Author Archives: Vicky Vatcher

About Vicky Vatcher

Vicky studied art, theatre, drama, and dance in the UK and the US, and has been directing and teaching aspects of theatre and performance for over 20 years. Her main interests lie in contemporary theatre and performance, focusing on non-text-based and non-linear-narrative work, and she particularly enjoys physical theatre and site-specific pieces. In 2015 she curated a multimedia project for the Bath Fringe festival, The River , which explored aspects of the lower Avon, and she hopes to develop this kind of work.

Andy Field: Lookout

This unusual production pairs one adult audience member with a primary-school-aged child from the city, and has been created by Andy Field in collaboration with the students and staff of Sefton Park Junior School.

I no longer live in Bristol and this visit was one of the few times I’ve ever been left feeling nostalgic about it. Brandon Hill is at its most beautiful at this time of year (even in the drizzle). The view over the cityscape, right over the docks, out towards the mouth of the Avon, is spectacular, and added to this, the whole place is singing with flowers and birdlife. After a while I understand that this outdoor event is not simply about being able to be outdoors now that it’s (almost) summer. Lookout carries an ecological message. We ‘look out’ over the landscape and we need to ‘look out’ for the future of a city whose green spaces and relative opulence provide an almost perfect mix for urban living.

Lookout is an event that gives small audiences a half hour introduction to possible futures. On entering the park we were greeted by Andy who hands us a small portable recording to be listened to, individually, at places where the view was the most far reaching. At first, music and then a child’s voice speaks: ‘Hello, my name is Frank, and I’m 49 years old.’ The voice goes on to describe something very different from the view I’m actually looking at. Allotments created of necessity cover the parkland (as they must have done during the war). Massive radar dishes funnel the heat of the sun and create local weather conditions; the views are gone, buried under high rise housing developments. The voice stops and a real child’s voice takes my attention: ‘Hello, I’m Frank and I’m seven years old.’ Frank then outlines the format of the exchange; he asks me three questions. ‘Do I think I will be alive in 60 years’ time?’ He is unflinching but the point has been made – how do I see the future of this place? And, how would I feel about its loss of it as a place of beauty? But is there also an assumption, in Frank’s script, that audience are part of the ‘I won’t be around so I don’t care’ club? That only by knowing we will witness the devastating changes that will occur if real environmental protection doesn’t speed up, will we care about and actively support change?

As the first exchange ends I listen to another recording: ‘Hello, I’m Frank and I’m 69 years old.’ Frank is standing beside me looking at the view though a pair of toy binoculars until it’s time to talk again. Then other voices, that offer other futures, feature interesting proposals such as the abolition of money, the teaching and learning of gymnastics for all from an early age– thus making the ‘need’ for acrobats redundant. Finally Frank asks for, and takes careful note of, some things I would ask for from the government. I don’t know what he will do with my replies. I don’t ask. There is no formal ending, he walks away. The recording turns to music and then ends.

The exchange has been smoothly mediated and I need to reflect hard on what I’ve contributed to. The introduction of a listening device was key because, as with other forms of theatre, we have been trained to listen but in ordinary encounters, in public areas, there are no particular definitions to the space or focus of attention.

Andy Field’s work always focuses on the reimagination of everyday behaviours and this commission from Mayfest builds on that trope and his history of making interactive work. The levelling of adult and child in this piece is exceptionally simple and clever. I overhear a member of the audience saying that the kids are ‘sweet’, but they’re not. They are on the same level as the adults in this exchange (only more imaginative) and the familiar, simple interaction at the heart of this piece nevertheless exerts a complex effect. Frank was an actual child and a ‘character’, he played a part, as did his peers with other audience members, and each was both real and symbolic, universal children. This strangeness created a beneficial distance that validated and gave an equal weight to the ideas of both parties. It’s a concept piece that could be used to powerful affect in many other cities and may, I hope, be repeated when Frank is 69.

Sisters: Clockwork & Tanter: Vixen

Two Scandinavian companies brought their explorations of circus and gender to this year’s Circus City, Bristol’s biennial circus festival.

The most powerful image that stays with me from all-male Swedish company Sisters’ exploration of precision physical interaction – Clockwork – is of men flying through the air, pole to pole, like silent gibbons. Not a mechanical image, as suggested by the title of the piece, but a primate one. When I watched these movements I could feel air rushing past my ears, my arm getting ready to receive weight and pass it over quickly. These things are something my body knows about although I have never, could never, replicate them. That’s a good reason to go to the circus – to get vicarious satisfactions. The second most striking image I retain is of a naked man, tied up, hanging by his hair, and the audience laughing, me included.

The company describe the show as aiming to create ‘a universe where the human body can be lots of other things… the metamorphosis of coming from three individuals to one being.’

This appearance of metamorphosis was certainly achieved at times to great effect. Not only did they frequently interact as one, they created diverse images and the attempts to achieve these ‘like clockwork’ foregrounded the risks of their acts. As spectators, our human consciousness keeps us focused on this duality of being: we wish to fly but are afraid of falling, only our primate cousins enjoy aerial ease. The physical demands of pushing human limitation, this ‘oneness’, including vibrant, precise work with the German Wheel and the Chinese Poles, is only possible to sustain for short periods. Between acts, Sisters use playful and competitive interactive clowning and tricks such as putting limbs in boxes and creating the illusion that they are turned the wrong way. Body parts are crunched, heads and shoulders displaced. The body becomes the site of both cruelty and humour, as an individual entity and a communal one. Clockwork is a story of denial; it displays and disputes notions of the fallible and limited human body.

In contrast, the inaugural show, Vixen, by new all-female Danish ensemble Tanter worked in a different way to connect to my ‘inner animal’ and understandably so because, as the show’s ambivalent animalistic title suggests, the piece explores negative stereotyping of women. Feminist critiques of the images of the Madonna, whores, and mad women are well-trodden ground. But, as an audience member, the interest comes from seeing their treatment, and that such images are still compelling and relevant to performers and audiences. Three women appear from behind the back curtain, their fox fur hats fall over their faces so they can’t see, they wear red high heels and carry full wine glasses. They totter, struggle, try to dance, fall over, they echo the debasement of ladette excesses that supposedly demonstrate a good night out. One gets up (Karoline Aamås), loosens her fantastic flowing long hair, freaks out and attempts ‘escape’ by climbing a rope while the remaining two do sort of mock-porn ‘girl on girl’ things on the other side of the stage. The rope escape is presented as treacherous, hair all over the place (convincingly seeming to threaten the performer’s grip I thought), and she eventually falls from some height (on to a mattress) – that is, she fails.

Within the piece, circus skills present composite images of both dilemma and achievement marked by intersecting improvised and choreographed sequences. The slack rope walking depicts both the actual skill of the performer (Moa Asklöf) and the psychological position of feeling unsafe, trapped, and confined by fear of failure. Conversely, towards the end of the piece, when nearly all the scenes have hitherto been presented humorously, the high trapeze act (Elise Bjerkelund Reine) is framed as an epiphany, suggested by the sudden opening of the back curtain, revealing the altar and stained glass windows at the back of the church that houses Circomedia. As Elise descends she makes the traditional gesture that invites applause – broad smile, the opening of the arms with flat, upturned hands, and we, the audience, responded accordingly. It was wonderful work but strangely out of character with the rest of the piece. Vixen is essentially a story of harm and nowhere is this more poignant than when Karoline, at the front of the stage, cuts an onion and puts the two halves against her eyes giving her the appearance of a monstrous insect. The audience winces and laughs at this real, if minor, act of self-harm.

Both shows raise interesting questions about how traditional circus acrobatics can be incorporated into contemporary narratives. There are implicit paradoxes in their themes – the body as machine; woman as an idea rubbing up against physical, emotional reality – and these tensions are formally exploited as the companies play with exploring a position by presenting its opposite or skilfully presenting the physical joke of the ‘incompetent performer’. Whilst very different both effectively use circus’s formal qualities – to present skills and highlight their subversion; to emphasise physical realities and limitations and to create powerful and striking imagery – in order to explore their themes with sophistication and style.

Raucous: The Stick House

Knowing Bristol and its various performance spaces well, I felt excited by the prospect of visiting this hitherto unused, mysterious place – The Lo-Co Klub – underneath the Victorian passenger sheds of Temple Meads Station. As audience members we were initiated into what felt like a dark process: given Germanic names written on a piece of hardboard to hang round our necks, like aliens or criminals or soon-to-be-deported ‘others’; and then, on top of that, an invisible stamp to the wrists. What participation would the performance be asking of us?

We shuffled into the cavernous subterranean vaults guided by little lights on the ground. In the darkness there was a sense of immense volume, and the doors closed heavily behind us, heightening the feeling of threat. The Stick House then developed as a piece of site-specific, multimedia, reconstructed folklore. Within this unusual space the performances, enhanced by various technical devices, related narratives reminiscent of the original versions of the stories of Brothers Grimm. Costume and dialogue contributed to the feel of another age, another place: a concoction of medieval and Victorian worlds in stark contrast to our contemporary comforts.

The narrative centered on the plight of a young girl, Marietta, ‘lost’ at cards by her father, to some unknown, disembodied, male power. As soon as this is established we could only feel that things will not go well for her – but in what way? This story, enacted in this site, reminds us that the Victorians cut out the nasty bits in fairy tales but left them in, in real life, for most of the population. And, like reading a horror story those are the bits we feel most drawn to. The tale then touches on themes of the fragility of life, in particular for orphaned or abandoned children; social ostracization – witch hunting; sexual exploitation and rape; and the persistence of the power of superstition.

Changing the role of the audience from deportees, to voyeurs, to ostracizing villagers, was helped enormously by the full use of the space. Originally built as a series of interconnected, vaulted areas, the spaces between the vaults were lit as passages into other rooms, and used to move the audience on into the next section of the story. Lighting, projections, and sounds made us turn and walk towards the next scene or left us in complete darkness.

The technical wizardry was far more slick then a son-et-lumiere, and its aim clearly was to push a contemporary relevance onto the story’s themes (words like WITCH and BITCH flashed up in neon lights), but at times it distracted me from the aims of the performance and made me feel I was in a theme park of tricks; I soon lost focus or concern for poor Marietta.

Where I did feel strong engagement was with the character of Hobblehoy, the village ‘idiot’, in particular his direct address to the audience as he sits in the filth of a muddy field (a raised stage supporting him), inviting us nearer to hear his story. Here, the language is bright and moving – scripted by Sharon Clarke. One aim of the production was to touch on contemporary times – the resurgence of harsh values as a consequence of rising poverty – and this is the place it did it most effectively for me. At other times the character, beautifully played by Christopher Elson, moved among us and again drew us in with him. This simple technique was also welcome because, in places, our sense of journey in the promenade around the caverns was frustrated by the fact that you couldn’t see the action of some scenes for crowding. British theatre audiences are unused to close proximity – pushing to the front – except of course afterwards at the bar.

Total Theatre