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

Naga Collective: Persona

Persona. Your public face. The sum of your external behaviour traits. The way you talk to other people that causes them to see you as a particular kind of person. The image or personality that a person presents to other people. An assumed character for a fictional representation…

Four people – four personae – present themselves on stage. Who are these people? They offer themselves and their tricks to us, and to each other. Do you see me, they ask. This is just for you, they say to each other. Do you love me, they ask. Do you see me, they ask again. Yes, I see you.

What do I see? I see, hear, meet, learn to love, four women of different nationalities – Mexican, Italian, Finnish, Norwegian – speaking a babel of languages. I see four highly-trained bodies embrace the space, own the space, using the floor, the air, their own and other’s bodies, the equipment. I see circus tricks and turns – Chinese pole, contortion, hair-hanging, acrobalance – but more, much more. I see the playing out of female identity and human relationships; I see an exploration of the joys and challenges of circus; I see and feel and respond to the humour in the game-playing we are offered, and the observation of what it is that makes us human.

The four are onstage as we enter the auditorium, grouped around a small table, downstage left. We are cast as Alice about to enter the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, observing an endless round of clattering crockery and place changing, one high-pitched chattering voice (in Italian) dominating. The group disperses, and we are onto the next hallucinatory scene. A strong Chinese pole act (by aforementioned Italian Viola Baroncelli) offers the usual thrills of the form, with a neatly executed fast drop finishing the routine – but then the act subverts itself as the pole careers over and ends sitting at a rakish angle, ropes akimbo.

Enter contortionist and handbalancer Jatta Borg (Finland), who is dressed in a crab-pink playsuit – appropriately enough, as she crab-walks at a rate of knots around the stage, presenting the illusion that she has eyes in the back of her head, and limbs that know no limits of mobility. Perhaps she has. Her breathtaking strength and agility is matched by a softness and humour in the twists and turns and balances her body makes. She is joined by a second contortionist, Maria José Cåzares (Mexico), who describes her practice as ‘acrodance’. Which seems totally appropriate. Her energy – her persona – is a little tougher and harder, and bears the marks of a training in gymnastics and dance. The two bridged bodies scuttle around the stage then meet, face to face, upside down. It is a lovely moment, a skewed encounter. I’m reminded that eyes never seem to be upside down…

Our fourth performer/persona is Mari Stoknes (Norway), whose speciality is vertical rope and hair-hanging. And oh my Lord what hair! Waist-length and honey blonde, this magnificent head of shining and shimmering hair is hung from, tossed, shaken, hidden behind, manipulated in every which way. And later her comrades join her in a head-banging freak-out of hair-dancing – a fabulous statement of feminine wildness and exuberance. In these days of more and more modest dressing and hair-hiding, it is a pleasure to see these four wild women celebrating their hirsuteness on stage unfettered. Rock and roll!

In the second half of the show, spoken text takes on more importance, in a reflection on the act of seeing and being seen, and on placing yourself in the gaze of the world (aka celebrity). Who do we see? Who do we really see? Who do we remember? The Spice Girls become the subject of contemplation. Which Spice Girl are you, they ask each other. Who can name all the Spice Girls? Baby, Posh, Sporty, Ginger – and the one no-one can remember. ‘I just remember that she is Black’ someone says, in a moment that induces discomfort (in this audience member anyway), which I am sure is deliberate – Black bodies are often overlooked. ‘I don’t want to be the one that nobody remembers,’ they say. There are times in this section when the spoken text (in English) feels a little forced, and I long to hear the women’s voices in their native tongues.

When our not-the-Spice-girls foursome return to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, their hair is in front of their faces, obscuring their features. A comment on veiling, on hiding behind a mask?

The show’s exploration of identity and relationship gives more than a nod to the Jungian ideas of id versus ego; the play between the self and the shadow-self. We are what you see, but we are so much more too. Persona prompts us to reflect on whether we can ever really ‘know’ another person; and urges us to allow ourselves to be loved, warts and all.

Naga Collective are based in Brussels, having met at ESAC circus school – although some of them also met and trained at the Lido school in Toulouse. They describe their work as embodying the spirit of Brussels: ‘plural, mixed, vibrant… a melting pot of heritages.’

Persona is a superb piece of contemporary circus-theatre, exploring identity, challenging gender stereotypes, and celebrating femininity in all its complexity. The circus skills are top-notch; the scenography and theatrical staging of those skills inventive; and the onstage combination of all elements of sound, image and physical action carefully thought through – although by no means a linear narrative, Persona has a dramaturgical logic which is pleasing: it is far more than the sum of its very able parts. The piece was created collectively by the four women performers, joined offstage by director/dramaturg Virginie Strub (who also co-designed the show with Viola Baroncelli).

Yes, Naga Collective, we see you. We see you and we love you, and we hope to see a lot more of you.

Featured image of Naga Collective‘s Persona by Bernard Boccara.

FiCHO Festival runs in Guadalajara, Mexico 18–26 November 2017, and then tours to other towns in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. See www.fichofest.com

Social media: @FichoFest, #FiCHOFeST

Textear el Circo

Buenos dias! Total Theatre Magazine is in Mexico, taking part in FiCHo, a festival of circus, clown and physical theatre, which stretches across the sunny city of Guadalajara for ten days in November (then steps out to other parts of the country).

Your trusty editor was invited to take part wearing a number of sombreros – workshop leader, cabaret artist and community performer, and facilitator of critical writing workshops. And it is this last that is the subject of this post…

The 20-strong writers’ forum gathered by the festival includes established journalists and critics, young writers, circus artists, poets, short fiction writers and lyricists. The intention is to look at not only the conventions of arts journalism (the usual reviews, interviews and artist profiles or puffs) but also at ways in which text of any sort – tweets, poems, fiction, essays, long-form magazine articles, raps and rhymes, bon mots scrawled on post-it notes – can interact with live performance, creating an intertextuality of creativity.

In my opening talk, I used a batch of Total Theatre print mags (oh blessed artefacts, how we miss you!) as a springboard to discuss such things as:

The importance of writing about performing arts: Who is the writing for? How and why do we write about performance? We talked about different outlets for critical writing: the local newspaper, the specialist arts press, the proliferation of blogs and online magazines. We discussed Total Theatre’s founding principle of existing mostly for the artists and the arts industry, whilst acknowledging that the general theatre audience have to be considered too, as they might not have bought the print magazine, but certainly read the online magazine, particularly at peak times , such as during the Edinburgh Fringe.)

What other roles are possible, other than professional critic? For example, artists writing about their own work, or writing about other artists’ work. (Plenty of examples in Total Theatre of this, including the time Theatre Ad Infinitum’s co-directors, Nir Paldi and George Mann, interviewed each other.)

We also looked at how to give constructive criticism and helpful feedback when writing about performance; and the notion of the ‘creative response’: ways to respond to live performance that are beyond the usual critical writing format. (I cited some examples in TT that included the time we commissioned a visual artist to draw their response to a Pina Bausch show; and street arts and clown photoessays.)

But I particularly wanted to think and talk about how best we write about performance work that is non-text-based and is predominantly physical and visual: contemporary circus; mime, clown & physical theatre; visual arts performance, live art and installation. The stuff that has been at the heart of Total Theatre’s work for these past 30+ years, in other words.

Total Theatre has always been an artist-led project. We have pioneered the practice of artists writing about their own work, through creation or rehearsal diaries, reflections, our reworked interview format Voices, and multi-voiced review formats such as the Being There series (alongside more traditional formats such as regular reviews, company profiles and interviews).

We have always, in our reviews and in feature-reviews such as The Works, or in observational ‘outside eye’ reports on the creation process, championed critical writing that aims to understand and support the work artists have made, finding ways to both document and to offer constructive rather than destructive criticism. This I feel is a vital point: our maxim is: how can our writing HELP artists on their chosen path, not hinder them!

For many people who write for performance, writing about performance makes for a great counter-balance. It is good to learn how to witness your own work, through keeping an artist diary, or writing a critical evaluation of your own project, or an artists’s blog; and it is good as an artist to learn to write, critically and kindly, about other artists. Having multiple roles and perspectives can be a positive thing. As someone who does both – writing for performance, and writing about performance – I feel that the two can sit very happily side-by-side. I don’t actually feel that the skills are that different. All writing – be it journalism, prose fiction, poetry, drama – is based on and grows out of observation of the world. An ability to witness, report, notice, engage… To really see and hear what is out there. All good writing is the same in that it speaks of human life truthfully.

I feel that the main role of a reviewer is not to be a fireball of opinion, but to be a good witness. The good witness asks: what did I see/hear/feel/understand? What was given to me, and how did I receive it? How did it make me feel? What thoughts do I have about it that go beyond ‘oh I liked it’ or ‘oh I didn’t like it’. Just to have a reliable, non-judgemental witness who is there to try to understand and appreciate, there with an open heart and mind, can be fantastic for the artist who is presenting the work: to place work out there, and have it truly SEEN and HEARD and ACKNOWLEDGED is fantastic!

This type of writing about performance has much in common with the dramaturg or the ‘outside eye’. I feel that if I am invited to see a show (whether as critic or outside eye), my job is to try to get under the skin of the work, to give constructive criticism and helpful feedback.

It is also very important for physical/visual theatre and circus to be written about because if there is little or no spoken word in the show, there is probably no written play-script. Live performance is an ephemeral artform, it exists in the moment and then it is gone, so it needs to be written about, so that others (here and now, or in the future) can learn about it and have some sense of the work, even if they weren’t there. A few shaky photographs is not enough – and anyway, the written word is a technology that will survive. How do we know about non-text-based performance from 50 or 100 years ago? We know from witness accounts. So writing about performance is a form of documenting work; creating an ongoing, living archive.

Inevitably, in our opening session, we went on to discuss a question often posed by regular theatre critics: How exactly do we write about performance work that is non-text-based and is predominantly physical and visual? (i.e. forms such as contemporary circus; mime, clown & physical theatre; visual arts performance, live art & installation.)

Developing our ability to witness is vital here! If there is no spoken text to understand and report back on, no written play text to consult, then we must develop our skill in truly SEEING the visual pictures presented, and reflecting on visual imagery and association. We can develop these skills through repeatedly seeing as much work as possible – and by going to see painting, photography, installation work and other visual forms to teach ourselves to look, really look, at what is in front of our eyes. The more we see, the more we learn. Look at the way children look at things, really look. At leaves, at dogs, at the sky, at people. We honed our observation skills as children, but often then forgot that these skills need to be kept fresh.

And it had to be said too that you don’t need to ‘understand’ everything! Visual images are complex, multi-layered, often operating on a subconscious level, evoking what Artaud called ‘the truthful precipitates of dreams’ – it is not your role as the writer/reporter to explain everything – you can just say what you saw and heard, and how it made you feel. Write from your heart as much as from your head.

Other sessions in the week of roundtable workshops included a performative intervention by poet Miguel Asa who talked of butterflies and beards, in a reflection on the inter-relationship between reality, dreams, memories, and imagination, and issued us with stickers saying ‘Por favor lea a poesia’ (Please, read poetry), a directive I’ve also seen stencilled on the streets of Guadalajara. Established Mexican critic Ivån Gonzålez Vega presented a talk in which he posited the view of the critic as the eye of the audience. FiCHO hosts Cabaret Capricho ran a humorous performance-lecture on circus equipment and terminology (fear of not knowing what things are called often stops theatre critics writing about circus). Later in the week, I ran some creative writing exercises focusing on first-person reminiscence of early memories of circus (these then crafted into prose pieces, essays or poems), and we worked in pairs on interviewing skills.

As FiCHo Festival launched, so to did the writers’ forum blog, Textear el Circo. There was also a plethora of post-its at the first weekend of performances, including one-word audience responses to the shows, and a whole swathe of posts on social media with the hashtags #textearelcirco and #FichoFest

The message is: whether you choose to write in the conventional review format, use instant response media such as Twitter or Facebook, or forge a creative response to what you’ve witnessed in the form of a haiku, song, poem or short story – get out there, see work, get writing. Por favor.

Dorothy Max Prior is a guest of FiCHo Festival, which takes place in Guadalajara and other cities in the state of Jalisco, Mexico, November 2017.

See www.fichofest.com for the full programme of shows, events, talks and interventions.

This is not a review: Wild Bore and more

What are reviews for, that is the question?

It’s something that comes up all the time here at Total Theatre Magazine central, especially at the moment, as we struggle to re-establish ourselves, and work out what we are doing here and why.

There are some of us who believe passionately in maintaining a reviews section, and some who think we should ditch reviews altogether – in an era in which every Tom, Dick and Jane is running an online theatre magazine and posting reviews within hours of seeing shows, perhaps Total Theatre just doesn’t need to? Especially now that so much of the work we were set up to cover – physical and visual theatre, mime and clown, contemporary circus, live art et al – is no longer outré and ignored, but is covered not only by the small-scale specialist press but by mainstream magazines and newspapers. The Guardian, The Times, Whatsonstage, Time Out, and The Stage are all pretty likely to cover the same work as Total Theatre Magazine, at least some of the time. Then there are the hungry new upstarts such as Exeunt and A Younger Theatre…

What do we offer that is different? We’ve tried! Over the years, we’ve pioneered alternative approaches to reviewing, such as the Being There feature in which at least three voices – including the theatre-maker and the reviewer – each, independently of each other, write about the event from their perspective. We’ve also often run reviews as conversations between two writers, as an example, a piece on Pina Bauch’s Kontakthof reflected on by an old-hand who’d seen lots of her work (me) and a young reviewer who was seeing Bausch for the first time (Alexander Roberts).

Total Theatre Magazine was set up and continues to be ‘staffed’ – if we can use that word of people who work very part-time and usually unpaid – by artists who also happen to write about the artforms that they and others around them practice: theatre and performance. We are not ‘critics’ in the traditional sense – although even that statement is problematic as many very famous traditional critics – take the mighty Kenneth Tynan, for example – also worked in theatre as writers, dramaturgs or whatever. Anyway, to follow this train of thought, Total Theatre Magazine (and its sister organisation Total Theatre Network) exists to celebrate and support the artists making the work. It’s a trade mag, and insider’s voice.

Does that mean we don’t publish ‘bad reviews’? The jury’s out. As editor, I tend to prefer not to. Reviews editor Beccy Smith often disagrees on that one. But this is my blog so I’ll state my case: I can’t see the point in bad reviews. It’s fun to write them, but it’s usually more about the writer than the show reviewed – an excuse to wax lyrical and pun gleefully, enjoying the creation of witty words and humorous jibes. If Total Theatre Magazine exists to support the artists making the work, aren’t we doing the artform a disservice, causing harm even, by publishing a bad review? Up against that is the idea that we have a duty to review work seen, and the best way to support an artist’s development is by giving them hat we believe to be a fair critique. In which case, I’d argue, write it and send it to them, don’t post it publicly.

The next problem is the issue of subjectivity. I recently taught a Critical Writing course at Evolution Arts Centre in Brighton, and it was one of the first questions asked: as a critic, am I expected to be objective? My answer? Try to be a good witness, being as ‘objective’ as you can about what is presented on stage – describe what you see and hear. Open your eyes, open your ears, open your heart and try to experience, really experience, what is being offered to you. Try, initially at least, to remove any need to ‘have an opinion’. But once it moves onto the part of the review where you are writing what you feel and think: be aware that these are subjective responses, inevitably informed by who you are and where you’re at in this particular moment in time. Some things I’ve asked fledgling reviewers to think about include: how much is your age, ethnicity, personal life experience affecting your response and judgement? If the show irritates you, what buttons are being pushed and why? What do you think the artist was trying to communicate, and why is it not reaching you? I don’t for a minute feel that everyone has to love everything, or pretend they do – just to flag up that if we respond with a strong reaction – love or hate – to a show, we should at least try to see why it is provoking that response.

And more on subjectivity: how often have I heard a journalist or awards judge say, oh it’s not down to personal taste – it’s not because I didn’t like it, it’s just that it’s a bad show. But that argument is easily challenged by looking at the very disparate reviews that almost any show will garner. It becomes clear very quickly that intelligent and well-informed people can see the same work and disagree strongly about its ‘value’. This is particularly true of anything that involves humour. I’ve sat completely stony-faced through shows that other people have howled in laughter at from beginning to end, and I’ve laughed hysterically at things that have left other people cold.

Let’s take Wild Bore, for example – a very funny (in my opinion) show created by three female theatre-makers/comedians, who have all seen a great deal of commercial and critical success, and simultaneously a great deal of slamming of their work. The three women are: Zoe Coombs Marr (Australia), the winner of the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) for Trigger Warning; Ursula Martinez (UK), theatre writer and performer of shows such as Free Admission and My Stories, Your Emails, and cabaret diva (the famous Red Hanky lady of La Clique/ La Soiree, and star of Duckie’s C’est Vauxhall); Adrienne Truscott (USA), choreographer, circus performer (one half of the acclaimed Mau Mau Sisters), writer and comedian, creator of the controversial (value judgement or fact?) Asking For It: A One-Woman Rape about Comedy Starring Her Pussy And Little Else.

Wild Bore, created collaboratively, has caused a stir wherever it has played because of its unusual subject matter. It takes negative reviews – of the three artists’ previous shows and of theatre shows by other people – and makes this the text of the show. Or at least, this is one aspect of the text – the performance text consists of the words staged inventively within a series of comic vignettes and increasingly complex visual tableaux and physical actions. The first scene, famously, notoriously we might say, featuring the women’s talking backsides sitting atop of a trestle table. ‘Opinions are like assholes,’ says one of the bare bottoms. ‘Everyone’s got one.’

We go on to see each of the performers debunking their least-favourite review of their work. When a critic says that something on stage (be it a grown woman running around in circles tearing off her clothes or a teenage boy holding up a skull called Yorick) happens ‘for no apparent reason’ because they cannot fathom out what that reason might be, or muses on whether something presented to them on a stage is by ‘dramaturgical design’ rather than a happy accident (of course it is – duh!) it is obvious, now this is shown to us, that those sort of critical statements are pretty dumb, and say more about the critic than the artist’s work.

Almost everyone who has reviewed this show has stated that it is almost impossible to review – it’s a show about theatre criticism that cleverly second-guesses almost any response anyone might make to it in its debunking of the role of the critic. Some have thus chosen not to review the show, but some have taken up the challenge. We can note here that Wild Bore has garnered two-star, three-star, four-star, and five-star reviews. It’s a matter of opinion. Divides the critics, as they say.

The Guardian hedges its bets and eschews its usual reviews-with-stars system by publishing two responses side-by-side, from comedy critic Brian Logan and theatre critic Lyn Gardner (yeah, yeah – we’ve been doing that for years at Total Theatre). Rupert Hawksley, in the Telegraph, decides that he will respond as a bull to a red rag (or is that a red hanky?), saying in his two-star review: ‘This attack on theatre critics falls squarely on its bottom.’ What a gift! Into the show it goes! Two stars also from The Scotsman, this time a female critic, Joyce Macmillan (not all the flak is from middle-aged white men): ‘ [Wild Bore] is not much more than an hour-long demonstration of thespian self-obsession, taken to vaguely obscene, although occasionally entertaining, extremes.’ Hmmm. Not so obviously quotable but ‘occasionally entertaining’ is a good example of damning with faint praise. Exeunt’s Joy Martin gives it a good review, buying into the notion that it is a patriarchal question (ie most critics are privileged white men) saying: ‘The three naked asses and genitalia on prominent display are female, which to me felt like a deeply feminist symbolic rebellion against the broken elements of a traditional style of theatre response that we have inherited from the patriarchy, which is struggling to see, accept and understand the unfolding edges of theatre, and which defaults to superiority and derision as a response to anything it doesn’t get.’ (Fair enough, but what about Joyce? Is she then cast as the Theresa May of theatre criticism in this story?) Five stars from Broadway Baby’s Charlie Ralph: ‘Wild Bore is a show that is sometimes difficult to watch, frequently difficult to understand and almost constantly difficult to critique. What makes Wild Bore fascinating is that it is a show about all three of those things and how key they are to theatre, it is this nesting doll of metatextuality that makes Wild Bore such a unique, impossible experience.’ Metatextuality – cor blimey, that’s a word I’ve never used in anything I’ve written. Must try harder.

So, what do I think? Here goes: Wild Bore is a witty and entertaining Fringe show easily received and enjoyed. But it is a whole lot more. As the show progresses it raises increasingly complex ideas – not just about the nature of criticism but about the act of making and viewing theatre. What do we really see, hear, feel, think? And if this applies to theatre – the need to constantly re-evaluate what we are witnessing and what it means to us – then it also applies to life. We have nothing other than ourselves through which to filter our theatre-making and theatre-witnessing or indeed any of our life experiences – our sensory impressions, emotional responses, intellectual judgements are, inevitably, our own. There is no objective gaze; there is no neutral performance body. This last point is beautifully (value judgement!) demonstrated by the unexpected arrival on stage of a Deus Ex Machina – a previously unseen fourth character who calls out the women for making work that is a product of their cis-female, white, educated, privileged selves. This coup de theatre makes the play. It is – to offer a totally subjective opinion – a stroke of genius.

We don’t give stars, but if we did I’d give it – lots.

Wild Bore was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award 2017. It played at the Traverse Theatre throughout August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and can be seen at Soho Theatre in London from 21 November to 16 December 2017. www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/wild-bore/

Winning Hearts and Minds

Summerhall are all-victorious in the Innovation, Experimentation and Playing with Form category of the Total Theatre Awards 2017

There is an irony, says Rachel Mars, picking up her Total Theatre Award, in making a show about competition and envy that goes on to win an award…

Her show, Our Carnal Hearts, is a total delight. The ‘thou shalt not covet’ commandment is investigated thoroughly: everything from the relatively harmless #humblebrag (let’s all sing a long to the Humble Waltz!) to the deeper, darker nastier parts of our psyche that wishes ill upon our dear friends and family when they are perceived to be doing better than us. This isn’t just a theoretical musing: Rachel bears her heart, revealing her own ‘spiky, sticky, shameful bits’ – including her hatred of her pretty blonde cousin with the angelic singing voice and her envy of artist friends who win cushy awards or commissions. The audience are implicated too: we are asked to picture a moment when we heard some good news about someone close to us, and wished them ill. We are then asked to share, which most refuse to – but a brave young man sitting next to me offers up his envy of his sister, who quits a challenging job in order to pursue a spiritual path. We are all asked to join in with him in shouting our congratulations.

Two narrative motifs weave through and eventually merge: the old Yiddish joke about a fairy who offers to grant a wish, but with the proviso that whatever you wish for, your neighbour gets double (it doesn’t end well); and the story of a high street plot that morphs from community park to car valeting shop to upmarket jewellers to nespresso boutique… Oh envy, thy twin sister’s name is aspiration. The text is marvellous – wise and witty and deliciously wicked – we wouldn’t expect anything less from Rachel Mars. But what pushes this show up from great show to award-winner is the eloquent way that the in-the-round staging, spoken word, and live music (composed by Sh!t Theatre’s Louise Mothersole) interweave. The piece is set to resemble a church service, with a choir of singers placed within the audience, and sermon mics on stands placed in each of the four aisles. The central space is used for ritualistic actions in this unusual service – these including the laying out of a geometric pattern of coffee grounds (Aleister Crowley eat your heart out) and the beating out of sins with a couple of rubber chickens. Hallelujah! We are saved!

Rachel Mars: Our Carnal Hearts

Our Carnal Hearts was presented at Summerhall, and I saw it immediately after seeing what was to become another Total Theatre Award winner, Palmyra, which is also, in a very different way, an investigation of the sinful side of human behaviour. In this case, Thou Shalt Not Kill (not bully, nor beat, nor terrorise) is the commandment up for investigation.

The show is made and performed by Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas, who we could see as a next-generation Ridiculusmus (similarly a two-man outfit combining intense physical performance, spiky spoken text, and darkly comic clowning). Palmyra takes no prisoners. The scenography and choreography are totally intertwined, and there is a fantastic build of energy as our two protagonists spar and bully their way through an intense hour of crockery smashing, hammer wielding, and whizzing around on 4WD skateboards, in an exploration of ‘revenge, the politics of destruction and what we consider to be barbarian’. The audience are not allowed to remain neutral, and are coerced into taking sides: take the hammer, hide the hammer, give the hammer to him… Let’s call the whole thing off!

Palmyra: Photo by Alex Brenner

Palmyra provoked an interesting discussion at the judging meeting about who owns stories and who has the right to tell them, with some feeling that Syrians and those living close to ISIS-held territories might perhaps have a very different response to this show, which takes the destruction of the ancient site of Palmyra and its use as an execution arena as its starting point. There is also the question of whether, without the title and programme notes, the audience would even get the connection. But it won out in the end because the majority view was that this is a dramaturgically complete, beautifully structured and brilliantly performed piece of theatre. My own view? Humour and satire are vital tools in the fight against violence and terrorism. And the message of Palmyra is a sound one: Let him without sin cast the first stone – we all have the capability for violence within us, it’s how we handle it that counts. This is a show I had some reservations about when viewing but which has stayed with me, provoking new thoughts and responses long after the last piece of crockery has fallen. And ‘What’s happened here, then?’ could qualify as the best opening line of the 2017 Fringe.

Both of the above won Total Theatre Awards in the Innovation, Experimentation and Playing with Form category. There was a third winner here too: Selina Thompson’s salt. Which also involves things getting smashed – but this time it is an enormous block of Himalayan rock salt.

Selina Thomson: salt.

salt. is an autobiographical piece – but that tag doesn’t do it full justice. It is a piece that weaves together stories from a personal journey (a literal journey at sea and a metaphorical journey into the self) with an investigation into the legacy of colonialism and the African slave trade, via a journey tracing the route of the Transatlantic Slave Triangle that joins Britain, Ghana and Jamaica. Selina’s story of her sea journey, a quest to sit inside the history of the people – Selina’s ancestors – ends up being extraordinarily difficult, but provides an extra dramatic element to the artwork, in that something that could have been dismissed as a reflection on a long-gone past takes on a contemporary immediacy due to the artist’s appalling experiences of still-with-us racism. In an article Selina Thompson wrote for Total Theatre Magazine last year, in the early days of making the piece, she had this to say, by way of introduction:

‘On 12 February, I got on a cargo ship, and sailed from Antwerp in Belgium, to Tema in Ghana. I left there, and flew to Kingston in Jamaica, before sailing back to Antwerp via North Carolina. I returned on 12 April…

While I was away, myself and my film-maker had to split up, my grandmother died, my biological sister got in touch. While I was away, my hair was searched in customs, I tore the cartilage in my left knee, I listened to people stand outside my door and comment on the fact that I was “already as black as one of the niggers”. While I was away I showered outside while hummingbirds flew above my head, a French bulldog burst into my room and stole my luggage tags, and a load of flying fish jumped too high and landed on the ship I was sailing in.’

The show (which I saw in preview at the Attenborough Centre in Brighton) is a revelation. Selina Thompson, in her ‘act of remembrance and grief’ demonstrates a phenomenal ability to combine sharp writing with a winning personable delivery that breaks the fourth wall: embodied in the fact that we need to wear goggles when the salt rock is smashed; we are most definitely here together in this shared space.

In one of the most harrowing moments in the piece we stand with Selina before the Gate of No Return at the former trading fort Elmina Castle, Ghana, facing the Atlantic ocean and seeing with her the thousands of men, women and children forcibly removed from their homeland to work and die in the New World plantations. These moments of gravity are counterbalanced with gently humorous accounts of her telephone conversations to her Dad back in Birmingham, who takes some of the stories of the journey with – well, I’ll not resist the obvious and say with a pinch of salt.

Beyond the strength of the script, the scenography of the piece (with design by Katherina Radeva) provides a staging that is perfect for the story. A neon sign, a few plants, a simple and elegant white dress – it doesn’t take much, but it is all more than enough, a deceptively simple and elegant design. The enormous rock of salt is centrepiece, broken up with a pick-axe as the show progresses,the larger chips off the block to be laid out in representation of the people populating the story. We are one, it says to me – one race, the human race, united in our mineral essence, drops in the ocean.

All three of these winning shows are by young artists, and all were presented at Summerhall – which perhaps merits some comment.

Julia Croft: Power Ballad

Summerhall continues to be the venue that is the most likely to host the more experimental work being made, with the door always open for innovative international theatre. They do not shy away from the phrase ‘avant garde European theatre’ in their programme notes. The ever-enterprising Big in Belgium programme can be found there (Ontroerend Goed’s Lies making it on the the Awards shortlist), and the Northern Stage programme of new writing (which include Selena Thompson in its line-up) is to be found there, as it has been for a number of years. The future is taken care of in the form of a four-year residence at Summerhall for Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.

This year, Summerhall also hosted the CanadaHub programme in its sister venue the King’s Hall, which included the brilliant Mouthpiece (reviewed here) and a very lovely piece of music-theatre featuring multi-instrumentalist Ben Caplan – Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story.

The 2017 programme also featured many companies dear to the hearts of Total Theatre Magazine’s editorial team – including many previous Total Theatre Award winners or shortlisters: Ridiculusmus, Sh!t Theatre, FK Alexander, Dancing Brick, Richard Gadd, Action Hero, RashDash, Orkestra del Sol, and Julia Croft (whose Power Ballad was shortlisted for the Total Theatre Emerging Artist Award 2017). Which is quite a list – and only a fraction of the shows on offer.

On the day that the Fringe closes, I sit at home, well away from Edinburgh, with my Summerhall programme and I grieve for all the shows I didn’t get to see there in the brief two weeks I spent in the Burgh during August 2017. Never mind, there’s always next year…

Summerhall is a year-round venue and gallery, housed in the former Royal (Dick) Veterinary College in Edinburgh. www.summerhall.co.uk

Selina Thompson’s salt. was seen in preview at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts (ACCA) at University of Sussex. www.attenboroughcentre.com

Featured image (top) is Selina Thompson: salt.

Total Theatre Awards 2017 Announced!

Total Theatre Awards 2017 have been announced!

The Total Theatre Awards, which have been running since 1997, recognise ‘innovative and artist-led performance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’. 28 peer assessors, who looked at 538 shows across the first 11 days of the festival. The nominees shortlist was announced on 17 August. The nominated shows were then viewed by a panel of 20 judges who gave seven awards across five categories, together with two special awards: the Judges’ Discretionary Award to Liz Aggiss, and the Significant Contribution award to journalist Lyn Gardner.

Awards were announced on Thursday 24 August at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall, and the ceremony was supported by Edinburgh Playhouse and hosted most admirably by Figs in Wigs.

Co-directors Jo Crowley and Becki Haines said: ‘This year’s awards recognise exceptional artists creating gentle, bold, risk-taking and visionary work that is diverse, inclusive and accessible. It highlights the vital role theatre plays in communicating, engaging and opening up space for shared experiences. The artistic voices across this festival continue to provide a lens for audiences to understand one another better in an increasingly divided world.’

The judging panel for this year’s awards included Donald Hutera (The Times dance critic), Adrian Berry (director, Jacksons Lane), Dorothy Max Prior (editor Total Theatre Magazine), Matt Trueman (writer and critic), Jessica Bowles (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama), Andy Roberts (Bootworks/University of Chichester), and a whole team of producers and programmers from venues, festivals, and arts organisations across the UK, including Home Manchester, and The Place London; together with a number of overseas judges, some of whom were there with support from the British Council.

The Total Theatre Awards are managed independently to Total Theatre Magazine.

For more information on Total Theatre Awards see: www.totaltheatrenetwork.org

Full list of Total Theatre Award winners as follows:

Total Theatre & Farnham Maltings Award for an Emerging Company / Artist

Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist

YesYesNoNo (England)

ZOO

Physical / Visual Theatre

Sigma

Gandini Juggling (England)

Assembly

Total Theatre & Jacksons Lane Award for Circus

Fauna

Fauna in association with Aurora Nova and Follow the Rabbit (Sweden)

Assembly

Total Theatre & The Place Award for Dance

Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus

Oona Doherty (Northern Ireland)

Dance Base

Innovation, Experimentation & Playing with Form

Palmyra

Bertrand Lesca & Nasi Voutsas (England)

Summerhall

salt.

Selina Thompson Ltd (England)

Northern Stage @ Summerhall

Our Carnal Hearts

Rachel Mars (England)

Summerhall

Judges Discretionary Award

Slap And Tickle

Liz Aggiss (England)

ZOO

Significant Contribution Award

Lyn Gardner

Featured image: Gandini Juggling: Sigma