Space Club Cabaret

by Ros Barber (Brighton)

The event I planned had a space theme. The club was on two floors: the downstairs bar (the space port) would be low lit, with fluorescent planets and stars hanging from the ceiling, and a poet telling stories about places that might or might not exist.

As the Maitre ‘D come tour guide I’d conduct folk up the stairs to a blinding light and the 2001 theme - to a dancefloor where a couple of strolling acts in fluffy UV fluorescent costumes with stilts on their legs and hands would dance like alien insects.

The van broke down so late afternoon I trogged the equipment across town, up the hill – smoke machine, UV lights – 3 or 4 trips. I’d flyered in costume - a golf ball alien head on a stick attached to my head. It was in the brochure. I went on local radio.

Absolutely nobody came. Absolutely nobody. Fred did some poems, the fluorescent alien insects danced a bit, then wandered off to the seafront to find a club. And it was lovely, despite the fact that it was, to all intents and purposes, a disaster.

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What Ros Barber says about Space Club Cabaret:

Stonesy ran literature and cabaret events for many years, and always planned a few special nights for Brighton Fringe Festival. This was the only event he’s ever run where the turnout was zero. As he said, “There are so many things going on in Brighton, particularly in the festival. I’d envisaged it as a cabaret clubby kinda thing, but this one slid between the folk who would normally go to clubs and probably thought ‘it’s a cabaret thing I don’t fancy that’ and those folk who would go to cabaret and thought ‘it’s a clubby thing, that’s not for me.’ It was also in the middle of the week, a Wednesday or something.”