An attempt to review via cut and paste and visual tone

Robocritic's New First Prime Directive

There's a reason why Robocritic was fitted with a human, and not just made purely out of metal and software. Imagination is a crucial quality in the engagement with art - without it, most plays would just turn into a bunch of people running about on stage, and paintings would become blobs of meaningless paint on canvas.

Unfortunately, the original prime directives militated against the exercise of imagination, leaving a series of failed critiques littering Robocritic's hard drive. He thoughts on A Chorus Line, for example, consisted of repeated complaints that the characters kept dancing and singing for no good reason.

Three new prime directives have been installed, but these are more by way of suggestion than absolutes. Each of these statements have been hardwired into Robocritic's consciousness. They are always true, he believes, and always applicable. But unlike the original directives, they do not correspond to definitive statements and can be interpreted without the need for the installation of a post-modern deconstruction chip.

Prime Directive One

Monsters Inc is a really good film because it relays an important moral in an entertaining fashion. In fact, it has that wonderful quality, when the point being made correlates with the format of the film. Presenting the idea that laughter is a better fuel than fear for the Monsters' energy need, it relies on comedy rather than terror to get the message across.

The first soundings are good. Robocritic now insists that the structure of A Chorus Line now explains why the cast keep bursting into song: they are at a rehearsal for a musical, and it would make sense for performers, trained as triple threats, would best express themselves through their training. He also agreed that the choice by Glasgow Music Theatre was a wise one, since the community nature of the production (being inclusive and consequently having varying abilities) is not only protected by the scenario - it's an audition and perhaps some performers would have less skill in one or more area but the range of parts means no one performer has to shoulder the entire success or failure of the production.

A print-out of Robocritic's feelings on Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares is also positive. If Celtic Connections is now more concerned with the connection than a strict Celtic music theme, the emotional connection made by the beauty of the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir is a more persuasive argument for international collaboration than an essay on the United Nations.

Curate. Programme. Connect. Enjoy.

Festivals can go one of two ways. They can be a bloated, expensive attempt to cash in a particular art form, or they can be lovingly designed to present a comprehensive, if idiosyncratic, study of the works.

Of course, there are other possibilities, but now that Scotland has become the Festival Nation, it's time to recognise the programmer as an artist. And the best festivals show the gentle hand of the programmer in the way that the individual shows have been selected.

Scotland has never been short on visionary programmers: back in the day, Steve Slater compared announcing the season at Tramway as being a bit like releasing a new album, and the work of Nikki Millican made New Territories an annually intriguing feast of experimental theatre. The growth of Celtic Connections over two decades can be put done to some cunning selections - emphasising the connection rather than the strictly celtic - and Morag Deyes' DanceBase seasons in August are always a provocative and enchanting mixture.

Manipulate has built a steady presence, first of all from Dundee, then Edinburgh and now across Scotland and into England, thanks to Puppet Animation Scotland's determination. Still facing a public opinion of puppetry as a minor art form, it juxtaposes film, including the CGI mockumentary Big Man Japan  and performance to maintain a festival that is equal parts primer for contemporary visual theatre and celebration of the cutting edge. Simon Hart, artistic director, is clearly a man inspired by the potential of object manipulation, and the inclusion of potentially controversial topics (Schicklgruber alias Adolf Hitler) is balanced by reinventions of classic fairy-tales (To The End of Love) and all-ages magic (Paper Cinema's Odyssey).

Unlike the Fringe, manipulate has a clear mission: to celebrate contemporary visual theatre. Arika, who have evolved from experimental music festivals into experimental festivals, are even more preoccupied with the way that art provokes conversation, setting gigs next to discussion sessions. Much of Celtic Connections passes beneath the radar, as it offers opportunities to play and learn musical styles next to the grand shows. Yet the focus of all three festivals makes them healthy, dynamic and unique. They stand out from the crowded market.

A strong festival programmer ensures that each performance relates to others: when Svend Brown books minimal, he invites a performer or composer to hang out for the weekend, and lets them make a selection. Manipulate might appear to have a broad range of styles and content (Chris Sullivan's Consuming Spirits delves into human secrets through experimental animation, while A Wild Growling Happiness has larger than life puppets and childhood dreams), but the belief in the power of the performed image is consistent.

There is a danger that any organisation can slap the title "festival" on unrelated events in an attempt to fool the market (one lap-dance bar advertised "a festival of erotic dancing" during the Fringe a few years back, before the Festival of Erotic Arts made a more sustained and serious programme): but the true spirit of a festival goes back to a unity of intention. Entertainment is important, but the connection between the events, the possibility to explore an art form, to learn and laugh, is the mark of great curation.

January - First Top Five...

Having been locked up for the past fortnight with only the internet for company - there seemed to be some kind of celebration going on with my family in the adjourning room, but I was trawling for essays on the political traditions of puppetry - I am glad to see that at least some performance is happening in January. It used to be the case that July - as the Fringe approached - and January were dead months in the arts, but programmers realised that they had to provide critics with something to write about before we all became disillusioned and start making our own productions.

Celtic Connections will dominate Glasgow for most of the month - even the Tron is filled with folk song - but the SSO is doing a favour to fans of a more experimental bent. I know him best for his blistering interpretations of Ornette Coleman (Spy Vs Spy redoes free jazz through the filter of hardcore punk), but John Zorn has become one of the most important contemporary classical composers who isn't in the minimalist or squeaky gate schools.

It's difficult to believe he has hit sixty, or that the BBC are offering a portrait of his orchestral works - there's even a new commission, Suppôts et Suppliciations. I picture him as that slightly geeky looking hard bop saxophonist, a contemporary of Sonic Youth and full of that bad-ass attitude that was the interesting legacy of punk. The SSO have got in their principal guest conductor, Ilan Volkov - himself no stranger to the more intriguing end of classical music - to throw down with his wordless opera La Machine de l’être and the strings only special Kol Nidre.

Zorn will be present, although he is not down to play. I suggest that a chant ought to go up at the end, to get him to honk a number out on his saxophone. Maybe that wild solo he scattered over Black Girls  by The Violent Femmes. 

City Halls, 12 January

I've banged on about the Lyceum's revival of A Taste of Honey and The Maids at the Citizens before, but I am still excited by both. Being a bit of a curmudgeon, I complain about most things that aren't brand new, except when they are pieces that my random sense of aesthetics has decided are "important." A Taste of Honey is obviously a crucial jewel in the threaded necklace of contemporary scripted drama - tersely political, confrontational, it predicted a social engagement that is a key theme of modern drama. The Maids is an example of how Genet was experimenting so radically with theatre that half a century later, it still has a forbidden exoticism.

A Taste of Honey fits in with the emergence of Britain's "Angry Young Men" playwrights (only the author was a woman, indicating how even the twentieth century was falling foul of a certain gender blindness): The Maids jumbles up sexuality and sex, murder and manipulation into a queer mixture that predates the celebratory adoption of the word. As I prepare for a few months of Live Art and Object Manipulation (Buzzcut and manipulate are on their way to my heart), here's a couple of reminders that I probably ought not to ignore the script.

The Maids, Citizens Theatre, 17 January - 2 February

A Taste of Honey, Lyceum, 18 January - 9 February

At the risk of being Glasgow-centric, my last two choices have got to be part of Celtic Connections. I'd give a shout for the whole festival - before it was instituted, January was a moribund month. Not only did it find new audiences, it has livened up the city after Christmas and probably encouraged the theatres to programme earlier in the year. However, a few specific choices would bring this list up to five...

I am going to be vaguely sentimental in picking an  All Will be Well - The Life and Songs of Michael Marra. To be honest, I don't really want to hear Hue and Cry do Mother Glasgow, but there are a few other names that are less tainted by my youthful prejudices against polished pop. Michael Marra came from Dundee and wrote not a few songs that dealt with contemporary life in an idiom that was as much Tom Waits as it was folk.

His recent death was a loss to Scottish music - I liked him the best for his compositions in Plan B's A Wee Home From Home and this tribute is an appropriate way to remember his song-writing brilliance.

Royal Concert Hall, 28 January

The final choice is too easy. Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares: described as "magnificent, otherworldly soundscapes of dissonant diaphonic harmonies," I was one of the trendy indie kicks who loved this in the 1990s and so "helped kick-start the whole world music movement." Admittedly, there's a few problems with that whole category, but there's few things more astonishing than a Bulgarian choir in full assault mode.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery, 24 January