When I was younger I never went to the theatre. We were more of the Clint Eastwood Thriller on a Sunday night kind of a family. Not that I'm scorning this - there's nothing I love more than a gratuitous overdose of CSI of an evening... there's something comforting about naked exposition, the feeling of pure undiluted plot coursing through your veins.
When I started at University I knew almost nothing. I would sit for an unsociable number of hours in the Drama section of James Thin attempting to read plays and invariably failing to find anything that could hold me for longer than a handful of pages. I must've read the first page of almost every canonical drama text there is. I am the undisputed Michael Billington of openings. Yet I felt no closer to knowing anything. I had all of this unchannelled enthusiasm and nowhere to put it.
And then, as a wide eyed first year who looked closer to 14 than 18, I was lucky enough to get cast in a play called Like Skinnydipping by a guy called Chris Perkin. And with this play, we went to the National Student Drama Festival. And undoubtedly, nothing (no play, no performance, no person, no opportunity) has had more of an effect on me than that festival.
Simply being surrounded by this bubbling, intoxicating enthusiasm was incredible. Surrounded by people desperate to learn, desperate to prove themselves. Young people in love with theatre. How exciting is that?
Not all of the shows were great. In fact some were awful. But others were still some of the most memorable shows I've seen. I remember a company called Deer Park from Dartington who did a beautiful, haunting piece with nothing but several potted plants a handful of school uniforms - a melodic, lyrical mesmerising show. We left the theatre and could barely speak for the next half an hour. I remember a show called the Freudian Slip (by a company that have now become Pegabovine) - still one of the wittiest, most surreal and brilliant comic shows I've ever seen. I remember a production of Enda Walsh's Bedbound, that was evisceratingly painful to watch, in the best possible way. I remember seeing all these things and being staggered, astounded by what theatre could be.
But the festival is so much more than its programming. There was a workshop in which Richard Hurst manage to somehow make me humiliatingly aware that I am utterly incapable of working with actors. There was a magazine, written daily by a pale faced, underslept battalion of inspired writers. A totally open forum in which anyone could drop in and write something, which has spawned some of the best young writers around.
And then I remember being introduced to Mark Ravenhill in the bar, to vomitting questions on this playwright who I'd heard of but who's work I had never seen. Asking him how he got to know plays, what should I read, what should I do? I remember talking to him for almost an hour. Him recommending to me Howard Barker, who's play Victory was the first major show I directed and who's inspiring writings I devoured throughout the rest of university and ended up writing my dissertation on.
I remember the spirit of the place. I remember how perfect a location Scarborough was. It's own intimate melting pot, a quiet seaside town suddenly infused with faintly drunken excitement.
And I know that the place has had the same effect on dozens of other people. And that thousands of the people creating work today do so as a direct consequence of having a chance to partake in this joyous week-long experience on the Yorkshire coast.
And now Yorkshire Arts Council have withdrawn its funding, choosing to focus on regional producing houses and companies. And I cannot stress how bad a decision I think this is. In an industry where people are constantly talking about the need to get young people involved, to interest young people, to make theatre relevent and exciting. Nowhere does this better than NSDF, nowhere is as challenging and exciting and enlightening for the next generation of theatre makers. And there are few better services for Scarborough than the bevvy of theatre makers, and school groups and press that descend on the town for a week in the Spring.
So please do sign the petition set up to help protest this decision, which must be done before 15th January.
Showing posts with label Alex Ferguson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alex Ferguson. Show all posts
Dec 14, 2007
Dec 11, 2007
2007 (Part The First)
Well, that's it then. We've scrambled another year onwards, almost all accounted for.
As much as I agree with Andrew that it's been a year stuffed with an exhilarating, exhausting series of conversations, arguments and, well, some actual theatre, I can't help feeling that the suggestion that we've solved everything and have run out of things to talk about is somewhat premature.
There's surely plenty of thinking and talking needed to be done, for example, on the relationship between the mainstream and the, umm, not-mainstream (upstream, alternative, experimental... pay your money and take your choice). Only today Brian Logan has an interesting article up at the Guardian about another fractured attempt at amalgamating alternatives modes of practise into the turgid British theatrical tradition. And I'm sure that anyone reading this is already aware of Chris Goode's fascinating ramble on the means by which the adherents of that same tradition are already peeling the skin off experimental theatre and draping themselves in it like a grotesque theatrical version of Silence of the Lambs (an idea that, surprisingly, no one at Tristan Baker has come up with... yet).
Indeed, just today in his round-up of the theatrical year Michael Billington reiterated his spurious claim that the only thing experiemental theatre was missing was a decent playwright. Chris has already aptly demonstrated the ways in which this assertion misses the fundamentals of alternative theatrical forms, taking its aesthetic to be its essence. Fixated on the hip location or the dazzling technology you miss the unpredictability, the intimacy, the risk, the authentic sense of participation that is what absolutely constitutes exciting experimental theatre. When Billington cites Complicite's clinical and uninspiring A Disappearing Number as a sign of the proper way that mainstream theatre can diversify, you know that there's a long way to go.
Yet although we (or indeed Chris) may have thoroughly dissected this problematic appropriation, surely this conversation is only half-done. Where do we go from here? How do we forge a more meaningful relationship between mainstream and the 'upstream'? How can the Royal Court or the National or the RSC accomodate ways of working that are incompatible with their complex technical apparatus and their play-making philosophy?
Indeed, should they? There's a piece I still mean to write about a localness that is missing from a theatre world that is still built around events; can any theatre that is as singularly located claim to be a National Theatre? Rather than worrying about the quality of this particular show or that, should we not instead be building a localised theatre, a dispersed series of events and happenings, that does not pretend to the universal but is instead focused on its immediate context and its individual participants?
And while we're on it, let's talk a little about the internet's favourite pinata, Mr Michael Billington. Surely a lot of the frustration vented at this generous and passionate elder statesmen is a product of the fact that somewhat stupefyingly he is still in the forefront of forging the theatrical agenda after 30 years in the same job. His attitude to what theatre can or should be, relatively unchanged after everything that has happened to the world (the internet, the end of the cold war, the rise of postmodernism, 9/11, the continued existence of Simon Cowell) in the intervening years, is still the orthodoxy in theatre. And as we're well aware, he's not the only one. So while our tiny internet pot may be bubbling over with exciting new ideas, its hardly like we're forging a brave new world quite yet.
One of the things I have enjoyed so much about writing for the Guardian is that it has required me to go back and repeatedly explain, justify and underline those points of presumed knowledge that are essentially givens in our online discourse. Because for all that our little community forges an exciting collective theatrical vision (primarily by enthusiastically agreeing with each other), it's not necessarily having that much impact on the wider theatre community yet. I know from personal experience that some artists are beginning to be informed by the subjects thrown about on the internet, but what of the Dominic Cookes and the Nick Hytners - are they avid readers?
What is the relationship between theatre and criticism anyway - there's a chicken and an egg really should throw together for a while. Especially as one thing the internet riotously does is blur the boundaries between the two - how many of those who so passionately write about what they feel theatre should be are at the same time creating (either writing or directing or, very often, both) their own work? The majority, I'd say.
The Guardian website is a fascinating entity in all this. There's now a wee bevvy of wonderfully talented people writing there and already it's surely beginning to challenge the orthodoxy suggested above - if only in that for every painfully inevitable Billington tirade, Lyn G is able to provide a refreshing counter narrative to absolutely cheer.
How though might we take this further? And if, as Andrew suggests, we are already running out of topics for your typical several hundred word blog post how might we begin to forge a more dynamic dialogue in the infinite spaces of the internet? If the internet is the future of theatre criticism, we who are here in the early days have an opportunity to try and construct that criticism as something meaningful and radical and new - but what and how?
I've enjoyed immensly reading everything that has been written over the past 12 months. I've been exhilerated, challenged, confused. I've felt jealous, awed and faintly inadequate in equal measure. And I'm undoubtedly looking forward to what happens in the 2008.
Coming up in part II later this week I'll try and write a little about some of the actual theatre that I've seen and enjoyed this year along with music/films and other such cultural bric-a-brac.
As much as I agree with Andrew that it's been a year stuffed with an exhilarating, exhausting series of conversations, arguments and, well, some actual theatre, I can't help feeling that the suggestion that we've solved everything and have run out of things to talk about is somewhat premature.
There's surely plenty of thinking and talking needed to be done, for example, on the relationship between the mainstream and the, umm, not-mainstream (upstream, alternative, experimental... pay your money and take your choice). Only today Brian Logan has an interesting article up at the Guardian about another fractured attempt at amalgamating alternatives modes of practise into the turgid British theatrical tradition. And I'm sure that anyone reading this is already aware of Chris Goode's fascinating ramble on the means by which the adherents of that same tradition are already peeling the skin off experimental theatre and draping themselves in it like a grotesque theatrical version of Silence of the Lambs (an idea that, surprisingly, no one at Tristan Baker has come up with... yet).
Indeed, just today in his round-up of the theatrical year Michael Billington reiterated his spurious claim that the only thing experiemental theatre was missing was a decent playwright. Chris has already aptly demonstrated the ways in which this assertion misses the fundamentals of alternative theatrical forms, taking its aesthetic to be its essence. Fixated on the hip location or the dazzling technology you miss the unpredictability, the intimacy, the risk, the authentic sense of participation that is what absolutely constitutes exciting experimental theatre. When Billington cites Complicite's clinical and uninspiring A Disappearing Number as a sign of the proper way that mainstream theatre can diversify, you know that there's a long way to go.
Yet although we (or indeed Chris) may have thoroughly dissected this problematic appropriation, surely this conversation is only half-done. Where do we go from here? How do we forge a more meaningful relationship between mainstream and the 'upstream'? How can the Royal Court or the National or the RSC accomodate ways of working that are incompatible with their complex technical apparatus and their play-making philosophy?
Indeed, should they? There's a piece I still mean to write about a localness that is missing from a theatre world that is still built around events; can any theatre that is as singularly located claim to be a National Theatre? Rather than worrying about the quality of this particular show or that, should we not instead be building a localised theatre, a dispersed series of events and happenings, that does not pretend to the universal but is instead focused on its immediate context and its individual participants?
And while we're on it, let's talk a little about the internet's favourite pinata, Mr Michael Billington. Surely a lot of the frustration vented at this generous and passionate elder statesmen is a product of the fact that somewhat stupefyingly he is still in the forefront of forging the theatrical agenda after 30 years in the same job. His attitude to what theatre can or should be, relatively unchanged after everything that has happened to the world (the internet, the end of the cold war, the rise of postmodernism, 9/11, the continued existence of Simon Cowell) in the intervening years, is still the orthodoxy in theatre. And as we're well aware, he's not the only one. So while our tiny internet pot may be bubbling over with exciting new ideas, its hardly like we're forging a brave new world quite yet.
One of the things I have enjoyed so much about writing for the Guardian is that it has required me to go back and repeatedly explain, justify and underline those points of presumed knowledge that are essentially givens in our online discourse. Because for all that our little community forges an exciting collective theatrical vision (primarily by enthusiastically agreeing with each other), it's not necessarily having that much impact on the wider theatre community yet. I know from personal experience that some artists are beginning to be informed by the subjects thrown about on the internet, but what of the Dominic Cookes and the Nick Hytners - are they avid readers?
What is the relationship between theatre and criticism anyway - there's a chicken and an egg really should throw together for a while. Especially as one thing the internet riotously does is blur the boundaries between the two - how many of those who so passionately write about what they feel theatre should be are at the same time creating (either writing or directing or, very often, both) their own work? The majority, I'd say.
The Guardian website is a fascinating entity in all this. There's now a wee bevvy of wonderfully talented people writing there and already it's surely beginning to challenge the orthodoxy suggested above - if only in that for every painfully inevitable Billington tirade, Lyn G is able to provide a refreshing counter narrative to absolutely cheer.
How though might we take this further? And if, as Andrew suggests, we are already running out of topics for your typical several hundred word blog post how might we begin to forge a more dynamic dialogue in the infinite spaces of the internet? If the internet is the future of theatre criticism, we who are here in the early days have an opportunity to try and construct that criticism as something meaningful and radical and new - but what and how?
I've enjoyed immensly reading everything that has been written over the past 12 months. I've been exhilerated, challenged, confused. I've felt jealous, awed and faintly inadequate in equal measure. And I'm undoubtedly looking forward to what happens in the 2008.
Coming up in part II later this week I'll try and write a little about some of the actual theatre that I've seen and enjoyed this year along with music/films and other such cultural bric-a-brac.
Nov 14, 2007
Guardian Blog
I've got a new post up at the Guardian's website, which, as Alison has identified, is a pretty exciting place at the moment.
This one's about the length of shows and builds, to some degree, on the things that Dan Bye and Alex F had to say about Sport back here. Personally, my dream is still to get hold of a remote island somewhere (possibly somewhere like the delightfully remote Colonsay off the coast of West Scotland) and for three months or so have a theatrical event of some kind taking place, part instalation, part interactive experience, part festival that people could arrive at and stay for as long as they like, becoming as much or as little a part of the experience as they wanted.
The whole thing would be based around the marvellously doomed attempts of various utopian thinkers to found their own perfect communities - at once both an incredibly long show about these gloriously hopeless, magnificently naive utopias and (in some small way) a little society of its own, growing its own rules out of the infinite possibilities of theatre. Well, that's the theory at any rate - though, Lord of the Flies II is always a possibility...
This one's about the length of shows and builds, to some degree, on the things that Dan Bye and Alex F had to say about Sport back here. Personally, my dream is still to get hold of a remote island somewhere (possibly somewhere like the delightfully remote Colonsay off the coast of West Scotland) and for three months or so have a theatrical event of some kind taking place, part instalation, part interactive experience, part festival that people could arrive at and stay for as long as they like, becoming as much or as little a part of the experience as they wanted.
The whole thing would be based around the marvellously doomed attempts of various utopian thinkers to found their own perfect communities - at once both an incredibly long show about these gloriously hopeless, magnificently naive utopias and (in some small way) a little society of its own, growing its own rules out of the infinite possibilities of theatre. Well, that's the theory at any rate - though, Lord of the Flies II is always a possibility...
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