tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49998364472193162632023-11-15T23:16:11.102-08:00...Persons Unknown......theatre...art...directing...performing...writing...walks about thoughts about cities...cultural meanderings...bad jokes...radical possibilities...critical thought...thoughts about thoughtless critics...a profound sense that the way things are just isn't good enough...desire searching for form...hope...words...alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-83852167809391038732011-11-24T01:03:00.000-08:002011-11-24T02:34:14.387-08:00Timeline: who said what about Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed ForcesMy friend <a href="http://www.twitter.com/khalidabdalla">Khalid Abdalla</a> has asked if people can put together what Western leaders have said about and how they have supported SCAF (Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) and its head, Field Marshal Tantawi. So let's crowdsource it. We're looking particularly for statements by David Cameron, William Hague, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and other US and UK politcians. If you find something, put it in the comments, along with a date for it and a link to the source and I'll add it here. If I've missed out significant events then please let me know as well.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Jan 25 EVENT - Start of the January 25 Revolution</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Feb 11 EVENT - Hosni Mubarak resigns as president, handing over power to SCAF.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Oct 9 EVENT <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/Mosireen#p/u/8/00t-0NEwc3E">The Maspero Massacre</a> (warning - very graphic video)</span><br />
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Oct 10 "The President is deeply concerned about the violence in Egypt that has led to a tragic loss of life among demonstrators and security forces. The United States expresses our condolences to the families and loved ones of all who were killed or injured, and stands with the Egyptian people in this painful and difficult time. Now is a time for restraint on all sides so that Egyptians can move forward together to forge a strong and united Egypt. As the Egyptian people shape their future, the United States continues to believe that the rights of minorities - including Copts - must be respected, and that all people have the universal rights of peaceful protest and religious freedom. We also note Prime Minister Sharaf's call for an investigation and appeal to all parties to refrain from violence. These tragic events should not stand in the way of timely elections and a continued transition to democracy that is peaceful, just and inclusive." - White House Press Secretary - <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/10/statement-press-secretary-violence-egypt">http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/10/statement-press-secretary-violence-egypt</a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nov 9 Hillary Clinton hails SCAF as the establishment of "stability and continuity in Egypt" - <a href="http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Story.aspx?sid=58852">link </a>- can someone find a full text of this speech?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nov 14?? "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">If, over time, the most powerful political force in Egypt remains a roomful of unelected officials, they will have planted the seeds for future unrest, and Egyptians will have missed a historic opportunity" Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/world/middleeast/us-warns-egypt-as-military-stalls-transition.html?_r=1&hp">more</a></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nov 19 start of the Nov 19 uprising</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nov 22 "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">We are deeply concerned about the violence. The violence is deplorable. We call for restraint – we call on all sides to exercise restraint. We think it's very important that the elections go forward.</span></span><br />
<div style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 13px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The violence needs to stop. The Egyptians need to be able to decide their future and decide it in a peaceful manner." - spokesman for Obama <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/22/americas-egypt-dilemma-support-reform?INTCMP=SRCH">more</a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Nov 23 "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">We condemn the excessive force used by the police. We strongly urge the Egyptian government to exercise maximum restraint, to discipline its forces and to protect the universal rights of all Egyptians to peacefully express themselves." </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for US State Dept <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/23/us-egypt-military-rulers-protesters?INTCMP=SRCH">more</a></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">NOTE: this is not a thread for discussing what's going on in Egypt. There are plenty of places to do that. Comments not containing information that we can add will be deleted.</span>alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-88557570848582778552008-07-02T05:04:00.000-07:002008-07-03T02:57:21.285-07:00Black Watch, Barbican<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Just for old times' sake, like...<br /><br />let's talk about a play.<br /><br />Black Watch, eh?<br /><br />This was jolly good, wasn't it? Black Watch is the story of a group of Scottish soldiers serving in the Black Watch regiment in <st1:country-region st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, recounting their time <st1:country-region st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, encountering a playwright who wants to make a play out of their time in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>. It's told through song and movement, as well as dialogue. That's it. Simple.<br /><br />A few thoughts that seem worth thinking:<br /><br />Dramaturgically, this is in no way a well made play - many of its devices are almost clunkingly obvious, but that doesn't stop it being very fucking good. We set too much store by subtlety, mistaking it for profundity or complexity. There is a passage in which one of the soldiers recounts the history of the regiment as he's dressed in the various uniforms of its history. It is straightforwardly didactic - but that doesn't make it any the less dramatic - it simply transfers the site of the drama from individual personal conflict to the movement of a group through history and the relationship of an individual <i>now</i> with that history. (It's predecessor here is Peter Brook's <i><st1:country-region st="on">US</st1:country-region></i>, in which the history of the nation of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Vietnam</st1:place></st1:country-region> was dramatised through the body of two performers). Didacticism has a bad press, perhaps in part, becuase too few artists have very much worth telling. Gregory Burke has plenty to tell us here, as do the soldiers who have served out there. In a sense, story<i>telling</i> is the most didactic of forms.<br /><br />So, this simple, clear, often direct approach should not be confused with a lack of sophistication, nor should it be any impediment to considering Black Watch (or any other theatre that employs it) as anything other than fully theatre, fully art. There's too much about the show to exhaustively list its qualities or fully analyse every element, but an aside might let us into its world a little: while this is clearly not where its value lies, it points towards both the folly and the value of criticism. The former is that as theatre approaches its most theatrical, its most artistic, it also approaches its most incomprehensible, its most unrepeatable. What hope for the critic in the face of beauty which renders you speechless, of horror which chokes the words with which you might respond even before they form in the brain?<br /><br />This is not simply a case of being insufficiently articulate, though here we find much to be insufficiently articulate about. It is that the moment we aspire to record, to comment upon, to critique, defies description and re-presentation. It is, in essence, beyond even comprehension, since comprehension can only come after the experience, the moment, itself. The experience occurs outside of comprehension, is changed by our inevitable attempts to comprehend. It's too obvious to say that we can never fully comprehend, but perhaps when we think we understand even a little we are kidding ourselves, reducing action to signification as though drama can be read like a code.<br /><br />There is a striking moment - the soldiers at the heart of the play, who we have already seen being variously boisterous, loud, crass, playful, scared, angry, recieve letters from their loved ones. One by one they read them, drop them, and, perhaps by way of reply, they perform a simple series of sign-language gestures, many of which, but not all, are obvious enough for us understand; we pick out that they are saying "I love you" and maybe a few other words and phrases. So here we have gesture as purely codified language, and yet gesture is never simply purely codified language, any more than saying a word is simply conveying the meaning of that word. The effect is hypnotic, beautiful, but above all, it speaks of a world beyond the play, beyond here and now - a whole world of desire and ache. It demands a response, but like all truly electric moments of theatre, the only response we can muster is silence.<br /><br />So we rely on more inadequate words. Many reviews have mentioned this moment. None of them have captured it. None can, of course. What do you do with it? Try to captur<span id="__firefox-findbar-search-id" style="font-size:inherit;">e some of its poetry <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre/reviews/black-watch-barbican-london-854183.html">in your description</a>? Describe, rather than the moment, your confused thoughts about why physical theatre is <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/arts/2008/06/26/btblack126.xml">"mystifying" and "embarassing"</a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/arts/2008/06/26/btblack126.xml"><url=http: uk="" arts="" view="details&grid=&xml=/arts/2008/06/26/btblack126.xml"></url=http:></a> and in so doing tell us nothing about the play and everything about yourself? <a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article4213529.ece">Tell us you liked it</a>?. Offer an interpretive gloss? - it is too easy to resort to cliche and say that here we are being shown the sensitive side of these hard men. Perhaps we should retreat to the banality of judgement and weigh out our praise; for the acting which is never less than supremely focussed, always absolutely and terrifyingly in the here and now; for the movement which combines a visceral masculine force with a delicate, vulnerable grace; for the choreography which wrenches time out of joint, drawing the whole of the meaning and more out of moments which could so easily pass in a flash of intensity; for the direction which never misses a trick nor a beat, which time and again jolts you out of complacency with a surge of violence, or discovers tenderness and humanity in the midst of horror; for the music, which seems to carry the weight of all history with it in the arrangements of traditional regimental songs punctuating and accentuating the action. And so on.<br /><br />But even as we find ourselves at the moment of the inevitable failure of criticism, of response, perhaps its here we find its value. It's understandable to stand open mouthed (or perhaps to scream with rage or sigh with boredom) in the face of theatre. But it's not enough. It lets us no deeper into the moment, nor any deeper into ourselves. If we are to value something we should at least understand a little of what its value is.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span id="__firefox-findbar-search-id" style="font-size:inherit;">We need to note that, yes the applause here is for the actors, the production and so on, but its also for the men they play who are, we now know, heros in the midst of folly. And that it is inadequate. Our response has to be inadequate. Because like all great art the question you leave with is "What do I do with that? What can I possibly do with that?" And like all good questions the answer is beyond your reach and somehow you know that if you could catch even a glimpse of it it would leave even more shattered than the show does. And life has to go on.<br /><br />So life goes on, but you are a little different and the world is a little changed.</span></p>alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-56642513394050004952008-01-28T07:23:00.000-08:002008-01-28T07:30:26.321-08:00...what have you realised today persons unknown?...why, today i realised that my beliefs on theatre criticism are not, as previous posts may have suggested, based on a a carefully thought out argument about the importance of a vivid discourse comprised of distinct, potentially antagonistic, voices which enrich the world in which the work takes place, but on having read too much <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Power">Amiga Power </a>when i was growing up.<br /><br />gosh.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-26867424563227968192008-01-27T12:33:00.000-08:002008-01-29T04:01:58.189-08:00...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXl2n0t9XrEKXSwROa3zJqUK6BQU2tk_edyREsTI5jpdOd4lAZy5-iHc9SWY4S5kbkOJ4VgxblsavH7O38U0sfqXdYQaSk1DfTjetD_aVLqrTHx-SNInq5KR1s1hZDGApLjOJ7xipQJHhl/s1600-h/2IMG_1385.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160814150408400354" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXl2n0t9XrEKXSwROa3zJqUK6BQU2tk_edyREsTI5jpdOd4lAZy5-iHc9SWY4S5kbkOJ4VgxblsavH7O38U0sfqXdYQaSk1DfTjetD_aVLqrTHx-SNInq5KR1s1hZDGApLjOJ7xipQJHhl/s400/2IMG_1385.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a 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/><div></div></div>alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-67401581642901352082008-01-09T02:33:00.000-08:002008-01-09T03:04:06.296-08:00The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Southwark PlayhouseIf the below reads a little bit more like a, y'know, proper review than you're used to round these parts, that's because, well it is. i've not mentioned on here that i've joined <a href="http://search.ft.com/search?page=1&queryText=alex+ferguson+-sir&drillDown=%2Bgatopics%3A%5E%22Music+%26+Theatre%22%24&aje=false">the dark side</a>, have i? Well, now i have. Having <a href="http://unknownpersonsunknown.blogspot.com/2007/06/theatre-criticism-objective-true.html">banged</a> on <a href="http://unknownpersonsunknown.blogspot.com/2007/08/set-it-off.html">incessantly </a>about how <a href="http://unknownpersonsunknown.blogspot.com/2007/09/that-series-on-theatre-criticism-with.html">all theatre criticism is rubbish</a>, i've been given the opportunity to put my bollocks where my mouth is (no, wait, that's not quite right), (actually, it probably is). This review got buried under the landslide of Christmas shows that blanket the theatre pages in December, so i'm putting it up here as a matter of record as much as anything else, since, sadly the show's run has finished.<br /><br />The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, Southwark Playhouse, London<br /><br />By the end of the multinational Oslo Group's fittingly icy production, the Southwark Playhouse is so cold you can see your breath. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's unflinching meditation on the destructive power of desire, best known in its 1972 film form, here receives an intelligent, stylish revival.<br /><br />Kimie Nakano and Matt Deely's spare, otherworldly design atomises the cavernous space. It is in the huge distance between its inhabitants that the drama works, in the gaps between desire and its impossible consummation. Petra, a wildly decadent fashion designer, falls in love with model Karen. At first, she stands her on a chair and assesses her, thoroughly objectifying her. But soon the power shifts; Karen is free to torment and abuse Petra in the knowledge that the further she is from the ideal Petra projects onto her, the more she lusts to possess her.<br /><br />Here love is an act of pure masochism, maintained insofar as it is unfulfilled. Anna Egseth turns in a remarkable performance as Marlene, Petra's silent, much-abused servant. An ever-present observer, hovering on the margins of the action, her every look speaks a world of self-abasing desire for her mistress.<br /><br />When David Tushingham's translation brings its despair to the surface, the gestural, expressionistic performance style heightens its poetry. As Sasha Behar's Petra disintegrates she becomes a self-dramatising whirlwind of spiked prose. But before Karen's rejection triggers her descent, it feels stilted - unremarkable speech weighted with an emphasis it does not merit.<br /><br />Yvonne McDevitt's production changes style and tone instantaneously. At times the effect, though disconcerting, is subtle and intelligent; we are jerked back from a scene of wrought emotion by upbeat beats and dancing, only to be thrust suddenly back to the cruel reality of Petra's rejected daughter's wails. At others it jars unhelpfully.<br /><br />"It's easy to feel pity. Understanding is a lot harder," Petra declares. Even as she breaks down, bitterly lashing out and descending into near madness, the production declines to work on our emotions. Instead it exerts a cold, almost intellectual fascination which nags at the mind long after the performance has ended.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-50907396190633763142008-01-03T02:29:00.001-08:002008-01-03T05:15:10.045-08:00Why are there no right-wing plays?<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=U52E13SRSL3JRQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/arts/2007/12/31/btpolitics131.xml">Again.</a><br /><br />Because you haven't fucking well written and staged them, you dumb fucks.<br /><br />That is all.<br /><br />PS - Why are there not more plays challenging the "left-liberal consensus"?<br /><br />Because, according to you, it's a fucking consensus.<br /><br />That is actually all.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-85150077400861108302007-12-13T10:23:00.000-08:002007-12-13T10:47:13.246-08:00...if you care about the future of theatre in this country, or indeed, the present of it...It seems Arts Council Yorkshire have cut their support to the <a href="http://www.nsdf.org.uk/">National Student Drama Festival</a>, declaring that they want to "refocus our investment". I just can't stress enough the extent to which there is no single thing that Arts Council Yorkshire which would be more effective in screwing up the future of theatre (and, indeed, of theatre criticism) in the UK. The Festival has until January 15th to appeal, and are putting together a petition to support the appeal.<br /><br />Go <a href="http://www.nsdfpetition.org.uk/">here </a>and sign the petition.<br /><br /><br />I'll put together a fuller post on the subject when i've managed to speak to some people at the Festival and get a bit more information about the situation and their plans. In the meantime, does anyone know enough html to put together a button that people might be able to paste into their blogs? i'm looking at you Davis Wateracre...alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-90726562662546095192007-12-04T06:25:00.000-08:002007-12-04T08:29:36.663-08:00...go there...i've just discovered a really wonderful blog: Miles Alinson's <em><a href="http://mrcurly.blogspot.com/">A Confrontation with Falling</a></em>.<br /><br />"We burn in time and produce nothing which will remain except our own disappearance. "<br /><br />from the blog.<br /><br />"Art is life remembering magic. It is being. It is activism. It is ritual and prayer. It is play. It is the first word. It is the antidote. It is futile. There is only the dull hum of air-conditioning units without it."<br /><br />from <em><a href="http://undergrowth.org/the_city_i_by_miles_allinson">The City, I</a></em><br /><br />...go confront...<br /><br />xalexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com230tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-19117797487437203382007-11-22T08:08:00.000-08:002007-11-22T08:10:18.806-08:00...does anyone speak finnish?...Cos i want to know what they're saying about the reduced michael billington <a href="http://www.aamulehti.fi/blogit/hamartia/53809.shtml">here</a>.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-1044063292004908332007-11-21T03:03:00.000-08:002007-11-23T08:53:46.506-08:00...here and now, friends, here and now (part one)...theatre is theatre and not something else because it is taking place in the here and now.<br /><br />it is a sharing of that here and now that can take us beyond that here and now.<br /><br />beyond even the wider here and now of our lives hereish and nowish.<br /><br />it is a commonsensicle cliche to say that it does so by constructing a fictional not-here and not-now.<br /><br />Distrust commonsense. And cliches.<br /><br />Beyond: what if the here and nowness of theatre is itself a fiction?<br /><br />i. HERE - WITH INNOVATIONS!<br /><br /><em>...can this cockpit hold<br />The vasty fields of France? or may we cram<br />Within this wooden O the very casques<br />That did affright the air at Agincourt?</em><br /><div align="right">Prologue, Henry V</div><br /><div align="left"><em>And this is me talking. This is really me talking to you now.</em></div><div align="right">Dad, bedbound, Enda Walsh</div><br /><div align="left"><em>There exists a place where all the contrarieties are true</em></div><div align="right">William Blake<br /></div><br />Theatre offers the promise of a "here i am" on the part of the performer that goes far beyond the "here i am" of everyday life. In a sense it embodies nothing less than a desire to say "hello", an act which asserts the hereness of both myself and yourself. This desire in itself can be seen as a reaction against the inevitable experience of disembodiment encountered when something comes forth from within us - something like the voice. My voice is mine but it's not me. It leaves me.<br /><br />Children, until they are told they shouldn't, often begin their stories with "Hello". As the voice is removed from even its origin in the body by written text, this "Hello" crystallises the pretence - the "i am not me", the "Hello. I am a lion." - of fiction which is a retreat from the self, we find a simultaneous counter-urge:<br /><br />"Hello, here I am."<br /><br />"I am a lion."<br /><br />There are drama forms in which a character's first act is to introduce himself.<br /><br /><em>Ego sum Alpha et nouissimus.<br />I am gracyus and grete, God withoutyn begynnyng,<br />I am maker vnmade, all mighte es in me;<br />I am lyfe and way vnto welth-wynnyng,<br />I am formaste and fyrste, als I byd sall it be.</em><br /><div align="right">First lines of the York Mystery Cycle<br /></div><br /><div align="left">(Hello God!)</div><br /><div align="left">There's a word for this but i can't remember it. Anyway, there's a lot of it, and to consider it unsophisticated is to miss the point that the Big Hello happens every time an actor steps into view.</div><br /><div align="left">Of course, we're not really talking to God. God isn't here. It's just an actor. "Hello God!" is a ridiculous thing to think. More so to say, because he can't hear you.</div><br /><div align="left">Oh, hang on.</div><br /><div align="left">It makes everything a lot easier if you've got an omniscient deity watching over the processes of representation which uneasily clunk around in between me and you. "Hello God!" we think and God hears even what's inaudible. "Hello" i say to you and god legitimates me and you by knowing that i'm here and you're there and he heard you hearing me and understanding me. </div><br /><div align="left">But we don't got that now, at least not at the heart of our metaphysics, so we're going to have to try again...</div><br /><div align="left">The "Here" in the "Hello, here I am" of the actor's entrance has at least two meanings. It's the here of this <em>stage here</em>, and the here of <em>not-this-stage</em>, maybe the "vasty fields of France", maybe a field with a single tree in it. To speak of the second "here" as a lie and the first as a truth is to ignore the special status of the theatre space. In other words, that first "here" enables the second. I can say "Hello, here i am. In France." And if i'm onstage, i won't get the response i will get if i say it in Tesco in Holburn: "No you're not." The audience allows it. The theatre is not a lie that tells the truth; the stage is what allows theatre to transcends the true/false binary. This is why we can talk about the "magic of theatre" - but this magic, unlike other magics, need not hide its workings. It's magical even as you see the pocket that the rabbit's kept in, even as it exposes to you its secrets.</div><br /><div align="left">But all the world's a stage ne c'est pas? Well, peut-etre, but if that's the case then where does the audience sit? For all that identity and its constituents may be a performance, they don't (always) take place in a theatre and so they don't get to bail out from the true/false party. On stage, being theatrical is mandatory. Elsewhere it's another way of saying you're being a dick. </div><br /><div align="left">Who or what gives the theatre this magical special status? A stage is not a stage because it's in a theatre, it does not need to be blessed like a temple or launched like a ship in order to come into being. </div><br /><div align="left">"You see that space there?"</div><br /><div align="left">"Yes."</div><br /><div align="left">"It's a stage."</div><br /><div align="left">"No it isn't."</div><br /><div align="left">"Well, ok, let's pretend it is."</div><br /><div align="left">Perhaps the contract between performer and audience goes no further than this: we agree on the fiction that this here is a stage.</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left"><em>update: as Paul Burgess has a really interesting piece in the same kind of area </em><a href="http://www.daedalustheatre.co.uk/"><em>here</em></a><em> (go to notebook and scroll down to november 10th)</em></div>alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-14666715094175153052007-10-05T02:06:00.000-07:002007-10-05T02:48:16.622-07:00...terminal...<strong></strong><br /><strong>ARRIVALS</strong><br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">bingbong</span></span></em><br /><br />The <a href="http://www.unknownpersonsunknown.blogspot.com/department-of-oh-for-fucks-sake.html"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">belowpromised</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">fisking</span> </a>is running late. This is partly because <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">i'm</span> trying to be all positive and sunny about things and not snarly and negative, and partly because i can't be arsed to trawl through right-wing websites to hunt down sources. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">i'm</span> sure <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">i'll</span> get round to it next time <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">i'm</span> feeling masochistic.<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">bingbong</span></span></em><br /><br />On the other hand, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">imminentish</span> is the arrival of a piece on the theatre and commodity fetishism through the prism of Brecht. And some other stuff i haven't figured out yet. persons unknown: where obscure performance theory and Marxist economics collide! i bet you can't wait...<br /><br /><strong>DEPARTURES</strong><br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">bingbong</span></span></em><br /><br /><a href="http://www.georgehunka.com/blog/">George <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Hunka</span> </a>is back. And this time he's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Redux</span>! (i can't help but hope for The Arcades Project: The Director's Cut, in which <a href="http://thearcadesproject.blogspot.com/">Andrew Field</a> gets to say what he really wanted to before the studio made him put in an explanatory <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">voiceover</span>.) This is good news! Go there! Sadly, but totally understandably, he's decided that a comments section is simply not worth the hassle anymore. Thankfully, persons unknown is flying below the radar of the kind of people who might want to ruin it for everyone else (read - has a readership of you, me and my girlfriend) and so has thus far avoided The Tragedy of The Comments.<br /><br /><span style="color:#66ffff;"><em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">bingbong</span></em></span><br /><br />Yes, that was a convoluted economics pun. Sometimes i even disappoint myself!<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">bingbong</span></span></em><br /><br />In common with <a href="http://postcardsgods.blogspot.com/">Andrew Haydon</a>, i demand that you head on over to <a href="http://iamthemovies.blogspot.com/">I Am The Movies </a>where you'll find, like, totally the best film reviews ever, and leave comments begging for more. That way Lily might write some more, and then we can all be happy.<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">bing</span>bong</span></em><br /><br />What's that? You're a fan of analytic <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">philosophy</span> mixed with jokes and argumentativeness and things about books? Well then, why not pop your <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">webhead</span> into Ed Lake's fabulous <a href="http://incorrectamundo.blogspot.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Incorrectamundo</span></a>.<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">bing</span>bong</span></em><br /><br />Also also, <a href="http://www.pessimismofintellectoptimismofwill.blogspot.com/">Dan Bye</a>, if you're reading this, we want more. Your public awaits...<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#66ffff;">bingbong</span></em><br /><br />Also also also, i've just discovered <a href="http://parachuteofaplaywright.blogspot.com/">Ben Ellis</a>. i like...alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-3734294823263993322007-10-02T07:32:00.000-07:002007-10-02T07:37:30.700-07:00Department of Oh For Fuck's Sakeor <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2181646,00.html">how the internet broke thought </a>and <a href="http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/home/?q=node/136">why won't those nasty theatre types stage plays that are mean about musslimsses</a>?<br /><br /><br /><br />the latter of which is going to be subjected to a good hard fisking when i get round to it.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-63586624330655645802007-09-28T03:27:00.000-07:002007-09-28T03:28:43.252-07:00BurmaPut <a href="http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/dirty_list/dirty_list.html">these companies </a>on your shit list.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-84424344424180734292007-09-27T05:35:00.000-07:002007-09-27T08:11:53.216-07:00...useful hints...If you're bored at work, don't just randomly click through <a href="http://www.beescope.blogspot.com/">Chris Goode's </a>Blogroll in search of something diverting and arty. Most especially, don't click through to <a href="http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/">Dennis Cooper's </a>blog. No really. Don't.<br /><br />Also, i wanted to draw all 5 of your attentions to a <a href="http://www.chickyog.net/2007/09/20/public-service-announcement">shitstorm </a>that doesn't affect theatre, but is an issue that affects <a href="http://b-heads.blogspot.com/">bloggers</a>, people who give a flying fuck about <a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/380565.html">free speech </a>and football fans (even if those most likely to be affected do support <a href="http://www.arsenal.com/">the wrong team from North London</a>). Also, <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=craig+murray&meta=">Craig Murray</a>, around whom this furore first furored, was a character in <a href="http://www.outofjoint.co.uk/prods/T2T.html">Talking To Terrorists</a>, so it's sort of on topic. And if someone shuts down all the websites, who's going to write the abovementioned <a href="http://members.aol.com/HippoPage/read_gb.htm">CG's plays for him</a>?alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-73686964775444093722007-09-17T07:48:00.000-07:002007-09-18T04:48:21.761-07:00That series on theatre criticism with an overly long title - Part 3People have been talking about reviews and criticism and the difference thereinbetween. <a href="http://pessimismofintellectoptimismofwill.blogspot.com/2007/08/reviewing-and-criticism.html">Dan Bye </a>cites <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/08/were_the_ifcomedy_judges_drunk.html">Leo Benedictus </a>in the Guardian: "A review is a practical tool designed to help people choose a show. Criticism is an attempt to describe the way a show works and analyse why it works well." (Dan, incidentally, deserves great credit for being the first person i've come accross to lay into someone for giving him a <em>good</em> review.) Ian Shuttleworth, in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6752488408086271817&postID=4309700735407402068">various </a>comments around the blogs (which i now can't find half of - please feel free to point them out or to correct me if i've misrepresented you, Ian), tentatively puts forward an alternative view, which might be sumarised as "criticism places the work within a wider social/political/historical/cultural context." Similarly, Michael Billington states that "The critic has a duty to set any play or performance in its historical context" although he does so in <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/09/who_needs_reviews.html">a piece in which he seeks to draw a distinction between the blogger and the professional critic </a>rather than criticism and reviewing.<br /><br />i don't really buy any of these distinctions. Reviews simply don't interest me, but insofar as they are conceived as guides for the consumer, they are a) rubbish, and b) dumb (although i like the idea of nipping into WH Smiths to buy a copy of What Play? magazine so that you can be told which play to go to by experts who have tested all the major brands of plays to destruction). They are dumb because it is dumb to view a piece of culture solely as a commodity to be consumed by a consumer. Of course, once culture enters the market it becomes commodity, but becoming a commodity does not stop it from existing as other things as well. Other things like art, communication, expression, performance. Similarly, when you buy a ticket you become a consumer, but you're still an audience member as well, just as you're still a biological organism which can perform complex functions like breathing without having to consciously think about them. If you weren't, you'd die.<br /><br /><br /><p>They are rubbish because any interpretive or analytical or evaluative account of a piece of art or entertainment which has a conception of art or entertainment as primarily as commodity implicit in its very raison d'etre is necessarily going to be a pretty poor account, because it will have missed the point of what entertainment or art is. Furthermore, audiences don't know what they want. This is True Fact. Even if they think they know what they want, they only know it in such a way as to make the vaguest of claims - "a show with nice songs in it", "some good physical theatre", "things that will make you laugh/cry/think". It's not quite like trying to decide whether you want a washing machine with an energy saving function, is it? When they know specifics - a show with a hollywood star in it, for example, there's no need for a reviewer to tell us that there's a hollywood star in it. </p><p>I also don't much care for the idea that criticism is distinct from reviewing because it tells you how and why things work. As a practitioner i am interested in how and why things work in the theatre. i do not go to critics to learn about that - i go to other practitioners and to teachers, who can teach me about how and why things work. As an audience member i see no reason why anyone should be any more interested in how a particular effect is achieved than they are in how the sparkplugs work in their car. </p><p>Shutters' distinction - that criticism places the work within a context (he said reductively)- is more satisfactory in that it conceives of the critic as someone who must necessarily have a sense of that wider context and so in some sense deserves their expert status. But i don't go all out for it because i believe that a piece can be great critical writing without ever placing the work in a wider context. What if the critic works inwards rather than outwards? What if they produce an account that is detailed, intelligent, passionate and witty, but fail to tick the broader context box? i still count that as criticism.</p><p>So, I'd like to propose an alternative distinction:</p><p>A review is someone saying what they think about something. It has a value of very close to nothing whatsoever on the persons unknown index of how important something is (PUIHISI). Unless the jokes are good. Someone saying what they think about something and asking you to believe it is relying soley on your perception of them as someone with expert status, someone with authority. Perhaps this is one the reasons that professional reviewers are so often keen to point out how many shows they see, as though, like someone training for the Tour de France, the more miles they have in their legs the better equiped they will be (although i'm not sure if there are any performance enhancing critical drugs on the market). The other end of the justification you often hear for this type of reviewing is that "a review is just one person's opinion." This is something that makes me angry, and there'll be a whole post on it at some point, but for now suffice to note that this is not a justification but an apology - it's effect is to reduce the value of the review as well as to disavow responsibility for it. It means it doesn't matter if what the writer writes is dumb, is biggotted, is illogical, is just plain wrong, because, after all, it's just one person's opinion. The question we might ask in response is "why on earth should anyone care about just one person's opinion? You fuck!"</p>Criticism, on the other hand, is writing in which an argument is constructed about (/around/through/with) its subject. Its value is not conferred by the supposed authority of the author, but is found in the way the writing itself engages the reader. Writing of this kind can be "critical" in all the meanings that cloud around that word (compare this to the simple second look implied by a re-view). It can also be rubbish - there is such a thing as bad criticism just as surely as there is such a thing as bad writing and bad theatre, but it is critical that writing of this kind exist, because this form of engagement with art is valuable in itself, and because it has utilitarian value - it enables to think about art in new ways. And because it's nice to have something to talk about.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-84615901130616017472007-09-13T04:18:00.000-07:002007-09-17T05:15:33.532-07:00Live Sex Show!i'm very much looking forward to <a href="http://www.toldbyanidiot.org/">Told By An Idiot</a>'s production of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Ann_Duffy">Carol Ann Duffy</a>'s <em>Casanova</em>, currently at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and soon to be at the Lyric Hammersmith. Here's <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/story/0,,2168006,00.html">an interview with the company </a>by Lyn Gardner in the Guardian.<br /><br />Cassanova is to be played by the fabulous Hayley Carmichael, who, as the more observant of you will have noticed, is a woman. Look:<a href="http://www.toldbyanidiot.org/Images/Casanova.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://www.toldbyanidiot.org/Images/Casanova.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Now, this isn't just my favourite publicity shot of the year - there's a few key things that the company say that deserve drawing out, because they have implications for how we might make and watch theatre, for the portrayal of sexuality on stage, and for people who care about gender, power and representation within the theatre (the rest of you, stop reading now. I mean it. Now!)<br /><br />Gardner reports that early versions of the play about the great lover, contained, unsurprisingly, a hell of a lot of sex. As the show developed the sex disapeared. This from the article:<br /><br /><em>"We actually copied some of the sex scenes from the Fellini movie," explains Carmichael. "But, bit by bit, the sex disappeared, because it looked ludicrous and because, even with me on top thrusting away with a man beneath me, I still somehow felt and looked like a victim."</em><br /><br />Now, obviously there's nothing wrong with making a show that doesn't have lots of sex in it - plenty of people do that all the time - and it's certainly true that very often sex on stage looks ludicrous. I'm not in any way taking issue with the decisions that the company have made. What concerns me is that, even in a production which has obviously feminist undertones, overtones, and presumably every other kind of tone on display, a woman engaging in simulated sex onstage should make the performer feel and look like a victim, even when all the obvious signifiers seem to be pointing towards her being strong and in control. Again, from the article:<br /><br /><em>[Paul Hunter, the show's director] believes that there are very few situations in either the real or literary world "where women have the licence to behave like a Casanova without having to also deal with the judgment and censure that goes with that territory". </em><br /><br /><br /><p>I find it odd that the two statements can sit so closely together with no connection made by either interviewer or -ees. I'm also puzzled by Gardner's assertion that the staging is such that "the matter of gender becomes completely irrelevant". It is hard to believe that if a man were on top thrusting away with a woman beneath him, he would feel and look like a victim. It is almost as though in the theatre here described there is a live version of the film camera's male gaze at work - perhaps an invisible lens in the space between audience and performer, and even between the performer and herself.</p><br /><p>All of this makes it seem like the stage is an aggressively male gendered space, and maybe it is. Of course, in the real world we can't fix the effects of several thousand years of patriarchy in an instant, but the theatre isn't the real world - in's much better than that, and in the theatre space we can do whatever we damn well please. But in the theatre nothing is easy. Is it a theatrical problem or a broader cultural one which also manifests itself in the theatre? Are the structures of power inscibed into the theatres themselves or is it that they are etched into the psyches of audience and actor alike? What would a women's theatre look like?</p><p>i don't really have answers to these questions - so i was wondering if you guys have anything to throw into the ring...</p>alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-90709931863739600582007-08-14T05:17:00.000-07:002007-08-28T06:17:16.286-07:00...set it off...i've been doing my best not to bite, or in fact to do anything at all, but hey ho and whaddaya know, sometimes you just can't help yourself.<br /><br />persons unknown update:<br /><br />1. persons unknown are mildy concussed, apparently. If i look confused, if this post stops making sense, or if clear liquid starts coming out my nose, please stop reading and get me to hospital straight away.<br /><br />2. persons unknown have a new job. A new job scaring people, although this currently only works on people who are easily scared. Points one and two are not unconnected. Scaring people is a dangerous business. Still, at least these days i am performing for a living. And at least i have my dignity. Oh, wait...<br /><br />3. persons unknown are very sorry they've been neglecting you - i hit the intellectual trough i predicted way back when with quite some force and have been wallowing in it since. i've had plenty to say but no belief that it was worth saying. Of course it's perfectly possible that this lack of belief has been entirely justified, and that reignition is the worst thing that could possibly happen to this blog. But to those who doubt me i say, like Tony Blair before me: History will be my judge. Lets just hope that Judge History likes bad puns and disastrous, illegal wars.<br /><br />So, my friends, lets begin again by fulfilling a promise - that whole objective true factual truth about theatre criticism shizzle - i said it was a series and a series it is - so here's part deux:<br /><br />Theatre Criticism - The true objective factual truth part two.<br /><br /><p>Wup.</p><p>Q: Theatre criticism - why should anyone give a shit?</p><p>A: Andrew Haydon admits <a href="http://postcardsgods.blogspot.com/2007/08/pre-edinburgh-preamble.html">here </a>to a moment sloughing the trough of despond at the pointlessness of it all - tv critics, he says, get to write about stuff that people care about, because tv is sometimes about stuff that people care about. Added to this, people care about tv, whereas only about three people care about theatre and they're all at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival right now watching a man tie strings to his genitalia and yank at them whilst reciting every other line from <em>A Winter's Tale</em> ('Marionette of the Penis' - i'll give you evens on it winning a fringe first next year).</p><p>Of course, as Andrew says, television can be a medium for journalism, whereas theatre very rarely is (particularly if you buy my contention that "<a href="http://unknownpersonsunknown.blogspot.com/2007/05/story-characters-and-all-that-other.html">theatre is not a medium of communication of anything other than itself</a>") - it is art or entertainment. i'd go further and say that when theatre has journalistic elements or intentions (as in the case of much verbatim theatre) the theatre critic still has to write about something that only three people really care about - it's just that she has to locate her theatrical analysis within a broader social/political culture. It says much about either my laziness or the current paucity of our reviewing culture that i am yet to read even half an analysis of the relationship between a verbatim theatre piece as <em>theatrical event </em>and the political value of that event (for either the individual audience member or the body politic). If anyone knows of one then please do point it my way.</p><p>What i'm sketching around here is that when theatre approaches social or political reality it's not very much use for anyone to describe what think of that social or political reality. Or more accurately, it's not very much use for anyone who's interested in theatre for you to do that. What needs to be articulated, even from the point of view of someone whose interest lies more in politics than theatre, is what the theatrical performance brings to the party. </p><p>Anecdotage: the first verbatim play i saw was <em>The Colour of Justice</em> - a dramatisation of an edited transcript of the <a href="http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/4262.htm">Macpherson Inquiry</a> into the police investigation of the unprovoked, racist murder of the black teenager <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Lawrence">Stephen Lawrence </a>which labelled the Metropolitan Police "institutionally racist". Now i knew and felt plenty about this already, and whilst i may have learned a little more about what actually happened, the value i took from it was certainly not primarily the acquisition of knowledge - there was also the act of a group of people, both actors and audience coming together (entertaining) as a form of protest, but most of all i understood things differently as a result of confronting those events in relation to the presence of real physical human bodies in front of me - in short, the theatricality of the event was important. In approaching the show as a piece of theatre it is unnecessary and trite to say that what happened was wrong. It is even missing the point to analyse how and why it was wrong except insofar as theatre opens up new paths of understanding of howness and whyness.</p><p>Down the untheatrical path idiocy lies. David Hare's <em>Stuff Happens </em>had a lot wrong with it (almost everything in fact). David Aaronovitch praised it for it's ambivalence:</p><p>"So ambivalent, in fact, that - with one or two fairly minor changes - you could have shown this play to an audience of intelligent Republicans and had them laughing and applauding, albeit in completely different places."</p><p>Aaronovitch, of course was a moonlighting opinion piece writer <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/politicaltheatre/story/0,,1296666,00.html">(and one of many at that), </a>but he gets the theatre all wrong here in spectacularly stupid fashion. To value a cultural event because it might be liked by some right-wing americans if it was a bit different and was happening somewhere else rather suggests that you might want to spend a bit more time in the, you know, here and now. But this is what happens when we try to look at theatre as though it's NotTheatre. On the same page Polly Toynbee, who should be more naturally a Hare sympathiser, does a much better job of understanding the play (and consequently some of its shortcomings) in theatrical terms, despite being a similarly moonlighting opinion journalist.</p><p>So, if you want to talk about issues and ideas, become an opinion journalist. Of course, Andrew knows this, and pretty much says as much. But he concludes by lamenting the fact that he is so often reminded of the "supreme irrelevance" of theatre and theatre criticism. Yes, television creates the possibility of a form of shared cultural experience on a national level, but that no more imbues it with relevance than the limited reach of a limited run renders theatre irrelevant. But i digress - this is not about why theatre is important, which you're just going to have to take as a given for the time being, because its my blog and i say so, but why theatre criticism is important.</p><p>So let's swerve back to somewhere in the region of the point. Theatre criticism matters not because it tells people what shows are worth seeing (it doesn't) or because it tells artistic directors who can't see everything who they should be hiring (it does, and this is a real problem) but because the discourse surrounding theatre affects our perception of theatre, and (and this is so key that, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostbusters">where it to meet with Zuul, it would have Marshmallows dancing down the street</a>) affects our ability to think about theatre. This is primarily of concern not to the artist, but to the audience. Reconfiguring that a little, the responsibility of the critic is to neither the artist nor the work, nor some vague and abstracted Theatre in the Capital Letters sense, but to the reader.<br /><br /><em>Note - i'm aware that this is a pretty partial response to all the issues it raises - apologies. This has been sitting in my draught folder for ages, and in the interest of getting this blog rolling again, i've decided to stop dicking around and publish it. There's much more to say on this - hopefully, at some point, i'll say it. </em></p>alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-41443006689098658312007-08-03T04:13:00.001-07:002007-08-03T06:36:39.709-07:00...pluggery...i know, i know, i'm a bad man, and i've been neglecting you, and when i return it's to plug my girlfriend's show, but hey, i've been moping. so there.<br /><br />Right, Lily has been assistant directing on <em><a href="http://www.lyric.co.uk/pl234.html">Accidental Heroes</a></em>, for the Hammersmith Lyric Young Company. It opened last night and it's great. It really is. A genuine ensemble piece about growing up, gun crime, young love and loss it communicates the by turns painful and brilliant experience of youth in a way in which the professional theatre singularly fails to do. The reason young people don't go to the theatre is that it's not like this (he generalised reductively). It's timely treatment of a tough subject, and you should see it, because it works as a piece of theatre, not just as a piece of youth theatre. The light and sound design are both fantastic, and there are several moments of fantastically vivid theatricality which puts most work which happens on a main stage to shame.<br /><br />It's on tonight, and twice tomorrow. Go.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-11281997993571964652007-07-18T06:22:00.000-07:002007-07-18T06:36:53.883-07:00...heroism...i've come across <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gino_Bartali#Bartali_outside_of_cycling.">this </a>via the Guardian's <a href="http://sport.guardian.co.uk/tourdefrance2007/story/0,,2129190,00.html">online coverage </a>of the Tour De France. What a story.<br /><br />Consider this a sort of taster to the forthcoming "Why cycling is the most Beckettian of all sports", so i can talk about bikes whilst still pretending that this is some kind of arty blog.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-75316209406798304942007-07-18T04:38:00.000-07:002007-07-18T04:41:51.780-07:00...acting out stories...<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre">"Theatre is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, mime, puppets, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts." </a><br /><br />News to me.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-76005408668064478722007-07-06T02:58:00.000-07:002007-07-06T08:19:51.166-07:00...this blog, for one, welcomes its new theatrical overlords...My stats counter (which, of course, i check obsessively) is telling me that we have a sudden influx* of readers, thanks largely to nice things said by <a href="http://pessimismofintellectoptimismofwill.blogspot.com/">Dan Bye</a>, <a href="http://ghunka.blogspot.com/">George Hunka </a>and <a href="http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/">Alison Croggan </a>- all of whom are fine examples of the way the blogonets can open up a space for the citizen critic to articulate critcal thought about theatre which raises the level of discourse about our art. How great is that? Now Dan has to say nice things cos he's my friend, but it means a lot that such clever, articulate writers are linking here. Alison calls us a "cognac blog", from which i think we are to understand that she has correctly deduced that we smell of booze.<br /><br />In the meantime, if anyone has 46minutes and 10 seconds to kill (and quite frankly, who doesn't?) then there is almost no better way they could conceivably kill them than by listening to Andrew Haydon talking to Chris Goode over at <a href="http://www.theatrevoice.com/listen_now/player/?audioID=490">Theatre Voice</a>. Lots about his career, but also some very interesting thoughts about the limitations of scratch culture, the position of language within theatrical performance and what we'll reductively call the nature of the audience experience. Feel free to discuss any point raised in the comments...<br /><br />* "sudden influx" in this context means quite literally "some".alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-41204481106306325942007-07-04T06:41:00.000-07:002007-07-05T07:21:31.185-07:00sub-posta quick one...<br /><br />Thanks to Andrew Haydom for his big old comment below. Anyone else with any thoughts please do jump in. As i promise in the comments section, there will be more about theatre criticism, which is a subject close to my cold black heart. i bet you can't wait, you lucky lucky things.<br /><br />So, recent news. Saw <em>Longwave</em> at the Lyric, which was beautiful. i agree with Andrew <a href="http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2007-06/longwave.htm">here</a>. Also saw <em>Angels in America</em> parts one and two, also at the Lyric. On consecutive days. This meant three nights on the trot in West London for me, but pity poor Lily (Hi Lily!) who's working there, and so spent every single day for a whole week there. On <em>Angels</em>, i agree with Dan Bye <a href="http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2007-06/longwave.htm">here</a> (last para). This week i have no thoughts of my own.<br /><br />It was an interesting experience seeing <em>Angels</em> with that gap in the middle - being suspended mid-play for a whole day. My otherwise unremarkable day at the day-job was framed within its epic narrative, and i felt as though my real life, the life that matters, which here was the life of a theatre-goer, was on hold.<br /><br />i'm fascinated by how performance extends beyond itself, how theatre - which by definition happens only at that time and only in that room - has meaning and an existence in the life beyond that point in time and space. This is one of the reasons that theatre criticism matters, but it's also one of the reasons that theatre matters, or at least, that theatre should matter (or, perhaps, to appropriate a phrase from persons unknown's official <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Abdalla">famous friend</a>, why theatre that matters matters).<br /><br />Of course the bleed works both ways if the life beyond seeps into the priveleged performance space (which is of course also a space in time). Oooh look! A dialectic!<br /><br />Anyway, there'll be more on this at some point when i'm feeling like my head's working. Right now i just feel totally stuck, not just intellectually, but also creatively, and that's immensely frustrating. Gah.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEtIMYaskAxvFrneFlJHuHAIzOd29SPuIiWYglb5vthSCF1U3dtyGxjNSjpPTfyWa0-fnAirJVpgt5DSAihjM3pgYdXTpgpxxh_iM7p8aOSktKLTehqdzwwxZzk4nXfLY1cJVrkLlnJZhG/s1600-h/alexbike5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5083345800133660594" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEtIMYaskAxvFrneFlJHuHAIzOd29SPuIiWYglb5vthSCF1U3dtyGxjNSjpPTfyWa0-fnAirJVpgt5DSAihjM3pgYdXTpgpxxh_iM7p8aOSktKLTehqdzwwxZzk4nXfLY1cJVrkLlnJZhG/s320/alexbike5.jpg" border="0" /></a>On the plus side, here's a picture of me doing the 120 mile British Cyclosportive in a touch under 7 and a half hours last Sunday. i was the 1507th fastest! Apparently, Ian Wright was doing it as well, but he got lost. i was exactly one hour and 50 minutes quicker than him according to the official results. It is persons unknown policy never to knowingly be slower than former Arsenal players.alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-81045908318387189472007-06-25T12:12:00.000-07:002007-06-28T06:29:18.561-07:00Theatre Criticism - The Objective True Factual Truth Part 1<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">i've</span> been meaning to say something about <a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article1961473.ece">AA Gill's Sunday Times </a>attack on the critics and the responses that it's provoked. This particular storm seems to be already well on its way to blowing over, so maybe no one gives a shit anymore, but hey, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">y'know</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">i've</span> been busy*.<br /><br />Leaving aside <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">snarky</span> comments about dress sense, and the fact that some people have suggested that he's angling for a job, the substantial content of Gill's attack is as follows:<br /><br />1. Critics are basically <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">uncourteous</span> towards the theatrical establishment, making unreasonable demands which compel theatre managers to rearrange the seating for press nights and being in such a hurry to get out of the theatre and write up their reviews that they do not even applaud the work like every other fucker has to.<br /><br />2. Theatre is uniquely ill served by the critical establishment which surrounds it. Reviewers are "a moribund, joyless, detached bunch. Where are the voices that ring out as being aesthetically intelligent, passionate, current and, most important, entertaining?" In short, the writing itself is boring and stylistically bankrupt. Theatre criticism has suffered as a result, slipping in "cultural importance".<br /><br />3. Britain has a great tradition of theatre writers which puts the current crop to shame. At present there's no one who can hold a torch to Tynan, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Hobson</span> or Shaw.<br /><br />4. The critics place theatre in relation to other theatre rather than in relation to life outside the theatre because they have seen lots of theatre, but not lots of life outside it. "The only context for theatre in their reviews is other theatre. Drama exists in a closed museum of nostalgic experience."<br /><br />Right, it's fair to say that plenty of people aren't very happy about this, although it hasn't quite caused the kind of stink that the whole "Dead White Men" shenanigans skunked off.<br /><br />Now, i think it's fair to say, that 1. doesn't matter very much. 4. is arguable, but Gill don't argue it very well (although interesting Lyn Gardner accepts this point in a piece which is otherwise a refutation of everything he says), but 2 and 3... Well, put it this way - if there's a writer as good as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Hobson</span> or Tynan around now, can someone name them please? (If you are one of those who maintained that there was Absolutely Nothing Wrong, Nothing To See Here, Move Along Please when <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Hytner</span> levelled the misogyny charge, you can double up this challenge by explaining how <a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/show-23362911-details/Attempts+On+Her+Life:+17+Scenarios+For+The+Theatre/showReview.do?reviewId=23389057">this </a>review by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Nic</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">de</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Jongh</span> is an example of feminist criticism, or how when you're living in a world in which the most famous line from a half-way recent review is essentially a middle-aged man getting an erection over a Hollywood star, 'Pure Theatrical Viagra', <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">everything's</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">tickety</span>-boo on the power/gender axis.)<br /><br />Now what's more interesting than Gill's article is the responses. <a href="http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=355">Michael <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Coveny</span> </a>(second article down) raises himself to below Gill's level by saying he looks gay. <a href="http://www.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2007/06/i_threw_up_watching_elaine_paige_an.php">Mark <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Shenton</span> </a>calls him impertinent. Impertinent? How. Very. Fucking. Pompous. Criticising the critics is impertinent unless done by, who? The Queen maybe? Is she allowed?<br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/06/are_theatre_critics_really_mor.html">Lyn Gardner</a>, as ever, is the only person to say anything half-way intelligent.<br /><br />Now Lyn, along with Maxie <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Szalwinska</span>, was one of the very few in the critical establishment to respond to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Hytner's</span> accusation with anything other than dismissive, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">contemptuous</span> indignation, and in general she seems pretty up for asking questions about what criticism is for, and whether the critics are doing their jobs. So big credit to her for not partaking in the collective ingestion of the blue pill <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">every time</span> anyone throws up the possibility of the red one.<br /><br />But she says some immensely depressing stuff.<br /><br /><em>"...by style I suspect that Gill really means the flip, cynical wit which characterises his own TV and restaurant reviews and which is so beloved by editors. Don't get me wrong, they're a great read, clearly written - like his article on theatre criticism - with provocation in mind. But in my experience only the direst theatre </em><a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/drama/reviews/story/0,,2062139,00.html"><em>shows with no redeeming qualities</em></a><em> lend themselves to that kind of waspish humour. Such writing often showcases the reviewer over the work and while it may be possible to give blackened cod and wilted greens such treatment on a regular basis, my own experience is that when you apply it to the live experience of theatre it has a distorting effect. Funny and fair are often awkward bedfellows."</em><br /><br />Now, one thing at a time. Thing one: Whilst it may be true that Gill "really means flip, cynical wit" it's not actually what he says. What he says is "Where are the voices that ring out as being aesthetically intelligent, passionate, current and, most important, entertaining?" There are a few, a very few, and Gardner herself is one of them - her passion for theatre permeates her writing, and when she likes something you can actually feel the thrill that she gets from it rather than the cold, dry, sub-academic categorisation that you'll get from some of the others - but jeez, does anyone really think that these attributes are the norm in critics? Really? Honestly? Anyway, it's true that it's a good thing that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">everyone's</span> not being all waspish and all, but it seems a little unfair to attack Gill's argument by saying that what he actually means is something different to what he actually said, and that this hidden meaning is a Bad Thing.<br /><br />Thing the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">twoth</span>: Lyn seems to be saying that you can't be both entertaining as a writer and fair to the piece. Look, the most famous line in British theatre criticism ever is Tynan's "I could not love anyone who did not wish to see <em>Look Back in Anger</em>" which is a mighty fine example of vibrant, playful, even witty prose that says a hell of a lot, and a hell of a lot good, about the play. Writing can be passionate, articulate, entertaining <em>and </em>truthful, insightful and well argued. In fact, i think you can make a pretty strong case for the likelihood of it being the latter being pretty well <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">correlated</span> with its possession of the former set of attributes. And yes, as Gardner says, it's a really bad thing that reviews are getting shorter, but does she really believe that 300 words leaves little room for "style to swagger"? Style isn't an optional extra that gets tacked on around the edges of the serious writing. It's how the writing itself is written. If you (as Lyn doesn't, but as some of her <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">commenters</span> do) believe that by using an idiosyncratic style you're making the writing about the reviewer and not the play, you're presuming that there is some kind of neutral style in which the reviewer becomes <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">transparent</span> and that the play is a passive object entirely <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">separate</span> from the reviewer. And you're wrong on both presumptive counts.<br /><br />I can understand why the critics feel the need to close ranks in the face of every attack - many of the arguments used against them are specious and ill-thought-out bitterness from practitioners and they are being squeezed by editors who barely tolerate them. But <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Hytner</span> and Gill have been met with the same hostility that Ian <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Shuttleworth</span> was on the end of when he pointed out that a generation of critics was being lost because of the effective tenure of the first-stringers. There is, with the honourable exception of Gardner during the Dead White Males affair, almost no take-up in the opportunity that these moments offer for self-reflection, for self-criticism. Can no one even brook the possibility that the way things are working right now isn't perfect and that the people doing the jobs aren't all doing it in a perfect way? A healthy critical plurality would be debating the issues that have been raised by Gill and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Hytner</span>, not just with the provocateurs, but amongst themselves. What we have instead is <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">univocal</span> shouting down of dissent.<br /><br />5 points and a pie to the first person who can explain why that's a good thing.<br /><br />* In this context, "busy" means "lazy".alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com90tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-79041300139254191262007-06-20T03:35:00.000-07:002007-07-05T07:24:53.936-07:00Bloody Hippo World MessApologies for the unforced absence. Turns out i'm really lazy. Who knew?<br /><br />Saw a preview of Chris Goode's <em>Hippo World Guest Book</em> at Arts Admin's Toynbee Studios. First up, what a lovely complex. i didn't even realise it existed, despite having been to parties at Toynbee Hall. i hereby resolve to drink more coffee and see more things there.<br /><br />The show was lovely, sweet, funny and depressing by turns, but i don't want to say too much about it cos it was only a preview. Suffice to say, it's certainly in my top two ever plays about websites about hippos i've seen. And that it raises all kinds of interesting questions about the way we communicate or don't, the way the body relates to the text we produce, and that there's a whole essay to be written on the way it problematises the assumptions on which verbatim theatre builds its dramatic house of straw, whilst still being a piece of verbatim theatre of sorts. If you're going to be in Edinburgh, i'd highly recommend it.<br /><br />Then i saw Forced Entertainment's <em><a href="http://www.forcedentertainment.com/?lid=2">Bloody Mess</a></em> - part of Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown. <em>Bloody Mess</em> is the piece they made to celebrate their twentieth anniversary of being a big ol'experimental theatre company (whatever that means). Now, i saw <a href="http://www.forcedentertainment.com/?lid=385"><em>Pleasure</em> </a>by Forced Ent when i was seventeen and it blew me away. When they did their 24 hour show <em><a href="http://www.forcedentertainment.com/?lid=536">Who Can Sing A Song to Unfrighten Me </a></em>i spent a total of 18 hours watching it. Recently, however, their work hasn't thrilled me in quite the way it once did.<br /><br />There's plenty to celebrate about 20 years (more now) of Forced Ent. Anyone who saw Katie Mitchell's <em>Attempts On Her Life</em> at the National may well have spotted their influence looming large, and on that stage that's a victory that shouldn't be taken lightly. But there's also a difficulty in producing theatre to celebrate a theatre company who are so intimately concerned with failure - the failure of narratives, the failure of performance, the failure of understanding. What happens when your failure gets successful? When your mess isn't really a mess because it is so securely contained within a dramatic framework that you've established over the years?<br /><br />And the problem with the piece (or one of the big problems with the piece) is that it is <em>never</em> at risk of failure. What we're seeing looks a bit like failure (people say they're going to do something - tell a story say - and then they do it badly and everyone else around them conspire to fuck it up by playing, variously, with a smoke machine, the sound effects, giving unhelpful support and advice, interrupting to talk about sex, you know, all the kind of shit that goes wrong when you're in a Forced Entertainment show). It smells a bit like failure too - the person who's trying to do something will get annoyed and shout at the people who are fucking it up for him. But it isn't actually failure. Why? Because this is the whole point. There was never any hope that anyone would tell a story. Never any chance that anyone would actually do anything. So it's no loss when they don't. So it just doesn't matter. The failure is so obviously, <em>so obviously</em> the point, that it just isn't actual failure.<br /><br />At their best Forced Ent can debunk what they're doing, can comprehensively fail, yet still somehow actually manage to achieve something. So you get something that is funny and stupid and yet somehow dignified and beautiful. But this rarely happens here. The opportunity is there for some really powerful moments, but this opportunity has not been taken. So when we're told that we're going to have a beautiful silence (and we're told at length - two naked men suggesting the exact type of beautiful silence we could have for a very, very long time, and we know they are going to go on, and on, and on - that they are not going to stop at the point that we would normally consider this boring, and that we're going to have to sit and watch it or walk out - and some do - the Ents love to play on this tension and whether or not you like them pretty much seems to depend on whether you're prepared to let them do this without thinking that they're wankers) it is, obviously, constantly interrupted. Thing is, if you want a five minute long (cos that's the length they set) silence to fail, you don't need to have actors talking through it - it'll fail anyway. People will move, clothes will rustle, the speakers will hum, you can proabably even hear the lighting grid. But in the <em>attempt</em> to have a five minute silence, and in the failure <em>of that attempt</em> we may learn something about silence and something about failure and we may experience something that comes sufficiently close to silence, something that is sufficiently rare and special, that it becomes beautiful and valuable and worth something. What I'm trying to say is that actually trying to have a five minute silence, actually bloody-mindedly sticking to it, actually forcing that particular entertainment on us instead of playing up to us by distracting from it with a load of jokes would be cool, would feel daring, and would generate genuine tensions - between performance and audience, hope and failure, experience and meaning. This doesn't. Instead we get a lot of bad jokes about not being able to have a silence, and a pretence at frustration from the performers who purport to want a silence, but we know it's only a pretence and, crucially, we don't buy into the pretence, because the Ents have already pretty thoroughly debunked pretending.<br /><br />And yet, and yet - i went with Lily who was seeing them for the first time, and who said she just. wanted. to. scream. throughout the show. And i found myself defending them. Gaaarr. And not just saying look, there's good bits in it (and there are - the opening's great and there's a brilliant Gorilla). This is the thing about Forced Ent - just when you think you can not like what they're doing, you end up having to argue that people have got them wrong, and that there's actually nothing wrong with what they're doing. (Which is why when i wrote <a href="http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2006-01/worldinpictures.htm">this </a>-the only 'proper' review i've ever written in that i went as a critic on a press ticket, brrrr - i did it in the form i did.) Maybe i'm just so egotistical that i can't bear the idea that someone dislikes something for a different reason than the one that i dislike it. But maybe there are still fights to be won about what constitutes theatre, about what you can do with theatre, and about what we should expect from theatre, and the things that forced ent seem to be saying are things which need to be said, and are right, but right now, they just aren't saying them very well. And frankly they should be, because when you're Britain's leading experimental theatre company (whatever that means), it's your job.<br /><br />ps - i've referred to them as the Ents for much of this post in the hope that Mathew Warchus will dress them up as trees and put them in his <a href="http://www.lotr.com/">show</a>. Fingers crossed...alexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4999836447219316263.post-44870478093374753042007-06-13T05:51:00.000-07:002007-06-13T06:24:55.279-07:00Journalism<a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/06/coming_soon_to_a_theatre_near.html">This </a>is <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/06/shakespeare_and_the_importance.html">the arts</a>, folksalexfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08663311179979081963noreply@blogger.com0