:: Poker Stories :: Four Men and a Poker Game :: Metis Arts ::

Poker Exhibition

Is Poker like life? Or is life like poker?

Have you ever won, only to lose? – Or lost all, only to come up trumps?

WELCOME TO THE POKER STORIES EXHIBITION

What’s it all about?

Whilst creating Four Men and a Poker Game at Northern Stage, a production in which a man tells a tale about poker, people started to tell us their own stories, anecdotes and experiences of the game of poker. Four Men and a Poker Game looks at what happens when you think you can keep winning, regardless of the consequences. It could be seen as a story about capitalism and what happens if you are greedy.

We have been collecting stories, true tales, tall tales, anecdotes and accounts about big wins and great losses in the world of poker – or the game of life. These are featured here in an exhibition that extends throughout the space. The project is funded by Awards for All.

The exhibition also explores the history of poker. One interesting aspect of this history is how often discussion of poker has been linked to the operations of financial speculation on the stock markets. This theme emerges in books about poker as far back as the 19th century, as for example in Richard A. Proctor’s Chance and Luck: a discussion of the laws of luck, coincidences, wagers, lotteries, and the fallacies of gambling (London: 1887), which contains a whole chapter on financial speculation.

Brecht wrote the story Four Men and a Poker Game in 1926, whilst living in Berlin. Between 1921 and 1923 Germany had experienced an extreme level of inflation, making German currency worthless (1 mark in 1914 was equivalent to 726,000,000,000.0 in 1923). Although the mark then stabilised, there was an ever-greater gap between the wealthy or those who had access to foreign currency, and ordinary people who had to struggle to make ends meet. It was not long before the Wall Street Crash in 1929 would bring the stock markets tumbling down in America. This production has been planned since the Spring, and we first explored the story for an artist’s residency at Cove Park, two years ago – so it is interesting that the story’s exploration of attitudes to winning and losing feels so pertinent in relation to the current financial crisis.

A TALE TO TELL?

Do you have a tale to tell about poker? Or about winning and losing in life?

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