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

Nowhere to run

Sometimes the Edinburgh festival gets a bit suffocating. Whether it’s artistic differences, Fringe fatigue, illness or something worse, there’s no point suffering in silence. So here are some possible escape routes from the festival bubble.

First, the Spotlight promoters’ centres. These offer free Internet access and advice for performers. There’s one at the Pleasance Dome, near Brooke’s bar (where free tap water is provided with genuine good grace). And the main centre is in the plush surroundings of the Freemasons Hall in George Street, which during the Fringe becomes the New Town Theatre run by Universal Arts. The welcome is always friendly, and there are leather chairs and newspapers (coffee seems to have been a casualty of the era of austerity, but perhaps it’s better that way). Full details of their locations, seminars and one-to-one sessions are on the Spotlight website.

However, the promoters’ centres are also quite well-known, so offer planned and unplanned networking. On my first day, a girl pounced on my press release for Thirsty by The Paper Birds. ‘Was that good?’ She said, letting slip rather smugly that she was a staff writer for The Independent. The details of the conversation have now faded, but I was left feeling a little peeved. Last year I bumped into the crew from Mobius Industries, which was actually quite helpful for organising tickets and photos. And a BBC producer seemed to be working from the centre at the Pleasance this Friday, despite the fact that some of the Beeb’s infrastructure (such as their rather public display of crew-only catering in George Square) seemed intact.

Second, Edinburgh’s network of Victorian swimming pools. (For the record, I swim slowly, asphyxiating during front crawl and slipping behind the recommended time allocation of 35 seconds per length in the slow lane, let alone 25 seconds in the fast lane. But you can still get something out of it.)

Natalie Haynes, comedienne and cultural commentator, once told me that she went swimming every day during the festival. I was interviewing her several years ago, and felt a bit bad as she invited me to Soho House for a student feature. It suffered from (a) the fact that she speaks very fast and wittily, whereas my shorthand was embryonic and (b) the fact that the copy was slightly mauled so I didn’t really recognizs the published piece. Anyhow, at the time swimming every day seemed an indescribable luxury.

You do have to be careful with the timetables. I’ve turned up at the Royal Commonwealth Pool to find it’s closed for refurbishment. I’ve arrived at Warrender Swim Centre when it’s closed for staff training or recently twenty minutes before the pool was shut for clubs, only to pay about twenty pence a minute to swim. (This was after Thirsty last Monday, actually, and the man on reception did throw in the sauna too – I just wasn’t really sure how to use it.) And in previous years I’ve arrived at Dalry Swim Centre during the disabled session. Of course, organised people keeping afloat during the festival could check the Edinburgh Leisure website.

Third, Glasgow. Scotland’s second city remains remarkably impervious to the madness that is the Edinburgh festivals. Occasionally, you see an actor ordering a beer from the trolley service on the train back, or hear a director chatting late at night. The shuttle can get predictably overcrowded at weekends or be taken over by a jolly orchestra late at night. However, Glasgow is basically oblivious to the thespian shenanigans.

However, there is a catch… You can’t be at the festival and escape it at the same time. The horribly sensible advice that I read in a recent interview with Fringe Society trustee Alister O’Loughlin was to eat, sleep and WORK the festival for maximum returns. RealEscort ‘The enjoyment is in the work, and the people who get the most from attending the Fringe are the ones who are prepared to earn it,’ he said.

I am now approximately thirteen reviews, five blog entries, 25 trains, two two-hour meetings and a few wobbly moments into the festival. Despite working for free (or rather paid in the uncertain currency of free tickets), and this type of work not being considered ‘work’ but leisure by many people, I fear the disapproving suggestion by other participants that I am not ‘working’ hard enough. In 2009, I supposedly took an evening ‘off’ in Glasgow, only to go to a preview of The Last Witch by Rona Monro at the Citizens Theatre. To be honest, I have also been getting a little tired for swimming, though still have energy for another valedictory cliché (no offence Martha Reeves and the Vandellas). Perhaps there are plenty of places to run, but nowhere to hide.

If it’s Tuesday it must be Edinburgh…

So where was I? Ah yes, Stockton! Well, I left there Saturday, heading for the station with a friendly taxi driver who called me ‘pet’, caught a train to Darlington and learnt all about the footie from the Middlesborough supporters, just about made the connection at Darlington, arrived at Edinburgh Station 9pm and got transported through the rain-soaked city by a friendly taxi driver who called me ‘pal’. Picked up keys, found my flat, set off into the night in search of new venue Summerhall for the midnight-to-dawn show Hotel Medea. Arrived an hour early, and it all looked locked up, so rather than stand in the torrential rain for an hour went off in search of a fish tea and found ‘Edinburgh’s finest’, The Newington. Suitably nourished, headed off again and discovered that Summerhall wasn’t all locked up, I’d been trying to get in the wrong entrance. Oh, new venues, new venues – who knew?

Summerhall’s an old Veterinary College, part of the University of Edinburgh. It’s a wonderful building – dark wood panelling, tiled floors, grand staircases, and what seems like a hundred rooms big and small – although I hear that there had been a fair few problems getting it ready. I’m not sure if the rumours of the discovery of strange animal remains are true, but it’s a gruesome thought. But ready it is, and running a tightly curated programme, under Rupert Thomson’s direction, with the support of both BAC and the Demarco European Art Foundation. Much of the interesting experimental theatre, live art and installation work at this year’s Fringe is sited here, including companies/projects such as Quarantine, Action Hero, BiDiNG TiME, Little Bulb Theatre, Imitating the Dog, The Paper Cinema, Me and the Machine, Melanie Wilson, and Curious. A pretty impressive line-up, no? Oh and of course Hotel Medea, the extraordinary night-long journey-theatre piece, from Brazil’s Zecora Ura in collaboration with the UK’s Persis Jade Maravala.

It was a fantastic experience, but maybe doing an all-nighter on my first night in Edinburgh was a little mad. With a Total Theatre Awards assessors meeting at 10am, there was little point in going to bed, and I got through Sunday on the kind of speedy high you sometimes get when you haven’t slept. A relatively easy day, though, with just two shows, both at the Traverse. It’s odd to think that just a few years ago I would hardly have passed through the doors of the Trav more than once or twice in the whole of August. Now I’m a regular.

The Traverse is ‘Scotland’s New Writing theatre’ but their definition of ‘new writing’ has expanded more and more over the years, and now the work programmed there is most definitely within Total Theatre’s territory (this years offerings include site-specific work by Grid Iron, an intimate encounter with Adrian Howells, and Tim Crouch’s latest). It’s also clear that the world of UK theatre is changing, opening up to a more ‘European’ approach. So what with one thing and another, the longstanding divide between ‘physical and devised theatre’ and ‘new writing’ seems to mean less and less these days. So, on the menu for my Sunday night is the Mark Ravenhill / Mark Almond collaborationTen Plagues, a song cycle composed by Conor Mitchell and staged by designer/director Stewart Laing; followed by The Golden Dragon, a play by a German playwright that has the look and feel of a devised/collaborative ‘poor theatre’ piece, although it has in fact been tightly scripted. Check the reviews linked above if you want to know more…

Monday morning, and what Bootworks director Rob Jude Daniels describes as ‘the Hotel Medea hangover’ has kicked in. I’m not quite sure how I get through the day, but somehow I manage to stay awake through my three-in-a-row shows at the New Town Theatre. New Town is another gorgeous building, and home to Universal Arts, a lovingly nurtured venue that boasts another curated niche within the mayhem that is the Fringe. The programme has a strong international element, with work from the USA, Zimbabwe, Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, and Hong Kong – as well as from England and Scotland. (I’ve noticed nobody uses the term UK in these parts).

So my three choices are an eclectic mix – with a kind of Italian theme running through. First is Turandot, by neTTheatre/Grupa Coincidentia from Poland. The show’s a Kantor-esque reflection on the life of Puccini and the making of his unfinished opera Turandot, a very lovely mix of high and low artforms. There’s hardly anyone in the audience, a great shame as it’s an interesting piece – although it must be said that they aren’t selling themselves well with their PR copy, which doesn’t really flag it up as a visual theatre piece. Later that day at the venue I have an interesting standing-in-a-queue conversation with Herald critic Mary Brennan, who feels that companies are making some odd decisions, for example by choosing not to place themselves in the Dance & Physical Theatre section of the Fringe brochure. I say that it is probably because they are trying to reach as wide an audience as possible, but she points out, quite sensibly, that the problem with that is that those of us actively seeking out physical and visual theatre pieces to see and support are struggling to identify them in the great big mulch of information that is the Theatre section.

The second New Town show I see is Snails and Ketchup, a circus/physical theatre piece produced under the auspices of Made in Scotland, another curated programme within the Fringe, although in this case it’s a kind of showcase of Scottish talent flagged up in its own little brochure, rather than something linked to one particular venue. Good to see some wordless theatre on show at the Fringe! There does seem to be a fair bit of circus or circus-related work around this year… The Italian connection here is that this piece is inspired by Italo Calvino’s story The Baron in the Trees.

So third and last is Company XIV from the USA with Pinocchio: A Fantasy of Pleasures, a baroque ballet with music hall tendencies. The Italian connection here is obvious! But just to cement it, there’s a Venetian Carnival theme to the piece…

So that was New Town Theatre, but the night was not done. To wind it up was Ontroerend Goed’s latest, Audience. Well, this company seem to court controversy (the Fringe before last it was all around their speed-date show,Internal, pushing personal boundaries) but this time they’ve gone for the jugular. No doubt the show will be a big talking point of this festival, but for me it was a step too far.

So, Tuesday, sunshine! – although a chill wind. Another assessors meeting. A walk across The Meadows. A whimsical and charming dance-theatre piece,Agnes and Walter, at Zoo Southside – a venue that every August produces a solid programme of good work, much of it dance and physical theatre. Great to see good audience numbers – but Zoo Venues have put in the groundwork over the years, so now deservedly reap the benefits. A trip to Leith on the Fringe for another circus-theatre piece, This Twisted Tale, by the rather marvellously named Paper Doll Militia. And finally, to the Traverse again, for Dance Marathon. It’s four hours long, and inspired by the marathon contests of the 1920s and 30s. You remember the film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Well, that was us. I had a great evening – and I reached the semi-final with my new dance partner Ewan, who I met at the start of the show. High five, Ewan!

So three days in Edinburgh that begin and end with a marathon… Once upon a time going to the theatre meant a chance to doze off for a while in a nice cosy dark room. Now it’s dance shoes at the ready and off we go… but I’m not complaining, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The TEAM: Mission Drift

Viva Las Vegas! The fastest growing American city at the turn of the millennium, now at the epicentre of the US financial collapse and housing crisis… But never mind that, the show must go on! Cue Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. Cue Elvis singing ‘Suspicious Minds’ in a white jumpsuit. Cue showgirl dancers in Red Indian headdresses. Cue lady crooners in leopardskin. Cue a guitar solo. A drum solo. Palm trees with glitter leaves. And neon. And devil horns. And let’s crack open another beer, why don’t we? Let’s get lucky!

Young Americans The TEAM (the acronym stands for ‘theatre of the American moment’) made their mark at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008 with Architecting, a Total Theatre Award winning show that deconstructed Gone With the Wind, and meshed the response to Hurricane Katrina in with a reflection on racial conflict, social housing deficits, and capitalist enterprise in New Orleans. Now the TEAM return with another scorching investigation of American history and cultural mores – and what they call ‘the character of American capitalism’ – in a mesmeric music-theatre homage to the city that is the heart of America’s entertainment industry.

Using their trademark method of ensemble playwriting, built around extensive research (a month in Vegas) and ‘physical and verbal improvisation, battering, and argument’ the company have dug and delved into the many layers of Vegas life, and found a musical frame to deliver that story in a way that is beautifully appropriate and cleverly staged: no make-do pastiches here; we get the best across-the musical-board musicians, and a female jazz-rock-cabaret singer and pianist with the voice of an angel and a lovely stage presence – Miss Atomic (Heather Christian), a beauty pageant winner whose title is inspired by the 1950s nuclear tests held just 60 miles north of the city, and a kind of Puck-like character who is a catalyst to the action.

Mission Drift uses as its throughline the allegorical story of two WASPish youngsters, Catalina and Joris Rapalje, who, aged just 14, set off ‘in the Tigernot the Mayflower’ from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam (or New York as it is now known), then journey westwards till they settle in what is now called Las Vegas, a desert ‘meadow’ sitting between California and Salt Lake. Their 14-year-old selves grow up and come of age, but in mythic rather than real time – as the centuries roll by (and they take on slightly different names and forms – Cat, Jack, Lina, Josh), we see them reach maturity, but they remain essentially young and full of the bravado of the archetypal young pioneers who built – and continue to build – America. Here, they are the entrepreneurs who, once they reach what will become Vegas, set up the Little House in the Woods bar (‘What do people here need? They need a beer!’), which eventually, in present day time, grows into a massive entertainment complex and casino.

Set as foils to their story are Joan, a young black woman who has just lost her job at the casino, and a seemingly itinerant North American Indian man called Chris. The ‘house’ also features as a character – ‘I am the house, as in the house in the woods, as in the house always wins!’ – and this personification of places is picked up on by Chris when describing the man from the Vegas Water Authority who bought out his property: ‘He talked about Las Vegas like he was a person with rights… ’

What I love so dearly about the TEAM’s work is the complex relationship with America explored and displayed. Here is justifiable anger and criticism – Chris relates stories of white traders who, when trade isn’t forthcoming, just steal. And there is plenty about the greed and exploitation of the casino owners and the city authorities. But there is also a love of Americana and a refusal to opt-out expressed: when Chris tries to persuade Joan to join him away in Montana, away from all this, off the grid, she replies, ‘I like the grid!’, and later in the piece we get a beautiful eulogy to neon lighting delivered by Joan from a neon boneyard: ‘Leave the signs alone, they’re special… See there: the Genie with the Teapot, the Moulin Rouge!’ There is also ambivalence, and plenty of it: our teenage hero and heroine are, at one and the same time, wonderful examples of strength and self-reliance and the put-up-with-hardships pioneering spirit that made America, the ‘acceptable face of capitalism’; but we also see, through the eyes of Joan and Chris, the negative consequences of many of the white entrepreneurs’ actions.

Yet it is never cut and dried, there is always a question, and there is always love; it is all told in a spirit of love, and with a belief in redemption. ‘If you believe in God, you believe in Vegas!’ is broadcast to us as an ironic statement, yet the lingering thought remains that the TEAM do, in some very deep and real way, believe this to be true.

Mission Drift is a beautiful, complex, multi-layered piece of theatre that manages to appeal to head, heart and soul in equal measure. Fantastic performances from all the cast and musicians, displaying a combination of extraordinarily high levels of musical and acting skills. And living proof that contemporary collaborative ‘playwriting’, though often a complex and tiring process of negotiation, can reap magnificent rewards in the right hands. Another fantastic TEAM effort!

www.theteamplays.org

Told by an Idiot: The Dark Philosophers

Meet Gwyn Thomas, who is dead. He won’t lie down but he does occasionally slump on a sofa clutching the urn that holds his ashes, and often he’s to be found perched on a staircase, listening in on his father and his younger self, or eavesdropping on his neighbours. ‘Tell him to…’ he says, planting ideas in people’s heads. And who are these people he manipulates like puppets? Why, the people of the Rhondda Valley, of course, where Gwyn was born and bred, and the place that is the setting for his novels, short stories, plays, and autobiographical writings. Before seeing The Dark Philosophers, I knew nothing about the life and work of this renowned Welsh writer, but now he feels like a friend.

So here we are in the Valley, sometime in the 1930s, a place where people live ‘operatically, in shouts’. The crowded Terraces are represented by a clutter of junk-shop furniture – closets and wardrobes and chests. Wardrobe doors burst open and out come the villagers. An ensemble of seven (four men and three women) play around 30 colourful characters – and that’s not including Michael Parkinson, the goats, and the Oxford University students. They are as sharp and sparky an ensemble as you are likely to find anywhere, drawing us from one terrible – and often terribly funny – tale to another with breakneck speed and razor-sharp observation.

Told By An Idiot are masters of physical and visual modes of storytelling, and Paul Hunter’s direction brings out the best of everyone (and everything) on stage. A wardrobe door pops open, and we’re instantly in a Valley pub, witnessing a game of darts. Two people crawl painfully slowly across the floor in almost-darkness and we’re on the coal face too. A watering can is emptied over a man tugging his raincoat up to his ears, and we’re caught in the downpour with him. A broom, a jacket, and a wig are pulled together and there, looming over us menacingly, is Oscar the mountain-owner, the embodiment of capitalist greed, a tyrant who is willing to kill a poor man scavenging for coal just for the hell of it.

Some of the stories get pretty hairy: the coal-scavenging murderous-capitalist story is nasty in all sorts of ways; and one about a goat-keeper whose daughters take desperate measures to save their youngest sister from the abuse that they’ve experienced is horrible, yet told with a terrible black humour: ‘Could you love a goat?’ the goat-keeper asks the young lad who has come to work for him…

Every element of the production is beautifully realised: the characterisations (flirty barmaids, tired miners, and a shy lad ‘so thin he’s liable to fall through the cracks in the pavement’); the feisty physical action (a rip-roaring Commedia-style fight scene, a kitchen-table murder, a dodgy cabaret singer’s worst moment, seen through the eyes of her audience of male admirers); the sound (great booming crashes from the pits, gently tinkling pianos, and the odd tune on a ukelele); the design, which conjures up a sepia-tinged, earthy world – the nutty wood brown ‘architecture’ lit with street-lamp ambers. The text, crafted by Carl Grose, is both poetic and cheerily colloquial: ‘You could boil a bloody egg to those blasts, eh… Every three minutes, aren’t they?’

All this and scene-shifting too! As two actors who’ve been playing goats stop their bleating and leap up to move a large table aside, our Gwyn chimes in with: ‘You don’t see that every day, do you? Goats moving furniture’. You don’t indeed. But I’m very glad I did.

www.toldbyanidiot.org

Grid Iron: What Remains

What remains after death? Rags, bones, memories, melodies… Ah yes, melodies! Long after the piano lid has been slammed shut for the last time, the notes live on, echoing forever around the great soundbox that is this earthly world.

Grid Iron, the kings and queens of Scottish site-responsive theatre, have created a brand-new promenade piece set in the imposingly sombre antique halls, studies, and stairways of the University’s anatomy department. What Remains is performed by one live performer, David Paul Jones, with a supporting cast of a thousand ghosts and sighs. It could be described as a live horror film – or more precisely, of what might remain of a horror film if you took away the actual film. Remains encountered include the set (or site), the props, the research materials, the instruments that created the score, and of course the music itself. This is presented to us through demented live piano performances by DPJ, playing Gilbert K Prendergast, a concert pianist driven insane by the demands made upon him, and the demands he has made upon himself in his quest for perfection; disembodied fragments of sound that haunt the corridors and stairwells; and spooky moments of musical autonomy, as instruments seem to play themselves. The audience are left to construct their own narrative from the traces they encounter: the recitals, the snatches of music they hear, the letters they read, the rooms furnished or bare, the masks and the mirrors, the bones and the scalpels… And always there is sound, as sound is the heartbeat of the story.

Inspired as it is by the horror genre, with particular reference to films that use Gothic or Romantic music as the emotional driver or to push forward the narrative, it is hardly surprising that there are references galore to pick up on, from Hammer House of Horror’s Fall of the House of Usher, to Vincent Price as Dr Phibes, to Phantom of the Opera. And for anyone of a certain age, the disembodied voice of the piano pushing students further than they can handle has an instant association with the 1950s children’s recording, ‘Sparky’s Magic Piano’. What Remains is also inspired, in part, by the life and works of Scriabin, and by other late 19^th / early 20^th century composers such as Ravel and Mahler. A love of classical music from this era is at the heart of the work, and much of the dramaturgy/scenography of the piece is led by the music.

We start all together in a grand entrance hall, seeing Gilbert give the recital of his life, then are led off in groups (our ‘team’ denoted by musical notes – I was an A Minor). As is usual with Grid Iron, the audience are very tightly managed (no Punchdrunk-style wandering alone here!), and we are carefully guided throughout. Fine for the most part, although I did feel a little hurried occasionally ,and was particularly reluctant to leave a room filled with display cases full of bones, and featuring a pianola playing itself with wild abandon.

Our one performer is often absent – or, at least, not physically present, although his extraordinary and beautiful musical compositions stay with us throughout the journey. Along the way we are drawn into participating in a piano lesson led by a disembodied voice, scared by ominously human-sized bundles crashing from cupboards, put to bed in white satin sleeping bags (a scene I wasn’t entirely convinced by), and enticed up stairwells lit with ghostly blue light, where we are serenaded most wonderfully by Gilbert in nightdress and bloodied mask, giving a heartbreakingly beautiful (whilst simultaneously darkly funny) rendition of an Antony and the Johnsons song, ‘Her Eyes Are Beneath The Ground’.

I’ve been watching, and listening to, David Paul Jones admiringly for many years, ever since his appearance in Grid Iron’s Those Eyes, That Mouth (2003). Since that wonderful debut with the company, he has continued his work as composer, musician, and performer on numerous projects, including the award-winning Devil’s Larder and 2010 Fringe success Barflies. Programme notes tell us that DPJ and Grid Iron’s director Ben Harrison have been conspiring to create this present work ever since they met, and after many false starts and changes of direction, the piece has finally seen the light of day (or the dark of the night, it would perhaps be more appropriate to say). It may have been a long time coming, but it’s great that it’s finally happened. What Remains is very much a showcase of DPJ’s talents and obsessions, drawing on autobiographical material (such as memories of piano lessons on the path to his first career as a concert pianist, and reliving the burning desire to be ever-better), with the physical, visual, musical score lovingly guided and directed by Ben Harrison.

It’s a melee of marvellous sounds and – yes – haunting images; a wonderful marriage of sight and sound – and indeed of site and sound! There’s beauty in the darkness, and humour too. It’s a show that will remain with me a long time, I’m sure.