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More Camels and less Comics

23 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Musings, Theatre

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There was a time in my life,  in the mid to late 1990s that I would spend about a week every early December in Nice, in the South of France. The climate was mild, the prices reasonable, the bar and restaurants quiet. Good for Christmas shopping and for several years host to an eclectic European Theatre Festival, that gathered experimental thought provoking and physical theatre and presented it with something of a flourish to discerning audiences.

One particular year a piece from the National Theatre of Slovenia, loosely based on some of the absurdities in Shakespeare, and challenging our relationship to the printed and spoken word through exquisite physical theatre, stood out. At the end of the performance a live camel was led onto stage where it sat down and surveyed the (largely jaw dropping) audience with an absurdist non-challence that was as eloquent as it was relevant to the piece that had preceded it. Half the audience absolutely “got the Camel” the other half didn’t. And since then I tend to divide the world into people who get, and are excited by, challenging concepts, philosophies, and art forms. People who are happy to look at the world differently, who are not content with being spoon fed their theatrical or life experiences. As you might imagine, I got, and continue to get, The Camel.

I’m just back from another long weekend at the Edinburgh Fringe, seeing work from artists I know and much from people and groups that are new to me. I have seen outstanding work and some that is OK. I haven’t seen anything dire, but then I like to think I have a pretty good radar. Some of the stuff that was OK had large audiences, some of the stuff that was outstanding had small (let’s say intimate) audiences. Some of the performers faced with that intimacy are theatre makers of such experience, sensitivity and confidence in their theatre making, that they can adapt the tone to develop a conversation with a smaller audience, one that leaves you feeling special and privileged that only a few people have had such an experience. These  are the theatre makers that deserve the larger audiences. But while that’s nifty for the punter, it’s less rewarding for the artist: it doesn’t put pounds in their pockets or beer on the table. And as the Fringe runs on and money runs out, a prodigious amount of beer is drunk

It’s fair to say that this year, I think more than ever, intelligent theatre is being squeezed out of the Fringe. I have friends who are openly saying they may not bring back challenging, well made, pieces to try out in Edinburgh, but instead go for the more popular option: a spoof, a parody, a ripping yarn, something guaranteed not to scare the horses. Or worse not come back at all. With even a modest show requiring a budget of between £15,000 – £20,000 to mount, including accommodation and living costs, you can begin to see why. But that would be a huge tragedy. Not only is the Fringe, when it’s working properly, a chance for writers, artists, actors, directors and producers to showcase their work to venues which might lead to a tour (to offset the inevitable losses incurred by a month in Edinburgh), it also means that  if that work is being developed outside of Scotland (and the vast majority of shows of course are conceived furth of these borders) then those of us who don’t have easy and regular access to other parts of the UK, Europe or even the States are denied seeing new and innovative work.

So what is to be done? Once again I find myself (against my natural instincts) thinking the Fringe is too big, with not enough quality control and with too much of an emphasis on the popular and the comedic. While it is absolutely not true to say that there is no quality control; some venues are after-all very sniffy about whom and what they will allow in. The general “come one, come all” approach benefits no-one except the venues. Looking in the giant fringe programme for an idea of what to see is the artistic equivalent of going to  Niagra Falls to get a drink of water. And the absurd star review system so meaningless to be almost laughable or even a turn off. Audiences are short changed with more bad shows than good and at an average of £10-£12  a show that’s a lot of change. Performers stand to make substantial losses, have their confidence kicked out of them and decide the whole thing is just not for them. Venues that say they don’t make a profit on the shows  – but only on the bars and food – are just fibbing. The split house percentage deals means the house always wins.

The ridiculous quick get ins and get outs, to maximise the number of shows for each venue, and the fact that shows often use house technicians, mean that many shows present with the minimum of set or soundscape. I yearn to see a well dressed, well set designed fringe show. After all there’s only so many black boxes a girl can take in a weekend. And ALL the main venues have to stop this crazy and self defeating curfew on theatre after 6.00pm. Who decrees that only comedy should rule the evening? It means local people and by local I mean people within a 60 minute commute of Edinburgh, can’t see much, if any, theatre, on the Fringe, during the week if they are working.

There needs to be something of a revolution, either a new venue with new rules and a new model of collaboration between artist and venue needs to emerge, (It’s been done before in Edinburgh) or stalwarts who every year see their returns diminish need to boycott or demand change.

But one thing is certain the Edinburgh Fringe needs too see more Camels on its stages than comedians and cabarets.

If not Edinburgh might find that  there are other places in Scotland which will grab the mantle of intelligent theatre and give the Fringe a run for its money.

So if you are looking for decent challenging and thought provoking shows with performers of high calibre then amongst the shows I have seen and can highly recommend are:

Venue  Zoo Sanctuary: Nicholas Collett, Nelson a Sailor’s Story; Gavin Robertson, Crusoe

Venue Assembly: Guy Masterson, Under Milk Wood (semi skimmed); Rebecca Vaughan, I Elizabeth; Le Gateau Chocolat: Black

Venue Traverse Theatre: The Christians

Venue Summerhall: Key Change (part of Northern Stage collection); Moon Fool, Titania

Venue Gilded Baloon: Sex Rated G

A song of such intensity

17 Friday Oct 2014

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The National Theatre of Scotland’s new adaptation of Joe Corrie’s “In Time of Strife” asks a lot of questions of its audience. Chiefly why is it that miners and striking miners in particular seem to threaten the establishment most and therefore need the harshest response. Written in 1926 to support, in its production, the soup kitchens that were feeding the starving miners and their families in Fife during a 7 month strike and lock out, it has been adapted and redesigned ostensibly because it is the 30th anniversary this year of the 1984-85 miners’ strike. A strike that effectively broke the powers of the Unions and heralded the Neo Liberalism that has shaped Britain through and after Thatcher. Profit and enterprise always and before community and the workforce.

While the seemingly prescient lines from the poem Women are Waiting, make it clear that the press will always pour their vile propaganda in the public’s ear about the miners’ strikes to come in the future; and the public will turn against them as a community as quickly as they mourn a pit disaster. The real point of the play doesn’t need the link to 1984 to make it speak volumes today.

The key messages and themes are ones which we are all too familiar with in 2014. The isolation within wider society, of a community bound by generational ties, ties of blood in every sense, is the same as we see in migrant communities in Britain. The fear of the other, at the same time of us, but apart from us. In 1926 as in 1984 the suspicion of those outside the mining communities of their motives and behaviour allowed the media and the politicians to paint them as pariahs deserving of little sympathy. In 1926 it meant that parish councils withdrew support and closed the soup kitchens six months into the strike to save the ratepayers, starving women and children so their men would go back to work. Shopkeepers and tradesmen refusing credit to the families of striking miners. People died of starvation in 1926. Children still go to bed hungry in 2014.

In 1984 I raised money for and donated food for foodbanks for the miners. 1n 2014 I am still donating food to foodbanks.

In 2014 this fear of the other is giving rise to a far right party now seen as mainstream and is seeing a rush to the tight by all the other Unionist parties to out scaremonger about the hated foreigner. A refugee in London has his belongings destroyed by bailiffs because he was £18 in debt with his rent. They do it because they can, just as they could in 1926.

In 1926 the value of the labour of the miners was cheap. With no control, mining companies could pay what they wanted and set the terms of the job. Returning to work after 7 months the miners were faced with longer hours for half the money.

In 2014, despite a minimum wage a government spokesman says that the disabled are no worth more than £2 an hour and that the unemployed must be prepared to work for their benefits, and pay differentials between men and women continue despite legislation to the contrary. Despite a move to create a living wage as a policy in the public sector there is no agreement to spread that to the third sector and crucially the private sector cannot be legislated to take up this humanitarian policy. No wonder Jock in the play says “ I will sell my muscle but not my soul”

In 1926 the miners felt betrayed by their political leaders and the unions and the companies would only take back men who denounced heir union and who would have no further allegiance to it. In 1984 Thatcher effectively emasculated the Union movement in the UK. In 2014 the trust in traditional politics has never been so low and we are seeing a backlash against Labour the traditional party of the “working man” in Scotland.

In 1926 the betrayal of blackleggers was no less fierce than it was for the scabs of the 1980’s. In some parts of Scotland in 2014 a similar sense of betrayal is felt for those that voted to put the Union ahead of the aspirations of an independent Scotland.

The videos of the police riding down the miners in 1984 and the disembodied voice of Thatcher denouncing the miners as the ones “killing democracy”, were chilling and made the link palpable for those of us who can remember 1984 but who have no living family members from 1926. But the real link that has to be made for generations to come whenever this play is revived is that despite the passing of the generations, despite the rise of the left, despite workers’ rights and legislation the truth is that we are moving back to a world private company ownership but ownership that is global and so much harder to beat. That we are moving back to a world where the gaps between those that have and those that will never have the means to have enough are growing again, that we are moving back to a world where people will take jobs on longer hours for less money and zero hours contracts. And we are moving back to a world where like the parish councils before them governments will remove benefits for those that don’t play the game and do what they are told. And we are moving back to a world where the now seemingly permanent tent for the “needy of Glasgow” almost Victorian in its nomenclature, seems almost normal.

It will take more than the singing of the Red Flag in theatres across the country to stem that tide but as Corrie eloquently put it in his final challenge to the audience

“Will no-one sing a song of such intensity to the men of all the nations?

That will shatter the system of things to its very foundations?”

Time to start singing loud and clear