The logic of 'cutting small'

The rationale behind cutting support for small arts organisations and upholding larger, more unwieldy institutions has never seemed logical to me. It doesn't work in the world outside of the arts, where small business is seen as having an important role to play in employment and general well-being of a society. Why governments feel it's necessary to apply a different logic to the arts mystifies me, apart from the natioanlistic motivation of having 'flagship' arts organisations which are seen as important to uphold at (least) an appearance of culture.

Of course, the logic of cutting arts can always itself be challenged.

The mobility and versatility of the International Performance Festival Cardiff seemed from the outset its strong point, with curator/director James Tyson generating a program that was able to focus on internationality and mobility whilst staying small. Not only does this have only a fraction of the cost of a national theatre, the gifts it gives are not necessarily less fruitful.

Full interview with James published over at A Younger Theatre, available here.

LIFT: Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich

 I was a brief, unofficial guest of the London International Festival of Theatre, which runs 3-19 June at various locations.

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It was a shock to find that this show, brought to the festival by chelfitsch, Japan, had left me with nothing, perhaps even less than nothing.

After all, the elements are there. Super Premium Soft Double Vanilla Rich is a stylised, absurd piece of - I'm going to call it 'movement theatre' - that takes a convenience store as its central metaphor for human existence. The absurdity of convenience stores, and employment of them to illuminate the human being's capacity to willingly succumb to dehumanisation, has been pointed out in material as diverse as Kevin Smith's Clerks and Andres Gursky's 99 Cent. The material elements of this dehumanisation are obvious and plenty - neon lights, brightly coloured packaging setting up a power relationship with the spectator, the various control mechanisms in place which seem to coercively determine habit without ever rendering itself visible - the entire functioning of language in this space - like a form of new-age propaganda.

On the Move

Next week, my monologue End of Species has been invited to the Ignite Festival Exeter, and the Cardiff International Festival of Performance. Hopefully there will be an opportunity to write on some of these events, and some from the London International Festival of Theatre on the way back to Berlin.

Berlin Biennale

Together with Sonja Hornung, I was a guest writer for the Berlin Biennale on 27th May.

We penned this dialogue over at ArtSlant.

Theatertreffen round-up

My Theatertreffen round-up was published over at A Younger Theatre.

http://www.ayoungertheatre.com/blog-theatertreffen-round-up/

It feels like the event has reached some kind of precipice - it will be interesting to see which way it goes.

Theatertreffen: Die letzten Zeugen (The Final Witnesses)

Only in Germany.

This was my thought for most of the duration of Die letzten Zeugen - a 2.5 hour long performance about the Holocaust, followed by 1.5 hours of forums with the survivors. Only in Germany, I thought, would this be on a stage and called theatre. Anywhere else, it's a lecture.

Actually, this play, performed in Berlin as part of the jury-selected section of Theatertreffen, is not German - it's Austrian. The stories of seven Holocaust survivors from Vienna, sent to the camps at Auschwitz and Dachau, are told by actors, while the survivors sit in the background listening (again) to their stories. Director Matthias Hartmann has placed emphasis squarely on the stories themselves, removing almost anything that might be considered direction, save for a solitary writer sitting centre-stage who transcribes as the actors speak. There's an oddly formal process, too, for when the actor's story finished and they exit the stage, escorted by the actor who voiced them.

Anywhere else, and on any other topic, such earnestness would be considered parody. Here, it serves as a kind of respectfully light touch, privileging  the dignity of the survivors over the audience's comfort or attention span. The moments are not crafted, but given the full stage, save for some supporting projections, to breathe.

Theatertreffen - There Has Possibly Been An Incident

EDIT - On account of the depth of other critical writing about this show, I have written fairly dialectical criticism here. For a more in-depth description of the nuts and bolts of the play I recommend Catherine Love's review over at Exeunt here.

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Are we living in a time when the ability to stand out from the crowd has been demonised? If so, are we left with just conformity?

Today, reality, as structured by language, is built on a combination of xenophobia (particularly anti-muslim sentiment), a nihilistic catastrophe fetish played and replayed by the media, embedded twins of patriarchy and capitalism, and of course, our old friend distraction, which deters the pursuit of these things. The most powerful narratives of our time exploit these for political gain. They are, mostly, sites of fear and oppression, and key generators of conformity. Today, the individual is so tied to the institution it is difficult to gain enough distance to look at it, and what it is doing.

There Has Possibly Been An Incident, performed as part of one of Germany's largest theatre institutions, Theatertreffen, addresses this reality and tries to find the language to shatter it.

We enter the theatre to a rock track too loud over the PA and performers busy at work setting up the stage with tape and microphones. Already there's a sense that we're going to work. The actors sit and begin to read, throwing their finished pages away as though language itself is dying as it is spoken. There is a bomb under this show - it's gun-to-the-head theatre.