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

Dudendance: This Side of Paradise

Apocalypso! Our culture is awash with images of violence, destruction, despair and degradation. 24-hour news coverage beamed from war-torn countries, TV documentaries exposing the use of torture, gory and sadistic films, shoot-em-up video games. Almost daily we encounter yet another dystopia, another vision of apocalypse – the end is nigh, it seems. The end is never-ending.

How do we process these images? How do we assimilate and evaluate them? Dudendance’s This Side of Paradise grasps the conundrum by the short and curlies and beats out an answer with a cleverly manipulated use of site, intriguing imagery, and engaging physical performance.

We are first invited into a chamber of horrors that is all the more desolate for the fact that it is daylight lit – the Autopsy Room, a high-ceilinged space with a dust-smeared glass roof, cracked tiles, deep sinks, a cupboard full of ominous looking tools and medicinal bottles, and a big pulley hanging above. (‘Maximum load one tonne.’) As is often the way with truly site-specific theatre, it is hard to tell what is found object and what has been placed as ‘set’ or ‘prop’. There’s a pile of mattress stuffing and rags on the floor that seems to be moving, a hospital gurney that has what might be a human figure on it, and an ape-like man with clenched knuckles chained to the wall, dragging himself to and fro. He wears ripped and torn joggers, patched together with gaffer tape, and a skewed balaclava that reveals just one eye.

A melancholy usher, also wearing a balaclava, escorts us into the neighbouring Demonstration Room, which by contrast is in almost- darkness. This room is occupied by a number of writhing figures, stuffed in strange ways so that they seem more puppet than human figure – horrible deformations of the human form that are headless or spineless or abnormally long-bodied. Mutants! The ape-man and another one-eyed figure seem to be the ‘guards’, manipulating and tormenting the other figures. Just when it reaches a point in the show where the point seems to have been made, enough already, a shift occurs. With the introduction of kitsch lounge music and vocalised ‘pows’ and ‘kerrangs’, the world witnessed slips into cartoon violence, humour releasing the tension that has been held taut. Ape-man morphs into a ludicrous club-armed creature rampaging round the space, others wield tacky cardboard weapons and toy guns. We’ve moved from nightmare terror to Hallowe’en party horror.

This Side of Paradise uses its chosen site very carefully and beautifully (if I can use that word of something exploring the opposite of beauty). The opening and shutting of doors that allow in a limited ration of light in the main (second) space; the movement of the performers through the spaces; the careful integration of the found objects/physical aspects of the site into the dramaturgy of the piece. The choreography is fluid, precise, meaningful – I particularly like the puppeteer-puppet dynamic explored between the various pairings of performers.

It’s a dark subject, but there is humour for those happy to find the dark side of life amusing – and those who are this way inclined might spot some of the many passing references to video gaming, comic book and film characters – from the shadowy Nosferatu to the lurching zombies of Resident Evil, via Batman and The Hulk.

Made by Scottish company Dudendance (Paul Rouse and Clea Wallis), in collaboration with artists from Campinas, Brazil and a group of young Scottish performers who were trained in residence in Brazil. Paul Rouse (the ape-man cum club-armed monster) is, as always, a mighty physical presence on stage. The rest of the team work well together, and it is all very ably directed by Clea Wallis. There is nothing so entertaining as other people’s misery.

Theatre Ad Infinitum: Ballad of the Burning Star

Shalom! Peace be with you, prosperity, welfare –hello there! Oh, and while I have your attention, can I look in your handbag to see if you are hiding any bombs? And – well now, how interesting – don’t worry honey, I won’t tell a soul…

Meet Star, an Israeli diva who has a wicked way with words. She knows that they often say one thing but can be twisted or used ironically to mean quite the opposite, that they can beguile and seduce and entrance and ensnare. Star sings and dances and tells stories, aided and abetted by a boy musician called Camp David, and a pentangle of cute cart-wheeling girl foot-soldiers, the Starlets, who strive to obey her every command – ‘Yes, Star, yes!’

The troupe tell us two parallel stories – the story of an Israeli family living in a settlement in the ‘occupied territories’, and the story of the Jewish people and their quest for a land of their own, and how things have been since finding that land. Meet Israel, the country – and Israel, the little boy who shares his name with his homeland.

The creation of Star as storyteller (Theatre Ad Infinitum’s co-director Nir Paldi, the writer of the piece, plays her in glorious drag – all shimmering gold lame and skin-tight Lycra leggings, topped off with a sleek black Cleopatra wig) is a stroke of genius. With more than a hint of pantomime she steps in and out of the stories, commentating on the action, and teasing the Starlets in a way that only shiny and powerful people (entities, nations) can get away with. She’s a bully, but a loveable one. That ‘she’ is a man in drag humiliating women adds another level, a commentary on gender politics, into the mix.

No stone is left unturned, no closet left unopened. There are stories within stories, the layers building and unpeeling beautifully throughout a fast-paced and (yes!) fun-packed hour that proves that political theatre doesn’t have to be polemical, it can be as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. (Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill taught us this many years ago, and Joan Littlewood took up the baton with Oh What a Lovely War, but in recent years we seem to have lost the way when it comes to combining politics with theatrical entertainment.)

Real air attacks and schoolyard war games – the War of Independence, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War and the first Gulf War. Gas attacks and big bad bogey man Saddam Hussein. Innocent Jewish teenagers killed in bomb blasts on Jerusalem’s big yellow school buses, and innocent Arab teenagers killed by soldiers entering sewage-filled villages. Tiny children killed whilst trying to flee from the Nazis, and Holocaust memorial school trips to visit Auschwitz. Is this appropriate subject matter for a cabaret song-and–dance? Yes indeed. In one hour we learn more about the history and complexities of the modern nation of Israel than any history course could teach us in a year.

And it is the attention to detail that makes the show – detail that comes from Nir Paldi’s personal knowledge and experience (we learn, for example that the reason the Arab settlements are filled with the smell of burning rubbish is because the bin men don’t visit what is seen to be no-man’s-land; and that the Jewish settlements are at the top of the hill, and the Arab settlements at the bottom, so the sewage flows downhill). Living detail and the awareness and expression of the complexities of the history and politics of Israel. Nir’s story is one of someone who loves and cares about his homeland, but who has never felt comfortable with a one-dimensional viewpoint. He sees two, three, four, more sides to every story – and we learn that there can be many ‘truths’ that co-exist simultaneously. He takes elements of his own autobiography – growing up in the settlements, doing military service, being educated in the three forms of anti-Semitism, being surrounded constantly with stories of war and the threat of war – and with the support of the company’s co-director George Mann and the input of the five-woman supporting cast, builds on this material to take it beyond one person’s story; to make it the story of a nation.

And what an inventive way to tell this difficult story! In a lovely modern example of the Brechtian verfremdungseffekt (or, if you prefer, with a nod towards Mel Brooks’ The Producers) Nir’s creation Star brings on each terrible chapter in the story of ‘classical anti-Semitism’ – the Roman massacre of the people of Judea two thousand years ago, the Crusades, the Inquisition – with a wave and a smile: ‘Camp David, play the Persecution music…’

And of course the outrageous Star can say all the things that most wouldn’t dare to say. Holocaust stories are told, and Star cuts in to complain that every family festival is blighted with these stories. ‘We know, we know…’ she cries, bored to death with dull-as-dishwater death and destruction. Meanwhile, the Starlets high-kick and circle-dance merrily to Hava Nagila.

Ballad of the Burning Star merges its component elements with exquisite skill, and everything is delivered by our onstage cast of six with the level of technical expertise and artistic sparkle that we’ve come to expect of Theatre ad Infinitum. Some audience members might be surprised by the differences between this new show and the previous worldwide success, the word-free Translunar Paradise, but those familiar with the company’s other works, and with their working methods, will know that every show they make uses whatever tools from the theatre-makers’ box that they feel fits the job in hand. The Lecoq training is still highly evident in the precision of the physical acting and choreography. The longstanding interest in the integration of live music into a theatrical setting is there to see. Most importantly, the desire to use theatre to tell stories that really, really matter is paramount. A wonderful piece of theatre, the latest brightly glowing star in Theatre Ad Infinitum’s firmament.

Compagnie Bal / Jeanne Mordoj: La Poème

Jeanne Mordoj is ‘a formidable contortionist and juggler, a mischievous feminist and former bearded lady’. Her latest work, La Poème, is premiering at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, presented under the Crying Out Loud banner. And it is a delight!

The structure of the piece is deceptively simple. Lone performer Mordoj makes a slow journey from her starting point upstage, moving at various speeds, at various levels. She advances, then retreats. There’s music and sound effects, there’s object manipulation. But mostly there’s Mordoj and her amazing physical presence, so perfectly in control of her body in this space, so beautifully in communication with her audience, that it feels as though the whole world is here in this journey. It’s a journey that explores the tug between the ‘civilised’ and the ‘savage’; a journey that celebrates the wise and sometimes wanton woman of folklore; a journey that asks what it means to be human, female, fecund.

Mordoj starts silk-suited and booted, clutching a hand-held harmonium, singing an ethereal song. She conjures eggs from thin air, and spirits them away – mostly in her mouth, it seems. The eggs seem to infest her with a wild animal spirit – she crows and clucks and cavorts to a Calypso tune. She has big hamster cheeks and bulging eyes, gurning madly. She seemingly lays more eggs, shells crunched on the floor by the high-heeled shoes of her dancing feet. Her head and neck seem to move separately to the rest of her body. The soundscape morphs into a distorted mambo and jungle roars and rustles. The top half of her suit is discarded, and her shoulders, elbows and forearms take over the voodoo dance. Her breasts take on a life of their own, flesh coloured falsies emerging to be manipulated in all sorts of ingenious ways. Her belly rolls and undulates. More eggs, and ever-more ingenious uses for them. A yolk slithers up one arm, across her shoulder blades and down the other arm. This is juggling, but not as we know it.

Every movement is beautifully precise, controlled, imbued with joy and humour. There’s a twinkle in her eye as she comes ever-closer, then retreats again to the upstage land of the goddesses who gently beguile us with song. What a pleasure and an honour to see a performer in such control of her body, and of the imaginary world that she has created on a bare stage, armed with little more than a box of eggs, a harmonium, and a pretty green silk skirt. A truly inspirational, Shamanistic almost, solo performance.

Bryony Kimmings: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

Meet Taylor who is nine years old and likes tuna pasta, Jessie J, and martial arts. And Bryony, who is 31 years old and likes smoking, walking, and sushi. Bryony is Taylor’s aunty and she thinks Taylor is like a baby deer – innocent, awkward and full of annoying questions (Bambi rather than a real baby deer, then). Taylor thinks Bryony is a dinosaur – but that’s OK, she likes dinosaurs.

Cue Jessie J’s ‘Domino’. Bryony and Taylor give us a snazzy dance routine, both as sweet as could be with their matching long fair hair and long white socks, their buttoned and bowed puffed sleeve outfits a ludicrous contrast to the lyrics blaring out from the PA: ‘I’m sexy and I’m free…’ Bryony falls behind, and as Taylor continues the dance routine, Bryony strips down to shiny leggings and black bra, her Alice-in-Wonderland wig pulled off to reveal tousled peroxide blonde hair. She gyrates suggestively behind Taylor.

When Taylor has her ears covered up, Bryony confesses that she worries about being a suitable role-model for her young niece. She can’t remember what it feels like to be nine, but she knows that she feels a desperate, furious desire to protect Taylor from a violent, over-sexualised world that sizes up the ‘tween’ market and sells to it aggressively: Brat dolls (nine year olds are too old for Barbie nowadays, apparently). Peel-off nail varnish. Toy make-up. Pop tunes with sexy lyrics by Jesse J and Katy Perry.

Together, Bryony and Taylor devise an imaginary role model for nine-year-old girls. She’s called Catherine Bennett and she’s a pop star cum palaeontologist. Bryony plays her in a sparkly green Lurex dress with jokey big-framed glasses and a curly blonde wig. She sings silly songs with a set of twee actions that are more Birdie Song or Agadoo than Jessie J. Here, they lose me a little. If this creature is Taylor’s invention, then I think she was doing what kids do all the time – giving grown-ups the answers they think they want to hear. I’m pretty sure Taylor secretly likes Jessie J’s ‘Domino’ more than Catherine Bennett’s whacky animal action song. But maybe that’s the point. Bryony confesses that there’s a lot of adult interest in Catherine Bennett who has been interviewed on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, and become friends with Yoko One. It’s winning over the nine-year-olds that’s hard…

Despite being not too impressed by this made-up role model (although her dinosaur-bone necklace rang true), in all other ways the show won me over. I love the device of the ‘ear protectors’, allowing Bryony to riff freely on her own past life choices, her dawning maturity, and her fears for the world that Taylor is growing up in. I love the way Taylor is framed so beautifully and lovingly in so many different ways – dancing, play-fighting, talking on-mic, lying like a precious specimen of girlhood on a stark metal table, curled up like a puppy on top of Bryony. I love the hilarious, ludicrous, scene in which Bryony acts out gouging Taylor’s eyes out to protect her from witnessing the world’s horrors. I love the costumes (especially the girl knights in shining armour), the toy machine guns, and the silver-sparkled turquoisy-green painted set conjuring up an enchanted forest.

Bryony proves herself to be a credible, likeable, superstar role-model good enough for any growing girl – and it was a joy to be invited into the world she has created with her delightful niece Taylor. A brave and honest show, and hugely entertaining.

blackSKYwhite: Omega

A mocked-up circus tent and the sounds of a late-night carnival, mulched, distorted, as in a dream: Offenbach’s Can Can, a crowd laughing then booing, a dog barking, machinery churning, the wheels of a Ghost Train grinding metal on metal. Coloured beams break the fourth wall to illuminate seats in the auditorium, casting a pattern of what looks to be an oscillating and unravelling DNA thread. Drum roll. Enter an ageing ringmaster and a pair of dancers dressed in a caricature of 19^th century Toulouse Lautrec splendour, all ruffled petticoats and buttoned boots. Roll up, roll up – the show has begun! Time is of the essence! Time is tight!

What looks to be burlesque romp dissolves into something far more dangerous. Over the next hour we meet a succession of extraordinary characters, a kind of Tarot of distorted archetypes: Adolph and Rudolph, a two-headed tuxedoed tap-dancer; Boatswain Bob, the living skeleton rising from a bag of rags; Agasfer, a melancholy conductor of the universe who spears himself through the ears, head, mouth and (no!) eyes; Omi and Naomi, the ‘spiders of the universe’ who spin the patterns written on the sky. Then there’s the lovers: a silver-headed bride (Judith) wielding a dagger, poised over a table of neon skulls, accompanied on a futuristic cello by a headless robotic Holofernes. ‘Man is but a machine and woman is but a toy’.

In this and other sections there is a strong echo of blackSKYwhite’s first massive Edinburgh Fringe hit, Bertrand’s Toys, winner of a Total Theatre Award in 2000 – particularly in the beautiful and extraordinary physical performance by Marcella Soltan, whose limbs seem able to bend in any direction, and whose movements switch from seductive swerves to robotic jerks in a flash. Other imagery – particularly the nightmare nursery visions of mis-shaped babies, terrifying teddy-bear Pierrots wielding trolleys, and startling stabs of candy-pink lighting, remind me of their Aurora Nova/London International Mime Festival hit The Anatomy of Insects. As is often the way with blackSKYwhite shows, one wonders how so much can be created onstage by just four performers. And as always the stage sings with moments of extraordinary transformation, as human bodies twist and turn in every direction, the distinction between flesh, costume, mask, or animated object constantly breaking down, so it is often hard to work out exactly what we are witnessing. Is that a person dancing the skeleton’s sickly stick-legged dance of death, or a manipulated puppet?

Omega is a truly total theatre. The dramaturgy of the piece is driven by the three-way powerhouse of soundtrack, lighting design, and physical action. The soundtrack is created by experimental musician Michael Begg, an extraordinary multi-layered production embracing pre-recorded texts in Russian, Romany and English (including the voice of legendary alternative musician Little Annie) and musical sounds of all sorts. Electro Swing, Balkan Beats, and schmaltzy showbiz favourites like ‘Pink Elephants on Parade’ vie with soulful musical saw and ear-splitting electronic drones. It marries well with director Dimitri Aryupin’s scenography, together creating a textured assault on the senses, the modern embodiment of Artaud’s vision of a theatre that regales the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams.

Perversely played in the daytime, Omega is a moon energy show. Its interest is the nature of time, and in particular the fear of the finite (ageing, death, decay, the constant tick of the clock: ‘a hand turns on a face and the face is watching you’); and the even greater fear of the infinite (imagine a snake eating its own poisoned tail forever, to paraphrase a line in the soundtrack). Along the way it explores the battle of binary divides – light and shadow, matter and anti-matter, various conjugations of heavenly and not-so-heavenly twins.

Omega is a fairground ride: thrilling, uncomfortable, scary. It’s also a philosophical reflection on the nature of existence, and an exploration of the dark matter that continuously heaves and swirls just below our conscious awareness. It’s not circus, it’s not cabaret – it’s deep dangerous disturbing theatre. You will emerge blinking into the daylight shaken and stirred. Be warned.