No one contributing to this book actually draws conclusions quite as wild as this, but that is because it is a deceptively innocent book, as local histories invariably are. And this is a very local history, chronicling a space about twice the size of the average living room but through which, over twenty-one years, has passed thousands of performers and writers and voyeurs in a theatrical equivalent of stacking telephone boxes or Mini-Minors.

As all local histories do, this book will have two audiences: those who were there and those who weren’t. Those who weren’t will glean a gossipy impression of a frenzied and generous ‘intimate’ performing space whose alumni include enough people who are now sufficiently famous or at least half-famous, or at the very least local legends – for the book to trade on a false but titillating sense of familiarity. But the main audience will consist of those who were there, either as performers or as the performed upon.

The first thing these people – the ones who were there – will do (and I have tested this) is to look for their own name. If it is there, they will buy the book. There is a corollary to this of course – if their name isn’t there, they won’t – and that is the down-side risk. But if the marketing basis of all local histories is to include as many names as possible then this book is a beauty! Of its 112 pages, fifty-seven are devoted to listing every production and those associated with it. It is to this aromatic list that the hard-core La Mama aficionado will immediately turn. My own response? Priapismic. It is, as we used to say, ‘one of the great’ lists. The only thing more I could have wished for was a complete list of audience members (but, alas, no-one keeps bookings sheets).

But we ought to keep such lists. One night, in about 1966, in the hour before dawn, drunken curiosity led me into the recently abandoned Carlton Synagogue. As my eyes became accustomed to the thick light I was amazed to see that the whole floor was inches deep in loose sheets of paper which a current of heavy air was gently rippling from below. They were the discarded financial records – the name of every Carlton Jewish family was there, with their exact weekly contribution, going back year by year to the twenties. As I waded through, harvesting armfuls of the past, the surface of the paper swamp began rocking and heaving and suddenly from beneath it rose up a figure with a long beard, pages streaming from its head and shoulders. I froze in terror. We stared at each other until each realized that the other was harmless. He was just a dero who had found it warm to sleep beneath the papery blanket, and I was just a young man anxious to get my hands on history – even someone else’s. I apologized and left him to slide back under the comforting waves of minutiae. But since then I have always respected the power of lists to summon up apparitions.

The La Mama book is an emporium of theatrical ghosts, a winter catalogue of the half-forgotten. Figures rise up out of the list as vividly as the tramp in the synagogue. Figures in the lane. Figures on the staircase. Figures waiting. Figures banging on the door. All making their pilgrimages to this quaint and lovable building because they believe it contains the elixir of eternal theatrical youth. And the audience and the actors drink from the same urn. Indeed, the original coffee urn is on display at The Performing Arts Museum as if it were some mystic receptacle. As, of course, it is. (It couldn’t have been the coffee – it must have been the urn).

The La Mama audiences are as fearless as the performers. At one stage, to accommodate more people, elevated platforms were built up into the corners, and to get to these seats the audience had to enter through a trapdoor in the ceiling. These audiences and the performers have an unspoken pact – that they will both return. And they do. In the course of an improvisation in which I was a dog I once bit an audience member on the leg (I think it was Bernie Grindberg). After the show he came up to me and asked whether, if he came back the next night and brought some friends, I would bite him again. He did come back and I bit him. Of course I did. It was La Mama. It would have been unthinkable not to.

The second thing these people – the people who were there – will do when they pick up this book, is to look for the mistakes. I am glad to report that, just as La Mama has never been a home to perfection, so there are probably enough errors of attribution, omission and so on, in the book, to excite any reader. I won’t list them. Everyone likes to find their own. I found mine.

The introduction hints at some of the flavours, and the quotes and photographs may help fill out the meal for those without memories, but the list is the thing because it teases open the back doors of the mind without the irritating intrusion of anyone else’s anecdotal gloss.

I read this list and I shake my head. It’s like turning the handle on one of those ‘What- the-Butler-Saw’ machines – the cards flip past: the famous ‘blue flame’ performance of Hibberd’s ‘Who’ when Jon Hawkes lit Lindsay Smith’s fart; Meg Clancy slapping her mini-skirted thigh; the audience following the actors down to ‘the police station after they had been arrested by the Vice Squad; Peter Carmody dancing on his gammy leg; Tribe transfixed in deep but silent communication under the Manson-like influence of Doug Anders; and David Kendall trying to act without his glasses. Each item is a ticket to a full-blown, lurid production in the mind.

But I do lament the failure to mention the ‘group gropes’ which were such a feature of the early workshops and sometimes even figured in performance. These were a quintessential late-1960s phenomenon in which, at the end of a session, we would writhe about in a heap on the floor, in slow motion, tentatively touching one another. It was a perfect metaphor for the period.