Author Archives: Dorothy Max Prior

About Dorothy Max Prior

Dorothy Max Prior is the editor of Total Theatre Magazine, and is also a performer, writer, dramaturg and choreographer/director working in theatre, dance, installation and outdoor arts. Much of her work is sited in public spaces or in venues other than regular theatres. She also writes essays and stories, some of which are published and some of which languish in bottom drawers – and she teaches drama, dance and creative non-fiction writing. www.dorothymaxprior.com

Cirque du Soleil: Totem

Circus and narrative: discuss.

Of course, a regular linear narrative is not at all necessary in circus. Circus is, traditionally, a series of acts, including aerial of all kinds, balancing acts using various devices, object manipulation of one sort or another, and sundry ‘specialist’ things like dance numbers or magic acts (or in old-school circus, animal acts) – with the clowns there to provide the glue to fill the gaps and to give space and time for the riggers to shift the kit. There can be a theme or some kind of overarching aesthetic that unites the show – but the acts don’t need to fit in with or tell a story.

So here’s the dilemma with circus-theatre: how to fit the narrative in with the acts. If a narrative is set up yet isn’t developed, then it is far more irritating and unsatisfying than no narrative. Cirque du Soleil’s Totem, their second collaboration with compatriot Robert Lepage, promises much but delivers very little in the way of engaging circus-theatre – although if we strip away the ‘theatre’ part of the equation, then there are some jolly good circus acts (as we’d expect of this world-renowned company).

The show is written and directed by Lepage (although Cirque have an extraordinarily large team of ‘creative directors’ and ‘artistic directors’ of various sorts on board too, so who knows who contributed what in reality!) and purportedly tells the story of the evolution of mankind, with the programme notes giving a reflection from Lepage on a human baby’s personal journey from watery womb to land, and from earth-bound rocking and crawling to upright walking and aspirations into the air – thus setting up a parallel between personal evolution and species evolution. This is a potentially interesting theme that is touched on but not properly developed in the show, which instead gives us scenes celebrating some sort of primeval/elemental ‘birth-of-life’ moment followed by a very superficial exploration of man’s conquering of nature, which mostly boils down to numerous comic reflections on water sports and activities (fishing, surfing, water-skiing) or cod-batty professor battles with the elements, or ‘suits’ go walkabout in the jungle skits. The clowning and physical theatre element generally is of a pretty average quality, with many of the scenes far too long – which is disappointing as past Cirque du Soleil shows have featured some wonderful clown and mime work.

There’s an oddly uncomfortable celebration of the noble savage and, bizarely, it all reminds me of the Millennium Dome Show of ten years past. Something to do with the upmarket hippy cultural patchwork aesthetic, multi-coloured ‘ethnic’ costumes, and everything-in-the-pot stew of ‘world music’ influences.

The one clear Lepage signature is the design of the set’s centrepiece, a kind of ‘island’ (backed by waving reeds that hide the live orchestra) upon which film is projected, thus very cleverly and effectively transforming a large area of the stage into river, swamp or sea as needed, with some neat screen-to-live moments (moving image swimmers become real people etc). At times this ‘island’ opens, closes and shape-shifts like a giant Transformer toy. In front of it is a large turtle-shaped construction (a nod towards Native American creation myths), its ‘skin’ coming off to reveal a bony structure used to dangle from or into, or flip over and through.

Some of the acts could be shoe-horned into the ‘evolution’ narrative reasonably successfully, such as the above-mentioned opening bars and trampoline act in and around the ‘turtle’, which denotes the nascent human beings’ rise to the vertical and emergence from the caves. Later, the age of enlightenment is represented rather nicely in a scene in which juggler Greg Kennedy in mad scientist mode manipulates LED balls within a Steampunk-style glass contraption, whilst a monkey in a lab coat looks on.

It’s really hard to fathom out, though, what the roller-skating duet (wonderful though they were – indeed, one of my favourite acts), or the Chinese all-lady unicycling and bowls-juggling team, had to do with anything, narratively speaking – even though technically excellent and artistically appealing. The foot jugglers similarly seemed out on a limb (so to speak) both thematically and narratively. In fact, they looked liked they’d just been airlifted in from the Moscow State Circus – space-age sparkly costumes and all. And I have to admit that whatever might be manipulated (balls, logs or, as in this case, cloths) foot juggling always seems to me to be – well, just what it is – and it doesn’t really rock my boat. A Perches act (climbing and balancing on flexible poles) is good but marred by over-reliance on tautly pulled harness support, so it all seems a bit too safe, with little sense of the daring thrill of it all.

Free of harnesses, and the best act of the evening, is a doubles static trapeze piece by French-Canadians Louis-David Simoneau and Rosalie Ducharme, who trained at Montreal’s acclaimed National Circus School. It’s an exploration of a romantic entanglement (par for the course for aerial doubles!), but with a different edge as they act out the irritations, exasperations and rapprochements of a relationship. Their routine has a gorgeous pace and rhythm as they twist and squirm towards and away from each other, moving from elegance to feigned awkwardness and back again. The Russian Bars act is also top-notch – an exhilarating and free-flying finale to the evening. Androgynous flyer Nikita Moiseev is particularly enchanting.

Ultimately, though, the pace of the show is slack, and the structure weak, with too much in the way of filler (those dull clowns), and far too much object manipulation (bearers of balls, bowls, devil sticks, and hoops seem ever-present – not to mention those Crystal Lady antipodists).

Given that the story is pretty meaningless, the pace and energy and general wow factor would need to be high to raise the show above its narrative failings – and Totem doesn’t really manage this. I think it is fair to say that it is not one of the better Cirque du Soleil shows.

www.cirquedusoleil.com

Theatre-Rites: Mojo

As we enter the depressingly empty Silk Street Theatre auditorium, we look to the stage to see a kind of giant π (Pi) shape made of blue neon lights, and to the side a small drumkit. At five minutes before the start of the show, the theatre is less than a quarter full – although to be fair to the company, this is the second show of the day and perhaps 7pm is not the ideal time for a family show. I check in with an usher, who says that the afternoon shows during the run have been very well attended for the most part…

It feels a little cold and gloomy sitting here under the blue neon, surrounded by empty seats, but there’s a last-minute rush of punters – and of performers, who enter in a flurry of pink tutus, green skirts, mauve shirts, and red leggings, and take their place amongst the audience. Now a burst of sound, and one by one the performers are summonsed on stage by the call of the drum – a tambourine played with extraordinary skill and verve by beat-boxer, percussionist and all-round hugely talented musician Adriano Adewale. Each performer creates their own idiosyncratic dance (or in the case of the second musician, Leo Altarelli, sound motif) as they ‘play’ to their shaman/conductor, and to the audience, before sashaying through, or limbo-dancing under, a morphing neon light ‘door’.

It’s a great start, and the follow-up is equally good, as a series of abstract shapes appear in the dark, puppeteered by invisible performers. After much clever shape-shifting, a puppet baby emerges, to be held and cooed over by her eight-strong team of parent-carers. Toddlerhood is played out through such wonderful scenes as a dance on a glockenspiel, the puppet’s little wooden feet serving as hammers tapping out the tune. Early childhood sees a very lovely little human-and-puppet tap dance, and a charming (if a little overlong) magic-tricks-and-transformations scene featuring a series of peony pink and lime green cones and balls.

Meanwhile the neon frame opens out to reveal a frame within the frame, shifting colours (from blue to white to yellow to pink…) in a Messiaen-like synaesthetic response to the notes played by our two highly gifted multi-instrumentalists, who move easily from trumpet to uke to drumkit and back to glockenspiel (via a bit of body percussion and the occasional tune on a kazoo).

With the advent of adolescence comes attitude: electric guitar, mini-skirts, tossed hair, and the donning of shades. And it’s downhill from then on in, as the child-carer relationship cracks, and the show itself shows signs of strain…

Theatre-Rites director Sue Buckmaster has declared her intention for Mojo(her second collaboration with choreographer Arthur Pita, following Mischief) to ‘explore the ways in which our society both ignites and hinders our children’s energy and spirit’, but it seems such a shame that all the ‘igniting’ seems to happen in early childhood, and the teenage section is a clichéd exploration of the ‘hindering’. There’s lots of finger-wagging and foot-stamping – and a mysterious long-winded section in which our puppet girl disappears for ages and the carers left behind wrestle with a giant spider upon a stage revolve (which is in itself a rather unnecessary piece of kit that adds little to the production).

What can it all mean? That they are experiencing the ‘we’ve lost our little girl’ feeling many parents experience in the teenage years? Could the spider be a metaphorical representation of burgeoning female sexuality? But hang on a mo – this a show aimed at families with children aged five and upwards. Such themes would not be of any interest to young children. Who on earth can this section of the show be aimed at, then?

This is a major dramaturgical hitch. The Play-Away vibe of the first half is delightfully innocent and appeals equally to adults and to young children, but is too ‘childish’ in tone for teenagers or pre-teenagers. The subject matter for the second half is too grown-up for young children – yet on the other hand, older children and teenagers hate being ‘discussed’ onstage in this knowing way, so I feel it wouldn’t appeal to them either.

Eventually our puppet girl re-emerges to shake off her teenage angst and grasp the world of young womanhood. This is played out through a samba-carnival routine in which the music and dance is wonderfully exuberant – but the puppetry suddenly becomes the least important consideration, with our almost-grown girl left with a dead and dangling arm, and a strange twitching dance action, whilst the human dancers give it all they’ve got alongside her. This in odd contrast to the excellent puppetry of the earlier sections. Work to be done here, then!

Despite these reservations, a production to be applauded for its extraordinary and inspiring fusion of live music and puppetry – it is rare to see a work in which live animation and sound work so closely in harmony.

www.theatre-rites.co.uk

Aurélia Thierrée, Victoria Thierrée Chaplin: Murmurs

Ah, the walls, the walls – our lives are bound by them! Literal walls, metaphorical walls… But what if life is but a dream? Or what if we acknowledge (in the words of Jacques Lecoq, with a nod towards the Buddha) that ‘tout bouge’ – everything moves, nothing is solid? Where does that leave these repressive boundaries? Gone in a puff of smoke, that’s where.

In Murmurs, we are presented with a world made not of bricks and mortar but of cardboard packing boxes and crumpled curtain fabric. There is much play on absence and presence; on dressing and undressing; on covering and revealing; on solidity and mutation. Here today and gone tomorrow is the message; magic is the medium.

The opening scene places Aurélia as an ethereal creature surrounded by a set of boxes, a pair of removal men attempting a house clearance aided and abetted by our heroine, who we might take to be an awkward lodger or a ghost who won’t move on. The scenes that follow manage to be both fast-moving and other-worldly, perhaps mimicking the way dreams play out. Nothing is quite seen through – as soon as it arrives, it departs.

Illusion is the name of the game: lightweight buildings swoosh across the stage, then roll up into nothing; a pair of red shoes magically reappears onto a pair of pretty feet again and again, despite the fact that we clearly see them packed away; and a shapely leg crossing a threshold remains in place as its owner materialises elsewhere. Aurélia’s elusiveness is key to the piece. Popping up out of boxes, through windows, or from behind screens – never where you expect her to be, always one step ahead of the game – she is the desirable ‘other’ that is chased, flirted with, and occasionally captured momentarily by her two male foils (played by Jaime Martinez and Magnus Jacobsson) and by the various puppet-creatures, formed from everyday objects such as bubblewrap or bellows, that arrive in this other-world. It’s all breathlessly beautiful, and constantly unnerving.

Murmurs is the second show by Aurélia Thierrée to be created with / directed and designed by her mother Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, and comes with a lot to live up to. The first show by this team, Aurelia’s Oratorio, took the world by storm eight years ago and is seen as one of the defining moments in contemporary visual theatre. Then, there’s Victoria Thierrée’s thirty-year body of work with her husband Jean-Baptiste Thierrée, on Le Cirque Imaginaire andLe Cirque Invisible, which is often credited as giving birth to New Circus, looming over. (Aurélia made her stage debut with her parents, performing as a suitcase with legs – the image of legs appearing out of or behind objects is a continuing motif in her work!) Victoria has also collaborated with Aurélia’s brother James Thierrée on his renowned Junebug Symphony and La Veillée des Abysses. How could Murmurs possibly live up to the expectations seeded by this track record?

It doesn’t is the short answer – but that has to be qualified by saying that even a ‘less interesting’ piece by the Thierrée-Chaplins is worth seeing. Whilst watching the piece, I found myself frustrated by the constant fluctuations and wanted more things to be ‘seen through’. On reflection, after the show, I realise that this fluctuation is dramaturgically key to the notion of dissolving walls at the heart of the piece. I also, at the time, found the lighting to be rather odd – lots of steely-blues and straw-white washes rather than strongly focused spots, so the eye often had to make its own decision where to look. But perhaps the right effect for a dream world?

There’s an interesting moment at the curtain call: as Aurélia skips across the stage and takes the hands of Jakobsson and Martinez, there’s a kind of complicity and joyousness danced out that I suddenly realised was sorely missing from the show itself. Perhaps a little less ‘magic’ and a little more magic is needed.

It should, though, be acknowledged that both Aurélia’s Oratorio and Le Cirque Invisible were years in the making and have been constantly honed whilst touring. Murmurs is a recently-devised work, and was seen on the opening night of its London run. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops over time.

White Night Beach Party Animals

So, that was autumn then. Halloween, Bonfire Night and – if you live in Brighton – White Night, in which the city’s venues, clubs, art galleries, and museums open their doors all night to mark the end of British Summer Time and the turning of the year. The event is produced by Donna Close, who cut her teeth on the Streets of Brighton festival, so she knows a thing or two about programming outdoor performance and work for public spaces.

This year’s treats included environmental artists Red Earth on the beach; Rachel Henson’s Flickers, in which participants navigate an area using flicker-books of photos of the area they are asked to journey through – reviewed by Total Theatre Magazine at Stanmer Park during Brighton Festival 2010 and relocated/reworked for the seafront for White Night; and Periplum’s Navigator, which also (unsurprisingly) is a navigation piece for one audience member at a time – in this case using a pre-made film played on an iPod, which the audience member uses to work round the small streets and alleys of Brighton’s ancient old town, The Lanes – a journey that is spookily un-nerving due to the disorientation and discombobulation that occurs as you try to marry the real-life 3D environment and the portrayal of that same environment on film, the minor differences in the two representations playing strange tricks on your mind.

I had the privilege of being a guinea pig for Navigator on the night before White Night, and am proud to say that despite being a ‘luddite peasant’ I didn’t get lost, or break the iPod, and I even managed to turn down the right street occasionally, or look up at a window at the right time. It was quite odd to be followed along the route by six members of the company all anxiously looking after me like you’d carefully watch out for a tiny toddler taking their first solo journey along a street, ready to rush in and rescue them from trouble. Once I’d stopped panicking and relaxed into it, I find myself experiencing a delightful reflection on the passing of time, the nature of memory, and our perception of ‘reality’ – all framed within a gentle and wryly amusing take on lost childhoods that featured boys and bears of various sizes and age…

It was reported back to me that one of the most delightful moments that occurred on the actual run for Navigator was when one audience member – dressed as an angel, halo and all, and perhaps a little the worse for drink – turned out to be the most focused and attentive audience member of the evening, so completely enraptured and bent on his task, and moving so slowly and carefully and elegantly through the streets that he attracted an admiring crowd of observers following him in his quest.

If there’s a criticism of the show, it’s that the novelty of the form seems more important than the content at the moment – I’d like more characters, more street encounters, more integration and interaction with my environment, In saying this, I’m aware that these things take time and money, and that these are early days for this new work. And even at this delicate early stage of its evolution, Navigator is a witty, poignant and surprisingly moving piece of work, navigating (sorry!) street-arts supremos Periplum into fresh theatrical waters.

Usually on White Night I manage to weave my way across the city, taking in as much of the action as possible, but this year I was on performance duty with Ragroof Theatre, hosting an evening of dance, music and cabaret at Home Live Art’s Alternative Village Fete – a riotous evening that also included work by live artists cum cabaret and walkabout stars Brian Lobel (in 6-inch heels), Jenny Éclair (in 20 bras), Chris Cresswell (with sick superstar Baby Warhol), and the carnivalesque Day-of-the-Dead-ers Copperdollar – all set in a Big Top on the Old Steine, close to the pier.

Our White Night commitment didn’t end until 1.00am, by which time many of the more interesting artworks and performances elsewhere had been and gone, and the town had descended into a litter-strewn outdoor Halloween party. I realise, on reflection, that the first two years of Brighton’s White Night didn’t, for reasons of how the night falls in the annual calendar, coincide with Halloween (which always ends up as an enormous big trashy street party in Brighton these days), and that it is thus better when it doesn’t clash. If the organisers are determined to stick to the clock-changing weekend, next year will also clash with Halloween. But there’s talk of the clocks not going back (Boo! I like GMT!) and if that is the case then White Night could be held on any old autumn weekend I suppose!

Anyway, back to this year’s: the seafront remained a place of respite from the town centre madness (at least, it was fine if you ignored the mooning boys and staggeringly high-heeled girls tripping over on the pebbles), and I was delighted to make it down to the arches for a second viewing of Liz Aggiss and Joe Murray’s very wonderful film, Beach Party Animal, a documentary-cum-performance-to camera work commissioned by South East Dance which was showing right through the night.

Beach Party Animal is rather in the tradition of the City Symphony films of Walter Ruttmann and Dziga Vertov – a very artful and cunning mix of staged set-pieces and real-life action, so deftly edited that unless you are in the know and spot the performers, it is hard to distinguish the plants from the real-live city folk, this being Brighton many of whom are of course completely bats and 24/7 performers anyway. And the plants – the likes of Tim Crouch as a wildman harpoonist, racing butt naked into the sea, and the Two Wrongies as girls who’ve had one over the odds and are trying to work their way through, over, and under promenade railings, bandstand, children’s paddling pool, and sea-groynes in killer heels and skirts showing what they had for breakfast, as my dear Irish mother would say – are in fact also genuine real-life loony Brighton city folk, so who knows how we distinguish the ‘real’ from the ‘fictional’ anyway.

Liz Aggiss and Joe Murray are both established film-makers, and a married couple – yet this is their first joint venture (to my knowledge, anyway). Her on-film choreographic talent for the artful arrangement of both objects and bodies has shown itself in many of her previous ‘dance screen’ works, many of which fall broadly into the Expressionist camp, often created with her regular collaborator, the composer and former Divas co-director, Billy Cowie. Here, in tandem with Joe Murray, she moves away from Expressionism into a crisper and sharper Hyperrealism. Aggiss and Murray apparently spent many, many weeks filming on Brighton beach at all hours of the day and night. Hours and hours of footage are distilled down into a 20-minute film that is an homage to the city that never sleeps (unless it’s face down on a sodden handbag, or comatose and sun-bleached like a beached whale on the pebbles). The camerawork is beautiful, with glorious shots of dozy carousel minders, screaming end-of-the-pier Big Wheel riders, and late-night barbecue lighters, and the soundtrack (by Alan Boorman) is a cleverly manipulated mix that adds to the hyper-real feel.

The choice to show the film on the beach – in the very site it was created – is a touch of genius. The wind ruffling the screen adds to the surreal nature of the viewing. And the odd parallels of real and filmed action are entertaining and occasionally disturbing – giving the whole experience an extra layer of meaning is the sight of the on-screen late-night revellers mirrored in the passing across the screen in real-time of another bunch of late-night revellers – creating a kind of two-mirrors-placed-facing-each-other eternal corridor of action. Oh that someone had filmed the film with the live interventions! An exhilarating end to my White Night.

Autumn Days

Hallowe’en already? It seems just the other day that I was reporting from the Edinburgh Fringe. Somehow we’ve crept into Autumn with me hardly noticing – perhaps because summer in Scotland felt so like autumn, but then in a reversal of the usual order we had summer in September and October this year!

Well, what can I say? Sorry for the long silence – but your editor hasn’t been idle, I have in the meantime edited our luscious and lovely print magazine, Total Theatre 23.3 Autumn 2011, available by subscription frominfo@totaltheatre.org.uk or from specialist bookshops such as the National Theatre Bookshop and Samuel French.

This autumn edition includes features on the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam, on Proto-type Theater’s truly site-specific Fortnight at Mayfest, and on enterprising North London venue Jacksons Lane. The fantastic Mr John Fox is our Voices candidate; Total Theatre Award winner Adrian Howells is the subject of The Works; and there are reviews and reports from festivals galore – Edinburgh, Norfolk & Norwich, Brighton, Nottingham European Arts and Theatre (NEAT), and Birmingham’s BE. So, that’s the magazine, then… job done, plug over.

Meanwhile, out in the wider world, what’s been going down these past few months? First major event for me this autumn was the launch of a new artist-led festival, BR-116 – created by Anglo-Brazilian company Zecora Ura in collaboration with LIFT, and held in venues and public spaces across London. Collaborating venues included: Theatre Royal Stratford East, Arcola, Royal Festival Hall at the Southbank Centre, and Trinity Buoy Wharf. The festival featured work presented by English and Brazilian artists, the latter roster including Flavio Rabelo with Take-Away, in which he sits slumped in flowing gown and mask on a pavement inviting passers-by to take him away for a walk and talk; and a very beautiful and delicate night-time garden piece by Olgas Lamas called Sirva-se. (‘Help yourself’ – do we detect a theme here?).

BR-116 also included a series of commissioned performance works for public spaces and public transport in London, and in a rather odd coincidence not one but two of the Total Theatre editorial team were, independently, recipients of commissions. Yours truly (under the auspices of my alter ego Dorothy’s Shoes) presented a piece called Behind the Moon, Beyond the Rain which took participants (and any unsuspecting members of the public who got embroiled) on a fairytale quest across the East End that involved singing on buses in Stratford, carnival dancing across a footbridge at West Ham, making paper boats to sail on the Thames towards the O2 (‘and they sailed in their boats across the water to the great palace from whence came the sounds of drums and trumpets making merry music’ – Grimms Fairy Tales), picnicking in an enchanted forest at East India Dock, and seeking out trolls under a rickety bridge in a Tidal Basin bird reserve. If you’re interested in learning more, seehttp://dorothysshoes1.blogspot.com/

Then came Alexander Roberts’ RageWalk London, in which participants wrote their rage onto pieces of paper in a burst of free writing, which they then carried close to their hearts as they walked through London’s streets and journeyed on buses and tubes carrying empty white placards. When Trafalgar Square was reached, they were invited to refer to the writings and pick a few key words or phrases to transfer to the placard, which was then held aloft from within a chalk circle drawn on the ground.

If you’d like to hear about Alex’s experience of making and presenting this piece, then see his article on that subject in the Winter 2011-2012 edition of Total Theatre Magazine (out in December). Alex has a longterm interested in work sited in public spaces, and as well as being an artist, theatre-maker and writer, is also a producer and festival director – having set up the Public Space Programme with an inaugural festival as part of ArtFart in Reykjavik. Is there no end to the boy’s talents?

Other work presented for this inaugural BR-116 included a trip on boat and train with MP3 text and music accompaniment, by Brazilian artist Gustavo Ciriaco, and the Nomad Café foraged food picnic on the DLR. This all came together with workshops by esteemed Brazilian companies LUME Teatro and Taanteatro, seminars, film presentations, and a version of Zecora Ura’s The Selfish Banquet, held at the Royal Festival Hall – guests at that included Pippa Bailey and Rupert Thomson from the new Summerhall venue/arts project in Edinburgh.

It takes the form of a feast of food and discussion in which people bring food to share, all of which is luxuriously heaped onto a main banquet table, then guests make themselves a plate of food and move from table to table, experiencing different discussion topics led by facilitators placed one to a table. A very lovely take on the ‘symposium’ – which literally means ‘with wine’, banqueting and earnest discussion being inextricably linked throughout history.

The next BR-116 will take place in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, January 2012.