The Glasgow School: artists reply iii: Louise Quinn

photo credit: tommy ga ken wan

It is clearly not enough for A Band Called Quinn to have completed a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe - and getting an enthusiastic review from The List's wonderful Lorna Irvine (a member of the Justice League of Critics and, therefore, to be trusted implicitly). Reworking a play about the oppressions of the theatre industry as a rumination on the inherent tyranny of the pop music machine was clearly too easy as well: Louise Quinn had time to respond to my questions about Glasgow performance that is a reminder of how involved the band have been in the inclusion of rock'n'roll on the stage.

Are there any aspects of your own work or practice that you feel are defined by Glasgow? If so, what are they and how would you describe Glasgow's influence?

I think the dark humour present in our work is definitely influenced by living & growing up in Glasgow. Fifteen years working for the late, great Ian Smith of Glasgow based surrealist interventionist company Mischief La bas has had a huge influence on our work. 

As this work goes on, there is going to be much consideration of Mr Smith's contribution. Thank you, Louise for being the first to mention him... given the sort of antics Mischief got up to, I ought to ask which costumes you ended up wearing....

Working for Mischief informed the creation of Club Tromolo; a night of wonky cabaret with a host of surreal characters including Jazz Badger (a badger playing Jazz) & The Govan Seer (a psychic from Govan). Diane Torr was a regular at Club Tromolo & we were introduced to Diane through her involvement with Mischief La bas. 

I used to go to Club Tromolo, and love it: I went because I had heard Diane Torr was involved, but after a night of fun  - including a set from the band and loads of mad antics - I was grumpy because I seemed to have missed Torr's act. Years later, when I became a critic, I got a picture of Torr as a male character, and realised that I had not missed the act but had been completely fooled by her male impersonation. Then I saw her do the banana dance in The Old Hairdresser's venue and my art crush was full blown...

 

Our 'training' with Mischief La bas also informed our music video collaborations with Uisdean Murray & the culmination of all the strands of our work in recent multimedia performance Biding Time (remix). Ian was a 'doer', not just a talker & we definitely inherited his 'just do it' attitude towards performance & creation.

Can you name any other Glasgow-based artists with whom you feel an affinity? What shared characteristics do you have with them?

I feel an affinity with Vanishing Point with whom we worked with on The Beggar's Opera. I think Vanishing Point are also greatly influenced by many cultural spheres outside of theatre & performance & strive to break theatre conventions. I also feel an affinity with the work of Eilidh Macaskill of Fish & Game, as a fellow female theatre maker & someone who is pushing the boundaries of what theatre & performance can be & finding different ways of engaging audiences.

If you had to describe Glaswegian performance in three sentences, or phrases, or even words... what would these be?

DIY, irreverent & self-effacing.


Are there any events or festivals throughout the year that you would say are influential in developing particular sorts of work? This could apply to both theatre and non-theatrical events.

Arches Live, Behaviour, Sonica, Glasgow Film festival...

This mix is what I am talking about: bit of music, bit of film, bit of theatre. 

How would you describe your own practice (as an artist or participant in the arts in whatever form)?

Multimedia meltdown...


Do you have any further thoughts on the relationship of the performance arts and Glasgow?


I think Glasgow has always been cooler, darker & edgier than most places. It knows itself & as a result has a self confidence & belief that can produce work with great swagger & down right cheekiness as well as having a big daft heart.

This is brilliant stuff: not only does it help me in my process, it provides a really good introduction to what A Band Called Quinn are doing. 'Work with great swagger and down right cheekiness' could describe Biding Time - although I hope that the 'big daft heart' wasn't what the rabbit was cooking at the end of the show....

Biding My Time

Although Biding Time (Remix) follows the story of Louise Quinn's personal story of music industry horror, she has spent most of the past decade reinventing herself as a post-modern singer-songwriter. Leader of A Band Called Quinn, she wrote and performed the music for Vanishing Point's Beggar's Opera, curated a series of cabaret nights that replaced the usual neo-vaudeville with serious and funny acts inspired as much by Live Art, has worked with Mischief La Bas and collaborated with Kid Loco.

For her version of Pippa Bailey's original play - which addressed Bailey's frustrations at the entertainment industry from an actor's perspective, Quinn hooked up with Grid Iron's Ben Harrison and a cast that includes legendary drag king Diane Torr, Gaelic film-maker Uisdean Murray, alongside her band and young actor Martin McCormick, and remixed the script into a fresh study of record label dishonesty.

Quinn cleverly uses the traditional format of the gig to structure Biding Time: the filmed and performed interludes - involving McCormick as a sinister and sometimes sweet white rabbit - push along the narrative which is illustrated by a song cycle. Moving from the band's enthusiasm and good fortune, towards their inevitable rejection by a music industry that is lecherous, dishonest and manipulative, Biding Time touches on juicy political issues - the objectification of women in music, the obsession with style over substance, the vogue for alternative thinkers to be swept away by an environmental evangelism - without ever distracting from the powerful craft of the band.

Playing heavily on Quinn's ambiguous persona - she recalls the alienated glamour of David Byrne's early Talking Heads' stage persona - the set is heard not through the usual PA system but through the fashionable silent disco equipment. Personal headphones replace amps, perfect for relaying the intimacy of Quinn's signature style, gentle New Wave rock. Inevitably, the single mimed moment represents the song encouraged by the label, the mainstream appeal, distorting Quinn's melancholic vocal into a stereotypical disco queen, substituting her idiosyncratic song-writing for a generic female sex object.

Quinn's story - the programme comments that "any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely intentional" - is most engaging when dealing with gender politics. Aside from her transformation into a Madonna clone, the decision to cast Diane Torr as Mr Big emphasises the masculine culture of the record label: the insinuating lechery of various other music industry characters - again performed by McCormick - places Quinn at the mercy of a voracious assembly. The presence of the White Rabbit alludes to an Alice in Wonderland adventure, with Quinn cast as the innocent abroad. But like vanishing Point's Wonderland, this Wonderland is less fantastic than exploitative.

The music, the method of amplification and the episodic story-telling mesh effectively with Harrison's subtle direction and Bailey's original tale: this is experimental theatre that avoids aggression for a compassionate disappointment. The narrative is advanced as much by mimed, symbolic set pieces as the words - which include the voices of disappointed fans, business figures, an idealistic hippy and Quinn's mother ,a constant dour worry. At heart, it's another showcase for A Band Called Quinn's talent, filtered through a structure that offers at least one possible escape route from the predictability of the rock gig, and an opening for other theatre-makers to explore the medium's potential.

November 1 Cumbernauld