Why So Shocked? The Art of Unsettling

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

A nightly explosion is taking place on the stage of Islington’s Old Red Lion Theatre. As Greenhouse Theatre Company’s performance of Mercury Fur enters its devastating, loud and bloody conclusion, audience members alternately lean forwards and recoil; heaving, audible sobs echo around the intimate, claustrophobic space; a couple of theatregoers seem on the verge of complete breakdown. Never have I felt an audience so unified in tension, shock and emotional release.

The visceral punch of Mercury Fur is nothing new. When the play premiered in 2005, it was quickly labelled as Philip Ridley’s most controversial work to date, and Faber and Faber famously refused to publish the playscript on the grounds of its shocking content. It was a reaction that continues to infuriate Ridley. Speaking in an interview with Exeunt’s Tom Wicker, the playwright says, perhaps flippantly but nonetheless incisively, “if I’d reinvented Mercury Fur as a lost Greek tragedy and set it in Thebes, no one would have batted an eyelid”.

It only takes a cursory glance at the canon of Greek tragedy to prove Ridley’s point; Medea, for instance, kills her own children, while Oedipus famously sleeps with his mother and plucks out his own eyes. The significant fact to remember about Greek drama, however, is its origin in myth. The theatre of Ancient Greece was born as a way of exploring the contemporary problems and issues ailing the Athenians, but through a medium that was divorced from the citizens’ everyday lives. We might ask ourselves how much has really changed since the days of Sophocles and Euripides. Do we continue to be more comfortable with depictions of human cruelty when they are one step removed from our immediate experience?

In order to investigate the unique fascination and repulsion provoked by “shock theatre”, as we might label it for the purposes of this blog, it may be helpful to consider this within the wider context of other cultural mediums that also deal with acts of human brutality and the uncomfortable themes of death and decay. Two such genres that seem particularly relevant at present are dystopian fiction and film, which have seen an extraordinary resurgence in the teenage market, and the confrontational art that emerged in the 1990s and is exemplified by Damien Hirst’s current retrospective at the Tate Modern.

Firstly, dystopian fiction may be nothing new, but it is undoubtedly experiencing a fresh renaissance and a new legion of fans. This can in part be attributed to the ubiquity of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy of books, now also a box office smashing film franchise, although this is only part of a larger, thriving teenage market for dystopian narratives. Of course, as proved by the enduring popularity of novels such as 1984 and more recent hits like The Road, it is not only the youngsters with a taste for the post-apocalyptic, but it is the hunger of the young adult market for this challenging fare that has brought dystopia right back to the forefront of the literary marketplace.

In her article for the New Yorker, Laura Miller argues that the appeal of dystopian fiction for younger readers derives from the way in which these novels, however far-fetched, identify with the realities of teenage experience. Miller also points out that the major way in which dystopian fiction differs from its older sibling is in its conclusion: young adult dystopias favour salvation and catharsis, whereas the grown-up version typically ends in crushing despair. But in either case, no matter how gruesome – The Hunger Games hinges around children fighting to the death for public entertainment; in Cormac McCarthy’s bleak novel The Road, a baby is roasted on a spit – readers and viewers, young and old alike, happily gobble it up.

The work of the media-dubbed Young British Artists of the 1990s, meanwhile, is similarly gruesome and provocative, though not as easily accepted. When Hirst first unleashed his formaldehyde creations on the world, the art establishment did not know what to make of them, initiating a stunned disgust that would accompany the rise of Hirst and his peers. There are, in fact, many parallels that can be drawn between the work of these artists and the In-Yer-Face theatre movement that surfaced at the same time and was characterised by the plays of writers such as Ridley, Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill, parallels that are helpfully highlighted in Stewart Pringle’s excellent essay for Exeunt. The art, however, has seemingly mellowed with age in a way that the theatre has not, at least in the eyes of onlookers.

As Pringle ultimately argues, the output of the likes of Hirst and Tracey Emin has lost its shock and the “theatrical frisson” that made its name. Visual works of art are crystallized, static, trapped within the moment of their creation, and as such the shock of their reception is dulled by the passing of the years. This is something that Ridley, himself a visual artist as well as a writer, is acutely aware of. As he puts it in the interview with Wicker, “young audiences, families, will go to the Tate Modern and happily walk through sliced up sheep, pickled sharks and unmade beds with tampons on them. But do something like that in a stage play and people are outraged and you’re a ‘shockmaster’.”

It is clear, then, that theatre is still capable of ruffling critical feathers. The most striking recent example of this was Daily Mail critic Quentin Letts’ outraged diatribe against the provocative output of subsidised theatres, which he depicted as profane “gobblers” of public money. Expressing his opinion is one thing, and is after all what he is paid to do, but Letts was also allegedly involved in some shocking behaviour of his own. According to playwright Dan Rebellato, the critic tried to persuade the Lyric Hammersmith’s private donors to withdraw their money after the theatre staged a revival of Edward Bond’s seminal post-war play Saved.

If true, Letts’ actions are disgraceful, but that is a rant for another time, and one that Rebellato articulates far more eloquently than I could hope to. Placing this to one side, it is worth considering just what made Letts so incensed. The critic expresses concern about the decline of “communal decency” and distaste for the prevalence of bad language and violence, both of which are no doubt considered offensive by some theatregoers, in which case they have the choice not to buy a ticket or to leave before the end. We are, like Letts, all entitled to our own opinions and tastes.

Yet Letts’ argument seems to hinge on boredom. He admits that he fell victim to a “huge yawn” during the baby stoning scene in Saved, and states that in today’s theatre, “rape, murder, nudity and profanity have lost their shock value”, becoming “almost de rigueur”. However, his actions, as Rebellato points out, tell a different story. Likewise, the collective reaction to the denouement of Mercury Fur – a reaction which, by all accounts, was typical of the entire run – stands as testimony that the play has lost none of its vicious sting. Theatre such as this has the same bruising impact as it always has, and this is what Letts, beneath his affectation of ennui, seems to object to.

The answer to why theatre retains the ability to shock and to provoke such vehement reactions would appear to lie in the nature of its liveness and immediacy. Or, as Pringle puts it, plays such as Mercury Fur are “revived through the living, in a living space which has grown out of its own era”. It is perhaps not what is actually being portrayed that we struggle to accept as much as the proximity – both physical and psychological. Whether safely enclosed within the pages of a book or behind a cinema screen, or set in a comfortingly distant dystopian wasteland or mythical Greek realm, we can swallow our dose of cruelty when its side-effects seem not to touch us. It is only when these dark imaginings are diagnosed as a very real presence in human nature within today’s society that the cultural arbiters of that society shun it, deride it, even condemn it. Theatre should, in the words of Hamlet, “hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature”, but apparently only when that reflection is not an ugly one.

Reflection is something that Letts also seems to have a problem with in his article. He asks whether we should “take the view that, like Shakespearean court jesters, subsidised thespians are there to hold a mirror to our failings”. The answer, it seems to me even if not to Letts, is yes. Great theatre can also, as Letts suggests it might, aspire to change society in some way, but his belief that theatre makers should “use their power to mend our country instead of simply ‘reflecting’ it” feels like backward logic. Only once we have made the diagnosis can we turn our minds to finding a cure.

As depressing as it may sound, there seems to me little doubt that this shock theatre does reflect a buried, ugly side of human nature. Who was not, like Narcissus, both intrigued and enchanted by their own image when first viewing it in a mirror? I suspect that what disgusts and repels us about disturbing works of art is also what attracts us; we see something of ourselves, or at least of the human condition, in what is presented before us. Dystopian narratives and shock theatre alike speak to an aspect of human nature that is as unsettling as it is irrefutable.

While Elliot’s recollection of riots on the streets in Mercury Fur feels chillingly prescient in the light of the events of last summer, the issues dealt with by this and similar plays are not, as their critics seem to think they are, exclusive to this particular moment in time. Society may currently feel particularly broken, but these are universal, timeless concerns; as director Paul Davies says in reference to A Clockwork Orange – another controversial, dystopian narrative – “civilisation is a veneer”. All that the likes of Ridley are doing is chipping away at that veneer to expose the darkness beneath. And that darkness, as made clear by our ongoing fascination with works of art such as those discussed above, has always been there.

Revolution Square: Work in Progress

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

“I hope that they start to see connections”. These were the words of Revolution Square‘s writer and director Jonathan Holmes, spoken during our conversation last week when I asked him what he hoped audiences would take away from the piece, and they serve as a fitting place to begin reflecting on this work in progress. Because if this 45 minute scratch performance in a small attic space of the Bush Theatre achieves one thing in exemplary fashion, it is a sense of interconnectedness. To draw on another phrase from Holmes, “there’s a sense of joining the dots”.

The immediate context is the political situation in Russia and the recent protests against the country’s allegedly rigged parliamentary elections, but there is much more going on even within the play’s current short form. At the moment it feels economically crammed full of ideas, with barely a word wasted, leaving early audiences to do the unpacking – a process that is enthusiastically embarked upon in the overrunning post-show discussion. There is, as Holmes confessed to me when we spoke briefly before the performance, simply too much to fit in at this stage. It may be overflowing at the moment, but that’s part of what this process is all about.

In its current incarnation, Revolution Square is essentially a conversation between three women caught up, willingly or unwillingly, in last December’s protests: a British priest, a Russian socialite and a dissatisfied young girl from the country (played by Helen Masters, Dolya Gavanski and Sian Rees). Each has a different perspective on the riots and on Russian politics; a division of opinion that is intensified by the introduction of a Western outsider, a move that immediately joins the dots by connecting the situation in Russia to what is going on elsewhere. Moscow does not exist in a vacuum, and Holmes even posits the unsettling thought that what we are looking at in Russia now is a preview of Europe in a decade’s time. It is not a particularly sunny forecast.

Returning to this idea of connections, one of the characters remarks to the British woman that perhaps she should look in her own ‘back yard’ before taking it upon herself to comment on the situation in Russia, a pertinent point considering our own current state of crisis. If not quite as pronounced as in Russia and seemingly a million miles away from the Arab Spring demonstrations that this piece also makes reference to – joining those dots again – we certainly have our own problems. This all feeds into a wider, unsettling sense of mass discontent that has been compounded by last summer’s riots and the Occupy movement and that seems to be increasingly reflected in our theatre. This discontent on a wider scale, its roots and its possible destination is an area that I personally would like to see explored further.

The other question that is raised of whether we have the right to pass judgement on Russian politics is an interesting and troubling one, especially as that is exactly what we are participating in when we come to see this piece of theatre. As the Brit in the play points out, surely this is better than ignoring what is going on, but we must also be aware that as a culture we have a patronising tendency to assume superiority over others and preach democracy, a tendency that Revolution Square is implicitly challenging while simultaneously participating in that culture. This piece does not shy away, however, from openly admitting that the protest movement in Russia does not have an alternative ideology that it is proposing; as one other audience member puts it in the post-show discussion, they know what they are moving away from but not what they are moving towards.

In terms of structure, the piece is primarily character driven, as Holmes intended it to be. Much of the dialogue is necessarily political and intellectual debate, but this is achieved without completely sacrificing theatricality and is an approach that I hope and expect will continue into the finished piece. Debates can be argued in any manner of ways, but what makes theatre so effective as a medium is its ability to engage us on a more immediate level than, for example, journalism. To keep audiences interested in these debates, they must also be kept interested in the characters, which Holmes seems to recognise. Towards the end, however, the piece breaks out of its naturalistic bonds and takes a decidedly Brechtian turn, a detour that currently causes a distracting rupture but that could be more smoothly integrated into the piece. It seems important when dealing with this subject matter to give the audience the odd jolt and keep them engaged on an intellectual level as well as an emotional one, but this still requires further development.

There is much more in this piece that could be discussed: comparisons between the political structure in Russia and the Medici dynasty in Florence, further thoughts on ideology and its necessity or otherwise for a protest movement, the role played by religion, the recurring motif of falling, the link between Russia and the current state of Greece, which was ironically the birth place of democracy, the question of what democracy itself really means – I could go on and on. There is also, both because it is a play with exclusively female characters and because of some of the conversations within it, a sub-strand of gender politics that is particularly fascinating. For a piece of theatre that is, on the surface, about a very specific situation, Revolution Square opens up pathways to many other debates.

Unsurprisingly and perhaps inevitably, this has a slightly messy, incomplete feel; an isolated jigsaw piece with jagged edges. As we engage in discussion following the performance, however, other pieces already begin to present themselves, even if they do not quite fit together at this stage. It’s a fascinating process to be a part of, like watching a roughly-hewn sculpture being delicately teased into shape. What Holmes and his performers have produced to date is a sort of suggestion or provocation, a conversation starter that brings thought upon thought tumbling out.

I’m intrigued to see how these discussions are eventually weaved together into a finished piece, but I am compelled to end on a note of uncertainty. Because, one might ask, is a piece of theatre ever really finished? And I don’t refer to the little daily tweaks and changes that are an inherent part of live performance. When we are speaking about politically engaged, provocative, thoughtful, responsive theatre – theatre that begs a conversation – does that theatre then extend into the discussions which it acts as a catalyst for? Where does theatre end and discussion begin, or are the two inextricably tangled?

Revolution Square runs at the Bush Theatre until 17 March.

Revolution Square: Thoughts on a Process

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

“Russia is a very unexplored political situation”. Until I hear these words from Jericho House‘s artistic director Jonathan Holmes, it is not an omission that I’ve particularly noticed, but the moment the statement is spoken I realise that it’s true. There remains an enduring fascination with Cold War era politics and the Soviet Union, but post-1990s Russian politics has taken a back seat in our concerns. This is something that Jericho House’s new project, Revolution Square, hopes to begin to change.

Although he has nurtured an interest in Russian politics and culture for several years, Holmes did not find a way into discussions about the situation – at least not discussions on the stage – until last December’s mass protests on the streets of Moscow against alleged fraud in the country’s parliamentary elections. “Suddenly, because of what else was happening in the world, I thought, ‘we need to do a show’,” Holmes tells me. “Then we knew we had two months to put something together because of the elections in March – in theatrical terms, that’s no time at all.”

The result, thanks to a collaboration with the Bush Theatre, has been a hectic week-long rehearsal process, to be followed by a week of scratch performances at the theatre. As we sit in the cosy cafe of the Bush’s new residence on the final day of rehearsals, Holmes explains that there was no other choice than to pull something together in this hasty fashion; even the script was not finished until a matter of days ago. “We couldn’t really put it together until we knew what the situation around the election was – not necessarily the result, because we could predict that Putin would get in, but it was just knowing what else was going to happen and leaving room to factor that in. It really has all come together over a period of ten days.”

During rehearsals over the past week, Holmes has worked closely and collaboratively with the three actors appearing in the piece, two of whom know Russia very well, a knowledge that has fed into the piece that will now be performed. Rather than existing as a fully-formed script before rehearsals began, Revolution Square has taken shape over the course of rehearsals, moulded into form by various layers of meaning, character and narrative from Holmes and his team. It seems to me an organic, flexible way of working.

“What’s interesting is that notions of character and narrative come very much more to the forefront,” Holmes reflects on the process. He was keen that, rather than the performers “acting as mouthpieces for different perspectives”, the play should be character driven, but this has proved to be a challenge with so little time at their disposal to discover these characters. It has entailed, however, a re-learning of the dramatic craft for all involved. “You start to evaluate these strategies for writing and you learn what’s useful and what’s not, what’s there for traditional reasons and what’s genuinely helpful,” says Holmes. “You’re reinventing the wheel, but in a very healthy way.”

This sort of quick-fire response and breathless rehearsal process raises questions about the way in which theatre responds to current events. Urgent topicality is a trend that has been on the rise in British theatre, from the Tricycle’s verbatim plays to Theatre503’s response to the hacking scandal. “It’s become quite a feature of British theatrical life,” Holmes agrees, “and that in itself raises challenges about what form that takes. Is it possible to create a play that’s quite nuanced and subtle and has all the things you want from a good play, but is also responding quickly? That’s something that I think British theatre is struggling with at the minute, and it’s nice to be part of that debate.”

What stands out about Jericho House’s response is that it is a debate, a true conversation. This is not a closed, blinkered process with a clear end goal or one specific political statement that it is setting out to make. Over the next few days, Holmes and his team are inviting audiences to be as vocal as they like, hosting post-show discussions, handing out feedback forms like candy and welcoming emails with suggestions. Holmes hopes that they will go away with lots of material to eventually make into a longer, finished show that has been informed by multiple perspectives.

“What’s important for all plays, but particularly for plays that are striving to be topical, is that you get a very clear set of responses – as many as possible from as many audiences as possible – so that you can factor those in,” says Holmes. “If you’re writing a play that wants to have a conversation with people, have the conversation as even-handedly as possible. I’ve resisted drawing too many conclusions, because it’s a work in progress and I want to see what people say.”

It strikes me that this is perhaps one of the best ways to approach current events and issues that sweep along in their wake a whole storm of different opinions and perspectives; a piece of theatre can let itself be carried on those gusts rather than obstinately trying to fight a route through them. By the time Revolution Square is finished, it will have been influenced by the immediate witnesses Holmes spoke to in his initial journalistic hunt for information, by the actors involved (and in the case of two of these actors, by their own experiences of Russia) and by numerous audience members, whose reactions will no doubt be coloured by Western culture and attitudes, giving the piece a rich and varied flavour that is hopefully far more representative of actual experience and reactions than one authorial voice could ever be.

Holmes also hopes that this piece will have resonance beyond the current situation in Russia. “The conversations about developments in capitalism, about financial crisis, about the role of religion, about individuals versus the state, about idealism and cynicism, about apathy – all of those things are relevant to us,” he explains. “It’s about producing something that I think is relevant to the audience here, but that is very specific to the situation in Moscow also. It’s about being timely and universal at the same time.”

As Holmes puts it, Revolution Square is ultimately about “seeing the bigger picture”. This widening of the lens applies both to the resonance of Russian politics for the rest of the world and to the myriad of responses that Holmes is inviting to richen and enhance his creation. I personally look forward to adding my perspective to that picture when I get to see the first snapshot later this week.

Revolution Square is being performed every evening this week (12 – 17 March) at the Bush Theatre, followed by post-show discussions. Check back for more thoughts on the process on Thursday after I have seen the show.


Topical or Typical? Responsive Theatre Programming

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

I think most of us can agree that, when it wants to, theatre as an art form is pretty good at responding. A response can, of course, mean many things, from passive acknowledgement to probing investigation to active retort. Think only of the Tricycle Theatre’s renowned verbatim plays, the most recent example being its analysis of last summer’s riots, or of the nationwide movement initiated by Theatre Uncut following the coalition government’s Spending Review. One thing that theatre is generally considered to be capable of doing and doing well is responding to the world around us.

But I wonder if sometimes it is responding merely for the sake of responding. This is not a thought that has newly occurred to me; I’ve written in the past about the ways in which theatre responds to current events and about whether it exploits topical subjects to create intriguing drama. In that case I concluded that while there may be different ways of writing in response to current events and issues, there is not necessarily anything wrong with using these as a creative springboard and that in fact it can result in thought-provoking, compelling plays. What if, however, self-labelled ‘topical’ theatre is not really responding at all?

I quoted Simon Stephens’ Bruntwood Prize launch speech in that previous article, but it is worth referencing again, not least because Stephens speaks extremely articulately about his craft and about the wider world of theatre. In a climate where theatres could very well take a ‘more tentative approach to programming’, Stephens sees the Bruntwood Prize as an opportunity for playwrights to write those challenging, truly responsive plays that might not otherwise get heard, describing the competition as ‘a clarion call to all playwrights’.

Perhaps the same clarion call ought to be extended to the theatre industry as a whole. It is undoubtedly a difficult time and despite the many challenges faced by the sector there are still lots of interesting, responsive conversations going on. But my worry is that some theatre which is masquerading under the guise of being incisively topical really has little new to say and that its connection to current affairs is being used as a sort of self-congratulating mask (or, if I was to be particularly cynical, that it is piggy-backing on sensationalist hype).

The one current issue that particularly sparked these thoughts was the Leveson Inquiry and the debate about press practices that continues to rumble on. While theatre was extraordinarily speedy in formulating responses to the spending cuts and the summer riots (in the case of the latter, it was quicker even than any official response), the reaction to the phone-hacking scandal has been sluggish by comparison. Although Theatre503’s Hacked and now a revival of Doug Lucie’s media corruption play The Shallow End at the Southwark Playhouse have seized on the subject matter, we have yet to see anything vaguely resembling a full dramatic dissection.

Hacked was perhaps, ironically, hampered by the rapidity of its conception. Put together in the immediate aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal, it used the provocative and novel (if slightly gimmicky) idea of hacking the phones of six volunteers to create six short plays. The brief to the playwrights was vague, but this was a piece that, by the free admission of its curators, did not want to deal too directly with the causes and ramifications of a scandal that was still emerging.

This reticence to begin heavily analysing an issue which was still very blurred is wholly understandable, but there is an argument that this piece of theatre might have been more valuable had it waited a little longer. That said, some of the short plays did grapple with the troubling implications of the News of the World fallout, particularly Matt Hartley’s satirical take on the dangers of interpretation and Dawn King’s entertaining consideration of privacy. Unfortunately, there was a far from consistent focus and an overall sense that this was skirting around the big questions.

The Shallow End, meanwhile, is clearly a different matter, having been written in 1997, long before the phone-hacking revelations. However, I wonder what the thought process was behind reviving this now, aside from its obvious resonance with today’s press. Yes, Doug Lucie’s satire predicted the media corruption that has now been exposed, but it reveals and asks very little about its causes. As I put it in my review, this feels like ‘sloppily topical programming’. The intention behind the revival is understandable, but its effect is ultimately disappointing.

What would be truly interesting, and what theatre has the capacity to do in a way in which other forums don’t, would be to get to the real crux of the matter, the deep-rooted causes behind the faces that get slapped on front covers. What is it that convinces an ordinary person to brutally invade the privacy of another individual? What is the psychological need that drives the insatiable demand for tabloid gossip? The phone-hacking scandal is a frightening phenomenon because so many people are so complicit. This is not just about headlines; this is a deeply human issue that could be intelligently explored by one of the most human of all art forms. But perhaps the play that really scrubs away at the grime to get to the heart of the issue is just too challenging for today.

Returning once again to Simon Stephens, the playwright recently claimed that the recession has made British theatregoers more conservative. Speaking to Aleks Sierz for Theatrevoice, Stephens said: ‘I think people’s taste for theatre, in the past three years, has shifted more towards the commercial and the accessible’. Maybe, in the end, it is this shift in attitude that we have to thank for all this dancing around the real issues. Has the recession and growing conservatism among audiences resulted in an appetite for the topical without the challenging?