Our Ayahuasca Literati, John Constable's Art-Unit, Green Angel's Anuanl Event, "The Southwark Mysteries" for Halloween Night in London.
>>> Check Archive Interview "Ayahuasca Literati" with John Constable

THE HALLOWEEN OF CROSS BONES: Friday 31st October
a ritual drama by John Constable

Begins in GREEN ANGELS, 12 Trundle Street (off Lant St) SE1 LONDON U.K.

(Borough tube, turn right, first right into Lant Street, walk up past the new property development, then right again and diagonally across into the little street on the left. The door to Green Angels is in the whitewashed part of the old warehouse. Tug on the bell-rope and open sesame!)

Doors open 7pm. Doors close at 8.30 prompt for performance.
£8 / £5 concessions

A ritual drama to honour the Winchester Geese – medieval prostitutes licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to ply their trade within the Liberty of the Clink – whose bones were dug up during work on the Jubilee Line. The event begins at Green Angels Space with pumpkin soup and an opening samhain ritual, followed by a performance of poems and songs from The Southwark Mysteries by the author John Constable (aka Crow), with Niall McDevitt, Jahnet de Light, the Angel Choir and the Liberty Crew. It climaxes in a candlelit procession to the site of the Cross Bones graveyard to bless the outcast dead with ribbons, songs and offerings. Come in fancy dress, and bring your own thing of beauty to offer in their memory. Places are limited, so please arrive early to avoid disappointment. (Parental advisory: performance contains explicit language.)

Southwark’s Liberty of the Clink dates back to 1107, when the Bishop of Winchester was granted a stretch of the Bankside to the west of London Bridge, which lay outside the law of the City of London. Here, the Bishop controlled the brothels, or ‘stews’. The Whores of The Liberty were known as ‘Winchester Geese’. The Southwark Mysteries were revealed to John Crow at Cross Bones graveyard, on the night of 23rd November 1996, by The Goose, the Spirit of a medieval Whore, licensed by a Bishop, yet allegedly denied Christian burial:

For tonight in Hell they are tolling the bell for the Whore that lay at the Tabard,
and well we know how the carrion crow doth feast in our Cross Bones graveyard.

The Halloween of Cross Bones

was first performed in 1998 (Time Out’s ‘Pick of Halloween’). The event has evolved each year, with more and more people helping to turn the iron gates of Cross Bones into a shrine. This the sixth Halloween of Cross Bones is particularly timely. London Transport recently won an appeal to develop the site with three office blocks. Local people are campaigning for at least a part of the site to be given over to a memorial garden. This year’s respectful, peaceful pilgrimage to the gates will reaffirm that the Cross Bones graveyard is sacred ground.

John Constable

is a south London poet, playwright, singer and performer. His solo show I Was An Alien Sex God was performed on the Edinburgh Fringe ("mind-blowingly weird" (The Independent). His stage adaptation of Gormenghast (David Glass Ensemble) played at The Lyric, Hammersmith, followed by British Council world tours. John also conducts workshops, including Shamanic Playhouse, and a Mysteries Pilgrimage through Southwark’s secret history.

Sha-Manic Plays and The Southwark Mysteries by John Constable are published by Oberon Books. Copies of the book and the new John Crow Southwark Mysteries CD of shamanic poems songs and raps are available at the performance or from

mysteries@boltblue.com

The website: www.gooseandcrow.co.uk
*features film clips of Halloween of Cross Bones 2000 and 2001