CHAPEL PERILOUS AND THE BLACK LODGE
ARE YOU READY TO TESTIFY?
"In researching occult conspiracies, one eventually faces a crossroad of mythic proportions (called
Chapel Perilous in the trade). You come out the other side either stone paranoid or an agnostic;
there is no third way. I came out agnostic.
Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called "I," cannot be located in the space-time
continuum; it is weightless, odourless, tasteless and undetectable by ordinary instruments.
Indeed, like the Ego, it is even possible to deny that it is there. And yet, even more like the Ego,
once you are inside it, there doesn't seem to be any way to ever get out again, until you suddenly
discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside thought.
Everything you fear is waiting with slavering jaws in Chapel Perilous, but if you are armed with the
wand of intuition, the cup of sympathy, the sword of reason, and the pentacle of valour, you will
find there (the legends say) the Medicine of Metals, the Elixir of Life, the Philosopher's Stone, True
Wisdom and Perfect Happiness.
That's what the legends always say, and the language of myth is poetically precise. For instance, if
you go into that realm without the sword of reason, you will lose your mind, but at the same time,
if you take only the sword of reason without the cup of sympathy, you will lose your heart. Even
more remarkably, if you approach without the wand of intuition, you can stand at the door for
decades never realising you have arrived. You might think you are just waiting for a bus, or
wandering from room to room looking for your cigarettes, watching a TV show, or reading a
cryptic and ambiguous book. Chapel Perilous is tricky that way."
Robert Anton Wilson
CHAPEL PERILOUS
Chapel Perilous is the open mic of the soul, the beating heart of conspiracy theories and the gateway to another
dimension filled with strange and ambiguous creatures, many of whom are festival-goers who accidentally stumbled
in despite the warning signs and became forever entrapped and entranced.
Chapel Perilous will be open daily for the taking of Conspiracies and the receiving of Testimonials, the offering of
poetry, puppetry, interactive performances, play readings, speeches and a whole host of Discordian shenanigans.
Although there will be many star testifiers over the weekend, some of the most inspiring, deranged and disconcerting
tales will come from members of the public, all of whom have their own adventures to reveal.
BEN GRAHAM’S CONSPIRACY SLAM
Are you an Illuminati Conspiracy? Do you know someone who is? Do you have your own theory on JFK, Area 51, 9/11,
Marilyn, chemtrails, big pharma, MK Ultra, the Reptilian Elite, the moon landings, fake news, the fractional reserve
banking system, or visitors from Sirius? Do you have a new conspiracy theory all of your own? Turn up with your
wildest conspiracy theories to be in with a chance to win the tinfoil crown!
The rules are contradictory, labyrinthine and impenetrably complex. You will be judged by a specially chosen panel of
secret masters, on Plausibility, Implausibility and Presentation (or will you?). The final decision is of course completely
fixed while seemingly arbitrary - and only the Men in Black know who the real winner is…
Warning: The 2016 Conspiracy Slam messed with the heads of some of the most clued-up conspiracy nuts and
professional paranoids in the whole New World Order. In the age of fake news and alternative facts, the 2017 version
could get even danker…
Ben Graham (http://www.bleedingcheek.wordpress.com)
Ben Graham is a poet, performer and counter-cultural historian-activist. He is author of A Gathering of Promises: The
Battle for Texas's Psychedelic Music, from the 13th Floor Elevators to the Black Angels and Beyond (Zero Books, 2015)
and Scatological Alchemy: A Gnostic Biography of the Butthole Surfers (Eleusinian Press, 2017), two novels and several
poetry collections. He is a regular contributor to The Quietus and Shindig magazine, and is part of the shadowy
Discordian cabal. He is currently completing his post-Brexit modernist pulp sci-fi novel, Amorphous Albion.
DAISY CAMPBELL
Daisy Eris Campbell was conceived backstage at Illuminatus! in Liverpool - a play directed by her father, Ken Campbell,
based on The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (the cult novel which launched a million
conspiracy-freaks and catapulted the 23 enigma into popular consciousness).
In 2014, Daisy wrote and directed a stage adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger, the backstory of
Illuminatus! and an extraordinary blend of conspiracy theories, mass initiations, musical sing-alongs, tantric sex,
Erisian chaos and Discordian confusion, as we share Robert Anton Wilson’s journey to Chapel Perilous (an occultist
crossing point, from which you emerge either paranoid or agnostic). In Cosmic Trigger, phantasmagorical music,
3D projections and a recorded guest performance from Alan Moore evoked the real-life hallucinogenic trip through
conspiracy, paranoia and enlightenment that transformed Robert Anton Wilson from Playboy editor to much-loved
counter-cultural icon. The play returns to the stage in London during May this year. www.cosmictriggerplay.com
Daisy Campbell starring as her mum, Prunella Gee, visiting tarot reader
Miss Portinari (played by Kate Alderton). Cosmic Trigger, Liverpool 2014
Daisy worked alongside her father, Ken Campbell for many years,
helping to create Pidgin Macbeth (an attempt to teach the world a
lingua franca via the medium of Shakespeare in Pidgin English) and
The Tilly Matthews Academy of Bizarre and Adventurous Education
(for performers in the business of becoming “extraordinary”) amongst
many other capers.
Daisy Campbell at the late great Robert Anton Wilson event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsBWj5jNadw
http://www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/culture/arts/magic-mayhemand-mu-mu-on-mathew-street
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/news/illuminatus-director-s-daughter-returns-to-play-thatgave-her-life-9862365.html
Bill Drummond: the five lessons I learned from Ken Campbell. How do you get Tammy Wynette to sing on your
record? How do you stop the Teardrop Explodes from imploding? And what’s the wildest thing you can do with £1m?
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/18/bill-drummond-five-lessons-i-leared-from-ken-campbell
JOHN HIGGS (www.johnhiggs.com)
John Higgs is a writer who specialises in finding
previously unsuspected narratives, hidden in obscure
corners of our history and culture, which can change
the way we see the world. He writes for publications
including The Guardian, The Independent and Mojo,
and is author of:
Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the
Twentieth Century (‘A breathtakingly lucid and
coherent map of the tectonic shifts which drastically
reshaped the human psyche, and the human world,
within a hundred thrilling, terrifying years’
Alan Moore), and
The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a
Million Pounds - (‘Adam Curtis brainstorming with
Thomas Pynchon’ The Guardian).
His first book I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary (featuring a foreword by Winona Ryder) is
currently being translated into seven different languages.
A prolific speaker, talker and thinker, John has spoken at events and festivals including Wilderness, The Secret Garden
Party, the Brighton Festival, the Port Eliot Literary Festival and LonCon3 (the World Science Fiction Convention).
John Higgs on The KLF, Discordianism, Chaos Magic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBhXtd75uLc
War of the Certain: John Higgs Interview: http://thequietus.com/articles/20482-john-higgs-interview-robert-antonwilson-illuminatus-burroughs-agnosticism
MICHELLE WATSON
Michelle graduated from Middlesex University with a BA Hons in Drama and Theatre Studies before attending Drama
Studio London. She has acted for The Natural Theatre Company, in Ken Campbell’s The Warp and as John Constable’s
Goose in The Southwark Mysteries, performing at the Roundhouse, Southwark Cathedral and Shakespeare’s Globe.
Inspired by John Constable’s poetic form she shifted her attention to
writing, becoming Moksha, a respected spoken word artist on the London
and festival circuit, performing at Glastonbury, The Horse Hospital, The
Scala, Festival 23 and Cosmic Trigger (which she co-produced with Daisy
Campbell). For many years she produced her own successful “It’s a
Thought Crime Cabaret” events at the 491 Gallery. She is currently
working on her first book, a science fiction novel entitled Folium, and
continues using poetry as resistance.
Michelle writes issue based plays for teenagers performed by actors
throughout the UK and has written a short film on self-harm which won an
award for education. She is also a creative consultant for Bigfoot Arts
Education and Brunel University’s Urban Scholars program and works with
young people suffering with mental health and behavioural issues.
“Actress Michelle Watson became the Goose, a prostitute on the Bankside, a wise and sassy creature with a throaty
voice, radiating erotic scorn.” The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/londonscrossbones-graveyard-is-the-setting-for-a-very-eerie-halloween-celebration-1810973.html
http://crossbones.org.uk/being-human-hope-and-fear-at-crossbones-graveyard/
PUPPET ALAN WATTS
Puppet Alan Watts is the first in a project called “Future Zen Puppetry” - reviving cosmic thinkers with life changing
ideas. Alan Watts and his friends are recreated as puppets and recite their most significant talks to festival audiences.
The Puppets mime recordings of the original talks rather than reciting them in a comical voice, giving the performance
an uncanny sense of weight. These tongue in cheek puppets are exaggerated caricatures of their human counterparts
but are created with the utmost love and respect, to allow us to revisit their respective philosophical messages.
"The real you is not a puppet, which life pushes around. The real deep down you is the whole universe."
http://puppetalanwatts.wixsite.com/puppetalanwatts
PUPPET WILLIAM BURROUGHS
William Burroughs welcomes you to Interzone! This 8 foot Puppet William Burroughs runs cut-up technique
workshops and gives talks on the infamous Wishing Machine. ‘Captain Clark welcomes you aboard.’
HAPPY HARDCORE AEROBICS
The perfect way to
get back on your
feet after a night’s
dancing: ridiculous
and knackering
aerobics moves to
boost mood,
combined with
180 bpm happy
hardcore classics…
ANWEN FRYER BURROWS
(AKA Young Mother Hagbard, Pope Absinthe Codeina, Little Pope Peep, Joan of Larks)
Anwen Burrows has always been a daughter of Eris, Goddess of Chaos. She is full of tales of The Golden Apple, The
Original Snub, and a font of knowledge about when and where a fully committed Discordian is permitted to eat hot
dog buns. She is more than likely to sprinkle you with fairy dust, or marmite laced with glitter… Choosing her blend of
hodge and podge, she is sometimes a DiscoWiccanChaosMagician and at others a Wiccacordian. She is full of light,
throbs with a happy heart, and oozes humour and creativity.
Anwen will be bringing ritual fire performance, an introduction to Eris Pathworking, guided meditation and her
audience participation Nursery Crhyme playshop.
THE LOST DOCTOR AND DISCO DALEK (AND TARDIS TBC)
Tom Calderbank is a gifted poet, performer, speech-giver, cultural fixer and fool. He is currently art curator for The
Florrie in Liverpool. Tom has been positively changing the world (or his small part of it) all his life. A huge believer in
people power, he has been instrumental in a string of award-winning projects at the sharp end of community
development in his beloved Toxteth.
Tom is currently producing a series of 23 radio plays in the Lost Doctor series, starring Ken Campbell as Doctor Who
from beyond the grave. He will offer festival-goers the chance to participate in a read-through of the current script (in
which Doctor Who meets Robert Anton Wilson) complete with science fiction sound effects.
Tom will be bringing along with him a Dalek which fans of
Doctor Who can decorate in a theme of their choosing.
Starting off black and white, you never know how the
Dalek will end up. At Festival 23, it became Disco Dalek…
Ever mobile across the festival arena, Disco Dalek can be
seen here with revellers on the dance floor, listening in on
a speech about the Illuminati, and getting friendly with
Jimmy Cauty’s Aftermath Dislocation Principle.
http://www.artinliverpool.com/hidden-gems-featureflorrie-gets-art-curator/
http://www.schoolofcuriosity.co.uk/wordpress/?tag=tomcalderbank
LISA NELSON
Lisa Nelson is Gatekeeper of Chapel Perilous and Founder of the Church United in the Name of Thinking. She is a
published poet and playwright, currently specialising in comedy erotica. Her short play Sister of Mercy was performed
at the Crossing the Tees Literary Festival in June 2015; her first dalliance with scriptwriting since she adapted Philip K
Dick’s The Divine Invasion for the stage (performed at the Horse Hospital, Bloomsbury, in 2006).
Lisa is currently playing a cybernetic alien in the Lost Doctor series of Doctor Who radio plays, having previously played
‘a hippie with nothing to contribute to society’ in MI23, and a born mystic with clairvoyant abilities in The Warp.
As well as acting as Gatekeeper, Lisa will be quiz-mastering her interactive ‘Game of Fnords: 223 facts and fictions about
the number 23’ which will test festival-goers’ knowledge of the 23 enigma to the full. She will also be giving a talk on
Emperor Norton, the self-declared Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Last year Lisa won the Jane
Burke Prize for Dissertation of the Year for her project on Emperor Norton when she graduated from Teesside University
with a First in English and Creative Writing.
Lisa has performed at Glastonbury Festival, The Electric Kool-Aid Cabaret, Festival 23, Stoke Newington Festival, Passing
Clouds, Cosmic Trigger and the T-Junction International Poetry Festival.
THE BLACK LODGE
With all the excitement building about the release of the new Twin Peaks series (on 22 May 2017), no event
this summer would be complete without its very own Black Lodge. All you need to do is find the way in…
Hawk: There is a legend of a place called the Black Lodge, the shadow-self of the White Lodge. The legend
says that every soul must pass through there on the way to perfection. There you will meet your own
shadow-self. My people call it The Dweller on the Threshold… but it is said if you face the Lodge with
imperfect courage, it will utterly annihilate your soul.
Dale Cooper: Harry, we're in trouble. If the door to the Black Lodge does exist, it probably exists at a point
in time. Now, an object, such as a door, normally exists at a point in time and space. By way of contrast,
a shooting star normally exists at a point in time over a continuum of space. But taken from the star's
point of view, it's a completely different experience.
Harry Truman: You just lost me.
Dale Cooper: If we're not at the right place at exactly the right time, we won't find our way in.
Please note: Those wishing to gain access to The Black Lodge may need to pass through the Gates of Chapel
Perilous. Whilst in The Black Lodge, you are responsible for your own actions and those of your Doppelganger.
If you get stuck, please call Bob.
LEΆSUNGSPELL
Bob Beagrie is a poet, playwright and senior lecturer in creative writing at Teesside University. He has performed at
The Royal Festival Hall, Theatre Royal Newcastle, The Dylan Thomas Centre and at venues all across Europe. As well as
collaborating with musicians, he works closely with visual artists on public artworks and with theatre company Three
Over Eden. He is co-director of Ek Zuban Press, an independent publishing house, and runs the regular Middlesbroughbased live literature event, The Electric Kool-Aid Cabaret of the Spoken Word.
Leásungspell is an epic poem set in the wilds of Northumbria in the year 657 AD, and tells the tale of a monk walking
from the Anglo Saxon monastery of Herutea (Hartlepool) to Streonshalh (Whitby) carrying secret letters from Abbess
Hild (St Hilda). The poem is written in a synthesis of Old English, modern English and Cleveland, Yorkshire and
Northumbrian Dialect forms.
Leásungspell: A Fool's Tale is a multimedia performance involving epic poetry and live soundscape set in the ancient
Kingdom of Northumbria. Leásungspell brings to life the mind-set and vision of a world filled with animism, rapture
and omens. It is a tale of twisting digressions, dreamscapes and stories folded within stories and of language itself. It is
also an anti-epic, a fool’s yarn, a small tale of a nobody wandering alone through the Dark Ages.
Set in 657AD, Northumbria is one of the seven warring Anglo Saxon kingdoms, a place where the traditions of Celtic
Christianity, Roman Christianity and pagan beliefs and magic clash. Where blood feuds and brutality rage and political
intrigue festers. Here Oswin, a monk from the monastery of Herutea (Hartlepool) treads a path across the volatile
landscape, a wilderness where faith, history, myth and folklore intertwine, as he journeys towards Streonshalh
(Whitby) bearing secret letters from the Abbess Hild.
Bob Beagrie, along with a group of musicians, conjure up the wild and wyrd world of the Dark Ages in a live
performance of spoken word and sound. Leásungspell has played at The British Museum and the Dorman Museum
and is due to play Bamburgh Castle in July and Durham Cathedral in October.
“Astonishing, haunting, ambitious in scale and impressive in reach, Leásungspell is a feast for the imagination.”
Pippa Little
“Leásungspell is a work of sustained visionary imagination the like of which is rarely encountered in contemporary
English poetry. The language rings like the clashing of broadswords – this poem must be read out loud - and from that
energy and violence, a vivid new world, at once both archaic and strangely contemporary, emerges.”
Steve Ely
The live performance of Leásungspell and the audio works have been developed with the support from Arts Council
England. The Audio Works can be accessed via www.leasungspell.com
CARMEN THOMPSON
Carmen Thompson won the BBC’s Verb New Voices prize in 2015 and the Neil Gaiman Fable Competition in 2016. Her
poetry blends local tales with myth and her own experiences, always deeply moving but often very playful.
Her project, The Book of Godless Verse, responds to her own lapsed Catholicism and explores what she perceives as a
need in our society for an alternative type of secular prayer. Carmen, from Saltburn, says: “I’m lapsed in my faith but
there are moments – minute and huge – from roadkill to hate killings, which create a vacuum of grief and rage. These
moments need to be witnessed – they require an acknowledgement, but not prayer as we know it.”
BBC Verb New Voices: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2015/r3-verb-new-voices-2015
Carmen performing The Wondering Bra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJgKOt7xfUs
JULIE HOGG
Julie Hogg has always lived in Redcar. Majuba Road, her first poetry collection, is a journey through the North East
landscapes she inhabits. Her poems chart urban and industrial decay, set against the constant ebb and pull of the sea;
an edge ‘between lonely and alone’ to which the book keeps returning. The women who feature in her book know all
about hard times. But they are strong survivors; their sense of humour sees them through. Her voice can be lyrical,
startling, staccato and also exquisitely tender, urging us to ‘live like this’.
Review of Majuba Road: http://londongrip.co.uk/2017/02/london-grip-poetry-review-hogg/
JULIE EGDELL
Julie Egdell has been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK, Mexico and France. Her work appears in the
Bloodaxe anthology Hallelujah for 50ft Women, The Break-Out Anthology published by Ek Zuban and Dark Matter 5
published by Black Light Engine Room Press. Her debut collection Alice in Winterland - a sequence of poems about her
time living in Russia - is forthcoming from Smokestack.
Julie performing at the Royal Festival Hall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPD7z1p9h1Q
WILL DIXON
Will Dixon is a local poet from Hartlepool whose work has been published in The Intercity Flow collection and Through
the Cracks. Will has performed at the Royal Festival Hall and frequently reads his poetry at the Electric Kool-Aid
Cabaret. He has recently turned his hand to stand-up/fall-down comedy.
Beautiful Women
He smokes his tobacco
with pages from
the Great American
novel
second hand.
He murmurs to himself
as he inhales Steinbeck
‘I have beautiful women
in my life,
ones that hate me,
ones that love me,
whatever the
circumstances
I am always surrounded
by beautiful women’.
CHRIS STEWART
Chris Stewart performs at the Cheltenham Literary Festival this year. He is described by Apples and Snakes
performance network ‘as if Vic and Bob went to the dark side,’ and by independent reviewers as, ‘awkward, offbeat
and probably the funniest performer of the night’.
Chris' poems and short stories appear in many magazines and anthologies including The Wrong Quarterly, The
Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker, Alliterati, Freak Circus and The Machinery. He is winner of the 2015 Read Our
Lips Competition and was long listed for the CYCLOP International Videopoetry Competition that same year.
Pricing Structure
The Black Lodge & Chapel Perilous
(tickets, fees and expenses)
NB: artists can perform both in the Spoken Word café and Chapel Perilous if desired
They would also be happy to work on promenade
The Black Lodge and Chapel Perilous – 23 tickets in total
£2,300 (£1,150 fees, £500 décor fee and supplies, £650 travel)
Without local performers - 13 tickets, £1,700 (£650 fees, £500 décor, £550 travel)
NOTWORK 23/COSMIC TRIGGER CREW
(13 tickets)
John Higgs
Daisy Campbell
Ben Graham
Tom Calderbank (family ticket)
Myra Stuart/Megan Clifton (décor and puppets)
Little Pope Peep (with child ticket)
Michelle Watson
The Buddhist Poet (family ticket)
FROM THE TEESSIDE SCENE
(10 tickets)
Leasungspell featuring:
+ more TBC
Midge BJ (Imperial College)
Nic Alderton (Complexity Productions)
Roddy McDevitt/Salena Godden
Jamie Dodds/Jacqueline Haigh
Carmen Thompson
Julie Hogg
Will Dixon
Julie Egdell
Chris Stewart
Bob Beagrie
Kev Howard
Sara Dennis
Peter Lagan
SJ Forth
Plus poets/spoken word artists:
Bad Fractals
&
Bloom
BLOOM (£100 + tickets)
Bloom make experimental cosmic pop music using natural and augmented vocal harmonies, samples, syncopation and
synthesisers. The music is influenced by tiny wriggling things, giant galactic things, the intensity of life, nature and
magic - a kaleidoscopic take on existence.
What is Life - the first album from Bloom - was funded by Kickstarter backers and released October 2016 to rave
reviews from The Quietus, The Girls Are and Art Noise. Shout - the first track released from the album - was BBC
Introducing’s ‘Track of the Day’ twice and was played out by three separate BBC presenters. Bloom are currently
unsigned, unpublished, and co-managed by front women Emily and Megan, best friends for over a decade.
'Astral space-pop worthy of Bjork' - THE QUIETUS ‘
A blissful audioscape worth exploring. - ART NOISE
'Vibrant, dynamic indie pop to see you through the darkest times’ - THE GIRLS ARE
'Complex and bittersweet’ - LINE OF BEST FIT
‘A sense of longing, reaching, hoping and emerging’ - BRIGHTON’S FINEST
'It is rare that I feel so loved by music.’ - TWO TORN HALVES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu-zRyhPNqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cohaAQgjo1A
BAD FRACTALS (£300 + tickets)
Shaman Gangsters tear their way through Acid Punk, Malevolent Music Hall and
Trailer Trash Blues in a world gone mad...
PEOPLE OF PLANET WORLD!
Join us at the crossroads, in a theatre of the absurd…
Hear Story and Song shift with the wild wonder of FRACTALS!
Watch psychedelic punks get drunk with clown kings!
Glare at artificial angels dancing with deadbeat demons!
Gasp as Astral Travellers gather in galactic taverns and Shaman Gangsters shoot bullets of LOVE!
Listen as Spirits scream and tear their way through Acid Punk, Malevolent Music Hall and Trailer Trash ‘n’ Roll.

BANG CROSBY - Vocal Violence & Venomous Verse

ASTRAL OZ - Psychedelic Strings & Electrostatic Discharge

FRED ASTRAY - Drums & Dynamic Discord