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Editor Rob La Frenais Contributing Editors Lynn MacRitchie Marguerite Maclaughlin Luke Dixon Pete Shelton Administration Mary Lee Woolf Contributors Robert Ayers Paul Burwell Gillian Clark Meira Eliash Catherine Elwes Roger Ely Stella Hall Andrea Hill Neil Hornick Phil Hyde Chrissie lies David lllic Robin Morley Anna Mosynska Andrew O 'Hanlan John Roberts Steve Rogers Diana Simmonds Liz Stolls Guest Contributors Paul Anand David Dawson John Dowie Peter Godfrey R1tional Theatre Chris Millar Helen Powell Double Issue Distribution Profiles Reviews Full Time Distribution Moore Harness Anne Bean 4 The Final Academy 31 J F Ansell Horse and Bamboo 9 Italian Performance 35 Total Distribution (US) Interview Brogue Male 37 Typesetting Psychic lV 14 Laurie Anderson 38 Windhorse Photosetters Witches Fly South 40 Printing Music Vineyard Press, Colchester Philip Glass and Rhys Chatham 18 Performance Platform 42 Publisher Video Willats in Derry 46 Performance Magazine Ltd NY Video 20 Copyright © 1983 LVA Group Show Short Reviews 48 ISSN no 0144 5901 22 Channel 4 and Performance 23 Ellen Fisher, Arnaud Labelle- Special Feature Roujoux, Optik, Sitting Ducks, Performance in the Third 24 Attila The Stockbroker , Eric Dimension: Bogosian, Split Britches ,

SUBS ID ISE D BY THE Rational Theatre/Malcolm Poynter Michael Upton and Peter Arts OJuncil ABDC Workshop Lloyd-Jones , An Eccentric OF GREAT BRIT AIN Jim Whiting Evening.

Cover Photo of Anne Bean by Willy Kiddell . Last issues' cover photo for 'Art on the Run' should have been credited to Ray Ridolfi. We apologise for this. '

Anne Bean

Sally Boon

Here is Anne Bean, writing on her 12th birthday. This article is about her. She has asked me to write about her and her work knowing very well that I have seen only a few performances, and these some years ago. We have, I'm sure, no secrets from each other and our friendship goes back to first days at art college. From the beginning we had complete freedom with each others minds and it is, I think, with this idea that she has asked me to put into words what I can. 'I feel to be black and part of that undemeathness. The dancing and singing, and banging. They call me - 'SCORCIANA' the dreamer.' (20-7-64). This quotation and the ones following comes from a collection of letters which Anne wrote to herself on her twelfth to twenty-first birthdays. She wrote these letters to be sure that the adult she would become could not be someone quite dif ferent. 'I am writing to you at twenty one because of some idea about you being an adult then. I hope you haven't done any thing to me to make it so.' (20-7-62). It may occasionally surprise a person to discover how rational and approachable Anne is by a broad group of people. Whilst alienating nobody she does not agree with everyone. Her position is fundamentally rational. She is a good listener and her con sciousness genuinely inclusive. She has few obvious mannerisms of thought. Talking to me this afternoon she said that everyone had as many strange and peculiar experiences as each other. I replied in a way I thought best, that, to have some thing to say you have to be prepared to be a little wrong. 'I always remember believing flowers could spontaneously combust. I had a dream where a frog was struck by light ening on a tree, and its skin split open. Its green skin became leaves and its red belly became a flower. The flower grew and its red petals opened wide and when they reached their widest they burst into flame and lightening shot out back heavenwards. I wondered if my belief came from the dream and if the dream came from some shared reservoir and if Within her she's hastening to become sibility of being an anti-hero or mis the shared reservoir came from truth.' lighter and simpler. Using and expending adventurer. Yet it seems that this thought (20-7-65). ideas quickly so that they don't become a should remain unspoken - almost There is about her a consciousness that baggage of the mind and in this way unthought; to keep it simply as a twinge goes deep and stretches knowingly back accrueing an ever increasing vitality in the belly, an undercurrent.. .'(20. 7 .68) into her childhood. Her work reveals an through the alchemy of her work and life. When I met her at Reading it was clear abundance of striking imagery and origin 'I can say to you that my basic goal she was making her own universe. This ality but it's in a sense outside her, where it seems to be to try to be an ethical or must have been true before; in Zambia. belongs. spiritual adventurer, accepting the pos- The paintings she did as a teenager have

Anne left Sc1emo10gyafter giving them several opportunities to show her that it would be better to stay. In the end, rather than face another attempt at 'handling', she left. She has since said that if she really thought it was the truth she would have stayed in spite of its unwieldy bureaucracy. Towards the end of her six months stay she also became very conscious that to pro gress beyond the preliminary stages required in practice a complete loyalty to the organisation , and this she could not give. In Butlers Wharf we discussed our reasons for choosing our bodies. She does not totally accept the principle of U nivers al justice - that there is no injustice, and whilst I accept this principle, I know others cannot. Anne comes very close to adopting a position of complete resonsibil ity for her life including birth. 'The tyrannical heat, the strident light, the low rumbling sound that seem ed to be the sun itself, all breaking into free flow, so my eyes weren't seeing but were what they saw; my ears weren't hearing but were what they heard. Partic les simultaneously possessed and dis possessed.' (20. 7.66) She is advancing from openmindedness to certainty. The main features of her work were mapped out at a time when the urge was only to be free and rid of convention. Now it's a slightly nervous business how to' With the Moodies 7

'I've left Africa, never have I felt in such sharpness the process of leaving rather than going towards, the heavy sad shuffle of somethin g about to meet mem ory rather than reality. Flight from Gond wanaland. Scorciana's funeral service . Now I will be Scorciana the undead , liv ing in England with secret terrifying in formation which only endless submission to the sun will reveal. Hybrid mangled secrets Pain rushing secrets. Secrets of red .' (20. 7 .69) Elisa Leonelli With the Kipper Kids 8

Harry Hallworth MacDonald died on April 17th 1971, aged sixty four years. His gravestone in the Woohner Green cemet ery says he was 'a good man and full of the Horse and Bamboo Holy Spirit'. As a young man he had left his native Yorkshire and sought work in the more prosperous South. Thirty miles along th Great North Road out of London, he found an old barn which he leased for use as a workshop. A carpenter by trade, he made the occasional stick of furniture and did the odd job here and there but his life's task was the barn in which he lived, worked and died. Over the years, he orna mented the barn with carvings and con structions. Around the top of the house flew 175 swallows while around the bottom ran 230 Scotty dogs, each animal individu ally carved and painted. Father Christmas could be seen forever in the act of climbing down the chimney while beside him, a cow jumped over a big yellow moon. From the gutters jutted gargoyles or parrots guard ing the house while from over in the trees cool yellow angels kept watch over the gar den . Seven peacocks made a fence and two giraffes kissed to form an arched gateway. As Harry worked away at his carving, the garden became a village of houses, wells and aqueducts. The visitor's footsteps on certain paving slabs would trigger levers to make chimneys sprout ostriches, dogs wag tails and elephants pour water from their trunks. A single man all his life, he was an eccentric, regarded by the villagers with affection although he could prove to be an 'awkward old bugger'. If anybody in the village upset him, he was rumoured to turn one of his carved ducks on them. A poss ibly lonely man, he was fond of children, despite their nervousness of him, and he would make a carving for a child's birth day, leaving it tied to the house's dustbin to be discovered in the morning. So for thirty odd years Harry MacDonald created this Moving to the next performance Jim Stallibrass sprawling, homely mixture of a world, mixing up folk icons and fairy tale charact - ers and animating it with wit and humour. Wolmer Green, not a stone's throw from Stevenage? 'There was such a contrast A life size policeman stood in the garden to where the woodcarver lived. Bob Frith, between Harry MacDonald 's house with catch the eye of any speeding motorist. His founder and director ofH & B, grew up in all it's richness and variety and this bloody private and magical world places him with the new town of Stevenage, not far from awful environment where I had to live other English artists such as William Blake Woolmer Qreen. How did the company where everything was at right angles to and Stanley Spencer who were themselves come to make a production around Harry everything else. This place was like a beac attached to a particular corner of England MacDonald? 'It started with me trying to on and it made Woolmer Green special. It and to whom the extraordinary arose out of become more aware of what my sources of gave it an identity, part of a whole web that the commonplace. Eleven years ago, he inspiration were. I remembered this cott gives any place an identity. I was very con died. His only relative was a missionary in age from when I was a kid and realised it scious living in Stevenage in the early six Africa and not been seen for twenty years. had had more of an effect on me than I ties - the new town blues days - that here The house stood empty, gradually dis realised. I used to talk to people and tell was an environment that didn't have that integrating until the word came to sell the them of this wonderful place. So one day, web. It's like the patina that's laid down property. Accordingly, despite protests we all jumped in the van and drove down over generations and if you're in an envir from the villagers, the empty barn was here. And it wasn't there. I was just onment that's been bulldozed and started demolished and the ground sold for build speechless. This marvellous place had up again, the loss of the richness of that ing land. been allowed to disappear. So I said I'm web affects peoples lives very deeply. I'm This fascinating and tragic story was going to do a show about this. I was really not a romantic over progress . If people told in Horse and Bamboo's touring angry at the time.' How had he regarded need to build motorways then good luck to summer production which played around this strange house in rural Woohner Green them but I can see the destruction that the North of England and finally at coming as he did from the new town of . takes place. I can mourn it and do all I caD

show in m1mature Harry's world. His Fuller. The living sculptures of masks and tradition and unknowingly debases it's work complete, he lies down and the shad the painted images of the setting reveal a heritage with tales of Midas' riches to be ow puppets show his soul escaping in strong link with the tradition of express won at bingo, a mighty war fought in a death . Abruptly a suited man enters, his ionist art that runs from the medieval South Atlantic kingdom and the magical mask showing the cruel anonymity of a drawings of Grunewald to this century's romance of a Crown Prince and his perfect bureaucrat. Armed with schedules and glowing colours of Georges Rouault. bride . The need for story is still here but contracts, he has no patience for this pretty Among the stylistic influences is an elo instead of Jung 's 'healing fictions' of arche frippery and impatiently tears it apart. The quently simple style carrying a greater typal dynamics , every day brings a vast little house swings aside and to the roar of emotional impact than could be achieved offering of stereotypical aridness , sup engines a giant bulldozer blade creeps through naturalism . The grasp of tradi planting refreshing richness with the amel down the tent towards the destruction. tional art forms is such that the incorpora ioration of a cheap thrill. The raw energy of From the wreckage, a washerwoman finds tion of a time based element becomes a newscast is compulsive story telling. the carved angel and is left alone to mourn essential to sustain the concern for story Soon a vastly extended TV network will be the waste. The show ends on a note of great that is at the heart of H & B's work. pandering to the voracious appetite of loss. The audience is left with a deeply This telling of stories and enactment of infantile humanity, cramming yet more moving story that owes nothing to senti legends is neither romanticism gone soft junk food of news, sit-corns and chat shows mentality. The tragedy of Harry Mac nor the comfortable cushion of sentimental into it's maw in an effort to satisfy the Donald's life and work, it's neglect and indulgence. The company seem to redress infant's need for models to live by. Why abandonment to demolition, has been all a balance in a world that has found a hope does this sheer quantity indicate the inade too clearly told. less substitute for a simple need . The need quacy of the quality? Consciousness is This is a clarity achieved by working for story is still slapbang in the middle of stimulated only through literal patterns through challenging contrasts. Popular modern consciousness but what is offered and to compensate for the lack of meta content is conveyed through environment to fulfill it, a glut of television serials, auth phorical and mythic patterns that give ex al experimentation. Humble events are orised biographies, drama documentaries istential meaning. The surrogate story told with a mightily fierce expression and and newspaper expose, is merely deaden tellers of the modern media resort to either tragedy lies side by side with a celebration ing through it's factual literality. Cultures ever increasing specificness (snuff of beauty. Inanimate artifacts come alive with an oral tradition of story telling have movies, porn video) or fruitlessly chase a through the animation of human perform recognised teller s to recount the legends mythologising role by offering super ers. A sense of living and developing tradi and myths. The tale will often undergo an charged portra yals of royalty and celebri tion runs throughout their work, more ad hoe reconstruction to play off the needs ties. than sufficient to rebut the antagonisms and attitudes of the audience . Today a H & B make a large contribution in a towards Live Art of critics such as Peter tabloid press unwittingly belongs to such a small way to setting these things to rights . Phil Hyde 12

The Woodcarver's Story was created by Amanda Speed, Barbara Nicholls Bob Frith, Jay Venn, Keith Bray Mala Sikka Melissa Wyer, Paul Kershaw and Su~ Goodwin.

VANITV AND COURAGE • PETER BRUEGHEL SA\a/lTALL .... *

Bob Frit h 13

RIGHT NOW you have these alternatives: To remain forever part of a sleeping world ... To gradually abandon thee hopes and dreams of childhood .. . To b1· pnn ,.mently addicted to the drug of the commonplace .. . Or, to fit'hl ..ilun~:-ide us in Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth! Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth has been convened in order to act as a catalyst and focus for the Individual development of all those who wish to reach inwards and strike out. Maybe you are one of these, already feeling different, dissatisfied, separate from thee mass around you, instinctive and alert? You are already one of us. The fact you have this message is a start in itself. Don't think we are going to tell you what to do, what to be. The world is full of institutions that would be delighted if you thought and did exactly what they told you. Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth is not and NEVER WILL BE one of them. We offer no dogmas, and no promises of comfort or easy answers. You are going to have to find out your Self, we offer only the method of survival as a True Being, we give you back to yourself, we support your Individuality in which the Spirit and Will united burn with passion & pride. Our function is to direct and support. Work that is needlessly repeated is simply wasteful. Accordingly we will be making public books, manuscripts & other recordings of our progress, in Yarious formats, video and audio. These do not contain meaningless dogma but are examples of our interests & beliefs in action. They are made not as entertainment, but as experience, not the mundane experience of day to day routine but of the Spirit & Will triumphant.

Genesis P. Orridge and Sleazy B. Christofferson

After sending out postcards stating simply 'The Mission is Termi Temple ov Psychick Youth, whose adherents shave their head nated', Throbbing Gristle, started by performance artist turned except for a pigtail, wear uniforms and follow the principles rock musician Genesis P. Orridge, was re-incarnated this illustrated opposite. David Dawson asked Genesis P. Orridge a summer as Psvchic TV. It was the public face of the newly formed few questions about the temple, and its views on art, sex, music and religion.

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. CONVERSATION NOVEMBER 12 with GENESIS AND DD: You have a Royal Doulton chain handle in your toilet. It's PAU LA P. ORRIDGE . designed by George Tinworth in the 1880s I think. David Dawson: Why a temple, Genesis? The references seem to Paula P. Orridge: Yes. contra dict your ideology. GPO: People don't imagine that we'd be sensitive to things like that; Gen esis P. Orridge: They don 't really. Its only the abuse of religion they expect everything to be punk round here . I believe in the whic h makes peop le suspicious of the word. concept of making art functional. DD : It does imply an orthodoxy though, even if benign . DD: I don't think the tape's working. It's a loan from Olympus GPO: From our point of view it's important to convey a level of Optical company so this is a sponsored interview. seriousness and responsibility, language has its limitations . GPO: All those wonderful gems of wit and sarcasm left forever - DD : Do you see the temp le in a historical sense? Is it continuing any Do your think it's your batteries? tradition? DD: I checked them out just as we started. GPO : It continues the tradition of the esoteric. It brings the GPO: We're probably being opposed . Did you read about it in Brion 'esoteric' into the modern age, that is, a new practical whimsical Gysin's book. It happened to him. version of esoteric- Modern in references. It is a temple of the head, DD: I've heard a lot of speculation regarding the Temple involve of the skull - the front part of the brain thats most ignored in recent ment with Magical groups . history . GPO: We don 't subscribe to any restrictive orthodoxies. We would DD: I find your use of the term Modern fascinating, especially only see that kind of thing as a step on the way. within the context of a 'religion'. DD: But how about yourself? GPO: Temple (not religion)- Weare using the achievements of the PPO: Gen was involved in a battle. Someone in Sheffield. modern age to our own ends; TV, the media ... all have a potential or DD: What happened? rather their negative influence has to be displaced ... GPO and PPO: He died . Over the last thirty years TV has been the greatest single GPO: You've been set up to ask these questions. factor in the control of the attitudes of the people ... the prevailing DD: Yes. view of the world ... has become the accepted 'norm', to which the GPO: Are you listening, Rob La Frenais? (laughter ) viewer inevitably compares himself. Of course the world PPO: Is it all right if I go and see Carol? presented on TV bears little or no relation to reality... those DD: Who's Carol? interests which shape and control TV everywhere assume that (Section deleted ). 'the public' cannot cope with the whole truth. It is our intention to DD: I heard you mt:t when Paula was working at an East End market reverse this trend. stall. (from 'An Introduction To The Temple Of Psychick Youth') GPO: That's another myth. DD: I'd like to be a little more clear about who the temple is, how it PPO: I was working at Tescos. started . Since both yourself and Peter Christopherson were leading GPO: Yes it took three and a half years. lights of Throbbing Gristle, a popular assumption is that PTV & The PPO: My mother had warned me about people like Gen. Temple are a continuat ion of that. DD: My notion of art is that it's not some sort of intellectual end GPO: The Temple is the sum total of the people in it. We are an game. uncontrolled organism. The Temple doesn 't exist as such, it is an GPO: At best it's almost psychotherapy for society. We've reached a unknown quantity - we are investigating it. point where the people who are doing that psychotherapy which is We are faced with the debasement of man to a creature essential, and the true visionary research; are the people who are without feelings, without knowledge and pride of self... The attacked and discouraged from being artists and the ones who end up Temple Of Psychick Youth has been convened in order to act as a hating the notion of art because it is such a betrayal. The pre catalyst and focus for the individual development of all those who renaissance role of art was intrinsic to the belief structure, functional wish to reach inwards and strike out. in a truly social sense, a craft for information and documentation it (from 'A Personal Message From The Temple Of Psychick became the propaganda . The only thing that's art is the way the artist Youth') lives. Thats all. So a punk could be an artist in a sense, but so could anybody else. Art is just a product. The reason the artists are abused, DD: And Throbbing Gristle? ignored and humiliated when they're alive is because people still GPO: We follow the laws of inevitability. We don't see any don't understand that the artist is a crucial factor, not the product. constructive purpose in the traditional performer-audience DD: An intelligent agency. situation. It only perpetuates the entertainment myth. What we offer GPO: That's what the .artist is: an integrated, intelligent or even is information. sometimes a completely insane vision of the worlds society. Their DD: Other cults, sects? life, their emotions all the facets that make up their personality in GPO: They are aimed at the glorification and enrichment of the relation to the world at large. And the products are just a luxury on individual (an individual). We are ppposite. Part of our role is to top which inevitably flow from needing to express that vision. conduct guerrilla action against these cults. They evade the issues DD: All people really want is stereotypes. There's a lot of confusion society presents us with . Take the whole Jamestown thing: they are on this issue . People keep asking me to explain your use of uniforms against the interests of individual self-knowledge. and uniform hairstyles - symbols and so on. DD : The image of the Temple, it arouses a lot of suspicion - GPO: The most recent photograph taken of members of the Temple uniform, insignia, extreme hair-cuts , scars, tatooes - for most showed only two people in uniform; people look for provocation, it's people they add up to an archetype of conformity and suppression. part of our exploitation of the media. We know what we want and GPO: Firstly, it is not a requirement of the Temple to adopt 'an how to get it. image'. However as a media device it serves us very well. It operates DD: There seems to be a very thin line between your image as a on a number of levels; it's good fun , it attracts attention . If people do religion or political cult and the reality of yourselves in opposition to feel threatened, then probably they're the people we would like to those notions . make uneasy. GPO: Ambiguity can be a powerful device. There 's so much DD : How do you see yourselves in relation to the wider political deception in art products, and in their interpretation , and exploita context? tion that the only thing you can go to at all with any kind of GPO: In the obvious ways as vulnerable as anyone else, though our conviction is the artist themself. We live in a society when anecdote unity which is independent of that places us in a very constructive and gossip is in fact very important and exciting and people live it; position. that 's why the Teaser/Jaws section of the music papers is so widely DD : In a specific sense thou gh, do you occupy a position? read . Its because people want to know about each others lives. It 's GPO: Well yes, we are a dissident group. why biographies and autobiographies and TV programme s about DD: Do you have any taboos? peoples lives are so popular. It's instinctive in people that ultimately GPO: Stealing off friends, rape, hurting animals - no others. you have to go back to the person , And what they do is what attracted

'Psychick Television is the public manifestation of The Temp le Of Psychick Youth. Psych ic TV embraces screenings, perfor mances, its products are Video recordings , publi catio ns and recorded work ... These 'Public Manifestati ons ' are intended to publisize and disseminate the Ide ology and Pra ctice of The Temple Of Psychick Youth . They are not intended as Rock Music , Performance Art or entertainm ent though they use these forms as some of their means. In response to restrictions and limitations imposed by contemporary society and in opposition to its systems of control over every area of life. The Temple Of Psychick Youth evolved to embrace a new positivism dedicated to the discovery and realisation of the individual's potential. This potential is the residual talent of all people currently suppressed · and misdirected by these restriction s and control. Specifically this unrealised potential is conceived as being not only tradition ally recognised skills but neglected Psych ic Skills, or the residual mind as suppressed in contempo rary W estem Culture and Society. The Temple itself is not a rigid structure, and does not impose codes or restrictions on its members (initiates), rather it survives because of their continued integrity and mutual trust. ' 17

Chris Harris Rhys Chatham Minimalist Headbangers

Arguably the single most controversial and which the sounds are organised. It is no ability to by-pass the conscious mind, the influential innovation in 20th century surp rise that a musical culture which counting of sheep to induce sleep, or the music was Stravinsky's emphasis on a stri shows a marked preference for percussive meditators mantra, for example. Yet at the ct time, almost primitive, rhythmic struct instruments should have an emphasis on same time it may also activate the body, as ure. The first performance of the 'Rite of rhythm. Rhythmic interest compensates with the trance states of voodoo dancers. In Spring' is famous for the riot of indignation for the lack of melodic sophistication both cases the music elevates the listener it caused, (remember Cocteau's story of which is not possible with percussive in from the mundane and can even suppress the lady with the hatpin?): the rhythm was struments capable of only two or three pain or tiredness. Marching music and thought to be obscene. Similarly in the tones . African grinding songs have precisely this 1960s when rock music became a wide The social role of music in African cult purpose, it stimulates regular bodily move spread cultural phenomenum, Christians ure is as a fitting accompaniment to work ment s and pacifies the conscious mind. and parents worried that this new music or for use in shared rites and rituals . In Undoubtably rock music performs the would pervert the world's youth with its both these activities the rhythmic struct same function in removing the listener 'evil ' rhythms. ures of the music impart a feeling ofregu from a mundane reality. Is it any wonder Both Stravinskys innovative work and larity which is then articulated in regular that the ultimate in strict-time repetitive rock music has roots in the music of non body movements . Whereas the western music , disco, is so all pervasive? western cultures . Unlike the western musical tradition attempts a 'romantic' In the late 1950s when artists started to musical tradition the melodic and poly stimulation of the imagination, many non look for alternatives to the dominant con phonic forms of much African music, for western musical forms by-pass the con servatism of post-war western culture, example, derive their dynamic qualities scious mind and/or stimulate the body . they, like their predecessors at the start of from the rhythmic framework within A repetitive, strict time rhythm has the the century, turned to non-western cult-

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. to HM. The music of the Rhys Chatham Both Glass and Chatham are tackling band is an extraordinary and powerful the 'crossover' problem of taking minimal synthesis of the two. Imagine if you can ism into the 80s. Glass seems to want to Glass writing a commission for Motorhead write pure systems Abba and operas about Video (give him time) and you may get some religious teachers, as though he wants to where near Rhys's music. The band is four split in half and write on the one hand 'pop' guitarists and a drummer, and the volume minimalism and on the other hand work 'The quick-firing, fast cutting, explosive is very high. The music comes very close to with more serious content. Chatham is editing of urban images against a pounding the music of Africa. The guitars are used as writing one music which combines both backbeat characterises a distinctive breed percussive instruments, there are no melo 'art' and 'popular' music and has a clear, of the New Wave ofartist' s video to emerge dies, but rather the music comes from the upfront political content. Glass's presenta from NY in recent years.' So says the ICA dynamics of the rhythmic structure and tion is of an ensemble almost motionless in publicity hand-out. variations of time and volume. The sound black clothes on the stages of large concert This new wave, equally evident in per is hard, loud, aggressive and very pure. halls and opera houses, Chatham's present formance and painting is certainly appro The purest possible music is one note re ation is of a rock band, pogo dancing, in priately placed in the medium which has so peated at regular intervals. Rhys's music at clubs, bars and small arts venues. As a influenced both its content and its form. its simplest, is one discord played by four loyal fan of Philip Glass over many years, I The fragmented, repetitious, rhythmic guitars at regular intervals and at very high hate saying it, but Chatham 's music, its nature of the tapes, and their shortness (4 volume. Yet the music has sophisticated presentation, its politics and its musical minutes being an average length ) has been elaborations on this, nut only in the varia qualities, makes the likes of 'Glassworks' attributed to the joint influence of rock tions of time and volume but also in the seem 'effete' and 'banal'. Chatham is con promos and broadcast TV. Television att way that the sound sets the whole environ fronting both a musical and a political empts to counter the soporific effect it has ment vibrating, setting up a complex set of problem on its own terms, whereas Glass on its audience by a rapid turn-over of glos sounds and reflected sounds . What we hear seems to want to approach the same prob sy, spectacular or violent visuals - few is not only the amplified drums and guitars lems from the security of the concert hall, images stay on the screen for more then a but also the vibrations of the walls and the and the label of success. few seconds. The ads that persuade Ameri floor. It is orchestrated noise. Glass's music is still beautiful and cans to consume a succession of useless Just as Glass learnt that pure rhythm mesmerising and without him Chatham's commodities are only slightly condensed based music can be meditative, like the music would never have been possible. But versions of the cultural pulp that fills the meditator's mantra , Rhys has learnt that whereas Glass is still interested in melody, gaps between commercial breaks. New pure, rhythm based music can be danger nice sounds and the rhetoric of formal wave video pirates, snatches of manufact ous and stimulate violent physical react composition, Chatham through his involv ured TV emotion , action, glamour and ions like the voodoo dancers . The music of ement with HM, has freed himself of these spectacle. It uses them directly or mimics Rhys Chatham contains the threats of New restraints . He is free to fully explore the them or enhances them with all the tricks York street life and the violence of a punk musical possibilities presented by all musi of advanced electronics. These images are gig. With perfect timing an audience cal traditions both serious and popular and injected with the urgency of consumerism, member hurled a beer can at Rhys and in can therefore confront issues of political of high-tension urban living and that parti response he spat back at his assailant. The and musical conservatism directly. His cular brand of NY energy which at its tension and atmosphere was electric. music is tribal music for the streets of New worst darts about on surface impressions Coming out of the concert I felt as though I York, it is a music of hard physical labour and not risking a pause for thought, settles had just run the gauntlet of a street full of and of shared rites and rituals. for instant cynicism instead. At its best this skinheads looking for trouble. Steve Rogers energy can be manifest as bursts of pure exuberance or leisurely displays of irony stemming from accute observations of our technological age. Techniques of fragmentation and repe tition are not new . Much '70s performance built up intricate collages of sounds and images culled from a range of disciplines and media. Feminist performance in parti cular evolved an eclecticism that countered the minimalism and specialisms of con ceptual art. In this country, video has been and continues to be used as a fragment, an element within the work of performers like Rose Garrard and Sonia Knox . Video art itself has traditions and it is structuralist video (perhaps more British than American ) that originally developed techniques of fragmentation . Repetition and distortions of every kind were used in the '70s to highlight and subvert what was seen to be our passive consumption of broadcast TV. By breaking up the narra tive and denying us the pleasure of escap ism, structuralists implied that 'harmless' TV entertainment is in fact saturated with hidden ideologies. The y identified realism as the vehicle for those ideologies and fract ured their images into lengthy blurs, jerky pans across nothing in particular or rapid fire edits which never allowed any object to be positively identifi ed . Rhys Chatham 20

The idea that an audience can be bored conversation between a doctor and his ironic rendition of Yellow Bird by Spike into political awareness has been thank patient: 'He doesn't do anything , doesn't and Allan Scarth who specialises in elegant fully abandoned, but the structuralists and say anything .. . Its just the way he looks at off-key harmonies . These tapes and a set of conceptualists' concentration on form (the me ... That sounds crazy?' The narrative rivetting action-replays of Wonde r content of form) produced some interest builds up slowly as a few more words of the Woman spinning into her 'technological ing video effects that artists like Laurie deadly dialogue are released. Extended in transformation' are offered as deconstruc Anderson and Sandborn/Fitzgerald have this way, the pathos is laid bare, the narra tions, parodies of the manipulative fruitfully exploited. We are now faced wit tive content becomes meaninglesss and the medium that feeds and controls our imag the proposition that pleasure and enter result is peculiarly moving. In 'Kojak inations. I suspect that this is something of tainment can extend our critical understan Wang', a succession of quick edits con a post-rationalisation. At least 70% of the ding of TV culture . This idea was force struct an aggressive rhythm with gunshots, work is simple delight in technology, in the fully rejected in the '70s; an art which used crashing baddies, tough talk and a shoot tricks you can play to disrupt accepted say pornographic images to build a critique ing star absurdly advertising mini comput notions of reality. Although critical of its of pornography was accused of simply ers. Rhys Chatham's music ebbs and flows misuses, Dara Birnbaum is nonetheless producing more of the same. But now even according to Kojak's lines; these we hear seduced by media magic. She reconstitutes pornography is a serious contender for pol again and again. The violence of the edit TV tit-bits into even more ingenious spells itical intervention. ing and the violence of the content are opp that in turn seduce her audience . I'm not 'My God, I can't take all this pleasure !' ressive. The artificiality that the editing suggesting that we learn nothing from laughed a friend as we sat through the first exposes both alleviates and points up the these tapes; the dramatic devices and ster wave of NY New Wave video art from the TV violence which is so often absolved of eotypes the media employ are laid bare by Kitchen Centre - that great Manhattan any charge for inciting actual violence. her techniques, but if she intends a clear melting pot of music, performance and Another tape plays off the plastic personal critique of 'Corporate America's ' propa video. ities of the dumb blond, the wise-cracking ganda, then her work's entertainment Dara Birnbaum's tapes 'Pop Pop Pop ' comedian and the 'ordinary ' people who value dilutes the message considerably. and 'Kojak Wang ' ( 1979) have been hailed take part in quiz shows against a disco ver What her work does do is tamper with the as classics of the new wave. The first tape sion of Georgie Porgie Pudding Pie (who great untouchable, that massive media juxtaposes fragments from soap opera with kissed the girls and made them cry). The machine which represents an impregnable sequences of ice skating races. The grace words of the song roll up the screen like an establishment and at another level conjures ful movements of the skaters punctuate autocue as a bluesy voice takes over the up parental authority and the bewildering repeated exerpts from a dreadfull y intense refrain. The tape ends with a beautifully omnipotence of adults. Dara Birnbaum

London Video Arts Show How do you begin to unravel the work of This, of course , is the whole point. The performance s and two monitor s. Then , the nine different artists at this show? only useful tool for examining the work using an array of small toy instruments, he Seeing the mood and atmosphere change seems to be when the artist deliberat ely build s a soundtra ck. The star of this every quarter of an hour or so does not lend repeats an action or makes an action so performan ce is not Welsh but a small itself to the type of criticism this work drawn out as to be superficially boring. mechanical rabb it, a drummer. Welsh is a requires. There is no way to stop and look Jerem y Welsh's 'Elephant Rhythm's stooge , the straight-man , and there is a at some small detail for a minut e, no way of No.2' began the show. Welsh first tripli hint of the ventriloquist in his manner. exami ning the image more closely. cates himself by using two pre-recorded Welsh successfully amazes us, both by the 22

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. style of the perfo rmance, and his apparent identical to the table in the tapes, this already, never mind the future . What ease of delivery . The repetition of himself, supports a bowl of fruit. To the right, an London Video Arts really require is not an and of the action allows us to see the con image of the fruit decayed, with flies; to the annual or bi-annual show, but a permanent struction of his performance ; it's a skill left, Littman and Redman present them exhibition . that can 't be imparted through this review. selves singularly, walk on and off, they Jane Parish displayed some of her color Catherine Elwe's 'Kensington Gore' alternate between taking compliments, in xerox prin ts during the show. In one of (video-tape ) concentrates on illusions and sulting themselves, giving insults. The the se, using Michelangelo's 'Creation of the skill of creating them. There is a story rotten fruit is eaten, laughter and 'Yum Adam', God passes Adam a video camera . in the tape but the more arresting aspects yum' mixes with the whining monitors. The implication must be that at some of the illustration of this idea come direct The still life can be eaten or not, the human stage, God really did send us the video ly off the screen . A man is having a wound being can left to rot? camera, and He meant it's use to be seen. made up on his neck , it's a long cut. He Akiko Hada's 'The Branks ' is another Paul Madden wears a uniform and a wig, for story is set indicato r of the variety and diffusion of in the past . On his face is a real look of work made on tape. Hada investigates pain, and he looks right at the camera. broken glass, Hada cuts herself . Hada There is a narrati on by two different exploits herself and finds a labyrinth ; the people, and this we see being recorded . minotaur can only watch and record. My Perform The studio is dark and mysteriou s, the two search for any meaning or theme (which is women alternate, swap places. mainly for the reader of this review) is As different again is Steve Littman's pointless. In this month's 'Vogue' Jill -ance and video-tape of a performanc e by the Impact Spalding notes that with 'Tron', 'Blade Theatre Company . Entitled 'Impact Runner ' and 'E.T. - The Extraterrest Venezuelan Sequence', it races past the eye rial', the look of film is now it's meaning. Channel4 leaving a taste for the complete work . This idea, although familiar to anyone who From it I can only surmise that Littman's has followed avante-garde film over the By the time you read this issue, the pundits flair for lighting is matched by his master y past decade or so, is at last reaching to the will have made their judgement on of the edit. More on Littman further on. industry of motion-pictures . whether the much fanfared opening Qf David Critchle y's untitled piece was Zoe Redman 's '7 Faces of a Woman' Channel 4 has been, as claimed , 'the most made only a few hour s before the show. To completed the programme. Originally a exciting event in television for a decade', or the right , a shot of his shoulders and head . performance, the piece has now been has been written off as a one day wonder. He talks about himself to himself, perhaps adapted to video . Each 'face' of a woman is Be that as it may, the Channel is here to to us . He. says that he is aware of the time presented in a variety of ways. The woman stay, and for a while to come it's going to be that has passed since his last work, that is not the same woman, or she is a woman the closest thing to a minority interests now is the time . He presents us with the with another woman's face. In one of the station that we have. image of the artist as the worker who has sequences, Redman stands in a corner; The Channel crosses interests with skipped off, he's sheepish. To the left, his clothed in a raincoat and scarf, with her Perfonnance Magazine in a number of head and shoulders again, but not talking, mask of cuttings from Cosmopolitan - areas, not least in the opportunities it only the repeated grin , grimace, and, eyes from here, lips from there - listening affords for the kind of groups and individ almost, anguish . It's a bizarre to an unseen man's compliments, she can't uals featured in these pages to grab their juxtaposition ; it leaves the viewer embar open her mouth to speak. The most slice of the three or more hour s of arts pro rassed, and not knowing which monitor to pointed part of the piece to me, is where grammi ng each week . I will be examining look at. It's what will one day be called a Redman acts as the holiday maker showing the effects of working across the media in double-one-shot , with no edits, pans or the neighbours her holiday slides. The the next issue. For the moment I will be zooms. As a self-portrait it does not do him woman chats along, explaining the action, concerned with the fundamental issue of any real justice; as an insight into your own and everyone joins in the fun . Except that the kind of broadcasting we need. voyeurism, it is startingly real. the slides are not photographs - they are For the past ten years or so there have 'An Introdu ction to Womanhood In hand written captions saying 'The candles been a number of lobbying groups that The Modern World', by Marion Urch, has flicker ed' or 'It was so peaceful'. The idea I have sought to influence the pattern of a soundtrack of songs with the common suppose, is that people are not interested broadcasting, most expecially in reference link of the birthda ys of sixteen-year old that much, or they are looking but substi to Channel 4, but also concerned with local girls . The lesson Urch throws at us is that tuting their own memories instead . radio and Cable TV . Undoubtedly , the your introduction to the modern world is What I find hard about the criticism of most successful of these to date has been when people carve you up and eat you . these tapes is that video-art is not tele the indepe ndent producers , who have been Urch often uses memory in her work ; are vision. Television is not the state of the art revelling in their new opportunities to these memories her own experience? Are when it comes to images on a screen . For broadcast. But there has been another they an observation and response to the start, most television is entertain ment. broad band of lobbying, composed of an way men still try to control women, baking Whether it is 'Coronation Street' or 'Sit-up assortment of media workers, neighbour them into their own preferred image? The and Listen', the television trains people to hood media resource centres, community wickednes s of the knife used to cut the stop using their eyes and their minds. The artists and activists, plus a number of those birthday cake suggests that this is so; but main reason for this is that it is not inter already on the 'inside' who saw the need for the hand wielding the knife is female, and active. Until recently television even pro a radical re-appraisal of who uses and who the girl eats the cake alone. gram med the time when you watched it. contro ls broadcasting . It might seem that Martin Gallina Jones gave an untitled These points are necessary, even if some this group would have little hope in influ perform ance which I understood to be what obvious . My point is that video-art encing what the public gets to see, but this about one thing only - that people are as can't be read in the same way as television. is not entirely true . different from each other as one apricot It requires a new way of seeing, and a way In the mid-Seventies , just about every stone from another. This interpretation is of seeing that has to be constructed by the one involved in media became obsessed only a literal reading and cannot be taken viewer him or herself. Without the experi with the activities of the Annan Commis as an indi cation of Jones' ability to create ence of seeing many of these and similar sion on Broadcasting. Television produc controv ersy. tapes, and often , the necessary author ity ers were tripping over each other in the 'Sti ll Life' be Steve Littman and Zoe that such a type of viewing requires is race to hoist their liberal colours in antici Redman is a three monitor installation. going to take a while to acquire. pation of the Annan Report: rumour was These are arranged in line facing the The answer to this problem is further rife that Lord Annan and the assorted audience. Each monitor sits on a table confused by the width of work that exists worthies preparing the report were going to continued on page 47 23

ORDERS OF OBEDIENCE will bethe Most Rational Theatreshows are char without clothes, hair, facial expression - tenth performance by Rational Theatre, acterised by the dominance of 'internal act some of the time, words - much of the and the first to take as its starting point the ions' over 'everyday-world actions'. The time; they are reduced to the aoimal, who work of a visual artist - the sculptor Mal world of the shows is one in which the behaves iostioctively and thinks without colm Poynter. superficial 'realism' of any action or state having formal ideas . Only in patches does We have worked from images before; ment portrays in its lackof 'normal' theat the 'human' appear- the badges of 'civil the reconstructed Neanderthal man at the rical relationships with other actions or isation'. And in places the instinctive National History Museum led to 'Fossil statements, an intention to express thou animal itself has been rubbed away to re face', but we have never before had the ghts and feelings at more than a merely veal the organism, the material from which opportunity to work from a group of narrative level. it is constructed, the vegetable and mineral images with the cooperation and active It is not, as sometimes described, 'sur worlds. involvement of the creator of those images. realism', I prefer to call it 'supernatural The first thing you can say about doing Discussions with Malcolm began early ism'. anything is that you do it because it feels in the year - full time work on the project lo practise, this manifests itself as work right. After that come the ideas, the theor commencing when performers, director, which seems to unfold in a logical way, al ies and the techniques. writer and designer spent a week working though there is clearly something abnorm We begin from wanting to see certain· with the Japanese Buto dance company al about the logic; the ideas develop, but things on stage. These are usually things to SANKAI JUKU . Shortly after this the the pictures also have a life and be perceived, but when worked upon cast shaved their heads and work began on development of their own - from a become things heard , things thought interpreting in moving flesh and blood the mixture of the two the piece develops. about and written down and then reconstit · feelings expressed in Poynter 's sculptures . In Orders of Obedience the actors are uted, like powdered potatoes. We tcy to Orders of Obedience

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. other. It is a rational decision to accept our Purgatory emotional natures, perhaps also an emotional decision to accept our rational natures. It assumes that there is no such thing as Jim Whiting an irrational act, our lack of understanding may make things seem irrational or super natural, but as we extend our concept of natural law to include all observed pheno When I arrived at the site of the installa electrical engineering although he spent his mena, we enable ourselves to perceive and tion, a grey Midlands sky had covered the time drawing. This was a perversity only to understand the universe in more profound top of the sculpture court. A small balding be bettered when, later, he went to St. ways. There may be more things in heaven but youngish figure with metal tipped Martin's where his short sojourn was spent and earth than are dreamt of in our philos shoes like the overgrown toenails of cows making his electrical devices. ophy but that is because our philosophy is was clanking around, wordless, peering At this point he delved into an attache inadequate, always several steps behind into boxes, lifting things and momentarily which was stuffed with papers and our observations. Theatre is one area in stopping. The stale lifeless air was silent re-emerged with a freshly charged gin which we expand our observations of life too and the aura of reverence amongst the and a picture of what he claimed had been and contribute to the expansion of our total two-kids-and-a-dog audience suggested tht instrumental in his fall from grace with the consciousness - including our ability to I had missed the start of the performance. famous London art college. Apparently dream. Rational Theatre is not rational Then the black clad druid spoke; when he first went to St. Martin's he was istic, it is holistic . 'I've lost a head,' he said. without a girlfriend, unlike his classmates Peter Godfrey founded Rational Thea 'Did it have hair on it?' retorted a and so he made what he simply called a tre in 1978 and was for a time writer, dir quarter of the audience indicating simul wanking machine. Perhaps fortunately, ector and performer. Brian Lipson and taneously her sincerity in looking for the the drawing or photograph indicated Cindy Oswin were amongst the earliest renegade head and her sympathy for a man nothing more explicit than a pair of dis actors to work with the company, in 1980 who was clearly the sort who would go embod ied legs and before I could ask Andy Wilson joined, taking over as direct round losing heads, shorn or otherwise . whether it worked or not he had started on or of productions. Chris Whittingham first (Looking as if she'd just stepped out of something else. · worked with the company in 1980, Sar~h 'Charlie Brown', she later told her com Anarchy and Jim by this time had well Sankey joined in 1981 and Alan Brown in panion that what they were watching was and truly taken over; at one moment he 1982. Sandy Powell has designed Rational no more absurd than getting married. ) would be filling me in on his life story and Theatre shows over the past year. Ros Anyway, thus it became clear that I at another he would be illustrating some Robins has been the company administrat hadn't missed any of the performance and idea he'd had by pointing to 'Purgatory' or or since the beginning of 1982. New to the that what I'd mistaken for the aloofness of telling me how 'it' was really all about company for Orders of Obedience are ritual was, in fact, the distance of an ob 'seeing people' and how 'things' were 'just Chris Bowler and Giles Oldershaw. We sessive and slightly absent-minded invent beginning to take off. Whiting himself also have a number of students working or. even looked the archetypal nihilin dressed with us on the show: Nigel Prabhavalkar By the time Jim had given up searching as he was in a black suit and scarf, a slightly from the Central School of Art and Design for his head and was wheelchaired up to the grubby white shirt and a horrible vermil and four dance students from the Central construction by his friend (Myra), dressed lion velvet bow-tie sticking out above the School of Dance. Richard Hahlo, also a as a uniformed nurse, the crowd had swell lip of his top pocket. student, is the assistant director. ed. For the next half an hour or so, the Whiting, however, is too fond of Malcolm Poynter is working in close cow toed high priest crawled around 'Pur making things which work to be chaotic. collaboration with the company and is at gatory' using the shoes as hooks playing Instead, his anarchism is quite ordered. present making pieces for use in the show jazz sax and occasionally being attacked by His is the anarchism native to England as well as contributing his visual percep his own creation but enjoying every minute which means not only supporting the tions to the process. of it. underdog against the weight of authority Peter Godfrey It was the day after this extraordinary but also revelling in the absurd. The top performance (in which his theatre and half of 'Purgatory' for instance, with its music were nearly as important as the in pink foam fly-winged bodyless angels stallation ) that I was able to talk to Jim moving in stately circles however surreal is Whiting about his various electro not Dada mixed with Micelangelo. Like mechanical devices, although offspring the workings of a celestial carriage clock, it might be a more appropriate word for these is a very funny Pythonesque joke without objects with which he was little less than so much as a sniff of the continental about besotted. it. As we spoke it soon seemed quite clear There is a lot of one man's-battle that; draw parallels with other scupltors or against-authority in Whiting. He smiled artists or point out similarities with other when he told me about a brief career in schools as one might , and I shall; any real teaching at a girls' school where he kept his explanations for these creations were to be pupils in order by promising to draw them found more in the critical events of Whit until he was caught bunking off by the ing's personal biography than a review of headmistress 'on the other side of town the styles of his predecessors - if indeed with a lolly-pop in my mouth '. He positive such persons can be defined. ly droolled when he described his plans for In fact he started early. When other the 'Dismembered Traffic Warden'. But children were discovering the age of the even he admits to having nightmares and train, Whiting was conducting what he melancholies which haunt his works and called, with boyish enthusiasm, 'phasing make you watch them longer than it takes experiments' . Something must have happ to get the jokes. ened to Whiting at that embara ssing age It wasn't long though before he when boys get bored with their trains launched off again, this time on fencing because his mania never subsided and he machines with 'devastating attacks' as he found himself at university signed up for pointed to another part of 'Purgatory' 26

Q) E :::, f c Q) ~ 28

ABCD Workshop 29

Williams Seward Burroughs has a particu lar place for the British in his universe, and it's not very nice: 'YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A BANANA REPUBLIC ..... You Fabian Socialist vegetable peoples go back to your garden in Hampstead and release a hot-air balloon in defiance of a local ordin The Final Academy ance delightful encounter with the bobby in the morning. Mums wrote it all up in her diary and read it to us at tea. WE GOT ALL YOUR PANSY PICTURES AT ETON. YOU WANTA JACK OFF IN FRONT OF THE QUEEN WITH A CANDLE UP YOUR ASS?' (The Wild Boys 1969). I don't know exactly what happened to WSB during his sojourn in London in the sixties, residing in the Bun ker in Duke Street St James (the address alone shows how much London must have changed) but he left it with a distinctly bad taste in his mouth. Surprising then, that all it took was a little enterprise, hard work and probably hard currency to get him back. Things have changed a lot since then. Briefly singled out as a pornographic bete noire and stimulant of fervent and loony correspondence in the Times (the 'Ugh' letters, after the title of a priggish review) the seminal Naked Lunch inspired a whole new generation of artists, musicians, aca demics and anarchists who have since aged and formed a kind of hidden Establish ment, an underground force who are bid ing their time waiting for something to happen. Garrad Martin That something could almost, but not quite, have been the appearance of the Not so, replied Roger Ely, one of the friendly but natural home of poets, occult venerable, gravel-voiced gentleman him triumvirate that made up the Final Acad ists, egyptologists, the British Museum, self in Brixton Ground Zero, the way hav emy, the organisation that staged the Brix and bookshops full of Burroughs ing no doubt been prepared the previous ton readings alongside poets, performan ce ephemera ; other elements across the Atlan summer by tech sergeants with recordings artists and rock groups who were continu tic have also been at play. Recently, for of riot noises, breaking glass etc, as another ing the 'legacy' of William Burrough s and example, along with John Giorno and the little corner of the Earth prepares to go his collaborator, Brion Gysin. Bar one performance artists Laurie Anderson, he Nova. There certainly were some classic evening, he stayed and watched every sold out at the Roxy Marquee on Sunset appearances from the vicinity of the wood thing. The Face probably had in mind the Strip, Los Angeles. The LA magazine work in the Ritzy, a procession of veterans activities of Psychic TV, who ended the High Performance wrote- " It felt to me of various struggles for the soul of the plan series with a ' 1984' type presentati on of like the emergence of the post-avant et. People who ought to have been dead, or propaganda, and whose stamp clearly garde." The magazine goes on to describe married with kids, or both, or burnt out, or marked out the tenor of the other bands Burroughs' appearance on the TV show become drbnks, gone mad, got lost in the playing, 23 Skidoo, Last Few Days, and Saturday Night Live; "The cameras Amazon, joined the system, become Scien Cabaret Voltaire. Genesis P. Orridge, zoomed in and held a close-up of his face tologists, Satanists, Stalinists or Sufis, got another F.A. organiser, and instigator of for nearly forty seconds - longer than old kidnapped by beings from outer space: Psychic TV, had in fact, through the succ Walter Cronkite, for Christ's sake! What they all came slowly, blinking down the ess of his previous group Throbbing Grist can it possibly mean that this 67 year-old aisles disbelievingly, wondering how they le, had attracted a fair crowd of younger ex-junkie - who accidentally killed his got Burroughs to Come Back. people, two generations apart from the wife with a bullet between the eyes, whose The money, said some, meaning pre 'underground' contingent to the Ritzy, and only son and namesake died young of a sumably money for his junk habit. (Now thus to Burroughs' work. The apocalyptic drug and alcohol-diseased liver, whose restarted, probably for good, since as an imagery (or apocalyptic chic, as the Face entire life's work flies in the face of every old man the shock of another cure would put it) in the music and visuals of these Judeo-Christian sense of acceptable con not be worth it. ) 'I have to do readings. I groups, had certainly been lifted from the duct - has reached a position where couldn't live off my income from books .' ravaged landscape of a Burroughs novel, if Lauren Hutton can introduce him to a tele The pop music magazine The Face quoted perhaps a bit literally. vision audience of a hundred million or so the above, and derided the Final Academy Although it is customary to think of as America's greatest living writer?" as an attempt to co-opt him into some Burroughs as particularly appealing to the What indeed, in a country run at morbid new 'movement'. denizens of the spurned London , un- present by the "Do-Right Johnsons " , the

parasitical time travellers and Nova crimi comic character of Dr Benway, people Burroughs , whether through drugs or nals; jumping backwards and forwards have seen MASH enough times to take the actual experience, the worlds he describes between orifices in Mayan codices, back edge out of medical horror-story/jokes. are only too real, and to not ignore them, to rooms in Chinese laundries and Tangier But then he's been accused of being too dwell on them even, is a healthier and more hotels. He really is steeped in this stuff, he retrospective and self-absorbed. His frank sane approach than to run away screaming didn't just knock it off and forget about it; and clear speech, on the first night, about Ugh! it's his whole life and he quite possibly humanity's desire to destroy itself by The whole series finished with believes he will become immortal through means of nuclear weapons put the lie to Burroughs slyly intoning, through the it. He left behind the draft for his latest this, and any suspicion of cynicism about applause, that famous soundtrack of book, The Place of Dead Roads, by the world's potential horrific fate that he 'Histo ry of Witchcraft' 'Lock them out mistake in Kansas: he simply set about re describes with loving accuracy in many of and Close the Door , Lock them out for constructing it when he got here. He made his books. For many people in the Evermore .... ' Rob La Frenais perhaps a bit too much mileage out of the audience, who had seen similar visions to

William Burroughs 34

Over the past couple of years there have garde seem strangely both unnecessrily What with Basilco, pasta, and the been tantalising rumours that 'something obscure and ineffectually cosy. beauty of the country and the people and is happening' in Italy. It is a shame then The next company to appear in the pro now with such good theatre I was all set to that the Arte Italiana season arrived at the gramme, 'La Gaia Scienza' shared with pack and catch the first plane to Rome. But I.C.A. and Hayward Gallery with so little Falso Movimento their extraordinary there are two other equally well known sense of occasion. Perhaps the recent energy and their determined rejection of Italian characteristics, which whilst being opportunistic fashion for spotting the next conventional theatre forms. The perform the worst kind of bigoted generalisations, national flavour of the month has proved so ance, 'Gli Insetti Preferiscon o le Ortiche', will probably prevent me from ever trying disappointing that nobody seemed either which must mean something like 'The to live in Italy. Unfortunately, after an surprised or particularly interested in the insects prefer the Ostrich', was construct excellent start to the programme, the arrival of the Italians. ed of a series of mini-spectacles of light and Nuova Spettacolorita season went badly The season started with 'Tango Glac dance and sound. They investigated the wrong and mostly through bad iale' performed by the Falso Movimento theatrical possibilities of almost every con organisation and prima donna behaviour Company. Against a slide vision of modern ceivable light source, except convention by the artists. Italian designer living, to a text of clinical, ally used theatre lights , each light source The performance by Taroni/Cividin art/disco music, three performer danced being actively manipulated by a company was a fiasco. They kept their audience cliched vignettes of urban alienation. The member. The music however, was taped waiting an hour and then doled out 30 perils of crossing the street, arbitrary and consisted of an almost impenetrable minutes of incompetent rubbish. Any new killings in the crossfire of guerilla warfare; blend of what seemed to be arab love songs movement will produce imitators and the destruction of traditional bucolic life; and African ritual drumming. hopefully with time, luck and the right the kitchen-sink violence of family break It was the dancing however which pre kind of support some of these will develop down; counterpointed with equally cli served the performance from being merely their own distinctive voice. This was not ched, palliative dream s of poolside ro an experiment in form . Sometimes impro the right kind of support. The performers manc e and Holywood stardom. The mess vised and sometimes choreographed the clearly believed that they deserved the age is clear; hardedged , designer living is performers shook, jittered, stumbled and respect and admiration of their audience . sterile and an outrage perpetrated on arbitrarily flailed their limbs like a tribe of This attitude is not surprising, after ·au, humanity and the performers rage against demented ants performing some strange they were giving their debut in one of it, finally bursting the seams of their demonic ritual. This combination of non Britain's most prestigious venues, with Gucchi safari suits in blind destruction and theatre lights , non-western music and non financial support from the Arts Council self-destruction. mammalian dancing became hypnotically and the Commune di Milano. There are There are obvious parallels with punk . fascination in the way that physical de many British performers of considerab ly The youthful abrasive energy; the simple formaties or the rotting carcass of a dead more talent and experience who would direct message; the obsessive rhythm of animal can be. Yet what we are looking at is have given their right arm for this kind of the music , dancing and scene and costume people, and we are given the impression support and exposure. changes. And just as punk was as much a that humanity is extraordinary freak of Unfortunately, this was not the only violent reaction against the power elite of nature, as fascinating and yet as incompre disaster on the programme. Dal rock superstars as against social injustice, hensible as is the teeming flesh of a maggot Bosco/Varesco who were due to give two so too Tango Glaciale reacts against the ridden corpse . performances discovered that they were alienation and class-divisiveness of modern My appreciation of the performance being paid for their two performances what life and against the power elite who domin suffered somewhat from my inability to Torino/Cividin were getting for one and ate the art galleries and theatres. translat e the quite difficult Italian used . having seen the Cividin performance I am The difference from punk is that the The translations in the programme were not surprised that Dai Bosco/Varesco Italian avant garde has always enjoyed a helpful and it is shame that we didn't have decided to cancel one of their close and natural contact with ordinary them before going into the auditorium. 'La performances. I am only sorry that they people allowing them to operate their Gaia Scienza ' were every bit as energetic decided to cancel the one I had planned to message from within the institutions and and commited as Falso Movimento but see. The programme was finished off, (pun without having to set themselves aggress they lacked the youthful and abrasive dir intended ) by Antonio Syxty. This was one ively apart. In particular Falso Movimento ectness of message which made Tango event that was preceded by any kind of speak directly to the young and as the com Glaciale as effective politically as theatri hype, I had at least seen posters around pany themselves are very young, they cally. town for it. Apparently Antonio Syxty gets suggest, by their own obvious commit An Italian friend once said to me 'How set and costume designs from architects ment, an alternative and more valuable can you say Britain is civilised when you and the fashion world, music from form of personal expression than dying don't even grow Basilico?' There is a composers and choreography from, yes, your hair pink and buying the latest fash wonderful salad they make. Dice together choreographers. He then acts as ions. some sweet tomatoes and some mozzerella, impressario putting all these different con This is theatre of a radical and courage add some torn leaves ofBasilico, a little oil tributions together. This part icular piece ous kind, its energy, commitment and and salt and you have a simple visually was called 'Fa miglia Horror'. The futurist directness makes much of the British avant exciting, delicious dish. Try it. style set was elegant, the music rather pre- 35

dictable, sounding like out-takes from an old Tangerine Dream album, the dancing was cliched and the scenario was banal and boring. Five female androids reawaken from a sleep on board a space ship. Under instructions from the 'mother' computer the androids are to create the 'Family Project'. We are told that the project is sabotaged by 'males' and the androids start to experience human emotions and finally one of the androids disobeys the mother computer, so overwhelmed is she by insatiable desires to have a baby, to be a 'mother' herself. The voice over tapes were a rapid banter in Italian and at least added an exotic feel to the performance. Reading the programme afterwards I can only believe that the voices contributed yet more quasi-Freudian, sexist clap-trap that was apparent in the narrative of the performance. As a fashion show it would have been entertaining, as theatre it was trite. The programme notes also reveal that Antonio Syxty founded the Antonio Syxty fan club, Prima Donna is an Italian phrase and we need look no further to see why it is in international usage. The one unifying element of Nuova Spettacolorita was the use of eleme~ts of post modern culture and, in particular, youth culture. There does seem to be a genuine attempt to come to terms with new social problems through new forms of theatre. There is an emphasis on visual and musical spectacle and dancing, but whether such similarities do constitute a new movement I am not really sure. It would be like saying that the Operas of Monteverdi and of Robert Wilson constitute a movement as they both have an emphasis on repetitive musical structures, on visual splendours, and are both rather phsyically static. Certainly there are superficial arguments for the work presented at the I.C.A. to be seen as part of a vital new init iative in European theatre . Whilst they looked similar they had completly different things to say, ranging from the simple directness of Tango Glaciale, to the amateurish dabbling fo Torino/Cividin to the reactionary chic of Antonio Syxty. There is certainly and energy and vitality there which I hope will have an intluence in Britain, but I hope I am not being nationalistic by saying that the Italians could learn a good deal from Brit ain about sensitivity and discipline. Steve Rogers.

.2> l::! ~ 0 C: ><1:1 -8 co 36 Falso Movimento-Tango Glaciate

The casual visitor to theatre might well Rider Haggard , Capt W.E. Johns and the continuing obsessions and details . The think that 'Brogue Male' belongs to that others. All twenty four parts and sound character of the night club entertainer, Les category of show whimsically put together effects are performed by Davies in a tradi Basset , is the twin of Chas Barton, the by resting rep. actors and trundled out to tional BBC dinne r suit. The script is such warm up man from Radio Beelzebub, a try and make a few bob on the door at that it could in fact be played over the radio part which gave the then little known Edinburgh . This hypothetical punter may but the visual performance of Davies as he Keith Allen his first taste for the idiom. well think the show worth a look, given its switches from character to character is a Both comedians are excrutiatingly hack credentials. Raved about by the Daily hilarious cornerstone of the piece. The comedians. Both start in fine form and Telegraph of all things , this 'Smash Hit ' of discrepanc y between the sound created degenerate into psychotic messes. Whereas the Edinburgh Fringe was described by the and it's mean s of production makes for Barton 'dries' into self pitying weakling Bristol Evening Post as 'a hilarious spoof more enjoyable insights. crippled by domestic crises, Basset goes and the Edinburgh Evening News cited it's The show starts with a traditional over the top in a babbling tirade of creator, Paul B. Davies, as an 'outstand ing recapitulation of the story so far. Deep in paranoid terror at the people in his local comedian '. the jungle , Sir Digby Spode and his vague pub .and at the words in his head . 'Words As indeed he is. What the casual visitor and elderl y assistant, Carstairs , are about are thoughts with legs on!', he gibbers would probabl y be completel y unaware of to enter a lost temple in search of the until dragged offstage. Both characters are is the decade of hard work in performan ce legenda ry skull of the Laughing Goat memorable roles and have done a lot for that Davies has done creating a substantial Abandoned by their treacherous guide , their creators . Allen's impromptu rendi body of original and disturbing theatre into they enter only to find the skull gone and tion of the Barton routine at the Comedy which 'Brogue Male ' offers only a small in the door slammed shut behind them . Store gave him a foothold for a career he sight . In 1970 Davies founded the Crystal Escaping via a secret passage they see the has intelligently developed to give him a Theatre of The Saint to develop experi guide and a mysterious Bohemian fleeing national reputation. On the strength of this mental theatre along the lines indicated by from the site . Fearing for Lady Gwendo show, Paul Davies could be poised on such Antonin Artaud earlier this century. By line Spode's safety, they return to England an opening. last year the company had done thirt y full where Spode confesses the true purpose of 'Brogue Male' is clearly and deservedly scale productions as well as numerou s his mission abroad was to clear his father's a critical and popular success. Only a events and environmental proje cts. Exten name in the Laughing Goat affair. On train purist could object to a performer sive touring throughout Britain and to Paddingt on, they encounter treacherous expanding to reach a wider audience . but Europe had brought them critical recogni guide and the Bohemian who escape in a as the audience shifts from being one of tion but little subsidised support. A com tussle but not before they've dropped a fringe afficiandos to a more broadly based plete commitment to experimentation had valuable clue, a card for the Mammary middle class one, there is the danger of created immensely powerful shows such as Club, Soho. Spode and Carstairs visit the diluting mterial so as to defer to taste. As 'Radio Beelzebub ' as well as the curious dive where the entertainment is provided, the commercialisation of the fringe pro but overloaded 'T he Protector '. Often inter alia, by stand up comic, Les Basset. gresses, both through neccesity and entre working on the simple principle that things In a police raid , the two heroes escape and preneurial manipulation, it becomes more are not what they appear to be, Crystal pursue the Bohemian to a Scottish tourist difficult to find work that convinces Theatre pursued obsession al interests in board office where they discover he is through it's rawness and energy. As TV the devil, radio, furniture and the treach making for Bloodwood House on the Isle talent spotters scour studio theatres look ery of language . Pieces ended in catast of Gray. Hot on the trail, they arrive on the ing for novelty acts for late night shows, it rophe with strobes and dry-ice machines island and discover a secret tunnel leading will be difficult to refuse the lucrative fees going full tilt. With maroon s and flash pot s up into a cellar in Blackwood House . Here offered even though the antics of Alexei exploding, it was as if the last statement they are overpower ed by the Bohemian Sayle on 'O.T.T.' serve as a warning . It had to be one that blew some invigorating who reveals himself to be a follower of the would only be a gain to see talent such as chaos into a four-square world. As the Laughing Goat cult. The desecration of the Paul Davies on national TV. I hope he madness and excess of Artaud was courted , tomb by Spode 's father can only be doesn't lose his direction in the process. there were sights and scenes that the Tele placated by the sacrifice of the defiler's Phil Hyde graph critic might not have been so enthus first born and anointing the skull with it's iastic about. blood. Spode is strapped to the altar and all Crystal Theatre are in abeyance now seems lost until Carstairs reveals he has a for a ,year's rest, possibly longer. In the trump card. Unknown he has picked up meantime Davies has been pursuing solo the skull and threat ens to dash it into work. A precursor to 'Brogue Male' was smithereens if Spode is not released. The 'The Shallow Grave' which acquired a cult two men retreat up the stairs and the skull following when shown on BBC West 's is thrown down. The cosmic energy con popular RPM programme . At present he is tained within the skull is released, blowing collaborating with Dr John Collee, host of a the house and devil worshippers to pieces. medical phone-in programme for BBC The mortally injured Carstair 's mind Radio Bristol , on a serial for Radio West begins to clear and his vagueness is reveal and a new comedy show for HTV . Using ed as thirty year's amnesia. He is, after all, elements of old material and techniqu es Spode 's father and so as not to upstage this devised during Crystal shows, they wrote shattering revelation, dies as any obliging 'Brogue Male ' specifically as a vehicle to character would. showcase Davies ' talents. Performed in an On stage for a continuous ninety imaginary radio broadcasting studio, the minutes, Davies' per formance was re show is a pastiche of adventure thrillers markable for it's stamin a and ability. that have been created over the last Hugely entertaining, it was doubly fascin hundred years by English writers such as ating for any Crystal enthusiast to pick out

New York is a wonderful town, a town One room of the gallery was a room full icebox hums, an ambulance goes whoop- that's produced, and continues to produce of dreams. Pop on the headphones and a re ing along the street, a child screams ...... large quantities of high quality art. In the corded voice describes a dream . Each.tape the New York artist is savaged by experi main though, the ICA's New York bash recording is accompanied by a fuzzy black ence but (post Cage, post Warhol) life goes has been pretty disappointing. And for str and white picture - rather like a film-still on and, with a shrug and a 'So what?' And aightforward reasons: of the seven artists edited out just at that moment when the erson focusses on its bland details. included in the Urban Kisses exhibition, patient says - 'Yes doctor, I remember it O.K., butwhat'sdisstisfyingisthat 'So three of them, John Ahearn, Mike Glier all now .. .' Their identity is scribbled on what?' was exactly the question that much and Ken Goodman, simply aren't very the picture: Butcher or Student, the simple of Laurie Anderson's work left me asking. good, and in fact, on this showing, only nouns that also provide the title of each Staying sane in New York City may well Keith Haring seemed to justify the promo piece. Sometimes the recorded voice is acc mean coping with insidious pressure rather tional excitement. ompanied by background noise, but typic than taking individual pleasures, letting The real focus of the season though, ally of Anderson's style, all the urns and things wash over you, adopting a defensive was Laurie Anderson, whose Artworks fil ahs are left in. Sometimes the dreams are neutrality, then they can't really be thou led the upper gallery. I can't say I was actu bizarre, sometimes rather ordinary. Or as ght of as very good. ally disappointed by this display, because ordinary as dreams ever get. Certainly Of course Anderson's work doesn't en not being an enthusiast, I didn't have high these pieces tend towards the ordinary . Be tirely lack wit or imagination. Something expectations. Which was just as well. Her cause what each of the sets gives us; the as simple as New York Times Horizontal, much heralded and pompously gestated picture , the bland flat identifying noun, China Times Vertical makes that obvious: performance United States may yet prove the reported dream, the sound of the voice; But this piece succeeds because it manages exciting and wonderful (and worth the £12 what it gives us is that sensation which to draw its physical form into the joke. It and two trips to the Dominiqn that it's might accompany hearing a real dream re may be 'about' the incomprehensible jum going to take to see it) but as a maker of ported, that things aren't adding up, that ble that results from weaving together the gallery objects, Anderson doesn't look ter they don't make sense. New York and China Times, but it's given ribly strong. What she does look like- be And this of course isn't just the central interest by the reference, no matter how il cause the appearance at least much of this subject matter of Anderson's work but one logical, to the fact that one newspaper is stuff is familiar enough - is a somewhat that recurs in the work of most of the artists read in horizontal lines traced from left to tardy conceptual artist with a taste for low included in this ICA season. And the rea right, the other in vertical lines from top to technolgy. Certainly there's plenty of son for this, we are asked to believe, is be bottom. hardware to keep us busy: headphones to cause this is urban art at top speed, art pro In fact, I suspect that much of Ander put on, tapes to listen to, books to flick thr duced when technology really gets high, son's real interest is in the technical charac ough, 3D specs, more headphones, even a the art of post-modern New York City, the teristics of her work. Replacing the bridge jukebox .... But is there sufficient content art of the cultural capital of the world as it of a violin with a tape recorder playback to sustain all this? I think not. A little goes gets dangerously close to falling off the head and drawing over it, not a conven a long way, people keep telling me. But edge ..... the phone rings, a truck rumbles tional bow, but one in which horsehair has this really is a little. And it's made to go a below the window, the TV flickers, in the been replaced by a length of pre-recorded hell of a long way. next apartment somebody gets knifed, the tape may yet, in performance, prove the

Mailman 1980. 38

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out of the way. They do, in any case, apply a kind of polite acceptance of the act, despite it being a bit close for comfort. It's a performance after all, and they know how far to go. Or do they? He throws a chair across the room. People are being forced to rethink their ideas - are they really safe? The pitch is heightened. The girl in the raincoat and dark glasses pulls a member of the audience into the middle of the space and pushes him down onto the floor. She repeats this until she has gathered a group of the audience into the centre of the performance space. They remain there, crouching expectantly, being ignored by the rest of the performers, who are busy staring out various members of the audience gathered round. The group obediently huddle together uncomfort ably, waiting for something to happen . It doesn't. The performers continue to provoke the audience, catching someone's atten tion and then turning away, playing games with us until we are not sure how far we are going to let them go. The nurse does some thing to the black-shiny-mac-girl in the chair. She screams loudly. The man in the overcoat with the brylcreamed hair picks up a bass guitar and begins to play. A drum machine beats out a rhythm. The girl in the black shiny mackintosh and another sinister-looking woman in the fur coat and hat both grab microphones and begin rapping to the music. One of the group in the middle begins to dance. Tentatively at first, others slowly follow suit, until the entire audience is dancing. There is a strong feeling of relief, of something having been resolved. I am still not sure Performance Platform whether I am watching a performance or not, or where the lines begin and end . The performers are acting normally. There is a Nottingham is the ideal spot for a trade fair Performance Platform itself does 1s sense of barriers having been broken for live art, for that is what the Midland provide an essential intensive experience down, of freedom in the fact that you are Group Performance Platform has almost for those most interested in the future of standing in that same performance space become. 'Delegates' staying at the Waver live art; especially in this country, where and doing something. ley Commercial Hotel, a 'Pennies From veteran avant-gardists in their forties and There is that feeling you get after a Heaven' style nostalgic epitome of the fifties are still regarded as radical Young good party; of having enjoyed yourself to Midland Salesmans Stopover, with Turks with the absence of the sort of estab the point of exhaustion, but still not quite budgies, tinted photos, radiogram , a lishment acceptance they would receive in ready to leave. That was the end, however, visitors book stretching back thirty years the US or Europe. It roots out the younger and so we stumble out at 6. 30 a.m. onto the and the whole affair done out in dark red and lesser known artists who don't get Arts street, with a feeling of some triumph at gloss paint; spend a gruelling day watching Council money (not necessarily always the having survived the night, and walk all the 'displays' ranging from endurance pieces same thing ) and gives them space and way to Brick Lane for a cup of tea. to absurdism, smoke bomb epics to food facilities to present their work. The Was it a success? Any event which fetishism, body art to ballistics. Splling out audience consists of the other artists, rep attempts to do what 'Witches Fly South' into the street afterwards the performance resentatives of funding bodies, critics, did has to be commended . Strange's goes on; Lawrentian Nottingham on a students and academics, and the interested concern with redefining structures and Saturday night out without the flat caps. public. Although the organisers may not setting up something in its own terms Yates Wine Lodge, throbbing with this wish it, it really is self-limiting in that way. creates its own criteria for judgment rather traditional Saturday Nocturnal hedonism; It is right that it should be, not because than pre-existing ones. There is a fragmen fights breaking out in odd corners, a there is an important need for performance tation of mainstream culture; people are balcony string trio pumping out manic to be self-regarding from time to time, so tired of being remote spectators. The Tschaikovsky; has its usual brimful of that it can mature and develop a language Event Group was memorable because of shop-persons and art students supplemen for itself in the same way as static visual art the way in which they involved us and ted by a shell-shocked Platform audience and theatre. Performance art has for too challenged our passivity. This kind of who have just spent a full day watching long been forced into a Peter Pan role by event becomes what you are willing to people throw spaghetti at one another or jealous painters and actors. make of it, and that is a rare thing these riding bicycles endlessly in the dark. As if to put the lie to the Trade Fair days. Chrissie Iles So much for atmospherics. What the allusion, the organisers this year chose to

Club Boring - Steven Taylor Woodrow 42

is it so boring and why did half the audi archive. ence walk out? Still, Janet Davies' insistent ft can be seen that the selection this monotone still echoed through my brain year was wide and ambitious, and served days later, so was there some subtle form of its purpose admirably in bringing to light a verbal conditioning in the apparently representati ve selection of good, bad and meaningless text? Time will tell. indifferent work. This is much better than Sue Carpenter built excellent wearing playing safe with selections, in the hope structures, made of wood, and based on that consistent quality can be achieved. In Samauri armour for her Structure-Move Live Art it can't. It would be Dead Art ment-Sound and provided really the most otherwise. visually stimulating presentation. But why However, one criticism has to be made, did it have to be so choreographed? Applic of a mistake that has been repeated, and ation of dance principles to such ideas, to should not be again. There is no point in. me lends an unnecess~ry aridity which wheeling out a Performance 'Star' (last could have been avoided by simply seeing year Jeff Nuttall, this year Roland Miller) them worn, in a random way. Still, the to lead a discussion if he or she cannot see 'dervish' movements, with all the slats all the Platform work . Roland Miller had clack-clacking to a halt on change of direct - some interesting points to make, but they ion, was really worth experiencing. were basically irrelevant to the weekend's Finally, back to the Great British Ec experience, people were tired, and the dis centric Department for Noel Perkins' cussion was a dead duck . As it was, there Flow Motion. This, to everyone's initial was not much time left till the last festival disbelief, was a water-powered movie pro event, Forkbeard Fantasy, and it was satis jector! Buckets of water were poured into fying to see some of the more rareified vis the top of a large wooden structure which ual performance 'delegates' being given then ran the mechanism that turned the the full treatment by more experienced film and also cooled the light bulb. The saboteurs of the space between theatrical film, shot by the same principle, almost artifice and absurdist art. seemed to blend in with the process, as if it ,Rob La Frenais. had been rescued from some waterlogged

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The Basement Group performing at the Platform. (Article about them next issue) 45

Derry is no more than one would expect. haggling about where the amenities should Although he doesn't see himself involved Grey, bleak, tense - the cliches trip off the be sited (down-town Derry was finally de in what he calls 'social missionary work' he tongue effortlessly . The barricades may cided upon as 'neutral' territory ) the Ore.h wants the gallery to take an active role. His have been taken down on the Bogside and ard Gallery was finally opened, along with decision to show Willats was taken in the the Creggan and the British Army may go a theatre and a sports c,entre. hope that the work would 'make connect about its 'peace keeping' with a lower pro Since then the gallery has built up a ions'. file, but no one talks about the city being a good deal of support within the commun Willats in Derry? It is impossible for more 'relaxed' place these days. Merely a ity, Protestant and Catholic. As Declan the work not to 'make connections'. Will bit quieiter. McConagle, the director of the gallery and ats work has always sought, where possi That Culture should find a foothold - a Derryman, says: 'it's as if people trust the ble, an empathetic context for his 'con and flourish - in Derry seems almost like space' . Remarkably, this trust has been sciousness-raising'. Willats though was not a bad joke. Crippled by war and high un built upon a very adventurous exhibitions involved in a project in Derry itself (some employment Derry is not the place one programme. Stuart Brisley, Gerard Hems thing that had been mooted but then drop would expect to find a state subsidized gall worth, Nigel Rolfe, Richard Long, John ped); the show consisted of work from re ery, particularly when there have been no Murphy and recently Stephen Willats, cent projects in London: the Charville precedents of any kind for such a venture. have all had one man shows. Coupled with Lane Estate project Two Worlds Apart, The success of the Orchard Gallery is this 'experimental' work has been a variety Pat Purdy and the Glue Sniffers (based on therefore something of a surprise - if of conventional exhibitions (local amateur the activities of a group of kids on a piece of that's the right word. Up until 1978 Derry work, holography) and miscellaneous ev wasteland 'The Lurky Place' adjacent to had virtually no cultural or recreational ents such as rock and jazz gigs (The Under the Avondale Estate, Hayes, West Lond amenities . In 1973 the SDLP council pro tones , Derry's most famous sons, have on) and The Kids Are in the Streets posed that if Derry was to continue to call played in the gallery). (based on the life of a young guy in a tower itself a city it should offer its residents the The gallery 'both demands from, and block on the Branden Estate in South Lon amenities of a city. In 1978 after years of gives to, the audience', says McConagle. don).

The Kids Are In The Streets - Steve Willats 46

Description or formal analysis of Will change the shape of broadcasting. And, trap that can be avoided? ats work is otoise. Willats is an information indeed, their findings were unexpected. In There is little chance that the coffee gatherer. A biographer. His interest in aes essence, the Annan report advocated an table luxury of Charlotte Street is going to thetics is cursory, antipathetic even. The 'opening-up' of the medium, with a fourt h treat its minorities any different to the photographic panels and now collages (arr channel free from the constraints of BBC other channels. No part of its process of iviste New Wave) are purely tokens . What and IBA, operated by the Open Broadcast formation has involved public participa remains primary is the context, the know ing Authority, and taking in work from tion, and as it has no real structure through ledge that others (white working class independents , individual s, pressure which people can say what they want to adults and kids) have participated in, and groups - in fact any group who realised each other, it is abundantly clear that determined the outcome of, the work. It is the potential of television and had the Channel 4 will decide what people want to far more profitable to talk about Willats' resources to make programme s. Admitted say to each other. However well intention shows as arguments. As arguments for ly, the plan was for something more struct ed those decisions are, however correct what art can achieve in functional terms. ured than a non-stop Open Door, but on the some of their decisions might be, it is clear Willats' close involvement with his sub other hand the scope of their vision was ly a sell-out on Annan's vision. jects is not based upon example ('look what reflected in some of their lesser-known Wholesale criticism of the Channel, people can do with a bit of encourage findings, such as their advocacy of tele though, is inappropriate. It does remain ment' ) but on co-operation, on a defence to vision operating on a village level, with the best opportunity for showing a whole the needs of others. What is important is people recording their own views and opin new area of work, and that is to be wel this self-expression (in those whose lives ions to show to the people living around comed. Indeed, when you consider the are nominally dismissed as 'non-creative' ) them . It was a vision of a democratic extent of the compromises that could have is seen to have taken place, to have author broadcasting channel - and one that been made, you feel duty bound to applaud ity. hinted that they had done some careful what has been achieved. What both users Because Willats chooses not to work listening to the media campaigners. and viewers should be doing is not to within a specific political discourse but at Whether such high-minde d ideals assume that the existence of Channel 4 pre the same time espousing a certain egalitar could have won an audience is now a cludes the development of other forms of ianism (Willats first concern is trust ; the matter of speculation . It wasn't the mock broadcasting . The greatest onus is on those participants are not distanced as a ery of the TV mogul s, who laughed at the whose work will be shown. Because Willats chooses not to work notion that anyone other than themselves Channel 4 has never released effective within a specific political discourse but at could make television , that knocked the power from the hands of broadcasters. The the same time espousing a certain egalitar plan on the head . When it came to the consequence must inevitably be pro ianism (Willats first concern is trust; the nitty-gritty, even the BBC supp orted the grammes about rather than programmes by participants are not distance as a 'prob idea of an Open Broadcasting Authority - non-broadcasters . This has as much signif lem ') he is forced to organize his materials if for no better reason than to depri ve the icance for the artists appearing as for the along fairly simple symbolic lines. Under IBA of ITV 2. That the IBA did get a other groups. They are only being engaged neath all the cybernetics and information second channel was due to the advent of a in half the process. How much more could theory Willats is a Romantic at heart . Will Conservative government aiming to drasti they do if they had the ability to grapple ats focus on 'areas outside of planned cally reduce public expenditure , and the with the medium of television rather than urban life' (such as 'The Lurky Place') - IBA didn't want a penny of publi c money being somewhat passive subjects whose their occupation and use - are counter to run the new channel. work is covered, packaged and presented cultural metaphors, sites of 'counter But the expectations fuelled by Annan by others? Would artists and performers consciousness' . Planned urban living is couldn 't disappear quite so easily. Certain welcome the opportunity to develop the bad, areas free of public control are good. ly, the operation of Channel 4 is dependent language of television, or are they happy to Willats may not be so naive to suggest that on finance, and their method of expressing let their work be seen in a traditional all planned urban living is bad, but he it is all you would expect of an American framework? needs to emphasize its worst aspects in Broadcast network: 'we need ten per cent The problems become intensified for order to stress the limits put on self of the audience to hold the adverti sers'. those who want to use their air-time to expression in such circumstances . Some And, yes, their approach to schedulin g is create a more specifically political times this takes on a comical aspect. Und hardly a brave new world , rather a gentle dialogue with an audience . The benefits of erneath a photograph of a bush in a pot on a freshener. But the commitm ent to serve a national audience have . to be weighed housing estate in the catalogue to the show minority interests, somehow, wouldn 't against the enormous generalistion of the Willats writes : 'The separation and control evaporate quite so easily. Accordingly , the audience. Whilst Channel 4 would be of nature is emphasised in the New Reality IBA wheeled in one of the more acceptable delighted if they had a general audience for by isolating and encoding it within con faces of broadcasting, in the form of minority interest programmes, I suspect crete'. b ne has visions of council workers Jeremy Isaacs, for the top job. Of course, that they are shrewd enough not to expect being ·given stern directives to encode the end-product is a watered-down com it. The problem is therefore created that things in concrete. promise. But is it a good comprom ise, or a they need as much of the minority as If Willats is not interested in aesthetics bad one? For the pleasure of mum being possible to be watching programmes made and the works are purely tokens, if the effi able to see you on the box, is it worth it? with them in mind. It is hardly surprising cacy of the work lies in the collaboration What's been lost in this chequered gesta that they refer to groups such as youth, the with other s, what are we left with? I think tion period? black commu nity, and women in the typi one remains faithful to the work because it There 's no doubt that the mixtur e of cally stereotyped way that the media has no pretensions. It recuperates working the slightly unusual alongside the usual always do. They have failed to take the class experience in such a way as to say media-fare will have some audience . The Mass out of Mass Media, and consequently what is at stake here is not: 'I am an artist question is, that with their commitment to their view of the audience as numerical making work about the working class, I am maintaining their audience, how is Channel blocks. rathe r than the much smaller political, I am conscientious', but that 4 going to dress-up and process the interest group s who really make society working class experience can find express unusual so that it seems perfectly normal ? tick, is bound to replace one form of ion directly through art, albeit in this inst And what kind of effect will that have on editorial balance with another. ance mediated on the way by the profess those who were trying to achieve the As if in answer to these points, hope has ional artist. unusual? Compromises have the nasty come from another unexpected source. At John Roberts habit of spreading very quickly - is this a its best, Lord Hun t's Report on Cable TV 47

Dance theatre training courses. Leading to a certificate BA degree (pre Ellen Fisher requisite 2 A levels). Training in both The props being very minimal (a table, with the more obvious urban subject courses includes contemporary tech 2 lamps, a plastic male figurine and two matter of Laurie Anderson for example, it niques, and ballet, choreography and tiny dolls), the key to the success of the at least links up with the nervous energy production (costume, lighting and performance is in Fisher's range of move and sense of unrest that is evident in New sound) . ment. Her act is a blend of dance, mime, York culture specifically and with urban Dance Foundation course. acrobatics and a type of puppetry which feeling generally. It makes an interesting demonstrate the extraordinary versatility and thought-provoking addition to the For 16 to 19 year aids, offering a general and tight control of her body. From merely New York season at the ICA. grounding in dance to a level suitable for letting her fingers dance across the table, Anna Moszyska entry into a degree course. Includes the she is next able to throw herself in convul opportunity for O and A level studies sive fits across the floor. As much as her Arnaud-Labelle Rojoux during training. time spent with Meredith Monk in the For these and other postgraduate House (1975 - 1981), her year in Sri Lanka Midland Group courses and evening classes write to: Mr. with Indian dancers learning Tai-chi and Peto, The Administrator, Laban Centre gymnastic skills must have contributed Long Distances was a powerful perfor for Movement and Dance at the considerably to her training and helped mance and also strong on a purely visual, University of London, Goldsmith's give her movements the crispness and pictorial level. Entering the space we College, New Cross, London SE14 6SW. Tel : 01 691 5750.

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. observed the artist completing his prepara which the three individuals, Count/Lin acknowledged it was neccessary to stay tions, the almost ritual sprinkling of red dor, Figaro and Rosina constantly meet closer to them than perhaps the performers and yellow powder paint along the floor, at and depart in locations from Renaissance needed. From this showing they certainly two places forming the words 'Duchamp' Spain to a colonial outpost in South Amer have the ability to leap the chasm once the and 'Matisse'. (This seemed to me a far ica. initial spark has been charged. better use for powder paint than trying to The piece opens determinedly in the Stella Hall paint with it; at school it was something I present, Heather Ackroyd in black plastic never found very satisfactory, it would mac frenziedly attempts to break out of the never do what l wanted it to). mould, dancing a kind ofT'ai Chi ballet as Sitting Ducks Rojoux, seated in a chair, propels though her life depends on it. A boy in a Kings Head himself backwards around and through the red jersey joins her and is gone. Pan pipes (surprised) audience, shouting more and play and a woman sings more hoarsely to 'Mammy!' Later he rolls 'When lemons taste like honey dew/ A deep red light glows on the piano, a in Matisse and Duchamp, obliterating I'll stop loving you' white venetian blind is hauled up to reveal them, and then runs back and forth, Before there's even time to register, a pile of shapeless striped boulders, the wooden boards attached to his shoes, time shifts, and a becloaked figure with a pianist, Jacky Taylor, takes her place and throwing a fine cloud of red and yellow lamp is serenading an unseen love. In the sings a plaintive ballad 'I'll love you to powder that sticks in the throat and hazes distance the woman sings night/if your lipgloss stays bright'. Un the air. To one side are projected the names 'Don't play a sentimental melody, noticed, the heap has undergone amoebic of far-away places but Rojoux never gets They leave me breathless, fission and there are two boulders, then there. With the verging-hysterical despera They leave me breathless' Optik four, and suddenly these amorphous tion of the child who calls and calls lumps have taken on a life of their own. A (wantitl.g - Mammy? Daddy? nothing?) bright pink latex bag struggles out of its he runs over and over again along the same grey casement like a butterfly emerging piece of floor, the wood striking painfully. from its chrysalis and starts to sing the lead The voyage finally exhausts him. of 'To know you is to love you' while the It was impressive to see an artist so asexual backing group choruses along, lift immersed in what he was doing that one ing heads, or is it bums, in time to the forgot all about 'make-believe' and 'perfor music. ming' and 'presentation': this was real and From here on we are treated to varia taking place now. All the disturbance and tions on the bag theme; a blue furry box noise was directly experienced by those conducts a love-affair with a multi present, not just watched and walked away coloured tube, a striped yellow shape and from. This is important. This is good two grey ones sing a song about Depression (performance) art. Ann Cullis with a doo-wop backing, a turquoise bag with a tiny head at each end sings a song Optik between an old man and a young girl, the images tumble over each other as more and Cockpit more appear. We can hardly believe there are only four performers. Optik have been in existence for over a year The seemingly smooth transition from now and have already toured two shows, UJ song to song is turned on its head as two One Spectacle ( 1981) and Second Spectacle ~ performers in the same bag come on and ( 1982). Short-sighted, which they brought al arrange themselves into an armchair. And to the Cockpit in October was the first CD wait. After a minute or so a furiously whis- production I had seen, and I certainly felt The moments build layer on layer, each pered conversation begins. They've cut as though I'd been missing out on meeting oddly out of joint, as though two this number. Which way do they get off? something, they're the sort of company jigsaws had been shattered, then lovingly Each has another bag waiting in the oppo you feel you'd like to know from the start. reassembled to form one. The count is ad- site direction. The armchair collapses, The three performers, Heather vised by Figaro to disguise himself as a looking more like an elastic-sided tumble Ackroyd, Paul Bown and Adrian Rawlins soldier in order to gain admittance to his drier as the two inmates fight their way all trained together at Crewe and Alsager loved one, he reappears as a soldier, but in out. College, where an integrated approach to modern dress. Rosina, as she flutters and On the whole the songs are fairly gentle visual arts and drama led them into a flirts with the Barber, cannot see him send-ups, including a wild tap routine in performance style which emphasises both with his sandwiches and thermos. red and black bags with pointed hoods the involvment of creative design and live The action shifts, the elusive Rosina is strongly reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan; music. Cornelia Parker's wrought-iron sets found again on the other ·side of the world, the pianist turns drummer for this number and Clive Bell's music certainly exemplify a white-suited traveller finds her in some and the Klansters do a hand-jive while this attitude. An eclectic assortment of dusty shanty town where she dances a singing 'Jealousy does a tapdance on my instruments and Marjie Underwood's wild, shrieking display, a cigar clamped mind'. By this stage the bags have become electric singing combine to create a whole firmly between her teeth. A long slim flute more distinctly humanoid and for the next other dimension to the spectacle, and Clive is played, drums sound and, as she whirls it number, a lullal;>yin sleeping bags, we act whose work also involves him in the seems the time is suspended. Optik excel at ually see bare arms! I'm not surprised then London Musician's Collective can never be such moments, where the visual and aural to see the four women clamber out and accused of going for the obvious or the experiences meld and boundaries djssolve. reveal themselves in glitter skirts and merely commentary, the musician as There are images of extreme beauty brightly-coloured necklaces for what performer in his/her ·own right means that,, and of sheer lunacy and sometimes they are seemed to be the final chorus. I am the music doesn't simply become a the same. It seemed unfortunate that some- somewhat perturbed though at the re threatrical backing track. times the need to move the story along got emergence of one singer to do a pseudo Short sighted takes as its inspiration in the way. I felt we could have dispensed Elvis hip-grinding male impersonation Jean Luc Godard's 'Breathless' and 'The with some of the exposition in the interests 'I'm rough I'm tough/I'll give you enough' Barber of Seville', marrying them together of a clearer vision of their shifting relation-· utterly out of kilter with the rest of the in an extraordinarily seamless performance ships. It seemed that once the original debt show. Although she expertly reveals the piece, creating a timeless continuum in to Godard and Beaumarchais had been kind of macho sexuality such singers exude 49

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. "Fr ee Women" ' -g ives some idea of the halls . We settle down with some trepida ably discovers the gold is tarnished, the ghastly tenor of the dialogue) made the tion to an evening of edification and dream is insubstantial. Our beliefs are situation even more ambiguous. Some of spiritual enlightenment . undercut Bogosian's later parodies , which include a Split Britches are New York based, 'Bet you thought Reagan got shot/ street corner shouter after women, who arising out of the late Spiderwoman com They did it in a video workshop' ends up abusing them, then jacking off, pany, with a strong commitment to playing and plaster saints lie crumbling amongst takes us into the dangerous and murky to women and about women . The other the paper castles and the plastic rose. We realms of negative self-expression as art, show they've brought over, 'Split all join in rapturously to choruses of 'Is which almost amount to a kind of public Britches ', looks as through a microscope, that all there is to Alive?' and won't let therapy . at the lives of three women in tough l 940's them go without encores and leave edified Essentially, I had reason to suspect Virginia. Beauty and the Beast turns the and spiritually enlightened and wonder Bogosian 's motives in this sort of pre microscope the other way around, magni how, and why . Stella Hall sentation , and I put to him after the show fying three vaudeville performers to fill an the point that parodies rely on a form of entire continent . theatrical energy that by nature require s The whole show is the tacky end of the the audience to collude with the subject. American dream, where everyone wants to Michael Upton and Bearing in mind the seriousness of the be a star but never gets beyond the bath subje ct matter , shouldn't he have been a room mirror. Emer son wrote 'America is Peter Lloyd-Jones bit more in control of the situation? It was a country of young men '. Split Britches are Air Gallery up to the audience how they took it, he busy rewriting a country populated by replied . If they laughed in the wrong outrageous weird os, misguided fanatics places, that was their problem. Shouldn't and sad losers', and in that , we might think, an element of alienation have been intro it's not a lot different from another country I didn't think that I would ever have to sit duced? N o, these images of men are there, we could name. through a performance like Dialogue 2, by deep down in him , and he wasn 't about to The storyline has by this time become no Michael Upton and Peter Lloyd Jones, censor them . I warned him that although more than a peg on which to hang individ again in my life. Two super annu ated his intention s were maybe pure, there ual and corporate fantasies, they float in (male ) art lecturers making 'meaningful' would be those who misinterpret and be and out of persona at will, to get one over gestures with tissue paper, a marble and a outraged by him . Sure, he said, he'd been on each other or on the audience with wine glass presented a spectacle that justi attacked by women during performances whom they have set up an immediate fied any possible criticism of performance in the US, but he'd then tried to explain rapport, leaving us defenceless against art that could ever have been made. Care what he was doing to them . abuse and susceptible to appeals to our fully picking up pieces of tissue, laying I went to see him a second time at the better judgment . them along the floor and then actually ICA in London , and the fact that I was Deborah Margolin , playing a manic picking them up in exactly the same way increasingl y impres sed by him ; (and that rabbi , veers between an almost religious over a period of about 15 minutes per act th e apparent lack of control of audien ce belief in her role as Beauty's father and ion is but one of the components of this respon se had been somewhat mastered , desperate assaults on the audience for work that I shall not bother to describe in despit e his denial of a need for this ;) left me sitting through such stuff. Occasionally detail. This outrage combined well with feeling more and more ambiguous about she relieves his/her suffering with furious the arid atmosphere of the Air basement, him . He was so flawless that the majority bouts of activity on the piano, looking like already for no definable programming rea now excused any lack of comment. His a deranged beetle as she pounds away at the son perpetuating itself as a 'dead' space for radio sequence now sparkled , especially keys while they sing harmonious versions performance, a white-walled draughty sep the advert s for ridiculou s consumer pro of totally irrelevant songs like 'Kansas City ulchre for live art, with a curious and mon du cts. Intere stingly, his extended joke Kitty ' or Loi s Sergeant Rut ledge quavers otonous aural illusion of traffic noise from about record compilation s of dead Super 'Do you know the way to San Jose?' ; secure Rosebery Avenue transmitting itself myst stars, didn 't go down well. Is death less of a in her belief that she can really sing, eriously through a ventilation shaft to tabo o in Britain ? So, I'll give him the despite all indication s to the contrary. The punctuate the vapid movements of the benefit of the doubt about the sexpol, and rabbi gains further alleviation of pain by pair. look out for him next time he's in Britain. cracking appalling jokes as a Jewish stand Perhaps the trestle table should have Hopefully he won't have joined Buddy , up comedian when the enactment of the been a warning, but I ignored it, sitting as I Edd ie, Jan is, Sid, Jim and the gang by story becomes too much for him to bear . did near the front, barring all modes of esc then . Rob La Frenais The fairy story becomes a reality that ape. In my experience, whenever a trestle none of the three can face, each constantly table is brought on the scene there is always escaping back to their own dreams. Peggy going to be some pompous fool with a re Split Britches Shaw as eight y-four year old Gusie ceding hairline with his foot on one of the Umberger is vaguely unhapp y about being dustier rungs of the art historical ladder, Oval House cast in male roles, but still maintains a using 'basic' materials, to illuminate some desire to play Jam es Dean . She is cut off obscure lump of conceptual jargon . An un seen commere announce s 'An halfway through mimin g to a record of 'It's The only person with whom I have absurd drama of ridiculou s people ' sonor Impossible' by Sinatra and wanders off to compared notes about this performance ously cataloguin g a dozen or so 'inter yet another bit part as messenger or the was a woman, herself a performance artist, nati onally known vaudeville stars' who will sister who isn't beautiful or the wise Beast who stayed for five minutes, laughed at me be joinin g us throughout the evening. whose outer ugline ss conceals true Beauty, stuck there like an idiot, and left. But Wh en the thr ee Split Britche s troop on, led warning us against being taken in by the something she said to me might be a key to by Lois Weaver in relentlessly cheerful schmaltz . what actually was going on that night. Salvation Arm y sergeant guise, we know Split Brit ches invest their victims with a Could it have been that the whole thing was somehow they won 't be coming . Thi s desperate eagerne ss, as of drowning per a giant practical joke, a parody of the worst hilarious and unlik ely trio look as if they're formers clutching at the audience to get sort of performance, which was explained living out their faded fantasies on some them out of thi s mess, but we're too busy to the audience during a key central ghastly M .S.C. scheme for retired enter laughing to even hold out a feeble hand, moment? I will never know . Because, as tainers, condemned to touring intermin and it's too late, they've floated away, my friend informed me, when she came in ably their version of 'Beauty and the Beast' locked in a perp etual embrace. Each I was significantly asleep. round shabby middl e-Ameri can church attempts to scale the heights, but inevit- Rob La Frenais.

51 I

This issue of Performance Magazine has been reproduced as part of Performance Magazine Online (2017) with the permission of the surviving Editors, Rob La Frenais and Gray Watson. Copyright remains with Performance Magazine and/or the original creators of the work. The project has been produced in association with the Live Art Development Agency. The Bone end they . break the applause and dance to for, isn't it? To talk and drink and get on Almeida the frenetic rhythm of Toshi's drums. each others nerves. My turn. I get up . I Following his single spring heeled leap as can't be heard either. I get down. Ian The Angel of Death Clement Masdongar Hinch cliffe, dressed like a gangster, Imagine a space with a low ceiling and leads the company in backflips and high screams for a bit which is o.k. then up raked seating. Cushions around the bare kicks. Meanwhile, Toshi has come from jumps Lol and Bob and Dave and a floorboards of a circular performance area behind the drums and is jumping and drummer and a piano player and Christ flanked on three sides by a curving red drumming first on the floorboards, then on almighty what a row. I go to the bar brick wall. Add a simple bamboo fence, a someone's head. A little more bowing and downstairs. Standing at the bat is Bill few scattered stones, some primitive pots waving and they have gone. Millis who organised the whole thing . Ha and pans and a large audience buzzing with The brevity of the piece was not in itself ha ha. I chat with friends and drink. The anticipation and you have some impression a problem . Rather it was that the company man sitting next to me a)puts on his jacket of the setting for a story. attempted to do too many things in too upside down and b) takes offence at our Far from the land of Africa the Almeida short a time. Ironically, it was the fact that jokey remarks. I think he wants a fight. Theatre in Islington saw an extraordinary the pace and performance of the spectacle Hurra y! Somebody's just poured a pint of performance of L'os, an hour long Sengal were so charger as to render any sharing of beer over the bloke in the white suit. The ese tale adapted by Birago Diop . Acted in a real space with the audience awkward and pub can't take any more of our money so mix of French and English the story re embarrasing. The.man who was drummed now they're throwing us out. I go back volves around Mor Lam's hatred of on the head was not given the confidence to upstairs . The landlord is furious. Moussa, his 'more than brother' who has stand up and take part when invited. This Somebod y's ruined a pot plant and reneged on a loan. To avoid the conse reticence must, in part, be due to the venue (perhap s) the piano. 'This', he bellows, 'is quences of Mor Lam's passionate anger for L 'os is a story for the market place. It my home '. I'm fucking glad it isn't mine. Moussa surrenders his cow. According to need s to be seen outside a theatre frame I can't tell you what an unbelievably custom and at a time of hardship and work if it is to go beyond being a show and horrible evening this was. John Dowie hunger the slaughtered animal is shared become a more participatory event. What amongst the village who leave Mor Lam ever the company intended they must with the precious bone and marrow. His surely consider the context of a piece as The Farndale Avenue wife, Awa, uses the bone to cook a slow much as the content. As far as this kind of broth which they keep selfishly guarded. work is concerned the professional Townswomens Guild When Moussa comes to visit his relatives in package deal our middle scale venues are Dramatic Society the midst of their cooking they panic. Mor offering their middle class audiences is a Lam goes to fantastic lengths to keep real obstacle. Theatre Space Moussa from the bone. Whilst Awa looks Aside form the moralistic content and on in amazement he feigns illness, he the implications of a theatre setting the feigns death and so he is buried alive. Mor audience is offered a full-blooded celebra Well they've done it again! The Farndale Lam meets the Angel of Death and tion of life. Images return to the mind like Ladie s have come up trumps with another Moussa, upon his betrothal to Awa can snapshots from some unfortunate wedding riproaring comedy that swept into town only greedily snap out the words 'Ou est part y: Tosh i's remarkable mobile percus dire ct from the Edinburgh Festival. There l'os?'. sion, Moussa's final greedy words, the were laughs galore in this merry romp as First performed in France by Peter knurly white bone clutched against Awa's intriguing businessmen and furtive lovers Brook 's Paris based international breast and Mor Lam's first cursing fit capered and colluded in a salute to the time company, L' os was originally part of an whilst manically sharpening a stick. honoured tradition of the French farce. evening featuring The Conference of the Through the relaxed skill and physical The tears rolled down my cheeks as all the Birds. Here, it makes for rather an im dexterity of the performers these attract old chestnuts of mistaken identities and balanced presentation . Made by three of ions made the visit to the Almeida thor wrong bedrooms were taken out and the original performers and accompanied oughly enjoyable. dusted down to delight a packed audience by the invaluable percussion of Toshi Andrew O'Hanlon in the tiny space of the Theatre Space Tsushitori; it is led by Malick Bowens who theatre. plays Mor Lam. Why should he decide to Despite considerab le problems with revive this particular fable for the Al An Eccentric Evening the scenery and technical cues, the plucky meida? One answer might be that this TruscottArms, London cast soldiered on to give the paying public simple looking tale from Africa is a warn what they've always wanted: a stiff dose of ing for the comfortable West. The good old fashioned enterta inment. All programme note tells us '.. . the faults of A room full of people talking , many of credit must go to Erika Poole who stepped Mor Lam - egoism, rapacity and greed_: them idiots. One in particular , poncing in at the last minute to take the part of Mr . are in opposition to the firm trad itions of about in a white suit, thinks himself Parrot. Her having to read the part from fraternity which have always governed the extraordinary because he sports a set of the script in no way detracted from a winn village'. This moral tale is a study of obsti plastic Dracula teeth. Somebody ought to ing performance. Deborah Klein struck nate obsession and its consequences. Mor kick his fucking head in. An idiot with a the right note in the haughty role of Mrs Lam finally becomes what he pretends to beard and flared trousers starts bellowing Garret and talented Janet Sate gave her be when he absurdly kills himself through through Bob Cobbings' set from his own best as Mrs Barret while delighting us with greed. volume of poetry. Why not? This is art, a provocative cameo as Fifi, the French The 'tradition of fraternity ' however anarchy, free expression, excessively maid. Special mention must go to the tastes more of Pari s than Africa and it is boring . Lol Coxhill plays his famous versatile Julian Clary who managed the ultimately a French style of presentation saxophone exactly as you 'd expect. parts of both Mr and Mrs Carrot with all which dominates . Possessed more by Horribly . A Scottish gentleman reads well the pana che of an old trouper. David Mc Moliere than by Voodoo magic Bowens from William McGonagall, stopping every Gillivray and Walter Zerlin 's fast moving sets a high level of energetic concentr ation second stanza to tell us how much he hates script soon had the better of me, I must in his first outbur st that is conducted like the bastard English. Commendable, but confess, but all was not lost as the laughs electri city from one performer to the other I'd like to see an English bloke try and do came thick and fast in this snappy product throughout the farce. The eight strong that in Scotland. John Hegley can't be ion . Coming up with a 'mise-en-scene' that company literally run from one scene to the heard ; well, he could be, but no one can be would have had Brian Rix wishing he'd next. It comes as no surprise when at the bothered to listen . This is what we're here waited a few years before hanging up his

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