A Theatre for Dreamers – A Second Stream of Words and Music with Polly Samson and David Gilmour

To celebrate her new novel A Theatre for Dreamers entering The Sunday Times’ Bestsellers list at No. 2, Polly Samson and her ‘Von Trapped Family’ have hosted another live stream of words and music while under lockdown.

The live stream opened with a harp and guitar duet by Romany and David Gilmour which is part of a forthcoming new song written for and about the novel. This week’s stream featured readings from the book, questions from the audience and fascinating insights into the island of Hydra in 1960 including photographs by James Burke of the first public performance by Leonard Cohen.

During research for the book, Polly discovered the song that Cohen would have been playing in those photos was probably Fingerprints, which he later recorded for the album Death of a Ladies’ Man. David Gilmour performed an exclusive version of the song during the live stream and closed out the evening with Leonard Cohen’s Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.

The streams are adapted versions of the special events rescheduled for September where the audience will be transported to the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, and a world dancing on the edge of revolution, where a circle of poets, painters, writers and musicians live tangled lives. It’s a story of utopian dreams and innocence lost, of the troubled King and Queen of Bohemia, Charmian Clift and George Johnson, of a young poet named Leonard Cohen, and his Marianne; and of Erica Hart, an 18-year-old in search of answers.