Emma Bennett – Bird Talk
Alex Kelly and Annie Lloyd – The Dust Archive
Dan Canham – 30 Cecil Street
Nice varied programme. Three artists. Still out quite early. Nice. Let's talk about the work, shall we?
Apparently Emma Bennett has something of a cult following. Possibly because she's primarily based in Bristol, and hadn't appeared at Forest Fringe before, I'd been previously oblivious. Which is frustrating because, on the strength of this performance, she really does seem to be Very Good Indeed and I want to see more*.
Bird Talk is, what? I think I'd like to categorise it as a performance of a poem. But it has an intrinsic element of video incorporated into it. And, arguably, it is performed “in character”.
Overall, it most reminded me of Chris Goode's An Introduction to Speed Reading (and also Hippo World Guest Book), but that's slightly misleading. While, it shares with both an illustration of a hurtling toward entropy, it is performed, initially at least, far more gently.
There is a basic set-up, which is that Bennett (or, “Bennett”) is delivering an slideshow-illustrated lecture on how to recognise different sorts of birds. However, the slides – well, it's a film or something more akin to a powerpoint presentation really, but there's a retro- quality to the pictures used, giving the impression that they *should* be slides *really* – the slides aren't behaving themselves. Controlled by an unseen force, they switch back and forth, then jamming, holding on one particular image for too long. Often this is a long shot of a bird table.
“Bennett”, meanwhile, tries to deliver the appropriate bit of text which should be matched to each image. At first, while the slides are behaving in a reasonably orderly fashion, this is easy enough, but gradually, as slides flicker in and out of vision, sometimes with alarming rapidity, her spoken text becomes fractured and fragmentary.
Of course, since Bennett will have edited this film together herself – and I'd be interested to know whether she did this to illustrate the text, or wrote the text to accompany the film – this impression is of course completely misleading, but it's odd how effective as an impression it is. Instead of automatically thinking of the piece as *a text*, it does actually take some active remembering to do so. Which I liked a lot.
If it owes something to difficult modernist poetry it also feels like it owes a slight debt to someone like Anna Russell or Joyce Grenfell. Well, no. That's over-selling it somewhat, but Emma Bennett, as befitting someone who sounds like two Austen heroines at once, or rather “Emma Bennett” the character in this piece, does have a delivery style that owes more to Blue Peter than something more confrontational. In the context of this piece, and generally, this is A Good Thing.
It also, I think, allows Bennett to get an awful long way on charm charm and amusement alone.
I do sometimes wonder if it's entirely helpful to British, well, to British anything really, that we're so apparently addicted to charm and laughter. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm as British as the next person, and I fall for it every time, but I do sometimes wonder if it doesn't wrong-foot a few things. Because, while Bennett's piece emphatically *was* both funny and charming, I'm not sure everyone needed to laugh *quite* so much. And it felt like maybe a few members of the audience we deliberately laughing in preference to actually thinking or receiving the piece differently. None of which is a criticism of Bennett – nor the audience really. I should probably be a whole lot less intolerant and judgemental about such things.
(it's worth noting 30 Cecil Streetalso got a few laughs last night, while I don't remember it getting any on Monday).
Another interesting aspect of Bennett's piece – and this is far and away the most tendentious bit of analysis I've offered all week – is the possible detection of a sexualised undercurrent. On one hand, I think it's probably only my age and addiction to appalling wordplay that makes me wonder if the “Bird” in the title could also be the sixties slang version of “woman”. But then there's some of Bennett's odd phrasings, emphasis on “rumps” and birds' legs. And the recurrent motif “get some action on the table” every time the picture of the bird table repeatedly flashes up. And, given what a thorough bit of writing this seems to be, I find it hard to imagine it's a complete coincidence.
Towards the end, as the slides/images have broken down, not only sentence structure, but even individual words, angrier fragments can be heard. From the cooing tone of appreciation of the birds' “cute little legs”, the commentary becomes “fucking little legs”. And as the words break down yet further, the sound of disorganisation turns to panic and a large birds face staring directly into the camera briefly flashes up a number of times.
I think once probably isn't enough times to see this intricate little piece enough to fully appreciate what it might be up to, but once is certainly enough to make me want to search out more of Bennett's work and see more of it.
Next up, and off in a totally different direction, Alex Kelly (already seen at FT@TG what now seems like aeons ago on the first night) and Annie Lloyd basically presented the book they've made about the now-defunct Studio Theatre at Leeds Met Uni., The Dust Archive.
Now, I don't know what watching this was like for anyone else, but since I was at Leeds University proper between 1996 and 1999, and it was there that I first got into theatre at all, the Leeds Met. Studio was one of the most vital theatres I ever went to.
The thing that was special about the Leeds Met Studio Theatre was that it programmed touring productions by all the important small-scale alternative theatre companies, as well as giving space to home-grown companies to develop work and to local companies to put on shows. While the University theatre gave me a grounding in usually quite standard student productions of classics from Shakespeare to Pinter; the Theatre Studies department put on student-acted productions of obscure bits of early Howard Brenton (I surely must be one of only about fifty people in this country who's seen a revival of Sore Throats) or Wole Soyinka; and the West Yorkshire Playhouse, then under the doleful iron heel of Jude Kelly, put on mostly rubbish. And Northern Broadsides; it was the Met Studio Theatre where I got to see really early stuff by Imitating the Dog and Third Angel and Unlimited Theatre and even my first Forced Entertainment show – which I *so* didn't even faintly begin to understand at the time.
But, as a consequence of all the above, my experience of what was essentially not really a performance lecture, or even an actual lecture, so much as a bit of a talk with some video and some anecdotes.
In a way, I'd quite like to see it worked up into an *actual* performance – with perhaps *more*, and more varied documentary materials. But also perhaps a bit more context on the artists who are being talked about – at one stage there was a list of the sorts of people they were talking about, and I'm pretty sure the look that the two girls in the row in front of me exchanged was basically saying “Who? Nope, I've not heard of any of these people, have you?”
At the same time, for me, it was a lovely wander down MemoryStraße. And, actually, quite a jolt to think that it was 13 years ago when I first saw Chris Thorpe's Static at the Met Studio, and probably a year or two before that when I first saw Unlimited doing No Brave World (which I think was also the first professional show I ever reviewed. For Leeds University Theatre Group's newsletter. Dear God). Or seeing John Donnelly's second play Personal Matters there, being done by Tony Singh's company Conspiracy Theatre before it went to BAC, or indeed, seeing John in Conspiracy's production of Caryl Churchill's Thyestes. Even odder that I'm still seeing these people only last week and still in the context of, well, a small black box slightly outside the mainstream.
So, yes; a lot of personal memories, possibly crowding out what I was actually watching and listening to. And yet, I think this piece would have legs for anyone who has any history of going to a specific venue – perhaps most of all if it was to see any of those artists associated with this one.
Another really interesting effect of the piece was the effect that its proximity to the final piece of the evening, 30 Cecil Street, had on the latter.
Returning to it last night after first seeing it on Monday, it was fascinating to see the piece go from effectively being framed as “the second thing about Limerick/Ireland” on the night, to “the next thing about theatres that have closed”.
As a pairing, I felt that The Dust Archive did a lot more for 30 Cecil Street than the bleakness of Hammer and Bell.
The piece opens with Canham switching on a reel-to-reel tape player (although the actual sound comes from the theatre's sound system, and probably an MP3 plugged into the sound-desk, but...). He then marks out the floor with masking tape. The resonance between this and the floorplans on every page of The Dust Archive was so strong that you almost wish they'd had it as a motif as well. Or you wanted them to get Canham to do it during their piece too.
All the while that he's marking out the floor, an interview with someone (two people, actually) who was obviously very connected to the Theatre Royal which stands/stood at the titular address in Limerick. There's an older man and a younger woman. The older man talks about the place being turned into a club, or a venue for bands. He remembers fights. The girl doesn't remember any fights.
The memories continue until they are interrupted by music. Lyrical, orchestral music at first. Canham, seated in a chair, begins to twitch and move in time with the music. Then he's out of the chair, the music switching around him as his body seems to be physically buffeted by the changes of style and pace. There's house music, and then suddenly there's old fashion dancing music: waltzes, hot jazz, whatever music it is that people used to tap dance to...
Then there's a section where Canham is dancing only to the sound of recorded footfalls on a bigger, more echoing, more hollow stage. We suppose it is him dancing on the stage of this old abandoned theatre in Limerick. This is perhaps the most successful moment of the piece – there is a satisfying level of technical skill watching someone dance so precisely – their feet hitting the ground exactly in time with the beat of the recorded dancer. The quality of the sound recording is also lovely. These echoing footsteps are an effective way of evoking the larger space in the smaller one.
Gradually these footsteps too fade away and the voices return as Canham leaves the stage and a spotlight fades on the reel-to-reel tape machine as the voices reflect “it takes a long time to build up a scene, and a very short time to kill it.” “Or a town,” the other voice reflects. “And they've have a bloody good go at this one”.
*happily, we *can* all see a bit more Emma Bennett as she has a Vimeo channel. Yay.
post-script: also, something about the qualities of retro-looking images and increasingly fractured delivery in Bird Talk also reminded me of this short “KFC commercial” made by Peter Serafinowicz (definitely worth two minutes of your time):
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Forest Fringe at the Gate – 8
Tassos Stevens – Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits)
Dan Canham – 30 Cecil Street (not reviewed here)
In what appears to be my mad rush to break all the rules of theatre criticism in a fortnight, my confession for today's Forest Fringe review is twofold. Firstly, I read other reviews of the show. Second, Tassos and I had a bit of a chat about the show over a drink afterwards. And, third, I left at the interval. As you'll notice, leaving at the interval doesn't actually mean anything, since afterwards it was another performance of Dan Canham's 30 Cecil Street, which I'd watched the night before.
So this is just a review of Tassos Stevens's Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits). And, if it starts to feel like the word count is slightly smaller than usual, you can bet your ass I'm going to be using that full title throughout...
As it happens, I'd read Maddy Costa's brilliant review of Jimmy Stewart... before Christmas, when I just assumed I probably wouldn't ever get round to seeing it. But then I read it again today, and I also read Miriam Gillinson's excellent account of last night's show, and went back and had a re-read of Matt Trueman's review of the thing at BAC.
There is actually a reason for this beyond sheer impish perversity.
Something I've found incredibly liberating about reviewing all these Forest Fringe shows at the Gate is the fact that I've been pretty much the only one doing it. Ok, it's true, Diana Damian has written a couple up brilliantly for Exeunt, and Lyn Gardner came to the first one, as previously discussed - and now Miriam saw last night's. But I'm the only person who's doing nearly the whole lot.
And I have to say, it's made me feel a whole lot more inclined to write, and indeed feel some responsibility for writing these reviews. Precisely because, if I don't write it, then some of those nights will never get written up. And I think there's been stuff too good to get lost, and an overall sense of trajectory which is incredibly valuable and important as well.
Ok, this would be a separate blog if I had time, but I don't think I do so... Another element of why I'm finding this fortnight a more conducive and congenial way of writing, as well as the “embedded” thing, is that being the only person writing about a show makes the whole thing feel a lot less competitive and a whole lot less *fighty*.
I'm sure I'll get that urge back at some point sooner or later, but it does feel quite relaxing not writing in a way that feels subconsciously like you're largely writing only to contradict someone else's opinion, and in some way mentally bludgeon their opinion to death by way of superior argument, better understanding, and cleverer insights. But even that is better than just discovering you've knocked up a differently worded part of an overwhelming consensus.
It may or may not even be significant that knowing there are already at least three other really very well-written reviews of Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits) is why this is the first review I haven't managed to write/finish/post the day after I saw the show.
And, if I keep waffling on about reviewing it, and therefore not actually reviewing it, that is likely to remain the case, and will doubtless push last night (Wednesday)'s review over to tomorrow and everything will go wrong. Etc.
It's almost tempting, given the existence of those other reviews, to try to include only things that no one else has said yet, but frankly, that would be harder than simply writing up the whole thing, and you kind of need to describe the whole *as you see it* to put your take on it out there anyway.
So, Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits)...
Well, it's essentially a story. Apparently exactly 57 minutes long. The story posits the theory that James Stewart – yes, *that* James Stewart, the actor famous for Rear Window and It's a Wonderful Life and Harvey – is in fact from Mars. And, Mork and Mindy-style, finds himself on Earth, reporting back to a mysterious controlling agency on Mars about life here. There's some neatly observed stuff about how long it takes sound to travel to Mars (eight minutes and 20? seconds), and so whenever Stewart receives a phone call, he knows that he's going to have to wait 16 minutes for a reply to what he replies.
The story itself concerns Stewart's attempts to understand and define the human emotion love. A process which Stewart begins to undertake, in the 80s, by listening to a lot of radio. Stevens rattles through a section in which the lyrics from many 80s pop songs are held up as attempted working definitions of love, with Stewart analysing them, and wanting to know what love is as fervently as Foreigner.
From here, Stewart leaves his flat (was that a Rear Window reference I missed?) and goes off into town and wanders around. He meets a rabbit. Not a giant pink one, like in Harvey (which I haven't seen, but clearly need to – and doubtless there are hundreds more references that are lost on me, although I think I did ok on the pop lyrics round), but one which Stevens describes as “looking exactly like the rabbit you've just imagined” [paraphrase - I don't take notes].
There's quite a lot of that sort of thing – drawing our attention to the level of collaborative agency we have in the making of this piece with our imaginations. Stevens also uses a “synaesthetic soundtrack”, to wit, an A3 pad with the sounds he wants us to hear written down. This starts off as quite normal descriptions of sounds, gradually becoming more impressionistic, surreal and specific. Oddly, it reminded me most of Simon Stephens's “impossible” stage directions between the individual sections of P*rnography - “Images of hell. They are silent”. Except these ones tend to be kinder, more pleasant sonic pictures.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me, though, about Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits) was how much of it I Just. Didn't. Get.
Dan Canham – 30 Cecil Street (not reviewed here)
In what appears to be my mad rush to break all the rules of theatre criticism in a fortnight, my confession for today's Forest Fringe review is twofold. Firstly, I read other reviews of the show. Second, Tassos and I had a bit of a chat about the show over a drink afterwards. And, third, I left at the interval. As you'll notice, leaving at the interval doesn't actually mean anything, since afterwards it was another performance of Dan Canham's 30 Cecil Street, which I'd watched the night before.
So this is just a review of Tassos Stevens's Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits). And, if it starts to feel like the word count is slightly smaller than usual, you can bet your ass I'm going to be using that full title throughout...
As it happens, I'd read Maddy Costa's brilliant review of Jimmy Stewart... before Christmas, when I just assumed I probably wouldn't ever get round to seeing it. But then I read it again today, and I also read Miriam Gillinson's excellent account of last night's show, and went back and had a re-read of Matt Trueman's review of the thing at BAC.
There is actually a reason for this beyond sheer impish perversity.
Something I've found incredibly liberating about reviewing all these Forest Fringe shows at the Gate is the fact that I've been pretty much the only one doing it. Ok, it's true, Diana Damian has written a couple up brilliantly for Exeunt, and Lyn Gardner came to the first one, as previously discussed - and now Miriam saw last night's. But I'm the only person who's doing nearly the whole lot.
And I have to say, it's made me feel a whole lot more inclined to write, and indeed feel some responsibility for writing these reviews. Precisely because, if I don't write it, then some of those nights will never get written up. And I think there's been stuff too good to get lost, and an overall sense of trajectory which is incredibly valuable and important as well.
Ok, this would be a separate blog if I had time, but I don't think I do so... Another element of why I'm finding this fortnight a more conducive and congenial way of writing, as well as the “embedded” thing, is that being the only person writing about a show makes the whole thing feel a lot less competitive and a whole lot less *fighty*.
I'm sure I'll get that urge back at some point sooner or later, but it does feel quite relaxing not writing in a way that feels subconsciously like you're largely writing only to contradict someone else's opinion, and in some way mentally bludgeon their opinion to death by way of superior argument, better understanding, and cleverer insights. But even that is better than just discovering you've knocked up a differently worded part of an overwhelming consensus.
It may or may not even be significant that knowing there are already at least three other really very well-written reviews of Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits) is why this is the first review I haven't managed to write/finish/post the day after I saw the show.
And, if I keep waffling on about reviewing it, and therefore not actually reviewing it, that is likely to remain the case, and will doubtless push last night (Wednesday)'s review over to tomorrow and everything will go wrong. Etc.
It's almost tempting, given the existence of those other reviews, to try to include only things that no one else has said yet, but frankly, that would be harder than simply writing up the whole thing, and you kind of need to describe the whole *as you see it* to put your take on it out there anyway.
So, Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits)...
Well, it's essentially a story. Apparently exactly 57 minutes long. The story posits the theory that James Stewart – yes, *that* James Stewart, the actor famous for Rear Window and It's a Wonderful Life and Harvey – is in fact from Mars. And, Mork and Mindy-style, finds himself on Earth, reporting back to a mysterious controlling agency on Mars about life here. There's some neatly observed stuff about how long it takes sound to travel to Mars (eight minutes and 20? seconds), and so whenever Stewart receives a phone call, he knows that he's going to have to wait 16 minutes for a reply to what he replies.
The story itself concerns Stewart's attempts to understand and define the human emotion love. A process which Stewart begins to undertake, in the 80s, by listening to a lot of radio. Stevens rattles through a section in which the lyrics from many 80s pop songs are held up as attempted working definitions of love, with Stewart analysing them, and wanting to know what love is as fervently as Foreigner.
From here, Stewart leaves his flat (was that a Rear Window reference I missed?) and goes off into town and wanders around. He meets a rabbit. Not a giant pink one, like in Harvey (which I haven't seen, but clearly need to – and doubtless there are hundreds more references that are lost on me, although I think I did ok on the pop lyrics round), but one which Stevens describes as “looking exactly like the rabbit you've just imagined” [paraphrase - I don't take notes].
There's quite a lot of that sort of thing – drawing our attention to the level of collaborative agency we have in the making of this piece with our imaginations. Stevens also uses a “synaesthetic soundtrack”, to wit, an A3 pad with the sounds he wants us to hear written down. This starts off as quite normal descriptions of sounds, gradually becoming more impressionistic, surreal and specific. Oddly, it reminded me most of Simon Stephens's “impossible” stage directions between the individual sections of P*rnography - “Images of hell. They are silent”. Except these ones tend to be kinder, more pleasant sonic pictures.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me, though, about Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits) was how much of it I Just. Didn't. Get.
Now, let me put this in context. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching the piece. I thought it had a lot of interesting, or funny, or humane things to say. It was a nicely made piece of work. And it seemed quite clever, if perhaps a bit more whimsical at times that I might opt for if I got to pick how whimsical everything was. And I thought at the end, I'd pretty much *got it*.
Thing is, I'd gone to see the show with someone who studied anthropology, and she immediately starting telling me how interesting it was that Stevens had used all this stuff that I Had Never Even Heard Of.
For instance, there's the Oliver Sacks book An Anthropologist on Mars about the autistic anthropologist Temple Grandin. Who also invented the Hugging Machine, several of which feature at one point in the story. I thought these were just a whimsical invention on Stevens's part. There was also his mention of the indeterminacy of translation. Apparently that's a real thing too. Coined by this guy.
All this post-fact information was interesting to me on many levels. First, I was interested that I'd been perfectly able to enjoy the show while plainly not really knowing the half of it. Second, I was interested that it hadn't really been flagged up in the show as something that it was *possible to know*. Third, I wondered what bearing receiving all this information retrospectively was having on what I could now think about the show. Was some of the whimsy that I'd detected, actually *Not Whimsy At All*? I mean, the hugging machines weren't and they were about as whimsical as it got.
So my understanding of that scene went from thinking of it as, well, something quite Douglas Adams-y to something quite different. (although, along with Ben Moor and Daniel Kitson, I'd still include Adams as one of the writers of whose work this piece quite reminded me – all compliments, to my mind, btw).
I've known Tassos for a while (*everyone* knows Tassos, right?) and I guess I knew he was pretty damn clever, but to suddenly have to reset your coodinates on a piece you've just watched quite so sharply is an interesting sensation.
And perhaps mentioning all the above, I've just done the same to a few people who also saw the show, but didn't have the conversation with an anthropologist and with Tassos himself (who has a doctorate in psychology, I learnt), and share my total lack of general knowledge about science and the social sciences.
I dunno, maybe I've been living under an arty rock for too long, and everyone else knows all this stuff, but it was news to me. It also made me want to know, if I kept on asking, how much else within the show also directly referenced stuf I'd never heard of.
And, at the same time, always this constant knowledge that *Not Knowing* at the time, hadn't stopped me enjoying the show, and, possibly, had the footnotes/references been included in it, the thought that perhaps I'd have enjoyed it less, but maybe at the same time, been able to map a more informed course through it.
It was good way to reflect on what part personal knowledge plays in how one ultimately *understands* or receives a piece of theatre.
So that was interesting.
But kind of not actually *about* the show itself.
So, the show – well, it has a lot of clever ideas in it. It is pleasingly witty, and also enjoys putting some really terrible jokes out there too (one pun on paws/pause is particularly excellent/terrible). And it's distressingly tender and comforting.
I say distressing, since I sat in the theatre reflecting inwardly to myself that it was strage that I honestly found watching a show about love somehow more unsettling than Chris Thorpe's pieces about violence, extremism, terrorism and horrific accidents. Which was an interesting reaction, but possibly not one inherent in the piece itself.
So, there we go. Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits) is very good, and also prompted me to think about, and end up writing about, a lot of things that *weren't* actually in the show at all. Or were, but I didn't know it at the time.
Which felt like quite a new experience for something that clearly so much a part of a very familiar artform. Which I liked a lot.
Thing is, I'd gone to see the show with someone who studied anthropology, and she immediately starting telling me how interesting it was that Stevens had used all this stuff that I Had Never Even Heard Of.
For instance, there's the Oliver Sacks book An Anthropologist on Mars about the autistic anthropologist Temple Grandin. Who also invented the Hugging Machine, several of which feature at one point in the story. I thought these were just a whimsical invention on Stevens's part. There was also his mention of the indeterminacy of translation. Apparently that's a real thing too. Coined by this guy.
All this post-fact information was interesting to me on many levels. First, I was interested that I'd been perfectly able to enjoy the show while plainly not really knowing the half of it. Second, I was interested that it hadn't really been flagged up in the show as something that it was *possible to know*. Third, I wondered what bearing receiving all this information retrospectively was having on what I could now think about the show. Was some of the whimsy that I'd detected, actually *Not Whimsy At All*? I mean, the hugging machines weren't and they were about as whimsical as it got.
So my understanding of that scene went from thinking of it as, well, something quite Douglas Adams-y to something quite different. (although, along with Ben Moor and Daniel Kitson, I'd still include Adams as one of the writers of whose work this piece quite reminded me – all compliments, to my mind, btw).
I've known Tassos for a while (*everyone* knows Tassos, right?) and I guess I knew he was pretty damn clever, but to suddenly have to reset your coodinates on a piece you've just watched quite so sharply is an interesting sensation.
And perhaps mentioning all the above, I've just done the same to a few people who also saw the show, but didn't have the conversation with an anthropologist and with Tassos himself (who has a doctorate in psychology, I learnt), and share my total lack of general knowledge about science and the social sciences.
I dunno, maybe I've been living under an arty rock for too long, and everyone else knows all this stuff, but it was news to me. It also made me want to know, if I kept on asking, how much else within the show also directly referenced stuf I'd never heard of.
And, at the same time, always this constant knowledge that *Not Knowing* at the time, hadn't stopped me enjoying the show, and, possibly, had the footnotes/references been included in it, the thought that perhaps I'd have enjoyed it less, but maybe at the same time, been able to map a more informed course through it.
It was good way to reflect on what part personal knowledge plays in how one ultimately *understands* or receives a piece of theatre.
So that was interesting.
But kind of not actually *about* the show itself.
So, the show – well, it has a lot of clever ideas in it. It is pleasingly witty, and also enjoys putting some really terrible jokes out there too (one pun on paws/pause is particularly excellent/terrible). And it's distressingly tender and comforting.
I say distressing, since I sat in the theatre reflecting inwardly to myself that it was strage that I honestly found watching a show about love somehow more unsettling than Chris Thorpe's pieces about violence, extremism, terrorism and horrific accidents. Which was an interesting reaction, but possibly not one inherent in the piece itself.
So, there we go. Jimmy Stewart, an Anthropologist from Mars, Analyses Love and Happiness in Humans (and Rabbits) is very good, and also prompted me to think about, and end up writing about, a lot of things that *weren't* actually in the show at all. Or were, but I didn't know it at the time.
Which felt like quite a new experience for something that clearly so much a part of a very familiar artform. Which I liked a lot.
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Forest Fringe at the Gate – 7
Christina Gangos – Hammer to Bell
Dan Canham – 30 Cecil Street
Little Bulb Theatre
Having banged on about “embeddedness” at some length yesterday, it's perhaps worth noting that I didn't know a single person who presented work last night (Night 7) of Forest Fringe at the Gate (FF@TG).
Week two of FF@TG is being curated by the dancer and theatre-maker Dan Canham. He is performing his big Edinburgh Fringe hit 30 Cecil Street every night, and has lined up an intriguing supporting programme of both Forest Fringe artists and other artists.
Last night's line-up was admirably eclectic: essentially a film, a dance and a band. No actual “theatre” dramatic or postdramatic anywhere to be seen. Which was interesting. It also sort of presents another issue. I'm quite happy spouting my opinions on theatre/performance, largely onn the basis that I've seen quite a lot of it and reckon I've got a reasonably good grasp of the coordinates. I'm very far from an expert on documentary films, contemporary dance or any sort of music, so apologies in advance to all those reviewed below; there are people more qualified to assess your work than I.
Still, this is part of the fun of this fortnight of Forest Fringe, we're all trying new stuff out. Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be trying out writing about stuff that I don't know how to write about... :-)
Interestingly, last night' programme was, in many ways, a lot more oblique than more or less anything shown in the first week (with the possible exception of #TORYCORE™)
First up, was Christina Gangos's 45 minute documentary film Hammer to Bell. You might think a documentary film would be the exact opposite of oblique, seeking to explain its subject and itself as fully as possible. That would be the other sort of documentary film. Hammer to Bell is in fact far closer to the actual possible meaning of the words “documentary film”.
Instead of having an overt thesis or narrative, Hammer... simply pointed a camera at a series of vignettes and, well, *documented* them. The result is remarkably attractive and stylish. The subject of the film is the Irish town of Limerick and some of its inhabitants.
It's interesting that the less overt editorialising there is – there's no voiceover, no one explaining what's going on, or why we're being shown *this* scene, not something else – the more I found myself thinking about it. How much more material had been shot but not used? Were the folk shown in the film typical of the people of Limerick, or had they been picked for being especially idiosyncratic? What were their relationships to the film-maker? Was the film trying to show us what Limerick is *really like*, or demonstrating its capacity for almost Lynch-like oddness?
In a way, though, by the end, it didn't feel as if these questions were especially pressing. The film had a more ambient, meandering quality than that.
What's most striking about the film is that the camera basically never moves. In a couple of scenes, it may very slowly pan up slightly, but normally it is completely fixed. Which makes for a really interesting effect. It's reminiscent of the early documentary films of Peter Greenaway, but also of the way that we watch theatre. It is odd enough to sit in a venue where you're accustomed to have living performers in the same room as you and watch a film. It is even odder when that film turns out to have a few unexpected theatrical properties.
Perhaps it was because I was watching in a theatre context, but oddly, another reference point I'd use to explain the film, or rather, something that the film suggested to me, was a really vivid picture of the sort of worlds created by Samuel Beckett. In one scene, the first, but returned to several times over the course of the film, a man sits absolutely motionless in a chair watching a printing machine running. It is only when he moves, that you're sure that you're not just watching a film of a still photo. Elsewhere, a man sits on his sofa playing with his dog, while his wife sits next to him, apparently completely oblivious to both him and the camera just knitting silently and intently.
The other major/useful aesthetic touchstone is the photographs of Nan Goldin. If you imagine this, magically animate with such thick Irish accents that the (Irish) film-maker has felt the need to subtitle them, then you'll have a pretty good idea of what Hammer and Bell looks like.
Dan Canham's 30 Cecil Street is also about Limerick (neat bit of curating, that). Specifically, about the Limerick Athenaeum or Theatre Royal which could be found at the titular address. The building has been closed now for 14 years. Apart from on the flyer for the show, we are never shown the building. Instead, Canham mixes recorded sound with dance to conjure the building, its history and its present.
Unlike Thorpe last week, Canham is performing 30 Cecil Street every night this week, which theoretically means that I can watch and review it six different times, and try not to say the same thing twice (while also not contradicting previous reviews). This strikes me as quite an interesting challenge – although I apologise to Canham in advance that I'm using his piece as an exercise.
As such, I think I'll say relatively little about this first viewing, since I was pretty tired last night and probably – partly because I knew I'd be seeing it again – didn't concentrate as hard as I could/should have done.
One thing I did notice, however, which partially re-affirmed my preference for live performance over films (and if you're anything like me, you do sometimes find yourself wondering if you really *do* prefer performance, or whether it's just something you've fallen into by mistake). But, here, with all other things being equal (the seats, the room, the audience) it was incredible just how much more engaging watching a live person was, compared with making yourself concentrate on a film.
Perhaps it wasn't an entirely equal contest since the film was *very* static and oblique, while 30 Cecil Street is overtly eye-catching and crowd-pleasing.
The last item on the bill was the company Little Bulb Theatre.
Like most people, I suspect, I first saw Little Bulb in 2008 doing their reputation-making show Crocosmia in a terrible little venue on the Royal Mile. It was amazingly playful-yet-sad and as far as I remember, was a critical and commercial smash hit on the Fringe.
Since then, for some reason I've largely managed to miss their work. I say “for some reason”, but that's a bit disingenuous. Actually, I have seen them as house-band at Forest Fringe (the actual one in Edinburgh), and very enjoyable they were too, in a late-night, couple-of-drinks-first kinda way, but “for some reason” I never felt particularly compelled to go and catch their next couple of shows. Actually, I suppose *that reason* was the way that subsequent shows were raved about. Not the fact that they were being raved about, that's fine, if a bit tiresome, but more the manner in which they were raved about. Nothing anyone said made them sound like they'd be especially appealing to me. But mostly I was just in a big old grump with Edinburgh and didn't fancy enjoying myself. I wanted to watch depressing, dark, analytical things with hard edges and straight lines, not cosy pastoral, rural, fluff (like I say, I didn't actually see it, but that was how everyone who told me about it made it sound).
So, I suppose it was with a small amount of trepidation that I wandered back into the Gate after Little Bulb had set up their instruments. I'd so loved the apparent turn-around (as I perceived it) of FF from purveyors of hand-made, home-knitted twee to something much more hardcore, and I didn't really want to see that continuum broken.
Actually, as it happens, I needn't have worried. Granted what Little Bulb did do last night was a world away from Chris Thorpe's fictions or Lucy Ellinson's #TORYCORE™, but it did a) seem to have a bit more style than I'd previously given Little Bulb credit for, and b) also reminded me that I do actually have the capacity to be charmed.
Their new shtick is doing the Parisian Gypsy Jazz scene of the 1930s. Last night they only played music, but apparently these songs (really rather fine) come from their new show, which is apparently based on Orpheus in the Underworld. And the music of Django Reinhardt. Which sounds quite fun. They also won me over by having pretty much all the inter-song banter in French. Actual French. Not piss-taking Franglais but an actual foreign language. Good. British theatre needs a lot more foreign languages in it.
[sorry for abrupt ending. Need to leave for tonight's show. Will round off and polish tomorrow, when hopefully I'll be feeling a bit more lucid and lively...]
Dan Canham – 30 Cecil Street
Little Bulb Theatre
Having banged on about “embeddedness” at some length yesterday, it's perhaps worth noting that I didn't know a single person who presented work last night (Night 7) of Forest Fringe at the Gate (FF@TG).
Week two of FF@TG is being curated by the dancer and theatre-maker Dan Canham. He is performing his big Edinburgh Fringe hit 30 Cecil Street every night, and has lined up an intriguing supporting programme of both Forest Fringe artists and other artists.
Last night's line-up was admirably eclectic: essentially a film, a dance and a band. No actual “theatre” dramatic or postdramatic anywhere to be seen. Which was interesting. It also sort of presents another issue. I'm quite happy spouting my opinions on theatre/performance, largely onn the basis that I've seen quite a lot of it and reckon I've got a reasonably good grasp of the coordinates. I'm very far from an expert on documentary films, contemporary dance or any sort of music, so apologies in advance to all those reviewed below; there are people more qualified to assess your work than I.
Still, this is part of the fun of this fortnight of Forest Fringe, we're all trying new stuff out. Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be trying out writing about stuff that I don't know how to write about... :-)
Interestingly, last night' programme was, in many ways, a lot more oblique than more or less anything shown in the first week (with the possible exception of #TORYCORE™)
First up, was Christina Gangos's 45 minute documentary film Hammer to Bell. You might think a documentary film would be the exact opposite of oblique, seeking to explain its subject and itself as fully as possible. That would be the other sort of documentary film. Hammer to Bell is in fact far closer to the actual possible meaning of the words “documentary film”.
Instead of having an overt thesis or narrative, Hammer... simply pointed a camera at a series of vignettes and, well, *documented* them. The result is remarkably attractive and stylish. The subject of the film is the Irish town of Limerick and some of its inhabitants.
It's interesting that the less overt editorialising there is – there's no voiceover, no one explaining what's going on, or why we're being shown *this* scene, not something else – the more I found myself thinking about it. How much more material had been shot but not used? Were the folk shown in the film typical of the people of Limerick, or had they been picked for being especially idiosyncratic? What were their relationships to the film-maker? Was the film trying to show us what Limerick is *really like*, or demonstrating its capacity for almost Lynch-like oddness?
In a way, though, by the end, it didn't feel as if these questions were especially pressing. The film had a more ambient, meandering quality than that.
What's most striking about the film is that the camera basically never moves. In a couple of scenes, it may very slowly pan up slightly, but normally it is completely fixed. Which makes for a really interesting effect. It's reminiscent of the early documentary films of Peter Greenaway, but also of the way that we watch theatre. It is odd enough to sit in a venue where you're accustomed to have living performers in the same room as you and watch a film. It is even odder when that film turns out to have a few unexpected theatrical properties.
Perhaps it was because I was watching in a theatre context, but oddly, another reference point I'd use to explain the film, or rather, something that the film suggested to me, was a really vivid picture of the sort of worlds created by Samuel Beckett. In one scene, the first, but returned to several times over the course of the film, a man sits absolutely motionless in a chair watching a printing machine running. It is only when he moves, that you're sure that you're not just watching a film of a still photo. Elsewhere, a man sits on his sofa playing with his dog, while his wife sits next to him, apparently completely oblivious to both him and the camera just knitting silently and intently.
The other major/useful aesthetic touchstone is the photographs of Nan Goldin. If you imagine this, magically animate with such thick Irish accents that the (Irish) film-maker has felt the need to subtitle them, then you'll have a pretty good idea of what Hammer and Bell looks like.
Dan Canham's 30 Cecil Street is also about Limerick (neat bit of curating, that). Specifically, about the Limerick Athenaeum or Theatre Royal which could be found at the titular address. The building has been closed now for 14 years. Apart from on the flyer for the show, we are never shown the building. Instead, Canham mixes recorded sound with dance to conjure the building, its history and its present.
Unlike Thorpe last week, Canham is performing 30 Cecil Street every night this week, which theoretically means that I can watch and review it six different times, and try not to say the same thing twice (while also not contradicting previous reviews). This strikes me as quite an interesting challenge – although I apologise to Canham in advance that I'm using his piece as an exercise.
As such, I think I'll say relatively little about this first viewing, since I was pretty tired last night and probably – partly because I knew I'd be seeing it again – didn't concentrate as hard as I could/should have done.
One thing I did notice, however, which partially re-affirmed my preference for live performance over films (and if you're anything like me, you do sometimes find yourself wondering if you really *do* prefer performance, or whether it's just something you've fallen into by mistake). But, here, with all other things being equal (the seats, the room, the audience) it was incredible just how much more engaging watching a live person was, compared with making yourself concentrate on a film.
Perhaps it wasn't an entirely equal contest since the film was *very* static and oblique, while 30 Cecil Street is overtly eye-catching and crowd-pleasing.
The last item on the bill was the company Little Bulb Theatre.
Like most people, I suspect, I first saw Little Bulb in 2008 doing their reputation-making show Crocosmia in a terrible little venue on the Royal Mile. It was amazingly playful-yet-sad and as far as I remember, was a critical and commercial smash hit on the Fringe.
Since then, for some reason I've largely managed to miss their work. I say “for some reason”, but that's a bit disingenuous. Actually, I have seen them as house-band at Forest Fringe (the actual one in Edinburgh), and very enjoyable they were too, in a late-night, couple-of-drinks-first kinda way, but “for some reason” I never felt particularly compelled to go and catch their next couple of shows. Actually, I suppose *that reason* was the way that subsequent shows were raved about. Not the fact that they were being raved about, that's fine, if a bit tiresome, but more the manner in which they were raved about. Nothing anyone said made them sound like they'd be especially appealing to me. But mostly I was just in a big old grump with Edinburgh and didn't fancy enjoying myself. I wanted to watch depressing, dark, analytical things with hard edges and straight lines, not cosy pastoral, rural, fluff (like I say, I didn't actually see it, but that was how everyone who told me about it made it sound).
So, I suppose it was with a small amount of trepidation that I wandered back into the Gate after Little Bulb had set up their instruments. I'd so loved the apparent turn-around (as I perceived it) of FF from purveyors of hand-made, home-knitted twee to something much more hardcore, and I didn't really want to see that continuum broken.
Actually, as it happens, I needn't have worried. Granted what Little Bulb did do last night was a world away from Chris Thorpe's fictions or Lucy Ellinson's #TORYCORE™, but it did a) seem to have a bit more style than I'd previously given Little Bulb credit for, and b) also reminded me that I do actually have the capacity to be charmed.
Their new shtick is doing the Parisian Gypsy Jazz scene of the 1930s. Last night they only played music, but apparently these songs (really rather fine) come from their new show, which is apparently based on Orpheus in the Underworld. And the music of Django Reinhardt. Which sounds quite fun. They also won me over by having pretty much all the inter-song banter in French. Actual French. Not piss-taking Franglais but an actual foreign language. Good. British theatre needs a lot more foreign languages in it.
[sorry for abrupt ending. Need to leave for tonight's show. Will round off and polish tomorrow, when hopefully I'll be feeling a bit more lucid and lively...]
Monday, 16 April 2012
Embedded
Strangely, this is a piece I've been quite interested in writing for a while now, but my fortnight at FF@TG seems to have made it feel a bit more focussed than hitherto.
The idea of “embedded critics” seems to have gained something a momentum recently. Perhaps the most interesting session (to me) at this year's Devoted and Disgruntled was the one called by Maddy Costa and Jake Orr on this very subject. Their basic question was: “What new dialogue can we set up between people who write about theatre and people who make it?” with the sub-question “Do we want to maintain a distance between the people who write about theatre and the people who make it?” (full report here).
Only a couple of days after D&D, I went to Kurdistan with ATC and their touring production of Roland Schimmelpfennig's Golden Dragon (my first report on this is published in the paper version of The Stage this week – doesn't seem to be online yet). Being in Iraq and a journalist, jokes about my being “embedded” abounded.
And it is an interesting position for “a critic” to find themselves in. Indeed, the question of “embeddedness” is one that goes to the very heart of what we think a critic is *for*. Or what a critic's job is/should be.
I've written before about the slightly funny, symbiotic relationship between critics and theatre. Obviously there is a school of thought which holds that the critic is essentially a parasite, feeding off a host body and is incapable of surviving without it.
As a basic model, I think I prefer those birds that apparently hop into the mouths of crocodiles and pick bits of food from between their teeth. On occasion it's probably quite annoying for the crocodile and they might think, “Look, for God's sake, you can't kill these things that you're eating, so why the hell should I let you pick at my leftovers”. And probably those birds *could* go off and eat something else, but mostly the crocodile benefits from have the bits picked from between their teeth. It improves their mouth just as much as it apparently sustains the bird.
Is that too much metaphor? (I do hope I haven't misremembered those birds – I think learnt about them when I was three and haven't really thought about them since)
Anyway, my point is, critics aren't a cancer on theatre. Our survival and reproduction does not entail the death of theatre. We essentially have a vested interest in theatre's survival.
Beyond which, as I also said before, I think I've pretty much given up being a “proper” critic. There are a bunch of reasons for this, which I might or might go into at some length at some point, either in the future or indeed in this essay, but, for the time being, let's just say that I'm more interested in experimenting with new models of how to write about theatre (/performance)
I'm not going to say that the “old model” is broken, nor am I going to claim that I'm trying to *fix* it. I think (star-ratings aside) *normal* criticism, or “the old model” has its uses. And I think some mainstream critics are very good at doing it. I have to admit that, actually, I think a lot of my reasons for trying to find a different way of *doing criticism* are as much down to the bad-fit that I am for proper criticism as anything deeper or more philosophical.
Anyway, I seem to have got off the point slightly.
So, “embeddedness”. Is it desirable? What are the problems? What are the benefits?
Obviously, there's an initial massive, potential problem with the “embedded” critic. And that is the problem of readers' trust. At root, before knowing anything about theatre, before being able to write, before even having anything like “good taste”, the one thing a critic needs is the trust of his or her readers. Mostly, I get the impression that our critics do ok on that score. We might think, in various cases, that their taste is lousy and their writing is abysmal, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone ever really question whether a critic was telling the truth. The only one I'd question is sometimes Quentin Letts, who, I'd say, sometimes looks like he's second-guessing or rehearsing a political position more than actually saying what he really thought. I mean, it's possible that he really does think like that, in which case, God help him. But I think it's far more likely that he knows what he's expected to say and says that.
If a critic is “embedded” then there's the possibility that that relationship of trust is shaken slightly. The reader might conclude, in the words of Mandy Rice-Davies: “Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?”
I want to have a bit of a look at this assumption. And also at what it means for criticism.
Because, I think on one level, there's something in it. I don't think that the reader would be right to *mistrust* the “embedded” critic, and I don't think that the “embedded” critic is any the less truthful. But on the other hand, the relationship between them and the artist is plainly going to be different.
At various papers, there's an informal policy that if one critic writes an interview or feature about a company/director/actor to preview their forthcoming production, then it should be the/an- other critic who reviews it.
This stems from the somewhat puritanical conviction that a) the work should speak for itself, and b) it contaminates the critic's, I dunno, purity of mind, if they've had the director explain to them what they're driving at already.
I can see two answers to this. On one hand, yes, if someone's told you what they're going to do before you see them do it, or try to do it, then, well, you'll know what they're trying to do as you watch it happen. This is a different experience to working it out yourself from seeing them do it. Lyn Gardner has gone further and written about how she doesn't even read programme notes before watching a show.
As I've written before, this is certainly one approach, and I can see its value.
On the other hand, firstly, it is very culturally specific. I've now gotten over my surprise that German critics read the texts of plays they're going to see, before they see the productions. Of course, that approach is partly informed by the way that German directors treat texts, but I think it also bespeaks a certain thoroughness and rigour that Germany's theatre has that we don't.
That said, the not-knowing-what's-coming approach *does* fit the way a lot of mainstream British theatre operates. And there is an advantage to being made to jump in your seat, laugh, and squirm in the same way as the rest of the audience is.
At the same time, other members of the audience might read the director's programme notes before the show starts – theoretically giving them potentially more insight into the show than the critic who has denied themselves that opportunity.
There's also Tassos Stevens's maxim that states: “The experience of an event begins for its audience when they first hear about it and only finishes when they stop thinking and talking about it” (he's written a fuller account of that idea here).
In one way, that very maxim, and the thought process behind it, ensures that the critic's experience of a piece of theatre is always going to be different to that of a regular audience member. As The Reduced Michael Billington blog brilliantly skewered it some years ago: “critics are uniquely equipped to see through all of the PR and marketing that surrounds plays. They do this by going to theatres on special nights set aside for them, where they are met by the play's publicist, handed a handy press pack put together by the marketing department and given free drinks at the interval which come from the play's marketing budget. How could an ordinary member of the public possibly see through the marketing, which, from the theatre's point of view, I am a part of?”
As such, one sort of “embeddedness” could just be framed as an extreme version of reading the programme notes before watching the script.
Actually, it strikes me I haven't really discussed what I even mean by “embeddedness”.
Maddy and Jake's original D&D discussion seemed to focus on being present in the rehearsal room, doubtless informed in part by Maddy's involvement in Chris Goode's Open House at the West Yorkshire Playhouse last year, and Jake's subsequent attendance of (and upon) various companies' rehearsals.
I haven't done, or been doing that exactly. Granted, I did sit in on one run-though of The Golden Dragon in Suleimanyah, but since all but one of that company had already spent at least a month touring India with the production, that was far more of a run-through of a play (which I'd already seen in Edinburgh last year anyway) for the benefit of the one actor who'd just joined. As such, there was very little of the actual creative process on display – not so much of the emotional nakedness that one imagines might go on at the very start of a rehearsal process.
What I did do in Iraq/Kurdistan was spend six or seven days travelling about with the company, eating with them, sitting in the mini-bus with them, and, hell, experiencing a totally new country with them. Which obviously changes my perspective on those actors, and that director, stage-manager and producer. Apart from anything else, it humanises them. It strikes me that in the usual run of things, theatre criticism sometimes kind of requires you to forget the humanity of those about whom you're writing.
Or at least, it's helpful if you don't think about it too much.
Because, after all, you're writing about the art. About the achievement, or otherwise, not actually about the *people* who have made it.
But of course, it was made by people.
It's a bit obvious to suggest that if critics were to consider their subjects as *people*, then they might be a bit nicer. Or more polite. Or might put things differently. But I think that's simplistic. I like to think that I'd be able to say everything I've ever written to the face of the people about whom I'd written it. Even if a couple of times actually doing so might have earned me a slap.
I think there are about four reviews I've written where I've probably gone too far (for the record, they are: Sex Idiot, Behud, Off The Endz and Berlin). Interestingly, they're also amongst the reviews that people have told me they've enjoyed reading most often. Because people do love a good pasting at someone else's expense.
In my defence, I do still stand by those reviews and maintain that they are still accurate records of just how cross some pieces of theatre have made me in my time. Also, for the record, Bryony Kimmings and I are now friends on Facebook and hung out a whole bunch in Edinburgh last year. And she's a really nice person. And I still don't think I'm ever going to like Sex Idiot (although, I do partly blame the way that it was framed at the Pulse Festival for the extent of the violence of expression in that review. That and the fact I might have subconsciously been feeling more removed than usual from considering UK artists as people, since I wrote the review after I'd returned to Berlin). But, if I saw it now, I'd have a lot more information at my disposal, as well as having met her in real life. It kind of goes without saying that I'd write the review differently. I'd still write it honestly, but there are a lot of different ways of saying the same thing, aren't there?
So, does that mean I've been compromised?
I'd say not.
There is an interesting maxim in theatre criticism that your first duty is to your reader. Having had a bit of a think about this, I've concluded that I disagree. I reckon one's first duty is to one's own humanity (which, I agree, is a sickeningly pompous way to put it). But, I don't think it's healthy to lose sight of how cruel one could be being simply because a lot of people enjoy reading critics being cruel.
That said, there's every chance I'll forget these noble sentiments next time I see something that I *really* hate, and realise that some bastard has just stolen three hours of my life to bore me to tears with their crappily performed, sexist/racist/homophobic/solipsistic rubbish, but, in the main, I don't think it's unhealthy to sometimes be reminded that you're writing about people. And people who are mostly acting out of good faith.
Another aspect of “embeddedness” that I think worth addressing is whether, if a critic gets “embedded” in some way or other, it will make them view the work more favourably.
Well, here's a thing. I reckon a critic's actual *opinion* of a piece is frequently the least important part of a review. Yes, some people treat reviews as some kind of consumer guide. I suspect many of them might be the same sort of people who grumble if they suspect a critic isn't “being objective”. They're the people who prize the star-rating. And, having taken into account what I've said only a couple of paragraphs earlier about respecting the humanity of others, I still think those people are the wreckers of civilisation.
Ok, it is useful to know if something is good or not. But unless you're actually the person who's reviewed the show – or you have the magical good fortune to have a critic with whose taste yours corresponds exactly – the good/not-good question just boils down to that most mysterious of things; one's taste.
What *should* be useful in criticism, is the expertise of the critic. Their insights and ability to cast light on a work; to describe what that work is doing;how it does it; etc.
Of course, all this involves value judgements too, but judgements that are a good deal less crass than the false binaries of good or bad. And it takes *words* to *explain* them. You can't just explain a plot, or a set of synaptic responses, or a philosophy, or a design with a number of stars out of five.
If you accept this as a view of criticism, then it makes the idea of whether a critic is embedded or not suddenly seem a lot less relevant. I guess, in part, that's why I'm interested in this as a possible new direction for writing about theatre.
Which brings us pretty much up to the present, which, as of this sentence, finds me sitting in the small ante-office of the Gate Theatre, sat next to Forest Fringe co-director Andy Field, writing a piece justifying why I believe this state of affairs is in any way acceptable. And why, moreover, I think it's *useful* and perhaps even *better*, than if I just turn up at half seven and scamper off as soon as the show finishes.
There are a couple of other elements which I haven't mentioned yet. These could usefully be filed under the headings: “Festivals” and “Friends”.
I remember while I was taking part in the Festivals In Transition Mobile Lab. one of the elements that we spent a bit of time thinking about was that of the position of the critic at an (international) theatre festival. The vast majority of those festivals that we visited, as well as the Neue Stücke aus Europa festival in Wiesbaden, were distinguished by the closeness of the festival communities that quickly grew up within them – much more like the National Student Drama Festival here, than either the Edinburgh Fringe writ large or even the Edinburgh International Festival. And, as such, we did a bit of thinking about whether one writes any differently as part of a community rather than as an individual voice, more or less lost and anonymous in a metropolis as vast as London.
I don't think we concluded at the time that we thought we did, or would write any differently. And, hell, you only have to read my attempted evisceration of Superamas's Big 3rd Episode: Happy/End, to see what we meant (and that review, fwiw, was written at a festival in Rakvere, Estonia, a town where the festival existed in more-or-less total isolation from the rest of the town, with performers, audience and critics all eating and drinking together in a little arty bubble).
Actually, I think the impetus for the spirit in which I'm approaching my FF@TG has a lot more to do with the spirit of Forest Fringe itself. And the fact that some of the pieces are first scratches – which is a different sort of review again.
And then we come to the issue of writing about friends' work. Last week at Forest Fringe, I did know quite a few of the people performing, through various channels. I was at university with Chris Thorpe and Lucy Ellinson (and indeed playwright John Donnelly, who came along on Tuesday night). Indeed, the first thing I ever directed as a student was a short play by John in which Lucy took the lead role. I've also known Andy Field for an aeon since he reviewed for CultureWars while I was still theatre editor there. I've known Ira Brand since I saw Tinned Fingers at NSDF '08, and subsequently recommended them to Andy for the first publicised season of Forest Fringe in Edinburgh, at which they were a huge hit, and their relationship with Forest has since blossomed. And, hell, I've Chris Haydon for long enough for him to have stolen my made-up surname to be his made-up surname. Actually, and perhaps most relevantly to this argument, I shared a flat with him in Edinburgh the year that, while reviewing for the Scotsman, he effectively *discovered* the TEAM, five-starred them, got them awarded a Fringe First and, I guess, put in motion the chain of events that led to their storming hit Mission Drift last summer.
You'll notice that both Field and Haydon (Christopher) also used to work as critics, before they hopped over the fence.
Which perhaps explains another element of how and why I feel that this experiment in being almost a “critic-in-residence” for this fortnight makes sense. And I think, why I've been allowed by both theatre and resident/guest-company to do it. These are entities led by people who also understand first-hand the value of writing about theatre.
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Intermission/trailer
Slight change of plan. Thanks to a last-minute schedule re-jig, I spent the whole of Saturday at the Neue Slowenische Kunst symposium at Tate Modern. As a result, I didn't get to Forest Fringe on Saturday evening (although I did see both the Melanie Wilson and Gemma Brockis pieces at the BAC in March, so can discuss them in the full round-up). There will be a review/account of the NSK event, written primarily for Exeunt, but I'll stick up a link here, and eventually will post the whole thing here once Exeunt have wrung all the hits out of it.
Being at Tate Modern the NSK thing all day (literally *all day* - 10.30am until midnight) means I've also not had time to write much. So the projected essay about *embeddedness* (and indeed the end of the essay about fixity and recording) will hopefully be appearing tomorrow. Along with me apparently trying to review a Laibach gig and knock up an account of an 11½hr seminar...
On the bright side, the NSK event proved incredibly helpful for clarifying and sharpening some thinking on avant gardes (the Laibach concert was subtitled: Monumental Retro-Avant-Garde – of which, more asap). This felt particularly useful in relation to my current writing on Forest Fringe, so it all feels very worthwhile; it's just put a bit of a hole in the actual production of words. Anyway...
For those of you who haven't got the faintest idea what I'm going on about, here's a YouTube video I made at the gig (in THE TURBINE HALL AT TATE MODERN!!!) yesterday (not ideal quality, doesn't convey nearly enough what it felt like to be there, and won't be anywhere approaching loud enough) of Laibach doing B-Mashina from their soundtrack to forthcoming, daft Finnish film Iron Sky (which is what's playing on the screens behind the band) and under that, there's my review of Friday at Forest Fringe...
And here's Forest Fringe at the Gate – 5...
Forest Fringe at the Gate – 5
Charlotte Jarvis - Blighted by Kenning
Ira Brand – A Cure For Ageing (working title)
Chris Thorpe – new story
If anything, Friday night's programme of FF@TG was far and away the most coherent of the week so far. The unifying factor seemed to be the deployment of “science” in all three pieces, although other ideas also recurred.
Charlotte Jarvis is an artist. I'd say a “visual artist”, but perhaps “conceptual” is nearer the mark. But it's Art-art. She's a *proper* artist, rather than someone who's an actor or writer or whatever who gets described as “an artist”.
Currently, she's artist-in-residence at the Netherlands Proteomics Centre (NPC). Her piece tonight is essentially a performance lecture, or indeed *a talk*, about her current project.
But before she explains that, she talks us through the basics of the work that the NPC do.
Which pretty much blew my tiny mind.
I don't know a lot about science. And, if I'm honest, I tend to avoid it as a subject rather than trying to rectify my ignorance. I don't have any aptitude for it as a subject, so it feels safer to steer clear of books about it since that's just inviting hours of head-scratching and incomprehension.
All of which means, if I'm sat down for an hour and told about some of the research that's going on at the moment, and indeed some of the things people can already do, it totally astonishes me. Ok, so occasionally bits and pieces filter through my fog of ignorance; I'd already heard, for example, of the luminous mice and the glow-in-the-dark bunny which Jarvis mentions by way of illustration of how biologists are now able to isolate specific proteins that inform genetic structures in such a precise way that they can find out the element of a jellyfish's DNA that makes it glow and introduce that protein into the genetic codes of mice or rabbits (I think that's what she said).
But, frankly, I still find it a) completely astonishing, and b) slightly troubling.
Late in the piece, Jarvis addresses this ethical dimension and, quite reasonably, argues that the popular press's stance of condemnation and fear is largely born of ignorance. On the other hand, having just had the facts explained to me patiently with the case put sympathetically, I still had a few questions about the rights and wrongs of just making a bunch of glow-in-the-dark mice *just because you can*.
More interesting, in the context of the week, though, was hearing someone be so overwhelmingly positive about science and the effects and possibilities of science. In the main this week, science and technology has largely taken the role of representing the potential for death and destruction. Planes have fallen out of the sky. Missile guidance systems have improved kill ratios. Errors at air traffic control computers have resulted in terrible disasters. After all that, it's quite nice, if a little strange, to hear someone create an un-cynical environment in which they can uncomplicatedly extol science's virtues.
It's interesting to hear someone talk about genetics without once mentioning eugenics, or the Nazis, or sterilisation, or torture. On the other hand, it still feels like a particularly big elephant still standing in the room.
On the other hand, Jarvis's sheer enthusiasm for her project, combined with its almost heart-on-sleeve uncomplicated beneficence makes a compelling counterargument.
Her project is essentially to translate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (just article one?) into a protein and to then inject that protein into some apples. To grow those apples outside the International Court of Justice at the Hague. They are then going to send those apples off around the world to other labs to see if other scientists can *translate* the protein, and then invite those scientists to eat the apples.
See what I mean. It's at once inspiring and also kind of astonishing that it can be done at all.
Translating prose into protein, for heaven's sake! (my inner cynic was quietly amused by the thought that it would be quite funny if universal human rights made apples inedible, but...)
But, yes. Isn't it staggering that that's even possible? So, yes. Most of my experience of this show was taken up with me keeping on picking my jaw up from the floor.
The piece also included a live Skype link-up with one of Jarvis's Dutch scientist colleagues on the mainland. And even that worked flawlessly. I mean, I've seen tech-heavy shows before, even in Fringe venues, but this was passed off so effortlessly as now something that's just a fact of life (and it is, really) that it reminded one just how advanced some technology now is...
And I sat there taking the odd snap with a 3.2 megapixel camera, that just happens to be mounted in my mobile phone. I mean, it's actually mad when you think about it.
Thankfully, there was then an interval, which gave my poor brain a bit of a chance to recover.
First up after the break was Ira Brand's A Cure For Ageing; a first scratch of her new solo show (the follow-up to Keine Angst – which I've somehow stupidly managed to miss so far). That said, it is already so*realised* and dense, that if I'd been told it was just another performance of a long-running show I wouldn't have blinked (it has also made me want to see Keine Angst all the more urgently).
The basic theme of the piece is, as the title suggests, ageing. To look at this, she's currently taken a few diverse strands and not so much woven them together as presented them alongside one another leaving us to make the synaptic leaps ourselves. It's an approach that works very well. The individual strands are, without exception, absorbing and helpfully suggestive – putting some interesting ideas our way in a non-directional fashion. There's a nice bit of poetic writing at the start. There's a bit where she describes a video she's taken of someone standing naked in front of a white brick wall taking about their body – thanks to a technical hitch, she then gets us to close our eyes and imagine the video and the speaker, as she reads out the transcript. For my money, this might even be a better approach than actually showing the video, but I can't compare effects since I didn't *see* the video.
There's a description of how jellyfish (a certain sort of jellyfish?) can regenerate their cells to a younger version of themselves, making them technically, biologically immortal – or at least, immune to dying of “natural causes”.
And, most movingly, there's an email from her mum about going to visit Brand's grandfather in Austria (Brand is apparently German by birth, although you'd never guess). Obviously German grandfathers of that vintage add a whole extra dimension, although this is admirably understated – there's a glancing reference to his being in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, and that's it.
If this *was* the finished article, one might bridle very slightly at the looseness of the ends, here. But on the other hand, it feels like it would be a mistake to tie it up too neatly. I've got every confidence that Brand knows exactly what she's doing – much better than I do – and doesn't need my musings to get in the way. She did specifically ask for feedback after the show, however, so I've added some feedback at the bottom of this review.
Friday night (Night 5) was also the night that Chris Thorpe chose to present his new piece – specifically written for his week of Forest Fringe curation.
This was interesting for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I don't know when in the week he wrote it, or if he wrote if before the week started (I should have asked), but whichever it was, it was interesting the way that it both fitted well with the other themes of the week and this night, and at the same time sat completely outside them. The second thing that I found absolutely fascinating, was that this felt like the first bit of “drama” I'd seen all week (indeed, there were several pieces I'd have called “Postdramatic” if I didn't think it'd just get on everyone's tits). I know I discussed what I thought the difference between a monologue and a story might be earlier in the week, but it was seeing this piece that helped clarify those thoughts for me.
The difference between this piece and the others is that we, the audience were being addressed as a a specific character. Moreover, as well as being a specific character, we were at a specific point in time with the narrator. The narrator wasn't so much “telling us a story” as going through, well, the *actual* actions of a specific (made-up) man (a man who plainly wasn't the same man as Chris Thorpe, the man who wrote this text).
Interestingly, it was the first piece I'd seen all week where I could totally imagine someone else playing the part. Because it was a matter of “playing a part”.
The part in question, it gradually becomes clear, is a soldier who's returned from some war or other, I thought probably Iraq, given a few cursory details which seemed more *Iraq* than *Afghanistan* - although given the lack of troops in the former coupled with the contemporaneity of the piece, maybe it was the latter.
I said there was science in all three pieces – from Jarvis's remodelled proteins, through Brand's lifespans of jellyfish, we arrived at Thorpe's character's description of how seeing works. Something to do with protons (?? :-/) of light bouncing of an object and hitting our eyes in a certain way so that the synapses in our brains fall a certain way and possibly even release chemicals into our bodies to induce how the thing we've seen makes us *feel*. It reminds us of the phrase “you can't un-see something”.
In a funny way, this rigorous de-bunking of any last vestige of the idea of “spirituality” or “romance” or something that might still attend upon the idea of looking at a field of daffodils or a tree has a kind of atheistic poetry of its own. Later, the same process of description is applied to how we take a photo.
The story hinges on what the character addressing us has seen. And what he's taken a photo of. The photo is printed on a sheet of A4 paper and is face down on the table next to him. And he's asking us to turn it over.
I think the piece is about half an hour long, and it is unremittingly tense. There are fewer jokes and more instances of the word “cunt”. The audience laughs whenever it can, just because of th need to break this unbearable tension. It reminds us that Thorpe is a very good actor, and also, that he can look pretty damn intimidating if the mood take him.
Strangely, the piece isn't really about war or violence nearly as much as it's about friendship.
I won't say more than that, because this piece really should have a life beyond Friday night. It's a great bit of writing – like so much that was on show this week – and hopefully more people will get opportunities to see much of the work in the future.
Anyway, I promised feedback. This is the best sort of feedback:
Ira Brand – A Cure For Ageing (working title)
Chris Thorpe – new story
If anything, Friday night's programme of FF@TG was far and away the most coherent of the week so far. The unifying factor seemed to be the deployment of “science” in all three pieces, although other ideas also recurred.
Charlotte Jarvis is an artist. I'd say a “visual artist”, but perhaps “conceptual” is nearer the mark. But it's Art-art. She's a *proper* artist, rather than someone who's an actor or writer or whatever who gets described as “an artist”.
Currently, she's artist-in-residence at the Netherlands Proteomics Centre (NPC). Her piece tonight is essentially a performance lecture, or indeed *a talk*, about her current project.
But before she explains that, she talks us through the basics of the work that the NPC do.
Which pretty much blew my tiny mind.
I don't know a lot about science. And, if I'm honest, I tend to avoid it as a subject rather than trying to rectify my ignorance. I don't have any aptitude for it as a subject, so it feels safer to steer clear of books about it since that's just inviting hours of head-scratching and incomprehension.
All of which means, if I'm sat down for an hour and told about some of the research that's going on at the moment, and indeed some of the things people can already do, it totally astonishes me. Ok, so occasionally bits and pieces filter through my fog of ignorance; I'd already heard, for example, of the luminous mice and the glow-in-the-dark bunny which Jarvis mentions by way of illustration of how biologists are now able to isolate specific proteins that inform genetic structures in such a precise way that they can find out the element of a jellyfish's DNA that makes it glow and introduce that protein into the genetic codes of mice or rabbits (I think that's what she said).
But, frankly, I still find it a) completely astonishing, and b) slightly troubling.
Late in the piece, Jarvis addresses this ethical dimension and, quite reasonably, argues that the popular press's stance of condemnation and fear is largely born of ignorance. On the other hand, having just had the facts explained to me patiently with the case put sympathetically, I still had a few questions about the rights and wrongs of just making a bunch of glow-in-the-dark mice *just because you can*.
More interesting, in the context of the week, though, was hearing someone be so overwhelmingly positive about science and the effects and possibilities of science. In the main this week, science and technology has largely taken the role of representing the potential for death and destruction. Planes have fallen out of the sky. Missile guidance systems have improved kill ratios. Errors at air traffic control computers have resulted in terrible disasters. After all that, it's quite nice, if a little strange, to hear someone create an un-cynical environment in which they can uncomplicatedly extol science's virtues.
It's interesting to hear someone talk about genetics without once mentioning eugenics, or the Nazis, or sterilisation, or torture. On the other hand, it still feels like a particularly big elephant still standing in the room.
On the other hand, Jarvis's sheer enthusiasm for her project, combined with its almost heart-on-sleeve uncomplicated beneficence makes a compelling counterargument.
Her project is essentially to translate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (just article one?) into a protein and to then inject that protein into some apples. To grow those apples outside the International Court of Justice at the Hague. They are then going to send those apples off around the world to other labs to see if other scientists can *translate* the protein, and then invite those scientists to eat the apples.
See what I mean. It's at once inspiring and also kind of astonishing that it can be done at all.
Translating prose into protein, for heaven's sake! (my inner cynic was quietly amused by the thought that it would be quite funny if universal human rights made apples inedible, but...)
But, yes. Isn't it staggering that that's even possible? So, yes. Most of my experience of this show was taken up with me keeping on picking my jaw up from the floor.
The piece also included a live Skype link-up with one of Jarvis's Dutch scientist colleagues on the mainland. And even that worked flawlessly. I mean, I've seen tech-heavy shows before, even in Fringe venues, but this was passed off so effortlessly as now something that's just a fact of life (and it is, really) that it reminded one just how advanced some technology now is...
And I sat there taking the odd snap with a 3.2 megapixel camera, that just happens to be mounted in my mobile phone. I mean, it's actually mad when you think about it.
Thankfully, there was then an interval, which gave my poor brain a bit of a chance to recover.
First up after the break was Ira Brand's A Cure For Ageing; a first scratch of her new solo show (the follow-up to Keine Angst – which I've somehow stupidly managed to miss so far). That said, it is already so*realised* and dense, that if I'd been told it was just another performance of a long-running show I wouldn't have blinked (it has also made me want to see Keine Angst all the more urgently).
The basic theme of the piece is, as the title suggests, ageing. To look at this, she's currently taken a few diverse strands and not so much woven them together as presented them alongside one another leaving us to make the synaptic leaps ourselves. It's an approach that works very well. The individual strands are, without exception, absorbing and helpfully suggestive – putting some interesting ideas our way in a non-directional fashion. There's a nice bit of poetic writing at the start. There's a bit where she describes a video she's taken of someone standing naked in front of a white brick wall taking about their body – thanks to a technical hitch, she then gets us to close our eyes and imagine the video and the speaker, as she reads out the transcript. For my money, this might even be a better approach than actually showing the video, but I can't compare effects since I didn't *see* the video.
There's a description of how jellyfish (a certain sort of jellyfish?) can regenerate their cells to a younger version of themselves, making them technically, biologically immortal – or at least, immune to dying of “natural causes”.
And, most movingly, there's an email from her mum about going to visit Brand's grandfather in Austria (Brand is apparently German by birth, although you'd never guess). Obviously German grandfathers of that vintage add a whole extra dimension, although this is admirably understated – there's a glancing reference to his being in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, and that's it.
If this *was* the finished article, one might bridle very slightly at the looseness of the ends, here. But on the other hand, it feels like it would be a mistake to tie it up too neatly. I've got every confidence that Brand knows exactly what she's doing – much better than I do – and doesn't need my musings to get in the way. She did specifically ask for feedback after the show, however, so I've added some feedback at the bottom of this review.
Friday night (Night 5) was also the night that Chris Thorpe chose to present his new piece – specifically written for his week of Forest Fringe curation.
This was interesting for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I don't know when in the week he wrote it, or if he wrote if before the week started (I should have asked), but whichever it was, it was interesting the way that it both fitted well with the other themes of the week and this night, and at the same time sat completely outside them. The second thing that I found absolutely fascinating, was that this felt like the first bit of “drama” I'd seen all week (indeed, there were several pieces I'd have called “Postdramatic” if I didn't think it'd just get on everyone's tits). I know I discussed what I thought the difference between a monologue and a story might be earlier in the week, but it was seeing this piece that helped clarify those thoughts for me.
The difference between this piece and the others is that we, the audience were being addressed as a a specific character. Moreover, as well as being a specific character, we were at a specific point in time with the narrator. The narrator wasn't so much “telling us a story” as going through, well, the *actual* actions of a specific (made-up) man (a man who plainly wasn't the same man as Chris Thorpe, the man who wrote this text).
Interestingly, it was the first piece I'd seen all week where I could totally imagine someone else playing the part. Because it was a matter of “playing a part”.
The part in question, it gradually becomes clear, is a soldier who's returned from some war or other, I thought probably Iraq, given a few cursory details which seemed more *Iraq* than *Afghanistan* - although given the lack of troops in the former coupled with the contemporaneity of the piece, maybe it was the latter.
I said there was science in all three pieces – from Jarvis's remodelled proteins, through Brand's lifespans of jellyfish, we arrived at Thorpe's character's description of how seeing works. Something to do with protons (?? :-/) of light bouncing of an object and hitting our eyes in a certain way so that the synapses in our brains fall a certain way and possibly even release chemicals into our bodies to induce how the thing we've seen makes us *feel*. It reminds us of the phrase “you can't un-see something”.
In a funny way, this rigorous de-bunking of any last vestige of the idea of “spirituality” or “romance” or something that might still attend upon the idea of looking at a field of daffodils or a tree has a kind of atheistic poetry of its own. Later, the same process of description is applied to how we take a photo.
The story hinges on what the character addressing us has seen. And what he's taken a photo of. The photo is printed on a sheet of A4 paper and is face down on the table next to him. And he's asking us to turn it over.
I think the piece is about half an hour long, and it is unremittingly tense. There are fewer jokes and more instances of the word “cunt”. The audience laughs whenever it can, just because of th need to break this unbearable tension. It reminds us that Thorpe is a very good actor, and also, that he can look pretty damn intimidating if the mood take him.
Strangely, the piece isn't really about war or violence nearly as much as it's about friendship.
I won't say more than that, because this piece really should have a life beyond Friday night. It's a great bit of writing – like so much that was on show this week – and hopefully more people will get opportunities to see much of the work in the future.
Anyway, I promised feedback. This is the best sort of feedback:
Friday, 13 April 2012
Forest Fringe at the Gate – 4
Chris Thorpe
Hannah Jane Walker
Chris Thorpe and Hannah Jane Walker - The Oh Fuck Moment
Jess Latowicki
Well, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. Last night, Night 4 of Forest Fringe at the Gate, there was a piece that I didn't happen to really go for.
This is difficult on a number of levels. Primarily, it's difficult because the piece of work in question happens to have been a scratch performance at a pretty early stage of its development. So on that level I certainly don't want to say anything that's going to put the maker of the work off developing it further. (No. I don't think I'm in the least bit influential in that way, but no one really wants cold water poured all over their work by anyone, do they?)
But then, if my basic brief is to write about all the stuff I see at FF@TG then I reckon I should at least describe it. And then, beyond that, well, it doesn't feel entirely illegitimate to share my thoughts about the piece, and perhaps say which bits didn't work for me so much, in the vague hope that these thoughts might turn out to be useful.
On the other hand, is it helpful to have those thoughts shared in such a public space/forum/way?
I'm open to persuasion on this, but I suppose the flip-side of Forest being a “community of artists” is that communities kind of need a basic level of honesty, and beyond honesty preparedness to actually *say* the honest thing out loud.
Since I've burbled on about this so much, I might as well start off by talking about the piece in question. It was Jess Latowicki's A Faultline. It's a one-person, solo piece and the basic set up involves Latowicki standing on stage in two different lighting states, each of which accompanied by a different voice-over.
On a technical level, it was just bad luck that the sound levels for one of the voice-overs – a kind of beauty contest compère – wasn't really played at the volume it needed. And it's hard to know how much that sort of thing actually impacts on how one ends up watching a piece. So perhaps some of my lukewarm-ness toward the thing could be down to that.
I should say, I didn't actually *dislike* the piece. And Latowicki is definitely an engaging performer. And at no point during the piece was I bored.
In fact, if anything, I think my discomfort with the piece stemmed largely from its premises. Or rather, how it sought to explore its premises. The piece was essentially about female body image – both self-image and external judgements placed on women's bodies. Which, I should confess a) isn't my favourite topic (give me international politics, war, terrorism, torture and the clash of political ideologies any day) and b) isn't something I'm ideally positioned to discuss. I don't, after all, have a woman's body. I never have had, and it's unlikely I ever will have.
On the other hand, unless the piece has been made solely for women, this shouldn't necessarily feel like a massive bar to watching/appreciating/enjoying a piece of theatre.
But I don't think this was really where my problem with the piece came from either.
I think it might, in part, have stemmed from the fact that as it stood last night, The Faultline felt a lot more descriptive of the problem than analytical or opposional. Which, interestingly, felt kind of at odds with the Forest Fringe ethos. Which isn't even something I'd ever consciously noticed before. But it felt, in comparison to, say, Chris Goode's Infinite Lives, or Lucy Ellinson's TORYCORE™ or any of Chris Thorpe's short stories, a lot more defeatist and hope-less. Which feels like a funny thing to find myself saying, given how incredibly bleak on many, many levels those pieces can be.
It felt like there was a slight problem with the way Latowicki positioned herself on stage. The basic set-up is that she's in a beauty contest. The contest, in theory, is about charm, manners and intelligence, but the voiceover repeatedly makes it clear that she's being assessed mostly on her looks. Which is a perfectly fair point for Latowicki to want to make. But in its current form, and because it is a self-generated solo-project – it almost felt like Latowicki was pretty much dis-empowering herself. How to do “objectification” on stage is definitely a tricky thing. But this approach of essentially demonstrating how people get objectified, by putting yourself on stage and objectifying yourself, feels slightly counter-productive.
Or perhaps it was/is effective precisely because it was uncomfortable. I'm honestly not sure.
There were some nice moments, though. Toward the end, the piece became increasingly absurd. Latowicki spent a few minutes running very hard into a wall (which was properly uncomfortable to watch, even if she did have a crash-helmet on), and there was a nice bit where she tried to put on six evening gowns at the same time.
The parts with the second voice over – lit with a single footlight (definitely the best lighting state anyone's used so far in FF@TG, btw) – were also interesting. It felt like the writing here might want to go further/do more, but this felt like a much more interesting and fertile strand to develop.
But anyway, it was an early scratch performance, which could well end up bearing little or no relation to the finished article. And hopefully, if this “review”/report/scratch-account of it has any bearing at all on anything, then I hope it is entirely helpful/constructive.
Latowicki's piece was, however, only a quarter of what was on offer last night.
The first piece was another of Chris Thorpe's short stories.
Actually, was yesterday's piece a “short story”? It was originally written for Slung Low's astonishing Beyond the Front Line project (my review of the whole thing here, my Guardian blog about it here) so I suppose it could equally be accounted a monologue. Thorpe did kick off by wryly noting that he was “going to do some acting”.
The original performance took place with an audience of about 8 or 12 in the back of one of four army trucks parked round the side of Salford's Lowry Centre.
Taken out of this context, the piece almost makes more sense as a stand-alone entity, rather than as one story of a possible four set in amongst other spectacles and different voices.
And again, it's a really good bit of writing. In short it a monologue spoken by a computer programmer who has just designed a bit of software that allows soldiers in the field to fire missiles more quickly. The programmer's problem is that while he has solved the technical issue that was his brief, while he's managed to upgrade the equipment, no one has upgraded the people using it. And so perhaps he's responsible for people making more mistakes. Killing more innocent people, or more people on their own side.
Taken out of the context of Beyond the Frontline, you also get to notice how much the text is of-a-piece with Thorpe's other work. There's certainly a similarity of themes running between this and Monday's piece that could be characterised as a concern with the way that computers can magnify the consequences of human error.
This is a theme which is picked up and turned into a central plank of The Oh Fuck Moment, the show which Thorpe made with Hannah Jane Walker for last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival (the actual one, not the Forest bit), where I believe it won a bunch of awards. The version they performed last night for FF@TG was a slightly pared-down version, kind of like a relaxed walk-through, rather than the full-fat version.
The original show is interactive, and takes place with an audience of 25 all sat round a table in an ordinary office space. This version, well, I think they just cut that parts that were interactive and instead just delivered a lot of the text that they say in the piece.
The interesting idea at the heart of The Oh Fuck Moment is that the rush of adrenalin that we get when we accidentally send a text to the wrong person, or wipe hard-drive at work, or whatever, is actually an evolutionary hangover from when panic was actually useful – like noticing a sabre-toothed tiger and having to run away. They note that in most instances the petty cock-ups of modern life are not commensurate with the level of panic they induce. And, moreover, that the panic instinct is pretty useless as a response anyway. But, at that moment, as they beautifully put it, you are standing on top of a massive pyramid of all your ancestors who all know exactly the same stomach-dropping sensation that you're experiencing.
I didn't actually get round to seeing Oh Fuck in Edinburgh last year (thanks to a longish series of my own fuck-ups, in fact), so it was nice to at least get a sense of the show for the first time. And actually, it felt good to be seeing it in the context of seeing a lot of Thorpe's other work, since, in a funny way, Oh Fuck almost ties together and makes explicit a lot of the elements that do recur elsewhere in his work. I say “in a funny way” partly because, of course, the piece isn't just Thorpe. In fact it feels like a pretty fair 50/50 split between himself and his co-performer and creator Hannah Jane Walker.
We get to check this out too, since before the interval, Walker also reads a selection of her own work. Apart from having made the Oh Fuck Moment with Thorpe, she's mainly a poet, apparently. Annoyingly for me (and doubtless for her too, and for anyone else who wants to read an informed opinion on this quarter of the night), I don't know a lot about contemporary poetry. I've somehow managed to miss ever going to a performance poetry night (at least, I don't remember ever having been to one), and I don't get round to reading much of it myself, so unless people stick it on in front of me in a theatre, I tend to miss it. With the net result that I've got literally no useful coordinates when it comes to trying to compare Walker's verse to anyone else's.
Well, I know a few contemporary poets. I can happily say that Walker is nothing like Andrew Motion or Simon Armitage. She might be a tiny bit more like Carole Ann Duffy and Wendy Cope, but mostly only because she's female and frequently quite funny.
If I was going to have a stab at summing her work up, Walker's stuff seems to tend to be about everyday life stuff. There's a poem to/about girls who she doesn't like the look of on account of their OTT personal grooming regimes. There's one to her as-yet unborn niece, there's one about blokes who do performance poetry (which is very funny), and there's a touching on about her hippy mother.
I've just noticed, thinking about it, that my poetry preferences are overwhelmingly male (T.S. Eliot, JH Prynne, Drew Milne, Luke Kennard, Chris Goode and that's about it), so this is possibly not really my department.
I will note in passing, however, that Walker is the first person to mention Grazia mgazine at FF this week, (Latowicki later becomes the second). I'd rather no one ever mentioned that magazine within my earshot even if they are being disparaging about it (both were). I'm tempted to suggest that one of the reasons I go to theatre, and prefer leftfield/upstream work is precisely the distance away from Grazia it is. I'm not sure I'm happy to accept that Grazia is a fact of life. I don't think it needs to be. If we all ignored it, it might go away.
My favourite of all Walker's poems is also the most abstract. Abstract enough that I couldn't actually tell you what it was about, but it did contain something about twin shrimp babies and a certain crackle and fizz of ideas and the sound of words hitting against other, right words. Which is how poetry works best, to my mind.
So, yes. An interesting night, all told. Certainly it's the night that I've found most difficult to write up so far, and have had to think about why-I-thought-what-I-thought most.
My favourite of all Walker's poems is also the most abstract. Abstract enough that I couldn't actually tell you what it was about, but it did contain something about twin shrimp babies and a certain crackle and fizz of ideas and the sound of words hitting against other, right words. Which is how poetry works best, to my mind.
So, yes. An interesting night, all told. Certainly it's the night that I've found most difficult to write up so far, and have had to think about why-I-thought-what-I-thought most.
[no essay today, due variously to: tiredness, doing things other than writing solidly all day, size of subject. Should be with us tomorrow, though, along with a review of tonight's show...]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
