Eating together: Blog 89

Morning!
It was lovely to wander through Soho yesterday flowers in hand and end up at Koya at 49 Frith street, a nice little Japanese restaurant where we met to celebrate our daughter's 23rd birthday. Her suggestion.
It was the first real day of spring and the sun was doing what only it can do.

You could see its work on the faces of people sauntering along the street eating ice cream and those sitting at outside tables enjoying the newly found warmth, relaxed and lazy in Sundayness.

I can highly recommend Koya, the food is delicious and even the cramped tables have a certain charm. Olly and I had hot ginger to drink, and it was hot!

The family gathering around a table to eat together has always been central to our lives, indeed for my 40th birthday my family clubbed together to buy me the most beautiful roughly hewn eight foot oak table, five chairs and an Oliver like bench to squeeze as many little bottoms as possible for when the girl's friends came to tea. I wanted this at the heart of our home as a special place for being together.

The sharing of a meal around a table has an importance and significance to most families, often seen as a sacred space for nourishing both the body and the soul. Good food, conversations, arguments and joys get shared around these tables daily in every culture. Sometimes these gatherings are merely for the everyday, and sometimes for sacred or significant life moments. Its only a few days too since the celebration of the most famous of all meals, the Last Supper. The Davinci painting is carved into many people's psyches one way or another, even if we hold no truck with organised religion - a reminder of just how deeply family and friends eating together features in an ordinary life.

Its good for children in particular of course, giving order and structure as well as nourishment. Conversations during the meal provide opportunities for the family to bond, plan, connect, and learn from one another. It’s a chance to share information and news of the day, as well as give extra attention to each other. Family meals foster warmth, security and love, as well as feelings of belonging. It can be a unifying experience for everyone.

Often over the years its been precisely this space of sharing a meal that has given rise to new creative ideas and projects for us, often with our children chipping in with insights that challenge and enlighten and in some cases influence our thoughts on the play we are absorbed with making at that time. 

Sometimes too sitting around a table to eat with those you love in times of turmoil or loss binds you together and invites your creative imaginations to come up with solutions to problems, greater understanding or simply to tell and share stories that reflect the common theme. 

When your children grow and fly the nest the most common way for keeping close and in touch is through a return visit home for a meal or getting together in a restaurant. And when you meet up with old friends the first thing you often mutually agree is to meet for a meal somewhere. 

And in drama the meal is central to many plays - Alan Acykbourn's Table manners, Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, Wesker's Roots to name just a handfull. And of course this is precisely because the dinner table is a profound metaphor and litmus test for relationship. Its a rich source of material for the playwright and director to excavate. Here is the place where much is said and shared, pain and joy expressed.

I have a particular fondness for the work of American feminist artist Judy Chicago, whose Dinner Party influenced me and my work early on. For those of you who don't know her work, the Dinner Party is an installation artwork depicting place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women. It was produced from 1974 to 1979 as a collaboration and was first exhibited in 1979. Subsequently, despite art world resistance, it toured to 16 venues in 6 countries on 3 continents to a viewing audience of 15 million. Since 2007 it has been on permanent exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum New York. I was fortunate enough to see it in the early eighties in Chicago. 

I did an event a couple of year ago called 'Inspirational Women' and invited over 100 women to a dinner at the Malthouse themed on Judy's work. It was a fantastic event and celebrated the unique and inspirational qualities of those invited. Both my daughters were on the invitation list, they have both inspired me and continue to do so.

So a strange little foray into the meaning of meals together resulting from one such yesterday!

Now onto breakfast and then - oh yes - lunch with my lovely new friend director Tim Major. I think that might be a long one!

Have a good lunch today yourselves!