Author Archives: Thomas Bacon

About Thomas Bacon

Thomas John Bacon is an artist whose current practice focuses upon the conception of the body, being & the idea of a multiplicity of self/s in performance. His work can be located within the framework of live art and philosophical/phenomenological investigations that look to de/construct and challenge perception, alongside the assumed liminal barriers of body-based practices. Thomas is due to complete his doctoral research at the University of Bristol, with his thesis Experiencing a Multiplicity of Self/s. He is supported by the Arts Council England and is also the founder and artistic director of the live art platform Tempting Failure.

Curious Directive: Your Last Breath

If science and philosophy did not sit comfortably within theatre then last year would not have seen the frustratingly engaging Schrödinger from Reckless Sleepers or the beautifully desperate The Writer from Ulrike Quade. Yet somehow Curious Directive, who set out in their manifesto to ‘interrogate the simple role which science plays in everyday life’, have produced a work that is emotionally sterile.

Your Last Breath interweaves four stories, setting different time periods and generations in parallel through a montage of scenes that allows the audience to gain insight into the potentially unseen connections and shared histories of the narratives. In 2011, the present day, Freija travels to Norway to scatter the ashes of her father. Her story, played by Karina Sugden, is compelling and the heart of the narrative. In scenes with her guide (portrayed by Gareth Taylor) we find glimpses of depth and despair as their relationship blossoms and her personal connection to home is tested in the journey they take together. Yet this is hidden for the most part as we continually cross-cut between other moments in time.

The connected themes of mapping a personal archive, self-discovery and life are overworked and painfully obvious as we jump to a British cartographer in 1876 mapping the same region of Norway, guided by an elder relative of Freija’s present day guide. Meanwhile a curious forward flash is made to 2034 as a corporate salesman pitches a medical breakthrough in cryogenics, inspired by the forth story from 1999 in which a skiing accident marks a catalytic changing point in the way doctors perceived the frozen human body. Further family links are established and implied through the course of the action but none really connect or excite in the moment of their unveiling. Ironically the audience is left cold.

Sugden and Taylor aside, the acting fails to engage and what, in places, could be moments of intense despair or poignancy fall flat, becoming rather awkward. In a production of technical excess, where video projection is used to the point of distraction on both the stage floor and rear set, and an incessant piano score dominates rather than compliments, the direction feels rushed; actors physically spin in and out of scenes, mimed actions sit awkwardly alongside the physically present, while the application of simplistic physical theatre and Release seems slapdash.

I applaud the sentiment that the company seeks to find ‘responses rather than answers’ in their work, and under the weight of their response presented inYour Last Breath there is a heart. No matter what you are exploring, connection to your audience is key and sadly the show fails on this front. But that there is a heart at all means there is hope for it to be rescued, and perhaps a strict dramaturgical editorial process may help to rediscover it anew.

www.curiousdirective.com

Rhum and Clay Theatre Company: Shutterland

With the mechanically open charm of the Lecoq performance style Rhum and Clay present a space of illusive freedom and hegemonic control. Three men in gas masks and trench coats guide, affect and respond to the world of the central character Lublin, a ministry clerk of no import, deftly played with an anxious energy by Christopher Harrisson. He is the Everyman: a patriot and decent citizen who tries on a daily basis to be the best tiniest cog in the grand scheme that he can be. In much the same way as Disney’s Goofy shorts of the Forties and Fifties there is a comically hapless and desperate desire to improve – to match the ideals of the system and conform.

Shutterland questions: what if one’s life was monitored and watched to the degree that all your actions and choices were imposed and devoid of free will? Today, at his tiny workstation in the damp basement of the ministry, Lublin receives a red letter: an error or further manipulation from an unseen source has brought this document to him and what follows is a chaotic journey of awareness that unhinges the analogue dystopic system from within.

This Everyman persona neatly fits with the Lecoq philosophy of le jeu (playfulness), complicité (togetherness) and disponsibilité (openness), giving the troupe free reign to gleefully play with the life of Lublin. Each gasmasked ‘storyteller’ acts as both manipulator and resonator to him, stepping into the guise of the various characters that inhabit his world – such as the bureaucratic ministry officials who appear in an expertly timed sequence that sees the MacGuffin red letter magically flit around the space, seemingly out of control, appearing anew in each official’s hand with split second precision. At other times they reaffirm his existence as familiars or projections of a split Self. Indeed in a moment of climactic self-realisation for Lublin they present a divided truth; engaging fully with the world’s analogue ideals, presenting their three bodies as a distortedly broken paused image of one man’s life in an excitingly refreshing way.

There are numerous references to our European cold war past and there is a distinct Orwellian feel to the proceedings, but appropriately the location of our setting is never fully realised. Shuttlerland offers thrilling economic theatrical simplicity as bare-bones-staging importantly allows the affected human figure to become the priority at play in this world. What props are used are manipulated in such an exciting manner that to describe them would ruin their charm and the crescendo to Lublin’s journey is without doubt beautiful in its construction. This is a brilliant Absurdist satire that in all but a minor detail of a mis-timed falling sequence was perfect and a great way to start breathing new life into socially relevant theatre for 2012. If ever there was a time for a new wave of Absurdism now is it, lets hope Rhum and Clay forge a way.

www.rhumandclay.com

Steven Berkoff: One Man

Tonight at the Theatre Royal in Bath, Steven Berkoff shares two of the one-man pieces from his celebrated solo cannon, The Tell Tale Heart and Dog. Giving all of himself to his audience, he presents the work via the conduit of a vibrant single body. Berkoff is a heightened, expressionistic, ever-able thespian who is able to immerse an audience into his world with nothing more than his own body and voice. This is total theatre: the stage is bare, Berkoff is everything. Only minimal lighting cues allow for the most simplistic of scene changes – we need no other theatrical flourishes here.

The Tell Tale Heart, an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe classic, opens the evening and is quite simply a masterclass of perfection. The acting is vibrant, and reels its audience quickly into a dark world – a hideous place where in-character narration guides us through the story of one man’s psychosis: a paranoid obsession with a neighbour whom he eventually murders, mutilates and hides under his floorboards. Timing and expression are key: choreographed facial mannerisms bring each humorously sick moment to life with a playful glee. The elements of mime are simply sublime. To watch this sinister being peer around the corner of an elderly man’s bedroom door at the witching hour, or see him hurriedly rush down a spiral staircase, or even embody the footsteps of a party of men where nothing physically is manifest on stage is glorious. The characterisation is expressed with the ease of a master who neither disrupts nor brings attention to how adept at his craft he truly is.

So it is somewhat sad that Dog, the story of a football hooligan and his most faithful of companions from London’s East End, made for somewhat awkward viewing. The story is short and sees Berkoff flip between manifestations of a lout and his dog. As with the previous work there are natural flourishes that engage the audience directly and seem to have a certain charm to them, but beyond that we are left with nothing but a base and very basic caricature. Where the expressionistic style gave birth to a beautifully dark and gothic world in the Poe adaptation here it feels forced, straining against a weak narrative that at points feels almost insulting, constructed on a parody that worked when the piece was made but doesn’t now. Socially awkward, there are times where you can’t help but feel that you’re sat with an audience from one area who are enjoying laughing at the ignorance of the character before us who represents another. Perhaps if the work had more depth or a stronger socio-cultural commentary then the satire would flourish but tonight this feels more Little Britain than the work of British legend.

With a glorious start to the night, Berkoff can and will continue to command a stage for a long time to come. Delighting many with the work he produces, he is a national treasure, but while seminal works such as The Tell Tale Heart may leave us with memories for a lifetime, perhaps its time to put down Dog, leaving it in firmly in the early nineties for good.

Forced Entertainment: Void Story

Forced Entertainment are unpredictable, sometimes playing with an audience’s reaction as much as the conventions of performance; you can neverexpect, only anticipate. And it is that sense of anticipation that hangs in the air of the auditorium tonight. The stage is set with desks on either side, microphones, reading lamps, scripts, sound-desk and the ever necessary artist’s iMac – all present under a screen projection of brilliant white. Residually illuminating all before us, it is a central component of what will take place, dominating the space and those that will undoubtedly sit below it. It is oblivion, and this is where our story of the void begins.

As the performers sit at their desks and run through a performed script reading, the central screen projects stills in a 1980s Jackanory style to illustrate the unfolding narrative. Sound effects and vocal distortions manipulate the portrayal of characters, and are placed alongside the deadpan reading that runs through this darkly cynical satire. Appropriately there is no physical life in the performance, for we are taken into a lifeless collage world of grey singular dimensions. Here a couple stand at the window of their tower block apartment looking out on a bleak industrial urban world. ‘It’s dark out there,’ one says, as the other replies, ‘It’s only light when people want it to be.’ This is nowhere and yet everywhere. It is a landscape made up of the indistinguishable minutia of the real world: a fence from Sheffield, a wall from London. All were pulled from the internet and splashed upon the screen to create this juxtaposed dystopia.

The narrative takes us through the couple’s catalytic desire to constantly ‘get out’ of their current situation. They are consumers looking for something. They encounter trigger-happy law enforcement, a black market smuggler, charity cold-callers, killer hornets, a cyborg child selling books, religion, snipers, a hotel next door to a brothel, human trafficking, and a manipulative little girl who gets what she wants with threats of allegations of pedophilia. This hellish world however is familiar: it is our modern life, estranged to us as viewers through the reprographic grey collage.

Both protagonists receive mortal wounds to their bodies, and the visceral sound of the blood squelching from them causes the audience to recoil with a mixture of disgust and delight. Laughter replaces both as at different times they nonchalantly brush away an imminent death scene with the distraction of the next obstacle. They are figures in a perpetual cycle of suffering; the dark humour of each moment links them together, but where a visceral moment is replaced by an incidental action both are statements on an endless consumeristic desire to experience more and, importantly, to escape. Yet we gradually become equally locked in this cycle as voyeurs, consuming their endeavors with a vicarious glee, securely hidden in the dark confines of the comfortable theatre.

This purgatory is a world without soul, yet incongruously it is a world in which fortune tellers have a voice and the spirit of a murder victim haunts a hotel room. Perhaps this is a commentary upon hope or merely the commodification of Otherness. Yet in the final moments of the performance the couple find themselves locked in an epic dance competition where if they win they are told that their troubles will be over. They dance forever, against a backdrop of repeated moments and identical competitors until left alone they can no longer remember who they are: ‘We’re nothing, just wallpaper: background noise.’ As white oblivion returns, the auditorium fades into darkness and we sit in silence. In that moment before a ripple of applause begins, we are in our own void, waiting to experience the next situation, finally aware of our own capitalist, consumer-driven existence.

www.forcedentertainment.com

Reckless Sleepers: Schrödinger

Reckless Sleepers reopen a world within a world: presented before us is a restaging/reimagining of their 1998 work, Schrödinger. A large black box consumes the stage. One side is open to the audience allowing us to see inside of this monolithic structure filling the main theatre of the Arnolfini. It shows the hallmarks of use and is made up of numerous hatches and doors. This is a place in which paradoxical imaginings coexist in time and space.

With frenetic energy five performers are consumed in their relentless and unforgiving task of testing the environment that they exist in. They are figures at the end of their tether, caught in a cycle of exploration that requires them to engage, through movement and scripted passages, with Erwin Schrödinger’s 1933 quantum theory – which states that at an atomic level particles of light may exist in a single moment both in a state of decay and not; and that a box in theory may therefore hold both life and death for a single entity in a simultaneous instance. For Reckless Sleepers, Schrödinger is about the immeasurable experiment: a series of contradictions placed alongside one another in an attempt to wrestle truth from juxtaposition. But is there a truth to be found? By its own cyclical nature, nothing can be resolved here; what little truth exists can only be found in the erratic live struggle to break free from the confines of the experiment.

Within this however there is something that sits uncomfortably in viewing the work. We are told at the outset that, ‘It may seem to you that we’ve done this for the first time, but even the mistakes have been repeated over and over to get them exactly right… Nothing is left to chance; nothing can go wrong, we’ve thought of every eventuality.’ Which in turn leads the work to hold a rigid, almost lifeless quality under the fixed choreography of the cast. The spoken dialogue appears numb and there is a sense of misjudged acting in what should be real action. The work is extremely theatrical and in a post-show discussion the artistic director, Mole Wetherell, celebrates the piece as theatre but then speaks of its realness as if it were more akin to performance art and follows through with a commentary on his unforgiving feelings towards the contrivances of traditional theatre. But as in the performance there is a duplicity at play. What takes place is an experiment – the acted and choreographed contrivances aren’t a failure but a necessary force as the work thrives on its ability to contradict itself. The performers fight against their self-imposed limitations creating a duplicitous commentary that not only examines the lifelessness found in this purgatory but also the vitality in the act of reenacting an act of making.

Despite what we may be told, within this space mistakes can be made, unique moments do explode – it’s impossible for them not to. The living entity of the human form is by nature imprecise and in the chaotic cacophony of bodies, water, chalked scrawling, fighting tables and mess comes real fraught anxiety and misplaced figures. Moments that see performers fight to scrawl words in chalk that others wash away, or outstretched hands misplaced to be marked with chalked crosses, or apples rolling away from where they are meant to be, are unrepeatably unique and seek to engage under the hegemonic sense of the coldly regimented. Schrödinger is an experiment in truth and lying; it is filled with glorious moments and tedious predictability. It engages and disenchants; on one level it is the best piece of action you may see in sometime, and on the other the worst example of theatre filled with dire drained acting.

Actors fall through hatches from the ceiling, riff on themes of alcohol consumption, cats, mountains and waves of light. Bodies are thrown around the space and the majesty of the box is defaced in elegantly haphazard chalk scrawlings. After watching, it will leave you to wrestle with its problems and anxiety for days to come, which in many ways is where it really excites. The people at play in this world are like mice in a science experiment; they are forced to behave, to repeat and yet fight against this. The work is an unending battle for its participants but the central figure is the box; the closing image of which leaves its occupants wretched and used. The climatic finale is beautiful as soaked, shattered bodies litter the space of the cube; the sixth and most central character that has dominated all, now revealed as a living entity in its own right, stood before us covered in chalk handwriting and doodles, crying as water cascades feebly from every worn and tired orifice. We leave this world exhausted and frustrated. Knowing it is set to endlessly repeat we understand the drain it has had on its occupants; like the particles in a single moment they are stuck both vibrantly alive and dead. The box owns space, time and is a world of truth trapped in a blanket of lies.

Total Theatre