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c ollaboration: VOLume 19 | ISSUE 04 | WINTER 2007-2008 | totaltheatre.org.uk totaltheatre - developing contemporary theatre M M an ime is is ime c hester G reat D ead - ead N Come together - Conne - together Come T West: orth otal L ong ong heatre T heatre L ive M iverpool L iverpool ime Aw V ards at ards oi es: c es: E c Culture of City uropean ting Worlds Worlds ting nnie A nnie E dinburgh dinburgh S prinkle & prinkle F estival A part E lizabeth lizabeth R enegotiations ringe 2007 F ringe queerupnorth S tephens B rooklyn R s from from w s evie H ope B S t ull L td I n appre n

Ceilidhs in Cumbria Cumbria in Ceilidhs A vignon vignon c iationof F estival

£5 Volume 19 Issue 04 Winter 2007–2008 Total Theatre Magazine Total Theatre – Developing Contemporary Theatre Editor Dorothy Max Prior Total Theatre Volume 20 Issue 01 will be published February 2008 [email protected] Deadline for News, Listings and Advertising is 7 January 2008 Editorial Forum Robert Ayers Franc Chamberlain Richard Cuming Subscribe! Anthony Dean Laura Eades Send a cheque for the appropriate Barry Edwards Total Theatre Subscribers receive: Penny Francis • Four issues of Total Theatre Magazine amount made payable to Total Theatre David Harradine with your contact details including postal Marigold Hughes • Your News, Listings and Updates posted Miriam King on Total Theatre Website/published in and email addresses. Alex Mermikides n ch oi Beccy Smith Total Theatre Magazine u For further information call Edward Taylor • Priority booking for Total Theatre, events n - s Mischa Twitchin +44 (0) 20 7729 7944, Cassie Werber with reductions and/or free places Tom Wilson • Reductions on display advertising costs email [email protected] or see www.totaltheatre.org.uk Listings Editor in Total Theatre Magazine and on the cost JOHN ELLINGSWORTH

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Press releases, information on performances or events, and other publicity material © Total Theatre. All rights reserved. ISSN 0960-6106. Total for Total Theatre Magazine should be sent to: [email protected] Theatre Magazine is published quarterly by Total Theatre Network, the UK network for physical and visual performance. Our redesigned website is being developed as a vibrant, constantly updated resource. Please theatre a Cover: total The views expressed or opinions stated in Total Theatre Magazine are not send news, listings and updates for both the website and magazine to: [email protected] necessarily the views of the editor or publishers. Similarly, statements made or opinions expressed by the advertisers are not necessarily shared by the editor or publishers. Reasonable care has been taken to avoid error in the magazine but no liability will be accepted for any errors which may occur. No material in this publication may be reproduced in any way without the consent in writing of the publisher. The publishers will not If you would like to submit news or listings or to advertise in the next issue, accept responsibility for the safe return please note that the deadline is 7 January 2008. Total Theatre Vol 20 Issue 01 will of unsolicited material. We assume be published February 2008 and will cover the period March–May 2008 permission to publish any unsolicited material unless otherwise stated in writing. 2 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre EDITORIAL contents 2008 sees Liverpool crowned as European City of Culture, and in Regulars this issue of Total Theatre we welcome you to The Great North News & Previews P4 West, as Beccy Smith, Ric Watts and John Fox give a taste of Company Updates P8 the region’s artistic life – from queerupnorth in Manchester to Out & About P12 ceilidhs in Cumbria; experiments in multimedia performance at Pippa Bailey Hope St Ltd to burlesque on a boat, courtesy of Walk the Plank. Voices P19 Annie Sprinkle & Elizabeth Stephens From the docks of Liverpool we sail away to the waterside of Media P36 Brooklyn, New York to encounter an extraordinary crossover of visual and performing arts. Paso Doble is a collaboration between Features French-Yugoslavian choreographer Josef Nadj and Catalan artist Focus on: The Great North West P14 Miquel Barceló, previewed here before it arrives on our shores Beccy Smith, Ric Watts, and John Fox share for the London International Mime Festival in January 2008. their knowledge of a vibrant region of the UK

Another pair of collaborating artists, featured in this issue’s Brooklyn Bull P20 Voices, are American artists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Dorothy Max Prior previews Paso Doble Stephens. They’ve taken artistic collaboration about as far as you can, and pledged to a seven-year programme of life-as-art, in Come together – Connecting Worlds Apart P22 which they will renew their personal and professional unity each Bianca Mastrominico year in a series of chakra-themed civil partnership marriages. Mime is Dead – Long Live Mime P24 A very different sort of collaboration is documented in a feature An appreciation of Marcel Marceau that sets the scene for the latest Total Theatre professional by Nola Rae + obituary development project. Called Renegotiations, it brings together six established artists in a peer mentoring programme. Find out more Renegotiations P26 inside these pages. Pippa Bailey

Also bringing artists together is a series of ongoing exchanges Reviews P28 called The International Training and Performance Residencies, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007 in which artists from Asia and South America come to the South Avignon Festival, France West of England in a spirit of mutual learning, documented in an CPT Sprint Festival, London article by Bianca Mastrominico of Organic Theatre, the artists x.trax Showcase, Manchester who initiated the project. Plus: Kazuko Hohki in the King’s Road Chelsea, Faulty Optic at Manchester International Festival, The artist’s voice is a key feature of Total Theatre Magazine. In the premiere of Periplum’s The Bell, Acrobat at response to the death of Marcel Marceau, the man who brought Circus Front and more… mime to a world audience, we bring you a very personal tribute from his friend and pupil, Nola Rae.

Our regular sections include Pippa Bailey’s Out & About column, which muses on cultural diversity in theatre in the light of an open letter from Iraqi playwright Jawad Al Assadi. In our extended News section, catch up on the Total Theatre Awards at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007.

Diversity and collaboration; the artist’s voice; reviews, news and previews, and updates from our associated artists and companies – as always an eclectic mix offering perspectives on the contemporary performance scene in the UK and beyond, which we hope will be entertaining and enlightening for theatre makers and audiences alike.

Dorothy Max Prior Editor

Comments or suggestions? Email: [email protected]

totaltheatre.org.uk 3 nadj/barcelo paso doble at limf NE W S & PREVIE W S

LONDON INTERNATIONAL TOT MIME FESTIVAL A L

T HEA 12–27 JANUARY 2008 It’s been confirmed that TR the Josef Nadj/Miquel magaz E Barcelo collaboration Paso Doble will be presented at the 30th London International Mime Festival, January 2008. The piece, presented in in collaboration with BITE, will turn the Barbican Theatre into a canvas for a spectacular artwork which redefines the e | e term ‘visual theatre’. Another highlight will be Sadari Movement Laboratory (Korea) with Woyzeck which won the Total 19 | 19 vol Theatre Award 2007 for Best Physical Performance. Other confirmed artists/shows for LIMF 08 include: BlackSkyWhite (Russia) Astronomy for Insects; B.P. Zoom (France) A Wonderful World; Faulty Optic (UK) Dead Wedding; Gandini iss Juggling (UK) Downfall; Gecko (UK) The Arab and the Jew; Hiroaki Umeda (Japan) Duo/While Going to a Condition;

E WINT | 04 ue Mossoux-Bonte (Belgium) Nuit sur le Monde ; Sarah Wright (UK/Germany) Silent Tide; Teatro Corsario (Spain) Aullidos. There will also be a Total Theatre Lecture at the Mime Festival, delivered by the National Theatre’s associate director Tom Morris (date/venue tbc). For further information and booking details see www.mimefest.co.uk

R 2007R AURORA NOVA TOURING PRO-SESSIONAL DRAMATURGY From its humble beginnings two years ago in the South East of England, to Pro-sessional is the first British this year’s expansive programme of five shows touring 27 venues across event to focus on practical support, the UK, Aurora Nova Touring’s vision has been to present the contrasting skills sharing and professional and emotionally resonant features of contemporary international physical development for artists engaged in theatre and dance. This autumn, five award-winning companies taken from the dramaturgical development of the Aurora Nova season of international physical theatre and dance at the new work. The programme includes Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2006 bring their extraordinary work to audiences hands-on workshops, open rehearsals in the UK. Farm in the Cave, Sclavi – The Song of an Emigrant; Array (Darren and fora led by some of the country’s Johnston), Outré; Jo StrØmgren Kompani, The Convent; CoisCéim Dance leading theatre practitioners. With Theatre, Knots; Derevo, Ketzal. For dates and venues see www.auroranova.org a particular emphasis on alternative theatre processes as well as text, this CAMDEN PEOPLE’S THEATRE will be an essential event to support rififi theatre at cpt At CPT this winter there’s new work your work facilitating creativity. from Daedalus Theatre Company, Soho Theatre, Monday 12 November Collective Janito, La Scene Infernale, (Central London). Tickets are £30 for The Footprint Project, and Rififi members of the Literary Mangers Theatre with The Alice Project (which Forum, the Dramaturgs’ Network sold out during Sprint). In the new and Total Theatre; £40 for all others. year there’ll be work-in-progress See www.dramaturgy.co.uk showings from Top of the World, and the UK premiere of A Corps et a Cru, from Indian Runner, which have both NEW TERRITORIES, GLASGOW been developed with support from New Territories, a highlight in the CPT. The venue is also accepting Scottish arts calendar, will run February applications for next year’s Sprint - March 2008 (dates tbc). Scotland’s festival, which will take place May - international festival of live arts June 2008. Deadline for applications includes the National Review of Live is Friday 11 January. For more details Art. Further updates here, or to register and info on how to apply, see www. interest, email colin_newmoves@mac. cptheatre.co.uk/sprint.php?season=1 com or see www.newmoves.co.uk

4 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre & W S NE news W S PREVIE

derevo ketzal loft

KOMEDIA LOFT AT THE ROUNDHOUSE November-December this year Komedia Brighton are This Christmas, see a domestic world turned upside down hosting two Aurora Nova touring shows – Derevo’s Ketzal as seven friends escape the monotony of their daily lives. and Coisceim’s Knots (shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award Loft is a hilarious mix of breathtaking trapeze, jaw-dropping in 2006) – as well as an extensive line-up of children’s shows. contortions, aerial acrobatics, frolics, fun and music. In Puppet State Theatre Company’s The Man Who Planted The 7 Fingers are former members of the world renowned Trees a French shepherd sets out, with his dog, to plant a Cirque du Soleil and will be in London at the Roundhouse forest and transform a bleak landscape. Long Nose Puppets’ for three weeks only with their internationally acclaimed Fly Away Katie follows on from the success of their last show show Loft following a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Shoe Baby with an inspiring flight of fancy about the power of with their show Traces. An incredible theatrical event that imagination. For the full programme see www.komedia.co.uk will thrill and amaze adults and kids alike. Box Office: 0870 389 1846. Tickets £10-£25. See www.roundhouse.org.uk

ukulele orchestra

TOYNBEE STUDIOS CHRISTMAS PROGRAMME For the six weeks before Christmas Artsadmin has a everybody’s kitchen programme at Toynbee Studios with a definite festive EXETER PHOENIX feel. Forkbeard Fantasy return to the Studios with their Winter ’07 at the Phoenix sees a strong programme of latest work, Invisible Bonfires – a combination of surreal live art and dance. Tom Marshman’s Everybody’s Kitchen comedy, spectacle and invention, film and cartoon – and is an innovative and intimate piece, using smell and taste to ending with two weeks of performances from the Ukulele investigate the powerful and often subconscious emotional Orchestra of Great Britain. A funny, virtuosic, twanging, connection people have with food; Retina Dance Company’s singing, awesome, foot-stomping obituary of rock-n-roll This Is Not A Body is inspired by 20th century artists who and melodious light entertainment featuring only the urged people to interpret art through the subconscious ‘bonsai guitar’ and a menagerie of voices; no drums, rather than intellect, and features breathtaking partner- no pianos, no backing tracks, and no banjos. Forkbeard work and extreme physicality combined with projected art Fantasy 20 November – 1 December (not Sun 25); Ukulele and music to challenge our perception of the body; Marcia Orchestra of Great Britain 12-15 & 19-22 December. Box Farquhar’s 12 Shooters is the result of a collaboration office 020 7650 2350. Book online at www.artsadmin.co.uk with twelve artists who filmed a selection of Farquhar’s new and familiar work, including monologues, visitations, NEW DIRECTOR AT CORN EXCHANGE a Humpty Dumpty seance and her famous lifesize Punch In the New Year, long-time director of the Corn Exchange & Judy show. See: www.exeterphoenix.org.uk Martin Sutherland will be replaced by Nick Giles, currently deputy director of Oxford Playhouse and chairman of Hextable Dance. Nick will be joining the organisation at an exciting time: the digital micro cinema, opening this autumn, will be in its first season; audience figures have increased 25% over the last three years to 107,000 per year, and the 2007 Newbury Comedy Festival was highly acclaimed in the national press. Martin will go on to work as Chief Executive of the Royal & Derngate theatres in Northampton. See www.cornexchangenew.com

totaltheatre.org.uk 5 eddie ladd’s scarface TOT A L T HEA TR magaz E in e | e 19 | 19 vol iss E WINT | 04 ue

veda at push INTERNATIONAL EVENTS R 2007R PERFORMA07, NEW YORK PUSH IN VANCOUVER CANADA Performa07, the second biennial of new visual art The annual PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is performance, opens on October 27 in New York City, one of Vancouver’s signature events. Produced over 19 days launching a four-week programme of performances, each January, the PuSh Festival presents groundbreaking exhibitions, screenings, symposia, and live events including work in the live performing arts: theatre, dance, music ten major PERFORMA commissions by Carlos Amorales, and various hybrid forms of performance. It attracts Sanford Biggers, Nathalie Djurberg, Japanther, Isaac Julien, acclaimed local, national and international artists and Daria Martin, Kelly Nipper, Adam Pendleton, Yvonne Rainer, their work. 16 Jan – 3 Feb 08. See www.pushfestival.ca and Francesco Vezzoli. PERFORMA07 features the work of over ninety international artists at more than fifty leading INTERNATIONAL THEATRE cultural institutions and venues throughout the city, with the FESTIVAL SANTIAGO, CHILE participation of more than thirty curators, and is organized The international festival of Teatro a Mil has presented under the artistic direction of its founder, RoseLee Goldberg. a varied programme of performance arts to the people See www.performa-arts.org of Santiago and its summer visitors since 1995. About 150,000 people enjoy mainstream, experimental, fringe PERFORMANCE STUDIES INTERNATIONAL and street theatre, at a score of venues throughout PSi is a professional association founded in 1997 to the central area of the city. A headline theatrical promote communication and exchange between scholars festival, it brings some 40-odd important works to the and practitioners working in the field of performance. capital, from 30 countries. See www.stgoamil.cl The organisation has staged numerous international conference and festival gatherings that have moved ADELAIDE FRINGE: 22 FEB – 16 MARCH 2008 between the discourse and practice of performance. Adelaide Fringe Inc presents an internationally renowned, The thirteenth PSi conference, Happening, Performance, open-access, three-week independent arts fringe festival Event, will take place in New York 8–11 November 2007, for artists to present their work and for audiences to engage and is being hosted by the Department of Performance and interact with the arts. To be a part of the Adelaide Fringe Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University in programme, artists pay a one-off registration fee to the Fringe collaboration with Performa, the performance biennial. as well as pay the presentation costs of their performance/ For further information email Adrian Heathfield on psi. season/event/exhibition. See www.adelaidefringe.com.au [email protected] or see http://psi-web.org/

6 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre significant meow meow contribution winner: jos houben wildcard winners: precarious totalw s ne theatre news

TOTAL THEATRE AWARDS 2007

Ten years of the Total Theatre Awards With a record number of nominations Shortlisted: Chickenshed for As the Mother of a Brown Boy (Zoo Southside); Tangled Feet for Game? (Gilded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – and this year (400 – around twice as many Balloon Teviot);Tbilisi Marionette State Theatre for The Battle of Stalingrad, (Assembly Aurora Nova);Vanishing the consensus is that the 2007 Awards as in 2006), it was a tough job to find our Point for Subway (Traverse Theatre); Bottlefed for Return were the best yet! We were fortunate shortlist and winners. The first stage to Reason (C soco) this year to have sponsorship from assessing for the Awards was carried Total Theatre Award a number of organisations, without out with great commitment and energy for Best Physical Performance whose generous support it wouldn’t by a team of 30 or so reviewers and Sadari Movement Laboratory in association with AsiaNow Productions have been possible, namely: the Centre representatives of the theatre and arts for Woyzeck (Assembly Aurora Nova) for Excellence in Training for Theatre industry. The dedicated team of judges Shortlisted: Song of the Goat for Lacrimosa (Assembly (CETT), based at the Central School for the Total Theatre Awards included Aurora Nova); Biuro Podrozy for Macbeth: Who is that Bloodied Man? (Old College Quad); Signal to Noise for of Speech and Drama, University of critics (Lyn Gardner of the Guardian, Longwave (Underbelly); Adam Read for Eclipse (C soco); London; the University of Winchester; Donald Hutera of The Times and Mary Pasodos Dance Company for Sorry, Love (C Chambers) and the University of Chichester. Brennan of The Herald); academics Total Theatre Award from Central School of Speech and for Experimentation Furthermore, Total Theatre’s new Drama (Nick Wood), the University Ontroerend Goed for venture for 2007, Giving Something of Winchester (Professor Anthony The Smile Off Your Face (C soco) Back, brought an exciting new element Dean), and the University of Chichester Shortlisted: Little Dove Theatre Art for Six Women Standing in Front of a White Wall (C soco); Rotozaza for to our month in Edinburgh with a series (Robert Daniels); artists (Ben Harrison, Etiquette (Assembly Aurora Nova); Chris Goode for Hippo of free workshops and networking Beccy Smith); festival director Christie World Guest Book (Pleasance Dome); Au Cul du Loop for Score (Assembly Aurora Nova); science made simple for events for artists, including an Open Anthoney of the Adelaide Fringe and Visualise – The Beauty of Science (Venue 13) Space session led by Improbable’s Lee creative producers Kate McGrath (Fuel) Total Theatre Award Simpson; a workshop on site specific and Martin Sutherland. Total Theatre for Best Small Scale Work theatre led by Ben Harrison of Grid Iron; was represented by its editor Dorothy News From Nowhere for England dance classes and warm-ups; and an Max Prior and the organisation’s (Traverse at the Fruitmarket Gallery) inter-company volleyball game. creative director Pippa Bailey, who Shortlisted: Adrian Howells for An Audience with Adrienne (Traverse Theatre); Fraser Hooper for Funny chaired the judges’ meeting.We extend Business (The Spiegel Garden); Hoipolloi for Hugh After an intense process of assessment heartfelt thanks to everyone whose Hughes in Story of a Rabbit (Pleasance Courtyard); Organic Theatre for Sheepskin (Pleasance Courtyard); and judging, the winners were work contributed to the assessing Playgroup for The Art of Swimming (Traverse Theatre) announced on 23 August at a ceremony and judging process. Total Theatre Award held at the Assembly Hall Rainy Bar – for Significant Contribution a memorable occasion attended Here then are the winners of the Total Awarded to Complicite founder member by a host of artists, producers and Theatre Awards 2007: Jos Houben, here at the Fringe 2007 with his presenters, members of the Edinburgh performance-lecture The Art of Laughter. Total Theatre Award for Jos had fittingly been a winner at the first glitterati and representatives of arts Best Emerging Company ever Total Theatre Awards in 1997 as writer- Proudly supported by University of Winchester director of The Right Size show Do You Come organisations from across the world. Here Often? Speakers and Awards presenters 1927 for Between the Devil and the Deep included Jon Morgan, Director of the Blue Sea (Underbelly) A special feature of the Total Theatre Awards 2007 was the Wildcard vote Edinburgh Festival Fringe; Louisa Bolch, Shortlisted: Precarious for Druthers (Zoo Southside); Unpacked for Funeral Games (Pleasance Courtyard); by audiences: Clore Fellow and former Commissioning Analogue for Mile End (Pleasance Dome); The River Editor for Science at Channel 4; Ben People for The Ordinaries… In an Awkward Silence Wildcard Winner (Bedlam Theatre); Present Attempt for Precarious for Druthers (Zoo Southside) Harrison, Artistic Director of Grid Attempt 3.4 (C-cubed) Iron Theatre; and Nick Dodds, Chief Total Theatre Award Congratulations go to all our winners, Executive of Brighton Festival and Chair for Best Original Work and commendation to the shortlisted of the British Arts Festival Association. by a Collective/Ensemble companies. Reviews of winning Proudly supported by University of Chichester, shows appear in this magazine.Other Entertainment was provided by the MA Theatre Collectives Edinburgh Fringe shows reviewed on divine Meow Meow, star of the Rude Mechs in association with Erich our website: www.totaltheatre.org.uk Spiegelgarden, who brought a little Jungwirth and Richard Jordan Productions for Get Your War On bit of late night decadence to the (Assembly Aurora Nova) Photos by Gabriel Foster-Prior sun-kissed morning event. totaltheatre.org.uk 7 updates w ompany c ompany people sho performer & updates TOT 1927 CHICKENSHED CHOPPEDLOGIC A L

T HEA 1927 are doing a three-week run of Since the successful run of Inspired by real events, ChoppedLogic’s their multi award winning Edinburgh As the Mother of a Brown Boy Double Negative is a dynamic new TR show Between the Devil and the Deep at Edinburgh a filmed version of the theatre performance which holds an magaz E Blue Sea (Total Theatre Best Emerging show has been broadcast on several unsentimental lens up to the reality Company, Fringe First 2007, Herald occasions by Sky Arts. This filmed of Britain’s sex trade. Combining bold in Angel 2007, Carol Tambor Award, version has picked up more plaudits original writing, dance, movement e | e Arches Brick Award). Using mime, to add to the critical acclaim of the and puppetry, the show explores the 19 | 19 vol live music, and a mix of film and live Fringe. Through the production itself, seamier side of suburbia and the 2D animation, the show is a cornucopia Chickenshed made great contacts with slippery edges of contemporary society. iss of lush visuals that evoke the year of organisations such as Smart Justice A charged, poetic exploration of people

E WINT | 04 ue the company’s name, 1927. The show and the Prison Reform Trust. The trafficking and the complex desires runs 15 October – 3 November at company now hopes to bring the show which fuel it. Oval House Theatre: 16 Battersea Arts Centre in London. to a wider audience, including prisons October - 3 November 2007, Tuesday - See www.19-27.co.uk and ex-offenders, as well as more Saturday, 7:45pm. Written and directed

R 2007R traditional theatregoers. Meanwhile by million-watt theatre luminary Dorcas BOTTLEFED some members of the cast are working Werber. Box Office: 020 7582 7680 or After performing Return to Reason on a new production of A Christmas online sales at www.ovalhouse.com at the Edinburgh Fringe and completing Carol which opens in November this Creativity Matters (a research project year. See www. chickenshed.org.uk CHOTTO OOKII run for the Engine Room and University This summer Chotto Ookii successfully of Arts London), Bottlefed are back in CHIPOLATAS completed their new show THUS FAR the studio to train and work on new The Chipolatas are this season and no further thanks to the support ideas. Additionally the company are taking their 3-Style circus show of Bradford Theatre in the Mill. The going to run several workshops for to Festival Internacional de Circo, show will premier as part of the autumn performers in order to widen their Caracas, Venezuela (28 November - 3 season at Bradford University on ensemble for future projects. See December); and the World Buskers 7 December (Box Office 01274 233200) www.bottlefed.org for future Festival, Christchurch, New Zealand before touring the UK in the spring. performance dates of Return to (17-27 January). An Australian tour is In an explosion of wax, fluff and flour Reason and workshop details. being finalised for February and March: THUS FAR and no further takes the check the website for details. Other audience on a journey to a chaotic BRIGHTFX than the updated www.chipolatas.com world where something has broken Following the success of Circus website, the company also have new down and everyone is lost. To find Tatovski in the UK and Europe, brightFX Myspace and Youtube portals: out more join the Chotto Ookii mailing have been commissioned to adapt the www.myspace.com/thechipolatas list by sending your address to street show for a theatre audience. & www.youtube.com/thechipolatas [email protected] or see In collaboration with Tina Carter www.chottoookii.co.uk from Expressive Feat and Ian Owens chotto ookii from Albert and Friends, this will be an action packed show for all the family. BrightFX has also been invited back to produce the Reading Oracle Riverside Spectacular for a second year. This spectacular show combines choreographed fire performance and aerial acts with stunning lighting effects and pyrotechnics. Email [email protected] or see www.brightfx.co.uk

8 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre performer & performer tangled feet tangled FAULTY OPTIC He tries to remember, she tries to forget. Ripped apart by the fickle Bacchae, Orpheus has found most of his strewn body parts except his updatesc ompany legs. All that remains is for Eurydice to remarry him, but she is desperately trying to wash something terrible away. dna The only hope is Elysium, but Elysium DANNY SCHLESINGER beckons only for some, and only after This autumn/winter Danny will be they yield to complete amnesia. Faulty performing his solo show Lighter Optic’s latest show Dead Wedding tours than Air at various venues around through autumn/winter, visiting Lakeside the country. Enter the bizarre and Nottingham (10 October), Huddersfield strange universe of a wild balloon Contemporary Music Festival (21 tamer where skilful, surreal and stupid November), The Sage, Gateshead things happen. The show combines (1 December), and the Barbican for DNA physical comedy, circus skills and its Bite Festival (22-26 January ’08). DNA is pleased to announce an award eccentric dance with a medley of Email [email protected] or of nearly £5000 from Arts Council other skills. Dates include: Chipping see www.faultyoptic.co.uk England North West to further develop Ongar (3 November); West End Centre its innovative interactive performance in Aldershot (15 November); Greentop FITTINGS MULTIMEDIA ARTS for early years, Ball Pond Bobby. DNA Community Circus in Sheffield (16 Fittings Multimedia Arts’ medical will now commission bespoke seating, November) with a workshop in musical extravaganza Welcome to remake the set and add to the overall physical comedy the next day; and the Institute is a satirical sideswipe aesthetic of the performance for its Redbridge Drama Centre East London at the fag end of the health service, a autumn 2007 tour. DNA will also supply (22 November). Please come along to medical musical showdown between additional supporting materials for support Danny and the venue as this the forces of evil and the forces of families to enhance their understanding show is not funded. See good. Think Green Wing with songs, of the experience. The company is www.circoridiculoso.com think Kafka with gags. Directed by very excited to be working closely Garry Robson, Composed by Leigh with Early Years Specialist Joanne DANTE OR DIE Stirling, designed by Jo Pocock. Touring Albin-Clark to evaluate the project, dANTE OR dIE have just returned from throughout October and into November. and with Ludus Dance who will work the Dublin Fringe Festival, where Caliper Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, with dancer Tids Pickard to further Boy was nominated for the Spirit of the Manchester, Telford, Penzance, and develop the choreography. See www. Fringe Award. In the show a 189 year- London. For details contact Deborah dynamicnewanimation.co.uk/Bookings. old 12-year-old boy is searching for the Wintle at Fittings on 0151 708 8858 html (click on the Google Calendar for answer to his lifelong question: “Why or [email protected] or see tour dates). aren’t I like the other children, Mother?” www.fittings.org.uk Joining forces with a range of acoustic EXPRESSIVE FEAT folk musicians, dANTE OR dIE bring FOURSIGHT THEATRE PRODUCTIONS you a tale of freaks, fright, folk song, After almost ten years, Naomi Cooke Expressive Feat Productions make flying burgers and frantic underground will be stepping down as Artistic unique aerial work. Using fresh air whispers. Caliper Boy’s endless urban Director of Foursight Theatre. She as their stage, the company conjures existence is illuminated through an will continue working in a freelance dramatic, humorous and thought- evocative live score, distorted body capacity as an actor and director. provoking stories. Their latest show, parts and tales that disorientate and Frances Land and Sarah Thom have Park Life, falling somewhere between perturb. Check the website for upcoming been appointed as Joint Artistic A Clockwork Orange and The Keystone tour dates: www.danteordie.com Directors of the company, alongside Cops, was performed as part of a Michelle Knight, their newly appointed showcase day for the University of DELL’ARTE General Manager. The new Foursight Kent’s Practice as Research MAs in The Dell’Arte Company is proud to team will be in place from 1 October, drama and film earlier this year, and present two of its most poignant supported by Naomi Cooke as is currently available for indoor and productions in two of California’s most Associate Director, and Lisa Harrison outdoor performance. culturally rich cities this winter. In as Education and Outreach co-ordinator. See www.exfeat.com San Francisco in November, Land of The company looks forward to a new the Grasshopper Song is a historical, era going into its 21st birthday in 2008. musical comedy that explores the See www.foursighttheatre.co.uk journey of two women who set out in 1908 to be ‘field matrons’ for the Karuk Tribe of Northern California. In Los Angeles in February, The Golden State is a raucous, sexy farce inspired by Molière’s comic gem The Miser. This is Molière with the heat turned up, the stops pulled out and the women on top. Call 1-707-668-5663 or email info@ dellarte.com or see www.dellarte.com

totaltheatre.org.uk 9

People Houdini’s Suitcase Houdini’s W Houdini’s Suitcase is a Houdini’s IMAGE SHO Accidentally Waiting Accidentally to Waiting BIRDS Houdini’s Suitcase is the Houdini’s Feathered Winks, which will CKLED ckled image Winner of the People’s Winner Jury of Prize the at People’s the Belo Horizonte Puppet Festival in Brazil, brand new show from Bristol-based puppetry company Pickled Image. Created last spring in the depths of north Norway, stunning piece of visual theatre that fuses live performance, puppetry, and a haunting soundtrack. Unique, poignant and funny, is a sensory feast aimed at audiences 12 years+. The show tours the country this autumn, with venues including the Met Theatre, Bury (1 & 2 November); MAC, Birmingham (3 November); and the Frensham Heights Performing Arts Centre, Frensham (19 November). See www.pickledimage.co.uk PAPER Having returned from Edinburgh the Paper Birds have dived back into a million and one exciting education and outreach projects, including a trip to Jersey with the company’s last show Happen. The Paper Birds will shortly be beginning research and development for a new to show, be devised in the In the new meantime year. they will be continuing to develop their current show 40 then be touring nationally in spring 2008. See www.thepaperbirds.com PEOPLE Meet the white-faced clown and the melancholy Eavesdrop baby. on dancing boxers, share the fantasies of the roadie, and ‘live the dream’ with the washed-up stand-up comic. A promenade performance, Show features 118: The Birthday Tour live music, multimedia imagery and deception. A new work based on the original Birthday Show created to 40th celebrate the company’s On anniversary. national tour from October (see website for details), then at People Show Studios, East London £14 6-10 Tickets & 13-18 November. (£12 conc). Capacity is strictly limited, so book Call early. 020 8858 7755 (Greenwich theatre box office). See www.peopleshow.co.uk PI pi The Next e tr Exit Napoleon thea GOED y GAP orar Mozart Preposteroso will be The Medical Show and THE RAE ontemp will have its first run in 2008. See ing c Pursued by Rabbits to the Masca Theatre in Bucharest for two performances and two workshops 2-5 November. Act www.mimethegap.com NOLA Nola Rae will be taking at Castellon de la Plana in Spain 16-18 Nola will also November. pay her first visit to Greenland for performances of Upper Cuts in Nuuk on 30 November The and newest 1 show, December. Home-Made Shakespeare, will have more performances in Sweden in Uppsala and Karlskrona on 7 & 9 See www.nolarae.com December. or for bookings on contact West Valerie 0208 444 6248 ONTROEREND MIME Mime the Gap is a silent comedy theatre company now celebrating its 10th The anniversary. company is currently developing its new show The Next . Act Previous shows have included: . Nightmare The Magician’s Theatre Award winners Total Ontroerend Goed, who were awarded in the ‘experimental’ category for Face, Smile will off be Your performing the show at the Adelaide Fringe, 22 February - 16 March 2008. After that, the company will be coming to London at the end of March. Dates are not yet fixed, but keep checking the website for updates. After their extraordinary success in Edinburgh 2007, the Belgian experimental theatre makers have plans to return to the Fringe in 2008 with a new See show. www. ontroerendgoed.be paper birdspaper p lo e - deve tr ART thea Six Women Six Women al tot THEATRE THEATRE Rust is hitting the creates humorous, GINGER DOVE LUGGAGE 10 LITTLE melancholic and touching moments within its narrative, exploring issues of identity memory, and the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit. See www.bathingbeauties. org.uk or or www.shunt.co.uk www. myspace.co.uk/leftluggagetheatre Left Luggage Theatre will showcase Day Return at Shunt Lounge (London 7.30pm Bridge) - 19-21 September, 12am) before performing at the show’s spiritual home at The Festival of Bathing Beauties on the Lincolnshire coast, 23 September 10am-4pm. Day Return is a promenade journey to Skegness through the dreams and memories of an The old Ivy. lady, performance uses different types of live puppetry, performers, soundscape and installation to recreate the nostalgic world of the British seaside. Day Return LEFT road for a final time; the culmination of 24 months of European touring, this award-winning production was recently described in the Norwegian national press as “part-Sex Pistols, part-Monty Python and with a touch Belgium, Ones”. of Touring The Young France Poland, Norway, and Germany, the UK; see the website for details. Green Ginger is also coordinating Toast in the Machine, a rolling programme of Bristol-based professional development and mentoring for young puppeteers and other theatre and film makers. For more info call +44 (0)117 9225599 or or see email [email protected] www.greenginger.net Green Ginger’s Green Ginger’s GREEN The Little Dove flock has flown and scattered throughout the world. Most will reform to perform works for The National Multicultural Festival Fringe 2008 in Canberra, Australia, which company director Chenoeh Miller is Artistic Director of. Having survived Edinburgh with invitations from theatres and festivals around the world, Little Dove Theatre Art will tour Standing in Front of a White to Wall Marseilles, Berlin, NYC, Vancouver, London and Jerusalem in July and August 2008. The company is currently seeking official invitations and madly applying for funding. See www. myspace.com/littledovetheatreart

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 théâtre sans frontières sans théâtre performer & performer

zecora ura updatesc ompany

SHAMS THEATRE THIRD ANGEL Shams Theatre relocated to Cambridge Still basking in the warm glow PRECARIOUS this summer, where they are developing of a series of lovely reviews for Precarious had a successful Edinburgh Black Stuff, a wicked comedy about Presumption in Edinburgh, and a place run this year with their new physical the end of oil and climate change, on the shortlist for the Carol Tambor theatre and multimedia show Druthers. due to tour across East England in award, Third Angel is squeezing in During the festival they were crowned March 2008. The show draws on the an international collaboration, Off the Total Theatre Wildcard Winners and company’s work with Clown through White, with Paula Diogo from Lisboa’s nominated for the Emerging Company Mask, and Jonathan Young will be Teatro Praga, before unpacking Award (not to mention taking the Total running an intensive four-week course Presumption for an autumn tour starting Theatre Volleyball Champions title!). in London 7 January - 1 February. in Firenze, Italy. Find all the details Precarious are now making plans to See www.shamstheatre.org.uk or at www.thirdangel.co.uk, which tour Druthers in Spring 2008. If you contact [email protected] or will soon be undergoing a complete are interested in booking the show or call 07740 475 879 redesign and will, finally, have lots receiving more information more room for archived projects, or a DVD, please contact Karla SHEER LUNACY video and current work. at [email protected] or see Young, UK-based company Sheer www.precarious.org.uk Lunacy featured two original pervasive UNPACKED games in this year’s Come Out and Play With little time to empty the Edinburgh PRESENT ATTEMPT festival, which took place in Amsterdam suitcase, Unpacked hit the road with Present Attempt will begin a year-long on the 28 & 29 of September. Sheer No Obvious Trauma in October – don’t residency at the Centre of Excellence Lunacy are a collective of performers, miss the last date of this tour at the for Training in Theatre (CETT) based artists and creators who aim to share Lakeside Theatre in Colchester on at the Central School of Speech and a little playful chaos and perception- 15 November. Unpacked worked on Drama in October. The company is altering fun with anyone who’ll let them. puppetry for the Tangram Theatre currently working on a small-scale See www.sheerlunacy.com for more. and Southwark Playhouse production site specific piece which will take the of Richard III, also in October. And form of an audio tour. On their return TANGLED FEET following success in Edinburgh, Funeral from Edinburgh company members Tangled Feet were delighted to be Games will be touring the UK in April interviewed a range of various shortlisted in the Best Original Work 2008. In the meantime the company practitioners as research for their MA by an Ensemble category at this year’s continues to work on their new project. in Advanced Theatre Practice. This Total Theatre Awards for their show For more info visit www.unpacked.org included previous Total Theatre Award GAME? It was particularly gratifying as and if anyone has a spare Bison please winning companies NIE and Hoipolloi the company has been working within get in touch. as well as Improbable and Forced the same ensemble for four years now. Entertainment. They plan to make a GAME? will tour the UK in Spring 2008 ZECORA URA new piece of work in January. See before Tangled Feet start to devise their A Brazil/UK co-production presented www.cssd.ac.uk ambitious new project... watch this by Zecora Ura Theatre, Urban Dolls space! www.tangledfeet.com Project and Real Live Cinema, Hotel PROTEUS THEATRE Medea will be developed into a full This year Proteus celebrates over 25 théâtre sans frontières production for Aurora Nova premiering years of making work for and with Three touring shows at Théâtre sans in 2008. In a myth driven by deeds not diverse communities with two shows: Frontières: Como agua para chocolate thoughts, sacrifices have to be made. one old, one new. Back by popular - Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Using striking linguistic and musical demand, The Elephant Man is the Esquivel’s magical tale of simmering contrasts to set off the alienation moving, poetic and ultimately uplifting passions and food to stir the senses, of Medea, the project examines story of the life of John Merrick, whose visiting UK theatres in spring and the character by recognising that life and tragic destiny is as relevant summer 2008 (Spanish 15 years+); technology is reinterpreting our today in our image obsessed culture Conte Dorés, two captivating folktales relationship with myth. Work-in- as it ever was. Proteus’s new show, from French-speaking Canada, touring progress to be shared at the Shunt Below Zero, tours 21 April - 25 May schools in spring 2008; and Around the Lounge, London on 16 & 17 November. 2008. Using the company’s distinctive World in 80 Minutes, an action-packed For more details contact Nwando Ebizie fusion of circus, film and physical adventure introducing children to the on 07916 278949 or nwando@para- theatre, this is an exploration of modern French language and Francophone active.com or see www.Medea.Tv attitudes toward our own bodies and countries, touring UK theatres this the obsession with perfection at any Autumn (English & simple French). cost. See www.proteustheatre.com The company is also developing a show Lipsynch, an epic celebration of language and voice co-produced with Robert Lepage & Ex Machina (English, French, Spanish & German partially surtitled). See www.tsf.org.uk

totaltheatre.org.uk 11 e tr During the Fringe I attended an introduction to Arab Theatre, During the Fringe I attended an introduction Edinburgh Showcase. produced as part of the British Council a very different This session was an opportunity to glimpse generally speaking, theatre-making world. In the Arab states, operating since theatre has largely been an imported artform living in 22 countries the 1960s. There are 320 million people Jebali from El Taoufik and the cultures vary enormously. spoke of the rise in interest in visual theatre in Tunisia Teatro the censors. because image-based work could get past who has lived Sulayman Al Bassam, a political theatre-maker difficulties for artists and worked in the UK, spoke about the region. But the most in Kuwait and touring work across that Al Assadi, missing powerful message was delivered by Jawad and nephew. from the panel due to the death of his brother a leading director Jawad Al Assadi, originally from Iraq, is vision of theatre of theatre in the Arab world. His innovative actors and means he devotes energy to training young by a wide range of employs a unique style in directing plays essays on theatre, Arab playwrights. He has written poems, which have been studies on rehearsals, and several plays, including Forget translated into English, Russian and French, Jawad Al Assadi has of War. Hamlet, The Bench and Women spent 25 years as an exile, moving between different Arab countries and contributing to the development of progressive thought and dialogue in the region. voice the and here) (printed meeting the to letter a sent Jawad of this respected artist should be heard. What is cutting edge theatre? How do we define innovation and what relationship does it have to our cultural sensibilities? These questions are tragic loss. brought into sharp relief by Assadi’s thea y orar ontemp ing c p lo e - deve tr thea al tot 12 Bailey Pippa volution! says Vive la Ré The complex connections between British culture and the rest of the world has informed the decision to extend international focus. High quality international Theatre’s Total practitioners come to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Several Awards Theatre international companies received 2007 Total Theatre and we are discussing ways to develop the Total other countries so that we can start to explore in Awards how work and standards of excellence vary across the world. Is it appropriate for us to use our own standards when judging work from elsewhere? Is it possible to separate personal taste from ideas about quality? And how can we build new relationships and cultural understanding through this process? Artists with new ideas, such as 30 Bird Productions and Mamoru Iriguchi, were able to pitch their shows. The showcase closely followed the Edinburgh Festivals – sadly, the Fringe seemed remarkably lacking in cultural diversity perhaps due to the proximity of these events. this year, An essential part of my revolution would be a greater focus An essential part of my revolution would I attended an on diverse theatre practices. In September showcase in international symposium, part of the decibel England initiative Birmingham. Decibel is an Arts Council culturally diverse (running 2003-2008) to raise the profile of of projects and artists, through a cross-artform programme a not-to-be-missed events. The Birmingham showcase was artists and opportunity to see the very best performing descent based companies of African, Asian and Caribbean Leftovers, in in England. Mem Morrison Company presented a citizenship test, and which the full English breakfast is given an object Myung Hee Han presented A Dream of Butterfly, life and death, illusion theatre live art performance, exploring and reality in an installation made entirely of paper. Guardian Theatre critic Michael Billington, in an article Guardian Theatre critic Michael Billington, End (the Guardian, 2 Aug bemoaning the state of the West is in dire straits. 2007), called for a revolution: ‘Theatreland is dying, and the Second-rate musicals rule, new drama for a revolution’. venues are falling apart. The time has come very different visions I suspect Michael Billington and I have and achieve, but for what a theatre uprising might look like la Révolution! bring it on. Vive as a call to arms I say, mem morrison leftovers. photo manuel vason TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 out & about with pippa bailey / an open letter from jawad al assadi jawad al assadi 13 . e.org.uk Baghdadi Bath is, in fact, tr hea alt tot The play depicts the lives , Baghdadi Bath. The play depicts the otal Theatre from Iraqi An open letter Al Assadi Jawad playwright workers spent the day in illuminating conversation with them. The discussion groups included those who were there to see outdoor events as part of the programme, people who were making a planned visit to see This Space Watch Part of the purpose was to make connections and passers-by. an indoor show, This Space and the NT indoor theatre programme; another between Watch purpose was to explore attitudes to contemporary theatre, and see how theatre Theatre has run lives and leisure activities. Total fits in (or otherwise!) to people’s numerous salons, talks and symposia for professional theatre-makers. This was our first such event for the general public, and we hope very much to repeat the exercise soon. Future plans include an event as part of the London International Mime Festival, January 2008; further details to be announced on our re-designed website. See www.totaltheatre.org.uk THEATRE EVENTS TOTAL Theatre, in which autumn activities included a day at the National Theatre’s Total members of the public were engaged in spontaneous mini-Salon events. Enticing people into the building with the promise of free tea and cakes, four T has unfortunately become real in life. My brother and his son were kidnapped as they What I described in Baghdadi Bath has unfortunately become real in life. My his son were My brother and the incident that was theatre has become a reality. were driving their bus. This time, however, Radwanieh, not far from the infamous Al Rasheed Camp, then driven to a remote stopped by ten armed men in the area of armed militia have sprung up in an unprecedented manner area in dense palm tree forests, where Iraq is this one! The palm trees were the only witness. The large hole their final womb. Which Both in the written text and in the performance, the characters face sudden violations (or intrusions) during their daily trips, the characters face sudden violations (or intrusions) during their daily Both in the written text and in the performance, to on the way to Baghdad, where hundreds of passengers and drivers are subject especially after passing the Iraqi border attack, kidnap, looting and bloody murder. nephew My brother and of masks, which leads to brutal slaughter. the theatre It’s This is the perfect Iraqi theatre of blood. a into investigation and tortured for days, then brought to a surreal trial with were indeed kidnapped, interrogated, forced in to pray because their death in dawn is inevitable. Irtiqa Al Assadi was slaughtered mock judge, who asked the kidnapped into a large hole Al Assadi, followed by the father who was also slaughtered. Both were thrown Hussein front of his father, who had gone out to earn his daily who had hardly reached his teens, and the father, with many other dead bodies. The boy, bread, were thrown into a hole. I felt an unprecedented bitterness during the rehearsal for my most recent play bitterness during the rehearsal for I felt an unprecedented and Baghdad. The text of daily drive a passenger bus between Damascus of two brothers who a touch of fantasy that dominates the theatrical action. a biography of these two brothers, with of killing, Iraqi drivers, both Sunni and Shiite (my brother and his son among The strange thing is that after the escalation one with a Sunni name to be handed to Sunni militia, and the other with them), have got used to carrying two passports; But the bloody dramatic trap that my brother and nephew fell into lay in the a Shiite name to be handed to Shiite militia. the costumes of Shiite militia, so my brother and nephew handed them their Shiite following: their kidnappers appeared in guaranteed, only to discover a few moments later that the kidnappers were passports, thinking that their rescue was actually Sunni. 01 features TOT A L T HEA TR magaz E in e | e 19 | 19 vol iss E WINT | 04 ue

For a region that has been responsible for some truly earth-shattering cultural Beccy Smith moments, the North West can appear uncharacteristically coy about its theatre. R 2007R celebrates A smattering of small- and mid- scale touring venues amongst the regenerated mill towns have long been stalwarts for companies travelling from across the country, the rich their audiences subsidised by the excellent universities in the area. But for too long pickings to the national sense of the region’s cultural vision has been of an inward-looking be found in her reflection on the grim wet reality of the northern experience. home region However, if this stereotyping was ever true, in the past twenty years the region has experienced an ever-accelerating sea change in its artistic landscape. To cite a few seminal moments: the foundation of the greenroom in Manchester in the 80s opened a space for experimental practice and the support of younger, emergent artists in the city (an agenda wholeheartedly embraced by subsequent student/ professional theatre crossovers with Contact Theatre, Alsager Arts and Nuffield Lancaster). Together they have supported work in the region by such companies as Doo-Cot, Dynamic New Animation and Quarantine. Hope Street Ltd, founded in Liverpool in 1988, pioneered the holistic teaching of collaborative, physical theatre – a model which has influenced national teaching policy ever since.

In Ulvertson (Cumbria), the agenda-defining creative projects of Welfare State International (and its successor Lanternhouse) have set the bar for broad stroke community engagement through work of artistic and political integrity. In Rossendale, Horse and Bamboo have been innovators in visual theatre, mask, film and puppetry since 1978.

Despite the weather, Manchester has established itself as one of the headline destinations for street arts, with festivals such as Streets Ahead which has not only presented work from round the world, but also nurtured local companies such as Walk the Plank, Artizani, Avanti Display and Whalley Range All Stars. Its sister festival, the Garden of Delights, and the annual xtrax showcase continue to present UK street arts and cross-artform companies to international promoters, and have also worked in tandem with the Arts Council’s decibel initiative to foster the development of a more culturally diverse arts practice. Also in Manchester, the queer arts agenda has been championed nationally and internationally since 1992 by queerupnorth, Europe’s leading festival of queer arts.

14 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre features the great north west 02 15 e.org.uk tr hea alt See www.queerupnorth.com facilitated by the shifting political and facilitated by the shifting past decade. social climates of the festival presented a This year’s placing Ronnie mixed theatrical bag, masterful puppetry alongside Burkett’s Dziemaskiewicz, Polish live artist Leon his hip- Rikki Beadle-Blair and club hop inspired work, New York Mac (pictured), and sensation Taylor one woman show. Mojisola Adebayo’s Alongside importing world class artists into the region each year, queerupnorth also develops homegrown talent, recently providing a platform for work by Manchester based artists such as Company Fierce, Quarantine, Doo-Cot and David Hoyle (the artist formerly known as The Divine David), to name but a few. The festival is embraced by the full theatres range of Manchester’s and performance spaces, with work programmed into venues from The Lowry to greenroom, via The Comedy Store and Contact Theatre and more inbetween. Beyond these traditional spaces, the programme has fully infiltrated Manchester and performances have sprung up in every In 2006 and 2007, corner of the city. work has been placed in spaces as diverse as Harvey Nichols brasserie and the Museum of Science and Canal St gay clubs and Industry, Northern Quarter jazz bars, libraries, cinemas, museums, and a Malmaison hotel room. Under new artistic director Jonathan Best, queerupnorth is currently going from strength to strength. With an increasingly diverse programme, a growing strand of commissioned new work and strengthened artists relationships with the region’s and venues, the festival is definitely one to keep an eye on. tot k in comedy, k in comedy, iverpool Culture s will be a commissioned alk the Plank’s alk the Plank’s As we see evidenced throughout this As we see evidenced is North West special feature, The unique artist- currently a hotbed for one of the focused initiatives, and fastest-growing artistic country’s to import regions. New opportunities the region larger scale work into will provide fruitful artistic stimulus, whilst many venues have realised the importance of forging key national, as well as regional, partnerships to foster the export of their work. An essential date in the North West’s cultural calendar is the annual queerupnorth International Festival, which takes place throughout Manchester every May. most Queerupnorth is Europe’s infamous festival of lesbian, gay and queer performance, and since 1992 has been commissioning, producing and presenting a wide range of theatre and performance work, alongside an eclectic programme of film, music, visual art and literature. The festival was originally born with an identifiable queer aesthetic based on club culture, underground performance and identity politics, personified in artists such as Ursula Martinez, Duckie and Split Britches, all of whom contributed to the early festivals. In more recent years, the artistic make up of the festival has diversified, reflecting a broadening of audible queer voices which has been ’s nation on the atts Ric W & queer performance gay , of lesbian festival leading of Culture Liverpool 08 – European Capital art and public participation have been programme of events, public In a far-reaching flagged up as key elements in Liverpool 08. One of the biggest free event The Sultan’s Elephant to London. new project by Artichoke, the company who brought The Sultan’s Theatre, dance and performance highlights will include Ghost Sonata, an epic promenade Liverpool Is Burning, and Three Sisters On Homotopia’s produced by The People Show. two cathedrals. story in the road that links Liverpool’s Hope Street, which sites Chekhov’s British Dance Edition will be held in Liverpool for the first time in 2008. W theatre boat, The Fitzcarraldo will host a monthly platform event for new wor burlesque, magic, theatre, installation and impro, a programme specially is also creative producer John Wassell the Plank’s Walk for the Capital of Culture year. working with artistic directors Nigel Jamieson and Jayne Casey and the L Company for the opening ceremony of the Capital of Culture which will take place early 2008. See www.liverpool08.com In Liverpool, winning the European City In Liverpool, winning the European City of Culture award for 2008 has stimulated a comparable period of unprecedented growth. Regional networks such as the Live Art Network established by Tamsin Drury have done vital work joining to up venues across the North West support programming and development, whilst creative programming from mid- scale venues such as Unity in Liverpool has ensured a continuous stream of nationally acclaimed theatrical experiment into the region. The response to the 1996 IRA bombing of bombing IRA 1996 the to response The an extraordinary Manchester prompted centre, one crucial flowering of the city regeneration of side effect being the Exchange building, the damaged Royal its established, to include alongside large-scale space often establishment, a purpose-built studio opening the theatre to a dynamic programme of smaller scale work. The space has supported work from emerging visual theatre companies such as Mishimou alongside experimental new writing from the likes of Jackie Kay and Duncan Macmillan. In 1998 the refurbishment won the organisation the title of Theatre Theatre in the Barclays of the Year A massive reinvestment in the Awards. city has transformed its economic as well as urban landscape and attracted cultural investment in the form of the new Manchester International Festival (with considerable commissioning clout attached to its remit to programme only new work) and the large-scale Lowry in Salford Quays. 03 e tr The emphasis is on a professional level of output. The three The emphasis is on a professional level their time there to five projects that student work on during venues, including are all put out to a public audience in real is a lynchpin the Unity Theatre (whose close partnership during structure). The production showing of the course’s my visit was Sugar and Spice, a theatrical examination of (the internationally the slave trade led by Hilary Westlake founded Lumiere renowned director who, with David Gale, local filmmaker and Son) working in collaboration with Mike Wight. expressed concerns about I met her later, when Westlake, the breadth of the material, up against the contingencies of working on a relatively short process with students learning to engage with the new tools they wished to play with for But Sugar and Spice played to a full house at the the show. who engaged hungrily with the informative content Unity, and playful shifts in tone. This close engagement with their audience, perhaps reinforced by a longstanding commitment to community-focused art-making, as well as closely nurtured artistic regional partnerships, is what grounds Hope St’s simply about creating ambition, ensuring their work isn’t artists but also about communicating with audiences. no surprise then that the course has spawned many It’s successful long-term collaborations. Graduating companies Rejects Revenge Theatre Ullaloom, include Big Wow, Proof Theatre. Momentum Theatre Company and Fool’s most Company have built a name as one of the UK’s successful physical theatre companies touring across the country and abroad, recently collaborating with Derevo artist, Associate artists Company: Collisions have Khabarova. Tanya twice been showcased at the prestigious London International Mime Festival. thea y orar ontemp ing c p lo e - deve tr thea al tot -winning artist training centre td is an award 16 Hope St L in the development part a formative which has played , youth AND participatory , carnival of UK physical theatre development meets creative arts. Beccy Smith lan Richardson , A co-ordinator Hope St Ltd occupies a three-storey block near the centre of town. The building includes two large rehearsal spaces, a basement workshop, and a ‘common room’ resource area, as well as the offices of both the school, its profit-making wing Culture Inc. and a number of supported companies, many of whom are graduates of their course. What makes the training offered by the school special is its longstanding commitment to collaborative, company-led creating. The model Richardson who together build a describes – of 20 apprentices per year, rounded collective of specialisms – is now de rigeur for much advanced theatre training, but what comes across clearly as he speaks is the rigour with which the school approaches find the right level of competency this model. ‘If we don’t fill those places,’ explains at audition, we simply don’t a scrupulousness many other drama courses Richardson. It’s could learn from and in part explains the special atmosphere of the school – one graduate describes her experience there as both being ‘part of a family’, a feeling that persists long after graduation. I meet Alan in a sunny streetside café in a stretch of Liverpool I meet Alan in a sunny streetside café in afternoon. The which feels continental on this warm July artists be to seem whom of many people, with busy are streets to greet us. It feels, Alan knows or has worked with, who stop arts scene of worlds apart from the sprawling immediately, vibrant than I had been expecting. more the capital; brighter, my memories of the theatre Growing up in the North West, middle class. Alan scene are as a world remote and stridently ‘cultural quarter’ and is at pains to point out that we’re in the necessarily characteristic of the the experience here isn’t place as a whole, but nevertheless it is clear that this is a city whose arts scene is present, vocal and multifarious.

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 features the great north west s . 17 , Liz O’Neill, who e.org.uk tr hea alt tot 04 s, which all explains atts ce arraldo docked in liverpool c For further information on PANDA see www.panda-arts.org.uk see www.panda-arts.org.uk For further information on PANDA the , not organisation the arts bear . bamboo-eating endangered Ric W PANDA was established in 2002 as a pilot model to provide business support in 2002 as a pilot model to provide was established PANDA bolstered which was being arts sector in the city, to the booming performing for emerging and and developmental opportunities by a variety of showcase scene, a support an increasingly rich performance established practitioners. To was created, providing a source of formalised network and development service work in the area. In the five years since sound business advice for those making and is now an integral part of the city’ its inception that organisation has thrived, arts infrastructure. arts sector in Manchester through an supports the burgeoning performing PANDA all of which are designed to support artists array of schemes and strands of work, at all levels of their practice. with over 650 members, who are offered The organisation runs an active network and employment opportunities, weekly newsletters with training, platform as the annual (and infamous) Christmas alongside regular networking events, such programmes of seminars and More structured developmental work includes party. and the opportunity for tailored one-to- masterclasses taught by industry leaders, in-depth discussion and advice one advice surgeries, offering young companies around their business needs. a two-year programme of structured also ‘incubates’ artists, providing PANDA performance companies into development work, helping to turn fledgling incubated companies include sustainable creative businesses. Previously acclaimed on last year’s Quarantine and Company Fierce, who collaborated the current Incubated Companies were offered Susan and Darren. This year, the rare chance to showcase their work to the industry as part of the inaugural Manchester International Festival. artistic landscape, work is now imbedded deeply within Manchester’s PANDA’s artists drawing on its support at some stage. Its with many of the region’s remarkable success story is largely down to founder and director has worked tirelessly and enthusiastically to establish the organisation. Liz has provided a support structure for many key artists in the region, and is a constant champion of new work emerging from Manchester – ensuring that the region continues to influence creativity in the twenty-first century. A major source of support for Manchester’s emerging artist scene comes from a emerging artist scene comes for Manchester’s A major source of support – a catchy acronym reaching organisation called PANDA modestly sized but wide Agency Performing Arts Network and Development for the more cumbersome chester . photo stevenc. photo menendez ar parade inar parade man alk the plank’s theatre ship the fitz 02 | taylor ma 02 | taylor robin photo 03 | sugar and hope ri spice st ltd. at 01 | w 04 | the art c For further information about Hope Street and for details of their apprenticeships, please see www. hope-street.org or contact Alan on [email protected] Richardson by Damon Albarn, by Faulty Optic; Monkey: Journey to the West included: Dead Wedding Jamie Hewlett and Chen Shi-Zeng; and The Pianist by Wdalyslaw Spillman. See www.manchesterinternationalfestival.com Festival Manchester International first festival dedicated entirely to commissioned new work. Planned to run MIF is the UK’s partnerships with key international venues as a biennial, it aims to build Manchester’s and festivals. The inaugural Manchester International Festival, June–July 2007, focused particularly on music but brought with it some exciting theatrical highlight A national pioneer, looking A national pioneer, internationally for new models to fuel its artistic exploration, Hope St remains a quintessentially North-Western organisation, keenly aware of the value of the vast resources on its doorstep. Recent funding changes have meant 25% a shift from regional exclusivity. of apprentices are now drawn from and Alan hopes further outside the NW, to build a more international team. Meanwhile his colleague, Hope St’s is on a sabbatical, director Peter Ward, researching the impact that being European Capital of Culture has had in other cities, and investigating the possibilities of establishing a European style Creation Centre in Liverpool. on feeding a definite emphasis Yet the region remains at the heart of the ethos. Alan hopes that organisation’s those who travel to attend the course will consider staying in the city. Recently, the school set up a school the Recently, New Work called programme ten throwing together Workshops, cross- to develop ideas for lead artists ideas Of the artform collaborations. will be or four per year formed, three then with these projects selected, offered meat of the course forming the the a bold decision – to students. It’s year on year content of the courses until a matter might not be discovered but it situates of weeks before it begins, the heart of the creativity and risk at qualities which teaching process – the artform but capture the nature of the bureaucracy are too often lost to quantifiable results and obsession with teaching and that plagues both arts experiment to licence This management. has attracted artists of the highest calibre – this year alone boasting John projects led by Hilary Westlake, Fox, Andrea Earl and Kal Ross. quarantine butterfly. photo simon banham e tr John Fox is the founder and co-director of Welfare State is the founder and co-director of Welfare John Fox on April Fool’s Day 2006. he archived International, which workingHe is now both as a solo artist supported by Arts Council and collaboratively with his England, North West new company Dead he has started Good Guides which with Sue Gill. See www.deadgoodguides.com ‘There is a palpable passion for experimentation in the North in the North for experimentation passion is a palpable ‘There open its doors has thrown of venues network A close West. makers while increasing challenging performance to new and from putting on anything artist-led initiatives are numbers of exchanges to international anarchic cabarets for live artists.’ Richard Kingdom Manager, Performance Programme Liverpool The Bluecoat Arts Centre, for new artists in this region at ‘I think the range of opportunities still space for new thinking There’s the moment is extraordinary. assisted in their artistic development on how artists might be to show their work, and there needs to beyond the opportunity artists to ensure that the role be more support for established hard to imagine a better landscape it’s models are there, but work stepping out into professional for new artists with strong practice.’ Neil MacKenzie Artistic Director, Alsager Arts Centre, Salford is one of the most active no doubt that the North West ‘There’s The artists and and vibrant regions for theatre in the country. the next few years organisations in this profile testify to that. Over new opportunities we will build on this and make the most of the profile. Major events growing international that lie in the region’s Manchester such as Liverpool City of Culture 2008 and the but alongside International Festival provide obvious examples, and the this the work of organisations such as Quarantine reputation is so Nuffield Theatre prove why the North West’s world stage.’ strong, and its influence is expanding on the Roddy Gauld Theatre Officer, Arts Council England (North West) Of the bigger venues The Nuffield Theatre at Lancaster originate and receive quantities of innovative work outside the mainstream – Forkbeard Fantasy are appearing there currently (October 2007). Finally there is Littoral, the socio-politico art based group working partially from their lump of woodland in the Langdales in mid Cumbria. Last week they presented an imaginative and unique mix of lectures and events to celebrate Kurt Schwitters. In the vacuumed relic of his last Merzbarn (desecrated or rescued, depending on your viewpoint, by Newcastle University in 1966) there was a sound installation (by Dan again as it happens) containing a recording of maybe It had Schwitters, performing wild generic sound poetry. me reaching for the brandy flask, for how many of us will be listened to in fifty years time? thea y orar ontemp ing c p lo e - deve tr thea al tot 18 reflects on some John Fox alternatives North West This is just a brief trawl though a few of the lesser known companies and people I am in touch with. It excludes major showcase and significant producing organisations like Grizedale Arts, the Ruskin centres at both Brantwood and Coniston, Abbot Hall, Blackwell, Cumbria Institute of the Arts, Playhouse the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, and The Duke’s in Lancaster who all produce vital necessary work. I have to declare an interest in Dalton in Furness (also in South Cumbria) as BoomDang, their street percussion band is run by my son Dan Fox and his work partner Therese Johnston. BoomDang have been around for nearly ten years and are a rigorous highly choreographed outfit who play tight raunchy sambas and more, and are in much demand at from Brussels and Belfast festivals locally and internationally, to Barcelona. Other people in Barrow offer primary creative escape routes whether it is Art Gene with their international programme of mixed media contemporary visual art, Shoreline films with a steady input of training for local film-makers, or Ali Rigg the State International, an exceptional ex choir leader of Welfare & Twisted. Tied singing teacher and performer with Tongue In Barrow in Furness, The Ashton group directed by Rachael In Barrow in Furness, The Ashton group years with local Ashton have been plugging away for 17 and guest Miller, actors such as John Hall, writers like Sarah directors such as Noeline Kavanagh. Their theatre is well received on occasional circuit tours of established venues but they regularly maintain a local and exhausting creative focus with talented young people in a town still more dedicated to weaponry than wonder. Whitewood and Fleming are another powerful force. Since Whitewood and Fleming are another powerful Fleming and Elaine Whitewood moved their company from Tim in South Cumbria a couple of Valley to the Rusland Yorkshire and videos with years ago they have generated workshops participatory ‘looked after children’ and produced numerous to schools and events, bringing theatre with a world flavour Coast. Penrith and the West halls around Barrow, Then there is More Music in Morecambe under the artistic Then there is More Music in Morecambe which has for a decade been a direction of Pete Moser, largely unsung flagship of community music/participatory with The arts – currently reaching well beyond Morecambe that brings an ambitious and healing musical work Long Walk an invocation of the together Chinese and local musicians in cockling in 2003. deaths of the 22 Chinese people who died There is a lot going on in the North West that doesn’t that doesn’t on in the North West There is a lot going of it on the ground in the Much receive much publicity. Solfest for instance, big guys. Take cracks between the held every August Bank Holiday for a joyous music festival Cumbria up near Silloth in North West the past three years, families, assemble in carnival 10,000 people, mainly weekend of bands and booze guise for a celebratory which is inspirational.

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 features voices | annie sprinkle & elizabeth stephens ash 19 ulian c e.org.uk photo j lab. photo art love tr hea alt tot Annie Sprinkle is a performance artist whose many works include Public Cervix Announcement, Annie Sprinkle’s Herstory of Porn, and Post Porn Modernist, the last (which came to the UK 1990s) in the documenting her ‘sex positive feminist’ journey from ‘whorehouse to arthouse’ via the creation of her alter-ego Anya, the sacred prostitute. She has the interesting distinction of being the first porn star have earned a Ph.D. to known Elizabeth Stephens is a multimedia artist working in performance, sculpture, installation, web-based media In one of her most recent projects she and photography. acted as a ‘travel avatar’ for other people, investigating the US geographical, and political and social landscape. of the University of California Santa She is currently the chair Cruz (UCSC) Art Department intermedia where she teaches and sculpture. Art Lab, Annie and Elizabeth have created the Love Together, an ongoing project. For current and future events, see www.loveartlab.com Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens talked to Dorothy September Max Prior at Chelsea Theatre, 2007. We are interested in making interventionist artworks, are interested in We galleries. Our Kiss making more work outside of theatres and as a group artwork, piece is being performed for the first time the International in public, on the Kings Road, as part of Festival. Workshop place is vital. Universities remain just about the only Teaching a difference, despite you can have a radical stance and make are interested in sharing the clampdowns on education. We and learning. really good. Being married and working together is have both previously worked in artistic collaborations We but this works with lovers, with various degrees of success, live away from the city We take risks together. well. We but currently travel a lot, (in Boulder Creek, California). We The year of our green would like to spend more time at home. the heart, and to wedding will be an opportunity to explore are mostly We investigate environmental issues for artists. interested in art as life, and life as art. The big issues for us are love and equality: equality. political equality for all; racial and sexual we believe in the power of love. are anti war; We When you are older, your focus shifts. Age changes us. When you are older, Sex stays important, but the enjoyment of ‘married life’, of companionship even more so. If you are against war, why make images of war? If you are against war, Why stay with the problem? Why focus on the violence? It’s want to model no longer radical; we need new strategies. We our beliefs about political intervention. We will continue to speak against the war, to focus on love will continue to speak against the war, We rather than killing people. Love is the taboo subject nowadays, not sex. Art about love has become stereotyped, trivialised. We are bored of art about sex. Thirty years on, sex based performance art has become mundane, the norm. It is everywhere. The students we teach are obsessed by blood now interested in art about love. Love are and guts. We make love is the new sex. Love is a political weapon. We are not interested in bombs: weapons of mass seduction. We engaging in any sort of way with George Bush. George Bush is an … ‘asshole’ is too much of a compliment. George Bush is can quote us on that! a haemorrhoid. You This may be the end for Exposed: experiments in love, sex, death and art which has been touring for two years as seen in the UK, part of The Love Art Laboratory (recently of the International Chelsea Theatre September 2007, as part Festival); we feel ready to move onto something Workshop we were dealing else. The work was created at a time when survival, and we perhaps need to with with breast cancer, look welcomed the opportunity to leave that time behind. We death in the face, to deal with it, to make fun of it. But then it was for real, and now we feel it is more and more like ‘acting’ are not actors; we know the memory rather than living it. We shit about theatre and acting! The first seven years of our project are based on the themes of our project are based on the themes The first seven years was . This seven-year structure and colours of the chakras get We of Living Art. 14 Years inspired by Linda M. Montano’s each wedding takes a colour that and married every year, sites of the body). corresponds to a chakra (the seven sacred have had a red wedding in 2005 (security and survival), We creativity) and a an orange wedding in 2006 (sexuality and In 2008 we yellow wedding in 2007 (courage and power). taking part in a will hold a green wedding, with many people colour of the Green is the mass ‘domestic partner’ ceremony. The green heart chakra, representing love and compassion. event in Santa wedding will take place as part of a major artists who are Cruz which will bring together many different and social practice. rethinking the relationship between art , together as artists since our first date been working We’ve work for each other’s had known We which was in July 2001. but our first kiss on our first years and had met previously, then had sex for collaboration. We date was our first artistic are two of our collaboration. We three days, a continuation Art Laboratory is the name for our artists in love. The Love work. It is a lab: a bunch of experiments. current collaborative & Sprinkle Annie Stephens Elizabeth words in their own e tr This genre-defying work – the creation of a series of living This genre-defying work – the creation with a set artworks as Nadj and Barceló engage energetically in Festival d’Avignon made of red clay – was first seen at the 2006, when Nadj was the ‘artiste associé’. at fits that It is hard to think of anything th an Paso Doble term visual theatre better th even to find the There, it was created/performed (it is hard work) in an old right verb for the process of enacting this call an easily chapel, the Celestine. It is not what you’d clay are needed tourable piece of work – 1,000 kilos of French it where about picky pretty are artists the –and outing each for the only other places it has been to are gets presented: so far, Bouffes du Nord) and here at St Ann’s. Paris (at Peter Brook’s The next place that this show will be going to in this rather exclusive and limited ‘tour’ will be London. It will be a highlight of the London International Mime Festival 2008, presented in collaboration with BITE – taking over the pristine environment of the Barbican Theatre for a week in January. and a gaggle of eager So here we are, local New Yorkers British press representatives, gathered up on this lovely September evening, keen to see this extraordinary work for ourselves. As we enter the space, we see, on the low stage, what appears to be a free-standing slab of white-coated clay, at right angles to a red slab carpeting the ground. The lights almost dim, but there is no sound or movement. Then slowly, imperceptibly at first, the back wall starts to bubble. Low-key swampy sounds become more urgent, the movements of the what by accompanied clay of wall cracking and blistering now men in dark suits appear, sounds like slurping quicksand. Two They fetch tools and one tall and lean, one short and stocky. start work. The stocky one (Barceló) works industriously, creating a field of little mountain peaks. The lean one (Nadj) is more anarchic, stomping around, gouging out lumps of clay which he forms into balls and throws at the back wall. thea y orar ontemp ing c p lo e - deve tr thea al tot 20 “Art comes and goes – it is fine to make & then to destroy” Miquel Barceló Tonight’s offering is Paso Doble, the acclaimed collaboration Tonight’s choreographer Josef Nadj and between French-Yugoslavian Catalan artist Miquel Barceló. One of these buildings is St Ann’s Warehouse, an arts centre Warehouse, One of these buildings is St Ann’s which moved here in 2001. In its earlier incarnation it had been predominantly a music venue, but artistic director Susan Feldman took the opportunity that the new space offered to create a unique cross-artform venue. Acclaimed past productions have included Lou Reed and John Cale’s Songs for Drella, the Mabou Mines Dollhouse and numerous premiere Group. (New York’s works by The Wooster finding their own premises experimental theatre company, a little restrictive for larger Street Wooster on Manhattan’s to create and preview scale work, use the space at St Ann’s has also gained a reputation for its new work.) St Ann’s presentation of prestigious and innovative European work. This area (known, rather bizarrely, as DUMBO – an acronym as DUMBO This area (known, rather bizarrely, Overpass’) was for ‘Down Under the Manhattan/Brooklyn artists when Manhattan became requisitioned by New York too expensive; the abandoned warehouses transformed into living spaces and artists’ studios – although judging by the number of chic restaurants down neighbouring streets I’d say not for much longer. It’s Saturday night and the sun is setting over the waterfront. Saturday night and the sun is setting over the waterfront. It’s State Park with a I walk back through the Empire-Fulton Ferry blue-steel buildings last glance over to the Manhattan skyline, on either side by the gently lit by the fading red sun, framed walk along cobbled Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges; now Street. to Water streets, past graffitied warehouse fronts From a bar beneath A couple are kissing under a streetlamp. of Night Fever. the Brooklyn Bridge comes the chorus Sometimes life is just like the movies… ? clay two men doing with all that are these What heads to New York to find out Dorothy Max Prior

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 features brooklyn bull | dorothy max prior 21 e.org.uk tr hea alt For most visual artists, the idea that For most visual artists, that remains there will be an artefact the process is still as the end result of current (witness the furore around leaky tanks). Some Damien Hirst’s of the audience seem almost upset by the idea that the work is of the moment, then gone. But to Barceló, this is not something he is bothered fine to by: ‘art comes and goes’ – it’s to erase the make and then destroy, work. Although they photograph each final outcome, they – like land night’s artist Andy Goldsworthy – see these What photographs as something other. happens on stage is the art; a shared space for the artists and the audience. Like the narrator of that Bradbury story who moves on from frantically trying to preserve the sand art from the incoming tide to realising he was honoured to have been the witness to that learn to good is it unique, something everything changes and the temporary is to be relished; what happens is for whoever is there. The images that remain after the show eye – in photographs or in the mind’s – are an evocation, a memory trace; you have to be there. If you but really, have the opportunity to see the piece at the coming London International Mime Festival, seize the moment. The term visual theatre is used to describe all sorts of work, but it is hard to think of anything that fits that term better than Paso Doble – visual art and time-based fleeting a on; head meeting performance moment in time not to be missed. tot th when covered “How do I breath when covered Nadj in clay? I don’t!” Josef The US premiere of Paso Doble, a production of the Festival d’Avignon by Josef by Josef USThe premiere of Paso Doble, a production of the Festival d’Avignon Nadj and Miquel Barceló, Institut Ramon was presented by The Llull in association For and the Cultural Services Embassy. with St Ann’s Warehouse of the French further on the venue or this presentation, see www.stannswarehouse.org UKThe premiere of Paso Doble will be a joint production of the London International Mime Festival and Barbican Event (BITE) International Theatre 2008. It will be presented at the Barbican 16–18 Theatre January 2008. See www.mimefest.co.uk paso doblepaso christophe photos delage raynaud The ‘Q and A’ session is an odd one: session is an odd one: The ‘Q and A’ but somewhat the artists, now washed on one side of the slightly dazed, stand a semi- and the audience make bar, an informed circle in front of them. It’s audience, and one that seems to divide up into people with a ‘visual arts’ sensibility and those with a ‘theatre/ learn performance’ awareness. We that the process started after Josef work. There Nadj had seen Barceló’s came the ideato work with walls of the idea using bodies. Initially, clay, was workshopped with lots of dancers, but Nadj found this ‘ugly – like Las He convinced Barceló that it Vegas’. should be the two of them ‘performing’, Barceló confesses that until that point any involvement in ‘theatre’ had not occurred to him, although he feels that ‘painting can be very theatrical too!’ learn that every night is different, We but essentially the piece is tightly it odd that choreographed (and isn’t people think that work of this sort isn’t carefully orchestrated; that it somehow just happens?) with variations mostly in the ‘masks’ section: ‘because we what we are doing!’ The see can’t soundscape is created live by Alain Mahé, mixing recordings from previous performances with sound generated in the moment. The title of the piece? A reference to the dance based on the moves in a Spanish bullfight. Someone asks Nadj: How do you breath when you are covered in clay? And he answers most interesting part The ‘I don’t!’. of the discussion circles around the ephemeral nature of the piece. Those of us who work in the performing arts are used to the idea that something exists temporarily. After the bows and applause, the audience takes a while to leave, hovering around the stage and poking The artists look bizarre close at the clay. up, the suits wrecked, hair a tangled mess, every bit of visible skin dyed red. Barceló is happy to chat to people, but Nadj looks wiped out. Only the promise of a post-show discussion persuades the excited audience to leave them alone and move out of the auditorium. Next, each artist in turn fetches a ready-made clay pot (unfired clay, I hasted to add) and places it over his head, squashing the clay into a grotesque mask. More and more pots are brought on, each larger than the last. The dynamic between the two we have a hunter shifts: suddenly, and a hunted, a matador and a bull. Nadj is now looking like the Minotaur in the centre of the labyrinth, his head ridiculously large; monstrous but vulnerable. Barceló corners Nadj, placing ever bigger mounds of clay over him until he is absorbed into the back wall, overpainted white, a living statue, a body stone-frozen in lava… A kind of contest is set up, with each A kind of contest is his own a path, man seemingly following at the back wall, each urgently clawing forming shapes and patterns. Images arise, associations abound. Grotesque face, lone eye, sunburst, skeleton, tree.... Cave paintings, mythological beasts, sacrifice, archaeological digs.... just Like watching clouds scurrying by, as you determine an image it changes. At one point Barceló brings on a hose full of the white clay slurry and covers up the red, only for the two to start in again, clawing away the white to reveal There are moments of the red below. stillness, when just for a few seconds the clay remains as a ‘finished’ 3D sand picture; then, like Picasso’s paintings in the Ray Bradbury short the image gets washed away, story, It existed, we witnessed it, and now gone. it’s 02 e together,’ writes y art can bring cultures 01 | sasi nair 02 | milòn méla domingues03 | augusto omolú. flavia photo d’avila tr 01 ‘Onl notes on his Kottakal Sasidharan Nair in his biographical Kuchipudi dancer, life as a Khatakali, BharataNatyam and years. teacher and choreographer for over 40 time, he had never When he arrived in London for the first had been speak a word of English. Sasi left India and couldn’t by his school of chosen to perform with a western group his parents had Kathakali dancing in Kottakal (Kerala), where youngest their feed to poor too eight, of age the at him brought to Gandhi, to raise and last child after donating everything ran away from the funds for the freedom struggle. ‘Many boys like the rigorous and disciplined work of school as they didn’t studying postures and mudras from early morning to late at night.’ But he stayed, got to like it and became very good. why he was in London, where he experienced his first That’s cultural shock in the form of a bizarre meeting. Searching for a post office, he was walking down the street, wearing a white shirt over his wrap-around lunge, and his first pair of shoes (shiny black leather shoes with ribbon-like laces, bought just before embarking for Europe) when suddenly a woman started to shout at him, and when he tried to run away, began to follow him. Like in a Satyajit Ray film, the bewildered awkward in his stiff new leather shoes, young Indian dancer, who finally reaches is chased by the perseverant English lady, him and pushes him down, then pulls off both his shoes, picks up one and puts it back on his foot. ‘But not on the one it had been on; and so she did with the second shoe, then she how I pointed at her own shoes and showed me, a dancer, should walk… She took my hand and we went to the post office, after which she brought me back to my new lodgings… All I could do to thank her was to bow in Indian fashion, with grateful tears in my eyes.’ my hands joined together, thea y orar ontemp ing c p lo e - deve tr thea astrominico on a Bianca M al tot divides cultural crosses that project development professional 22 For his part, Augusto Omolú, under the direction of Eugenio Barba, has already accomplished a successful ‘intercultural exchange’ with British theatrical heritage through his Othello, performance Ôro de Otelo, a version of Shakespeare’s based on the movements and steps of the traditional Orixá dances, from which he presented an extract at the end of his ‘This work,’ says Augusto, ‘originated in my work residency. As sessions with Sanjukta Panigrahi, the late Odissi dancer. language, we began to improvise speak each other’s we didn’t using non-verbal communication, letting our feelings and bodies speak; until we found a dialogue through dance, where Sanjukta was dancing according to her Indian music and gods, while I found a correspondence with my Orixás’. Almost a revolutionary slogan in the working space of the still at the heart of a vibrant western city Factory, Tobacco coming to terms with its obscure past as a major British port for the African slave trade, especially with the Heathrow incident in mind –a confined episode, but one which reflects celebrating diversity yet the present state of UK society, in growing danger of becoming pre-emptive and control- freakish, wary of strangers and strangeness. Augusto came to the UK, invited by Organic Theatre, for a Augusto came to the UK, invited by Organic May 2007 as part of five-day workshop in Bristol from 7–12 and Performance Residencies our International Training is freedom,’ he said programme. ‘The key to achieve things freedom you at some point in the workshop, ‘and to achieve need respect, will and love.’ and choreographer When Brazilian dancer May from Denmark Augusto Omolú arrived in London last accompanied by his (where he works with Odin Teatret), Ginzburg, he didn’t wife, the Italian writer and journalist Lisa almost an hour at think that they would have had to spend police. Heathrow airport being questioned by British he was speak English, but she did, explaining that He didn’t a workshop. The an artist who had come to Britain to lead for physical proof, police seemed not to believe him and asked and fired have, so they searched his luggage which he didn’t lead a workshop in off remarks such as: how could Augusto exactly did know the language? So why the UK if he doesn’t born and raised within this highly skilled classical dancer, attract the a family tradition of the Brazilian Candomblé, of his black skin? attention of the Heathrow police? Because hope not! Let’s

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 features come together - connecting worlds apart | bianca mastrominico 23 e.org.uk tr hea alt tot 03 The group of sixteen artists will make their first ever visit The group of sixteen artists will make their third and major to the UK in May 2008, in what will be the with The British residency of the project, in collaboration and the School of Grotowski Project at University of Kent, Plymouth. They will Art and Performance at the University of parades in Bristol. present workshops, performances and TRAINING AND PERFORMANCE INTERNATIONAL RESIDENCIES focuses on the body in performance, through performance the crossover between traditional non-western theatre. practices and contemporary western physical artists who live They provide an opportunity to learn from in their body and whose bodies are the living presence of disappearing traditions; masters who have chosen to transmit their practice while embracing a personal journey of creative challenges, confronting their roots and their identities with other cultures different from theirs, in an endless process of learning, researching and valuing the essence of their art. The link between the practices of Augusto Omolú, Sasi Nair and Milòn Méla lies in the importance given to the artistic path as a means for spiritual growth; the belief that art can be a life-changing experience; the cultural values of practical knowledge and technique; the need of rituals to connect with our inner sense of self and creativity. For Organic Theatre it means that as theatre-makers we should constantly try to sustain a unified artistic vision capable of bringing people together to enjoy and celebrate themselves. Above all, creating the conditions for things to happen – connecting worlds apart. y to achieve Bianca Mastrominico is a performer, writer and co-director of Organic Theatre www.organictheatre.co.uk www.organictheatre.co.uk writer and co-director of Organic Theatre Bianca Mastrominico is a performer, Asian Arts Agency Factory, and Performance Tobacco Residencies are organised in collaboration with Training International The book or to find out further Bristol, supported and Theatre by Bristol City Council and funded by Arts Council England. To information please contact Bianca on [email protected] The centre hosts Milòn Méla, literally translated as ‘the coming together fair’, which involves traditional artists from various Indian performance disciplines and of differing cultures and religions – Hindu Bauls and Muslim Fakir musicians, Chau and Gotipua dancers, Kalaripayattu martial artists, Patua storytellers and painters – invited from artistic communities in the rural and tribal zones of India; ‘cultural reserves’ whose life is in constant peril. Since its launch in original encourage to conditions created has Méla Milòn 1986, and creative work from the participating artists, as well as providing them with material resources for their daily life, and that of their families and communities. settles the mind through self-observation and alertness, settles the mind through self-observation increase awareness of being in an environment, is one of the most important basic rules given at Theatre House - Khele of Red Earth), in Bengal. This international Danga (Village work-centre, created by Indian director Abani Biswas just a few miles from Shantiniketan, north of Calcutta, is a project and a place inspired by his work with Jerzy Grotowski in the multicultural Theatre of Sources project, in which Abani participated from 1979 to 1983. of silence as a wa The observation Sasi Nair will lead a residency in Bristol from Sasi Nair will lead a residency in Bristol 12–16 November 2007. ‘They worked hard to imagine the Gajagamana (the movement ‘They worked hard to imagine the Gajagamana movement of the of the elephant), the Sansagamana (the is able to achieve swan); the western mind, once decided, childhood to learning anything,’ he says, but being used since the mind and by watching in silence, he found that ‘…indeed, the conversation together was very difficult…’ We met Sasi in the UK two years ago. At one of his years ago. At one Sasi in the UK two met We for university students, I demonstrations of Kathakali had watched the whole performance noticed that two people right back of the chairs in the front row, with their feet on the if he had found it a disturbance; he in his face. I asked him feet, but that in his tradition you never said he had seen the the first time This wasn’t behaviour. question the audience’s approach by students of the western he faced a similar casual taught has he London, to visit first his following where, – world In Los Angeles, at the Pomona and performed extensively. during the initial days of University, College of Claremont ‘some students lay training for a production he was directing, some smoked… To down, some dozed, some chewed gum, order in behaviour me, accustomed to strict discipline and disconcerting...’ But for years of learning, this was strangely were taken by the through the work, the Californian students him about how fascination of Kathakali, endlessly questioning music, dance and it had evolved out of a combination of song, as well as about the acting by body language and gestures, styles of acting out emotions. . Marceau has Nola Rae tribute to pays friend & mentor, Marcel Marceau e tr thea y orar ontemp ‘I was touched by the soul of chaplin’ ing c Marceau once told me that it took him ten years to silence his audiences. He started Marceau once told me that it took him ten the public was unused to silence. playing in Paris in small cafe theatres where From these small beginnings their unease, they would whistle tunelessly. hide To in some 100 countries, made possible by Marceau went on to conquer large stages had not spoken a word, because he He made you forget that he his great artistry. always had so much to say. a character he was discussing. Marceau had a disconcerting way of becoming for a moment Harpo was in front of He once described Harpo Marx to us and that involved speaking Grammelot (the us – we all gasped. He had party pieces Commedia del Arte). He could ‘speak’ gobbledygook language developed by the Swedish and he had a character to go even difficult languages like Danish and a Parisian taxi driver with each ‘language’. His ‘Frenchman’ was this influenced countless performers and he has had many imitators. I asked him if worried him and he said simply: ‘What can I do about it?’ I will always remember him as a very human man, poetic, driven, with an electrifying energy and a wicked He had a strong sense of integrity and was a generous and sense of humour. courageous performer and an artist without peer. man of the theatre and he will always live in the memories have lost a unique We of those who were lucky enough to have seen his elegant and beautiful Pantomimes du Style and his endearing clown Bip, the signature with which he signed his letters. p lo e - deve tr thea al tot ‘Mime is not an imitator but a creator’ 24 I later met Marceau in Malmo in Sweden where I was working as a I asked him if I could join his dancer. school. He simply said ‘yes’. In Paris, I found Marceau was a man of many words. In fact he was quite a linguist and would often start a sentence in French, switch to English and finish in German. He had a way with words and his turn of phrase was poetic and profound. As a teacher he was very patient and always encouraging. He would find something good to say, even about our most abysmal improvisations, and then he would work his magic by showing us how we could We could have done it better. only stand back in awe. His students adored him, as did his audiences. My father took me to see Marceau perform in London at the Apollo Theatre when I was 16. The memory of the audience in the balcony that night, leaning forward with rapt, almost breathless, concentration, focusing on the ageless and timeless man in white on the large dark stage, so many years endures even now, I left the theatre not Wonderful! later. wanting to break the magic by speaking. Marceau had made words redundant. My father and I walked to the Tube think without saying a word and I don’t we said anything until we got home.

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 features mime is dead - long live mime! | nola rae 25 eau. ceau. eau ceau eanine cel mar cel mar cier cier eau as bip. ceau e.org.uk eau unmasked!ceau j cel mar tr 01 | mar kevinphoto fitzsimons 02 | compagnie mar limfin the at 1995. overcoat mer sylvia photo 03 | mar mer sylvia photo thompson with mar hea alt Obituary by Dorothy Max Prior. Obituary by Dorothy Max Prior. information and help: Additional Joseph Seelig & Helen Lannaghan, International directors London Mime Festival. The French Government conferred its highest honour on Marceau, making him In an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur. November 1998, President Chirac named Marceau a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit; and he was an elected member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France. America has always honoured and respected Marceau and the art of mime: he holds honorary doctorates from Linfield College, Ohio State University, Princeton University and the University of City declared Michigan. In 1999 New York March 18 to be Marcel Marceau Day. Marceau passed away on 22 September 2007. He died of a heart attack in his home, age 84. ‘To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man’ ‘i have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment’ ‘What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude’ tot t’s good to shut to ‘It’s good up sometimes’ From the 1950s until his last appearances in 2006, Marceau performed all over the world: North and South America, Africa, Australia, China, Japan, South East Asia, Russia, and Europe. A notable UK appearance was at the London International Mime Festival in 1995. Although he had performed as a solo artist on many previous occasions, this was the first time that he had appeared in this country with an ensemble. The production was a new version of Gogol’s The Overcoat, a piece first staged in 1951 by the Compagnie de Mime Marcel Marceau. He also gave a fascinating and memorable lecture - the first time that opportunity the had had audiences British to hear Marceau speak in public. Over the years, he made many TV and film appearances; films include First Class, in which he played 17 roles; Shanks, in which he played a deaf and mute puppeteer; as Professor Ping in Barbarella; and in a cameo as himself in Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie, in which, he is the only with intended irony, actor with a speaking part, uttering a single word – ‘Non!’ In 1978, Marceau established his own school in Paris: École Internationale de Mimodrame de Paris, Marcel Marceau. In 1996, he established the Marceau Foundation to promote mime in the United States. ‘The people who came back from the Nazi concentration camps couldn’t talk about it; they didn’t know how to express it… Maybe that has counted subconsciously in my choice of silence’ In 1947, Marceau created the character that would remain his best known and loved for the rest of his life: Bip the clown, a white-faced naïf in a striped top and a black silk opera hat sprouting This was a departure from a red flower. the austere classicism of Decroux’s corporeal mime technique, which eschewed costume and music: in effect, a return to the romance of the 19th century Pierrot tradition established by Deburau – although it can be argued that technique the discipline of Decroux’s gave Marceau the physical dexterity that informed his work. His silent exercises, much parodied in later years as world fame came to him, include The Cage (in which he struggles out of one invisible enclosure only to find Against the himself in another), Walking Wind (the acknowledged inspiration Moonwalk, in for Michael Jackson’s turn the influence on liquid dance and and his bodypopping), The Mask Maker, exploration of the ages of man: Youth, Old Age and Death. Maturity, After the war, he enrolled as a student in he enrolled as a student After the war, School of Dramatic Art Charles Dullin’s in the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris, where he studied with Dullin and the great master of corporeal mime, Étienne Decroux, who had also taught Jean- Louis Barrault. Marceau joined Barrault’s company and was cast as Baptiste (the role Barrault had interpreted in the legendary film Les Enfants du Paradis). performance won him acclaim Marceau’s and encouraged him to present his first one-man silent play or ‘mimodrama’, as he chose to call them. He was born Marcel Mangel, on March Marcel Mangel, on He was born the son in France, 22 1923, in Strasbourg Mangel, and Charles of Anne Werzberg When war broke a kosher butcher. by the out, and France was occupied fled to South Nazis, the teenage Marcel France, changing his name from West escape detection Mangel to Marceau to a great fan of by the Gestapo. He was first inklings of Charlie Chaplin, and the as, hidden his immense talent emerged safe houses, he with other children in his impersonations entertained them with he joined the and silent sketches. Later, Resistance, helping Jewish children to escape France to the safety of neutral Switzerland. His war efforts sadly who could not help his own father, was arrested, deported and eventually murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. arceau, master of Marcel M has died. art du silence’, ‘L’ 03 06 e tr The renegotiations group are a formidable collection of artists with a vast amount of skill and knowledge between them. All of them are or have been mentors. In Greek Mentor was a friend of Odysseus, the Greek mythology, epic poem, king of Ithaca and the main hero in Homer’s he War When Odysseus left for the Trojan the Odyssey. and of his placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus, palace. This is the source of the modern use of the word mentor: a trusted friend, counselor and guide. ‘Within the group there is such knowledge, that you learn so much by talking with, or even watching a show with any of its has helped me members. A conversation with Tyrone understand the mechanics of human movement from a new perspective simply because he was trained as an engineer.’ thea y orar ontemp 05 02 ing c p lo e - deve tr thea al tot 26 01 04 Renegotiations is a peer mentoring project for six established practitioners: Siobhan Davies, Rose English, Tyrone Huggins, Huggins, for six established practitioners: Siobhan Davies, Rose English, Tyrone Renegotiations is a peer mentoring project in Summer 2007, the project will evolve over the next year and while this Started Ian Spink and Lois Weaver. Dick McCaw, project is developing, we will follow its progress through talking to the participants. Dick is living proof. He left the International Workshop Festival Dick is living proof. He left the International Workshop after nine years as director and was in his mid-forties when He he decided to retrain as a Feldenkrais practitioner. underplays the bravery of this decision and is enthusiastic about this new stage of his life. ‘I can do things now that know before, it is simply wonderful.’ And yet even I didn’t he is conscious of the fact that this move in his own life is at odds with traditional ideas about hierarchy and power. ‘I am interested in horizontal rather than vertical relations. All is in movement and in constant renegotiation. But power structures are based in stasis rather than in movement. I want to know about the state that is emerging, rather than the “state” as a fixed notion.’ I meet Dick McCaw in his garden. It is late summer and he offers me tea and an apple – a fabulously crisp, sweet and sharp apple. It seems deliciously apt. Dick helped develop the renegotiations project with former Total Felicity Hall. He named the project and Theatre director, speaks passionately about the motivation behind it. ‘It was conceived as a vehicle for development; one can become stale without development. Health and creativity are both vital for practitioners; we must have an ability to bounce an essential give. There is also an ethic back, a plasticity, sit back behind renegotiation. I am in my fifties but I can’t with imaginary pipe and slippers and stop changing.’ project ’s latest Theatre Bailey introduces Total Pippa

TOTAL THEATRE magazine | vol 19 | issue 04 | WINTER 2007 features renegociations | pippa bailey . 27 e.org.uk tr hea alt tot He teaches movement and theatre at Royal Holloway College, He teaches movement and theatre at Royal was published University London. His book, An Eye For Movement by by Brechin books in 2006, and he has been commissioned In Routledge to edit and introduce a Companion to Rudolf Laban. Phelim McDermott 2005 he edited DVD ROM documentations on Lamb and Geraldine with ones on Warren and Clive Barker, Stephenson in 2006. She Siobhan Davies (CBE) is a distinguished choreographer. Theatre, Second has worked with London Contemporary Dance the Royal Ballet and English Stride, Rambert Dance Company, Siobhan Davies National Opera. In 1988 she established the Studios were Dance Company and this year the Siobhan Davies completed. performing her own Rose English has been writing, directing and venues as varied unique performances for over thirty years in Court Theatre, Queen Royal Britain, Serpentine Gallery, as Tate and Sydney and Adelaide Elizabeth Hall, Lincoln Centre New York early site-specific Festivals. Her performances have ranged from spectaculars. collaborations, to acclaimed solos, to large-scale In 1982, Ian Spink is a renowned choreographer and director. he co-founded Second Stride with Siobhan Davies and later became sole artistic director until 1996. Since then Ian has continued his freelance work, including choreography for Rambert Dance Company and directing with the Citizens Theatre of Citymoves Dance He is currently Artistic Director in Glasgow. Agency in Aberdeen. Huggins is a writer for theatre, dance and radio, including Tyrone Choo Choo Ch’ Boogie, The Carver Chair and Emigrating Home; as well as Garrett Augustus Morgan for the Science Museum, London. In 1987 he founded Theatre of Darkness, currently producing his Inheritance Quartet of Caribbean diaspora. He has also written essays on culture, theatre, race and memory WOW was co-founder of Spiderwoman Theatre, the Lois Weaver and Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop Theatre in New York and director, Theatre in London. She has been a performer, writer with the Split Britches Company since 1980. Her interests include live art, solo performance, feminist and lesbian theatre, performance and human rights, and performance and technology. Artists The Renegotiations (in Company the Actors Touring was a co-founder of Dick McCaw produced 1981) for whom he Medieval Players (in 1979) and The In 1993 he was appointed Artistic until they closed in 1992. Festival (IWF) and in Workshop Director of the International seven themed festivals under the general 1995 began a series of each of which addressed one title of A Body of Knowledge, Movement, Voice, performance: Energy, fundamental theme of and Space. In September 2001 he Dialogue, Rhythm, Character Thesis on the Russian thinker Mikhail left IWF to write up a PhD his influence on Eastern European Bakhtin (1895 - 1975) and a Doctorate in December 2003 and in Theatre. He was awarded training to be a Feldenkrais practitioner that year he also began uggins ck mccaw 01 | siobhan gautier davies. photo deblonde 02 | di 03 | rose english. hugo photo glendinnig 04 | ian spink 05 | lois weaver 06 | tyrone H Finally, inspired in that beautiful garden with apples and tea Finally, in the August sunshine, Dick summed up why the opportunity to renegotiate is so valuable to him, ‘I have tramped through the desert of no money and no recognition. This project is an oasis, a beautiful pool in which to look at your reflection. All in which we we can do is offer time and space to each other, can all reflect on where we want to go and where we have been. None of us know each other very well and we are on a journey together’. I wonder why there seems to be such anxiety about cultural leadership. Dick responds, ‘Of course people are looking find your way by walking You a way. There isn’t for the way. it, listening to the process, finding where things creak, how a continual relay between experience, It’s they run and flow. modelling, testing and then off you go again. But I could never do you as well as you do you. There is a fabulous non exchangeability about human beings.’ ‘The conventional image of a leader is of someone out ‘The conventional image of a leader is of the side or from in front. I have always liked to lead from of some distance behind. There is an inappropriateness back. If you want leading someone by showing them your danger is to lead to lead from the front then the beauty and backward by holding out your hand, and then advancing on your partner into the uncertain future, but your eyes with an occasional glance to the path.’ At the first meeting of the Renegotiations artists, some At the first meeting of the Renegotiations this new time was spent trying to determine how exploration model of shared learning might work. This still unknown. is at the very beginning and so much is of the process. Discovering how will be an ongoing part Renegotiations is funded through the Cultural Leadership the Cultural Leadership is funded through Renegotiations in funded investment a two-year Treasury Programme, across the creative and cultural excellence in leadership By supporting an ambitious range of industries in the UK. the programme aims to nurture activities and opportunities, dynamic and diverse leaders for and develop world class, is one of the buzzwords flying ‘Leadership’ the 21st century. is significantly but this project sector, through the cultural idea of peer mentoring, artists leading different because the other as equals, challenges the and learning from each between mentor and protégé. Dick traditional relationship done anything by myself. When I muses, ‘I have never Heap, we agreed started the Mediaeval Players with Carl he led me, it was that sometimes I led him and sometimes and so I like a relay between us. I have started things but always with was that force that made things happen I want to I am less keen to be a leader, other people. Now, when mentoring support people who want to lead. My job moments, to is to allow people to live through difficult are very creative.’ encourage them, because fear and doubt Reviews from Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007

Sadari Movement Laboratory 1927 Between the Devil and News From Nowhere Woyzeck the Deep Blue Sea England Aurora Nova St Stephen’s Underbelly Traverse at Fruitmarket Gallery TOT

A L Winner: Total Theatre Award Winner: Total Theatre Award Winner: Total Theatre Award T HEA for Best Physical Performance for Best Emerging Company for Best Small Scale Work TR

magaz E A large ensemble of performers – and The lights catch the eye of the bowler- We are in an art gallery. Look, it’s chairs! – bring us an exciting physical hatted pianist (Miss Lillian Henley), beautiful. Two guides, one male, one interpretation of Georg Büchner’s poised adroitly at her instrument, female, welcome us into the space in famously unfinished 19th century surveying the audience with a pursed – this clean, pure, bright, light space e | e

19 | 19 vol tragedy, Woyzeck. It’s all here: the smile. A key is struck and the show – and into other imagined spaces: madness, the murder, the seductions, begins. Using mime, live music, and a white-walled duplex; Southwark the medical humiliations, the eating of a mix of film and live 2D animation, Cathedral; a doctor’s surgery; Guy’s iss peas… all set to the tango music of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Hospital; a private treatment centre

E WINT | 04 ue Astor Piazzolla. Sea is a cornucopia of lush visuals that in the English countryside; a hotel in There is wonderful ensemble work, evoke the year of company’s title, 1927. an unnamed Arab country, where the with precise choreography that is Brilliantly crafted vignettes fly off the female recipient of a new heart meets strongly rooted in European mime and stage and into our subconscious – and the ‘donor’s’ widow… everything, we learn, can be bought and sold, and if it R 2007R movement theatre tradition (although it is funny as hell too. Although the the company is Korean): sometimes, piece owes much to sketch comedy in can’t be bought it can be taken. It helps in its use of repeated gesture and its construction, it also borrows heavily to have a rich boyfriend. tongue-in-cheek humour, reminiscent from the dark imagery of Surrealists This is a story of art and culture and of Pina Bausch, and at other times, in Georges Bataille and Man Ray. Each cultural appropriation and ‘otherness’, its acrobatic encounters with the chairs new tale slithers from the stage with played out through a story of and the use of them as frames for the equal measures of hilarity and vicious international art dealing and health human body, reminiscent of Josef Nadj glee. tourism. It is a play in two acts. The (who also created a physical theatre There’s careful attention to detail and first act, Dabbing, has a fluid structure: interpretation of Woyzeck a decade a sinister strangeness as we are taken free movement through the space for or so ago – it is a popular choice). The to a macabre land of creepy twins, the two actors and the audience; an engagement with the physical space dismembered athletes and ghost cats ambient soundtrack that pulses then and wonderful lighting design are and dogs. swells and drops; spoken text that has what we would expect of a director We are led by the hand into this strange the rhythm and flow of poetry. Act 2, who has trained in Lecoq’s renowned world by Miss Suzanne Andrade and Wringing, shifts gear dramatically to scenographic method at the Laboratoire Miss Esme Appleton; both performers a terrifyingly intense confrontation d’Etude du Movement (LEM). But mostly of this Breton-esque sideshow straight between the two performers (who it is its own good self. The piece could out of a Christian Schad painting. switch back and forth between heart possibly be subtitled ‘1,001 things to do Almost stealing the show are the films patient and interpreter) and the now- with a chair’ – if you think that you’ve and animations created by the fourth seated audience, who – collectively – seen everything in physical theatre that member of the company, Master Paul are the wife of the deceased who ‘gave’ involves a combination of human body Bill Barritt. his heart (or had it stolen). You could and chair, think again… in Woyzeck, hear a pin drop, such is the silence and 1927 are a force to be reckoned with, the chairs are worked relentlessly: they stillness of the audience. winning a Total Theatre Award amongst divide the space, become buildings a host of other accolades (Fringe First, England is a perfectly realised or cages or beds, or percussion Herald Angel and the Carol Tambor, amalgam of text, site and intense instruments, or dance partners – which will send them to New York in physical performance (from writer Tim particularly lovely is a military cha 2008). A brilliant show from a company Crouch and Hannah Ringham of Shunt cha. The only quibble is with the use of to watch out for. collective), taking contemporary theatre surtitled quotes from the play, which Glyn Roberts into new territories that dissolve the seem unnecessary – the minimal worthless divide between new writing amount of spoken text (in Korean and and physical/devised theatre – a worthy English) seems enough without the recipient of a Total Theatre Award. added reinforcement of these scene- Dorothy Max Prior setters. Dorothy Max Prior

28 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre Reviews from Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007 W S REVIE

Ontroerend Goed Rude Mechs Precarious The Smile Off Your Face Get Your War On Druthers C Soco Aurora Nova St Stephen’s Zoo Southside

Winner: Total Theatre Award Winner: Total Theatre Award for Winner: Total Theatre Wildcard for Experimentation Best Original Work by a Collective (Audience Vote)

The Smile Off Your Face is a theatrical Get your game on, get your guns Precarious’ second production has an and multi-sensory exploration of on, get your fear on, get your rage ambitious brief – to explore through intimacy. Combining original staging on, GET YOUR WAR ON! Yes! Operation: performance the existential state of with audacious performance Enduring Our Freedom to Bomb the anxiety, to tell a story using archetype techniques, the production questions Living Fuck Out of You is in the house!!! and emotion as characters, and to give the very art of theatre and forces its In the Rude Mechs energetic and words to their world by reappropriating audience to question not only their own unashamedly agit-prop production, some of the more celebrated speeches happiness but also who has the right a comic about a war becomes a play of Beckett and Shakespeare. to challenge it. Audience members about a comic. The comic which gives Yet they temper this pretension experience the production individually, its name to the show is the Internet with some real performance élan. blindfolded and bound by the wrists in cult hit by David Rees. Like the comic, Digital sequences – a window a dungeon-type setting and wheeled the show is a round-the-water-cooler opening, balloons being blown up round the set through a series of tale of office life; Joe and Jane Public’s on the backdrop of a door – form a sensual vignettes. The play exploits response to Mr President’s war on playful frame to the unwieldy inner audiences’ vulnerability, giving them terror, from Anthrax to Afghanistan, via metaphorical worlds of the scenes, little option but to face up to their own Saddam’s execution. Appropriating the compensating in their delicacy for the existential realities and re-examine trappings of office life proves to be a heavy-handedness of the concept. the meaning of their relationships with clever way to incorporate the comic’s The dance sequences, particularly the others. The 20-minute journey builds up artwork into the action, mostly through exhilarating chorus work to a trip-hoppy to a clever reveal, where the blindfold is use of overhead projections. The score, are performed with panache; removed… but to say more would give five-strong cast, armed with little more the choreography which combines the game away, and as the show will be than a few sheets of acetate, bombard mask work, contact, acrobatic and returning to the UK soon, no more will us with an awesome armoury of quips contemporary dance is diverse and be said. fired from the hip, and painfully funny expressive, the aerial and mask work When I saw this production in the first faux-introspection laced with lethal well integrated. week, the company was struggling doses of irony. ‘So if you’re not with us, admirably with the inadequacy of a The staging is never short of inventive you’re against us, huh? I like it! So nice half-built venue in a show that captured – a tiny projection dances in a mirror, and simple! When do we start bombing perfectly the spirit and ambitions of bodies duet with their own images Western Europe?’ the Edinburgh Fringe. (Editor’s note: a on projected screens, a rogue white Yes, it is on one level a preach-to-the- situation that improved as the Fringe helium balloon ascends suddenly converted anti-Bush tirade (although progressed, with the show ultimately upstage. If you can get beyond the with added frisson from the fact that the becoming one of the hottest tickets for irritation of being preached at to seize company hail from Austin, Texas). But the festival.) the day reiteratively for an hour then what I like most is that the Rowan and there is vision and ambition here to It is to be hoped that this talented, Marty Laugh-In tone of cheery cynicism celebrate. experimental performance group is shown to be as much of a mask as Beccy Smith from Belgium continue to push the the gung-ho pronouncements of the boundaries of theatre and cross the Bush administration; underneath it all is Channel more often. a desire for something better. A moment Ben Walmsley in which a character suddenly says: ‘I have a feeling we’ll find Osama Bin Laden soon!’, delivered with childish enthusiasm, of course raises a laugh – but the underlying pathos and hope Reviews of shows shortlisted for Total shocks. Dorothy Max Prior Theatre Awards and of many other shows seen at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007 and assessed for the Awards appear on our website: www.totaltheatre.org.uk

totaltheatre.org.uk 29 01 Avignon Festival, France July 2007

Sasha Waltz insideout Theatre du Soleil Les Ephémères Rodrigo Garcia Approche de l’idée de méfiance

02 TOT A L T HEA TR magaz E 03

in To see insideout you take a bus to Delayed by a freak downpour of rain, e | e Avignon’s large and rather bleak Rodrigo Garcia’s performance spanned 19 | 19 vol exhibition centre – a collection of three the hour or so around midnight. A huge large industrial buildings close to the video screen is showing something iss city’s airport. When you enter – all strange, and it takes a few minutes to insideout lasted an hour and twenty E WINT | 04 ue the windows are blacked out – you work out that it is coming from a tiny minutes – by contrast, Les Ephémères are struck by the vastness and the camera attached to the back of a small started at two in the afternoon and emptiness of the place. Right in the water turtle paddling around a glass finished at ten that evening. On the centre of the building, under the apex aquarium on the edge of the open same exhibition site but in a theatre R 2007R of the roof is a collection of stairs, stage. Garcia is Argentinean but is now built especially for this show, two banks tin caravans, blockwood walls and based with his own company in Madrid. of seating face each other. A long stage metal grating– like a human settlement He works with a dense text, which in corridor is flanked on either side by dropped in the middle of nowhere. The this case is projected onto the screen grey curtains, which are pulled aside dancers are changing in full view as for the audience to read, except for to allow circular wooden floors to be the ‘backstage’ is all round the central one passage that is spoken by an actor. pushed on and off. Each of these floors construction. Also on the perimeter He is going to sue Dunkin’ Donuts if he contains a set – in complete detail – for there are telescopes attached to contracts cancer, and to make sure he each scene. It is an ingenious device balloons to play with, and right in the has a case he has been eating them for that allows the audience to see scores distance, on the walls and roof of the 26 years every day, and filming himself of different situations and events. Les building there are biographies and so that he has cast-iron evidence. Ephémères starts from the proposition photographs of the cast. You don’t Garcia collides this commodity that all humans will disappear at some have to entangle yourself in the maze crassness with elemental sensuality point. Once gone, what remains? of encounters and mini-scenarios that and physicality. The performers are This performance is testimony to the are being played out, but to begin with hosed down, play with hens, get power of all those small encounters everyone does, squeezing past each covered with milk, earth and honey. between people that sum up both the other to get a better view of an upstairs A land flowing with milk and honey is beauty and the fragility of humanity. scene, or to peer through a hole in a rich. One covered with mobile phones It is an amazing tour de force. Ariane wall to see a single performer uncurl and McDonald’s most definitely is not. Mnouchkine creates momentous and start to move. insideout is a frenetic drama out of a peasant farmer dying cacophony – live video, atonal music, Barry Edwards suddenly of a heart attack at the start glass cases in which dancers writhe of his regular evening meal of soup and and pose for the spectators. Performers bread. His daughter doesn’t know what with megaphones ask who you are, to do, so continues to eat her soup. An how old you are, what your name is, but elderly couple cower in their flat as an never stop for an answer. insideout is enraged grandson desperate for cash a crazy cabaret, a happening played to to buy drugs is trying to punch their postmodern rules. front door in. In both scenes we don’t know how it ends, we never see those characters again, but they are moving and mesmerising. 01 | sasha waltz. insideout 02 | theatre du soleil. les ephémères 03 | rodrigo garcia. approach de l’idée de méfiance

30 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre W S REVIE Reviews from Camden People’s Theatre, London Sprint Festival June 2007

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03

02 Corpus Soma The Krapp of My Life: Toward a Poor Imitation of Samuel Beckett

Corpus Soma’s re-imagination of Beckett’s short masterpiece of Knavish Speech Bill Aitchison identity, mortality and regret was Bed 24/7/52 satisfying on every level. As an adaptation the production intelligently Time for bed, and Knavish Speech Bill Aitchison begins by explaining that transposed the key ideas, articulate invite us to join them. The invitation we may be needed to help the piece to in its sense of disconnection, regret, is a little awkward (many companies function by passing him props, holding and the (theatrical, existential) no- find this transitional moment difficult, tape-recorders and helping him to fulfil man’s land of introspection. Re-casting unsure of whether they are in character the myriad tasks which make up this Krapp’s tape machine as an interaction or not). But the moment eases over performance – also inviting us to leave with the internet sounds hackneyed, as we enter the main space at CPT and use the bar when we please. The but the company’s rigour in pursuing to discover a dormitory of double first of ten tapes begins and Aitchison the parallel yielded unexpected beds, some occupied, some not. We eagerly proceeds to perform the task pleasures: the increasingly frantic are encouraged to find a comfy spot subscribed to that sound: washing his physical exploration of a huge projected and settle down. What follows is a hair. The sound ceases and another desktop, interacting directly with its ‘play’ on beds and bedtimes, a romp begins. A tape-recorder is thrust into icons and culminating in the performer through every possible association my hand as Aitchison places himself ricocheting around the stage cavern that can be imagined, from nursery in front of me and begins a series of cyberspace as the human cry of to girlish sleepovers to first loves and of movements. Throughout the next Elgar’s cello concerto was distorted and beyond. The ensemble of half-a-dozen hour, the soundscape builds, as do the enlivened through electronic beats, was (male and female) performers use multiple roles which Aitchison performs a sequence of pure theatrical pleasure. a mix of theatrical devices: there’s with focus and energy. We meet a In many ways, this show addressed spoken monologue and short scenes priest recounting the tale of Noah’s Ark, central preconceptions of Beckett’s of dialogue; wordless solos or duets a romantic holding a bunch of flowers, work. Geometrical translations of or trios, using a post-Bausch gestural a man preparing a meal for a date, a action, the pushing of the performed dance mode. The space is used well, weather forecaster, all of whom begin body to its limits, a snapshot of the with attention moved from bed to to overlap with one another and take essential state of contemporary man bed by the clever use of lighting, or on attributes of each other’s objectives. focused through the lens of drama. sometimes by a performer moving into When my tape-recorder begins again, So an intelligent engagement with a bed occupied by someone else – I suddenly feel responsible for adding Beckett’s ideas, but a production perhaps another performer, perhaps an another element to Aitchison’s growing which never lost its sense of audience member (leaving them with task list, as a man takes him up on his playfulness. A witty use of objects, the interesting decision of whether to offer of going to the bar: we are all in some cheeky audience interaction stay or go). In some ways, the piece this together. 24/7/52 is an amusing, and a very pleasing riff on the random felt a little raw: a selection of workshop enjoyable experience which thrives balanced the more provocative self- exercises that had not yet ‘cooked’, and on the element of chance. It is these recognition asked of the audience. although there were some excellent exquisite moments of uncertainty which It is the job of an adaptation to at the performances, the delivery of text was Aitchison needs to own more: we’re least fully meet its original, as well as a little erratic – some of the company with him, and will happily sit in silence to justify its re-presentation. To engage were not native English speakers and if we are allowed to enjoy it as much as with Beckett, to push his ideas further I found myself longing to hear more the rest of the show. into the contemporary, is a deeply of their own languages. But despite impressive feat – and to transpose these reservations, an enjoyable show, Terry O’Donovan them with such wit, thoughtfulness packed with ideas and full of promise. and panache may even have gestured toward surpassing that. Dorothy Max Prior 01 | bill aitchison. 24/7/52 02 | corpus soma. the krapp of my life Beccy Smith 03 | knavish speech. bed

totaltheatre.org.uk 31 X.trax/FEAST Platt Fields Park, Victoria Baths & Manchester City Centre Manchester June 07

Mimbre The Bridge Wired Aerial Theatre Glimpse The Alexandras Priscilla Queen of the Deaf World Avanti Display Stormbringer Artizani Desert Island Discs desert island discs island desert artizani

X.trax is an annual showcase of TOT (mostly) outdoor performance, geared A L

T HEA towards the street arts industry but presented alongside Feast! (produced TR by MIA – Manchester International magaz E Arts – as part of their Enchanted Evenings programme), a celebratory in arts extravaganza for the people of e | e Manchester. In fact, for the most part 19 | 19 vol they are one and the same thing, raising the interesting question of how iss a performance is framed and viewed.

E WINT | 04 ue So whilst most of the people watching the 40 or so shows at the lovely lakeside of Platt Fields Park are there for a public picnic, taking in a bit of ‘free’

R 2007R street theatre along the way, others are strolling around wearing an x.trax delegate’s badge and making notes in their promoter’s special booklet. But One of the highlights of this year’s Avoiding the traditional male/female as ultimately it is the same for everyone: programme was Mimbre’s The base/flyer partnerships, this all-woman the sun is shining and it is a delight Bridge, one of a number of shows troupe are free to explore notions to be entertained in such a pleasant that were presented at key street arts of fighting and resisting, giving and environment. festivals throughout the country as receiving, dependency and liberation, part of the Without Walls initiative (a which might be more loaded with a And mingling with the lakeside crowds, consortium that comprises Streets mixed-sex cast. The company’s clown taking in the walkabout performances of Brighton, x.trax, Greenwich & skills are also used to maximum effect and enjoying the good smells of Dockland, Winchester Hat Fair and as the archetypal roles morph into and samosas and jerk chicken sizzling Stockton International Riverside out of gently humorous character work, on the food stalls, I will say too that festivals). I’ve seen previous work and the soundscape merges spoken some folks talk ‘cultural diversity’ in by this three-woman company, and word, original composed music and pop audiences; others do it. By moving the admired their acrobalance skills classics from the past fifty years that main presenting space for the festival and playful inventiveness, but in The evokes a suitably pan-European mix out of Manchester city centre to a park Bridge they have really upped the ante, of languages and cultural references. in a culturally diverse suburb, selling it proving that traditional circus skills There’s a also a very clever use of props with the byline ‘All ages, all cultures, all and contemporary theatre really can in the piece – in one lovely scene a weekend’, x.trax/MIA have managed be united successfully. The piece is whole host of home comforts, including over the past few years to build up a directed by Joseph Alford of Theatre a lit standard lamp, apparently emerge, local audience for this event, which O, and tells the story of a bridge which Mary Poppins style, from a suitcase. feels like the global village family has has been ‘destroyed and rebuilt a A great piece of outdoor performance all come together in one place. You thousand times’. The impressive set and one I hope will stay in Mimbre’s would have been hard pushed to find a (yes, a bridge, with a tower – a kind repertoire for many years to come. more diverse audience at any arts event of cross between Checkpoint Charlie anywhere in the UK. The other obvious and a distressed children’s playground Although most events took place in the thing is that when a festival dedicates structure) is the arena for this play park, x.trax also included a number of itself to addressing diversity (of age, on wartime conflicts and personal showcase performances programmed class, socio-economic group, ethnicity) struggles. Mimbre offer an enactment elsewhere in the city. Wired Aerial in its audience make-up, the knock-on of archetypal roles: the catalyst, the Theatre’s Glimpse, for example, was a effect is an audience that educates defender and the one caught in the beautifully enacted aerial dance piece itself over the years to the wonderful middle. Acrobalance proves to be the presented in the gorgeous setting of the all-embracing thing that is ‘street arts’. perfect medium for this exploration. Victoria Baths (subject of a multi-million pound restoration).

32 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre W S REVIE A contemporary take on ‘Shakespeare in the Park’, basically, so a disappointment from a company whose previous large scale work (such as the marvellous Hydromania, which animated Manchester Town Hall with light and water so spectacularly in 2001) has done so much to move forward the cause of street arts.

Just before, performed as the sun was setting, fellow Manchurian Artizani’s Desert Island Discs was everything that is good and right in street theatre. It features one man (the very able and entertaining James Macpherson), a mound of sand, a hammock strung between a couple of palm trees, and a mechanical lobster that refuses to be dinner. It’s a straightforward idea (and in street arts, the simple ideas are often the best ones), the story of a castaway who starts the show determined to keep up standards with his silver service and champagne, waiting patiently mimbre the bridge to be rescued. Dressed properly for dinner, with stiff upper lip, he is keen to The audience were placed in the We learnt the sign language gestures show that he can tame the wild. But of swimming pool (empty of water, I hasten for ‘virgin’ and ‘angel’ – which, as she course nature bites back – there’s that to add) and the two aerialists (one said, would get us a long way – and dastardly lobster, for a start – and our male, one female), clad in watery blue so we were expectantly waiting for hero turns wildman by fits and starts, costumes, performed a marvellous duet these to come up (as they did a fair few rather marvellously portrayed by his of flirtation and seduction, acceptance times) in order to join in. Apparently ever-growing beard (every time he and rejection, all on bungee ropes. our positive response to this has led beds down in his hammock he emerges Ably assisted by riggers who take on a The Alexandras to do a short signing with another hefty growth of hair). role almost of marionettists as they tug session just before each show and Stuff happens, and eventually he gets on ropes and pulleys, the performers thus have the crowd eating out of rescued by helicopter – delightfully swoop up to the skylights far above, dip their hands. depicted by toy ’copters on long rods, just above our heads or occasionally waving in the night air like fireflies. land at our feet. Simply perfect. Meanwhile, back in the park, two As in his previous solo piece, Syrovy, Manchester favourites presented Macpherson uses all the tricks of the Another piece seen outside the work back-to-back. The latter first: the trade in his telling of this simple tale: confines of Platt Fields Park was The big evening show was Stormbringer, classic physical clowning that is on a Alexandras with Priscilla Queen of the presented by Avanti Display – a direct line of descent from Keaton and Deaf World, which was presented on company that has rather oddly split Chaplin; amusing object animation; a a stage in the heart of Manchester’s into two branches in recent years. Bill minimal but very effective use of slack shopping district. It is certainly Palmer is focusing on the walkabout rope (walking between the palm trees); something different: an ‘all dancing and small-scale static work like a clever choice of music; precise signing troupe belting out iconic Mr Lucky (doomed to an eternal timing and confident enactment of the classics in a style that only three deaf rainstorm under his weeping umbrella). physical comedy gags. But the years queens can’. I’ll confess to not really Meanwhile, company co-founder Mike of experience and the highly tuned skill getting it when I saw it at Streets of Lister has been developing large-scale shows most in the lightness of it all – he Brighton – it seemed to be nothing spectaculars like Stormbringer – a makes it look like anyone could do it, much more than a bit of camp karaoke, music and visual theatre extravaganza but in truth few can perform with such good for five minutes but not worthy based on The Tempest. On the night I assurance, or entertain so well, in the of too much attention – but I loved it in saw it, it suffered from severe technical public space. Manchester. Which first of all offers problems, curtailing the fire-and-water the thought that critics usually only see finale, but beyond that, it was the sort Dorothy Max Prior anything once, and really once is not of distanced and contained piece that enough to know what you think about doesn’t really reach out to include anything (so don’t take any notice of the audience too much – with the critics!). But more than that, there was exception of some engaging moments something that gave the Manchester of processing through the crowd by the show an added frisson, which was shipwrecked sailors. director Jenny Sealey’s two-minute signing lesson to delegates before we went out to see the show.

totaltheatre.org.uk 33 Kazuko Hohki Ragroof Theatre Faulty Optic/Mira Calix Oh Doh Shall We Dance? Dead Wedding TOT Chelsea Theatre/King’s Rd, London Winchester Hat Fair Library Theatre, Manchester A L

T HEA Sacred Season/ InTransit artist-led June 2007 International Festival walks July 2007 TR June 2007 One might have called this year’s Hat magaz E Fair a Wet Fair, as it was raining so The challenge to redevelop such an It is about endings: eight rain-soaked much. Nevertheless, Ragroof Theatre established mythical story (of Orpehus in ‘tourists’ standing in the stagelights full braved the rain with winning smiles and Eurydice) is an exciting one, and e | e of tea and biscuits, wondering how a and tongue-in-cheek humour. In front Faulty Optic’s theatrical aesthetic is 19 | 19 vol guided walk turned out so weird. This is of a traditional bandstand, on a wooden always epic in its invention – more the Oh Doh (King’s Road in Japanese) (now rather slippery) dancefloor, an than robust enough to accommodate iss package deal: interactive, innovative ensemble of nine guided the audience a radical revision in world-view. But

E WINT | 04 ue theatre-maker Kazuko Hohki leads a through years of social dancing history, this seemed a confidence that the tour about the lives and endings of from Charleston to Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot collaborating artists didn’t hold for famous King’s Road characters, along and Jive. The period tunes were mixed this show. The cardinal sin for me King’s Road itself. It is true street with the recorded voices of older was its reliance on programme notes,

R 2007R theatre. Hohki’s eccentric Japanese people, creating a layered soundscape which offered the only ‘in’ to the tourist persona is naïve but beguiling; of memories about long-lost partners, complex re-telling. Whilst this is an it is difficult to resist her innocent and the rituals of ballroom courtship established convention in opera (the enthusiasm as she takes the group in yesteryear’s village halls and glitzy production was framed ‘to celebrate to the changing rooms of Bluebird, ballrooms. Occasionally, longer the ‘400th anniversary of opera’), a punk reunion outside Starbucks, a sections of text bring us individual surely expressive tools are available shortcut to Utopia with Sir Thomas stories of small vanities and jealousies, to transcend this necessity? With More in a church hall and into a suitably or sad memories of the wallflowers the responsibility to communicate magnificent ending involving a car or of the disruption of young love by clearly shunted offstage, the world chase, a cup of tea in the ugly wailing of air-raid sirens. in Dead Wedding became purely a block of flats and a round of Essentially, a danced oral history, expressionistic. The rhythm of scenes applause on the Chelsea Theatre the set-pieces supported not only by felt stilted – sequences seemed stage. True stories and real people are the sophisticated soundscape, but overlong with detail loaded into the made bizarre and amusing by Hohki’s also by a small cabinet exhibition/ dextrous, witty puppetry, but its logic highly original casting: a smirking installation called the Documentation unclear. This aggravated by Mira female Aleister Crowley in feathers Booth featuring photographs, sound Calix’s atonal vocal phrases which snorting lines of cocoa powder in a recordings and video clips collected underscored throughout and which I specialist chocolate shop is but one during the research period. found abrasive and tiring. There were of her quirky touches. Between each Although the rain worsened, the some bravura moments – the stop- section of the tour, actors linger among company saw it through to the end. motion rendition of Orpheus’ journey the public, subverting the otherwise The very wet floor curtailed some of to the Underworld (in a lift, of course), sedate street scene with outlandish the more showy moves in the jive and the failed escape was achingly costume and semi-threatening scene, but the company kicked off human in its flashes of primeval behaviour. Audiences are expected their shoes and danced barefoot in fears, nightmare-like frustrations and to keep up, join in and be willing to the puddles. And the audience stayed witty imagery. It felt real, frightening leap into waiting cars, get turned – huddled under umbrellas. A very and funny and drew us entirely into away from members’ clubs, unnerve satisfying event. Entrance free, there Faulty Optic’s astonishing world. passers-by and stick with their intrepid, was not even a busker’s hat around.... Counterpointing performed imagery ever-smiling Japanese guide. As but I lift my hat in respect: with a musical score is a valid approach demonstrated in this unique outdoor Chapeau, Ragroof Theatre! to making performance, but why use experience, the end is definitely Hartmut Topf it if the stated ambition of the project worth it. is the sophisticated re-imagination of Hazel Tsoi-Wiles such a well-known story? For me, this production was an abstraction too far. Beccy Smith

34 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre W S REVIE

They’ve also learnt from working with Acrobat the Polish company Teatr Biuro Podrozy smaller poorer cheaper that street arts can be used to tell dark Roundhouse, London/Circus Front tales: The Bell is a harrowing story of a July 2007 town razed by invaders. The survivors rise up from the terror to rebuild their Circus Front was an ambitious and Periplum town, their success embodied in the exciting snapshot of contemporary The Bell creation of a great bell, a symbol of life’s circus from around the world; a range Alexandra Park, Hastings/Coastal defeat of death. of high quality work incorporating Currents theatre, dance, music, live art, cabaret, August 2007 The clever use of space, fire, and burlesque and – yes – incredible circus music is enhanced by a poetic text that skills. How best to engage a large audience employs the sounds and rhythms of outdoors? Hastings’ Coastal Currents is words beautifully, working in tandem Australian legends Acrobat returned a free-to-audiences festival, and this is with strong physical performances. to the UK with smaller poorer cheaper: the opening event. Around 1500 people There is a good awareness of a raw and intimate show comprising are here in this pretty park on sightlines. One example is a disturbing three twenty minute solos, illustrating a balmy summer evening; mostly from image of the dead and wounded on that in the hands of masters circus the local community but augmented the battleground: rather than place can be as effective at expressing by a smattering of street arts glitterati, bodies on the ground, we see them up emotional themes and stories as dance. here to see whether Periplum – aided in the air, splayed across a large mesh The show begins with Jo Lancaster and abetted by pyrotechnicians on a frame; trunks distorted, limbs who presents a powerful solo that The World Famous – can cut the intertwined, a Goya-esque picture explores the compromises, pain and mustard with large scale work. So can of pain and defeat. laughs in ‘settling down’ from a female they? The short answer is ‘yes’. perspective. The near nudity exposes They’ve learnt from the French (Jo The only section that doesn’t quite the sheer physical strength of the Bithume, Trans Express) that you can work is a funeral procession with performer as she tumbles, turns and move a big crowd around a space the audience cast as villagers. The somersaults through marriage and using light, sound and the basic elements are evoked and water, earth, motherhood. Mozes follows with a instincts of self-preservation. fire, air, and metal must be brought to visceral and powerful rope routine that The beautiful singing of Juliet Russell the centrepiece chariot/pyre. It’s the takes us on a journey from non-stop calls like a siren, summoning us sort of thing that can’t be rehearsed; the partying camp delights to poignant across the field; a sudden burst of only way to find out is to do it, and doing awareness of mortality. The visual sky-scorching red flames draw us it shows that there needs to be some impact of blood pouring from the top of in another direction; a large chariot rethinking on how best to create chains the rope down on to Mozes strong fit dragged through the middle of the of command and spin the action out and physique serves as a powerful and life space gets through with minimal away from the central knot of people. affirming message of survival. The last stewarding – if a great big thing on This, no doubt, will have been taken on routine on a slack rope (by Simon Yates) wheels is coming towards you, you board and will be worked on for future was weaker than the preceding solos. move; ditto when a line of faceless performances. Although Yates is highly skilled and the Dark Wraiths who look as tall as trees piece well performed, it felt, unlike the tear across the field. It’s like being The Bell, on its first outing, is a success other two, that this could have slotted catapulted into the landscape of – beautiful, melancholic, thought easily into another circus cabaret a fantasy video game, minus the provoking, well executed. It’s a strong format. There was less exposure of the control pad. show, and one that will grow and grow. performer as person and this did not Dorothy Max Prior chime with the nakedness – literally and emotionally – of the rest of the show. Donna Close

totaltheatre.org.uk 35 This new book media celebrates the lives of fourteen Media reviews by Mary Paterson producers working and Dorothy Max Prior across the arts and aims to provide Print publications an inspiration to an emerging Programme Notes: Case studies for generation of locating experimental theatre creative producers. Eds. Lois Keidan and Daniel Brine In many ways it is a Live Art Development Agency development of the ISBN 0-9546040-4-0 work started with www.thisisUnbound.co.uk the Central School £7.50 if ordered through the above of Speech and website (RRP £10.00) Drama/Total Theatre Contributions by: Lyn Gardner, User’s Guide to Tim Etchells, Neil Bartlett, Stella Hall, TOT Creative Producing John McGrath, Alan Rivett, Mark A L symposium and

T HEA Borkowski, Rose Fenton, Brian Logan, publication. There’s Lucy Neal, Keith Khan, Simon Casson, plenty of interesting TR Louise Jeffreys, Judith Knight, magaz E material, presented and Toni Racklin. attractively (lots of big glossy colour in All the contributors to Programme images!), although e | e Notes agree on one thing – now is a

19 | 19 vol the format is a little great time for independent theatre. odd; a mixture of Experimental, challenging, investigative first person account, iss and just plain different work has and interview. E WINT | 04 ue started to creep into our mainstream There is also some venues (think Duckie selling out at the inconsistency in Barbican) and attract huge audiences choices to include (do we need to mention The Sultan’s one Belgian R 2007R Elephant?). This book is a collection producer (of Les of case studies, essays and interviews Ballets C de la with some of the people who aided B) amongst a talks of the body having an intelligence that change, and it’s both a thrilling group who otherwise work partly or of its own, and the need to ‘de- glimpse of practices that helped usher exclusively in the UK. So quibbles learn’. Much of what is subsequently in the new, and a useful springboard about some of the editing choices; discovered – that theatre/performance for future strategies. There are some but an otherwise great addition to the is intrinsically ‘physical’, and that words warning bells – about funding, and rather limited number of publications and movement co-exist in performance about the conservatism of institutions on this essential cog in the art-making – will come as no surprise to Total – but this is a hopeful book. It brims machine, the producer. Theatre readers. with respect for the audience, building DMP The Split Britches DVD features to a consensus that, given education, company founders and leading lights, access and choice, people will continue DVDs Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw and to embrace independent theatre documents a workshop that took practice. The contributors’ passion and Women Writing For Performance: place January 2006 at the Nuffield inclusiveness springs from every page Performing Words and Spilt Britches Theatre, Lancaster University. Both so although aimed at professionals, this Lancaster University DVDs are worthy archive material will make a fascinating read for anyone. £9-99 each DVD, inc. P&P of a seminal programme of events MP www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/theatre/ (which has included conferences womenwriting and symposia, and numerous other The Producers: Alchemists workshops, including ones with Marisa of the impossible Women’s Writing for Performance is a Carnesky, Jenny Éclair, Curious, and Ed. Kate Tyndall three-year, AHRC funded programme Bobby Baker). The Split Britches one Arts Council England/Jerwood of practice-as-research with a focus is intrinsically more interesting, mostly Charitable Foundation on ways in which women practitioners because of the inclusion of interviews £20 Hardback 'write' for contemporary performance. with this renowned duo. With both www.the-producers.org These DVDs document two workshop- DVDs there is, for the viewer, an odd Interviews with/contributions from: based projects in the programme. sense of voyeurism in watching people Marc Boothe, Farooq Chaudhry, Helen The first is of the Performing Words go through warm-up exercises etc. This Cole, Andrew Eaton, Paul Heritage, workshops led by Gilly Adams (director somehow feels like an intrusion on the David Jubb, Judith Knight & Ritsaert of BBC Wales' Writers' Unit/associate closed space that a workshop nurtures. ten Cate, David Lan, Helen Marriage, artist of Welfare State International, That said, it is interesting to be the Michael Morris, Nii Sackey, Joana well known for her work, with Sue Peeping Thomasina on other people’s Seguro, Lieven Thyrion Gill on Rites of Passage), and Geddy teaching and learning strategies. Aniksdal from Grenland Friteater in DMP Norway. In her introduction, Geddy 36 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 37 38 total theatre - developing contemporary theatre totaltheatre.org.uk 39

ENTER A DIFFERENT WORLD

BLACKSKYWHITE

B.P. ZOOM

MOSSOUX-BONTÉ

30th LONDON INTERNATIONAL MIME FESTIVAL 12 > 27 JANUARY 2008 PROGRAMME INCLUDES: BLACKSKYWHITE (Russia) Astronomy for Insects GANDINI JUGGLING B.P. ZOOM (France) A Wonderful World COLLECTIF PETIT TRAVERS (France) Parti-Pris des Choses JOSEF NADJ FAULTY OPTIC (UK) Dead Wedding MIQUEL BARCELÓ GANDINI JUGGLING (UK) Downfall GECKO (UK) The Arab and the Jew HIROAKI UMEDA (Japan) Duo/While Going to a Condition JOS HOUBEN (Belgium) The Art of Laughter MOSSOUX-BONTÉ (Belgium) Nuit sur le Monde JOSEF NADJ / MIQUEL BARCELÓ (France/Spain) Paso Doble NOLA RAE (UK) Mozart Preposteroso! O ULTIMO MOMENTO (France / Portugal) Peut-Être PEP BOU (Spain) Clar de Llunes 'FOR 29 YEARS LIMF HAS BEEN SADARI MOVEMENT LABORATORY (Korea) Woyzeck TURNING GLOOMY JANUARY SARAH WRIGHT (UK / Germany) Silent Tide INTO A POSITIVE MINEFIELD OF TEATRO CORSARIO (Spain) Aullidos UNPREDICTABILITY, AND WHEN BARBICAN • ICA • LABAN • LYRIC HAMMERSMITH • BETTER THAN THE START OF A YEAR SOUTHBANK CENTRE • ROYAL OPERA HOUSE/ROH2 • SHUNT VAULTS TO GO TO THE THEATRE ASKING NOT Make sure you are on our e-list for the latest updates - email [email protected] - write ‘join e-list’ in the subject heading TO SEE THE EXPECTED' DAILY TELEGRAPH www.mimefest.co.uk 44 20 7637 5661

Totaltheatre9-07.indd 1 12/10/07 09:38:07