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.

Sunday Sun

The inestimable Daniel Bryne (The Guardian's own Keyser Soze) has drawn my attention to this delightful way of wasting my time.

1. Put your iTunes/ music player on Shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER WHAT

1. If someone says ‘Is this OK?’ you say?
Spec Bebop – Yo La Tengo
Turns out I'm actually Robin Williams' Mork

2. What would best describe your personality?
Seventeen – Forward Russia
Seventeen was, as I believe someone else once said, a very good year, I'd like to think I'd moved on just a tad in the intervening *mumble* years...

3. What do you like in a girl?
It's the Sun - Polyphonic Spree
Someone radiant? Someone gaseous?

4. How do you feel today?
Teenage Labotomy - The Ramones
No comment.

5. What is your life’s purpose?
Evil Bee - Menomena
Absolutely.

6. What is your motto?
Cello Song - Nick Drake
A little unecessarily ambiguous methinks...

7. What do your friends think of you?
A Cautionary Song - The Decemberists
"I knew this one guy... went into theatre... last someone heard of him he was scavenging for out of date readymeals behind a Tesco in Tooting Broadway"

8. What do you think of your parents?
The Water - Feist
I have nothing for this.

9. What do you think about very often?
From Here to Fame - Aim
Ha. Nary a truer word said in meme.

10. What does 2+2=?
Easier - Grizzly Bear
Oh yes.

11. What do you think of your best friend?
Remember Me as a Time of Day - Explosions in the Sky
If he were a time of day, he'd probably be about seven thirty. Don't look for meaning in that.

12. What do you think of the person you like?
The Beatles - Devendra Banhart
Baby you can drive my car? Anyone? Bueller?

13. What is your life story?
A Night at the Hip Hopera - The Kleptones
Boom!

14. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Domine Jesu - Mozart
Wow.

15. What do you think when you see the person you like?
On Your Way - The Album Leaf
Whose on their way? Her or me?

16. What do your parents think of you?
Fireworks - The Animal Collective
Disapointing and expensive.

17. What will you dance to at your wedding?
Fight! - Art Brut
It's going to be a good one...

18. What will they play at your funeral?
Sweet and Dandy - Toots and the Maytals
Now that would be a funeral.

19. What is your hobby/interest?
Shankill Butchers - The Decemberists
That's right, when I'm not writing for the Guardian or working for a popular London theatre, I torture and murder catholics to take the edge off.

20. What is your biggest secret?
Another Day - Air
Well aren't I just a tease...

21. What do you think of your friends?
In My Life - The Beatles
Ah. Well that's just lovely.

22. What should you post this as?
Sunday Sun - Beck

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...