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

Emma Frankland and company: We Dig

So tell me what you want, what you really, really want…

Ah, here they are, dancing into the space, five feisty gals, each with a story to tell. No, not the Spice Girls – but an equally refreshing burst of energy, redefining girl power for the 21st century.

In this case, the girls (Emma Frankland and company) are a bunch of trans women and trans feminine people, armed with spades and jackhammers, who are here to dig a hole. No, not a metaphorical hole. An actual great, big earthy hole in the ground of what is (was?) the stage of the Ovalhouse – a legendary South London venue that for decades has been ‘a hotbed of artistic activism’ and now about to be demolished, the theatre relocated to a new building in Brixton.

So there is proper, deep digging going on here, dust and rubble everywhere, and we are issued with plastic goggles. And yes – a hole is the ultimate (Freudian cliché) metaphor for female sexuality: the receptive space, the empty receptacle to be filled. The digging is real and the digging down is also a metaphor for excavating the past – a quasi-archaeological quest for recovering who and what has gone before. Actually, it’s not just symbolic, we have real archaeology here: along the way we learn that the diggers (another nice resonance, a nod in the direction of early anarchists The Diggers) have uncovered all sorts of treasures in this under-stage space – old shoes, newspapers, and myriad Coca Cola bottles and cans from the past 50 years. Thirsty work, theatre. A real, full can of Coke is unearthed and shared – as is a box containing a pumpkin pie made by stage manager Nemo. Time to take a break… But not for long. A woman’s work is never done.

As they dig, they tell stories: autobiographical snippets about growing up in a body not recognised as their own; reflections on their cultural heritage; historical evidence of the existence of trans women stretching back over millennia. This interweaves with a site-responsive reflection on the Ovalhouse itself, unearthing its magnificent history as the site for so much of London’s experimental performance over the past 50 years – including, as lead artist Emma Frankland flags up, the appearance of New York’s legendary gay/trans company Hot Peaches.

There is a Deus Ex Machina moment towards the end of We Dig in which a surprise guest performer (on this occasion, La John Joseph – there will be someone different every night) calls for a time when theatre critics review work by queer or trans people without referring to them as such, just looking at the work – but in this case, that would be pretty difficult, as the piece is built around biography, and is both personal and political. Emma Frankland has worked in her own autobiography, the biographies of her four collaborators in the ensemble, and testimonies from trans women and trans gender/non binary people across the world. I don’t know if it is because I’ve known and loved her work for a long time, but when Emma takes the space, the ante feels upped – I sit up taller and listen as she riffs on the unity of all matter; the components of rock; and the need to dig down and get your hands dirty in life. I’m also drawn to Canadian artist Gein Wong, a strong, nurturing figure, embodying ancient sacred knowledge. I love the moment when she pulls up floorboards further along from the hole and teaches us how to plant garlic. Morgan M Page is also Canadian, but lives in London. She’s known mostly as a trans historian and writer/blogger. Her story of the recovered ‘male’ body replete with feminine dress and jewellery, buried many hundreds of years ago, offers her (and us) a link to a trans sisterhood stretching back through the years.

Tamarra is an Indonesian historian and artist who brings to the table (or building site, at least) the notion of the ‘chita chita’ (which may well not be how it is spelt) – the very special dream or wish that everyone holds in their heart. No one here wants world fame or riches. To be safe, to see their children grow, to have a slightly better home, to honour the earth. But mostly, to be safe, to feel safe, everywhere – that comes up again and again. They are ‘the children of stress’ – they dig to feel safe, to relieve themselves of the oppressive weight of the world’s judgement.

Travis Alabanza is local – a London-based writer and performer who recently won a Total Theatre Award for best emerging artist. Travis is the joker in the pack, always ready with a quip, playing it for laughs. Until there comes a point where they just can’t do it anymore. The comic veneer cracks, and – from the top of a scaffold tower, water pouring down from a fractured pipe – Travis delivers a heartfelt rant on oppression, freedom and the strain of holding it all together.

We Dig is one of those performance pieces that constantly references the fact that it is a piece of theatre being constructed right here and now. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it slows the piece down. The show works best when each performer is delivering a heartfelt personal monologue (all five are gifted performers, each with a strong but very different stage presence); or when they collectively work together without words – the movement direction by Nando Messias is excellent, the spades used to provide rhythmic, percussive accompaniment to simple but strong choreographic motifs. A dust sheet is used for a brilliant moment of shadow theatre that passes all too quickly.

Less successful are the informal chats around the building site. Creating an ambience of supposedly casual, impromptu talk onstage is one of the hardest tasks for a theatre-maker, and there is a need for meticulous behind-the-scenes scripting and rehearsal to give the appearance of spontaneity. Especially hard when some performers are speaking in a second language, and most are performance artists rather than actors – so there is sometimes a lack of pace and zip in these sections. A dramaturg (Subira Wahogo) is credited, but no director – which is telling…

Viewed as activated installation/living sculpture, We Dig is wonderful – vibrant visual imagery, dynamic physical action, and luscious lighting working together to create powerful pictures that speak volumes. You dig?

Featured image (top): Emma Frankland and company: We Dig. Photo taken at Ovalhouse by Rosie Powell

Homage to Catalonia – Street Theatre and Circus Pioneers

What makes Catalan performing arts so special? Dorothy Max Prior reflects on the rich tradition of circus, outdoor arts, and site-responsive performance by artists from Catalonia

I’m trying to remember the first time I saw – or consciously recognised that I was seeing – work by a Catalan company. I think it must have been La Fura dels Baus’ 1985 UK debut in a warehouse in what was then a run-down part of London’s docklands. The show was called Suz/O/Suz, and a review in music paper NME described it as ‘a kind of adult adventure playground of fun, danger, slapstick and fantasy’. There was no stage, no separation between the audience and the performers, who emerged from nowhere, naked, breaking eggs over heads, beating on barrels, wheeling preposterous hybrid metal carts into the fast-scattering audience members, setting off fireworks, and climbing walls like unleashed lunatics. I remember my delight and astonishment at seeing something so raw and wild, a show in which experimental music (mixing live and electronic instrumentation) provided the soundtrack for such extraordinarily visceral physical action. La Fura established their own, and Catalonia’s, reputation as creators of anarchic multi-discipline performance that challenged conceptions of what ‘theatre’ could be.

La Fura dels Baus: Suz /O/ Suz, 1985

Sometime after that, I came across Els Comediants (under the direction of Joan Font), whose masterful teatre de carrer (street theatre) came to the UK courtesy of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), who brought The Devils (Dimonis) to Battersea Park – a piece which somehow made it feel like there were hundreds of these mad devils popping up unexpectedly from the bushes, brandishing flares, and chasing us down the paths of this urban park. Although in style very different to La Fura, Els Comediants shared their multi-disciplinary approach, and their exuberant energy – staging work in unusual spaces and breaking down barriers between artist and audience. These things feel pretty usual these days, but in the 1980s it was far less common, and for many British artists, Catalonia was looked to as ‘market leaders’ in the development of outdoor and site-responsive performance, and for a cross-artform practice in which visual artists, actors, musicians and circus artists were all brought into the melting pot.

Another legendary Catalan artist presented by LIFT was Albert Vidal, who turned himself into an exhibit, taking up residence in London Zoo – audience members (and regular zoo visitors) getting to see him eat, sleep and field the deluge of chocolate biscuits offered through the bars of his cage by small children. Vidal’s work is still regularly cited as one of the most adventurous examples of site-responsive performance ever seen!

Els Comediants: Dimonis (The Devils)

These trailblazers have been followed, in more recent years, by a new generation of equally vital and extraordinary Catalan artists who are often difficult to pigeonhole, choosing to cross established boundaries of form and practice.

Take, for example, the work of Barcelona based Xavier Bobés, who brought Things Easily Forgotten to the London International Mime Festival on two separate occasions. The show, which plays to just five audience members at a time in a specially created installation space, feels like a cross between a seance, a family gathering, and a magic show, as the dead of twentieth-century Barcelona are conjured up for us through an extraordinary array of printed ephemera, everyday objects, and crackly sounds that come from a vinyl record player. Bobés holds the space beautifully – sometimes silently, sometimes drawing us in with text. It leaves you with the sort of bittersweet melancholy you feel when you find a cache of old photographs in your grandmother’s wardrobe. There is an added poignancy for anyone with an interest in the painful history of Spain and Catalonia over the past 100 years, particularly the Franco years.

Bobés is one of the Catalan artists programmed and supported by Spoffin, an annual street arts festival based in Amersfoort, in The Netherlands. The festival’s artistic director, Alfred Konijnenbelt, has some thoughts on why so many wonderful artists emerge from Catalonia:

‘They strongly believe in their own culture and are proud of it in a sincere and honest way. Catalonia invests a lot of time and money into the arts – for example, through Institut Ramon Llull. Every year, at festivals in Catalonia, I discover the most beautiful performances. Productions that are distinguished by a beautiful balance of emotion and mind. They are strong conceptually, with the ability to touch your heart.’

Asked to name a company that captures the zeitgeist of contemporary Catalan performance work, he picks Kamchàtka, who have often brought their work to UK festivals, most recently to Stockton International Riverside Festival (SIRF) in August 2019:

‘Kamchàtka is the Catalan company that is always ahead of the times’ he says. ‘As early as 2006, they focused on the subject of refugees, creating performances that are very touching and direct, while leaving plenty of space for your own imagination. They made me feel close, guilty, in love, loved, sad and super happy — sometimes even in one single hour. Kamchàtka has a direct connection to my heart.’

In 2017 Spoffin presented a Catalan and Balearic Islands focused programme, consisting of eight different shows of outstanding quality. Alfred picks another favourite artist, presented in that programme:

‘One of the most inspiring pieces was Públic Present 24 hores by Ada Vilaró, in which she performed non-stop for 24 hours at the same spot in the middle of a big square, in pure silence, claiming public space is for everyone, and contacting audience members just with her eyes. This was specifically touching because Catalonia had just faced a terroristic attack and had come under huge pressure from the national government of Spain’.

Ada Vilaró: Públic Present 24 hores, Spoffin festival 2017. Photo: Wim Lanser

This last comment ties in with a thought from Gebra Serra, co-ordinator of Trapezi, the biggest contemporary circus festival in Spain, which takes place every May in Reus (a city that is an hour away from Barcelona):

‘Performing arts, especially, street arts, have been a tool for political vindication at the start of our democracy, often used to occupy public space and to empower the public.’

Trapezi programme Catalan, Spanish and International work. They have moved on from being presenters to also being producers, and in 2019, they produced their third small-format show, Davaii, a two-person show by Domichovsky & Agranov; and also co-produced (with Fira Tàrrega, MAC Barcelona and other partners) a larger scale show called Dioptries, by Cia Toti Toronell.

Trapezi also collaborate with SeaChange Arts and Institut Ramon Llull in the process of selection for the Catalan companies who are invited to perform at Out There International Festival of Circus and Street Arts in Great Yarmouth. Gebra cites Gregarious, by Cie Soon (Manel Rosés and Nilas Kronlid), as a show that she is particularly pleased to have supported.

I see Gregarious at Out There, where it is presented on the main stage of St George’s Park, at the heart of the festival. Ostensibly a piece about sport, two male athletes sweat and puff as they run around the stage towards an imaginary marathon finish line, battle over a teeter-board, and work together to erect a Chinese pole. What it’s actually about is the relationship between the two. Colleagues, collaborators, rivals, brothers, lovers? They seem to be all of these, at various points in the piece, which is meticulously structured, every moment of its 45-minute length used expertly in the telling of its tale, and the exploration of said relationship. They push and pull in a novel take on hand-to-hand and acrobalance, bicker and barter in acrobatic dance-offs, carry each other in fireman lifts, kick-start their seemingly lifeless partner with a hefty catapult from the teeter-board, swing merrily around the pole in an easy rivalry, wrestle, and slow-dance… The skills are paramount and of the highest level as they interrogate the circus forms used without feeling the need to dissemble them. Parallel to the investigation of male relationship is a gentle commentary on cultural heritage. Catalan acrobat Manel Rosés carries on the pole to a strident Paso Doble, strutting like a matador; the smiling Swede Nilas Kronlid gives us crowd-pleasing gyrations to a Eurovision-friendly Swedish pop tune. It’s a complete delight, from beginning to end – and like many other great contemporary circus shows, the result of cross-European collaboration.

Cie Soon(Manel Rosés and Nilas Kronlid): Gregarious

Also seen at Out There Festival is Collettivo Terzo Livello’s Documento, presented in the romantically named Dissenters Graveyard, a secret garden tucked behind a market. The aspect of this work that interests me most is the excellent interaction with the site. Boundary walls are climbed, walked along, and become a stage for juggling; benches and wheelie bins are used to clamber and trip over, or to climb into; old tyres are piled into towers, and become strange garments when stacked up over bendy bodies. This troupe of Italian and Catalan artists are supremely talented acrobats, although mostly they play down and deconstruct their circus skills with clever clowning as they trip and fall and flounder – morphing into dogs, battling over the inanimate objects they are giving life to. This is not the case in the (almost) finale of the piece – here, the pure skill and spectacle of circus is allowed full reign in a thrilling hair-hanging act, the performer emerging from a black bin liner filled with plastic and bubblewrap, like a strange new bird hatched in a nest of waste materials. She fashions herself a dress made from pieces of see-through blue plastic that look like disposable hospital gowns, attaches her hair-piece to the rope, and is hoisted high up into the trees, spinning furiously. It’s a great moment – an image of breathtaking beauty fashioned from an ugly mess.

Collettivo Terzo Livello: site-responsive circus experimenters

Collettivo Terzo Livello are one of many companies supported and nurtured by La Central del Circ, a research and creation centre for contemporary circus with a mission to provide resources for training, research, creation, production, and community building. Johnny Torres (artistic director) and Nini Gorzerino (project director) are its key movers and shakers, and they describe their organisation as ‘a contemporary circus lighthouse in the Mediterranean arc’.

Over the years they’ve given support to new collaborative circus formats or projects, ‘in order to propose other models of understanding and sharing circus arts’. So an experimental group like Collettivo Terzo Livello fit perfectly within their remit. Terzo Livello define themselves as: ‘A circus group whose works starts from artistic research, giving the artists a free space to explore and experiment on several issues, in spaces that inspire them.’ Johnny and Nini of La Central del Circ say: ‘Research is an essential element of the artistic processes… providing artists with time, space and economic resources to deepen in their practices gives them the opportunity to escape the pressure of success.’

Challenging ‘classist’ models of performance spaces led by market forces, they are particularly proud of a venture called ‘The week of rupture and transformation’ which began two years ago, the idea being to give, during one full week, the centre and all its economic resources to local artists, and to allow them to do whatever they want.

Joan Català: Pelat

Amongst a hefty list of artists that La Central del Circ admire and support is Joan Català, who British audiences may know for Pelat, presented as part of a Catalan programme at the Greenwich and Docklands Festival 2014; and Irish ones for his appearance at the 2019 Spraoi Festival in Waterford, Ireland, which this year programmed a number of Catalan and Balaeric artists.

Pelat, which uses audience participation as a key element, is, according to Joan Català, ‘an experiment which has become a spectacle’. He says that his goal is to remind people of the value of collective work – work that is ‘handmade, artisan work, not reliant on technology’. Part of the show involved audience members instructed to build towers, referencing the famous Castellers – although in this case it is with logs rather than human bodies. Talking of those legendary human towers, which I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing rise and fall with spectacular skill at Gràcia festival in Barcelona, I was delighted to learn recently that there is now a London branch of the Castellers!

Català is not the only artist from the region who employs and references local tradition and folklore, and Trapezi’s Gebra Serra reflects that one defining characteristic is a holistic integration of art and daily life:

‘We have a long tradition of popular cultural activity here: every village has a lot of cultural associations – it’s an ongoing activity of our society.’

This thought is reflected by Catalan theatre artist and teacher Marian Masoliver, co-founder of the internationally renowned Actors Space training centre, which is located just outside of the ancient Roman city of Vic (an hour or so north of Barcelona). Marian, who trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and was subsequently a performer with La Fura dels Baus, now mostly dedicates herself to teaching and running the centre, which is attended by participants from all over the world. But she and her English partner Simon Edwards are also engaged with the local community, co-running a carnival organisation in the small Catalonian town of Mollet – an opportunity for community celebration, and to laugh together at the ridiculousness of human behaviour. Marian cites ‘tradition, colour, music, and spontaneity’ as key Catalan characteristics, describing the work as both celebratory and meaningful.

It is something that comes up again and again – this way of sitting between populism and experimentation. Legendary Catalan company Els Joglars have as their strapline ‘combining avant-garde and popular theatre’ and talk also of the need to ‘recreate the age-old inconstancy, anarchy and individualism’ of their homeland.

Gebra Serra of Trapezi again: ‘Catalan performing arts are different to Spanish performing arts because historically Catalan artists have looked more to the rest of Europe, and they have evolved faster.’

Cia Toti Toronell: Dioptries at Fira Tàrrega 2019

Catalonia has worked hard both to face outwards and to welcome the world in. It is no coincidence that one of Europe’s leading international performing arts market (with a special focus on outdoor arts and the public space) is held there – the Fira Tàrrega, which since 1981 has taken place every September in Tàrrega, in the province of Lleida.

Fira Tàrrega describe themselves as ‘a shop window for creativity’ and their mission is ‘to invigorate the performing arts market, the internationalisation of the creators, and [to support] the generation of strategic alliances to develop international street art productions or circuits’. The 2019 edition opened with a talk entitled ‘Public Space: Social Transformation, Existence, Creation’ – which they feel was an unusual but successful opening gambit. So, a parallel here with Out Theatre Festival 2019, who dedicated their professional programme Rise Up! to the role of outdoor arts in cultural democracy. These are most definitely topics of great relevance in these tumultuous times – and a reminder that the origins of street theatre are inextricably linked with protest, social engagement, and political action.

Anna Giribet i Argilès, artistic director of Fira Tàrrega says ‘We think that Catalan artists are very good at small- or medium-scale street arts and installation work. They are particularly good at telling local stories that are of interest at the global level. There is a concept that encompasses that: glocal!’

Dulce Duca: Sweet Drama

But what of the artists themselves? What do they think? Juggler and physical theatre performer Dulce Duca, programmed in Out There Festival 2019 with her new show Sweet Drama, is well placed to answer:

‘I think that Catalonia has become an international artistic meeting point where many cultures cross. It’s a very rich environment with this mix of artists from all over the world. They are open to receiving new artists and to supporting them. I came from Portugal, I lived in France for five years, and then in Catalonia for the last nine years, where I’ve felt really included. I have to say that Institut Ramon Llull have supported a lot of artists to develop their work and to tour internationally – and that has helped the world to get to know Catalan artists…’

Dulce’s first major international show, Um Belo Dia, was presented at a previous edition of Out There. Her second solo, Sweet Drama, has been developed in collaboration with SeaChange Arts’ artistic director Joe Mackintosh, and premiered at Out There 2019.

It starts with a mock no-show as the stage manager announces that Dulce is late. The phone rings – mobiles become a motif of the piece – and we learn that she’s on her way. And here she is – running around the corner in a gold dress, red tights, and strappy high-heeled gold sandals. We learn that she’s dashed away from her friend’s wedding reception to do this show. There’s a storyline about a missing present – a commissioned painting that hasn’t been paid for, which eventually resolves in a live painting scene – but the piece is less about story than character. Dulce is a great clown, and in this piece she has created a comic character that is simultaneously deplorable and lovable. Like all good physical comedy performers, she mixes technical skill and clowning to great effect. Her core skill is juggling, and she finds ingenious ways to explore the comic possibilities of a set of clubs and a pair of half-on half-off tights. The high-heeled shoes come off, and on go – a pair of high-heeled roller-boots! The piece is a collaboration with local skateboarders who are well-integrated into the piece, and Dulce is a generous performer, letting them showcase their skills.

Dulce is particularly pleased with this aspect of the piece:

‘I am especially proud of what I am doing with the skateboarders. In my opinion they are jugglers – they manipulate skateboards with their feet. They have a very similar dedication. I want to be a catalyst, so the audience can see the greatness of what they do. I’ve been studying them and working with them to understand how can we fit together, and what can we share and evolve. It’s a very rewarding experience.’

Pau Palaus: Petjades

Just round the corner from Dulce’s Great Yarmouth skatepark is the idiosyncratic King Street, which runs parallel to the waterfront – an interesting mix of secondhand furniture shops, grocery stores, pubs and cafes. Yarmouth has a large immigrant population, with Polish and Portuguese speaking communities (from both Portugal and Angola) particularly in evidence in the groups of people sitting outside the shops and cafes. Into this environment come two men, and a cello. The cello is mounted on a trolley, and a gently melancholy tune is being played by a man in a brown wool coat and floppy felt hat. A younger (or perhaps he’s just more child-like) man in a teal-coloured coat and flat cap is pushing the trolley along. This is Catalan company Pau Palaus, and their promenade show Petjades is a beautiful and moving piece of work about migration – evoking both historical experience (the piece was inspired by Second World War stories) and the current so-called ‘refuge crisis’. How much has actually changed, we wonder? The narrative is simple, but everything in this word-free piece is executed with precision, and the interactions with the audience are handled with the expertise of experienced performers.

The fifth show in Out There’s Catalan programme is PakiPaya’s TocaToc, a two-person circus-theatre show (set in their own big yellow tent) which explores romantic relationships between men and women. ‘Two people meet, they say hello, they hug, they say goodbye, they leave…’ says the voiceover, and the words are acted out in numerous physical motifs – mimed, clowned, then abstracted into dance, and used as the catalyst for a number of skilled aerial doubles act on a specially-designed cradle structure. At first, the doubles acts are comic, with slaps and kicks and comic drops onto a mattress. The final one is tender, loving and totally beautiful. Before we get to that point, we work through very many comic scenes that exploit and celebrate popular culture, with our two performers dashing through a whole wardrobe of costumes, and exploiting the potential of their specially designed space – a unit with two doors is run around, stood on, and popped in out of with excellent comic timing and clown sensibility, and the aerial truss/cradle and ropes are used with expert ease.

Cia Paki Paya: Toca Toc

As with other European festivals, such as Spoffin or Spraoi, the relationship between Out There and Catalan companies is one that has been developed over a number of years. This special relationship has been brokered by the ‘Catalan culture abroad’ organisation, Institut Ramon Llull, working with Trapezi festival. Amongst other forms of support, the Institut has an Artists’ Mobility grants programme that gives support to Catalan artists to present or tour performing arts work. Four of the five companies seen at this year’s Out There festival were supported by residencies in Great Yarmouth, before presenting their work in the festival.

It is clear from the work seen not only at Out There festival 2019, but also at other festivals and events across Europe, that Catalonia remains a fertile bed of excellence and experimentation, producing high quality and innovative performing arts work, and continuing to both honour its own traditions and to look outwards to the wider art world.

Featured image (top of page) Catalan street theatre company Kamchàtka

This article is published by Total Theatre Magazine in collaboration with Institut Ramon Llull

Institut Ramon Llull is a public body founded with the purpose of promoting Catalan language studies at universities abroad, the translation of literature and thought written in Catalan, and Catalan cultural production in theatre, film, circus, dance, music, the visual arts, design and architecture. For more information see https://www.llull.cat/english/home/index.cfm

Out There International Festival of Circus and Street Arts in Great Yarmouth is produced by SeaChange Arts which is headed by artistic director Joe MacIntosh and executive director Veronica Stephens. https://seachangearts.org.uk/

The Out There 2019 programme took place 13–15 September, and included five Catalan companies:

Collettivo Terzo Livello, Documento; Dulce Duca, Sweet Drama; Pau Palaus, Petjades; Cia PakiPaya, Toca Toc; and Cie Soon (Manel Rosés and Nilas Kronlid), Gregarious.

www.outtherefestival.com

Trapezi is a circus fair focusing on Catalan productions, as well as international shows. This year it celebrated its 23rd edition. It is held in May in Reus, a city in the province of Tarragona. https://www.trapezi.cat/en/

Fira Tàrrega is an international performing arts market with a special focus on outdoor arts and the public space. It is held every year in September in Tàrrega, in the province of Lleida. https://www.firatarrega.cat/en_index/

Spraoi International Street Arts Festival takes place in Waterford, Ireland, every August: http://www.spraoi.com/

Spoffin Festival, is held in August in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. It celebrated its tenth year in 2019: https://spoffin.eu/

La Central del Circ, based at the Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona, is a creation centre which also makes its resources available to circus professionals for training, practice, and continuing education: https://www.lacentraldelcirc.cat/

The Actors Space is an international training centre for theatre and film, located in a place of outstanding natural beauty near Vic, one hour from Barcelona. https://www.actors-space.org/

La Fura dels Baus was founded in 1979 in Moià, Barcelona. The company are known for their pioneering urban theatre, use of unusual settings, and blurring of the boundaries between audience and performers: https://www.lafura.com/

Els Comediants is a collective of artists, actors and musicians who create collaborative work. The company was founded in 1971, and its base is in Canet de Mar (near Barcelona): http://comediants.com

Castellers of Catalonia

Here, There – and Out There

The streets are alive and kicking! Dorothy Max Prior is out and about in Great Yarmouth, for the Out There Festival of Circus and Street Theatre 2019

An experimental circus show in a secret garden with pink-lit trees, from which a woman hangs by her hair. Gaming arcades outwitted by an Actual Reality Arcade, in which small children get thwacked with rubber mallets by their siblings. A web of string animated by light and sound and physical action. Musicians wheeled (or wheeling themselves) though the streets on adapted instruments. And whole posses of acrobats and clowns, both slapstick and sophisticated, entertaining happy hordes of people enjoying the last of the summer sunshine. Welcome to Great Yarmouth, on an untypical weekend in September…

Out There, now in its 12th edition, has all the qualities of a great street arts festival. It’s within a geographically confined space – town centre and seafront, and the immediate streets and parks close to the festival hub at Drill House – so you can easily walk to everything. It’s an international programme, with work from across Europe, including a specially curated group of Catalan companies – and in some cases further afield: the string-web installation referenced, It’s Not Here, It’s Over Here, is by Korean company Galmae. And it nurtures local involvement, with artists and performers from Great Yarmouth, such as the Portuguese collective Reprezent, and local youth groups such as the SeaChange Arts’ Drillaz Circus School, presenting work.

Add in to all that an excellent Festival Professional Programme (Rise Up) for artists, producers and bookers of outdoor arts; a swathe of excellent workshops, from block printing with Extinction Rebellion and Paris 68 Redux, to informal juggling sessions; plus day-long family-friendly craft sessions and circus drop-ins at Drill House – and you’re on to a winning formula.

Inverted Theatre: Box. Photo Paul Blakemore

The festival’s full moniker is Out There International Festival of Circus & Street Arts – so there is, naturally, a strong emphasis on circus work. And we find all sorts here, of every scale and style. The six-strong daredevil team of La Contrabande present a crowd-pleasing piece called Bal Trap, which features teeter-board, trampolining, knife-throwing – including a great balloon-popping-from-afar skit – and a lovely section on a low-strung swing cum trapeze. It’s high energy, thrilling stuff as the team of human pinballs leap and bound and bounce on and over the equipment and each other. Carefully-honed physical skills, immaculate timing, and a brilliant sense of (slapstick) humour make for a top-quality show that is about nothing other than what you see – which is good enough for me!

In complete contrast, Inverted Theatre’s Box (a SeaChange Arts co-production) gives us a delicately funny and endearing duet about sibling relationships, using acrobatics and hand-balancing. It’s all set around – yes, you’ve guessed – a box, from which the twinned performers (one boy, one girl, of similar build) emerge. There are little doors, and holes through which to wave – all exploited skilfully. There’s a playful exploration of human shape and form in relation to the box, and to each other. There is a pole that pulls out from the box, used to walk along and hand-balance on, and they also balance on the box itself, on canes on top of the box, and of course on each other. They work beautifully together, bodies entwined like puppies, or pulling away churlishly. Push and pull, give and take is a constant motif. They handstand in such close proximity that they end up almost spooned together, or they balance precariously on opposite sides, right at or over the box’s edge. Skilful and whimsical, with a lovely relationship to audience, who are played to and high-fived as the rivalry between the ‘twins’ builds, Box is an absolute delight, full of gentle surprises.

Southpaw Dance Company: Icarus

On the same site as Box, a closed street that adjoins the park, I see Southpaw’s new show Icarus. It’s an ensemble dance-theatre piece, and like other Southpaw work, doesn’t shy away from delivering dance with a strong narrative element. Of course, the Icarus story is very well known, so they don’t have to work too hard to tell the tale, extracting key elements and transposing them into movement motifs and visual imagery, rather than labouring the story with too much detail. The Sun is a woman sporting gold make-up who doesn’t look quite have the gravitas to convince me she is an all-powerful ‘goddess’, and her costume is a little weak (too ‘basic contemporary dance’) to convince us she’s a personification of the mightiest element in our world – but she’s a good dancer, and her majestic rise and fall at the start and end of the day are nicely acted out in a contact dance/hand-to-hand sequence in which she climbs up onto shoulders, then down to the ground over the offered bodies of the chorus. The ill-fated boy Icarus is dressed in white, and the supporting cast are clothed in black tunics dusted with white chalk, with faces made up (evoking classic Greek Mime) in white and black. Icarus’ father Daedalus is, we presume, represented by the all-male chorus, who – having executed a well choreographed ensemble dance with flags and break-dance elements – lift him into his wings, encouraging him to fly high. And what lovely wings they are, enormous gold-and-silver metal structures, each placed individually on to the dancer’s body, supported by a leather harness. The image of the doomed Icarus joyfully exploring the possibilities that his wings afford is delightful, and although the subsequent disastrous encounter with the Sun feels a bit hackneyed to me, smoke billowing all over the place as Icarus falls, the crowd obviously love it. This is not my favourite Southpaw show – apart from anything else, I have seen so many physical/visual theatre versions of the Icarus tale I’m not sure there is room in my heart for another one. But it is, as with all the company’s work, choreographed with care and performed with skill – Samuel Baxter as Icarus, in particular, is a charismatic and talented dancer.

Cia Paki Paya: Toca Toc

As a specially curated body of work within the festival, developed in collaboration with the Institut Ramon Llull, the Catalan programme features an excellent body of (mostly circus) work, by five different companies who are either based in Catalunya, or are international collaborations with Catalan artists. They include the aforementioned secret garden hair-hanger, in Colletivo Terzo Livello’s site-responsive exploration of Yarmouth’s ‘dissenters’ graveyard’, Documento; PakiPaya’s zany tented show, Toca Toc, an exploration of love and partnership, within and outside of the circus relationship; and Cie Soon’s Gregarious, a two-man investigation of sporting rivalry and male friendship, presented on the main stage in the park, which rather wonderfully dares to play with and deconstruct the forms it uses (acrobatics, teeterboard, and Chinese pole). There is also Catalan-Portuguese artist Dulce Duca, who has an outrageously funny new take on juggling on Sweet Drama, a collaboration with local skateboarders co-written by local hero Joe Mackintosh; and a delightful and heartwarming walkabout show about migration, Petjades, by Pau Palaus. All five shows are of a very high standard. (They will be reflected on more fully in a special article about the Anglo-Catalan connection.)

Out There features another curated programme within the programme, in the form of work commissioned by Without Walls, a partnership of festivals and organisations that includes Out There producers SeaChange Arts. Shows presented here in Great Yarmouth includes circus-dance piece Wild by Motionhouse, parkour theatre On Edge by Justice in Motion, Matthew Harrison’s Actual Reality Arcade, and Ray Lee’s Congregation – which have all been seen elsewhere around the country by Total Theatre Magazine in summer 2019.

Spitz & Co: Les Gloriables

Also part of Without Walls, and a SeaChange co-production, is a French/UK collaboration from Spitz & Co, Les Gloriables. And what a glorious thing it is! Two women, one French, one English, give us a feisty feminist reworking of Les Miserables, complete with a massive supporting cast – yes, us, the audience, who are brought in as Gilets Jaunes, flag-bearers, placard-writers, angry men (of any gender), weeping women (ditto), and nuns (cue the excruciating 1960s hit ‘Dominique’). Oh and of course we are the baying crowd at the barricades – Viva La Revolution! The whole thing is carried by our trusty narrator ‘Josephine’, who also steps in to play supporting roles (policemen, judges, prison wardens etc.), and the ‘legendary French actress Gloria Delaneuf’ who plays all the main roles – so, an actress plays an actress, playing a multitude of roles, in a kind of nesting Russian doll structure. Gloria has ‘Dreamed a Dream’ (cue song, you know the one), and that dream is ‘to make a piece of theatre that will unite Europe’. The Union Flag and the EU’s blue and yellow emblem fly behind her.

Thus, reformed convict Jean Valjean becomes Jeanne, with a defyingly liberated left breast, and her prisoner number, 24601, emblazoned on the back of her jacket. Later, she morphs into the poor dear impoverished Fantine, who in desperation sells her hair and her front teeth (a nice nod towards the Victor Hugo book – in the musical Les Mis, it’s her hair and a locket), then, as she is forced into prostitution, lap-dances around an elderly gentleman tempted in from the audience. There’s a lovely scene as Fantine is harassed by the dandy Barmatabois, ‘Gloria’ playing both characters, in Music Hall style half-and-half drag. But oh dear, Fantine is on her last legs and wastes away – what will happen her poor dear little illegitimate daughter, Cosette? Jeanne to the rescue!

It’s Poor Theatre of the best sort. A porter’s trolley serves multiple purposes, the Paris Uprising is enacted with water bombs, and a basket full of white handkerchiefs are not only hankies but also flags and nuns’ wimples. And who needs a swanky theatre in the West End or on Broadway when you have the Market Place in Yarmouth (right next to the Market Chips stall too – an added bonus).

Rimski & Handkerchief

Another favourite show is also a SeaChange co-production, Rimski & Handkerchief’s Wind Up at Home. It’s a musical installation piece, a kind of arty bric-a-brac stall, placed (rather wonderfully, I feel) not in a cobbled backstreet full of quirky run-down shops – and there are a fair few of those in Yarmouth – where it would blend in with its surroundings, but right slap bang in the middle of the most redeveloped part of the town, next to the bus station and the Market Gates shopping centre. It looks magnificently incongruous in its chosen site. We see an open-fronted shoplet bursting to the brim with tattered objects, piled one upon the other, and escaping out onto the pavement. There’s a velvet chaise longue heaped with eiderdowns and cushions, an assortment of chairs and occasional tables of all shapes and sizes, and lamps a-plenty, many with the sort of fringed shades your granny would love. There’s a little wooden rocking horse, rusty Silver Cross prams, well-loved large-horned musical instruments, a gramophone player bearing a miniature band on its turntable, and a wax skull wearing a policeman’s hat. There are hostess trolleys loaded with a crazed assortment of lanterns, tin pots, crockery, and fake flowers – yellow dahlias! – and there are lots of whirring umbrellas of all sizes and colours. And it’s not just the umbrellas – things whir and tick and clunk all over the place. Oh, not to mention the ringing telephones… Meanwhile, a pair of odd looking characters, one male, one female, potter around. He’s in a faded and frayed black suit and battered hat. She’s in a Victorian white cotton playsuit-type undergarment with odd socks, brown brogues, and an equally battered hat sporting fake flowers.

To each side of Rimski’s Yard (as the sign pronounces) are two interesting musical instruments. There’s a piano on bicycle wheels, with a ripped and torn faded pink velvet seat and klaxon horn (the aptly named Bicycle Piano); and there’s a double bass mounted on to a tricycle (the Double Bassicle). A couple of times a day, the installation is augmented by musical performances, Rimski and his ‘partner in rhyme’ Handkerchief taking to their instruments to serenade us. At the start of their final show of the festival, Rimski frantically peddles up and down the pavement whilst playing the old honky tonk, and Handkerchief suddenly pops out of the piano’s top lid. Together, they sing Send in the Clowns (of course they do!) and the Flanagan & Allen classic, Nice People, amongst other treats. Handkerchief also has a brief spell on her double bass, which she describes as ‘broken’. The crowd love them – especially when Rimski veers into the road with his piano and does nothing to avoid an oncoming double-decker that has just turned out from the bus station. Rimski stops, heaving on the great metal handbrake that clunks noisily. The bus driver stops – just in time – and Rimski then slowly, pumping furiously, pedals away to cheers and laughter from the crowd. Meanwhile, the umbrellas whir on, and the installation clunks away in the background. It is all as eccentrically English as you could possibly imagine –installation and performance are a complete delight, both.

Mark Copeland: 21 Remarkable People (& An Angler)

Also eccentrically English and a total delight is the new project from Insect Circus creator, Mark Copeland – a marvellous wheeze called 21 Remarkable People (& an Angler), which is presented as an exhibition at Skippings Gallery, purportedly portraits of the artist’s ancestors, with a performative element in the form of Mrs Insect Circus (the artist’s wife and collaborator Sarah) who gives us a guided tour of cautionary tales. Thus, we meet a pair of twins conjoined by their hair and nails, a puppeteer who becomes more and more puppet-like – cracked and wooden – as he ages, and a woman who makes a jacket out of the tattooed skin of her drowned sailor husband… The dastardly Angler, by the way, is excluded from the ‘remarkable’ list as he is responsible for the death of the very last mermaid, which he catches and shows off with crude boasting.

The festival’s 2019 professional programme, Rise Up, includes a day reflecting on art activism, with a keynote speech from Extinction Rebellion’s Charlie Waterhouse; and a Total Theatre Talks session entitled The Future is Ours: a positive approach to Eco Theatre and Sustainability.

Tying in to the Rise Up! theme, the Saturday night whole-town showpiece of the festival is a major new show from French outdoor arts veterans Generik Vapeur, working in collaboration with UK company Gorilla Circus to create Thank You for Having Us (reviewed here), co-commissioned by the festival’s producers, SeaChange Arts.

Which feels a good note to end on – thank you indeed, Out There Festival– it has been a pleasure.

Générik Vapeur/ Gorilla Circus: Thank You for Having Us

Featured image (top): Spitz & Co: Les Gloriables.

Out There International Festival of Circus & Street Arts, 14–15 September 2019: www.outtherefestival.com

Generik Vapeur/Gorilla Circus: Thank You for Having Us (Merci de Votre Accueil)

The main drag in Great Yarmouth on a Saturday night. There are gaggles of teenagers, dressed in a supermarket of styles: a bit of Mod here, a bit of Punk there. Lots of Adidas, too. There are families with tots in buggies, some clutching bags of crisps or lollipops, and there are kids sitting on their dad’s shoulders waving toy lightsavers, or weaving their way through the crowd on scooters. There are young couples, and older ones too, clutching chips or cans of drink.

Some are here for Thank You for Having Us, the grand procession and show that is the highlight of this weekend’s Out There International Festival of Circus and Street Arts. Some are here just because it’s Saturday night, and where else is there to be in Yarmouth of a Saturday night? There are games arcades a-plenty, with names like Golden Nuggets and Pink Flamingo. Each arcade boasts its own brilliantly bright illuminations – flashing letters and numbers, geometric lines and grids, and symbols and images. And a cacophony of sounds erupt from each: ‘Hey you! Yes, you! Come and play me, if you dare!’ screams an electronic voice from within. There are burger bars, and fish and chip shops, and pubs. Plenty of pubs, including one offering a doggy dinner for £2-50. Ah yes, dogs – people in Yarmouth like their dogs.

Into all this comes Generik Vapeur, grandmasters (and mistress) of the large-scale, seemingly anarchic – but in reality meticulously planned and executed – processional outdoor arts intervention. This Marseille based company are veterans of the French (and Pan-European) street theatre scene, and have been doing this sort of thing for upwards of 30 years. We are in safe hands.

Music is at the heart of it all: vocalist Caty Avram, co-founder of the company and co-author of the show (the others being director Pierre Berthelot of Genrik Vapeur and collaborator Ezra Trigg of Gorilla Circus) and the other musicians – electric guitars and bass, drumkit, percussion, keyboards/electronics/sampling – are placed on a series of adapted grand pianos on wheels. The sound is cosmic – hardcore and highly percussive progressive krautrock (think Can or Tangerine Dream), with a dash of expressive New York style punky jazz, and a hint of the Pierre Henry/Spooky Tooth collaboration – plus Caty’s expressive low voice and rich accent giving it a contemporary French Cabaret twist. Although musically very different to the traditional Samba of Brazil carnival, they share with the Rio bands their relentless energy, and refusal to take a break even to draw breathe. On and on it goes…

And rising above it all are two voices, one French, one English. Each statement, each polemical rant starts with ‘J’Accuse’, and the world is called out on its excessive consumption, its immoral large corporations, its gross inequalities, its neglect of the poorer members of its societies, its burning rainforest fires, its oceans filled with plastic rubbish.

The caravan of grand pianos, each sporting at least one or often two or three musicians, are joined together and pulled along by an engine at the front. Guardians of the pianos, and procession leaders, are a motley crew of performers (some company members or regular collaborators, some local volunteers). Dressed in a steampunk ragbag mix of military jackets, wonky hats, and overalls painted with musical notes or mathematical equations, they flock and disperse, drag and heave, run and pose.

As the convoy progresses from its starting point in a small park, it passes numerous fixed stations. The first is a house converted into an Amazon(ia) depot. An endless number of cardboard boxes are passed out from a top window into waiting hands on the ladders, and away into the crowd. An hour later, I see a small boy still clutching his empty, plain brown box. There’s a metaphor there somewhere. Next is a kind of metal arcade or bower sporting a growth of plastic items, bags, bubblewrap et al, representing the ‘vortex of waste’ of our modern world, in which an eighth continent made of plastic waste has composed itself.

I can also see that there is something happening under and around this bower construction, but I’m way back in the crowd, so can’t really see, and I’m feeling rather hemmed in. I use a trick learnt at carnival in Brazil, extract myself, find a way round the back, and emerge at the front, ahead of the procession – so I witness them moving towards me.

As the cavalcade turns onto the seafront, the magnificent noise the musicians are making collides with the cacophony coming from the arcades. Everything all around is light and sound. The ‘motley crew’ light up flares, and coloured smoke mingles with the technicoloured neon. Then, they bring down the barricades – literally, as the Heras fencing separating audience from performers is torn down, piled up and scattered. It’s an exhilarating and slightly worrying moment as the audience are now very close to those pianos. Next, a wooden cart appears, and a topless baby-faced young emperor throws all his new clothes out of his cart and into the night sky, swimsuits and sweaters raining down onto the audience in a great visual image of reckless, foolish consumption.

As the procession moves along the front, there are three station stops – this piece is a collaboration with the UK’s Gorilla Circus, and we are treated to top-notch displays by the company’s acrobats at each stop: an exhilarating ‘wheel of death’, a lovely and joyous cloud swing, and a breathtaking grand finale of flying trapeze. Although it must be said that great though these are, it is a little hard to understand how the circus work fits into the concept and themes of the show, and where the collaboration lies, as it feels a little like two companies placed side-by-side. But I wasn’t there for the devising process, can only judge on what is witnessed, so who knows?

Thank You For Having Us circles around a critique of consumption and a flagging up of environmental concerns. There is a slight unease considering this in the light of the amount of rigging, kit, and transporting of large pieces of equipment in enormous trucks that creating and presenting this show entails – it’s a show about consumerism and environmentalism, rather than an environmentally friendly show! It raises questions about being part of the problem versus being part of the solution – a vital question for anyone working in, programming, or consuming Outdoor Arts. Are medium and message two different things, to be considered separately? For how much longer can we sanction and support work of this sort?

On the other hand – it is fantastic. I love it. I am very glad I have seen it, heard it, been part of it. Just as I am glad to have taken long-haul flights to Brazil at carnival time, more than once. Perhaps the plug will get pulled on the party and it’ll all stop soon – but for now, the carnival goes on. Let’s dance till the end of time.

Featured image (top): Generik Vapeur/Gorilla Circus:Thank You for Having Us (Merci de Votre Accueil. Photo: Caroline Genis.

Out There International Festival of Circus & Street Arts, 14–15 September 2019: www.outtherefestival.com

Generik Vapeur / Gorilla Circus: Thank You for Having Us (Merci de Votre Accueil) is a Sea Change Arts co-production, and its appearance at Out There Festival its UK premiere.

Riverside Flights and Fancies: SIRF 2019

Stockton International Riverside Festival 2019 struck me as a festival in two parts. During the day and into early evening, the high street is a ringing, singing carnival of overlapping shows – static, circle, promenade. All very different propositions: from traditional street theatre, to tea dances, to acrobatics, to anarchic audience interactions… Edward Taylor paints a colourful picture for Total Theatre of some of the work that he encountered, here.

By night, the ‘riverside’ part of the festival comes into its own. On Friday evening, I see three very different movement-based shows on the riverside site.

Sisus Sirkus’ Mosh Split is a fabulous all-female circus show featuring five feisty Finnish women who do everything needed – aerial, acrobalance, rigging, counter-weighting, street dance, singing, and playing – in a girrrrrl power mash-up of top-notch circus skills, traditional Nordic music, and Euro-trash aesthetics all delivered with a high-energy Spice Girls sensibility. So good that I made sure I saw it twice, coming back on Saturday…

The show starts with each of the five characters appearing from their parked campervan (behind the 10-metre-high rig) and interacting with the audience. There’s the sexy one in black latex with her pet (plastic) chihuahua weaving through the crowd – prompting plenty of exciting interactions with real dogs and their owners. She’s fearless. Then there’s the wild-haired gal in leopardskin leaping merrily hither and thither. There’s the girlish one with the lovely smile, in her little booties and prettily patterned skirt; the funny one dressed in stripey leggings who goes round clownishly cleaning things; and the classy blonde in white lingerie with the (fake) fur jacket. ‘Pump up the Jam’ is the signal for them all to come together onstage for an energetic skipping routine, which leads into a ludicrously funny chewing gum skit, which all the little girls in the audience love. Let’s talk some more about those little girls: I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an enthusiastic response to a circus show from pre-teen girls, who follow their favourite character through the crowd in the pre-show, then clap and cheer ecstatically throughout the show, and when it’s all done burst out onto the surrounding grassy areas to cartwheel and handstand-walkover crazily. The next generation of circus perfromers is on the up!

Sisus Sirkus: Mosh Split. Photo courtesy of the company

But back to the show: there’s some great contortion cum partner acrobalance, ‘sexy’ and ‘wild’ clambering onto each other’s bridged bodies, making marvellous shapes. Less hand-to-hand than ass-to-face, in the girls’ own words. ‘Classy’ hops up onto a Washington trapeze, beautiful streamers flying out from her body as she rises. But – oh, it’s toilet roll! Not so classy! All through, the traditional circus mores of female grace and glamour and unattainable beauty and elegance are usurped and sent up. Yet always with unarguable skills behind the games. There’s a ‘bum ball’ contest (yes, the girls using each other as human mallets to bat beach balls into the audience), and a great aerial straps cum rollerblading act to a fabulously kitsch Euro-pop track. Hoovers are employed as hair dryers in a wonderfully anarchic grooming and preening number to the tune of ‘I Don’t Like my Hair Neat… These Shoes Stay on my Feet…’ Sometimes, the girls group themselves on top of the campervan to form an impromptu pop ensemble.

But then, at the very end, the tone changes. Gone is the trashy, rappy, pump-it-up soundtrack and the pop piss-takes. Instead, we have a gorgeous live soundscape created on a traditional Finnish instrument – a kind of dulcimer that I am told is called a Kantele. Whilst this angelic music sings out, two of the team are simultaneously soaring ever higher and higher on side-by-side swinging trapezes. Up and up, higher and even higher they go. Now they are so high, they are up with the birds, who are flying by over the water. It is gloriously beautiful and totally thrilling. Oh what joy you are, Sisus Sirkus!

Furinkai: Origami. Photo Stuart Boulton

As the sky darkens, our attention turns to a large red shipping container across the way. We sit on a grassy slope and wait to see what happens. There are creaking noises, with the obvious association of old, wooden trading ships.

A female dancer (Satchie Noro) appears, cautiously moving over the surface. Slowly, very slowly, sections of the big metal structure open up, taking her up with it, or leaving her stranded. There are ropes drawn out between the metal sections – loose ropes which are swung from energetically, and tight-ropes that are walked across skilfully.

The piece, by French company Furinkai, is called Origami – and this is an apt name, as the massive and seemingly solid pieces of metal turn themselves from triangle to rectangle to square, and more. It is a beautiful piece, in a gently mesmeric way. We sit and wonder at the evolving shapes, geometric beauty for beauty’s sake; we reflect on the contrast between soft human flesh and hard industrial steel; we muse on the meaning of the imagery, which inevitably suggests a contrast, if not conflict, between (wo)man and machine, and a commentary on industrialisation and globalisation – what could be a better symbol of late-stage capitalism than the ubiquitous shipping container?

Origami is a well choreographed and beautifully performed piece – not a ‘big wow’ show, but one that quietly delights the soul with its clear and vibrant images. The structure itself, and its use; the performer’s movement and costume – all is carefully thought through and visually beautiful, a great unification of scenography and dramaturgy.

Vincent Glowinski: Human Brush. Photo Stuart Boulton

The third riverside show is by Vincent Glowinski (from Belgium) and is called Human Brush. And once again, the name is apt. You could go as far as to say that it is very much what it says on the can. Vincent is a living paintbrush, creating shapes and images with light on an enormous screen at the back of the outdoor stage. His dance is fluid and elegant, using the space and all levels expertly, gliding and turning and rolling. A suspended camera tracks his movements, which are then relayed with endless echoes – a kind of instant stop-frame animation at times; and at other times, a swirling screen-saver of digital imagery. It’s all accompanied by pounding beat-driven music. I enjoy the first 15 or 20 minutes, but then the intensity of the sound, and the constant strain of looking at blue-white light, proves too much for me – I admire the concept and the skill, but after a while I can’t really take the strain on eyes and ears, and move off quietly.

Heading away from the riverside, I walk along Church Road and catch the tail end of Korean company Muljil’s Elephants Laugh, in which performers and audience members find themselves immersed in tanks of water, in a piece which is inspired by the Haenyeo female divers of Jeju Island, who in their quest for shellfish endure terrifying moments of breathlessness. Having missed most of the show, I have no idea how people are enticed into the water – but the sight of the fully-clothed people bobbing up for air in the full tanks is certainly an extraordinary image.

As that show ends, I move on down the High Street – and encounter the strung-up cars that are the installation that remains following the end of Generik Vapeur’s show Droles d’oiseaux et art blaxon, which had been seen on the opening night of the festival. Standing close, the cars seem larger than they appear to be in photos, looming up proudly in the deserted street.

The one evening show that I miss, sadly, is the festival’s close, Hotel Watercage, by Dutch company Theater Tol – an aerial show that, it is said, investigates the battle between head and heart. As I leave Stockton town centre on Sunday evening, I see the giant birdcages dangling from their rig, waiting to be populated by the human ‘birds’ that will fly into them later that evening. It is a beautiful image to be left to muse upon as the train pulls out of Stockton station and heads off along Britain’s first every railway line.

Generik Vapeur: Droles d’oiseaux et art blaxon. Photo Stuart Bolton

Featured image (top): Furinkai: Origami at Stockton International Riverside Festival. Photo: Stuart Boulton

Stockton International Riverside Festival 2019 took place Thursday 1 August to Sunday 4 August, at various locations in Stockton town centre. See www.sirf.co.uk