Author Archives: Hannah Sullivan

About Hannah Sullivan

Hannah is a performance maker and freelance producer based in Bristol.

Stand + Stare with Emma Callander: The Guild of Cheesemakers

The Guild of Cheesemakers has been created by Stand + Stare Collective and Emma Callander, with the concept, script and performance created through a process that saw them work with artisan food producers in the UK. At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe the Guild of Cheesemakers met in the café of Summerhall.

Invited to a cheese and wine tasting evening, the audience find the tables set with glasses, place names and low-lit lamps. We are the Guild, we are told, and we have been meeting every year. This evening’s beautifully printed order of service is handed to us by the host Susannah Gray, a jovial woman who obviously enjoys her position of Beadle.

The evening begins with a few toasts to the Guild, the Queen and Boris Johnson, and the slicing of the cheese with the ceremonial dagger. It is Master Terry Fernsby’s turn this year and the audience member in his seat gets to do the honours. The cheese tasting commences! Each element is introduced by an expert – real experts from local cheese shops and bakeries. They tell us all about the processes and the particulars with great enthusiasm as they hand out bread or as we sniff and munch on our cheese.

The first tasting is Anster, which is accompanied with a Sauvignon Blanc and White Sourdough.

The hostess has just been taking a course in wine, with a couple of other members of the Guild apparently, as she gestures towards them and gives the impression they may need to jump in with their wine knowledge at any point. The Guild have been going through the archives and came across a lovely film showing the old age tradition of cheese making. The Guild of Cheesemakers begins as a legit evening with experts and fine food, everyone getting comfortable and muttering to each other about the delights of cheese.

Each expert opens up the floor to questions; people can ask about process, about ageing time, about the mould or the rennet. One audience member has a real interest in the film; he asks if it can be played again. The host is hesitant but allows it, and her son David (a recent graduate of Edinburgh University – a very quiet technical wizz) brings on the projector once more. The audience member gets out of his seat and waits for the film to get to his desired spot – ‘Stop,’ he says, and looks at the film, then looks at us with a huge grin. Here the real cheese tasting evening slips into fiction.

The second tasting is a Cambus O’May with a apple brandy and crisp bread.

Without spoiling the story, I can say we are lead into a debate on the concept of extending our existence, and are given the option to replicate a cheese that can stop the ageing process or to destroy it. The audience are given the floor and everyone chips in their pros and cons – is it justified by the fact that we already extend people’s lifespans through medicine? How would we feel about outliving our children? What would be the right age to freeze at? Should we toy with nature? We come to a vote, and I am sure there are two endings to this work, depending on the audience’s final decision.

The third tasting is a double Gloucester with Conde de Cron and a coarse rye bread.

The detail of the event – the integration of real experts, their knowledge and character – gives the experience a brilliant sense of authenticity. The overlaying of fact and fiction within the text is finely tuned, but overall the narrative does stay a little far-fetched and it is a challenge for the actors to deliver it. The question posed to us is interesting and relevant: some audience members call out and some discuss between themselves; a real buzz is generated with opposing views. We vote, and I find myself confirming my decision on the walk home, rolling it around in my head – the taste of cheese lingering on my tongue.

www.standandstare.com

Wojtek Ziemilski: Small Narration

As part of the ‘Polska’ season of Polish performance at Summerhall, Wojtek Ziemilski presents Small Narration, a performance-lecture video-art mix-up.

What’s in a name? Nationality? Identity? Personality? Wojtek has changed his name a few times, and explains to us the reasons by reading a monologue as the various alterations to his name are projected behind him. Throughout the reading he is still, lit by a small light from the stand that holds his pages.

What’s in a name? When moving to America, his aunt suggested he use his middle name, Anthony, for ease; this was then shortened to Tony. Moving to Portugal he attempted to return to his first name, Wojtek, but this was too difficult for the Portuguese, so was changed to Voitek, and to keep some national nostalgia Wojtek wrote it as Vvoitek. He explains that in Polish this is just a ridiculous spelling.

What’s in a name? Wojtek is named after his grandfather, whose nickname is Tunio. Wojtek’s grandfather was exposed by the Polish media as a collaborator in the Communist Secret Services. Tunio was an artist and a musician who wrote in-depth reports about any unorthodox actions or conversations he witnessed. This secret, once discovered, was publicised in the Polish media, and now the name Wojtek (or Tunio) Ziemilski is shameful.

Wojtek’s lecture continues in a monotonous voice, but picks up pace when rolling through the possibilities: that maybe Tunio didn’t know the extent of what he was doing, or maybe he was writing false reports; maybe it’s right for him to be punished for the crime against his people, or maybe it isn’t fair for an old man’s last years to be destroyed by exposing this secret and letting the hate and judgement descend upon him and move him out of his house and home.

Small Narrations is about many things – memory, history, nationality, age, judgement, war, performance, words – so much so that it is difficult to digest all at once. I should probably see it again. As he states at the beginning, it is almost impossible to start at the beginning as our own beginnings start before we exist. With the releasing of his grandfather’s secret, Wojtek is coming to terms with this fact.

Hunt and Darton: The Hunt and Darton Café

Coco Pops for £1 and a Roast Dinner Sandwich for £5 – this reasonably priced art-café is the pop-up project of performance artists Jenny Hunt and Holly Darton. As well as being a working café, it is an art piece (because they, the artists, say it is) presented as part of the Escalator East to Edinburgh programme. It is a cosy place animating the life of customer service by pushing it through a performance art funnel.

Hunt and Darton waitress in their own café – they wear pineapples on their heads and red lipstick as they swim around the café in an endless loop, and their customer service is efficient and friendly. It takes a no-mess attitude to be a waitress: ‘What can I get for you?’, ‘Is this yours? This isn’t yours is it, I should take it away’. You need to finish with a smile and a, ‘Was everything all right for you?’. These lines are the script of every waitress (as a waitress for six years, I know them well). Hunt and Darton also have little set-pieces, Haiku-like poems and ten-second ‘dances’, such as their mimed horse-race, that they deliver at random. ‘Did you make the right choice?’ Darton asks a customer. ‘Was she rude to you?’ She presses, gesturing towards Hunt.

I have a bacon sandwich and a coffee at a table by the window. There is a deconstructed Action Man on my table – other than this I was a lonely diner. I text my friends, watch the other customers, and read the menu. The menu supplies options for café conduct: How to sit – Conversational (opposite), Consorting (next to each other) or Co-existing (diagonal separation with chairs in between). Every aspect of potential café behaviour is explained, including the dos and don’ts of attracting a waitress (tapping forks on glasses definitely a no-no) and you can delight in experimenting with your options; mix it up maybe, be the customer that makes extreme demands, be the customer that winks at strangers, be the customer that tries to be overly helpful.

Behind me is a huge blackboard listing breakages and complaints (cold coffee, no bin in the loo, the waitress has silly hair). The profit/loss margins are also listed along with the takings for each day (Day 1: £480.30). All the inner workings of the café that are usually kept for the staff are open to the customers. When you’ve finished eating you are given a piece of chalk and asked ‘Have you chalked in today?’ On the blackboard every customer has been tallied; you add yourself to this list and so your participation in the project is solidified – the café is recognised as a community of fleeting visitors all equal to the next in this chalk line.

There are guest waiters, and these have included Escalator regulars Richard DeDomenici and Bryony Kimmings. Today it’s Tom Marshman (in Edinburgh for his Legs 11 show at Summerhall). He swans about in spandex and cocktail-glass specs offering a free Martini or tea-leaf reading service. I go for tea. In my cup are an ant and a horse’s head (not literally of course, this would require a pretty big cup). There is a record player in the café that you can change at will; a customer has just put on ‘The Sound of Silence’ by Simon and Garfunkel – again. I think: they must really love this song. They mutter along to it whilst flicking through the papers.

In the café’s side room is the base of this year’s Forest Fringe project – Paper Stages. Paper Stages is a book of instruction-based performance for you to undertake, collecting the contributions of 20 Forest Fringe artists. To get a copy you have to register with pioneering project Shmoney, a website that is experimenting in creating an alternative to money, where you exchange an hour of your time for something, on the basis that an hour of your time is equal to an hour of anyone else’s time. To get a copy of Paper Stages you commit to an hour-long task, which can be washing the dishes, making cups of tea for the staff, dusting the ornaments or telling the customers about your life. You can fulfil this task at the Hunt and Darton or at the newly relaunched (on a different site) Forest Café. My Paper Stages task is to write a review for the Hunt and Darton Café. Here it is.

www.huntanddartoncafe.com

Probe Theatre, Antonia Grove and Wendy Houstoun: Small Talk

Small Talk is a solo performance made by choreographer Wendy Houston for performer Antonia Grove, the premise of which is an actress auditioning for a B-Movie.

The performance is carried by a recording of a self-help tape teaching assertiveness. A soft voice talks us through how we can be anything we want, how we can make ourselves into whatever we want; this voice punctuates the show frequently. Antonia presents a series of female characters by switching wigs and shoes, transforming herself on stage at a dressing up table. In these moments she is relaxed, switching definitely between performance modes, as she looks at the technician and says, ‘Now’. Within her characterisations, she sits in a chair and talks about movies. Her voice is broken in places and she slurs her speech, the disjointed delivery making it clear that these aren’t her own words. She is constantly plugged in to an ipod, and so we ask, is she listening the tape we can hear, or just music, or the words that she is uttering?

Her speeches are teamed with stuttering choreography that builds in speed, abstract gestures accompanied with familiar movements from music videos – typical actions of ‘sexy’ women. Over the course of the show, she becomes a prom queen, a funny woman, a drunk, a dancing-all-night woman, and finally a country singer.

Each performance feels slightly off-key as she appears dishonest or upset or desperate in each character. Her performance itself is the focus and it is mesmerising, particularly the dance sections, which are extremely vigorous and performed full-throttle. Although I did feel lost at times within the content, the complexity of her auditioning / performing / being real left me disorientated and exhilarated.

Belarus Free Theatre: Minsk 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker

The Belarus Free Theatre are outspoken critics of the Belarus regime – a company who have themselves faced political repression and who have first-hand experience of arrests, protests and refuge. Minsk 2011: a Reply to Kathy Acker is a theatrical telling of Minsk and its many scars, with a particular focus on freedom of expression and sexuality as contrasted against the pioneering work of Katy Acker in 70s New York. ‘Welcome to Minsk,’ they say in their own language. ‘The sexiest city in the world!’

The opening scene speaks volumes. One performer takes out the national flag and is carried away by officials, another performer takes out a pride flag and is carried away by officials, another performer simply claps his hands and is carried away by officials. Finally, a performer stands and does nothing; the officials gather round him intimidating him, and then carry him away. Balancing these choreographed examples of the reality of life under the regime with facts – such as that it is illegal to gather in groups of more than three – we begin to grasp the state of this city.

A performer lists his scars and how he received them, mirroring the structure of the show, as Minsk’s scars are opened up to us. One scar torn wide open is the city’s political involvement with the sex industry. A haunting scene is bluntly portrayed as an officer assesses an erotic dance routine to pass it as erotic rather than pornographic. The women in this scene are vulnerable and obviously dependant on the validation from this official to survive.

The show builds to a climax as the company sing old traditional folk songs whilst covering a naked woman in black paint. She is like a child who is being poisoned by the city, by its rules, by its sex, and is thrown out as a monster, bewildered and flippantly bearing a whip. This almost ritual representation of the impact of the city on its people has high emotional effect.

The nine performers end the show by talking honestly about their own relationship to the city. This moment is calm and conversational; they laugh or cry amongst themselves. It becomes overwhelming that these people are dedicated to a city that is so abusive towards them.

Total Theatre