Love,
identity and other small matters: a work-in-progress Edinburgh fringe
post
It's
that line from Utah Phillips X all over again: I'm
here to change the world, and if I am not, I am probably wasting my
time.
*
Luther
and Bockelson want to change the world – or at least, change the
terms and conditions of the world in which a theatre audience meet.
Reformation 9 (Forest Fringe) opens with their manifesto, read by
Forest co-director Andy Field with drollness and an undernote of
diffidence; point 9, on paper, contains the single word “[silence]”,
but it isn't silent, because in that time Andy scans the audience, a
gesture of inclusion made abrasive by a single arched eyebrow, which
taunts: “I know you. I know what you're capable of.” What L&B
invite us to be capable of is intimated in point 7, which declares:
“Time for a party. Time for a riot. Time to sing of the
multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution. Time to kiss like
strangers in the aisles of the theatres of our great European
capitals.” Andy leaves, the show begins. And this is what happens.
I'm
thinking about what it means to ruin live art by not doing what it
tells you to do.
I'm
thinking about how uncomfortable I've always felt at parties. It's
one of the many things I hate about myself: my inability to sustain
the performance of self that parties require.
I'm
thinking about purpose and aimlessness, how they're enacted, and how
they're recognised.
I'm
thinking about riots. Whether, across time, every riot has
essentially looked the same. And involved the same kinds of people.
Followed the same set of prompts, impulses, rules. And where the
timid sit in relation to that.
I'm
thinking about permissions X
I'm
thinking about houses of cards. Their fragility. How they function
metaphorically. The patience required to build them and how easily
they fall down.
I'm
thinking about the hardwired conservatism of Matt
Trueman (a thinking more affectionate than that sounds), and
#riotcleanup, and the complexity of community impulses that neuter a
state of revolution.
I'm
going to stop saying what I thought about because L&B uber-fan
Megan Vaughan has a habit of militantly policing any writing on
Reformation 9, and I'm quite scared of her when she's angry. But a
couple of hours after the show, I had a conversation with Andy Field
about it, who caught me by surprise by articulating, almost
telepathically, the struggles I'd had with it. I don't want him to
incur the wrath of Vaughan either, so won't attempt to transcribe the
conversation; instead I'll republish a chunk of something Andy wrote
three years ago, which I've been quoting from ever since (I'm sure
he's sick of me doing this, but it was and remains hugely influential
on me, which in no way conveys the unquenchable fierceness of the
flame this writing ignited in me). X:
Theatre
is where we go to know what our hopes and fears and fantasies would
feel like
If
they were made of real bodies and real spaces
Freud
described dreams in a similar way to this
As a
way of thinking through doing
Dreams
are never dreamlike when we are experiencing them
They
are visceral and real
… [They]
are ideas running
Jumping
Dancing
through
our heads
In the
shape of real bodies that we can see
And
feel
And
touch
Bodies
we fight or fuck
People
we talk to
Or
imagine we are talking to
But
it’s all just us
Thinking
Painting
an imaginary world
With
things we’ve learnt from the real one
And
the most exciting thing about this whole process
Is
that once they have been dreamt
These
wild experiments
These
immersive environments
These
chaotic unfiltered ideas
They
can’t be undreamt
… An
idea you dream
Is
something you’ve learnt by the time you wake up in the morning
… You
don’t need to believe
As
Freud did
That
dreams are the expression of some unconscious longing
To
know that they are important
To me
they are important
Because
they are dangerous and exciting
Because
they are full of ideas that we are having before we know what to do
with them
We are
thinking in ways that are undisciplined and chaotic
Messy,
full of flaws and longings
We are
being changed in ways we can’t control
… Is
performance like this?
Could
it be?
Could
theatre be a place in which ideas
Are
made out of bodies
Breathing
together
Moving
around each other
Nonsensical
scenarios
Nightmares
Fantasies
In
which we think not by listening
But by
doing
Together
Figuring
out a way of living
In the
shapes that form in the space between us
Out of
chaos
And
play
And
possibilities
A
theatre that is actually, properly dream like
Because
it feels like a real life
That
we might be living
But
aren’t
Yet
Luther
and Bockelson paint an imaginary world with things learned from the
real one: chaos, noise, mess. A lot of people I saw it with had a
fucking great night for precisely that reason: they were living in a
place of play and possibility. Which leaves the longing part to me,
for what that imaginary space would look like if L&B painted it
with dream selves – different selves, braver selves – instead.
(Mostly
written on the train home from Edinburgh, 19/8/15)
*
*
Igor
Urzelai and Moreno Salinas want to change the world. They say as much
in the blurb for their show Idiot-Syncrasy (Summerhall), the opening
sentences of which are note-perfect: “We started with wanting to
change the world with a performance. We felt like idiots.” Because
how can an hour-long duet have that much of an effect? It's so
limited in its scope, so small in its reach. And yet, it's the
limitations I&M place upon themselves that make Idiot-Syncrasy
feel so enormous, make it reach to the heart of what it is to
dedicate oneself to what seems an impossible cause. They would fit
right in to the roll-call of modern Don Quijotes in Emma
Frankland and Keir Cooper's punk adaptation of the novel: tilting
at windmills, I&M make us see the world differently, make us want
to move in it differently, in a way that brings joy.
After
feeling like idiots, what I&M started to do was jump. Bounce. In
the show the movement begins after 10 minutes of singing what sounds
like (but might not be – I don't have the programme to hand) a
Sardinian anthem of independence and defiance. The same lines over
and over, with shifting emphasis, gently at first, but with
increasing emotional commitment, leavened with fleeting smiles.
Almost imperceptibly, they start to rise on their heels, to bob up
and down, the same movement over and over, and this, too, is with
shifting emphasis, gently at first, but with increasing emotional
commitment, leavened with fleeting smiles. It's funny and it's silly
and then they bounce backstage and bring out shot glasses and
whiskey, enough to go round the entire audience, and the terms and
conditions of the room in which we meet them have changed. They are
doing this ridiculous thing, creating this nonsensical scenario, for
us. They are pushing themselves to a physical limit, for us.
Strangers, people they've never met. And when we walk out of this
room, what will we do, what will we push ourselves to do, what will
we gift, to the strangers outside? What will we commit to?
The
more they bounced, the more fascinated I became by the tension in
I&M's legs, the swell of muscles and hardening of tendons down
their calves. It starts to look punishing, and that's when the tenor
shifts, and instead of bouncing at a measured distance from each
other, they begin to bounce together, to circle each other as though
stripping the willow, and then to hold each other close, intimately,
lovingly, creating a support for each other. This is how it works: we
commit to the impossible, the nonsensical, the life of our dreams –
and then we make a go of it, together. We imagine a life. And then we
live it.
A few
days after I see Idiot-Syncrasy, the press officer at Summerhall
tells me that people have started bouncing out of the auditorium at
the end.
(Mostly
written in time stolen from family, sitting in a window seat gazing
eastwards over a rooftop at Peak District hills, sun slowly setting,
21/8/15)
*
Ego.
Definitely something around ego. And that thing about being a renewer
of hearts from the Elsa Maxwell party book.
And
somewhere in here how I finally cracked going to the Fringe, not
managing the sleep deprivation when I go out of control with teen
regression, but the emotional bit, the overwhelmed bit: it takes is
having someone by me, ready to catch me should I fall.
*
Like
that of her contemporaries in the conceptual-art world, Ono’s early
work was all about blurring the line between art and everyday life.
Every image is a painting; every sound is a song. More than the work
of anybody she actually hung out with, Ono’s early art reminds me
of Yves Klein, the impish French artist whose first piece was — in
his imagination — to sign his name in the sky. It’s true that
some of Ono’s ideas inspired George Maciunas to start Fluxus, but
she never felt entirely included in this — or any — group.
Accordingly, there’s a loneliness to the pieces from early in the
period covered by the MoMA show: One subtitled Painting for Cowards
instructs the artist performing the work to cut a hole in a canvas
and shake people’s hands through it.
I see
in Ono a locus of possibility. I see a woman throwing blood.
Ono’s
art came alive when it broke out beyond the avant-garde, because her
mission was to awaken the artist in everybody — not just those who
were cool enough
Her
meditative instruction pieces feel perfectly aligned with our mania
for so-called mindfulness. Her work is being lauded by people
correcting a history of female erasure — looking anew at the Doris
Days instead of the Rock Hudsons. Many of Grapefruit’s pieces have
a sub-140-character brevity. They feel, now, like the 1960s version
of a tweet.
“Last
year,” Ono wrote in 1968, “I said I’d like to make a ‘smile
film,’ which included a smiling face snap of every single human
being in the world. But that had obvious technical difficulties and
was very likely that the plan would have remained as one of my
beautiful never-nevers.” Back then, the idea sounded like a
whimsical lark; today, in the age of the selfie, it sounds almost
banal in its achievability. Maybe she’s not a radical — or a
martyr — anymore. Maybe we’re just beginning to inhabit the world
that Yoko Ono always imagined.
http://www.vulture.com/2015/05/yoko-ono-one-woman-show.html
18 May
2015 New York magazine
[Added
23/8/2015. Not sure where this is going yet]
The
revolution at the heart of Portraits in Motion (Summerhall) is quiet:
so quiet it could pass by unnoticed. There's too much else to tease
out of the photographs stitched together into flipbooks: minute
shifts in their subjects' expressions, dancing across the projection
screen with such animation that for a moment each person seems to be
actually present in the room. Volker Gerling took these photos on a
sequence of walks across Germany and its neighbours; the subjects are
people he encounters on his travels, who take the time to stop and
thumb through his books and then agree to be photographed too.
Gerling
packs no money when he goes on these travels: only essentials for the
journey. He relies on the kindness of strangers and interest in his
art to barter his way and ensure his survival. In other words, he's
created his own economy; one that allows him to live outwith
capitalism's rules. One of the people asks Gerling: did you go to
university? I thought so, he laughs at the affirmative reply: only
someone who went to university would do something so stupid. But
Gerling's life isn't stupid: he just refuses to follow the terms and
conditions of the society in which he lives.
In
doing so, he creates a new relationship not only with money but time.
A photograph freezes time into a single instant; Gerling's flipbooks
– constructed from 36 photographs taken in rapid succession over 12
seconds – requires more time in the making and so allows more
insight into the personality of the subjects. We see emotions flitter
across their faces, laughter and embarrassment, love and a variety of
desires, the play of memory responding to place, the blossoming of
truth in their features. The movements of one subject inspire
another; the plump gawkishness of youth gives way to the hollow
cheeks and hunched shoulders of age. And Gerling's own relationship
with time shifts: he moves to the rhythm of his own pulse, his own
feet, the natural rhythms so destructively disrupted by the demands
of finance. And sure, he can do this because he has the privileges of
the white male and a benign family whom he thanks in the credits for
enabling him to go on these journeys. It's an individual's
revolution, not a communal one: the hope for me lies in the outright
refusal to perform what's expected. But he slows time in the theatre
space too, flipping through each book not once or twice but three
times, forcing us to slow our pace. After all, what else are we going
to do? Just rush out and consume, more and more.
(Mostly
written on the train home from Edinburgh, 19/8/15)
Portraits
in Motion makes a fascinating counterpoint to Jamie Wood's O No!
(Assembly Roxy) – but the train is in London, so I'll come back to
how and why.
*
Because
the thing is, if every sentence doesn't have or at least reach for
the same beauty, the tidal swell, the precise cadence of perfection,
as Neil Bartlett's writing in Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall, I am
probably wasting my time.
*
I Am
Not Myself These Days is what might have happened to Bartlett's Boy
if he hadn't found the bar, found O, found himself and courage and
love. Boy is 19 and searching, he wears himself out walking for hours
and hours around London, looking at his reflection in shop windows
and through them to the wares within, not finding what he needs until
he reaches the unmarked door that leads down to The Bar. There he
slowly falls into the arms of O, short for Older (all the men have
nicknames, plainly descriptive or plucked from movies), and together
they embody the love affair of the century. It's just as well I
didn't slip the book into the suitcase before coming to Edinburgh or
I would now spend hours a) rereading the entire thing and/or b)
typing out lengthy, scintillating quotations, because The Bar is my
kind of utopia: a place apart, a society bound together by its own
truth and its own rules, unconcerned by the pettiness and ugliness of
the world surrounding it, except to record and mourn those occasions
when violence encroaches, on the streets beyond, in a knife across a
cheek, a punch or a taunt. It's a bar for men, gay men, queers and
queens, who transform daily existence into a sequence of rituals, not
all of them gentle; and it's run, presided over, by a creature of
such extravagant theatricality that she inspires worship in every
last man of them. This creature is Madame, later Mother; she has
raven hair and a wardrobe of backless dresses intricately sewn with
white sequins, each one exactly the same as the last, except in its
modelling to the body shape she was, is or will be. Madame is
rigorous and perspicacious and exquisite. She is also, now, the
person I most want to be.
In I
Am Not Myself These Days (Pleasance Courtyard), actor Tom Stuart
plays Josh, a former high-school bassoon player so consumed by the
terror of being gay and not fitting in that he effectively combusts,
and from his ashes is born Aqua Disiac, a sequinned blonde-wigged
queen, who prowls the Chinese restaurant scene of downtown Manhattan,
searching for courage and love. She finds it in Jack, a crack addict
and escort/rent boy/hooker, who loves Aqua for Josh's softness in the
few minutes before his body wakes, before the tension of deep-set
fear makes every muscle clench until only the slow drip of alcohol
through his veins makes it possible for him to function. It's this
vulnerability that makes Aqua such a gorgeous narrator – that and
her breasts, half-orbs like snow-globes in which tiny goldfish burble
and swim. I used to think I wanted breasts that could independently
and simultaneously twirl tassles in opposite directions (hello,
Immodesty Blaise); now I want fairground aquariums. Such is the trick
drag plays on cis women, making them feel faintly deficient.
I had
a few minutes of dissonance at the start of this show, realising that
it was a play – which Stuart has also written, adapted from an
autobiography of the same name – and not a confessional, like La
JohnJoseph's absorbing (but earnest) Boy in a Dress or Le Gateau
Chocolat's earnest and intermittently engaging Black. Although rooted
in truth, it wasn't Stuart's lived truth; yet Stuart performs Aqua
with so much heart that she soon emerges vivid from the sheen of
virtuosity, tender as a new bruise, transparent as the bottles of
vodka she nightly drowns in. I have all sorts of qualms about this
show, from the sensation of voyeurism provoked by it being yet
another story associating queer with wretchedness and drug abuse to
its quest for “a career, sobriety and a boyfriend”, which read to
me as a microcosm or metaphor for the general telescoping of gay
liberation politics into the single issue of equal marriage (which,
tangentially, reminded me of this fierce piece
http://www.thenation.com/article/theres-reason-gay-marriage-winning-while-abortion-rights-are-losing/
published a few months ago, comparing a feminist argument for sexual
freedom with a patriarchal tolerance for same-sex marriage). In the
time it's taken me to put this paragraph together – two stints at
2am – I've had a top chat with X Ric
Watts, a dedicated fan of Ru Paul's Drag Race, who shared my
reservations to the point of not getting on with the show at all: he
wanted genuine glamour, immaculate wig and make-up, an array of
costume changes, less apology, less pandering to conservatism,
something other than a clean-cut male actor playing at risk by
putting on a frock. And I know exactly what he means, particularly
when he says the romance of the story is entirely heteronormative –
but it was that romance that snagged me, that made me care about Aqua
and want to protect her. I know exactly the moment of being caught,
too: Aqua has a cri de coeur early on, when Jack tells her
conventionally not to drink so much, and she fumes at his normalcy,
shouting to the morning sky, “I have a blonde helmet and a corset
of armour to protect me from dull people.” If drag queens make cis
women feel deficient, that's our own insecurity talking: really they
show us the way out of our prisons.
There's
another moment when Aqua, in a spasm of self-awareness, recognises
that her office friends might “congratulate themselves that they
count a drag queen among their acquaintance”. This show is a bit
like that: it's a hetero-friendly vision of queer existence that
primarily generates sympathy for the poor frightened boy beneath the
sequins and glitter. Bartlett's Boy is so much less accommodating: as
Aqua says of Jack's prostitution, Ready To Catch Him displays “a
level of perversity beyond my expertise”. That's partly what makes
the book so rapturously, headily, coruscatingly romantic: it is a
love story that queers every stage of the relationship, celebrates
the pleasure-pain of no-holds-barred sex, requires no conformity to
climax in happy ever after. Whereas I Am Not Myself These Days uses
queer as a path to a more enlightened and safe middle-class
existence. And no, I didn't like that about it. But I did love
Stuart's commitment, and vulnerability, the piquant soundtrack
(particularly in the Aqua performances), the goldfish-globe breasts,
and Aqua herself, in all her weakness. More, I suspect, than the
real-life man who created her.
(Since
hitting publish I've brushed my teeth and decided that it isn't fair
to mention Ric and not the nine other people with whom I've had a
conversation about I Am Not Myself These Days, none of whom shared
his reservations. Of particular note: K, a gay man, who was really
shaken by the scene in which Aqua is beaten up by a guy yelling
"faggot", because that's a word he bandies about with his
friends and has never experienced as a homophobic insult; P, a woman
slightly older than me, who struggled to get past performance to
authenticity; and A, a woman somewhat younger than me, who found the
whole thing incredibly moving.)
(Mostly
written in the wild-eyed solitude of the hours between 1am and
3.30am, when I know I should be sleeping but the words refuse to let
me rest, 18/8/15.)
*
And
the fact is I'm bored, so fucking bored of the conventions of theatre
criticism: the codes of conduct, the elision of the critic's
commercial function, the arguments over press nights and star
ratings, the scrabble to get the words out fast, faster, fastest.
Watching the fall-out of the Times reviewing the first preview of
Hamlet reminded me: I don't want to follow prescribed conventions in
writing about theatre. I not even sure I want to write about theatre.
I want to sing the polyphony of revolution. With or without the
kissing.
*
I
wasn't going to do any reviewing while at the Edinburgh fringe –
I'm only here for a few days – but writing about Wot? No Fish!! for
Exeunt reminded me I do like doing this, just in my own way. And I
haven't been here for a while, for reasons I'm still figuring out.
This is a work-in-progress post that will change as I continue to
rewrite above and extend below to flesh out thoughts on any of the
following:
Jamie
Wood's O No! (Assembly Roxy), which is a thing of such delight that
my friend David and I were alternately in paroxysms of helpless
laughter and gripping each other's arms to steady our giddy hearts.
Ellie
Dubois' Ringside (Summerhall), a polished jewel of a show that made
me feel tiny and awestruck.
Lost
Dogs/Ben Duke's Paradise Lost (lies unopened beside me) (Summerhall),
which says all the things about creating human beings in an imperfect
world and broke me to smithereens.
Racheal
Ofori's Portrait (Pleasance Dome), which delivers really smart,
direct and accessible intersectional feminist discussion in a
performance up there with Michaela Coel's in Chewing Gum Dreams.
Early
Morning Opera's Abacus (Summerhall), which has something of Simon
McBurney about it, and something else of Harry Giles, and is
spectacularly foxing to boot.
Bridget
Aphrodites' My Beautiful Black Dog (Underbelly, finished now), which
was enjoyable for the first 40 minutes, then suddenly reached another
plane of emotion entirely.
Panic
Lab's R.I.O.T (Zoo Sanctuary), which was intermittently fun and knew
where it needed to go in terms of feminist politics, but didn't get
there. I kept thinking while watching: just three more turns on the
sharpener, that's what this needs.
The
Beanfield (Zoo Southside) by a bunch of fucking children from Warwick
University who have no business whatsoever being so brilliant
already. It embarrasses me that I'm old enough to be their collective
mother.
This
Is Not a Magic Show (Forest Fringe), which is quiet and unshowy and
mind-boggling and a lovely construction of storytelling.
We May
Have To Choose (Forest Fringe), a list of opinions rattled off by
Emma Hall that is comic, graceful, discombobulating and smart.
Sue
MacLaine's Can I Start Again Please? (Summerhall), which is
constructed with such precision, such linguistic and metaphorical
rigour, that I couldn't tell what had me in more of a tailspin, the
intelligence or the violence of the subject matter.
Le
Gateau Chocolat's Black (Assembly Hall), another depression show,
this one with ganache-smooth singing.
It
might not have anything about Jo Clifford's Gospel According to
Jesus, Queen of Heaven (Summerhall at St Mark's Church), because I
saw that last year, but I hope people are seeing it because it's
exactly what church and religion and sacred should be.
It
definitely won't have anything about Happy Birthday Without You
(Roundabout at Summerhall) because I was stupid enough to miss the
start time by two minutes and staff refused to let me in. I've been
really struck this year by the military precision of every venue's
timekeeping.I was furious with myself, but then I read Donald
Barthelme's story Rebecca to my friend David at breakneck speed, and
he read me Anthony Lane's review of 50 Shades of Grey with impeccable
punctuation and emphasis, and the time didn't feel so wasted.
And it
won't have anything on Sharron Devine's I Worried My Heart Wasn't Big
Enough because I was so engrossed in conversation with Ellie Stamp
about hysteria and definitions of abnormal mental health and selfies
and comportment manuals and how people are taught to live by the
rules and most especially describing to her in ridiculous detail the
plot of Lolly Willowes that I didn't realise I had missed my time
slot until it was 20 minutes too late. Apologies to Sharron for that.
*
I
wasn't even going to come this year.
I try
to leave but I never stray far.
