Small Acts

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

If global warming persists at its current rate and sea levels continue to rise, half of London might be underwater. There are maps available online outlining the potential damage; just type in your postcode and watch your neighbourhood disappear beneath the deluge.

This is just one of the grim facts alluded to throughout Platform’s operatic audio tourAnd While London Burns, created in 2006 in response to climate change and the complex, ubiquitous oil network that dominates the world’s financial markets. Earlier this week I belatedly traced this tour through the heart of the City, its skyscrapers appropriately garbed in an ominous cloak of fog that was distantly pierced by the Shard, that oddly apocalyptic splinter of steel and glass. Gazing up at buildings that had inexorably sprouted in the six years since the tour’s creation, it was hard to imagine a halt to the onward march of disaster that flooded through my earphones.

But the aim of And While London Burns is not despair. Its end point, or at least the end point that I’m told it would have reached if the audio file hadn’t hit a glitch as I stood awkwardly fiddling with my phone in the drizzle outside Lloyds, is one of action, of hope. Intersecting bleak facts with a deeply human impetus for change, the piece is delicately crafted for maximum emotional impact, making the reality of climate change powerfully felt without ever entirely eradicating an optimistic chink of light. We can still do something.

This immediately brought to mind the contrast with Ten Billion, a piece of theatre that I did not personally see but that was the subject of much conversation around the time it was showing at the Royal Court earlier this year. In essence a lecture given by scientist Stephen Emmott and placed on stage by Katie Mitchell, it was by all accounts an unflinching breakdown of how humanity, as a species, is fucked. In this vision of a future ravaged by environmental catastrophe and over-population, there is nothing to be done.

Although I’m not in any position to make judgements on the respective science behind these two pieces, they do throw up an interesting theatrical tension. Both pieces are, presumably, setting out with the intention of changing our outlook on the world in some way; And While London Burns is explicit about this aim, while it’s difficult to even read about the subject matter of Ten Billion without taking a rather blacker view of the future. The problem and source of tension, however, is the effect of this intended shift in outlook. Stepping out into Sloane Square or between the glass-fronted structures of the City, what do audiences take with them?

In the second of Chris Goode & Company’s Thompson’s Live podcasts, Artsadmin’s Judith Knight mused on just this problem. Is it better, she wondered, for theatre like Ten Billion to leave its audience with hope, however false, than to depart with incapacitating doom? The problem with being told you can do nothing is that it gives you licence to do just that. As Andrew Haydon put it in his review, there’s something “powerful and seductive” – even liberating – about the sheer nihilism of it all. No need to worry about changing our behaviour if it won’t make any difference.

And While London Burns might look our catastrophic future just as squarely in the face, but it also offers the possibility of action. Not only does it retain the promise of a small shred of hope, the very form of this piece of theatre makes it imperative for us to act in order for the piece to work. We are actors, in both the performative and real world senses of the word, made to navigate our way around the busy streets. In principle this necessity of small actions offers us belief in the fact that action on a larger scale is achievable, though in practice the difficulties of winding between human traffic and keeping in step with the audio instructions can be just as much of a obstruction to the piece as the physical obstacles that have sprung up since it was made.

While considering these questions of hope and action, another unlikely comparison presented itself. I was temporarily transported back to Battersea Arts Centre, where I spent Saturday afternoon gleefully exploring the building’s many nooks and crannies as part of interactive children’s show The Good Neighbour, a celebration of imagination, silliness and the capacity of humans to work together. An altogether different proposition, then, to either Ten Billion or And While London Burns.

Yet within the fun and games there is something distilled in this otherwise joyously silly piece of theatre that many more serious shows might take note of. In framing its frolics as an adventure, The Good Neighbour returns to its young participants, already so restricted in so many areas of life, the idea that the possibility of instigating action might lie within their power. Through the underestimated medium of play, it holds up an optimistic vision of human nature in which change is attainable as well as desirable. Unlike the distracting confusion of negotiating the suit-clogged alleyways of the City, a level of performativity that may be active but is more often than not frustrating, the gameplay here produces a sense of triumph and exhilaration.

Whether this exhilaration could be transposed onto a form of activist theatre is another question, and whether this would ultimately make a difference is an even bigger question. The extent to which theatre can inspire genuine political and social change is a well-traversed and still inconclusive debate. But if performance is to provoke action, surely the possibility of agency within the space in which it sets out its arguments is the first building block in the bridge to action beyond that space. To act, we must first believe that we are capable of action.

A Change of Scene

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

Sitting folded origami-like in my seat in the balcony of the Royal Court, I can’t fight a certain nagging irritation at the peripheries of my perception. Captivating as its disconnected scenes are, there’s something distracting about Love and Information, Caryl Churchill’s new piece about the knowledge onslaught of the digital age. Or, more accurately, it’s the lack of distraction that becomes distracting in itself. Staged in Miriam Buether’s open-sided white cube of a set, each of Churchill’s 57 miniature plays is punctuated by a blackout, during which cast members and props are swiftly, invisibly switched. Each scene is surgically removed with such precision that not even a scar remains.

It’s a dizzying feat of stage management, but in its very invisibility it attracts attention. Doing away with the creaking, carefully ignored dragging on and off of props by stage hands and cast members, the production instead leaves a gaping black hole into which our latent anxieties about the craft of the stage are helplessly sucked. It might be seen as an inversion of the effect of Mike Leigh’s Grief at the National Theatre last year, in which tiny tweaks to the meticulously naturalistic set were made with unapologetic conspicuousness. Only when pronounced in either its presence or absence, it would seem, does the inherently awkward scene change impinge on the audience’s consciousness.

The scene change, as a convention, is a culturally conditioned blind spot in the illusion of representational theatre, an unseemly blip that we as an audience collectively ignore. We can handle a table being spirited in by black-clad figures in semi-darkness, or characters suddenly, inexplicably transporting chairs off with them upon their exit; this is all part of a game whose rules we are smug in the knowledge of. We know how this works. It’s the disruption of those rules and thus the unveiling of the game that causes discomfort, a discomfort that might fall under theatre academic Nicholas Ridout’s diagnosis of the “ontological queasiness” that theatre is capable of producing.

Much like Ridout’s description of the unsettling experience of a face-to-face encounter during a performance, a break in the conventions of the scene change can cause an uncertain lurch, a disconnect between the accepted illusion and the reality behind it. We’re aware not only that this isn’t real, which we knew all along even if we’d suppressed that knowledge, but that we have been willing participants in the illusion. What we’d ignored is suddenly impossible to ignore, either in its overt interference or its glaring absence. To take the resulting discomfort a step further, it might be suggested, to stick with Ridout, that our blushing reaction is caused by an acknowledgement of the economic relations at play: we’ve paid for people to shift the set around and agreed an unspoken contract to pretend that they’re not there.

So we could just see these odd dislocations as inadvertent slip-ups, of over-efficiency in the case of Love and Information and of sheer clumsiness in Grief, slip-ups that throw open the true nature of the economic exchange upon which theatre is based. But the more I think about these two examples, the more I wonder if there might be more to the simple scene change than a necessary movement of props that can choose to either conceal or expose its seams.

While at the time of watching Grief the constant to-ing and fro-ing of stage hands was a frustrating distraction and the small changes it was all in aid of seemed to be a hint that Leigh had become more accustomed to the cutting room than the stage, in retrospect it acquires more significance. Why construct such a perfectly observed sphere of naturalism, down to the last precisely placed photo frame, just to smash that illusion apart with the intrusion of backstage mechanisms?

Assuming, as I think good criticism should, that creative choices have been made for a reason, it is perhaps more productive to think of these intrusions as a deliberate jolting of the hermetically sealed suburbia in which Leigh’s protagonists exist. The changing of a vase of flowers or the tidying of a pile of newspapers, alterations so small they are laughable, could in this context be read as a comment on the essentially unchanging atmosphere of this household, a decaying stasis that is at the heart of the piece. These tiny adjustments mock the fatal lack of any real transformation. Scene change, if interpreted thus, is thematically enmeshed with scene; stagecraft reflects the content of the stage.

Likewise, the dazzling smoothness of Love and Information’s transitions would seem, when investigated in conjunction with the piece as a whole, to have a guiding rationale. Buether’s minimal container of a stage, with its clinical white glow, recalls the screen of a computer or smartphone; as actors and props appear and disappear with a magically seamless lack of fuss, the experience of viewing is strikingly similar to the experience of clicking through videos or apps. What we are witnessing is a series of downloads in an age of unlimited digital information.

These are striking but certainly not solitary examples. It would be naive and potentially insulting to suggest that no more creative thought is invested in the transition between scenes beyond which piece of furniture needs to be shifted where. But perhaps from a critical perspective, when we encounter the humble scene change, we ought to start considering this seemingly unremarkable feature of the stage as something that might alter more than just the props or signified location – as something that has the power to truly change and shape the situation being presented.

No Place Like Home

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

In the immortal, celluloid-enshrined words of a ruby-slipper-tapping Dorothy, there’s no place like home. Or at least, even if our birthplace is somewhere from which we run kicking and screaming at the first opportunity, the place we come from inevitably shapes and defines us in some way, as do all the other places we subsequently call home.

So what does our local theatre say about us or about the community it is born from? Growing up in something of a cultural grey zone whose sole theatrical offerings seemed to be incessant tours of Grease and the obligatory ABBA sing-along, my loyalties as a theatregoer were aligned to London almost by default. It is a city I have yet to actually live in, but to which I feel inextricably bound by my connection with its culture. My personal experience, which I suspect is partly down to my hometown’s relative proximity to the huge variety of theatre available in the capital, is thankfully not indicative of the state of regional theatre on the whole. But even in areas with a thriving theatre scene, how much of the work is really wedded to its surroundings?

There is, of course, an immediate flipside to this argument. Just as the dearth of roles for women is not necessarily addressed by female writers, who are often wary of confining themselves to female experience for fear of being shoved in the box labelled “feminist playwright” and never allowed back out, regionality can be shunned by artists operating outside the capital. “Regional” is a tag that risks being used to imply something limited, something insular and blinkered, perhaps even something quaintly pastoral. As Daniel Bye’s column about Northern Stage at St Stephen’s suggested, it is easy for a national theatre culture still largely centred on London to pinpoint regionality as a basis for criticism.

What Bye also proposed, however, is that we should ultimately be proud of where our theatre comes from. In his words, the programme at St Stephen’s was “marinated in its distance from the cultural centre”; whether consciously “regional” or not, work made away from London is inevitably coloured by the site of its origin, as much as London-based theatre is arguably lent a certain quality by its position in the capital. So why are we reluctant to celebrate these regional differences?

As with anything, there are startling exceptions to the picture of regional theatre that I have – admittedly very roughly – begun to sketch above. Chris Goode’s 9, for instance, programmed at the West Yorkshire Playhouse as part of the Transform Festival earlier this year, worked with local people to create a series of solo performances, crafting a piece of theatre fused to its place of origin through tangible human links. Remaining in Yorkshire, Invisible Flock’s Bring the Happy chose to investigate the concept of happiness through the very specific focus of Leeds, while their current project Sand Pilotexplores an equally specific relationship with the natural environment in Morcambe Bay. In a slightly different approach to regionality, Joel Horwood’s I ❤ Peterborough was commissioned by Eastern Angles with the brief of responding to the city of its title, a place referred to by the Arts Council as a “cultural cold spot”.

Many other examples could doubtless be cited, but what British theatres often lack is a truly regional aspect to their overall programming. Compared with the system in Germany, for example, where the dramaturgy departments of individual institutions set themes for each season based on a mix of wider social issues and subjects of particular local resonance, the UK model makes a striking contrast. Thanks to the touring structure, London is frequently either the source or the desired end point for work, generating an influx of shows geared towards the capital and casually indifferent to their location. When people complain that the theatre on offer in their local area has no relevance to them, it is easy to appreciate this perspective.

A couple of weeks ago, Lyn Gardner bravely lit the touchpaper in the ever fiery arts funding debate by suggesting that subsidy should be channelled away from major institutions and instead invested into “the bottom of the pyramid”. While this takes us into complex and thorny territory, one vital point that Gardner makes is about the participatory nature of the arts. As she stresses, for those who end up working in this industry, nearly all have found their initial point of entry through involvement of some kind, often no doubt through their local institution.

If such institutions were more attuned to their surrounding area, maybe more of those “ghost” artists that Gardner writes about would recognise the relevance of theatre to them and be able to realise their potential. A more local focus might also enable the feeding of funds into the grassroots, supporting emerging artists in the immediate region in a way that could allow major organisations and smaller companies to happily and productively co-exist.

To distil a piece of theatre down to any one element is of course reductive, ignoring the myriad influences that help to shape it. But to pursue the opposite extreme and discount location entirely is to also ignore something, something beautiful and idiosyncratic and married with a sense of community that is all too often missing from our theatres. As new artistic director Roxana Silbert’s spearheading of Birmingham REP’s centenary season recognises, theatres and artists have a vital role in serving their communities, be that through responsive programming or local engagement. And through this engagement maybe, just maybe, they can secure themselves an integral place for the future.

Fractured Narratives

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

As theatre implicitly recognises, our experiences in life are typically defined by the stories we tell after the event. The heightened experience of the Edinburgh Fringe is no different, from the startling encounter in the street to the performance that stole a little bit of your heart, or even just the slurred poetry of intense discussions in the early hours. We package our experiences in small, select slices, reassembled into a mangled but recognisable version of reality.

Perhaps this is why, as we pack away our deflated enthusiasm and file that inevitable late copy between jolting sips of lukewarm East Coast Trains tea, it becomes obligatory to overlay the mad anti-narrative of the fringe with some grand, overarching tale of political or artistic significance. The annual Edinburgh round-ups are scrawled over with trends and a theme inexplicably emerges from the shapeless nebula. Even coffee-fuelled discussions with fellow theatregoers and makers gradually, almost subconsciously slip into comparisons of what the work we have seen is “about” and how it interconnects.

Of course, no piece of theatre exists in a vacuum. Threads can be traced and there is a wider context in which all work sits, comfortably or otherwise. Context is particularly significant to a festival which has itself played host to smaller festivals, miniature curated or partially curated seasons that have carved out shapes within the amorphous whole: Northern Stage at St Stephen’s, Escalator East to Edinburgh, Old Vic New Voices and, arguably, the impressive, internationally-flavoured programme at Summerhall. Each of these programmes has had a distinct identity that has coloured its work – a narrative of sorts.

Yet the kinds of narratives we find ourselves imposing on our festival experiences are unavoidably subjective and essentially arbitrary. As an exercise, one might pluck a theme out of the air, sit down with the now dog-eared fringe guide and quickly circle a generous clutch of shows fitting the bill. Political protest, sexual politics, athletic prowess, urban decay, environmental disaster, eating disorders, the riots, childhood, adulthood, life, death, zombie apocalypse. Take your pick and build your story.

So I could insist on the triumphant glow cast by the Olympics on theatrical stories of sporting achievement, or point to numerous damning indictments of modern politics. I could even make an irritatingly ironic point by dreaming up a ridiculously idiosyncratic theme and using it to battle a pathway through the dense jungle of the fringe. But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll surrender to subjectivity in another way by falling back on one particular show at this year’s fringe which neatly illustrates my point. What I Heard About the World, a collaboration between Third Angel, mala voadora and Chris Thorpe, is all about stories, employing these as a way to understand the world around us. Gathered from the far corners of the globe, their odd little fragments of narrative are both amusing and revealing, but what the show is always aware of is its incompleteness. Any story it constructs from its many splinters of smaller stories must be limited and selective. A similar point was made by Thorpe’s serving up of exotic tales at Hunt and Darton cafe; you place your order and you taste the dish of your choosing.

If the Edinburgh Fringe could be distilled into any written structure, it would be a sprawling, web-like poem, replete with spiralling references and veering tangents; probably written by T.S. Eliot, with annotations by Roald Dahl. It has stories, sure – it’s overflowing with them. But the beauty of the experience lies in its messy, democratic multiplicity, its stubborn resistance against the narratives that we insist on vainly saddling it with. There is no overarching story, but we still have the stories that each of us tell.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

Six days, countless cups of tea and two free mojitos into my first fringe, it might be a tad early to start making any valuable observations about the small phenomenon that gobbles up Edinburgh for a few weeks every summer. One thing that is difficult to ignore, however, is the small army of reviewers who colonise the place, stamping our presence with ratings and pull-quotes as fast as they can be frantically stapled onto flyers. An exploded version of the national theatre ecosystem, the fringe is a beast that is fed and bloated by the star system.

So it feels strange to be sitting in a room, in Edinburgh, questioning what this is all in aid of. I’m at St Stephen’s, the theatrical haven crafted by Northern Stage within the stonework of the old church, participating in something of an experiment. This is the first excursion of Dialogue, Maddy Costa and Jake Orr’s project to cultivate and curate discussions between critics and theatremakers. Making a change from the endless tapping at my laptop keyboard, I’m here not to write but to talk.

The loose theme of the morning is the things that we, as critics or as theatremakers, don’t tell one another. While the discussions open in a fairly free-form structure, with individuals posing questions about preparation, objectivity and expertise, this later moves into a series of provocations. In a striking display of honesty, Maddy and Unfolding Theatre’s artistic director Annie Rigby each write down and then read aloud the statements that they don’t talk about, statements that I’m forced to hastily read before running off early to get to a show, but that stick to me like barbs.

Despite emerging from the artist’s perspective, many of Annie’s points strike potently at my own concerns about how I approach and write about theatre. They speak not of anger or antagonism, but of an aching disappointment that we don’t do this better.

“How long do you spend writing a review? How soon after a show do you write it? Are you happy with this?”

“Can we make some space to talk about what you got right and wrong? Like, if you could rewrite one review, what would it be?”

“I’m giving your review 3 stars. Don’t be disheartened. 3 stars is a good review.”

“I know you’ve got a word limit, but now we’re together it would be great to talk about that sentence you wrote.”

But the statement that lodged itself most firmly in my mind was Maddy’s: “it’s not you, it’s me”. Much as it made me laugh, this also seemed to me like a bold and stark unveiling of a widely accepted lie within criticism, an extension of the fallacy of objectivity that I found myself speaking about earlier in the morning. Because sometimes, amongst all the other unacknowledged baggage that finds its way into the auditorium, a critic just isn’t in the right frame of mind to productively respond to a certain piece of theatre.

In Edinburgh this, as with everything else, is heightened. Schedules are tighter, word limits are shorter, synapses are more impaired. With perhaps as little as an hour to wrench out a review and slap on a star-rating, carefully considered analysis begins to lose its foothold. More and more superfluous stuff finds its way into the performance space: fatigue, an awareness of where to rush off to next, a creeping dread of the mounting backlog. It’s not a popular admission to make, despite the evidence of the voluminous bags under our eyes, but sometimes we’re just tired. It’s not the fault of the work, it’s a simple fact.

One of the few certainties that I do have at this early interlude in my fringe experience is a hopeless, head-over-heels, bad-poetry-writing love for the intense, bubble-like intimacy of Edinburgh at this time of the year. I love bumping into people I know, having the conversations about theatre that we usually put off, stumbling into real-life, in-depth discussions with people who I usually only engage with in bite-sized snippets of electronic communication. All of this I adore. It is only the writing, or rather my own writing and its occasional rushed inadequacy, that I am in danger of falling a little out of love with.

So there we are. It’s not you, it’s me. But I’m not ready to give up on this particular relationship just yet. Perhaps we can take a break, or maybe we can still be friends. Perhaps, as I felt in that room at St Stephen’s smashing down barriers and facing difficult truths, we can even start over.