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

Theatre Ad Infinitum: Translunar Paradise

Oh heart, oh troubled heart!

An old man, recently bereaved, sits and sits, the minutes ticking by with painful slowness. He makes tea, and out of habit pours two cups, one for him and one for his dead wife. And still he sits. Watching him in anguish is the spirit of his wife, desperate to help, to tell him that it is OK to let her go. She tries to move ‘her’ cup away; she flutters round him in the house they have shared together for so many years. He makes a desolate attempt to sort through her belongings. A small case contains all her most treasured possessions – her favourite necklace, a bundle of letters – and these he lingers over sorrowfully. Each object becomes a conduit for a milestone memory from their shared life: their courtship and marriage; a baby that doesn’t survive infancy; the relived trauma of wartime injury after he is demobilised; the difficult patch in their marriage when she is given the opportunity to study or to forge her own career path. And eventually the inevitable as one partner (she) dies after a long illness and the other (he) is left to grieve.

It is a simple, universal story. Interview anyone over the age of seventy, speak to your parents (or grandparents, depending on your age!), and some version of the story above will emerge. That, for me, is a positive not a negative. At the heart of the success of this piece is the universality of the story, and the beauty with which it is executed.

There is not a second of Translunar Paradise that hasn’t been plotted with infinite care, nor performed with immaculate craft and precision. George Mann as the widower and Deborah Pugh as the spirit wife are a perfect match, their wordless storytelling exhibiting the expertise in mime and physical performance that a Lecoq training gives you, yet going way beyond the technical into a really gifted subtlety and expressiveness. Handheld masks are used beautifully to represent the characters in old age, the masks flying away as memories unfold and the characters become their younger selves. Each moment of transformation is seamless, and there are some particularly lovely sections where a removed mask takes on a puppetesque quality, the older character observing a younger self or partner. Objects are manipulated with tender care: a cup fought over between the real and spirit worlds; a necklace that dances with exquisite joy; the little suitcase that has its own narrative in the play, representing the one thing that she (when younger) has to hang on to, and that he (when older) has to let go of.

The physical action is supported by an onstage, visible accordionist (Kim Heron) who provides the perfectly-pitched soundtrack – playing or whistling snatches of songs that have accompanied the couple’s life journey, from ‘We’ll Meet Again’ to ‘Girl From Ipanema’; tapping out the interminable ticking of a clock with the accordion buttons; providing the labouring breath of a dying woman with the instrument’s bellows.

A word also about the audience. I don’t think I have ever seen a more attentive audience, at the Edinburgh Fringe or elsewhere. From the opening image of the widower sat at his kitchen table to a closing ‘life flashes by’ whirlwind of reprised memories as the ghost departs, the whole audience is almost holding its collective breath, and as the lights come up to rapturous applause, it is clear that there is hardly a dry eye in the house.

A near-perfect example of contemporary wordless theatre – and proof (should anyone need it) that theatre without words can engage the head, touch the heart, and nourish the soul just as effectively as any other form. A little taste of paradise on earth!

www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk

Paper Doll Militia: This Twisted Tale

This Twisted Tale is a modern fairytale, a coming-of-age story played out with vim and vigour by two female performers using a whole toolbox of theatrical tricks that includes circus (aerial and pole), puppetry, projection, shadow theatre, verbal storytelling, and dialogue – with feisty physical performances binding it all together.

First we meet Chloe – platinum pigtails, white bloomers, and an innocent air – the type of girl who floats through the world, teased by her peers for being childish and dreamy. Chloe’s mother, we learn, is ‘too tired’ to play with her, so she tells herself stories using her precious puppets (Wayang Kulit style flat figures on sticks). So there are numerous little plays within the play as Chloe tells the tale of Mary who ‘dove into the sea to see how mermaids pee’.

Chloe doesn’t really have any friends, other than her puppets, and spends a lot of time alone in the playground – which is represented very beautifully onstage by a an oversized swing, a set of monkey bars, and a lampost that doubles as a ‘Chinese pole’, all ready for the climbing…

Enter the ‘tumbling and whirling’ Luce (short for Lucifer, we suspect) – all punk posturing and petulance, a glorious mess of red curls, Cleopatra eyeliner, and black leather boots. She’s the devil incarnate: the new girl in town, or Chloe’s imaginary friend, or her alter-ego – choose your interpretation – a Peter Pan character who stays just where she is whilst Chloe grows and changes, yet is catalyst to those changes through her provocations.

The relationship between the two characters (or perhaps we should call them archetypes) is played out on the playground-cum-circus equipment in a series of acrobatic and aerial duets, and in the spoken text that is sometimes delivered a little breathlessly with rather too many crackles and clicks as the radio mics respond grumpily to the shaking about afforded them by the aerial work. This all augmented by the simple but sweet shadow puppet vignettes, played on a little portable booth, and supported by a very lovely soundscape of distorted music-box melodies and toy piano arpeggios composed by Grid Iron associate artist David Paul Jones. Talking of Grid Iron, their director Ben Harrison has also had a hand in this as a co-director/dramaturg.

It is a charming and poignant piece that tackles the marriage between circus skills and theatrical storytelling with great gusto. It doesn’t always succeed: the text needs a lot of work, both in the editing and in the delivery, but This Twisted Tale is adventurous in its aims and can thus be forgiven a few glitches.

My one major criticism is that although it is good to have the story pulled into Chloe’s future (with a very lovely girl-to-woman transformation scene that is done with great clarity and elegance), the inclusion of strictly adult content in such lines as ‘maybe if you were that passionate with your husband he’d fuck you more’ means that the show cannot be marketed at the audience that would be an ideal target – young people in the 11-15 year-old age group, just hitting puberty and really interested in the subject of self-discovery and self-determination. I’d advise the company to rethink some of the script decisions – a story about the development and empowerment of young women is just what the world needs, and although the dark elements are key to the narrative,it is possible to represent this theatrically in a way that could bring the show to its widest audience.

www.thepaperdollmilitia.com

bluemouth inc.: Dance Marathon

They shoot horses, don’t they? In America during the depression era of the 1930s, young men and women took part in dance marathons, which gave a cash prize to the last pair standing after – well, it could sometimes be weeks rather than hours or days! Canadian experimental theatre company Bluemouth inc.’s Dance Marathon is a mere four hours: an interactive performance event that plays with and parodies the dance marathon model.

So, we are all gathered in the foyer of the Traverse, and we have been issued with numbers to wear on our chests. I’m number 136. Everyone is chatting excitedly and wondering what’s going to happen. I’m on my own and wishing I had a dance partner with me. But never fear, for bluemouth are here, and once we’ve been led off to a location around the corner we find ourselves in a large hall with hundreds of pairs of dance-instruction feet marked on the floor, and – you’ve guessed it – we have to go and find our own feet. So, come in number 135 – a nice young man from Edinburgh called Euan. We stand facing each other a little nervously, do the introductions thing, and meanwhile the Mistress of Ceremonies for the evening, resplendent in a sassy red shirt and black trews topped with a titfer, sits on a plinth musing on the situation around the room: ‘So maybe you came here tonight on a first date and that lovely blonde girl is now on the other side of the room gazing into someone else’s eyes…’ I wonder if Euan is wondering how come he’s ended up with someone old enough to be his mother… But now the first dance track has started (The Bee Gees, fromSaturday Night Fever) and off we go in a bit of freestyle. As we warm up and take off on the dancefloor, it’s clear that we both love dancing and aren’t the shy retiring types, so we grin happily at each other. And so it goes… there’s waltzing and slow dancing and charlestoning and swing-dancing, courtesy of the live jazz band – but mostly there’s disco classics on the decks, the sort of tracks that everyone loves to dance to: Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’, KC and the Sunshine Band, Chic’s ‘Le Freak’. There’s a constant flow of games and challenges: learn the Madison, start a Snowball dance, do a Derby round the dancefloor. People are eliminated, sometimes for slacking but often completely randomly after being thrown a general knowledge question. When eliminated, nothing too dreadful happens to them: they have their numbers taken off, but can stay in the dance. They are interviewed on camera, Big Brother style, and given gift tokens donated by local businesses as a consolation. And there are ‘second chance dances’ where, if they want to, they can try to win a number back. Everyone’s a winner!

But for the competitively minded, there is the opportunity for glory. Euan and I are acting like we don’t care, but are pretty pleased when we make it to the semi-final. The last eight, out of all these people! Wow! Unfortunately our Hawaiian Hula dance is deemed not quite there, although we have the audience on our side and ‘you were robbed’ is said more than once. Oh the pain of losing at the last hurdle! But when I see what the final involves – the last two couples pitted against each other in a kind of go-kart race – I’m pretty glad it’s not us. It all ends with one last dance, a great big love-in to Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ – what else could it be?

What makes Dance Marathon such a rip-roaring success is the care and attention they’ve paid to the dynamics of the evening and the management of the audience-cum-participants. The show has a lovely rhythm and pace, with plants (company members from bluemouth plus a dozen or more Edinburgh-based dancers) interspersed throughout the crowd and ‘giving themselves away’ in incremental steps, from just being better at the taught dance routines than anyone else, to creating small ensemble interventions, to performing a number of solo performances or interactions (spoken or danced) that reflect on loneliness, partnership, ambition, and following your heart’s desire. The evening is held together by our MC, charismatic singer and dancer Lady Jane, and a flag-waving roller-blading referee.

Perfectly paced, thoroughly thought through, a delight and a privilege to witness and take part in. Top class entertainment that is simultaneously a gentle investigation of issues of intimacy, shyness, bravado, and competition. A true theatre of the people!

www.bluemouthinc.com

Ontroerend Goed: Audience

Ontroerend Goed have created a body of interactive/immersive theatre work that plays with the audience, investigating the borderlands occupied by ‘performer’ and ‘audience member’, and interrogating the role of audience. Their latest piece is called, simply, Audience. It was a given that this ongoing investigation was going to be at the heart of the piece.

The first ten or fifteen minutes are good. As we enter the space our coats and bags are taken off us. We find our seats; we sit down – as you do. A young woman comes out to tell us to turn off our mobiles. And to check that we’ve been to the bathroom. She says that if you aren’t used to going to the theatre, here’s a few tips: It’ll get dark. You’re expected to sit still and be quiet. If an actor speaks to you, you’re not expected to answer. Don’t eat crisps. Don’t cough.

She takes her seat in the auditorium and a young man with a camera comes onstage and stands in front of the giant screen taking up the whole back wall. He pans the camera over us, and the images loom large on the screen. He homes in on hands or feet, then zooms out to give a whole-group shot. He returns to focus on faces, and we get actors’ voiceovers imagining what people are thinking; ‘I want to be taken out of my comfort zone’ is one. Well, yes, it’s obvious that you will be.

There’s some footage taken earlier of us entering the space. A fashion show of actors parading in our coats and jackets is mildly amusing; the tipping out of handbags less so – nothing is done around that other than to just state the obvious or go for the lowest common denominator jokes: ‘Headache pills and condoms – optimistic!’

But there’s worse, much worse, to come. The mood switches from comedy-show low-level fun to a scene that is so unpleasant, so unnecessary, that I can hardly bring myself to describe it. The actor onstage asks the camera to rove around the audience, and it settles on a young woman, who is then insulted, harangued and harassed in the most unpleasant way imaginable. The camera remains on her, in close-up, throughout. Her face is enormous onscreen, her lip is trembling, her eyes blinking away the tears. The actor says that he will only stop if she agrees to ‘spread her legs for the camera’. Some audience members call out for this to stop, and one brave man pushes the camera away.

Of course, seeing how the audience will respond is the point of the exercise, but there is no excuse on earth for what has just happened. If she was a plant, or an audience-member briefed beforehand (and I am pretty sure she wasn’t either of those), then this is still inexcusable. If she wasn’t, it is more than inexcusable, it is despicable.

I struggle to see how the company do not realise that this is not a theatrical examination of abusive behaviour, it is abusive behaviour. It is not an ironic parody of sexual harassment, it is sexual harassment. If Ontroerend Goed want to highlight these distresses in our society, then they need to learn to be part of the solution, not to perpetuate the problems.

I suspect that Ontroerend Goed’s actors wouldn’t risk trying this sort of thing on a man – they may well get punched in the face! Women – especially young women – are an easy target, as they internalise violence directed at them. The young woman abused so unpleasantly at this show was not an actor; she did not enter into the contract that actors agree to when playing a role. We have no way of knowing what histories of violence and abuse anyone might carry with them, so this is an extremely dangerous and horrible game being played.

I have seen, and I have supported, much of this company’s work to date and I have defended many of the company’s previous controversial artistic decisions. But not this time. Audience deserves no support or defence. An enormous disappointment.

www.ontroerendgoed.be

Ramesh Meyyappan: Snails and Ketchup

Snails and Ketchup is a wordless retelling of Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, just one man (Ramesh Meyyappan) and his pianist (Toh Tze Chin) conjuring up the before-its-time tale of social protest and environmental concern as the son of a dysfunctional aristocratic family defies convention and protests against his lot by taking to a life lived in the trees. It is presented by Iron-Oxide and Universal Arts under the auspices of the Made in Scotland programme.

It’s a purely physical and visual performance, but it comes with a written synopsis given out to audience members before the start of the show, which set a small alarm bell ringing for me: surely a visual theatre performance should be able to tell its tale without this aid?

The problem is that the story is a convoluted one, and the performer/deviser has decided to focus strongly on linear narrative rather than working thematically and developing other aspects of the tale. Ramesh Meyyappan is a skilled performer, and I have read Calvino’s novella, but the narrative twists and turns rapidly, and it is (I have to confess, having spurned the synopsis) difficult to follow. The brutal father, nervous mother, mischievous twin sister, and ‘baron’ himself are all played by Ramesh, who has developed a personal style of illustrative mime that seems to have incorporated elements of signing and perhaps also of eurythmy. A concern for me was that this all keeps him frantically busy throughout and there is little stillness or space to breathe in the piece (ironically, as the baron’s stated aim in taking to the trees is to find a space where he can breathe) and for this audience member anyway, too much time was spent trying to work out what was happening rather than really relaxing into the show.

The piece is directed by circus/physical theatre stalwart Josette Bushell-Mingo, with aerial choreography by Jennifer Patterson and Lucy Deacon, so I had expectations of a high level of aerial circus work, particularly as on entering the venue we saw the stage set with a forest of ropes hanging down. However, this is not realised, and although the rope work that there is is clearly and competently presented, it is not an aerial performance to thrill. On the positive side, design, lighting and the cleverly-integrated video projection are all of a high quality, and add a strong visual dimension to the show. The live piano accompaniment is also very lovely, adding a silent film quality to the action.

Ultimately, Ramesh Meyyappan is a competent and skilled performer, but not (for me anyway) a riveting presence onstage, and I thus feel that the piece would be stronger if there were other performers to carry some of the burden of the storytelling. Snails and Ketchup is a work in development that has interesting aspects – but has a way to go yet.