FoulPlay Productions: The Bear Space

Theatre has some pretty bloody antecedents and these are the subject (and lurking subtext) of interactive Brighton-based company FoulPlay’s latest puppet-centric feast for Brighton Fringe.

We begin in an auction room where the bids (ours), for a host of relics from a certain Elizabethan entertainment establishment, are coming thick and fast. In 2014 the company won the Fringe’s Best Outdoor Event for their Roald Dahl-homage race around the city centre, The Fantastic Fox Hunt, and the ghost of outdoor languages can still be felt here. Smart crowd management strategies draw us into the world of the play and make it look easy to oversee our extensive interaction with it.

The world has been lovingly crafted, from the handmade artefacts that the auctioneer touts which include original artwork and homespun lace collars, down to the homemade and specially designed currency we can pay, and play, with. This is a company of artists and their influence – in the costumes, puppets and detailed design – can be felt throughout.

The heart of the play, though, comes when we move out of the auction room and into the past it so reveres. Jack Stigner’s long monologue of a showman defining the nature of his sport to his innocent yet curious daughter is a really densely worked and enjoyable piece of writing. It ambitiously takes on a Renaissance tone (complete with Shakespearian homilies) and rises to the challenge while feeding us a lot of both history and character. Stigner’s performance as the hinge between the two worlds is precise and convincing: his transformation from gormless no-mark to wily hustler boldly drawn in the simplest of sequences with a smart use of sound. Ulysses Black’s hilariously emollient auctioneer has a nice streak of repressed violence. Elsewhere, a somewhat underused Annie Brooks illustrates the lots with appropriate and sometimes less appropriate imagery on her OHP.

The show definitely leaves us wanting more: it is highly wrought but remains on the slight side. The puppets, when they come, are brilliantly grotesque, but some of their theatrical possibilities are ‘sacrificed’ to interactivity, only to be fully experienced by a few audience members. There’s a flaw too, in the central premise, as our natural urge remains in support of the bear not the violence whose emotional continuity with theatre the company are touting. As such, there are some limits to the extent we can get carried away in the action, despite the company’s thoughtfulness in their offers to us on this front. The connection between the two halves could be more worked – I wanted something to bring us back to the twenty-first century at the end.

The production is ultimately a love-letter to theatre itself. Though not without its flaws, as the past and present of the form collide we can glimpse traces of what made and makes the live experience so exhilarating.

George Orange: How I Almost Became the First Lady of the USA

‘This is a true story. In the early 90s in Chicago, I fell in love with a man who was running for president – in a dress.’

George Orange’s entertaining and engaging autobiographical show starts with an entrance from the rear – ooh missus – as our George slides quietly into the auditorium and then dances and pouts and poses as he slinks along the wall leading him to the stage area, flirting outrageously with men and women as he goes. He’s wearing matt silver plastic trousers, an odd-bod 1990s ravers’ jacket and a Joan Jett Blakk T-shirt. Joan Jett Blakk is the man who who was the candidate for the Queer Nation Party against George Bush in the 1992 presidential contest, fighting on the ‘Lick Bush in 92’ ticket. People born after 1992 who aren’t too hot on history: Bush won. America didn’t get a black, gay, cross-dressing president who saw himself as a blend of Divine, David Bowie and Grace Jones.

George tells us near the start that he is bisexual. There’s an interesting little monologue on whether you are what you are in this very moment – which for him right now, is a man in a monogamous heterosexual relationship – or whether you are always ‘bi’ even if not actively bedding people of both sexes. I’m with you George – it’s a question I’ve asked myself many times, and an aspect of queer identity that isn’t talked about anywhere near enough.

Having introduced himself and where he’s at, we launch into the story at the heart of the show: his relationship with Terence Smith aka Joan Jett Blakk. George at this time is ‘questioning’ but hasn’t actually slept with a man. He’s had a number of girlfriends and understands how all that works, but when it comes to boy sex, he’s afraid of appearing innocent and naive to Terence – although the older and wiser George looking back realises that his ‘boy virginity’ would probably have had massive appeal. But then, aged 22, a countryside boy straight from a farm, he was terrified of looking like he didn’t know what he was doing, so he slept with a male friend just to get the virginity thing over and done with. We are taken through the early days of their relationship (once it gets going), alongside parallel stories of friendships and flatmates in the gay scene in Chicago in the early 1990s. The absent character, Terence/Blakk, is drawn lovingly: we see him as a waiter lusted after by the young George; we are with George and Terence through the story of the presidential campaign; and we feel the heartbreak when Terence moves off to San Francisco, but George can’t go with him for family reasons. Blakk’s politics are portrayed through a sharing of his fabulous manifesto pledges, one of which was a switching of the Education budget with the Defence budget. Just think, says George channelling Blakk: the schools would have books, and the military would have to hold cake bakes to raise the money for their weapons.

The show is very nicely structured and the material is always fascinating. There’s a lot of wryly comic looking-back-at-a-younger-self telling of amusing anecdotes mixed in with a number of harrowing stories about AIDS/HIV and the murder of gay men. He frequently draws the audience into the action, and there is disco dancing and a bit of drag. There is even some mime…

The thing that lets the show down a bit is the delivery of some of the verbal storytelling. A little odd, as George is a seasoned performer, with 25 years behind him as a mime, clown, actor, dancer, and founder of Mary Bijou Cabaret who created Hitch, the magnificent circus-cabaret tribute to Alfred Hitchcock.

But not odd when you think about the enormous task that is writing and delivering a complex script based on your own autobiographical material. If this show has a director, s/he isn’t credited anywhere – so I’m going to assume it hasn’t and say that this is what it needs. It needs someone outside of this magnificent story to hold the space for George. It is almost an impossible task to do this for yourself when dealing with your own life story.

This is a fabulous show in the making, exploring a vital chapter in queer history. It feels close to made, but not quite there yet. It’ll get there, and it will be DIVINE, darling.

Laura Burns & Emma Frankland: NOW 16 (Week 1)

Laura Burns: WISHBONE

The Yard Theatre’s annual festival for contemporary theatre, NOW, runs a weekly programme showing a new double bill each week for five weeks. This gives artists time to develop work via repeat performances and to firmly establish a relationship with the theatre, the site, and their paired artist. This year, Week 1 opens with WISHBONE, created by Laura Burns in collaboration with Jo Blake Cave, Jo Hellier and Simone Kenyon, followed by Ritual for Change by Emma Frankland.

In WISHBONE the four women on stage use voice, text, and an illustrative movement vocabulary to process thoughts around and embody animals and materials that could have formed part of their previous lives. The piece is clearly structured into sections so that the audience can anticipate it evolving. A minimal group section breaks out into individual explorations with speech and either object play or dancing to accompany them. A final group oral section, first of dialogue and then of extended notes, calls, or harmonies, brings the work to a hiatus which feels spiritual, magical, and all-encompassing.

Four monumental figures stand tall, edging between swaying and rocking on the cusp of momentum. Their eyes occasionally sparkle, their expressions are of intent, subtle excitement, and anticipation. Changes in posture or focus and gradual coos and hoots pique the overriding sense of stillness and quiet. This first section cleverly strikes a balance that highlights silence and sound, the individual and the flock, the human and the abstracted, the woman and the creature.

Laura Burns’ solo is an accumulation and articulation of both thoughts and movement. An inquiry into her past lives manifests in short phrases of speech and movement repeated and extended. She is articulating, thinking and expressing an attempt to define who we are, what we are made of, and where we came from. Mimicking a rhythm of thought streaming and reoccurring, her speech is assertive with a sense of poetic urgency. Trying to ‘get under the horizon line,’ ‘underneath the London clay,’ she is physically pulling at a thread that she can see but not grasp, that links the centre of the earth to us in the here and now. Her gestures are as fine as feathers but with strength in their dynamics. Pats, slides, catches, and tremors lead from the tips of her fingers as Burns grabs at something invisible, making something indefinable almost tangible. Her style is something quite unique and individual within the group and this section parallels the piece as a whole, it is a process, an accumulation, an awareness of not quite knowing.

A later section sees each performer complete the sentence ‘and underneath that’ over and over in differing ways, digging us deeper and deeper. It connects the silly and scientific, memories and facts, a biography of time and place. As their speech becomes faster, louder, and enthused with unconstrained thrill, the group jump over and over as the energy and tension builds into an eruption of sound. They feel like they are actually going to take off like a rocket as the sound vibrates through our bodies and the intensity implodes, this feels amazing, I am giggling along with them. The binding feature of this piece is its soundscape, created by the performers’ tuneful voices, speech, and an abstract recording. It is gently layered with different types of noises and notes and builds to high volumes and disorientating intensities and falls to silence. It is gentle, melodic and airy with ebbing and flowing repetition punctuated by staccato surprises. These sounds feel like a language, a call, but not completely human or completely animal. They express the embodiment of creatures of past lives and they speak directly to the audience. WISHBONE works, it carries its audience through its highlights and climaxes and it interrogates and questions with thoughtful and intellectual vigour. The team of four independent women conjure up an energy that actually feels like it comes from the centre of the earth that they describe: it bubbles and simmers and emanates via sound to our very cores making a piece that is spiritual and cerebral.

Rituals for Change is performed by Frankland who made the piece in collaboration with Eilidh Macaskill and Myriddin Wannell. A transformative use of objects is at its core which describes and illustrates a process of change, exploring the indefinable nature of being transgender. The space is dressed with a central pile of earth supporting an axe and woodblock. Individually made clay pots, a record player, a set of bowls, plaster, and a pile of metal scaffolds surround the bed of earth. Each object is an ingredient or a tool, integral to the mix that transforms Frankland’s identity and her surroundings.

Frankland inhabits a haven of bits and pieces which she organises and uses like a chef in their kitchen, or an artist in their workshop. The set is a combination of an installation and a home, and the objects are constantly being used, moved and replaced throughout the performance. A bird’s eye projection displays the artist-cum-alchemist’s work on the backdrop behind as this world grounded in garden earth expands higher, as a scaffold tower representing ‘radical change’ is constructed. This evolving set parallels Frankland’s narrative of change: it expands, as does her horizon, her vision, and our own minds.

The theme of making, particularly of moulding clay, stems from Frankland learning how to throw pots at the same time as beginning to take the oestrogen pill. Ingredients such as water, find their way around the set and in speech, linking our bodies, ‘we who are water,’ to each other and the earth. A bag of water is hung on the tower, punctured and collected into a bowl. It is used in two smaller bowls to mix with the earth and mimic a dripping, not quite solid, layer of breasts. It is later used to make a tangible, malleable layer of clay breasts that Frankland sculpts around her own growing chest. This transformative process works by its steady division into mini rituals that prepare space, object, and body for the next step.

Well-used exercises in the creative process such as completing the phrase ‘we are…’ and ‘you will…’ form a simple and effective text-based structure and allow the audience to focus on reflecting on the visual metaphors created by the manipulation of objects. The speech works best when it is conversational or when jokes are shared between Frankland and the audience. This relaxed style could be applied to the narrative which often feels laboured or over emphasised on its subject of an individual’s mental and physical change as they take the oestrogen pill. Although autobiographical, it appeals to everyman by placing the audience as those who are outsiders judging her own identity and more accessibly as those who have experienced growth and change themselves. It is beautiful in its frank honesty, organised mess, and the dirty concoction of ingredients, with an overall ambience in a state of flux like its creator.

Both WISHBONE and Rituals for Change make a strong start to a meaty line up of works for NOW 16. Their concerns with the social and philosophical context of their subject matter and their manipulation of object, text and voice are sophisticated examples of multidisciplinary performance.

Mamoru Iriguchi: 4D Cinema

This is a refreshingly accessible live art work that is by turns amusing, intriguing, and oddly moving. It is constructed in two halves, with the quirky charm of the first setting up a quite ingenious formal / conceptual twist that delivers us back to the starting point in a highly satisfying way.

The solo performer, Iriguchi, calling himself 4D Cinema, opens with a discussion of time travel, the fourth dimension, and the medium of film. He then straps himself into a wearable contraption whereby his face appears through a hole in the centre of a screen, above which a projector is mounted. There follows a range of amusing and well-timed sequences in which his live face and body interact with pre-recorded video to take us on an eccentric journey around the life of Marlene Dietrich.

Many of the details of Dietrich’s life turn out to be quite surprising, and there are some odd moments of singing played backwards, but these peculiarities seem to be in keeping with the quirky feel of the piece. What happens in the second half, however, reveals them to be very cleverly constructed footholds on the route back to the beginning. It’s kind of like a homemade, avant-garde thriller that first ties a weird and eccentric knot and them unravels it in ways you really weren’t expecting.

The programme notes describe the piece as exploring themes and issues around gender and representation, and one could certainly draw out rich layers of interpretation around these themes if so inclined. For me, however, the most rewarding aspect is the piece’s ability to deliver layer upon layer of complexity within the structure itself. It lulls you into thinking you’re watching an amiable nerd, before revealing that it’s a deeply considered and finely crafted exploration of the live/video format. I really can’t be more specific without ruining the surprises for those intending to see it. I can say that this is a highly original and unpretentious work that leads to an increasingly engrossing experience due to its exquisitely clever symmetry.

Monski Mouse: Baby Disco Dance Hall

There aren’t many events for you in Brighton Fringe if your child is under three. I know, I looked, hoping to share bit of the cultural feast taking over the city with my one-year-old son. There are however two ‘baby discos’ – different venues, different price points, different musical aesthetic (one assumes). The retro styling and classy Speigeltent venue of Monski’s Mouse’s event, the shorter of the two sessions, drew our eye and so, disco pants on, we took to the floor.

The venue at Speigeltent is an immediate win; its mirrored walls, enticing booths, and bouncy wooden floor make it a magical playground for little ones. It’s also big enough for running around but small enough to create a real crowd on the dance floor. Australian DJ Monski Mouse (Monica Corduff-Gonzalez) has dressed the space minimally but well. Bright monochrome stripes cover the DJ desk that she dances around in her trademark Disney-styled ears, and there’s a baby chill-out area of stuffed animal cushions and rugs that my small person found very reassuring.

Her set is supported by two 50s-styled dancers who mingle and help raise the atmosphere in the crowd. Their muteness is occasionally a bit disconcerting – Monski is firmly the host – but they are a smiley and enthusiastic presence that helps to break down parental inhibitions. Beyond the styling of the dancers the retro theme is not much in evidence – the set is a mixture of disco classics both recent (Pharrell Williams’s Happy) and less contemporary (the B52s’ Loveshack) – but this didn’t seem to matter to the swelling crowd of cheerful parents and carers who threw themselves into the spirit of the event with gusto for a wild and wet Saturday morning. That crawling on the floor being a ‘lovecat’ or a sleeping bunny came so readily (to the adults!) is a testament to the skill with which the tone is set and the event managed by the team.

The mix of tracks to appeal to kids (actions!) and grownups (memories!) was well handled and, even though it was a bit strange hearing every song played to the very end there’s no denying that the mix was good and the hour the right length. In all, we felt well looked after and Monski’s background in early years work shone through. This was a highly successful and enjoyable hour spent sharing some of the energy and fun of going clubbing with the main reason you haven’t been able to do it for the past three years.

Total Theatre