Five things to do in London: William Burroughs celebration, The Room, and Dallas Buyers Club
Haven't made plans for this weekend, Londoners? Patrick Smith offers some tips on how to fill your diary. This week includes a William S Burroughs evening and a screening of The Room.
By Patrick Smith / 2:55PM GMT 07 Feb 2014
Thanks for the Mescaline: Willam S Burroughs in Toronto in 1960 Photo: TS/Keystone USA / Rex Features
1. Interzone (Friday 8pm - 3am, £20)
Think of William S Burroughs and several things spring to mind. One: that he was a literary genius, a cantankerous renegade of the Beat Generation responsible for such searing works as Junky and Naked Lunch. Two: that he was a drug addict for 40 years, who cut off the top of his little pinky, claiming it was a Native American initiation rite. Three: that he shot his second wife Joan Vollmer while "playing a game of William Tell" at a party. Burroughs was an artist in every sense of the word: a painter, a satirist, a polemicist, a philosopher. And plenty more besides.
On February 5, he would have turned 100. To celebrate this, those clever people at Guerrilla Zoo are putting on an "immersive" event inspired by his life and times, taking place in a secret location. Billed as a cross between Naked Lunch and Punch Drunk, it'll be part promenade theatre, part performance art, and will be based in a heaving marketplace themed around his Interzone stories. Expect gun runners, drug smugglers, tax-evading tycoons and beat eccentrics, as well as magical and alien creatures.
Book tickets here; full travel details will be emailed to you shortly before the event.
Think of William S Burroughs and several things spring to mind. One: that he was a literary genius, a cantankerous renegade of the Beat Generation responsible for such searing works as Junky and Naked Lunch. Two: that he was a drug addict for 40 years, who cut off the top of his little pinky, claiming it was a Native American initiation rite. Three: that he shot his second wife Joan Vollmer while "playing a game of William Tell" at a party. Burroughs was an artist in every sense of the word: a painter, a satirist, a polemicist, a philosopher. And plenty more besides.
On February 5, he would have turned 100. To celebrate this, those clever people at Guerrilla Zoo are putting on an "immersive" event inspired by his life and times, taking place in a secret location. Billed as a cross between Naked Lunch and Punch Drunk, it'll be part promenade theatre, part performance art, and will be based in a heaving marketplace themed around his Interzone stories. Expect gun runners, drug smugglers, tax-evading tycoons and beat eccentrics, as well as magical and alien creatures.
Book tickets here; full travel details will be emailed to you shortly before the event.
