Sunday 30 September 2012

Red Note are Quite Social


Quite obviously, the mind behind Social Media Week is a fan of The Vile Arts Radio Hour. The Hour lasts for at least one hundred and twenty minutes every week - sometimes I try and see how long I can broadcast before the station stops me, and Social Media Week has been running from Monday 24th September and ends on Saturday 6th October.

So, it's either respect for the concept busting pioneered by me, or an inability to count. I'd be careful about their statistics when they start talking about how many people got involved.

One of my favourite classical ensembles have done a project for the Week, though. That said, I thought this was supposed to be a Glasgow event, and it's Edinburgh's Red Note that are getting involved. That John Harris is not a man for boundaries, I guess. The ensemble's repertoire proves that much...

Anyway, here's the invitation... Red Note are looking for noise. 

To take part in Noisy Noises please record 20-30 seconds of your favourite noise on your phone and email the mp3 to noisynoises@rednoteensemble.com by midnight on Saturday 6th October and we'll upload them. The ones we like the best we'll make in to a collage and play them at Noisy Nights at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh on Monday 8th October, so come and hear your sounds played in public...

I'm just getting Eric to record this week's Radio Hour on his phone... well, the bits where I am talking, anyway. They are my favourites... if we divide them up... say, an hour of my voice... then cut to around 20 seconds each submission... I think we can submit 180 different clips...

So unless you really want the performance on Monday 8th October to consist of an extended mash up of me talking about hip hop, anime, Amanda Monfrooe and the SMHFAF (it's some episode tomorrow, and some people might even prefer it with guests, please take up this chance...

 










Hitch (reflections)

Tracing Kieran Hurley's journey to L'Aquilla in 2009, Hitch is a personal take on the protests that surrounded that year's G8 summit. That Hurley has recently toured the show across the country suggests that the political issues he discusses have not yet lost their relevance and the autobiographical content only emphasises how the work came from a personal commitment.

Framed around a series of meetings - lifts on the way across, chats with fellow protestors - and set pieces - the arrival at the final protest, a triumphant set by Patti Smith - Hitch is laced with anecdotes and Hurley's own thoughts: his ear for the telling phrase lends itself to some concise slogans, but Hurley never offers a simplistic solution to the challenges of globalisation.

The monologue evolved from an installation that Hurley set up in The Arches (while he was on the road, making his way to L'Aquilla), and emerges form his investigation into the process that creates protest: this lively inquisition sets up questions and offers partial answers and, rarely for a piece that is so dependent on the presence of the artist as performer, is open-ended and reflective.

Hurley sets up his own position early: he is part of the protest, not an impartial journalist. The various people he meets on the journey do offer different perspectives - some supportive, others not even interested in the politics - and their characters are quickly sketched through telling details. Rather than deconstruct the reasons for his protest, Hurley gives a view from the ground and stresses details - such as the importance of a hard-hat - to hint at the broader picture.

Although the political critique does not aim to be balanced - Hurley's conclusions are more about the nature of the people that he meets and how this can be drawn into an understanding of human nature - there are many telling moments.The crucial hard-hat is a gentle symbol of how the protestors are met by potentially violent security forces: one lift is shared with an aging punk who cheers Hurley onwards, while lost in the nostalgia of his own youthful protests.

Equally, Hurley does not shy away from the power that prevented effective protest. On the night before, when he is elated by Patti Smith's People Have The Power, there's a subtle irony: Smith won't be appearing at the protests, but dedicated this (empty slogan) lyric to the protestors. Hurley takes inspiration from Smith but his own political art, which involves him actually getting involved and replacing fatuous pop sentiments with well-observed characterisation, eclipses the presence of this arm-chair general.

Throughout Hitch, there is a sense that Hurley is coming to terms with his desire to be politically engaged: the idea of hitching to a protest is romantic, but the seriousness of the opposing police in Italy brings home that this is no mere game. The broad sense that something is wrong, both in the nature of the summit and the way it defends itself, is neither questioned nor examined - instead, the journey becomes a lesson in how communities can evolve and grow, and the message is as optimism as the opening thumbs-up as Hurley arrives on stage.

Most importantly, in avoiding either dogma or turgid analysis, Hurley personalises the political. His character is neither rabid Marxist nor thoughtless rioter and his path to protest is contemplative and inclusive. Hitch posits that the act of being involved need not reduce the individual to part of a faceless mass and that personal growth is connected to political awareness.

Friday 28 September 2012

For Rosie out of The Arches


Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Criticulous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation. 

An enjoyable afternoon spent in The Arches is coming to an end. When Vile lets me out - sadly, no-one realises that I am being Criticulous and everyone still calls me Gareth - I enjoy the opportunity to chat to artists. Of course, they don't realise that I am going to steal their ideas and present them back to unsuspecting audiences. 

The foyer is starting to fill up now: Alien War is about to begin. I've prepared my chair for tomorrow - I'll be sitting them from 2pm, and Eric will be ushering the audience into my presence. Remember: there is nothing to fear. I hate myself far more than I hate you.

I can't help but feel gratitude to The Arches. They have offered me the chance to explore some of my ideas about the potential for criticism. They've also offered me plenty of work to review over the years, and some of my favourite memories. Most of them happened out the front, where casual conversation over cigarettes evolved into friendship.

Mixed in with that gratitude is a sense of fear. Vile has spent the afternoon writing a few new scenes for the script. I am pretty sure these are the ones where he kills me off. He is tired of being hidden by a grander personality. He fears what I represent. Given that I was born out of his vulnerability, his sensitivity to criticism, his isolation, it's unsurprising that he wants shot of me.

So, although it starts at 2pm, I can't say when I Love Criticulous and Criticulous Loves Me is going to end. Each "reading" will take about five minutes - if you fancy coming along, maybe to say goodbye to me, I won't keep you for long. But at some point, the final scene will be randomly selected from the script, it will be read and Criticulous will depart. 

If humans wonder about what happens after death, imagine what it is like for self-aware fictional constructs. 


Scene 4567a (Third Draft)

Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Criticulous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation. 


The therapist asked me why I believed that criticism was the original art form. I thought that psychiatrists were supposed to listen. Instead, I got a lecture about how criticism, by its vary nature, is responsive, and cannot be original...


"In any specific incidence, let alone in the wider context of art itself. Are you insisting that criticism pre-dates any other artistic medium or genre?"

I replied that I thought therapy was supposed to be about my mental health, not an abstract discussion of aesthetics. There was a nice, comforting silence. I started to feel at home. It's like that time I decided to recite William Burrough's story about The Man Who Taught His Arsehole To Talk at the party for my grandmother's sixtieth birthday. Another minute, and tumble-weed would have rolled across the room.

"I'm interested in where you draw the line. It seems that so much of your identity is tied up within definitions of art, your response to art. And it never hurts to call a patient on what is, frankly, a delusional opinion."

Quick as a mood change in Alan Ayckbourne's mid-period comedies, I retort that plenty of people have delusional opinions, and that doesn't get them hauled up in front of the reality police. 

"Give it six months," my therapist smiled. 

I'd heard humour was often used in therapeutic situations to help the client feel at ease. I am not sure whether this is supposed to extend to alluding to conspiracies deep within the government to round up Christian fundamentalists.

"Dear God, are all of the scenes like this one? A serious point is presented, and the script wanders off to banter about the first thing that comes into your head?"

"Pretty much. Although I tend to make more references to where I steal my ideas from. This scene is a tribute to that one Punch, which had the famous puppet up on charges for assault and battery. Starred him out of Frisky and Mannish."




It's a shameless act of self pollution

Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Critculous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation.

The idea for I Love Criticulous was inspired by Joseph Beuys. I don't want to give too much away... there isn't that much to give away, anyway. But then Vile remembered seeing An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch and decided to rip it off. And he was listening to Radio 3 while he was writing the script, and realised that he could pretend that the piece was a celebration of John Cage's hundredth anniversary if he built in a random selection process. 

The thread that runs through the script is a darkly cynical exploitation of the work of other artists. In the absence of any real inspiration, Vile figured that he could pose as a post-modernist by collaging the inspiration of others. His conscience bothered him, so a great deal of the text involves explaining the references, acknowledging his sources.

But there is a core message at the heart of all... and not just that no-one ought to trust a critic who claims that they are making a collaborative art work. To be honest, we've been rehearsing it for three weeks, and I am not entirely sure what the message might be.

Oh yeah, that's the interpretation thing. Apparently it is all about how every possible reading is valid. That just sounds like a pitiful excuse, to be honest.


Messianic Musings

Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Critculous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation.


I rather fear that I am suffering from an existential crisis. That's unsurprising. I am an imaginary construct, designed to express the various neuroses of Gareth K Vile. Fortunately, he has got plenty of them, and I'll be around for years while he tries to work them out.

So, of course, technically, I don't exist. But that isn't what an existential crisis means, anyway. It's people with more thought than intelligence wondering about their purpose. My purpose is very clear. I am cleansing the earth of its existing notions about criticism, and replacing the popular image of the critic with something new.

But thinking about it, the popular image of the critic is of an intelligent, honest writer, who applies a detailed, practical knowledge to the assessment of art, before communicating in a straight-forward entertaining prose.

That's not so bad.

And the new critic I am supposed to be heralding? A buffoon who forgets the names of artists, who does not do research, who can't even decide how many stars a show is worth. 

And damn, if I don't lack agency. I am just a cypher for someone else's half-baked ideas. I bet this is how Jesus felt just before the Romans caught him. 


Criticulous thanks Grant

Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Criticulous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation.

You know who the really important guys are in theatre? Really... I bet you think I am going to say the critics... Yeah, well, right. Think again.

It's the technical guys behind the scenes. Seriously. Sure, there is always that nice moment when the cast points to the sound and lighting people  - after they have had their own applause, of course. And they sometimes get their names in the programme. But no-one really takes the time to thank them. And even if they did, the tech guys are usually too busy to hear it. They are cleaning up the bloody mess the "creatives" leave behind.

I've just spent some time with my personal tech guy, Eric Karoulla, and chatted with the wonderful Grant from The Arches. Eric's reward will be to get to be part of the show tomorrow - I can't wait until he sees the outfit I've designed for him - but Grant just arranges stuff and never gets a just reward.

On the other hand, if Grant wasn't so efficient, Criticulous would still be an idea in the back of the Vile mind. But don't hold that against him. Criticulous can give thanks, but accepts full responsibility for the consequences...

Karoulla takes control...

Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Criticulous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation. 


To whom it may concern,

Eric here. Vile is out for a cigarette, with Criticulous nagging at him about his divine qualities. 

I can't say I know what Criticulous is up to, although he mentioned tomorrow is to be "the final Criticulous performance" and "supposed to be the last part of the Criticulous Trilogy". 

But then, how does Vile plan to expel or retire Criticulous? 

Also, he intends to wrap up a trilogy, which doesn't adhere to the structure of our beloved Classical Greek tragedies (prologue, parode, episode, stasimon, exodus, epilogue) and doesn't even consult the ancients. 

Furthermore, he has broken all unities - unity of place and time as well as continuity of action (albeit one might argue rules were made to be broken).

Betrayal!

Then again, the parodeepisode and stasimon would require the unified voice of a chorus, for a dialogue to occur, and I don't see anyone stepping up to the plate to represent that. 

Where does that leave us?

Well, tomorrow, I will be busy being part of the furniture, while our audience members  (aka willing victims) will step in as actors, therefore once again there is a gap to be filled.

What's more, the agon (literally: struggle, fight, debate) between our two main characters rests between Vile and Criticulous. 

So is Mr. Vile simply externalising an internal dilemma, torn between two identities (he's lucky there aren't more) or is he asking me to mediate in his interrogation of the audience of our chosen artform?

(well, he chose it and I was sucked into the black hole...)

It's a cheap act of self promotion!


Show Name: I Love Criticulous and Criticulous Loves Me
Artist: Gareth K Vile
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Sat 29 Sep 2012 |2pm onwards | Foyer| Free

Descriptions (from The Arches Website): He took confession, investigated murder, chatted to stars and was locked up in a basement for his art. Now Criticulous faces the ultimate challenge: collaboration. 

Unwilling to admit that criticism is not the original art form, Criticulous fights his ego and mounting anxiety to present a series of pieces that brings dance, radio, dialectics, sculpture and the audience into his relentless quest to understand a world he did not create but reflects.
Contains desperation.


The rumour is that Vile is trying to retire me. He did that thing in the Fringe - The Passion of Criticulous -  and it got me into a fist-fight with a Polish political company. I don't think it is an accident that he keeps making works that involve me either insulting people who are bigger than me, or being put into clear and present danger. The last time I went, I was performing in a lift-shaft. Health and Safety?

Oh, I am sorry. Please, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mr Criticulous. I am the world's only performance critic. That is to say, no-one else would be stupid enough to do something like this. I have been working with The Vile Arts for about three years. I represent the attempt by Vile to break the fourth wall, from the audience's side.

This particular production - I Love Criticulous, and Criticulous Loves Me - is supposed to be the last part of the Criticulous Trilogy. It is the final Criticulous performance, in much the same way as Status Quo did a farewell tour in 1986. Get real. I'm The Vile Arts' cash cow.

You'll notice the intelligent reference to Joseph Beuys in the title. Originally, we intended to recreate the classic Live Art work, in which Beuys spent some time in a gallery space with a coyote. Sadly, we clash with Alien War in the basement, which does something similar to far more visceral effect.

You can insert the jokes here about how no self-respecting scavenger would want to share a room with a critic.

I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you  to come along and find out what we've decided to do instead. I'll be blogging on and off all day, giving you little extracts of the show, reflecting on the process, making slurs and revealing showbiz secrets.

Thursday 27 September 2012

Probably not an exclusive now but I tried: Michael Clark announces special guest...

I've been sitting on an article about Michael Clark's Barrowland Project for a while - I'll put it up some time in the next week when I finally work out whether it can be considered as a community piece (there was five minutes of performance by 'local people') or a dry run for the new work he is presenting at Tramway in the first weekend of October.

The professional parts of the Barrowlands Project were stunning, slinky and stylish, and the musical choices, as to be expected, were slyly hip. That Scritti Politti have been announced as special guests for the New Work next week does suggest that Clark was testing a few ideas at the Barras that are going to be developed in the New Work.

However, this very short blog simply says that Clark is getting a live band up on the stage with him at Tramway. Just like in the piece that inspired me to write about dance, Curious Orange. Only that time, it was The Fall, a cantankerous post-punk ensemble led by a lyricist determined to follow his own path.  This time, it's Scritti Politti, a  post-punk ensemble led by a lyricist determined to follow his own path. 

It's Tramway, it's Clark - who has made peace with the ghosts of his ballet training, it's a live band. I am a little excited...





Thu 4 - Sat 6 October 7:30pm

Tickets £20 / £15

Okay, that's enough on Wonderland


An image that does not appear in this version of the show.
Wonderland didn't go far enough. That isn't to say that a story about violent pornography, the destruction of the heteronormative relationship through the accessibility of on-line dark fantasies and the degradation of sexuality into a mere commodity is in some way mundane. But the focus on a particular sort of pornography and eroticism, ironically, softened the blow.

Although Wonderland - it shares a title with a film about the association of the pornographic and the criminal - sets out to unravel the sickening complicity of polite society and its darker underbelly, it descends too quickly into the world of violent, misogynist pornography. The allusions to Alice in Wonderland suggest a sort of "seduction of the innocent" but this Alice is already corrupted by the start of the play. She may act the innocent at the start, but she is merely posing, all the better to fulfil the pornographic fantasy.

The simple narrative of a woman losing her autonomy through  performing in pornography is complicated by Alice's own ability to switch between the compliant and the determined.  Although there is a moment when she resists the pornographers - sincerely, not in character - the switches between her porn persona, Heidi, and her true self, Alice, prevent the moral as being simply a condemnation of exploitation.

Then there is the sort of pornography being represented in Wonderland. It is not, as many reviews have stated, "hardcore pornography". It  is violent, hardcore pornography. Wonderland isn't making a point about the general availability of sexually explicit content. It is looking at a very specific strand of pornography.

Vanishing Point reduce the problem of on-line pornography into a matter of content, not its very existence. The tension between the complexity of Alice's story and the specificity of the pornography undermines Wonderland's immediacy. It is more philosophically satisfying - Wonderland is far from an angry polemic on exploitation - but lacks a visceral attack.

The danger presented in Wonderland is that certain men are getting their sadistic kicks through the proliferation of hardcore, violent film. Instead of an everyman character being seduced into nastier eroticism, the male starts off with some fairly vicious kinks: he tries to persuade a cam woman to abuse herself, has a thing for young girls. That the woman on cam draws a line under his antics is a forceful reminder that, actually, such behaviour is extreme. By the time he is watching a video of a woman being murdered (which the play makes clear is a performance and not a snuff film), he has already embraced his desires as liberating.

He's effectively insane by the time he is running about and cleaning his house in paroxyms of guilt.

By making the villain so specific, Vanishing Point allow the audience an escape. Lenton is clearly not interested in bland generalisations - the fuss made about the production at the Edinburgh International Festival implied that this was a scathing analysis of hardcore pornography's impact on society. It also suggested that the play had gone too far, and become as exploitative as the material it aimed to condemn. Neither of these are true. The appearance of the actors for the traditional bow reveals how far this show is from torture pornography. The blood can be wiped away.

Instead, Wonderland is about a specific perversion, one still generally regarded as beyond the pale. When The Skinny is full of articles about how pornography is okay, really, Lenton does well to find a subject that remains controversial: yet ultimately, few people will be challenged by the idea that being sexually aroused by violence against women is a bad thing.

However, Lenton does hint at a broader application. The dream-like sequences, familiar from Vanishing Point's last production, Saturday Night, encourage a more metaphorical interpretation. If the torture porn is a symbol for violence or pornography in general, the play is making a powerful point, examining how pornography can alienate. Yet, ironically, the class of the characters becomes important: it's a nice middle-class couple getting screwed by the internet. Again like Saturday Night, Vanishing Point are preoccupied with the horror beneath the facade of respectability.

It also becomes a man's story. Ultimately, Alice walks away, and the lingering image is of the consumer, covered in blood - very deliberately, Alice wipes the blood from her face in her "exit interview," designed to prove that the film she has been making is fictional. Vanishing Point have done such a good job of mixing fantasy and reality by this point, it is not clear whether the blood she wipes away is meant to be real. But the story of Alice is submerged beneath John's.

Vanishing Point are a brilliant company: Kai Fisher's design is superb, allowing the video footage to dominate the domestic bliss the straight couple have built in the form of a comfortable sitting room; Jenny Hulse is incredible as Alice, flickering between her pornographic role as a victim and an assertive young woman with ease. The cast is strong throughout and Lenton's ability to introduce a surreal visual sequence is deployed to disorientating effect.

But this brilliance can obscure the seriousness of the subject. An accomplished drama can hide the viciousness of its content beneath the veneer of theatrical intelligence. Wonderland tells one story - and rejects telling a great many others - with theatrical verve and philosophical integrity. But as a meditation on the power imbalance within pornography, it is trumped by Pamela Carter's short, Meat, which manages, in twenty minutes and a final wry smile, to deconstruct the acceptability of pornography in a similar heteronormative couple's life.

Wednesday 26 September 2012

See Thru Sam: Truncated manuscript, fragments 1 -9

...most of all, The Incredible Adventures of See Thru Sam makes me feel old. It's in the quiet moments, perhaps not necessarily connected to Sam's melodramatic fantasy world, when he acts like an innocent teenager, trying to articulate the feelings of falling for the girl, or the fear of the bully. Emotions that I recognise but can never feel again, lost in maturity and experience.

The audience is predominantly made up of school pupils, arrayed in rows with a teacher at each end. They enjoy the bursts of naughty language and chuckle at the adults acting children. Sam's nemesis, his uncle Herbie, is played for laughs: the confrontations between the grieving Sam and his foster parent are presented both in real time and in silhouette, through Kim Beveridge's digital design, as a battle between comic book characters....

McKnight's script reveals his experience in pantomime: Sam's side-kick, Walrus, mugs gamely for all the world like a teenage Buttons...

... when the animation shows a scene - Violet's bedroom, the street outside Sam's school - the script has a bad habit of describing what is up there on the screen... less show or tell than show and tell...

...a version of the tragic structure described by Jean Anouilh, the inevitable conclusion clear from almost the very beginning...


...back to the problem of "the critical voice": my experience precludes me making a strong assessment of See Through Sam because it is not aimed at me...

Sam's perky good humour is gradually replaced by a more sinister alienation: whether this is a function of his grieving or some kind of personality disorder - the obsession with the colour green, initially part of his memory about his parents' death, is revealed as an earlier, inexplicable anxiety - is never quite clear...

... yet another twist in Random Accomplice's decade long journey through theatre: a play aimed more at teenagers... if Small Town was an adult bawdy romp, See Thru Sam transposes the broad humour into a tragedy...

...obvious research into superheroes, using the nuances of the Superman mythos to define the boundaries of Sam's experience. Indeed, Superman is a motif throughout, and Sam's geeky knowledge provides him with a few clues that help him understand his own experience...

Vile Magic... (And Eric's Cafe...)

This is a public apology to the always wonderful Niall Morris. As head of Subcity Radio, he has introduced a smooth new logo, made the first foray across to Edinburgh (broadcasting On The Fringe) and add an extra forty minutes to the end of this episode of The Vile Arts Radio Hour.

This apology is followed by a second apology to Eric Karoulla. Eric's debut interview, with the lovely Peter McMaster, is repeatedly interrupted by Vile, who was supposed to be off looking after his next guest, Vanessa Coffey. Before Eric even got to start the interview, Vile had bumped it back later in the programme, so he could talk to Nicholas Bone, who is the director of Magnetic North's Sex and God.

Perhaps I could apologise to Mr Bone for getting the name of the show wrong at one point. And to Ms Coffey for not recognising her from the show I had seen her in a week ago, the Promethean Fire Into Song.

While I might wish to apologise to all listeners for my tone of voice and persistant lack of research, I am specifically apologising for the length of this episode. But it is worth a complete listening. There's some really creative swearing on the Azaelia Bank's tune, and the exclusive track from Lou Prendergast is a rare chance to hear some reggae on the hour.

If I had done some research, I might not have been so surprised at the amount of stuff my dear friend Jer Reid is up to this week. Another apology...

And sneaked away at the end is a chat with Johnny McKnight and Julie Brown. The full version of this interview will appear on our Soundcloud very soon (as soon as I find My Producer Harry). In the meantime, The Adventures of See-Thru Sam is touring Scotland.


Listen here!


Do Not Feed The Trolls


It's no surprise that work of a professional quality is emerging from the National Theatre of Scotland's Exchange event - the driving force behind this annual jamboree of youth theatre, Simon Sharkey, insists that just because it is being made by young people, it doesn't need to be simplistic or safe. Do Not Feed The Trolls is the first of 2012 Exchange's performances to emerge outside of the festival: a controversial success, it hammers the cliched expectations placed on youth theatre by following the twin inspirations of comedian Stewart Lee and the fluid structure recognisable from the radical Belgian theatre that has had such a lasting impact on recent Scottish drama.

Appropriately for a show aimed at, and made by, young people, DNFTT is preoccupied by a recent phenomena. Internet banter, only five years ago concentrated in chat rooms and now transferred to the comment box on Facebook, has always had its darker contributors. Encouraged by the anonymity of the web, trolls post abusive comments. DNFTT is a sharp condemnation of these characters who exist only to tease and attack.

Far from being an overtly moralistic diatribe, the devised performance acknowledges that the line between trolling and sincere comment is thin: the cast admit their pleasure in watching accidents on YouTube, spreading rumours and winding each other up. In an instant, a victim can become a tormentor. While the troll is condemned, a clear connection is made between real world bullying and on-line skullduggery.


Theatre is pretty enthusiastic about tackling big questions these days - the proliferation of scripts about the net back in the Fringe 2010 might have reflected cultural change  but the disgust of the authors might have been fuelled as much by the threat from this relatively new medium as any moral high ground. DNFTT represents the thoughts of a generation raised with the net. They accept it as part of life, and even the verbal violence is simply another aspect of on-line activity. It is addressed and condemned, but not without an awareness of their own complicity.

Trolling is recognised in terms of a more general cultural attitude, that enjoys a bit of rough and tumble. Taking Stewart Lee's extended rant about "people falling over" - unlike Lee, the cast admit they like it - they connect popular comedy traditions with the contemporary taste for on-line aggression. The version seen at Exchange relied heavily on Lee's words, but drew fresh conclusions from his meditation on why that bloke out of Only Fools and Horses taking a tumble is so hilarious. Tragedy is played out as entertainment. It's unsurprising that the audience becomes inured against it.

It's in the honesty and energy that DNFTT comes up most impressive. Making drama about the net is difficult - it's a medium in its own right, that has a very different aesthetic to theatre. Wonderland tried it at the Fringe, and had the same preachy anxiety as the drama made by Linda La Plante in the early 2000s (although it didn't have La Plante's stunning ignorance of how a computer actually works). DNFTT consciously undermines its own moral message  - either it is hypocrital or simply too tough to maintain - and expresses a genuinely young but still intelligent attitude towards the way technology impacts on the individual and the community.


Macrobert, Sat 06 October 2012 - 13:00PM