Oh la, I did want a bad romance.

After the Lady Gaga debacle, you'd think I would have learnt that pop music doesn't live up to its hype. I went along to the SECC Hydro on Sunday night, optimistic that if Gaga didn't integrate the aesthetics of Jeff Koons, as per her tour image, and Marina

Abramovic, with whom she hangs, I could throw a massive temper tantrum and spend 500 hundred words exposing the empress' new clothes.

Sadly, it was just another pop arena show, made notable only by Gaga's pottymouth and predictable poses in various musical forms. She just managed to deaden the pop thrill of her singles, by having heavy duty slap bass dragging the beats down into the abyss of empty virtuosity and getting a few solos that sounded like they fell off the back of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Gaga does follow in the footsteps of David Bowie, in that she constantly changes her identity. Yet these changes are so frequent that they suggest not a fluid, open sense of a sensual self, but a panicking teenager who can't work out which mask to wear to the prom.

The only claims Gaga seems to have towards the edginess I thought she had came during her shouted interludes at the audience. It's funny how different her voice sounds when she is not singing - and she did have a moment or two when she had the vocal chops that Madonna has never mastered. Sadly, one of those moments was in the introduction to that one about The Edge of Glory, and it is a load of 1980s cod-rock bullshit.

Anyway - the shouted interludes made a great deal about how she was all for LGBTQ rights, and anyone in the audience who isn't is on the wrong side of history, and everyone in the audience agrees and if they don't then they can get out and... is it just me, or is this a colossal act of appropriation? And in a week when the Pope tried to force the Curia to accept homosexuality, making a big play for gay rights is... kinda acceptable and safe?

Unlike Gaga, I can still remember a time when Derek Jarman got more than pelters off the newspapers for doing a film about Edward II which played up his sexuality. I remember the homophobic headlines in The Sun. And I don't see them anymore. I see politicians falling over themselves to be inclusive. And when some clown (usually from UKip) decides to be homophobic, everyone shouts at them.

And then there was that bit when she was standing there in a bra and thong and shouted that her talent and her fans had helped her in the 'misogynistic music industry.' The only ironic moment in the whole thing...

I am obsessed with working out why certain genres work (like, rock seems to be based on a balance of aggressive and vulnerable sensibilities, the feminine and the masculine, if you will). I was hoping Gaga would have something to say about the nature of pop, but the music was a grinding mess of rock and electronics, and she seemed more interested in shouting naughty words than inciting anything like a conversation with the audience. 

The support act (not the first one, Breedlove, who was just out of place) Lady Starlight played techno that was exactly like the stuff I used to love in about 1994 - bleeping, relentless and sounding, frankly, well out of date. Starlight paused in her set to say how Glasgow had had many important musicians... 'but more importantly,' the crowd looked fabulous. That was probably a revelatory moment.

And it wasn't a rave, either. 

Five Things Lady Gaga Needs to Do To Be a Proper Performance Artist.

Because it is so difficult to define, anyone can claim to be a 'performance artist.' Applying Guffman's theories, everyone one is performing all the time, which makes it even easier for me to claim a lineage that includes Abramovic, Bausch and Franco B whenever I put on my hat and use the ATM.

Lady Gaga has demonstrated an interest in being more than a mere international pop star - as this loving article explains, she fancies being a live artist. Getting spit roasted on stage, and being covered in spew is a good start, but if Gaga wants to be taken seriously when applying for Buzzcut, she'll need to up her game.

1. Wander about in the scud

one for the ladies

The whole 'strutting about in your shreddies' thing is so 1963. Ever since the Lord Chamberlain got bored reading every play written in the UK, and suggesting changes along the lines of 'replace 'fucking hell' with 'blooming Nora',' even scripts include a bit of bedroom fun. Gaga spends a great deal of her time in outfits more suitable for the beach than the stage, but that just makes her a burlesque routine.

Even Miley Cyrus did the full monty, that time on the wrecking ball (a subtle attempt to illustrate the feminist concept that 'the master's tools won't dismantle the master's house'). If Gaga is serious about her desire to share the heritage of Yves Klein (who gave himself a heart attack when he watched a film of himself), nudity is the elementary stage. If she covered herself in gold paint and sat on a child's swing, she could call it a Franco B tribute.

Plus it would quash all those rumours that she has a penis.

2. Nail herself to a car
This one could be doubly effective: she could arrange for Ford to sponsor her tour, and finish the night off by being crucified on the bonnet of an old Cortina. Admittedly, getting nailed on a car is more common round the back of Tescos than on-stage at the Hydro, but the interaction of Christian imagery, self-harm and the commodification of art would send a message to those pretenders than Gaga means Dada.

Unlike pop videos, which rely on a montage of images and a suggestive narrative, performance art is often all about the visual moment. As per Franco B (above), the physical presence of the artist combines with an immediate semiotic mesh, and the suggestive use of piercing and motor-cars can mangle the sweet spot between sex and death. I am thinking it would be a symbol of Mother Earth being tortured by human's use of oil, maybe the symbolic death of the artist through mechanisation, the eternal conflict between the creative genius and the forces of capitalism.

Chris Burden's original version uses a Volkswagen, which gets extra points for evoking Nazism, probably, but fails on the grounds that the style looks dated. He might as well be wearing flairs.


3.Dress up as a swastika
The recent Captain America film reminded everyone that, in an ever changing geo-political climate, the Nazis are always the baddies. Despite Lemmy's attempt to buy up as much Third Reich Memorabilia as he can afford from his dwindling record sales, English speakers can still find true evil through wearing cheap monocles, Hugo Boss designed jackets and throwing 'schweinhund' and 'achtung'  into a sentence.

Actually, maybe there is a bigger conspiracy behind this. The real villains, probably the Masons, realised that dressing up in WWII fancy dress would make everyone think that a secret cabal of Germans was behind international terrorism. I expect Captain America III will clarify this.

One of the downsides of all this, though, is that they have to make special versions for German release. It is not allowed to represent a swastika in Germany. While I bet they made this law so they didn't have to watch all those American films about the War in which they are depicted as baddies, and I have problems with the explicit censorship - far-right sympathisers should tattoo the fucking thing on their foreheads so I can see them coming, or just carry a copy of The Daily Mail, it did lead to this brilliant art work.

Martin Kippenberger With the Best Will in the World I Can't see a Swastika 1984

Now: imagine Gaga's cheeky smile poking out of the top of this. And let the world's press have fun. Gaga oh la la! Then she could explain how brilliant Deepak Chopra is.

4. Do a Press Release that makes no sense
I won't pick out any names here - it is invidious to mention one live artist over another. However, writing gibberish, and thereby mystifying both process and product is as endemic to performance art as using the British libel laws is silence opposition is to wealthy celebrities. Gaga has an advantage here: not only did she do her dissertation on Damien Hurst, giving her a working knowledge of International Art English, she likes Deepak Chopra, who uses quantum physics to explain why not taking your medicine is a great idea.

Admittedly, unlike every other suggest, this would be a step down for the author of lines like Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin/I'm not lying I'm just stunnin' with my love-glue-gunning. But here's a suggestion for the release of the next single.

Gaga uses the language of romance to interrogate the function of music by calling to attention the displacement in time and location that occurs in its realm.

Moving from a structuralist account of desire in which positive words are awarded a semiotic meaning that structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, Gaga re-articulates the question of desire into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

To put it another way, she uses a lot of dirty chat to undermine the traditional romantic notion of love.

5.Stick a baseball bat up her arse

Sadly, this isn't me being unnecessarily violent, and it refers to an artist whom I rate pretty highly. Ron Athey explores the danger and violence implicit in the human body, using his own skin as a canvas and his fluids as paint, in a manner of speaking. Athey is a live artist, but he evokes a medieval aesthetic, echoing those pictures of saints with the added bonus of being staged in real life.

Admittedly, this is the real rough stuff - Athey isn't out to take prisoners. It has ensured that his work is not amenable to the mainstream - Athey won't be doing an Abromovic and mistake having a chat with a fan for a serious art work any time soon. Strangely, Athey's work is not offensive, beyond the visceral reaction he provokes. There is an element of compassion to his performances, and through his extremity comes a calm, which might be close to the spirituality that people like Madonna claim to have paid for. 

Athey, however, might be one step ahead. I think he is doing a Lady Gaga routine already.

On a final note, I think Gaga knows her options already. Her use of the keytar is clearly influenced by the boundary pushing influence of Bryony Kimmings and her poster for the Art Rave Tour looks like one of those things I slap up from press releases on Paint. And I know she'll be reading this and thinking how she can add me as dramaturg for the next tour. Since her last move was to hang out with Marina Abramovic, who was last vibrant around the time someone thought Ayds a good name for a slimming tablet, I'll be by the phone.

Five More reasons that the Fringe is Crap

6: Lady Gaga is not performing

After the success of my previous post - quite clearly, all this hard work to develop new forms of critique could have been more productively spent on lists of My Little Pony  related stories - I am back with more Vile Bile. Thank you to Kate Stannard for suggesting these: but let's cut straight to the Hate!

1. Cost
It is not cheap. The escalating cost of theatre in the Fringe means that a good day out with three or four shows will cost a couple of ponies - you could get half a good meal at an Eric Clapton concert for that.

For a single show, it's not too bad - but why go to the Fringe to see one show? The whole point is to see tons of stuff, to compare and contrast. The price system plugs into that problem of different sorts of shows (community, student, professional) not being clearly delineated. Flinging a Pavarotti at an accomplished South African company doing a heist thriller with ironic cultural undertones (Silent Voice) is one thing, a couple of double nuggets in the bucket for The Creative Martyrs is a fair return. But splashing out a pinky and ending up at three versions Macbeth by a school companies is a liability.

2. Ethics
It's a bit rich for a critic to bang on about integrity - I refuse to go to shows if I have to pay - but Kate pointed out that some companies compromise their artistic integrity to get audiences. It is time for the bum story.

Once upon a time, there was a critic - we'll call him Margaret - who went to see a student production of Artaud-based antics. He ought to have known better, but he fancied finding out how Artaud, a real theatre wild-man, might translate into the modern idiom. 

On the whole, he found the sight of a woman in a naughty nurse outfit, a man dressed as a priest and another as a centurion pretty hilarious. Other audience members didn't, and walked out across the stage, shouting that Artaud would be turning in his grave. But the critic - let's call him SpinOza - stayed on.

There was this one bit where the naughty nurse laid down right in front of the critic - his name is Criticulous - and kicked her legs in the air, exposing her bum. The critic got a little distracted by this and cast his eyes upon the bottom.

His thoughts, which weren't really being held by the performance, pondered the ethics of the situation. Did the young performer recognise how she was exposing herself? Was she aware of the thin line between exploitation and challenging sexual normativity? Does an audience member have the right not to be presented with a bare bum, whether that bum is monstrous or attractive? It was a tough series of questions, and the critic got very involved in considering them.

Suddenly, he heard laughter from across the stage. He looked up, thinking that something funny was happening in the Artaud antics again. Sadly, the audience were pissing themselves at the sight of the critic staring at the actor's bum. 

Two stars.

3. Science
While this won't apply to every show that uses scientific theory as a theme or narrative, there is a tremendous amount of performance that mistakes a poor understanding of natural selection, or the Higgs Particle, as a signifier of intelligence. If I wanted to learn about relativity, I'd ask a physicist, not a playwright or actor.

This does imitate a Facebook trend: people who share 'I f-ing love science' memes. Science does enrich our lives, and a working knowledge of the correct meaning of 'theory and hypothesis,' 'experiment' and the difference between 'natural selection' and 'evolution' would help everyone (not least so that I don't mock you for not recognising the last entry). But vague gestures towards quantum theory in a version of The Antigone or hour long rambles about how cool technology is does not move theatre into new territory.

4. Three Weeks
It is inevitable that a critic will bemoan Three Weeks, the student review magazine. I used to do it myself - on one occasion, I took a photograph of some friends in a creche and tagged it The Three Weeks Editorial Team in Their Office. I was being a snide ass.

It is that sort of complaint - that Three Weeks or Broadway Baby aren't proper critics - that I hate. Of course they aren't proper critics: they are enthusiastic students trying to learn how to write criticism. If they get it wrong, so do the paid critics. If their grammar is a little idiosyncratic, it's not worse than wikipedia entries on The X-Men.

These reviews are a place where people can learn, and they provide a service to those companies who can't afford a PR by looking at everything indiscriminately. While anyone who thinks that a Three Weeks review is better than mine is wrong (in a relativistic way, that is), they do provide another subjective opinion on theatre, encouraging the debate, offering new voices and allowing students to experience the full horror of working in the industry.

5. Shakespeare
Like everyone else who runs out of ideas, I just go with Shakespeare. Again.

Five Reasons why The Edinburgh Fringe is Crap

Every year, the Fringe Society announces that it is now bigger and better. Better seems to mean that there are more shows so, tautology aside, the Fringe - which was started off, to quote wikipedia, 'when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival in 1947' to provide an alternative to the mainstream productions - the Fringe is now 'the world's biggest arts festival.' So instead of being the place where the obscure, the challenging or the experimental can happen, it's the aesthetic equivalent of a student disco on a Friday night. The beats are predictable, the outfits almost fashionable and the only thing that anyone cares about is being pissed or picked up.

Of course, I don't really mean it. But I am going for some click-bait. So here's my handy guide to the Fringe's utter crapness.

1. 

Star ratings are more important than critical assessment.

A few years back there was a campaign to address the problems of 'star inflation' (critics marking shows up to get attention). Since one of the leaders in this campaign puts has posters for their shows that assign over 40% of the space to previous star ratings, it was lucky that it never went beyond Facebook moaning. 

But it does highlight a particular problem. There are so many publications, and so many reviews, that is difficult to tell what the ratings mean these days. One publication now marks out of seven stars, meaning that the former gold standard of five stars is as trustworthy as Tony Blair's opinions on the Middle East. The most successful business in Edinburgh during August is printing, as companies put in bulk orders for sheets covered in stars. 

The downside is, no-one reads the reviews. I might as well replace my finely crafted opinions with guest slots from rubbish villains from comics.

2.

Student Companies don't distinguish themselves from professional companies.

I love drama by young people, but I don't want to critique it in the same way as I do professional companies. It has an entirely different set of intentions. I've discussed this elsewhere, but the short version is that, last year, I saw a few student companies whose advertising suggested that they were the next step down from the RSC. Watching these works suggested all sorts of ways that I could critique their work - to their advantage - but I had to give them the same sort of review I would give to the RSC. I just hope I didn't destroy anyone's ambitions: the lesson is: don't pretend to be something you cannot be.

3.

There is too much comedy.

I don't mean in the comedy festival. I mean in the theatre section. The idea that theatre ought to be funny works up to a point. That point is when actors mistake getting a laugh for connecting with the audience. 

4.

There is too much Shakespeare.

If you need me to justify this... you don't actually go to the theatre. 

5.

Radical interpretations one year become the establishment the next.

Yep, from content to form, once an idea is given a Fringe First, expect it to come back in spades the next, and be agitating for its own section the year after. This refers especially to: gender swap versions of Shakespeare; feminist versions of Shakespeare; confessions of sexual failure or excess; lectures about science; comedians doing theatre (thank you Mark Thomas). This year, a Fringe First will go to a play about sex work. I have fifty quid on it down at Ladbrokes. Next year, the Fringe Society will have a workshop called From Pro to Professional: Making Your Sex Work work for Your Script.

Disclaimer: I just made this all up. I love the Fringe really. Mind you, I think all these points are worth debate. Try to show you've read the whole piece, trolls, by not making an ad hominem argument about my cynicism. I am actually being cynical about cynicism, see?

Last Chance Saloon presents DRACULA: SEX, SUCKING & STARDOM

I recently saw Philip Glass performing his soundtrack to the classic Dracula film - the one that is all the more scary because it looks like an documentary - and didn't like it. I love Philip Glass, and was really excited at watching him perform. The thing was, it just felt like Glass had decided that his style of minimalism was bigger than the film, and slapped some generic riffs over the poignant, the kitsch and the frightening scenes. I didn't shit my pants, which is what I would have expected. Next time, they ought to let Kode9 have a pop at it. I bet he knows how to pitch a Brown Night. 


However, Last Chance Saloon are probably not looking for bowel leakage in their version of Dracula. Apparently, their Count loves some Lloyd Weber. So I won't be weeping when he gets the Big Stake in the end. Since I have no idea about musicals, and there's some Lady Gaga jokes too, I sat back and let the company tell me about it.


What will make your show stand out at the Fringe in 2012?

Three hunky men, a very liberal take on Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, and lots of blood. 

How would you describe the piece - what sort of theatre is it, and what inspired the content?

We make what we like to call Guilty Pleasure Theatre, that is, theatre that's sole purpose is to put a smile on your face. Last Chance Saloon aren't here to educate you- we want the audience to forget about their woes and their bad day at work, and indulge in a ruddy good laugh.

Dracula is the perfect story for the kind of theatre we make, with an instantly recognisable hero we could easily parody. He's a classic villain but we see him as a bit lonely, misunderstood and rather camp! Poor Old Count, in our version he's a secret Michael Buble groupie and a wannabe West End star!  Vampires are having a real moment, thanks toTwilight et al, and we hope our show will appeal both to Robert Pattison fans- and to those seeking an antidote to vampires that sparkle.  

How long have you been working in theatre, and are there any highlights of your career so far?

We spent 3 years at Drama School together and graduated 7 years ago. The highlight of my career was definitely putting on Dracula: Sex, Sucking & Stardom at The Hen & Chickens. It was quite unlike anything we'd done previously and we had no idea how it would turn out, but the pride you get from producing your own work, playing to packed houses and receiving fantastic feedback from people who you trust cannot be matched. 

Why did you decide to come to the Fringe?

As an actor in the industry you quickly realise how much of a small cog in the machine you are and how little control you have over your lives. Forming Last Chance Saloon and writing shows  for ourselves was a way of wrestling back the creative control and allowing us to do what we set out to do at the start of our acting careers, namely, perform work we believe in with people we respect.

Paradise in the Vault 
4 & 5 Aug, 9.20pm; 6 – 27 Aug, 8.40pm (No shows 13, 20)