Author Archives: Edward Rapley

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About Edward Rapley

Artist, actor, performer, and writer. A proud member of residence.org in Bristol. Trained at Ecole Philippe Gaulier. He has had the good fortune to be supported by Arnolfini, Bristol Old Vic and The Basement in the creation of some of his four solo shows. In his writing for Total Theatre he attempts to met each show on its own level and respond to the thoughts and dreams it sets off in his head.

Greg Wohead - The Ted Bundy Project - Photo Rod Farry

Greg Wohead: The Ted Bundy Project

Greg Wohead - The Ted Bundy Project - Photo Rod FarryTaking as his starting point the confession tapes of Ted Bundy, Greg Wohead examines our glib fascination with the narratives of murder. That we have an appetite for stories of human cruelty and horror is evidenced by a brief look at the contents of any newspaper. Murder, sexual abuse, catastrophes and suffering make up the majority of lead stories, padded out with human interest, politics and business, with the whole edifice resting on a plump buffer of sports. This show turns that desire inside out, strips away the security afforded by the implied authority and careful editorial policies of the news establishment and confronts us with the naked source material behind the safe and processed stories.

I experienced genuine terror, fear, sadness and disgust. I made a promise to myself that I would leave, I’d apologise to Total Theatre and tell them I couldn’t do it, I felt sick. This is an incredibly powerful show; it is also deeply ambiguous and disturbing.

The show is stark and spacious, it has an unhurried, methodical quality. The images within it resonate in this space. A pair of tights becomes a spectacle of suffering or the impenetrability of the mind of the killer.

Greg’s performance is delicate and nuanced, when he lends his natural charm to the portrayal of a serial killer the effect is harrowing. You enjoy watching him and he is a monster. Only, and this is a fundamental point, there are no monsters here. Both victim and killer retain their humanity, it is a person who does this to another person, we can see their actions but never know their thoughts, and as an audience you are left thinking, why do we return again and again to these stories?

The consumption (and by proxy experience) of trauma as a rite of passage, or perhaps just as entertainment, becomes a powerful thread. With the phenomenon of reaction videos there is no longer a mediator between the audience and the documentation of murder. We can choose to simply witness it ourselves and share that experience in the form of a comic-horrific video detailing our reactions and creating a secondary audience who can view only those reactions but not their source. The internet allows us to encounter and expose ourselves to the very worst things which people can do to each other. What happens when we choose to do that?

This is a seriously conflicting show, Greg does not take sides, representing both killer and in what might be the most awkward piece of audience participation I’ve ever seen, the victim. The facts and suppositions of a real life killing are presented with a light dead-pan. The killer’s own words are matter of fact. Then, in a chilling manner, Greg reveals the ease with which a skilled performer can lie to you, can fake reactions which you believed to be entirely genuine. He takes us to the same point, theatrically, as Bundy brought his victims: building trust, being nice, following the rules of politeness and then attacking the audience with a threat which consumed me with visceral desire to walk out. Does the show confront us with the hypocrisy of our own desire to consume stories of suffering in safety or is it another layer of predatory spectacle in the media circus of death? Buy a ticket and decide for yourself.

Split Britches/Peggy Shaw: Ruff

Peggy Shaw - Ruff - Photo Michael ContiBits of the brain go dark. The memories they contain disappear. Speech, thought, up and down: all scratch and twist and fail. What do you do? In this case the artist continues to do what they almost cannot do, nothing else is possible. In January 2011 Peggy Shaw suffered two strokes, and as one half of Split Britches, then turned them into a show, just as she turns a joke into a broken neck into a joke. In a company whose collaboration is this long standing there is a seamlessness to the authorship of the work and Lois Weaver’s direction turns us always to the centre of the show: its performer.

To begin Peggy plays with failure like a tragic clown, riding the flops. In contact with the audience she is light, playful, full of life. Only her memory is shot through with holes.

When I first saw her perform in 2010 it was as if I could see her entire life extending behind her, everything she had ever known was present on stage and concentrated in her face, that smile, it radiated out over the audience. Wild associations crackled through my brain: the 1950s, rock & roll, 20s jazz, beat poetry, New York, steam, crowded bars, film noir, smoke, cramped apartments, chaotic friends, black and white TV, tears, revolution, beauty, broken hearts, tenacity, bedrock, impossible dreams, fierce coals glowing with heat. Her timing was immaculate, nuanced, almost impossible, how could someone be this much like themselves?

Now I saw what had been lost laid bare, felt the rhythm cracked and jarring, because now Peggy can’t carry us suspended in the dreams she wove with the contact she gave. Now the show won’t stay put in her head. So it is the simple, declared, device of prompting screens bearing the lines of the show, which draws her attention away from us. If before we got to float, carried smoothly by the master performer, now we are lifted and dumped back into our seats each time she averts her eyes.

This is absolutely necessary, this is the show she has to make now because this is where she is, alone. There is no pretence, only an honest vulnerability. It is not even determination that brings her to the stage because that implies a struggle with another possibility. Performing is so much a part of Peggy that there is a simple inevitability, of course she would continue. Behind it all that smile, the passion to tell a story of loss and recovery.

So with screens as aides, extra voices, and supplementary memory Peggy pulls herself through an uncertain landscape. There are people and words missing now. Humour fades, is swamped and returns as we jump between green screen projections, adopted characters, playful public service announcements, self reflections and shifting images. Not everything works or is easy to follow, some of the projections clunk rather than clang, perhaps you need to know a bit about Peggy’s herstory to fully grasp certain references, and every time she looks at the screens instead of the audience it feels like a robbery, but you might as well complain about night becoming day.

If you live long enough you will lose yourself. The person you were will die and you will be left alive. There only remains the question: what you will do then?