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

Ontroerend Goed: Sirens

You may be stronger than me, but I have a weapon. I can SCREAM. And so she does, and so they all do, these women before us, they scream. Very loudly. This is an immediate, clear, unequivocal feminist statement. We are women, we have voices, and we will not be silenced.

Sirens is a show made by women, about women. The cast of six women actors are credited as the writers of the piece (with direction, as always with Ontroerend Goed’s shows, by Alexander Devriendt). These women – many of who have performed in other shows by the company – represent a wide variety of ages and experiences, and here present a wide variety of women’s voices. Women talking about feminism. Women talking about body image. Women talking about sexual violence. Women talking about everyday sexism. Women talking about ironic sexism. Women pleading guilty to stereotypical behaviour, and women berating men for their stereotypical behaviour. Women reflecting on the place of women in the world, and of the work that still needs doing. Part of me feels tired of the same old talk, the things that still need to be said – I’ve been an unreconstructed feminist for 45 years, and there is nothing here I haven’t heard before. But it’s not the fault of the show that this all still needs saying – it’s the fault of the world. Carry on…

I love the chosen form: a concert delivered by six vocalists, each in evening dress and heels, each standing behind a mic. The shouts and squeals and screams of the opening section of the work are at times like a serious experimental music piece (echoes of Cathy Berberian’s work with Ligeti) and at times clownish and silly. Both – and everything in between – works beautifully.

Musicality – specifically, the musical play with words and with vocal sounds – stays a constant throughout the piece. Lists are often used. A list of skin creams, what they claim to do, and their price (Estee Lauder, £55 for 50ml down to Aldi’s £1.79 offering). A list of female celebrities hated (‘I hate Cameron Diaz.’ ‘Sarah Jessica Parker is a skank.’). A list of casual sexual assault on young women (‘I was 16’ ‘I was 12’ ‘I was 19’).

Everything is beautifully constructed, well paced, nicely delivered. It is polemic, but it needs to be. There are moments of irony, visual counterbalances to the feminist tracts – for example, dimly-lit porn projections, onto the (black) curtains at the back of the stage; a mock (male) wanking scene. I’m not sure I’d have bothered with either; the former seems a pointless addition of men’s gaze on women, not really the subject of the piece; the latter is funny but doesn’t add anything much, seeming to be just an opportunity to do a bit of retaliatory man-mocking.

These are minor criticisms. It’s a strong piece of work, and a great showcasing of women’s voices – in many senses of that word.

Sirens is shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award 2014 in Innovation & Experimentation.

Baccala Clown: Pss Pss

Sometimes a show is such a total delight that it is hard to write about it without just gushing ‘See it, see it!’ – Pss Pss is such a show. See it, see it. Winner of a Cirque du Soleil prize, and playing the Edinburgh Fringe after successful appearances worldwide, including at the London International Mime Festival, it comes with great expectations. Fulfilled – I was entranced from beginning to end by these two gorgeous clowns, who here demonstrate circus skills galore and comic timing to die for. Poetry in motion.

They start very slowly. A lunch box, an apple, an envious glance, a raised eyebrow, silence. She juggles with her one apple. The audience applaud loudly – it’s just a few minutes in but she’s already won our hearts, looking at us quizzically with her big eyes from below her little grey skull cap, bunches of unruly brown hair escaping from the sides. He looks at her with a pitying, mocking look and places his apple on his head. She splits it in one killer blow.

Throughout, they play the status game – with twists. He appears to get the upper hand a lot of the time, then she trumps him. They hug, he tries to disengage himself, she resists and clings to him like a baby monkey, this turns into a beautiful and fluid acrobalance sequence – piggy-backs to shoulder stands with scarcely a pulse between; dead man drops that end an inch from the ground and immediately melt into something new. Their softness and agility is amazing.

The circus skills are worked into the clown relationship effortlessly. The diabolo section is a classic demonstration of merging circus skills with clowning – he spins the diabolo, there are drops. She does a dippy dance to cover the drops.

There are some great moments of audience interaction, for example, an ultra-silly scene bringing a stepladder onstage over the heads of the crowd. The grand finale is a trapeze act, featuring broken ladders, tangled limbs, and a fantastic frog-hang. I don’t know if such a thing exists in aerial circus, but there is no other word for it that I can think of to describe this fantastic image of our green-legged clown dangling from on high, abandoned by her partner. She does get down – with a little help from a friend. I won’t say how…

The performance by both clowns is world class. The costumes are just right, a mix of classic and contemporary clown imagery (he’s in a brown pin-striped suit and a trilby; she’s in red pixie boots that match her velvet bloomers). The use of music is beautifully considered, with silence playing an important part. I love the way a whimsical waltz or fairground oom-pa-pa polka suddenly stops as the performers freeze to stare each other out; or the way Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is played live by blowing through ladder rungs, to be picked up in the soundscape. In another section, the talented twosome have a battle of musical instruments, she on accordion, he on trumpet (louder, brasher – of course). She takes lots of solos; he retaliates with pure volume. The battle ends in the longest stage hug in history.

These two are such delightful company that inevitably they bring the (full) house down and receive a noisy standing ovation from a delighted, mostly young, crowd at Zoo Southside. So good to see such timeless and beautiful clown work receiving this sort of response. See it, see it. No really, see it.

Pss Pss is shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award for Physical and Visual Performance at the Edinburgh Fringe 2014.

Helen Paris and Caroline Wright: Out of Water

Where are the sailors and the lifesavers? The swimmers and the singers? Well, the singers are certainly here. And the lifesavers, guiding us in the art of artificial respiration. Cover the nose and mouth and breath. Breath, breath until you see the chest rise. This on our headphones, connected not (as is the wont these days) to an MP3 recording but to a radio signal, which gives the soundscape that lovely fading in and out quality we know and love from our formative years spent hiding under the bedclothes clutching a transistor radio.

We are on Portobello Beach, Edinburgh, at sunset. We walk west, as a pack, a herd, into the setting sun. The shipping forecast gives way to the dulcet tones of Helen Paris (half of the esteemed UK/USA company Curious, although in Out of Water she is collaborating with sculptor/visual artist Caroline Wright). Helen’s seductive voice lures us siren-like to the sea. It’s a glorious evening, the sun a rich rusty red in the West, the sea a soft blue, the sky lilac streaked with deep indigo. The tide is out, the waves lap softly on the shore. The headphones feed us Helen’s poetic reflections on learning to swim; on the lack of lighthouses; on the behaviour of migrating geese, whose v-shaped formations increase their flying speed. A male voice continues with the lifesaving instructions. A beautiful violin line floats in (courtesy of composer Jocelyn Pook).

We walk, slowly. We are held in the internal world created by the soundscape, but the external sound world is there too, at the periphery. A group of small girls playing. A military plane flying over. A group of young people laughing and talking. Everything becomes part of the performance text. After a while we see a line of people, all ages, all shapes and sizes, all dressed in navy blue fisherman’s trousers and white shirts, facing the sea. There’s a simple choreography down the line: an arm raised, a sway. Then, all two dozen or so pull on a rope. Not a big tug-of-war pull, a gentle pull. We are guided into a new formation – the herd becomes a flock. Earphones off, we hear the violin playing and the chorus singing live, with soloist Laura Wright’s beautiful voice carrying across the sands. Passers-by gather, curious. At the finish, we walk East – towards a great big full moon taking up half the sky.

Mostly, everything is beautifully enacted. The soundscape is wonderful; the music gorgeous; the visual image of the line of bodies facing the sea spectacular. There are a few things that don’t work so well. I’d have liked the eye of a choreographer on the movement of bodies – performers and audience. The performers’ gestures in the line were sometimes a little half-hearted, and the ‘flocking’ could have been managed more efficiently.

I’d also have liked someone to have told audience members (who by nature of the piece become participants in this shared space) that they shouldn’t take photos. When in the bird-flock V, my view of the singer and of the performers moving into the water was blocked by the screens shoved in front of my face. ‘Turn your mobiles onto silent’ isn’t good enough – turn them off needs to be the order of the day to maintain the meditative space needed in a work of this sort.

That aside, Out of Water is a heartwarming experience. What a delight to be away from the turmoil of the Fringe for a few hours, witnessing something beautiful and simple, staged in the open air. A pleasure, really a pleasure.

GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN: Number 1, The Plaza

Welcome, welcome – come inside, take a look around. Welcome to Number 1, The Plaza. Our house is a very very very nice house. And you’re very, very welcome. Tonight is party night and the door is open.

Two young women circle the performance space, dressed in slutty evening wear, one wearing killer heels, one barefoot, both covered in – what? Mud? Chocolate? Shit? Here’s the kitchen, and here’s the bathroom, and here’s the bedroom. Oops no, you can’t look in there, that’s where they’ve tossed all the – shit. As we take the imaginary tour the small blonde one (Lucy) starts to scamper faster, puppy-like. The tall brunette one (Jen) loses a shoe, which gets stuck in the – what? Surely not shit? – on the floor.

Taking the form of an ‘evening with’ cabaret, the show is built around two clownish characters, Jen and Lucy, here to entertain us with witticisms and wisecracks and songs (from A Little Night Music and Chess, amongst other musical theatre delights). In between, they wander back and forth to the DJ decks, pour and consume drinks, fiddle with the lighting, spin on revolving kitchen stools (sometimes sans knickers), and cat-fight. Although I’m pretty sure the company define themselves within the parameters of live art, the set-up is classic clown, with one high-status character (Jen) always striving to get and maintain the upper hand, whilst the chirpy little one (Lucy) constantly tries to win her partner’s and the audience’s affection by cranking up the volume on pranks and gags. Morecambe and Wise it’s not, but the connections are there to see, plain as could be. If Morecambe and Wise came back as a pair of feisty young females, maybe this is what they’d be.

At an hour and a half, it’s a show that feels over-long – although much of it, particularly at the start and the finish, feels like deliberate audience-testing. Will you stay or will you go? I have an odd reaction to it. I spend the first 15 or 20 minutes wanting to get out, not in, the back of the van, down on the road and away from them (a response shared by my colleague Edward Rapley when he witnessed them compering Night Watch at Cambridge Junction). But then – around about the time they do a spectacular live rendition of Send in the Clowns, emotive warbles to die for – it switches, and I’m suddenly totally engrossed in their world. Their stay in Edinburgh was brief – just two nights at the renegade Forest Fringe – but this is a show doing the rounds, with a whole raft of supporters (from Tom Thumb theatre in Margate through to the Almeida) so it’s bound to fetch up somewhere else very soon. If you get a chance to join the party, be brave, step in – although be careful what you step in.

30 Bird: Domestic Labour: A Study in Love

Everyday objects. Upright Hoovers, lots, dotted around the performance space. A ladies’ bike. A radiator. Electrical appliances. Extension leads. Marigold gloves. An ironing board. A flat-screen TV. The domestic environment.

We hear a male voice on the soundtrack, mixed low – it’s hard to hear what’s being said. I pick up something about having to change the sheets. Three women enter the space. There’s a short choreography with the Hoovers. The women voice the words of a domestic argument. It only takes a moment to realise that the male voice on the soundtrack is voicing a woman’s concerns, and the women’s live voices are voicing a man’s side of the argument. A nice twist.

The show isn’t what it first appears to be. It isn’t a show about domestic labour, the drudgery of housework (although that is part of the narrative); it’s a study in love – the subtitle of the piece turns out to be the important bit. And a study in gender (a popular 30 Bird theme – see, for example, Plastic, a show about trans-gender in Iran, shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award a few years ago).

Bit by bit, the fragmented narrative builds into a cohesive whole, using repetition and revision and addition so that layers are added, granting us ever more insight into the story of a marriage. A marriage between an Iranian man and an English woman, in which she is asked to make a declaration of her belief in Allah in order for the wedding to go ahead (‘Is she Catholic’, asks the Imam. ‘Catholics are difficult.’) A marriage in which a child is conceived semi-accidentally due to a half-arsed attitude towards contraception (the story of so many marriages), but then welcomed and raised with love. A marriage in which one person (the man) is away from home a lot, out in the world because of his work, whilst the other person (the woman) finds herself the one left to do most of the childcare and housework. ‘While you’ve been away I’ve…’ becomes a repeated refrain. Yes, it’s a familiar tale. Universal.

But there’s more, a lot more. The story becomes more specific, more intimate. A story of a romance that blossoms through a Spanish holiday – although one partner mostly remembers niggling things like having to bypass all the lovely fish restaurants because the other one doesn’t like fish. Memories of ex-girlfriends creep in. Parallel stories interweave: we move into the lives of other couples; of parents, and grandparents in Tehran.

A constant theme throughout the show is the ever-changing rules on gender and gender-based expectations that permeate British and Iranian culture. We learn that our male protagonist rides a ladies’ bike, which is a lot faster and better than his old mountain bike, yet courts ridicule. The Tehran grandfather is mocked by the gossips for sewing curtains for his wife and eating quiche. Real men don’t, obviously. We learn of the emancipation of women in Iran: it is decreed that no woman should cover her head, the scarf is abolished, women are ordered to dress in the Western manner. Grandmother refuses to go out naked-headed, so gets around Tehran by climbing from roof to roof with a ladder. It’s an extraordinary image, painted with words.

Meanwhile, on screen, here’s Johnny Guitar: the only Hollywood Western to feature a gunfight between two women. ‘All a man needs in life’ says a cowboy ‘is a cup of coffee and a smoke’. Oh, if only life were so simple…

The show is beautifully scripted (by writer/director Mehrdad Seyf) but looks and feels nothing like a regular ‘play’ – although there’s plenty of play. The words are important, but no more or less than the visual imagery, and the performers’ physical engagement with the installation-like environment. The show is created in collaboration with artist Chris Dobrowolski, and rather than a ‘set’ in the regular sense of the word, we have the real-life domestic objects that are used to create ever-changing sculptural tableaux. The bike often finds itself resting on the radiator. The women are often to be found wearing coffee-pot headdresses. Electrical appliances bang or whirr.

And within the text, whether spoken or on the soundscape, objects continue to hold sway –listed, accounted for. The cupboards and drawers containing her headscarves and long-sleeved tops. The story of how Grandmother wouldn’t remove his toiletries and clothes from the flat after Grandfather died. Live voice and recorded voice work in harmony. The soundtrack is a mix of this recorded text, found sound, and original composition (by Greg Mickelborough). Here and there are whimsical waltzes, distorted rumbas, and a hint of a Spanish Paso Doble.

The piece is performed more than competently with zest and energy by the three women actors, but if there’s a criticism it is that the physical performance is not as edgy or uplifting as it could be – I’d like to see a little more choreographic rigour in the piece. That aside, a stimulating and entertaining additional to 30 Bird’s ongoing investigation of what it means to be ‘male’ or ‘female’ in this world of ours.