It’s 8.30pm on a cool and breezy, but thankfully dry, evening in April. A crowd is gathering in the grounds of Shaw House in Berkshire. The house itself is an Elizabethan mansion, providing a moody backdrop to the cluster of structures standing in the gardens. Furthest away from the house is a grouping of tall metal scaffolds and ladders, bookended by a couple of wheeled segways (ominous looking giant metal tripods). Nearest to the house is a built structure that looks like a small, many-sided wooden house. In between these two stations is a circle of metal fences containing an odd kind of seat fixed on to a pole, like a one-man fairground ride. All around the space are ‘lamposts’ with tannoy speakers topping them – lots of them, making the space an unnerving futuristic forest of dead white trees. From these posts come constant and relentless announcements, in a babel of languages. English, French, Spanish, German – and perhaps others I can’t identify. As we walk around the space we are subjected to a constant bombardment of sound – the endless announcements mixed with the drone of whirring helicopters and jet planes flying low. The lighting is cold and blue, the atmosphere eery.

This is the pre-show setting for Periplum’s 451, the company’s latest large-scale outdoor show, created in collaboration with the Corn Exchange and New Greenham Arts in Newbury – hence this preview show in Berkshire, just down the road from the 101 Creation Centre at Greenham Common, where the show was made and rehearsed. It is inspired by Ray Bradbury’s dystopian near-future novel, Fahrenheit 451, which was published in 1953 (just five years after George Orwell’s 1984). In the novel, firemen are no longer needed to put out house fires, as technology has evolved to make houses fireproof. Instead, they are employed to start fires with kerosene in their hoses in place of water. They are called upon to seek out and destroy the agents of rebellion – those few people left in this disturbed world who are free-thinkers, preferring the now-banned books to the constant wall-to-wall onslaught of drivel dished out to them by an ever-encroaching media. (Yes, it’s prophetic, although like all such dystopias it is as much about the society the writer lives in – in this case consumerist 1950s America – as the future.) Occasionally, a fireman wavers in his resolve and finds himself stealing a book to read rather than burning it. Such a man is Guy Montag. Although most then see the error of their ways, Fireman Montag realises that there is no going back…

The show plays out with the expected flurry of fiery action, as resisters are rounded up and literary masterpieces destroyed – in this world, anything other than an instruction manual is seen as subversive. The bible, fiction, poetry, philosophy – it is all denounced as dangerous nonsense. A particularly beautiful and disturbing recurring motif in the show is the fluttering of book leaves in the night air. There’s plenty of noise and bluster as fire-engines (those three-wheeled segways) roar through the crowd and blazing flame-throwers apparently lay to waste undesirable printed matter and (even more disturbingly) people, including a brave woman who refuses to leave her precious books and thus burns with them.

What I’m pleased to see, though, is that the many quieter moments of the story are given attention, in darker, slower scenes in the show that contrast well with the bombastic burnings. Much of Bradbury’s novel features scenes of Montag walking alone in dark streets, or sitting quietly at home ignoring the constant onslaught of soap operas and government-controlled news broadcasts – desperately seeking peace, and trying to learn how to think for himself. That central ‘seat’ structure becomes Montag’s literal and metaphorical home, and the way it is used portrays the journey he takes: from frozen resistance, to disturbed confusion, to active rejection of the system. The inner voice – and the power of words (thought, written, spoken) over relentless screen images – is a crucial element of Fahrenheit 451, and that is reflected in this production.

This is the first show of a major outdoor work using a very complex array of technical equipment, featuring demanding physical performance on and off the equipment, live and recorded music and text, an inventive lighting and sound design, and pyrotechnics of all sorts, and the cast have had only limited time to work with this complexity of structures and forms – so there is inevitably something of a tentative feel about some scenes. But this of course will change as the show tours, and it is necessary to see it as what it is – a preview of a piece of work that is still evolving. It is worth acknowledging here that major large-scale outdoor shows of this sort can’t actually be fully realised until show time – partly because of the cost of pyrotechnic and other materials, and partly because the way that the audience moves in the space and responds to the cast and equipment helps determines the pace and rhythm of the show. The previous night had seen a technical ‘dress rehearsal’ in front of an invited audience – tonight is the first public outing. And although there is work still to be done, what we see presented here is a fantastic achievement – a rich mix of spectacular visual imagery, stunning sound installation, and thought-provoking storytelling.

So what has been the process bringing us to this point?

451 is an idea that has been incubating for quite a while. Periplum’s co-directors Claire Raftery and Damian Wright tell me that producer Simon Chatterton first approached them with the idea in 2009, as it had long been an idea of his that an outdoor version of Bradbury’s novel would be an interesting project. They agreed that the book had elements that would make a good visual outdoor show, and enough prophetic content about modern-day living to interest them.

The company have built their reputation by presenting a broad variety of work within the context of ‘outdoor arts’ (essentially, work presented free to audience in a public space). As with previous large-scale shows Arquiem and The Bell, in developing 451 Periplum have resisted the notion that work presented outdoors has to be mere entertainment.

‘We firmly believe that audiences do not need to be spoon-fed easy narratives all of the time, and that a rich variation of content and artforms can easily be presented outdoors’ says Claire. ‘Restrictions to content on the assumption that simple narrative is the only thing that works, or is allowed to work, means that artists are restricted to basing works solely on simplistic subject matter. Restrictions like these do not allow the huge variation in content that you normally see across the indoor arts. If we are free to take chances and to stretch the boundaries, audiences may indeed like to be challenged a bit more.’

For this new show, the company worked in a new way, in collaboration with Corn Exchange: ‘We used the book as a starting point to create a visual storyboard for the outdoor show. We don’t usually work with storyboards, as we usually create from multi-sensory worlds, where sound and atmosphere work at the same time as the visual element.’ In this case, storyboarded ideas were then shared with their production collaborators, who took on responsibilities that Periplum usually manage internally themselves.

I ask Claire and Damian about the creation of the structures that are such an intrinsic part of the work, and learn that some of the set is adapted from previous Periplum shows (made by Mike Pattison), and some designed by Martin West, resident maker at 101. ‘The first image I brought to Martin was of the North Korean Police on segways’ says Claire.’The image showed man and machine merging – I was interested in how this would have looked to someone 50 years ago. The idea came to use old-style and modern together – so Martin designed and made three giant segway fire engines.’ Apparently these were originally motorised and operated by one person, but during the development stage they removed the motorisation. Which is probably all for the good as they are quite frightening enough hurtling through the space without motors!

Another feature of the set is the aerial ‘manlift’ in the central circle, which is mostly Montag’s terrain. ‘I originally drew a chair which raised up into the air on a long pole (mirroring the fire-fighters’ poles) – to show the isolation of each person in their home’ says Claire. ‘When the central character (renegade fireman Montag) reads for the first time, he would physically spin in mid-air to show the effect the words were having on him.’

After a long and troubled search, they found the ideal man-lift sitting in a Lewes makers’ workshop and this is now hired from another company. The chair feature was made by Tarn Aitken who works with No Fit State.

The climbing poles are a Periplum obsession, and have been used in their work in different forms for many years now. ‘We drew out a city landscape of poles, drawn from the electricity pylons they have across the river there’ says Claire. ‘Originally the idea was to have performers trapped on the wires between, but we have never had access to the kind of budget that would allow that! We have for many years wanted to use a series of poles for performers to create an immersive city landscape. 451 came along and the idea fit the narrative. The watchtower or fire station is designed by Mike Pattison for another Periplum show, and for this we added 2 firemen’s poles to slide down. We couldn’t resist that!’

Claire then goes on to discuss the Tannoy system used in the show: ‘We have been pushing experimentation with multi-sound systems and split harmonics for a few years and the Tannoy design in 451 is an extension of this – they’re spread out amongst the audience, another way of creating an immersive space in the challenging outdoors, and a risk for us to attempt a merger of sound installation with large-scale narrative work. These were made by Graeme Calvert.’

I’m interested to know how Damian’s process as writer has been on this show – the first time they’ve had a novel as a starting point (although in other work, texts in other forms, such as poems and song lyrics, have been an inspiration).

Damian says: ‘As with most of our work, in 451 there’s a lot of cross-over between Claire and myself in the writing and direction roles. Claire is very good at giving a motif or a concept for a speech. I come into a rehearsal process with lots of material, and this gets adapted, dropped, added to as the piece comes into reality. The main challenge and joy with exploring 451 was to make it resonate for people today, and there’s so much in the book that’s predictive of our modern, interactive world – as individuals and as a social collective we’ve chosen this digital hall of mirrors while other forces cook up chaos and strange order, adding to the confusion of our over-stimulated lives. By writing for outdoor arts, we’re trying to relate to the audience directly and in the moment; to bring them into this reality, but also to provoke questions about realities in their own lives.’

Claire corroborates this view of the writing/directing/designing process as intertwined: ‘Periplum itself is a series of collaborations, starting with Damian and myself collaborating at the heart of the company’ she says. ‘We create with individual makers, designers, composers, musicians, performers, and the pyrotechnic company Lightfires. We were grateful to be able to continue these trusted collaborations into the making of 451, and to make a few new ones.’

Although the showing in Berkshire is the culmination of one stage of this precious collaboration, in another way it is the start of the next phase. The elements are in place – now comes the bedding in. I’m excited to have witnessed this crucial moment in the development of the show. It’s an honour to be at any birth – and the birth of a major new outdoor arts show by Periplum is a fantastic addition to the world.

All photos are by Ray Gibson.

Footnotes:

Periplum’s 451 is co-produced by Corn Exchange Newbury and New Greenham Arts.

It is funded by Arts Council England, and built at 101 Outdoor Arts Creation Space. The show was commissioned by Without Walls Street Arts Consortium, Brighton Festival, Greenwich & Docklands Festival, and Norfolk & Norwich Festival.

451 will appear at:

Brighton Festival, Preston Barracks, 16 May 2015

Norfolk & Norwich Festival, 22 May 2015

Greenwich & Docklands International Festival, 27 June 2015

Stockton International Riverside Festival, 31 July 2015

Credits:

Design, adaptation, script and direction –Periplum (Claire Raftery & Damian Wright)

Music Composition – Mike Simmonds & Barry Han

Pyrotechnics by Lightfires

Set design engineering – Martin West, Mike Pattison, Tarn Aitken

Sound design – Aidan O Brien

Tannoy design – Graham Calvert

Performed by:

Danielle Corbishley 

Milo Foster-Prior

Steven Grainger

Florencia Leon

Ben Phillips

Mike Simmonds

Ali Sparror

Will Strange

 Voiceover: Aurelian Koch

What do you know about sex? How do you know it? Dorothy Max Prior sees two shows at Sick! festival that are presented as part of the Wellcome Collection Sexology Season – and joins in the ensuing post-show discussions

So You Can Feel: the opening show in Sick! Festival 2015. The house lights are still up. Pieter Ampe walks out onto a bare stage. He’s dressed in regular-guy jeans and a T-shirt, and he has a hipster beard and longish hair pulled back from his face. He stands. He eyes people up. He goes very close to a woman in the front row. He intercepts a latecomer and puts his arm around her, gently. She laughs and we laugh with her, with him. His gestures and actions are all pretty ‘normal’ – by which I mean he doesn’t do anything that you would consider out of the range of regular-guy behaviour – although of course he is onstage, so everything is framed, everything feels important, relevant. He exits, almost, and re-enters the space in a different mode. Now there’s music, and a bar stool. He gets up even closer to the woman in the front row. He takes off his T-shirt and flexes his muscles. He changes costume, many times. He clambers over us. He goes from regular-guy to wacky way-out guy in a wild Afro wig bouncing around with a beach ball, to parody gay-club cruiser bumping and grinding in a shiny black nylon mankini, to see-through fishnet-clad go-go dancer, rotating his hips provocatively and shouldering a leg with an ease that would challenge any good Can Can dancer. Ultimately he’s naked – yet still ’dressed’, in body paint that seems to transform the human flesh into a statue, an object d’art to be gazed at and admired. At what point, if any, his presence seems to be asking, are we looking at adornment and gestures and body movements that are beyond the norm for a male body? Is a hair scrunchie OK? A wig? A catsuit? Can a man circle his hips without being considered ‘womanly’? What in any case do we mean by ‘manly’ or ‘womanly’?

Although this is not a dance piece, Pieter Ampe’s beautifully structured and delivered performance is that of a dancer and choreographer – he has the ease and control of his body that comes from years of physical training. There is also a lovely relationship with music in the piece, which seems to tell a parallel coming-of-age story – from the exuberant boyishness of Whole Lotta Shakin’ through the emotive and embracing Frankie Goes to Hollywood classic The Power of Love to the edgy, ‘been there done that’ tone of Nina Simone’s live Stars/Feelings medley

Pieter Ampe: So You Can Feel

In his play with receiving the gaze and framing himself as a moving sculpture, and in his use of props and costume, he reminds me a lot of legendary female performance artist La Ribot. In the post-show discussion, there is debate about humour – specifically, whether a woman performing the same gestures and movements would raise a laugh (as Ampe did) with a similar bump-and-grind and leg-splaying – and whether we are laughing to cover up discomfort. This last point is put to us by guest speaker Eric Anderson (Professor of Sport, Masculinities and Sexualities at the University of Winchester). This suggestion is refuted strongly by many members of the audience – there are few if any here who would feel discomfort at the sight of a man in a wig and a fishnet catsuit, even one gyrating his hips provocatively. And many of us also feel that many women working within New Dance and Performance Art have successful reclaimed the gestures and actions familiar from the products of the sex industry, and made them their own: from Annie Sprinkle and Coum Transmissions through to The Two Wrongies, Rosana Cade, and GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN. It looks as if an interesting discussion might be brewing on what we call ‘feminine’ dress and why physical actions are viewed as feminine or masculine. There’s a brief discussion of changing mores in Western society (18th century men in powdered wigs and heels are cited, as is the long-haired liberation of men in the 1960s and 70s that preceded the neo-reactionism of the 1980s onwards). I’m all poised to put forward the suggestion that some movements (particularly circular hip- or pelvic-based ones) are deemed ‘feminine’ because of their longterm association with biologically female experiences of fertility and childbirth – so called ‘belly dancing’, forerunner of the stripper’s womanly gyrations, having developed (many sources claim) in the all-female harems, as a means of easing the pains of menstruation and labour. But sadly, the discussion veers away from this interesting subject and into a defence of Professor Anderson’s key beliefs about contemporary male image and behaviour.

Although suggesting earlier that we might feel discomfort with images of the male body that challenge the norm for men, Anderson argues that things are very different nowadays for young heterosexual men – claiming that his extensive research shows that ’straight’ 17-year-olds are happy (for example) to wear pink and to share a bed with a male friend who isn’t a sexual partner. Although no-one is disputing his findings, within the demographic he has chosen to work, this American sociologist’s rather romantic view of British youth is challenged by numerous audience members. Some of us raise the question of rising trends for teenagers within the Islamic community to adopt conservative views about sexuality – with young women veiling themselves in growing numbers, and both sexes citing religious texts that supposedly support the subordination of women and the extermination of gay men. Anderson’s reply to this is astonishing: he says that it is of no interest because Britain is ’93% white’ and that he is not willing to go into Muslim communities, because as a gay man he would be unsafe. When BBC journalist Melita Dennett challenges Anderson’s hunky-dory view of teenage tolerance, citing the use of the word ‘gay’ as an insult, even in the liberal oasis that is Brighton in 2015, she is told that she has ‘an attitude’.

Luckily the chair, performance artist Boogalu Stu (dressed very fetchingly in a peach feather onesie with matching nylon quiff), manages to get the focus back on Pieter Ampe and his work. Much of the purpose of this, his first solo work, was to playfully explore his own liberation (as a self-defined heterosexual man) from restrictions of how the 21st century male body could look and move. Ampe talks of a desire to expose and move away from shame. To shame ‘shame’, you could say. He suggests that of all the things that a human being could be ashamed of, it’s a shame that physicality and sexuality are such a source of shame.

Christopher Green: Prurience

Shame – and the shaming of shame – is also right at the heart of Christopher Green’s latest work, Prurience, which is presented at Sick! as a work-in-progress (although this isn’t made clear in the publicity, it is flagged up in the discussion after the show).

The theatrical conceit is that artist and audience are members of a self-help group for self-confessed porn addicts. The Brighton showing is in Fabrica, an art gallery set in a deconsecrated church, which feels appropriate. As we come in, we are asked to make ourselves a name-tag, and to write down our expectations, hopes or fears for tonight on a slip of paper placed in a bowl. There’s a circle of chairs, and a trestle table at the rear of the space with tea and coffee. Christopher Green introduces himself as ‘Jack’, and gets the ball rolling by inviting members of the group to take and read out some of the Expectations papers. ‘I’ve kicked the coke and the cake – now it’s just the cock’ is one. ‘Great expectations!’ is another. Others are a little more prosaic: ‘I’m keeping an open mind’ or ‘No expectations.’ As the evening progresses, we are drawn into confessional mode by our uber-Californian self-help guru Jack, who insists on tolerance and respect for others with that kind of tense and slightly edgy tone so familiar from counselling and support groups. No-one is forced to participate – it’s fine to just observe and listen. The stories that emerge are harrowing, funny, believable, incredible. A woman who likes watching extreme gay male porn. A 20-year-old man who has seen so much that he now suffers from erectile dysfunction. A middle-aged male therapist who is sick of seeing his pleasure described as a problem. The beauty of the structure of the piece is that, as with porn itself, it is really hard to tell the difference between reality and fabrication. Which stories belong to the teller, and which don’t? Which of us (if any) are plants? Who’s acting and who’s ‘acting as if’. In both porn and self-help groups, role play is important. Some words seem to come from the heart, spontaneously, and some are pre-prepared statements or commitments, read out at Jack’s request. ‘No more wanking in the office disabled toilet trying not to get spunk on my iPhone’ is one. Everything is OK, except when it’s not OK – we’re here to bear witness, not to judge or intervene, and Jack helps us to understand and obey the ground-rules. Thankfully, no one mentions 50 Shades of Grey. There’s poetry, and a group song, and a break for more tea and coffee. And after the break, a build into ever-more intense interaction, with lots of huffing and puffing, until a climax is reached…

Christopher Green: Prurience

When the show ends, the bar opens – and filmmaker Toby Amies chairs a fertile and invigorating discussion. The sexology expert on-hand tonight is Clarissa Smith (Professor of Sexual Cultures, University of Sunderland)  – who is thankfully far less volatile than Eric Anderson, calmly presenting a good case for tolerance and acceptance, pouring cold water on the fever about the dangers of pornography. She cautions against the medicalisation of porn consumption – as an example, she seriously doubts the evidence on porn addiction resulting in erectile dysfunction in young males. Christopher Green talks about his desire to create a show that expresses as many different viewpoints as possible, rather than a polemic piece that takes sides. He talks with great concern about the commodification of both porn and the ‘cure’ for porn addiction: we are in a society that sells us the notion of addiction (porn, drugs, fags, food), tells us we have a problem, and sells us the solution. Therapy itself has become codified; has lost its sense of play – hence Green’s creation of prurience.org (with its charismatic founder, DVDs, and branded T-shirts), and the unsettling Jack character, a perfect parody of the sort of groups and group leaders that invade every aspect of our ever-more addicted lives. A few questions Christopher Green thinks we should all ask ourselves: Who are we giving the power to? Where are we getting our facts? Who is driving the moral panic?

Porn, says Professor Clarissa Smith, is neither good nor bad. It just is. Perhaps it goes without saying – but I still feel it needs to said – that there are limits to libertarianism. When talking about porn, we need to be clear that we are indeed discussing pornography – adult erotica, made by and for consenting adults – not images of child abuse. There is a growing awareness of the need to describe these images as what they are, rather than using the term ‘child porn’. Professor Smith is quick to clarify that what we are discussing excludes the viewing of images of child abuse, which is rightly illegal.

Both of these shows are presented at Sick! with the support of The Wellcome Collection, as part of its Sexology Season. Other shows and events in the festival similarly supported include What Tammy Needs To Know About Getting Old And Having Sex, in which Tammy WhyNot (the girl who put the ‘cunt’ into ‘country’) – aka performance artist Lois Weaver of Split Britches – collaborates with older people in Brighton, drawing on their personal stories of over-age sex; Brian Lobel’s Sex, Cancer & Cocktails, an ‘in-home conversation about doing it during treatment’; and Sexual Violence: Male Problem/Male Solution? a debate that asks how masculine identity in the 21st century can continue to allow the horrific level of abuse still perpetrated against women and girls. The opening event of the Brighton leg of the Sick! festival (which also runs in Manchester) was not a show but a debate, called Sexual Transactions, and the programme also includes a film called The Unspeakable Crime: Rape, and a showing of the internationally acclaimed verbatim theatre show about the horrific Delhi bus rape and murder of the girl they called Nirbhaya. It is evident from the high profile within the programme, and sheer amount of events on the subject, that issues around sexuality – male sexuality, in particular, are high on the agenda.

This is an interesting move for Sick! which is now in its third year, and establishing itself as a major fixture on the UK festival calendar. In the first two years, the programme was focused on exploring attitudes towards health, illness, and disability – and in particular, providing a platform for disabled artists making work about their bodies and their selves. In 2015, the interest is broader, becoming a festival ‘that confronts the challenges of life and death’ – challenges that ‘are sometimes rooted in bodies and minds that fail us, sometimes in the complexities of living in an imperfect society… bearing witness to the realities of our lives and shining a light on urgent issues that remain taboo or misunderstood’. A pretty broad sweep – which along the way takes in the brilliant Chop Theatre production How to Disappear Completely, in which lighting designer and filmmaker Itai Erdal delivers a reflection on his mother’s life refracted through the lens of hours of footage he has taken of her (reviewed at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014, where it was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award); and Sue Mac Laine’s new show Can I Start Again Please? in which her two lives, as theatre-maker and BSL interpreter for other people’s theatre, become one in a piece described as a ‘duet and duel’ in which two performers (the writer herself and Nadia Nadarajah) used signed and spoken language in a ‘linguistic challenge to represent traumatic experience, in particular that of childhood sexual violence’.

In the festival programme notes on Can I Start Again? it is described as a piece that is ‘both personal and political’. There has been much recent debate in the wider world about the need for politics to move away from the personal and back into collective organisation and action – to be less about ‘me’ and more about ‘us’. Yet whilst we still have a world in which a man can be thrown from a tower for no other reason than he is known to be homosexual; or a woman can have acid thrown in her face for having ‘dishnoured’ her family by making her own choice of husband; or a child can be groomed by a gang of men, who are not prosecuted for years because she is deemed at age 13 to be a ‘slut’ and not worth the police or council’s consideration – then the personal and political cannot be separated. Yes, we must act collectively –voting, campaigning, standing up the rights of others, demanding an end to the structures of power (political, financial, religious) that are used as tools of oppression. But the telling of personal stories, and the bearing witness to those stories, is a crucial part of the process of liberation and progression.

Dorothy Max Prior saw the UK premiere of Pieter Ampe/Campo’s So You Can Feel at The Old Market, Hove on 5 March 2015, and Christopher Green’s Prurience at Fabrica, Brighton on 6 March 2015. Both were presented at Sick! Festival with the support of The Wellcome Collection as part of the Sexology Season.

www.sickfestival.com 

www.wellcomecollection.org/sexologyseason