Theatre and Culture from Scotland, starring The List's Theatre Editor, his performance persona and occasional guest stars. Experimental writings, cod-academic critiques and all his opinions, stolen or original.
You like Glasgow, right? I mean, you live there, have a great view of the city and everything? So I reckon you'd fancy a bit of Cracked Tilesaction. Admittedly, it is a one manshow, and has an Italian-Scots perspective, which is slightly different to your own experience: but who can resist the sight of a man wrestling with his family (not literally) in the back of a chip shop? Edinburgh tends to think it's all that during August - biggest festival of arts, lots of tourists, bouts of reasonable weather, but here's a shout out to Lorenzo Novani for keeping it Glasgow. I think. He studied over here, did the West End Festival and... Be Better is having a crack at that pernicious religion of the late
consumer society: self-improvement. I know I gave up on that a few years ago, to slide into an obscure antagonism to anything that speaks of success, but the Urban Foxes tickle my fancy with what looks like a physical and exhausting assault on all that bullshit. Their reference points probably make more to sense to critics (Forced Entertainment and Vincent Dance Theatre), but they are on the more anarchic side of performance... only where Forced Entertainment have gone a bit middle-aged lately, The Foxes are leaping about for a theatrical pillow fight. I don't think that is literally, again. But what about some music? Check out the visuals for Fiona Soe
Pang's Alien Lullabies. It's a wild, uncanny creature, asking me what the hell it is up to - marching? Going to the shops to get some probes for earthlings? Messing with my head with those luscious eyes... I know it is made of wood but I am entranced. I have been waiting to see this for an age, and I am glad Made in Scotland decided to bung Fiona some cash to be part of their showcase. I like it best when Scottish work does not pull on received notions of identity and heads off into this psychedelic fantasy. And the music is haunting and evocative and... yep. This works for me.
What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a
script or an object? Answered by The Urban Foxes Collective (Saskia Marland, Elena Voce Siriani, Sara Sassanelli) This show was inspired by an idea. The idea was to explore a particular brand of contemporary narcissism. This idea was informed by various cultural sources and our own experience as young women trying to make work and live in London. The initial inspiration came from Shelia Heti's book, How should a person be, a sort of memoir with a dash of pop-philosophy. It reads like a journal, and follows Heti's attempt to find self-actualisation, and artistic fulfillment. While reading this book we felt equally enamoured and horrified at her blatant disregard for narrative structure/character development, she didn't seem to feel the need to impress the reader.
She was embracing the fact she had published a book that was essentially about herself (as a fairly privileged white middle class female in her 20s) figuring it all out, and the psychological and often existential battles she faces while trying to become the person she always thought she would be. This book inspired a lot of discussion, and we could not decide if it should be deemed self indulgent narcissism or a brave display of vulnerability told unashamedly from a females perspective. in hindsight it is perhaps a mixture of both. This sowed the seeds for "be better", as we tried to understand stand where we stood on this matter. What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think -
of your production? The audience can expect to see a heightened version of a reality that some will already recognise, as we are critiquing the culture of self improvement and social media (amongst other things..) that some audiences are bombarded with everyday. We take this idea of aspirational self improvement and push it to its logical conclusion, which is ultimately monstrous. We set the play in a seminar/ceremony of a cult we treat the audience as devotees, who have gathered to watch Saskia's conception ceremony (a narcissistic subversion of conception, you conceive a "better" version of yourself opposed to a baby). There will be a charismatic cult leader, who embodies varying qualities of capitalist modern messiahs. We hope the audience can see we are weary of this form of narcissism but we also buy into it, and are enamoured with some aspects of it. We hope he audience can see the complexity of the issue and perhaps examine/question there own relationship with the themes we are presenting.
The Dramaturgy Questions
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work? We have always understood Dramaturgy as the coherence of ideas within a piece/world created. Whether this is ‘coherence’ that embraces paradoxes or an area of
contention, to us doesn’t really matter. We have tried however to use dramaturgy to help us create a recognisable, yet abstracted 21st century crisis mini world and then to see what happens within it. We have worked with outside eyes and dramaturgs in the past and would like to do some more often as it always allows for a different layer of the show to be created.
What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition? Artists that use writing at their core, Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment have elements we have always been of great interested. We are interested as a company in other artists that are playing with theatrical elements and live art and at the moment it feels like an extremely exciting context. Vincent Dance Theatre have also been an inspiration due to their phenomenal use of symbols, movement and intellect.
Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process? We always make work concerned with "the now", therefore the beginning of our process is usually informed by an element of contemporary culture that one or more of us have encountered and wants to discuss. Many of these conversations tend to be do with role of women in popular culture (this is not always the case, but it is often is a strong element).
The beginning is pretty much always a process of sharing (articles/videos etc) and discussion. I would say one of the strong characteristics at the beginning of the process is a celebration of confusion. We often have contradictory feeling about the subject of our discussion, we may be strongly repulsed yet completely captivated by what we watch/read etc. We find this grey area interesting, and encourage not having a definitive answer or opinion as this is usually the most interesting point of departure from discussion to devising. We also are drawn to often drawn to the seemingly superficial icons of pop culture, believing that if you scratch the surface it can reveal a lot about society and the world we live in.
It is always personal.
What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work? As the piece embraces and critiques the sharing of information the audience is key to something happening, something changing during the piece. Their awareness of us on stage and themselves is important to the discomfort/entertainment we are trying to create. There are moments of interaction which of course could not happen without somebody there watching. Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you? Don’t think so, but maybe we could add something like this: We like thinking about context and the way our work functions in a specific context. Perhaps we will figure out how dramaturgy fits in to our process in a way where we recognize its impacts straight away. There is something latent about dramaturgy in our process at the moment.
