CLIVE BARKER 1931 - 2005

I want to share three images of Clive with you, one of them is an imaginary cartoon, the other two
could, indeed should, have been photographs.

The first is of Clive as a bag-lady. I picture him surrounded by plastic bags of all colours, shapes and
sizes, each one of them cram-packed with pieces of paper. This was the encyclopaedia of world
theatre that he carried about with him: there were facts, anecdotes, commentaries on plays,
playwrights, theatre forms, theatre companies, theatre movements - and more stories than you could
tell in a thousand and one nights. Some of my most vivid memories of Clive are of him bringing to life
some play by a foreign playwright that I'd never heard of, by the end of which I felt like I'd been there
myself in the audience with him. Most of us could fill a couple of carrier bags at a pinch, but Clive
would have needed a couple of supermarket trolleys to accommodate all his. It wasn't just the volume
of material, it was the range: from Madonna to Morecambe and Wise to Joan Littlewood, from Beebop
Jazz to Grand Opera. He once sent me a cassette of Emmanuelle 2 because it contained a
particularly good example of the Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat.

In a recent celebration of his life's work at Rose Bruford College he sat on stage surrounded by a
number of suspicious-looking humps, all covered with sheets. These were artefacts from his archive
that had been selected for him to discuss. This was the ideal format for Clive allowing him to range
freely through these papers and posters and things from his fifty odd years in theatre and talk about
them at length and informally. He was, in the best, and, occasionally, worst senses of the word, a
rambling man. When editing other people's work he could very swiftly fillet an article with a few
practiced sweeps of his knife, but when it came to his own writing ... the knife just seems to have
dropped into one of his many bags. Maybe there was just too much stuff all clamouring to get down
on to the page. Over the past six months we have been working together on a DVD-ROM about his
Theatre Games and I managed to gather some small part of what he knew - but I know that our stock
of theatre knowledge is sadly depleted now that he's moved on along with all those bulging bags.

The second image is of Clive at work. We were in Poland at a theatre with his great friend and
colleague Albert Hunt. A final rehearsal for a performance of an Ann Jellico play was going
horrendously badly. Nobody seemed to know where they were going or what they were doing. The
actors were frozen with fear. Clive leaped on to the stage (despite his arthritis) and proceeded to
marshal the actors. I don't know what he said, but within forty minutes a scattering of bewildered
actors had become a focused company that was ready and able to put on a play. I have seen the
same incisiveness, that same keen eye, when he was watching the video footage of a recent
workshop he had given. Having quite brilliantly analysed how and why the participants were moving
as they were, he turned to me and said 'Well at least there's one thing I can do - and that's read
movement.' In Theatre Games he mentions how he and Brian Murphy would watch people in railway
stations, building sites, public libraries - anywhere they could observe without being locked up.
Through a mixture of patient observation and painstaking study Clive developed a profound and
profoundly practical understanding of human movement. It is a cruel irony that his knowledge was put
to the most painful of tests when he contracted arthritis in the early 1980s. Patiently, doggedly, he got
back the use of his hands and the mastery of his spine and pelvis. And then he had stroke which left
him partially paralysed down his left side: the first thing he asked me to do when I visited him in
Walgrave Hospital's high dependency unit, was to put pressure on the sole of his foot - he needed to
judge how much mobility was left to him. Once again, with a patience and determination that I
wondered at (how many of us would have just given up?), he found his walking feet again. So, last
summer he led two workshops with me at the National Association of Youth Theatres. Clive used to
call himself the Ringo Kid after John Wayne's first starring role in Stagecoach, a guy who drifts into
town, does what he has to do, and then moves on. I think he is much more the come-back kid who
just couldn't be put down.

The last image is of Clive recovering, yet again. This time it was from a horrific infection in his leg that
plagued him following radiotherapy treatment for Lymphoma. His temperature remained doggedly
high and the doctors seemed unable to bring it down - it didn't look hopeful. About five days later, and
against all good advice, he travels down to London to see one of his favourite theatre troupes -
Neelam Chouddray's The Company from Chandigar in India. It was a stinking hot day, the rails were
buckling with the heat and his train was severely delayed - not great conditions for a man with such a
serious infection. Having crossed London to see the show he is then invited to have dinner with the
actors. He insists that we go. After another journey across town we arrive for dinner and he takes
centre stage, surrounded by the evident love and respect of the gathered artists. The effect was
immediate - life flooded into his veins and he visibly grew better. He was in his element, a man of
theatre amongst friends. Very literally, theatre was his lifeblood. And that was how he died,
surrounded by friends in York.

On that same evening after dinner with Neelam Chouddray, we returned home and I told Clive that my
lover had just died. His reaction was measured. 'She is an objective loss in your life - she will leave a
hole into which you will always fall into unless you learn to walk around it.' It was hard advice, but it
helped manage the loss. Clive leaves a hole in each one of us, but he also left a legacy which will
feed us all for years to come. I shall tend that space that was Clive with gratitude and immense
affection. I was proud to have been his friend.

Dick McCaw March 2005