Made In China

After The Fringe - when The Traverse becomes a safe bet for a good show and  a good benchmark of Scotland's theatrical health - the Autumn Season at the place for new writing is building up a strong profile. There's Orla O'Loughlin's debut production as artistic director, the annual dance special and, coming in November, We Hope That You’re Happy (Why Would We Lie?). Promoted by the BAC - the same people who put artists in sheds at Latitude a few years ago, and are supporting Peter McMaster.  

The company Made in China are a duo: one playwright, one live artist. The perennial tension between these two schools of performance - one's established, traditional and often safe, the other's experimental, challenging and often dangerous - has moved from being an epic blockbuster battle between Good and Evil towards a zany buddy movie where the two art forms find out that they are not so different after all.

We Hope That You’re Happy (Why Would We Lie?) does engage with some of the themes implied by the company's name: the two characters grapple with information's hyperactivity in this period of late consumerism, backed up by some funky moves, a great deal of beer and an idiosyncratic understanding of what constitutes friendship. Tim Cowbury - he's the playwright - was kind enough to be tracked down and be asked a series of increasingly absurd questions.


GKV:  To be honest, I had a wee bit of a shock when I saw the name of the company: I've spent a bit of time lately thinking about my politics - forced on me by the boycott of Israeli dance company Batsheva during the Fringe - and "Made in China" made me worried that this was another example of how British artists have been seduced by the generosity of the Chinese government (artists I really respect have been over there,making work, without even an appropriate questioning of the morality). Then again, I believe art overcomes politics, so I just get confused... Where did the company get the name?

Tim Cowbury: Haha - no, we've had no dealings with the Chinese government whatsoever, so far. We're still waiting for their call. The name is a comment on global consumerism, which most or all of our shows engage with in various ways. 

It was inspired by a teacher of mine at Goldsmiths (playwright Fin Kennedy) who in passing, one day, talked about the strangeness of living in a society that produces nothing tangible, only ideas and illusions (marketing, advertising, stock trading,endless reports and commentaries and consultations et c et c). Everything tangible is made in China, and is deliberately perishable (inbuilt obsolescence - if you get 5 years out of a laptop it's a minor miracle) designed to be consumed, used up, expended, and replaced by the next the purchase. 

We arrived at the name because all of my suggestions were about people coming together, sharing and loving, community, and all of Jess' (Jessica Latowicki - she's the live artist) were about breaking and smashing stuff. Made In China was the only one we both kind of liked. It seems to be quite a neat way to encapsulate the strange times we live in.

GKV: I have quite often emphasised my resistance to the script as the foundation of theatre, but you are known as a script writer... The company is a collaboration with a Live Artist, however, which makes me happy. What encouraged you to connect with a live artist, and how would you describe the play between these two models of theatre?

TC: I've also always had a resistance to the script as the foundation of theatre. This has made being a playwright torturous at times! But my conviction that theatre can be more - and more honest - than it tended to be every time I went to see 'new writing' meant I was very open to working with Jess. 

Our collaboration forced me to do things differently and educated me about alternative approaches to making shows. The play between playwriting and live art that occurs in our work happens by dint of us both being open to anything that will work from an audience's point of view. When we work this really is our only focus. We don't care about what you're meant to do according to the rules of this or that mode or genre of performance. 

Each show makes its own rules. My starting point is words because that's what I know, but it's fragments of text rather than finished scripts or scenes. Jess' starting point is lying on the floor of a rehearsal room listening to music and thinking and coming up with visual, physical, sound and design elements (a lot more productive than it may sound!). We put our specific skills together, butt in on each others' jobs, and try and come up with a show that will be enjoyable and thought-provoking in equal measure, for people who like Live Art and people who like plays but most importantly for people who don't really like or know about either.

GKV: You've been compared to Forced Entertainment - a wonderful thing  for any potential audiences who already know about alternative theatre, but a bit of a concern for me, as it might mean that you intend to make one good work every three years, and rest on your laurels before descending into some rather ugly social cynicism. My antagonism to FE aside (which is based on being blown away by them once, then disappointed when they are less than perfect, but I do get excited when they come to town), do you feel any affinity with them - are there any themes or approaches that you share, or is this another example of a critic using a short-hand to describe you?

TC: We both like Forced Entertainment and they are a reference point for us as makers. Tim Etchell's Certain Fragments was one of the most exciting things I read as I was becoming a writer. They talk about getting stuck and in this situation wandering around the city asking why the things they see aren't in their show.

Lots of the elements they work with - for example recorded pop music, apparent anarchy that's actually very controlled, rules governing the show that are akin to the arbitrary rules of children's games, extremely dry delivery (I call it anti-acting but of course it's actually a really difficult and rare skill in performers - definitely turn up in our shows.

But I've only seen FE's last two shows, and had very different responses and enjoyment levels in them. They seem sometimes quite interested in pissing audience members off, testing their patience, taking huge risks that perhaps jeopardise accessibility. We're less keen to walk this particular tightrope: we're suckers for always trying to give our audiences a really good time.

GKV: Hmm, I might be coming across as a bit cynical agajn, there. I apologise for that... as far as this production goes, you have two characters on stage, who are in what I might call an ambiguous friendship. Is this work in the fine tradition of autobiographical performance, or are the characters purely fictional?

TC: It's a mixture of both: when we make shows we all talk lots about our own lives, experience, and then totally mess with the truths that emerge, mixing them with complete fiction, whatever makes a good story or show and fits with the rules and world of it. 

We want to tell stories, and autobiography is a good starting point for making these up. The ambiguity that comes out of this helps us make our points, or rather, helps us not to just make points that we neatly wrap up for the audience so they can take them away and put them on the mantelpiece  but ones that are all messy and spill out of their hands and all over their clothes and stay with them for days because they're provocations and questions, not answers. 

GKV: I noticed you are hitting Exeter Phoenix later in the tour: whenever I go to Devon, I take my mum to the Phoenix to try and show her what sort of performance I like. Now, she's a ballet teacher, who likes a bit of Shakespeare but finds Beckett a bit miserable... that said, last time we went to the Phoenix it was for Richard Dedomenici, which ended up with her in bar, swapping tales and probably wishing he was her son rather than me (this adventure is described on-line under the headline "My Mum's Favourite Live Artist"). 

Getting to my question, with slightly less of my Freudian slip showing, if I happen to be in Devon at the end of the month, do you think my mother would enjoy the show?

We love Richard Dedomenici. He never remembers me because he has a condition that stops him recognising faces, but he remembers Jess because of her distinctive foghorn voice. He even came to her birthday once.

Definitely bring your mum to the show in Exeter. If you're okay with it, Christopher Brett Bailey, collaborator and performer in We Hope That You're Happy... will gladly be her surrogate son for the night. He loves shit like that, is very charming. And he looks twelve. Generally mums like our work, but no two mums are alike - so no promises.

Back to the content - one of the topics under study is consumerism. Something that bothers me - and I am holding critics as responsible for this as the performers - is that theatre seems to have become something of a consumerist paradise: we've talking about investment instead of funding in Scotland, and the review has increasing become a mere statement of whether a particular work of art is a good "purchase". 

I don't really reject this as one way to experience the arts - I am on the left, roughly, but lack the gumption to hold consistent political opinions - and it might be the most effective way for artists to create their work but I have doubts about its impact on creativity. 

How does consumerism influence the content of the show, and does it affect the process of making and touring work?

The show is about how we consume experiences, things we see, as well as products and food and booze (WHTYH features beer, ice-cream, ketchup, popcorn) and how this is problematic and bizarre. How it's unavoidable in the society we live in, where consumerism has been fetishised to the point that it has infiltrated areas of our lives (for example, watching news - clicking and flicking through videos and channels and articles broadcasting far-away tragedies) that we personally don't think should have anything to do with the act of consuming.

Theatre/performance is interesting in relation to consumerism: one of the reasons I make shows, write, is that I don't think you can consume experiences, art. This is one of the things that makes it valuable, or actually - invaluable. It's exists outside of the rules of the market.

But yes of course, it's forced to try and fit itself into the market, sell tickets, make a living for artists, producers, box office staff et c. We made WHTYH for free because no one was offering us any money, even really any rehearsal space, to make it. We're trying now to get paid something close to a living wage for creating and touring shows. Otherwise, it's not really sustainable. 

I've heard there's a book about art in relation to worth, value. I think it's centred around the idea that the exchange that happens between art and public is more like the giving of a gift than a monetary transaction, and I think I agree with this idea. But sadly, or realistically, we live in a world where someone still has to pay for the gift or pay the artist enough to make rent each month. With which I conclude, thank gawd for the Arts Council despite the Tories best efforts to curtail it.

UK Tour 8-30 November 2012 

Edinburgh, (8-10 Nov), Hull (17 Nov), Coventry (21-22 Nov), Sheffield (23-24 Nov), Exeter (27 Nov), Chichester (29 Nov) and Manchester (30 Nov).

Made In China is the collaborative work of British playwright Tim Cowbury and American live artist Jessica Latowicki, who met at Goldsmiths in 2009. Tim’s plays have been staged at Soho Theatre, the Bush, Old Vic, Public Theater (New York), New Wolsey and Tristan Bates Theatre. Jessica’s work has been seen at BAC, ICA, Shunt and Brick Box. She has recently collaborated with Uninvited Guests (John Martin Exhibit, Tate Britain), Bryony Kimmings (Roundhouse) and Louise Mari and Nigel Barrett (Shunt, Forest Fringe).