Divadelica was a performance art group formed by myself and artist/friend Wendy House in November 1995; our original purpose being to perform at a night of installation-based/performance art held by Battenburg/Amuart on the 3rd December 1995. So well-received was this first performance (but then, what else would you expect?) that we decided to continue; and with the addition of third member DJ Phillipe (providing cut-and-paste mixing as backup), we went on to perform at a number of other venues, the most notable of which included Nux Vomica and Six Inch Killaz' Night of A Thousand Pricks. Below is a transcript of the "open letter to G*d" which I delivered at our debut performance. (Yeah, I know, I know; totally sub-Burroughs, with a dash of Beefheart...) Anyway, hope ya dig it...

Wendy House's intro: And there came the sound of running water, and the smell of sulphur did hang in the evening air; from the encircling gloom, a diva and the devil appear, trailing a supporting cast of fried-egg eating cockroaches, a chorus of transvestite angels and the famous Mr. Horsedick. You are welcome to our merry hell...

The sun comes out; the acid eyelids; "a white flake riverboat just flew by"; as the dawn broke in two, a milk bottle melting in the beginning of another day... I opened my eyes and saw your face, and then turned and screamed as the doctors prepared another sedative; 'son, this ain't no good anymore; send 'em down the shock corridor and place 'em under hypnosis once more. We'll just see what comes up this time under questioning...' But sir, allow me to explain and clear up this little misunderstanding once and for all... My life is 100% of life; my wife is only 75% of life. 40% is electricity; 30% is borrowed; and 5% is made up of wool, earth and bug.This 5% also has bolts, string and plaster peeling off it, as well as the cockroaches peeling off my wallpaper and falling onto my fried eggs which they ruthlessly devour before you can find the salt. This 5% is called "The Little House I Used to Live In"; it is wired into the air like an electricity pylon in an open field. Sparrows come to rest on it in the late afternoon as trains pass by; children fly their kites and get them tangled in the wires of the pylon; they fall to the ground screaming. Another victim of the Public Information Film monster... 'It, sir, is one of the many things sent to test us; and test us it shall'.
 So, life is cheap. Death is a bit more expensive. But then, razor blades are £2.10 a pack, so what do you expect? £2.10 an ounce, £4.10 an ounce. £4.10 a pound. £93.02, £93.04 a gram, and you got the broken bits for free... So just try telling that to the old bitches down the road; tied to the lamppost granny. Broken glass, failed lobotomies, crushed up Coke cans, vintage car prints on the wall, souvenir tankards, gilt-framed colour prints on top of the television; there's just no place to go.
 The town which I had left only a couple of days previously was made entirely of dust. By this, I mean that the inhabitants were all already dead. Dead in the mind, you see. And all due to greed, selfishness and self-pleasuring. So few, in fact, were their morals, so small was their sense of justice, money, public benevolence and lending a helping hand, that by the time I arrived, they had sunk totally into self-indulgence, into the salty earth and also into pulling themselves off up there. Fact of the aether, cleaning the oven, these were a people of exquisite taste, whose greatest delight was to lie in bed all day with the curtains drawn; a record playing, a bottle of amyl nitrate inserted up each nostril; "all dressed up with no place to go". Quick, quick, quick...damn! Too late now, we'll have to put the needle back into my favourite track. That gives them another three and a half minutes, ladies and gentlemen. As to the sound of their favourite song, they all love to toss themselves in unison...
 Large underground halls on the same level as the coffins that were lifted have been excavated especially for this purpose; and to choose the music they were going to pull to each time, they had a secret vote; each of them promising never to say what their choice had been. This was so different divisions of favourite tunes would not spring up and start fighting amongst themselves. It was all in the name of democracy, you understand. Keeping the peace. Indeed, so much so did these people at least believe in the spirit of fair play, that the flag of their republic featured a picture of an old-fashioned gramophone with a blindfold over the horn. 'That's the spirit of liberty, sir, in the land of the free. Don't you realise, old man, these are the great contributions we're making to society? Can't you appreciate these great things old Uncle Sam's doing for your benefit?'
 Around here, the local dish is poo. Of course, you have to scrabble around for hours in the little boy's room before you find the damn stuff; but down here in Sweetheartland, we ran out of real food - you know, mung beans and human flesh - around two weeks ago, so now we have to settle for what we can get. Some think old Mr. Horsedick, the butcher, died of water deprivation; but the doctor died two days ago, so nobody can be too sure... As the sun splits in two, angels with tongues of fire and tails of cliches who shit gold come down to Earth from the shattered orb above, just to taunt us. I don't know where they came from; is this a competition? You tell me.

 Old Mr. Horsedick got his name in the most peculiar manner. He was watching "Lord of the Flies" one day, and when the kid raised the dead pig's head into the air, old Mr. Horsedick thought he was about to place it on his face. You know the kind of stuff; adolescent fantasies, delusions of grandeur, that sort of thing... Well, old Mr. Horsedick - he was originally called Smith or something, I forget - he was then losing popularity as a butcher; but as soon as he saw that, he jumped right out of his seat, shouted 'that's the way!', and ran straight to the front of his shop. In the refuse bin, amonst the sheep carcasses and chicken heads, there was a strapping big horse dick that had been laid to waste only that morning. Quick as a shot, old Mr. Horsedick pulls it out, gives it a quick dip in the glaze; and then, all screaming ignored (his own as well as the customers who happened to be in the shop), he applies it, with the aid of needle and blue surgical thread to his own undersized member. Thereafter, he went about with it hanging out all the time; and his reputation, I think you'll agree, was secured. He didn't wear any trousers, you understand, so it got kind of cold in the winter; but old Mrs. Horsedick never had any complaints! And when he walked down the street, all the girls gasped and all the housewives licked their lips; what a real superstar was old Mr. Horsedick!
 At the funeral last week - a dark autumn afternoon turning into winter - there were two coffins lowered into the ground as the junk-sick vicar said his piece. Ashes to ashes, catch a snatch, I Love Lucy, rest in pieces, running water, circus elephants; G*d bless old Mr. Horsedick, and G*d bless those little transvestite angels up in heaven; all dressed in white, with slutty make-up and a handbag full of sex toys; they've got a big surprise in store!
 This kindly old gentleman with a heart of gold and an asshole of teflon was, however, only one of the many people who I met while I was in this region. Amongst others, there were the Total Fucking Arseholes; a select family of vicious cannibal murderers who lived in one big private temple. This temple was something like a Moslem mosque; and though it appeared to be made of solid gold, it was in reality made of solid shit. There were many there who made up the family of Total Fucking Arseholes; too many to describe in one sitting, so I will instead tell you briefly who they were. There was the crazed red wine TS, the braindead six foot china dolls, the talentless sculpture, the pretentious pop singer (lots of fun); there was the uncertain catch-snatch lawyer and the tranny milkman with a fetish for plastic surgery. There was Blow It Up Burn It Down, the dinky dalmatian (she was a real girl); also a spiky spiky lady of the sunset and her chair-breaking girlfriend. Oh yeah; there was also the spiky beefcake Japanese print psychotherapist and the neurotic drug addict. I don't think I need say anything more about these people, other than that they all lived in the temple and spent all their time fighting with one another. As regards more individual portraits of the inhabitants of Sweetheartland, there was another such creature of desire and pancake of flesh who lived down the road from the Total Fucking Arseholes. This was the Fetish Nun; or at least, that's what everyone else called her while I was in Sweetheartland. Truth was, a name had to be made up to call her by, since she never ever spoke to anyone. Dumb, she was; plain dumb. This was on account of the gas mask which she always wore over her face, along with her nun's habit and stiletto heels. Wore? Grew, I should say, since it seemed to be fused to her face by dog knows what force; seemed as if she'd been standing in a growbag for too long and now she couldn't get off the fruit of her labours. You could see her standing in the street all day, pulling at it frenziedly; tears coming out of her eyes and running down into... We thought she'd do herself an injury, but what could you do? As well as this, she wore a pair of yellow rubber gloves, so no-one would see the wet, pink flesh underneath... Apart from the eyes, you dig, the eyes; glittering with a half-crazed look of utter desperation...rended the heart of anyone who dared look into them. But it couldn't be helped. What could be done? How could we allow her to free herself from this terror, so that she could then pull off her habit and her gloves, and we would then see what really lay beneath... Something pretty? Something female? Something human? What was the virgin underneath? The Fetish Nun was a miserable soul, and she refused to make whoopee with anyone, no matter how hard they tried. The only person - or should I say being - who she ever showed any affection was another lifeform; half-man, half-plant, it was. No-one knew where it had come from; but it had come, all right, and raised itself from humble beginnings to become the most respected poultry farm owner in the whole of Sweetheartland. For this reason, it had been christened by the local gentry, and given the name of Eggplant. Big reputation too; 'cause when Eggplant walked into town on a hot summer's day - his body of vine and creeper twisting and swaying in front of him, his human legs below, doing the hard slog - the mayor's son would rush forward; always the first, he was to take Eggplant by the hand and guide the blind businessvegetable into old Ma Beta's for a half of Baby Bio and a vessel of dead insects.

Flyer advertising the Battenburg/Amuart night of installation-based/performance art; 3/12/1995.

The mayor's son; he was another fascinating case history in the world of sophisticated cocktails and acid baths. If I remember rightly, he was a distinguished fellow, who did the most amazing bug impression in the whole of Sweetheartland. Paying crowds, several hundred strong, would turn out on a Sunday afternoon just to see it. Eventually, as the entire population was coming to see the performance every Sunday, a special theatre was erected solely so the mayor's son could do his act. The stage always had the same scenery; it was a reproduction of an ordinary living room, only everything was a hundred times larger than normal. Thus, all that could be seen was chair and table legs; plant pots and the bottom of plants, all shooting up into the air and cut off by the stage curtain. It was in this setting that the mayor's son made his entrance, dressed in his bug costume. This was a hard, black shell under which he would crouch and run about on all fours. During the two hours his act lasted, he would scuttle about, pushing around giant fluffballs and biscuit crumbs, all constructed on the same scale as the rest of the scenery. It was a great show; completely riveting, and it lasted for several years. Before long, the mayor's son had a name given to him by "the people" - "The Bug Himself"; and from thereon in, his sucess was assured. It's a shame, then, that the mayor's son met with such a sticky end; one that in turn signalled the end of that civilisation which I had happened to encounter. One starlit evening, he was performing for the Royal Mutilatogram and wallpaper stripper - the hottest night for liposuction round these parts for a long time - and just as he was moving an oversized apple core from one end of the stage to the other for the tenth time, there came from out of the blue a giant flyswatter; a hundred times as big as the mayor's son, and held by...the unseen hand of G*d (cut off by the side of the stage), maybe? It came screaming down with an almighty force onto the poor young bug, and - SPLAT! - crushed him into an intricate matrix of flesh and raw bone, spurting veins, dislodged teeth and exploded eyeballs that then slowly spread, with the force of the flyswatter, across the stage floor. "The Bug Himself", his bubbling remains pushing up through the holes of the flyswatter that lay innocent and supine on the stage floor...he was now no more. And as the audience remained silent, not a sound to be heard, not a Moulinex mixer or Breville toaster in sight, a war-torn, beetroot flavoured voice came echoing down from above. And the words the whole of Sweetheartland heard that night were: 'My mysterious half-sister. All efforts proved unavailing. The train was leaving. Heavily later than before. The officer advanced; once, twice, backwards. This is something you will never understand. Lying on it again. As the newspapers put it, "I'll never fall in love again." This is the meaning of: The Bug Inside.'
 The sound of birds dying and cat logs crumbling slowly filled the air; and all eyes turned once more to the flyswatter covering the remains of The Bug Inside. That catastrophe was a message of peace and human kindness, and to all of Sweetheartland. We all knew; we could all tell by the strings of human intestine trailing down to the ground below. The symbol of paint and peace? The symbol of paint and flesh? The secret of paint and symbol of flesh intestine feast? This, we realised, was the end of our lives here on Earth, not to mention the end of our lives as republicans of Divadelicacy. Divadelicacy, or Wendy House Luis Hatred Divadelica? Divadelica delicate Wendy House hatred Divadelica? You choose for yourself. Well...we shall find out.

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