Blacktooth Productions
Blacktooth Productions is a not-for-profit performance group based in Finsbury Park, north London.
We specialise is literary events mixing readings with live music and raucous anecdotes. Since 2005 we have put on more than 40 shows, covering such subjects as the Chelsea Hotel, Bob Dylan, Great Eccentrics, the Animal Kingdom, Holidays, histories of Hornsey and Highgate, James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ and the life of WB Yeats.
Our most recent show was about hotels and included anecdotage about Patti Smith, Mick Jagger, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton, Dorothy Parker, Kenneth Tynan, Frank Sinatra, the Beat poets and Billy Idol alongside readings from various classics (and less than classics), washed down with music from a cocktail bar pianist.
We’ve used a number of venues over the years. They include Hornsey Town Hall; the Earl Haig Hall in Crouch End; a sculptor’s studio in N16; the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury; the Free Word Centre in Clerkenwell; the Cross Kings pub at King’s Cross; the Wheatsheaf in Soho; the Welsh chapel in Fitzrovia; and St Ethelburga’s in the East End.
Blacktooth is run by three people: Mick Kidd, of the Biff cartoons; Nigel Pike, a former advertising executive; and Chris Howe, a journalist.
We advertise each event via Eventbrite and our own mailing lists and usually get between 70 and 100 people. Here are some comments from three of them:
‘A tour de force! I am beyond gobsmacked at your talent.’
‘So many stories! And terrific music, too, from the multi-tasking ensemble. I am left with the mental image of a rampaging elephant wrapping its trunk round a statue of Gladstone.’
‘Great show last night. When’s the West End transfer?’