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

1927: The Animals and Children Took to the Streets

So here we are, in the beautiful big city where there’s ‘milk and honey in every Frigidaire, and muzak playing in the air’. But wait: every city has its dark side, and there are places that the tourist buses don’t take you to. I mean, who goes to London to see Tottenham, or Peckham, or Croydon?

The onstage projected scenery switches from an attractive blue-and-silver skyline to an earthy expressionist mix of browns and reds with jagged black outlines, the screen-painting meanwhile depicting a run-down apartment block, a crazy jigsaw of walls and elevator shafts and rubbish chutes. Welcome to Bayou Mansions on Red Herring Street, where it’s hard, so hard, to keep the wolf from the door.

Three little windows open to reveal three gossiping ladies in old gold dressing gowns and turbans: our guides in the terrible tale to come. Bayou Mansions, we learn, is a place rife with cockroaches (we see them walking across the screen and doffing their hats), where the rooms are too small to swing a rat. We are introduced to some of its inhabitants: a 21-year-old granny, the lonely caretaker, his nemesis Wayne the Racist, and an enormous rat-pack of renegade children who know that the city’s parks are not for the likes of them, especially since the weeping woman junky got replaced by a water feature. Pan out to the rest of Red Herring Street, a tangle of stripjoints and takeaway restaurants offering ‘pan-fried pussy cat’, and we meet a junkshop owner who is touting glitter wigs, cuddly toys and Torvil and Dean VHS videotapes (and this lady’s feisty daughter Zelda, a left-wing activist and local gangleader).

Red Herring Street may be down in the dumps, but there is hope! Enter Agnes Eaves and her daughter, Little Evie, who are different, cleaner, and on a worthy mission to save Bayou Mansion’s children with ‘love, encouragement, and a bit of collage’. A story of riots, kidnap, and political subterfuge ensues, and of course there is no happy ending, just endless misery forever, because there’s no escape, and ‘if you are born in the Bayou, you die in the Bayou’.

It is all played out by our three live performers (writer/storyteller Suzanne Andrade, physical theatre performer Esme Appleton, and pianist/composer Lillian Henley) augmented by the gorgeous animated characters, graphics, and projected scenery created by the fourth member of the company, Paul Barritt. Taking techniques explored in their first show, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, the company push the possibilities of live and screen interaction on mightily – not since Forkbeard Fantasy’s debut has there been a company so adept at integrating live and screen action, and so interested in exploring the medium’s possibilities.

The Animals and Children Took to the Streets, only the second show by 1927, has toured extensively since its long development phase and premiere last year at Battersea Arts Centre, over which time it’s developed a delicious pace and dynamism. Yet there is something more adding an edge, and that is something the company couldn’t have predicted or factored in: the 2011 English riots. Suddenly, this satirical story of rioting children, with its ironic reflections on ‘art in the community’ versus wholesale sedation via ‘shadow nannies’ and the ‘granny’s gum drops’ that reduce them to blank-eyed couch potatoes seems suddenly horribly, terribly pertinent and politically insightful.

It’s visually beautiful, with animation that is cleverly integrated with the live action and technically honed to near-perfection, has marvellous live music, and a wonderfully witty script that is a shining example of contemporary satire. A lovely, lovely show. I saw more than 60 shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and I went back to see this previously viewed piece to check it was still as good as ever.

It was better, dear reader, even better! Editor’s choice for the best stage show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011…

www.19-27.co.uk

All or Nothing / Strange Bird Zirkus: Uncharted Waters

Billing itself as ‘three short stories narrated through contemporary circus and aerial dance’ Uncharted Waters takes a general theme of the nautical and seafaring. There are (as it says on the can) three pieces presented, these linked, or interspersed perhaps a better way to put it, by live song of a sea shanty nature sung by Dave Boyd, who accompanies himself with simple and effective percussion.

The first piece, Spokes, uses ropes and silks to explore everything that can be explored around the notion of masts and rigging. It’s all efficient enough aerial work, but to an old lag like me there is nothing here that hasn’t been done before with ropes and silks, and there are other shows that I’ve seen in the past that have used ropes to explore nautical stories a lot more convincingly. I am also not particularly charmed by the performance presence of the two women aerialists (Lucy Deacon and Jennifer Patterson). Or at least, not as manifested in this piece. I note that Grid Iron’s director Ben Harrison and composer David Paul Jones are part of the creative team, and although the soundscape is good, it is hard to see where Ben Harrison’s talents for ‘dramatic development’ have been put to use here…

The second piece in the trilogy, Youkali, is better. Moritz Linkmann’s Chinese Pole work is of a high standard, and the piece – a kind of sailor goes to shore and gets into drag vignette; perhaps a reflection on the masculine/feminine binary divide of seaman and cabaret diva within one person? – swings along nicely. I love the contrast between Moritz Linkmann’s muscled, overtly masculine body and the slinky lady-dress he dons, with pristine white y-fronts underneath exposed as he turns upside down. But surely the Kurt Weill/ Marlene Dietrich torch-song classic ‘Lili Marlene’ has been done to death? Was there a reason why it had to be this tune, or could another, less hackneyed, song have been used? Perhaps the cliché was the point, but I do feel I’ve witnessed an awful lot of drag versions of Marlene. Still, this section shone out in an otherwise mediocre programme of work.

The second piece is followed by a long interval while the space is re-jigged and rigged for the third section, prompting thoughts of how ‘big top’ traditional circus so often understands the form better than the contemporary makers: there really should and could be a way to move from one piece to another without this big long gap, which breaks the momentum. 1,2,3 here we go, a corde lisse solo by Jennifer Paterson, is OK, demonstrating able skills, but not really thrilling enough to warrant that long wait.

My favourite performer is actually the musician, Dave Boyd, whose robust tunes give an earthy balance to all that airiness. I feel a lot more needs to be done dramaturgically to make these three pieces hold together as one complete show; and I’m not convinced that the exploration of the nautical theme witnessed here is offering anything the world hasn’t seen very many times before.

www.strangebirdzirkus.com / www.aerialdance.co.uk

Siro-A: Technodelic Comedy Show

So, who remembers Yellow Magic Orchestra? They heralded the 1980s with their spectacular mix of electronic pop music, Kraftwerk-esque ‘showroom dummy’ performance, cutting-edge animation, and live computer-gaming references. Siro-A are like the wayward children of YMO: 30 years on, the technology has advanced, but the aesthetic is similar – yet this time the ante is upped considerably. Technodelic Comedy Show (the name really doesn’t do it justice) is brash and breezy yet good wholesome fun, bringing out the inner (Japanese) child in us all. Siro-A are highly accomplished performers, and they use their great big box of tricks to great effect.

So, we enter the hall and a guy with a camera is filming the audience, with a live feed to a large screen. Yes, stylistically just like Ontroerend Goed’s Audience, but a million miles away in intention. Little moments of animation come into play: a heart is drawn around a couple sitting together and they nod and smile – it is a sweet and gentle moment.

Then, Bang! Back goes the screen and we see and hear two DJs at their decks, set behind two onstage stations, white on white. The stage becomes a wild whirl of flashing monochrome visuals, a daze of black lines on white, and the hall is filled with the sound of hyped-up electrobeats. A troupe of white figures dance on, wearing ridiculously tall white stovepipe-shaped headdresses and we are off on a marathon of upbeat music, animation, and non-verbal live performance.

The show’s an absolute treasure trove of delights. In a sketch the company call ‘twinkleman’ characters adorned in LED lights ‘puppeteer’ each other, switching colours at the touch of finger. There’s a gorgeous contemporary shadow theatre section in which a performer starts an electronic track off with the bass thud of a ball hitting the ground, then moves away to reveal that his shadow has taken up the beat. He adds more and more loops, and each time his shadow takes the baton, so that as the layers of sound build, more and more shadow figures are seen bouncing balls, waving arms, dipping to the floor, or spinning across the stage. In another scene, a man comes on in a white t-shirt that changes to a black t-shirt, that is now an Adidas shirt, and now a Puma one – except that the puma has come to life and has run off from the t-shirt. And so it goes, with ever more elaborate t-shirt animations.

And running through it all are a hundred-and-one references to favourite old-school computer games (here comes Mario!), a colour palette of the brightest fluorescents you’re likely to find outside of a Tokyo comic shop, a loud and lively electronic soundtrack with myriad pop references, not to mention some of the most manic and animated human performers you are likely to see anywhere. It’s mime, but not as we know it!

A brilliant, bright and beautiful show that will hopefully return to the UK soon.

www.siro-a.com

Metis Arts: 3rd Ring Out: The Emergency

It’s 2033 and this is the premise: What would happen if Suffolk got flooded, and you – a gathering of twelve random members of the public who, as ‘audience’ for this piece are gathered round a table with buttons to push and plastic policemen to position – you, yes you, had to make the key decisions that would save or sacrifice resources (human or otherwise). What would you do?

The answer, of course, is that you’d behave like the good, bleeding-heart liberal that you are. I mean, are any of us going to press the button that tells the authorities to refuse permission for the refugees in the boats offshore to land? Are we going to deny the squatters the right to occupy the empty (although furnished and only temporarily abandoned) houses? No, of course not. Even though our responses are anonymous, we all play the game the ‘right’ way and pick the answers we ‘should’. And we make those decisions because it isn’t real, it’s a simulation – a very flawed one that doesn’t really encourage any deep thought on the subject to hand. After all, they aren’t real people or real houses, and there is no real incentive to suspend disbelief in this 2033 world in which everyone dresses and talks like us, and in which the camcom video conferencing is below the level of technology normal for 2011. I don’t for a minute, no matter how hard I try, believe that it could possibly be 2033, or that this scenario could really be happening ‘out there’, and this scepticism isn’t helped by the two actors (one with us and one in the other container) who are lacking any real credibility as our guides in this future world.

For me, the gaming format of the show, with its instant decision-making at the touch of a button, is an interesting gimmick, but is nothing more than that. It encourages a trite response, not a real reflection on issues at hand. The strongest part of the piece is a short section at the end when the ‘conference facilitator’ leaves us in the ‘Emergency cell’ to make decisions alone. We are encouraged to confer with our fellow audience members cum participants, take on different roles, and come up with some solutions. But because, until this point, we have been in splendid isolation pushing buttons and rearranging the plastic figurines, vehicles and road signs in what is a kind of alternative game of Risk, we have no relationship, so we are only just touching on how to work together when our time is up. Perhaps it is all one big commentary on how decision-makers make decisions blithely or can’t make decisions because they have no way of interacting in the given time – but that doesn’t make for an enjoyable or thought-provoking theatrical experience.

I’m also aghast at the amount of kit used in this show about environmental concerns: two massive shipping containers, an illuminated table, the gaming set-up, various video monitors, etc, etc. Presenting the ethical and environmental dilemmas that needed solving as written questions on pieces of card, discussed by a group of people sat on chairs in an empty room, would have made a lot more sense on all sorts of levels. Let’s start to live with the low-tech, low-energy solutions that will, in fact, make life better for all!

A worthy piece with, no doubt, its heart in the right place – but from my viewpoint it gets things very wrong in so many ways. The one positive thought that I did have is that this could work as a ‘theatre in education’ piece. Perhaps if it was used to introduce schoolchildren (as opposed to seasoned, weary experimental theatre-goers!) to some of the dilemmas potentially facing our country in the coming decades, and to examine the notion of ethical decision-making versus political decision-making, then that could be something of value.

I also enjoyed the installation in the neighbouring ‘Strategy cell’ (more interesting than the performance itself, in my book) where there are opportunities to write proposals of improvements you feel could be made in the here and now, or to endorse, contradict or add to other people’s proposals on such issues as public transport, water usage, and the pros and cons of nuclear fuel.

www.metisartshost.co.uk

Tim Crouch: I Malvolio

I Malvolio is the latest of four works by Tim Crouch that interrogate well-known plays by a certain Will Shakespeare, viewing the story from the perspective of a minor character (here, Malvolio, the much-mocked Steward ofTwelfth Night, would-be lover of Countess Olivia, and the butt of Sir Toby Belch’s cruel tricks).

This series of solo plays is aimed at young audiences – although there’s no evidence of that in the packed Traverse Theatre: a quick cast around the auditorium (easy to do as the house lights are kept on!) reveals that there is not one person under the age of majority present in the audience.

Which is no a criticism of the artist, nor of his producers, but there is a question here for the marketing team: surely it is good for a production to be viewed by its target audience, so even though this is an Edinburgh Fringe / British Council Showcase presentation, could we not have had some seats set aside for young people, so that there was some experience of viewing the piece in the company of those for whom it was written?

I know that this is rather a long introduction, but I feel it is key to a piece of work that we understand who the intended audience is, and how the piece relates to that audience – and having seen the show previously presented at the Brighton festival, I do feel strongly that the presence of the young people it was written for is crucial in a show in which (like all of Tim Crouch’s work) the audience involvement is core.

And so much of the text very cleverly meshes Shakespeare’s themes and Malvolio’s words into the sort of contemporary dichotomy that is of such interest to teenagers, and manifests in so many varied ways in their daily lives, at home and at school: the battles between an excessive Puritanical orderliness and repression of desires on the one side; and personal freedom, anarchy and slovenliness on the other. So at one point we have Malvolio, dressed in filthy longjohns and sporting a turkey wattle, spitting with ironic contempt: ‘I’ll just throw this piece of gum here, shall I? This piece of peel, this wrapper, this tiny little ring pull…’ And then a little later: ‘I’m just having FUN… I’ll just stay up all night and drink this and spill this and vomit this and abuse these and destroy that…’

And there’s a lovely moment, a bit lost on this adult audience, where Malvolio ruffles scruffy heads of hair, or tuts at scuffed shoes with the sort of headmasterly jibes we all recognise from our youth (‘Who allowed you to leave home dressed like that?’), then uses the standard schoolteacher wheeze: ‘Now, I’m going to go out. And when I come back in I expect everyone and everything to be exactly where I left it.’ Of course there is just polite silence when he exits – not a titter is heard, and no one moves. Oh how I wish I’d witnessed this scene when the show was premiered at a comprehensive secondary school in Brighton!

The scene that follows is a very clever exploration of mob rule and a play on the ‘real’ and the ‘pretend’, as Malvolio hooks up a noose to the rafters and coerces audience members into helping him to hang himself, egged on (or not) by the audience. Having failed to hang himself, Malvolio scrubs up and dons his Sunday best and treats us to a scathing resume of Twelfth Night’s plot (from his bitter perspective) – the story of cross-dressing girls, ‘peevish’ boys, lovelorn counts, and celibate widows who marry at the drop of a hat mocked and reviled: ‘And they say I am mad!’. In the end, he gets his revenge on the schoolyard bullies (us) by abandoning us… and without someone to bully and laugh at, where are we?

This is my third viewing of Tim Crouch’s I Malvolio and I discover more each time. On previous occasions, I’ve been wowed by Crouch’s wonderful way with his audience, and the lovely physical/visual clowning moments. (The mocking signs stuck on his back! The bared buttocks! The kerfuffle with the noose! The striptease moment with the gartered yellow stockings!) That stuff’s all as great as ever, but this time round, it was the exploration of the concerns of the adolescent child, and especially the clever casting of the audience as the bully– a kind of collective Toby Belch – that I enjoyed most; and the awareness of what a pertinent text this play is for a teenage audience, even if that audience was absent here. Perhaps it was their very absence that flagged up how crucial their concerns are to this play.