documentaries about famous people.

Belinda:

Radical education, radical feminism (Irigaray - all time no.1 *star*), Pride & Prejudice, Count of Monte Cristo, Sleepers, Paradise Lost (wow!), For your Own Good (Alice Miller's best book - but all her books really)

Any words that excite, delight and inspire - so many many books to list!

Josephine:

Meeting the Shadow  (Zweig & Abrams) & I CHING

Belinda:

People who make me smile, people with integrity and grace.  

Yoda ("Do, or do not, there is no try").  Billie Holiday (she could only sing one octave, but somehow she reached notes that others have never reached).  Wonder Woman (amazon woman warrior), Ghandi (peace maker extraordinaire).  Einstein ("Imagination is more important than knowledge").  Bertrand Russell (social commentator). Alice Miller (writer...a guru, of sorts, a women who saw a different way of being with our children - a free-er way, a gentler way)... people who smile, who laugh a lot, who change the world for the good, poeple near and dear to me that rock my world, people who speak up for the 'voiceless', people who take time to listen, people who are hourable...

Josephine:

Andy Warhol  & Damien Hurst