I am thinking about Red Bastard

Since Davis was in at the beginning of the recent rise in the success of clowning at the Fringe, he is sensitive to the possibilities that the genre allow, as he observes: ‘there is a spectrum: some people are really about the naive and the vulnerable, and allowing the audience to laugh at them; some people range to the other end, laughing at the audience’s stupidity.'

'In the last show, the target was on the audience, and Red Bastard is playing that role again but there is also some stuff where I open up my vulnerability. I’ll be wafting between pure bouffon and pure clown in this show.’

Come Dramaturgy With Me: Red Bastard @ Edfringe 2017

Red Bastard’s new show ‘Come Lie With Me’ will be at the Pleasance Courtyard – Two for the month of August for tickets go to www.edfringe.com

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Well, they say- write what you know.  So, I thought, "What do I know?"  Love, Lies, Truth, Freedom and Death.    So I'll make a show about that.   

Actually I was having a conversation with Richard Gadd. About what I wanted to make.  At first I thought It was going to be a clown show

about having an affair with the audience, but I soon realized, I was not getting into the darker side of it.  Lies and cheating.  That's where I wanted to go.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

Hell yeah.   Well, It could be.  If you make the space for it.  Can we get people to come to those shows?  There are these outrageous and passionately angry town halls in America over healthcare. 

It would be so interesting to see people as

passionate at a theatre show.  Didn't they used to riot over the theatre?  Whatever happened to that?

How did you become interested in making performance?

When I was in school, a Drama teacher said, you should try this improvised duet competition.  I was given a topic and a short amount of time to make a 5-7 minute play. 

Enough time that it was necessary to improvise most of it.  To my surprise, I was VERY good at it.  Better than I had ever been at anything in my life.  In a way, I'm still doing the same thing.  Some structure and improvising in between.  It's my favourite form.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

I wish I had a patented formula.  I don't.  This time I worked with Aitor Basauri, from SpyMonkey.  In general I find my theme, then write and improvise around it.  Eventually I bring in a director who provokes me and I videotape everything. 

It all gets transcribed.  I do the humiliating work of removing the 90% of absolute shit that I created.  I mean, if you don't like the show I made, you should see the show I didn’t' make!   I'm looking for the elusive "That's brilliant."    I can't tell you the amount of times I found it and then realized it's shit.  Like fool's gold. 

But then, I have to do the show.  The show isn't the show until the audience is there.  This show is new.  So- it won't be as polished as the original Red Bastard.  I'll be discovering it with the audience, which is an exciting thing.

Does the show fit with your usual

productions?

Well, I have a little more production value in this one than others. But you know, It's Edinburgh, so it can't be too complicated. 

There'll be dancing and musical instrument and film and quick changes.  It's a lot for me.  My last show fit into a duffle bag!

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Possibility.  Empathy.  Nervousness, laughter. 

Maybe some people will be inspired to be more free with their partners.  Or to communicate more.    

The show asks how free is your love? 

We converse around the themes of monogamy and non-monogamy.  Why and how people "cheat" and what cheating is. .

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

That's a great question.  I'm going to ask that question before I do my next creation.  I don't think I considered any strategies.  Actually-  This was tricky.  Because You're dealing with love and sex-  It's much more dangerous, I think to involve people. 

So I found I am much more gentle with this show than the previous.  Because it's even more dangerous.    Love is Sacred.  The best and worst moments of your life probably revolved around moments of love and sex.

I put words in the mind of Red Bastard

He's Such A BASTARD...

Remember July 2013? Before Red Bastard was a Fringe hit? When only one theatre critic knew what was about to happen? 

Nowadays, I guess RB is too famous to interview... but here is that interview, which ended up as The List's first festival cover article, in full...

When i saw you back at the surge festival, my mind was blown by the mix of aggressive physical theatre and hardcore philosophical concepts... what process led you to this combination?

Well, much of my formative life as an artist was spent in New York City. It's a tough town. You get angry. You get smart. Red Bastard is a product of compression. Press enough dirty coal together and eventually you'll get a cool, hard diamond- razor sharp. The philosophical concepts are universal. They are things I wondered about. Is it possible for me to be who I wan? Why am I so scared? Where does authority come from?


Your show probably isn't for the faint of heart - are you planning to get the audience involved in the action this time? and will you be taking any of the show to the streets?

The audience IS the action in my show. You will be intricately and intimately involved. But do not fear being destroyed. You may feel you were taken apart. But you will be brought back from the underworld with a new awareness, in one piece. Those who do not follow the chaotic rules of my realm will be thrown out on their arse (with grace and charm of course). It's possible you may see me prowling around in George Square. Come say hello. There's no avoiding our meeting.

I am slightly overdosing on lecoq this year - probably because i am a lazy minded writer who fancies seeing whether he can get any cheap gags in his headlines. what is your relationship to the French School?

I studied with people who taught at Lecoq. Ron and Ludvika Popenhagen and Philippe Gaulier. I also studied with Sue Morrison, who did not go to Lecoq, but was a student of Gaulier and Richard Pochinko- a Canadian who also attended the school and went on to combine the European Lecoq style with Native American clowning practices.


Are there any shows you feel share your ethos? is your work especially resonant of a NY style, for example?

I suppose I am a collection of my experiences. But no show, is quite like my show. In general I am told that it is unique. It is a bouffon show, but I am solo- rather than part of a pack, which makes it unusual.

 I tell jokes, like a standup might, but I wear a grotesque body. I am not your typical, nice and impotent clown- rather I am dangerous and play with the energies of anger, criticism and sex. The show is not particularly political, and yet it will effect how you govern your life. Though not a dancer, I move with grace and sensuality. You'll find Red Bastard registered in the comedy section and yet some audiences might be moved to tears. You must experience it to define it.

Can you briefly explain the difference between a chickenshit and a bastard?

Some days there is no distinction ;) Red Bastard IS you. He bounces around in the collective unconscious, penetrating the files of your not-so-hidden passions. His swimming pool- filled with your dirty secrets. His flesh- woven of your dreams and disappointments. In moments of ecstasy, rage, jubilation or enlightenment- you know what it is to be a Bastard. All else is chickenshit.

The Glasgow School: Methodology

Having worked as a critic for the past decade, I have developed an ad hoc methodology for my engagement with performance. Because ‘popular criticism’ (that is, criticism intended for publication in local, national and online magazines and newspapers) does not have the same disciplines as academic writing - there is no need to substantiate opinions with direct references to existing texts, for example - it is less systematic and has been developed in response to the tasks of interviewing, reviewing and discussing in the public domain, usually to a tight deadline.

I have named this process Radical Subjectivity, signifying that my responses are based on a root recognition of the partiality of my personality. It insists that any particular opinion or comment - including apparently factual ones about the content of an artwork - emerge through the prism of the critic’s experience and, as such, are only provisional responses.


This strategy was influenced by the vigorous debates around the role of criticism in the age of the internet: in the context of film, both Mark Kermode and Mark Cousins have suggested that new styles and writers will emerge not through traditional publications but through the ‘blogosphere’, whilst simultaneously emphasising the importance of an informed opinion. Kermode defines the role of the critic clearly.

One of the things I did in The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex was attempt to do a definition of what a good review is… the basic things were: to describe the film adequately. You have to know where the film comes from and contextualise it properly. You have to assess it on its own terms – if it’s a comedy, did you laugh? And then beyond that, there is your reaction to it, that which you cannot change or be anything other than honest about. The worst thing you can do is attempt to second guess the audience because: a) you’ll always get it wrong; and b) you’ll regret it. It’s much better to be honestly, completely wrong than to be dishonestly closer to being ‘right’.

Radical subjectivity follows Kermode’s injunction to be honest, but baulks at the possibility that a critic can be ‘completely wrong.’ A review might be contentious, or in a minority, but if the critic has ‘assess(ed) it on its own terms,’ and been honest, it is still a valuable part of the ongoing discussions about the art. Or, Mark Cousins puts it ‘Karl Popper said, to paraphrase, ‘If I'm wrong, I'm right.’To borrow a term from theology, criticism becomes part of a ‘hermeneutical spiral,’ the ongoing discussion of an event that never reaches a conclusion, but recontextualises the event at different points in time and space.

The primary justification for criticism as a process rather than a product comes from Red Bastard’s invitation to his audience to realise that most of a performance’s meaning happens not on stage but in their heads. He concludes that if they don't like his show, it is their fault (Edinburgh 2013), but this echoes both Wolfgang Iser’s interest in the way that art ‘manifests itself to the consciousness of the reader in the time of the act of reader’ (Fortier p90) and reader-response theory, considered in Gerald Rabkin’s Is There A Text On this Stage? when he approaches dissident interpretations of Arthur Miller’s Crucible (Fortier, p91).

Iser (ed. Counsell and Wolf, 2001: p180) appears to be pessimistic

about the possibility of finding any definitive answer: for him, the impossibility of determining objective truth ensures that all analysis becomes an analysis of perceptions. It is this warning that has encouraged the first stage of my research: rather than attempt to look at the performances as texts, I decided to invite artists and ‘stakeholders’ in theatre to express their opinions of their relationship to Glasgow.

How Many Bastards?

For many years, The VileArts has pondered star ratings. There was one year at the Fringe where a big Facebook group kicked off, with many artists complaining about the proliferation of stars all over posters. These artists couldn't actually bring themselves to stop putting stars on their posters.

So the next year, one newspaper started awarding marks out of seven stars (completely fucking the system that made five stars 'the best thing in the world ever') while I suggested a rating system based on the Fibonacci sequence. Although this later was highly practical, since it went into infinity AND  had two one star positions, I was ignored.

However, a genius came up with a solution: step forth Eve Nicol and your cat picture reviews. Funny, succinct AND SUCCESSFUL, it ought to have destroyed the 250 word review (the first sentence being the only one anyone reads) and the whole edifice of ratings.

It didn't, so I am stealing the concept. Pending his permission, I am going to use a picture of Red Bastard to rate shows this year.

There is a logic for this: I regard Red Bastard as providing a gold standard for performance. I am not saying his show is perfect (although deconstructing it to find the imperfections would challenge me to assess my own identity, since I am so bound up with adoring his work), but in terms of doing the things that I want theatre to do (make me laugh, challenge my intellect, effect real change and show me a willy), it scores highly. Plus, his photos work better than mere adjectives as semiotic signifiers of qualitative meaning.

Of course, it won't mean that Red Bastard supports my ratings. But to show you how it works, here are my Red Bastard reviews for the past few shows that I have seen.

NDT2 @ EFT

(Contemporary choreography from Europe, including tunes from Phil Glass).

A Small Prometheus @ Tramway

(Contemporary choreography from Australia, including tunes from Robin Fox).

 The People Show @ CCA

(Devised performance from the UK, including tunes on a flute).

I put words in the mouth of Red Bastard.... his looks, my words

Credit_Andy_Phillipson

Get REDy or LEDDY for the Fringe

Lecoq is not Mocked

The past couple of years at the Fringe have seen a resurgence of physical theatre companies winning awards and kicking it at the box office. I say resurgence, but physical theatre has been a Big Deal since the 1990s in the UK, when DV8 and Frantic Assembly renegotiated the relationship between words and movement.

The name that keeps coming up is Lecoq: Clout were trained there, Red Bastard references him and Gecko takes their cues from his school. By the time I get around to defining physical theatre, it'll have probably been replaced by another phrase (look at the fun I have trying to decide whether it ought to be 'live' or 'performance' art). Fortunately, I can get closer to determining what Lecoq signifies (because one of my lecturers wrote a book about it. Hopefully, they won't be scouring the net to find lazy critics ripping off their ideas).

Pinning down the nature of any school of theatre is notoriously hard: worse in the case of Lecoq, because he is a rare example of a teacher rather than a director. His name is known more for the pupils (Complicite et al) who have gone onto become champions of his approach - even though that approach is often explained in vague terms.

Simon Murray (Jacque Lecoq, Routledge) offers three qualities that are distinctive to the Lecoq technique: disponibilite, le jeu, complicite. He draws a line between the three: disponibilite is the openness of the performer that allows le jeu (play), which lead to the complicite between performers and between performers and audience. There's a lot more detail - my attempts to check the words' meanings in the dictionary wasn't that helpful - but these are the foundation of a Lecoq performance and the object of the training.

Inevitably, there's another aspect of the training that intrigues me: the auto-cours. In response to the 1968 riots in Paris, when his students demanded that they be allowed to teach themselves, Lecoq introduced this: an hour a day, making work for performance, in which the students taught each other. The shows are put on and assessed.

While the three qualities might be the object of the education, I admire the auto-cours as a transferable model of teaching. It's very clear how it works and, unlike the three qualities, doesn't allow for vague allusions to a metaphysical idea. It's simple. It combines the freedom of self-learning and the rigour of public assessment.

From now on, that's what I am going to think about when I hear Lecoq: a combination of freedom and rigour, the balance between teaching and autodidacticism. Oh yeah: and some cool clowning thrown in, hopefully with buffoons.

Red Bastard (1)

I am pinning my colours to the mast, and they are the colour of blood and desire. Red Bastard is the most important artist working in the Fringe this year. That's not to say that there aren't shows other people would enjoy more, or are as good. But as someone who spends his life in the business of criticism, a performance that is a critique of laziness and fear is going to press my buttons. And I don't usually take pleasure in being the submissive.

I've mentioned in the past how I like the Fringe because it is a rare chance for a review to actually make a difference - I think that is naive, as the success of a performance depends more on word of mouth, or celebrity, or the weather than my star rating. I really like the Fringe because it might start off some interesting conversations. There was a half-way decent effort last year with a Facebook group about star ratings - although the hypocrisy of those who bemoaned it while plastering their posters with ratings was hilarious. Now that we have twitter and bulletin boards, the conversations are littering the internet like bacon sandwich wrappers around the Royal Mile.

Red Bastard is going to be the foundation of any conversations I have. He points out, pretty clearly, that the worth of the show is not what goes on in the front, but what happens in the mind of the audience. It's the commitment of the spectator that makes the quality shine. Other factors - like whether the guy leaping about in the big suit has any talent - are secondary. No screaming - just remember: it's all in your head.

The conversation he provokes is something about... where does theatre happen, and how does it relate to reality. He has a great sequence where he asks whether the audience would prefer it if he pretended that they weren't there - and perhaps he ought to pretend to be someone he isn't. The idea of playing is repulsive to him - although he toys with emotions, and the persona is hardly the man who came on my radio show and spoke so movingly of his art.

There are many actors in the Fringe: if they'd like to see what their craft is capable of doing, check him out (before he checks you out. You don't want a six foot eight man in a jumpsuit watching from the wings). If you want to change your life, see him (although last time this didn't end so well for me...).






The only reason not to indulge Red Bastard is if you are not feeling brave enough.

Fringe Blather

We last left Vile lost in the forest. Appropriately, he realises this post at the time he is lost in the Fringe. It's been a week, and he is wandering somewhere around Edinburgh, pretending he is Red Bastard. He is currently trying to convince random actors that they ought to enrol in Lecoq, or waste their lives 'pretending to be someone they are not.'

He's been heard making the usual complaints. The first one is that the Fringe is full of shows that are too long. In the past, he has questioned the impact of the Fringe on the length of plays ('artists think of the Fringe and make everything run at just under an hour, the needs of the narrative be damned.'). This year, he's worried that some companies are trying to be too generous, extending the action by half an hour when they have a good forty minutes worth of action. Most notably, Omega suffers from this. It has a series of amazing circus style routines, topped off by an MC who is just bellowing and making it run slow.

Boredom isn't a problem in theatre - there are shows where the bloody-mindedness of the director, making the audience pay attention is part of the point. Vile is trying to catch up with Peter Higgs, reckoning that the man who thought of the particle that defines the universe will probably be able to write the equation that shows the relationship between content and running time. Vile's first thoughts are along the lines of: if (value of content) is less than (length of show) then this equals Audience(bored). Invert the values and you get Audience(Confused).

To be honest, he is only waiting to announce that tomorrow, on Fresh Air, he has Red Bastard as his guest. Listen in: he has a confession to make...