Paul Bright's Third Day

At the end of their reconstruction of Paul Bright's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Untitled Projects repeat the familiar myth of Bright's disappearance. The story goes that Bright walked out on the final production of the series, leaving his ambitious project incomplete and his legacy to be erased, gradually, from the annals of Scottish performance. While George Anton, who performed as Bright's 'sinner' (as well as being his close friend), director Stewart Laing and playwright Pamela Carter give him a heart-warming memorial, it doesn't replace the fact that this tidy obituary is simply not true.
Far from freaking out, as most people assume, or even disappearing into some hinterland of mental ill-health, Bright's sabotage of the last performance was premeditated and deliberate. Bright was not just the angry young punk that the archive footage captured, or the man driven by his love of Hogg's seminal Scottish novel. He was also an artist who destroyed the thin line between creation and life. Having shattered the fourth wall by staging the fourth performance as a rave, the finale leapt beyond mere drama and provoked a mystery that was so far beyond the aesthetics of the late 1980s that the theatre community punished it by consigning it to oblivion.


Throughout the monologue, George mentions Bright's disgust at the theatre establishment, and his passion for a 'real' immersive performance. It's no accident that Bright's later years were spent in Belgium - the energy he sought has mostly been found in the theatre coming from Ghent during the past twenty years - but his disgust with Scottish theatre was only intensified by his dalliance with success. Having been given a slot in the Edinburgh International Theatre, he recognised the audience's refusal to grapple with serious issues. When he walked away from Confessions, he consigned himself to the margins because he was not willing to join in the middle-class jamboree of 1990's City of Culture.

It is perhaps the ultimate irony that Bright would have found Untitled's tribute to him repulsive. Intelligent, well structured and moving, it is performed in a venue that Bright would have been the perfect director to inhabit, Tramway. George is compelling in retelling the stories and myths that surround Bright, and Laing's curation of the limited archive is eloquent.

Bright's distaste for the immaculate order that makes the reconstruction so evocative was reflected in both the stagings of the Confessions and the series of pamphlets that he produced in the 1990s. Whether Untitled deliberately ignored these publications, or never came across them is moot - since they were hand distributed and published pseudonymously, they are even more occult than the original plays. Bright turned his back on theatre, and followed the precedent of his hero Hogg. He became a satirist, churning out brief essays on apparently unconnected subjects.

Bright's afterlife would have been more recognisable had it begun in the 2000s - he was effectively a blogger before the internet took hold. Yet unlike the contemporary blogger, his writings held a consistent tone, an agenda. He spent ten years in a form of internal exile, attacking the commodification of culture.

Although I don't have a complete set of his pamphlets - I discovered five of them when I spent some time sorting through Tramway's archive, without realising their importance - three of them directly address his reasons for abandoning theatre. He never explicitly mentions his productions and it is only through watching the reconstruction that I realised how directly he was critiquing his own work.

The first paragraph of the first pamphlet sets out his position immediately, before he makes a series of eerily accurate predictions about the future of Scottish culture. By the second pamphlet that I possess - dated six months later, but possibly not the second publication, he makes a bold rejection of Confessions, the novel.

When I was a child, I saw things as a child. The tempestuous battle between good and evil, and evil's facility for the corruption of the good towards its own ends. I believed it was possible for the symbolic representation of these forces to be shown,that their earthly dominions could be made visible through the blowing of smoke over their invisible forms. The hog's eye view of the world, Satan walking abroad and blocking the divine light, the actors in this cosmic drama... the theology of ages past held good enough if not to lead Men towards the Righteous Dwelling but to retain some sacred meaning.

The portentous tone gradually gave way to more mundane, but incisive criticisms. Having seen a production of Marlowe's Faustus, he would observe the ridiculousness of contemporary theatre trying to use an outdated 'cosmic architecture' to explore modern morality. 'I can even sense Marlowe's own atheism in the burlesque of God and Devil,' he commented. 'Why on earth would an intelligent modern director imagine that this could shed light on the evils of today?'

Across these first two pamphlets, Bright bemoans the shift in contemporary thought that 'so readily abandons the past. The shared beliefs of nations are now reduced to an embarrassed archaeology. Confessions is being taught in schools, but to what end? It provides no moral instruction. The book is about the corruption caused by self-righteous Christianity, hardly a topic unfamiliar to those within and without the kirk. Elevated to the status of natural treasure, it is stripped of its revolutionary power.'

In later pamphlets, Bright points to a new literary hero: the Argentinean short story writer Borges. Following on from his dismissal of Hogg's theology as 'a historical curiosity,' it's unsurprising that he shifted his allegiance to a writer who indulges such curiosities. The third pamphlet (dated five years after the second) begins with what appears to be Bright's enthusiasm for a return to theatre.

In Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius I can see the outline of the ultimate performance,' he notes, before describing something that sounds suspiciously like the immersive events of You Me Bum Bum Train. Having already tinkered with blurring the line between actor and performer during Confessions, his ideal was 'to make the audience question whether they were, in fact, reciting lines already written.

By the end of the pamphlet, he has rejected the concept. 'The great rewriting of the world described in the story has already been done,' he complains. 'The creative community of Scotland has never realised that the real creative minds joined the Conservative Party and we are all actors in their drama now. It's a shame that their ambition was so petty.'

The fifth pamphlet is the most incendiary - undated, but referring back to 'previous missives' - and addresses the arts community in a language familiar from the prophet Jeremiah. A series of apparently disconnected paragraphs (most of them beginning with the phrase 'woe to the...'), it is a litany of complaints. He attacks the idea of arts funding ('woe to the artist paid by the state, for their work shall be propaganda'), the critical establishment ('woe to the reviewers, for their words shall be consigned to the rear of the newspaper... removed from the news and an idle entertainment for those who are more sophisticated than intelligent'), science ('woe to the scientist, for their ideas will be spoken by those who understand them not') and the church ('woe to the choir for they are having gay sex and the pastor who abuses women... there had better not be any real believers who would walk with those in trouble, regardless of their sexual orientation or state of intoxication.')

This pamphlet connects most obviously to Bright's attitudes recounted by Anton: the resistance to tame theatre, that hides its colonialist arrogance behind a mock spirituality. It also reveals some degree of humour, and an author happy in his new role. The lines about the church are, in fact, rewritings of a rap song, translated from African American vernacular into something more formal. Bright's rosary of objects are laced together with a delicious irony,and he clearly revels in his prophetic persona. 

This brief survey of Bright's continued work in the 1990s acts as a sort of post-show discussion on Untitled's reconstruction. Although it challenges the conclusions of Laing - the final show is a sort of crucifixion of the artist, and his pamphlets suggest he rose on the third day. It also leads me into a very difficult confession of my own.

Having found these documents, I know that Bright's death in 2010, as described in the play and providing the impetus for Laing's sterling archive investigations, is another fiction. Whether Bright manufactured this is not clear: he hasn't told me. And there's the confession - not only can I claim that Bright is alive, he is a regular reader of my blog. I know that he is reading these words, because he regularly emails me to point out gaps in my understanding of Scottish theatre history.

This opens up another question. While Laing has gone a long way to remind Scotland of this lost genius, there is a danger that so engaging a production will convert Bright's awkwardness into another aspect of Scotland the Brand. In particular, Glasgow has a habit of polishing rough edges into smooth consumer objects, enjoying the edginess but taming them into something safe for the picture frame. If Bright is championed again, he could become another version of No Mean City, supposedly authentic and tough but as dangerous as a Hollywood rebel. 


Bright knows what he wants his legacy to be. He's clear: 'a theatre that is about now. That is not the property of a liberal class, who are entertained by hard ideas but never let them touch them. Don't get the joke. Don't be an insider unless everyone is an insider.'

Three Types of Criticism, All Fictional

Somewhere back along the way, I became obsessed with the idea of a scientific criticism. After about

fifteen minutes, I realised that this would be difficult:  science is, despite claims that it is a body of theories  known as facts or statistics wearing a fancy gown, a methodology for investigation. When Nicholas Bone described the vision of his company, Magnetic North, as wondering would happen if..., then he was a great deal closer to science than the next idiot at the dinner party who starts shouting about natural selection being a fact (it isn't: evolution is. Natural selection is a theory explaining the mechanism whereby evolution happens).

I try to imagine what a scientific criticism would look like. It might look a bit like my blog, with all the different ways that a review or preview being slapped out at a rate of knots, and seeing what sticks (although thinking about it, that sounds rather like natural selection... when a particular approach gets a good hit rate, I repeat it). I am hoping that my Young Critics might provide me with ideas. In the meantime, I'll moan about how much criticism is theological or philosophical in nature. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

First of all, I want to define the two approaches. Quickly, like, and yes, I am just making this up. It's part of an attempt to find out how criticism works. If it sounds stupid, it is because I am either stupid or trying to begin a study without reference to existing theories.

Then I want to take the philosophical approach and see if I can't break it down.

Criticism-as-theology is usually the criticism voiced by artists trying to articulate their creative process, or make sense of their art. Peter Brooke has a couple of real beauties in his writings that follows his interest in religion and spirituality - and many of the interview on my blog have a similar attitude. For example, Harry Giles notes that, for him, it is a choice of making theatre or death.

I have come out with plenty of criticism-as-theology myself. Again, it's not surprising: I have never hidden my enthusiasm for Buddhist ideas and Jesuit spirituality. In brief, criticism-as-theology regards art as ultimately mysterious, an indivisable whole that cannot be divided into petty details. The puriest theology just marvels at its majesty, and attempts to reflect the glory.

Philosophical criticism takes a more analytical approach. It examines the various aspects of an art work - the materials, the presentation, the diverse influences - and assesses their contribution to the whole. It's probably the most common form of criticism: it stretches across the academic and populist forms.

This approach divides the performance into categories: it defines the form and the function, separates content from style, does a nice side-line in categories. It shares the broad general statement of theology, is quite happy to use a priori definitions and put theatre into a wider context.

Scientific criticism is, as yet, undefined. I could just take a load of scientific theories and apply them to theatre. However, that would not be scientific. It would be philosophical... true scientific criticism applies the scientific method to art. And I have no idea how that is going to play out

Burn Jukebox Musical, Burn

Although the "Golden Age" of the jukebox musical ended in 2015, when a disgruntled gang of rock fans attacked the stage during the climax of Rape Me: The Kurt Cobain Story, it has never entirely bee displaced by the satirical musical theatre that now rules Broadway and London's West End. Alongside the record-breaking runs of Tony Blair: You've Got To Be Joking and Like A Salmond Up The Stream, the occasional nostalgia outing will play a limited run to half-filled auditoriums.

Welcome To The Terrordome is still an anomaly. Made up of tracks spanning hip-hop's evolution from a minority enthusiasm to a world-conquering genre, it takes a story that would not be out of place on a 1990s' concept album - Snoop Dog and Tupac fiddled about with the album as fictional autobiography, before Kanye West did it best - and threads in numbers that act as a partial history of the form. From the high-school hi-jinx of Bust A Move to the finale of Public Enemy numbers, Terrordome reinvents the jukebox musical as a consciousness-raising session.

The core narrative - young man is bullied at school, enters into a gangster's lifestyle only to become politicised after seeing a break-dance crew - is suggested by the musical choices and does not necessarily follow the untidy development of hip-hop: Public Enemy's style was largely eclipsed by gangster bragging. But the basic framework is enough to allow the musical to get down to business: the desecration of hip-hop classics, chewed up by an eighteen piece orchestra (none of that untidy turntablism here) and sung by an uncomfortable chorus of triple-threat performers.

There are moments of genuine humour: The Pharcyde's Oh Shit! is a skit on sexual misadventure, culminating in a wild satyr dance, false genitals and all; Bust A Move captures the anxiety of the school disco while the medley of NWA tunes balances on the fine line between stupidity and intensity. Fuck Tha Police is not best illustrated by a trio of scantily clad women brandishing handcuffs at the protagonist. It is the more serious themes that are most undermined, as the fierce rage of Chuck D is subliminated into a more palatable, socially acceptable political engagement.

Equally, the plundering of hip-hop culture is partial and unconvincing. The only scene where genuine hip-hop moves are used is in the disco, where a mild crumping contest fizzles out: the dramatic conversion is supposedly a breakin' contest, but is actually performed by a circus acrobat. It's unsurprising that the jukebox musical died: it shows a lack of respect for its sources, under-estimates the audience's intelligence (Burn Hollywood Burn does not need a firework display to clarify its message) and is so eager to please that it replaces any heart with supposedly spectacular set-pieces.

More Truth and Lies

Foxy and Husk

Fox-day Afternoon

“Our success is still something of a surprise,” admitted Foxy before taking to the stage at the SECC. “It doesn’t seem that long ago that we made our first appearance in Scotland, in a small venue down a back alley!” Undoubtedly, Foxy and Husk’s rise has been meteoric: from roots in Live Art, their idiosyncratic mix of miming, pop video surrealism and wry irony has seen them elevated into something like rock stardom.

Tonight’s show is a triumphant review of their greatest hits: quoting from last year’s science fiction concept work, based on the writings of Stanislaw Lem – and weaving it around  populist remakings of various pop shorts, it builds to a dynamic finale. Joined on stage by some of their most famous fans – the cameo from Lady Gaga is priceless, although Coldplay are a little limp next to Husk’s brash energy, the duo confirm why they have reached the heights: an undeniable charisma charms the audience and their knack of catching a song’s subtext and exaggerating it makes them intelligent and funny.

The balance between tough and cute is perfect: whenever the choreography threatens to become too serious  - and the middle of the show has some moving meditations on the joys and pains of determined individualism – they pull it back with a cheeky wink or a slapstick flick. The energy on stage is infectious: it is rare to see an entire crowd dancing along to a pair of dancers who parody and pay tribute to the magic of pop and furry costumes.

Looking into the future...

Nic Green

Dropping Science

Green’s supporters and critics have often made the same mistake. For all the seriousness of her work, she is far from a dogmatic feminist: Trilogy came from a desire to engage with the feminist tradition rather than a settled position and its most moving moments often involved her personal, tentative embrace of this rich heritage. The fractured replication of Bloody Town Hall has given way to this darkly comic monologue, which sets Green precisely in this moment of history, responding not to the political or social news of the day, but to details of scientific research, provided by a Twitter feed.

Throughout Dropping Science, Green foregrounds her own emotional responses to the releases: a snippet on DNA leads her to reflect, humorously, on the dangers of unethical study, imagining a Godzilla style assault on the central belt of Scotland; a line from a paper on pharmaceutical advances is repeated in differing tones, from the initial shout of surprise to a final resigned whisper. The task based choreography of Trilogy is supplanted by a ready wit and a stand up’s sense of timing, but Green’s unique sensibility – determined yet gentle – remains.

Unlike many other successful Live Artists, Green has stayed true to her personal vision, only to diversify her range of approaches and techniques. Dropping Science is largely improvised, but her courage in addressing a wide audience without rejecting her intelligence or beliefs is striking and powerful.

Criticulous' Spring Break

Kristina Nitsolova
Dig It!

When is a performance not a performance. For Nitslova, it is when it goes beyond the simple mechanics of a play or improvisation and actually acts on the world. In this charming site specific show, Nitslova literally ploughs the earth and scatters the good seed on the land. Her audience of young people are enthralled by her soft enthusiasm and fascinating explanations of how they, too, are part of the environment that she cares about so deeply. For connoisseurs of performance, she amazes by her dual ability to farm and act at the same time.

Throughout the production, Nitslova talks directly to the audience and tends the earth: when she walks away, and invites the crowd to follow, she leads them to a remarkable vista that supports her repeated assertions about the beauty of the planet. Her recurrent musings on how the individual is not so separate, that the social connections we might echo the natural connections of an ecosystem are pointed and trenchant. her message may be revolutionary, but it tempered by her mild manner.

Nitslova’s tour of Dig It! is, thankfully, going global: with only a small capacity, each show is tailored to the group. For a show that insists on such hard physical work from the performer, and has an immediate impact on the very ground that hosts it, Dig It! is beautifully conceived and charmingly executed.

Criticulous' Ultimate Trance

Louise Ahl
Apt!

It is impossible to tell, thanks to the non-stop manic energy which is tempered by a sweet sensitivity, that this is Ahl’s first Broadway musical. The topic - the life of Elizabethan occultist Edward Kelley - may seem unpromising. However, the success of the single, No, It’s Not!, seems to have ensured a steady stream of full houses. Quite how Ahl then turned this tale into a frenetic two hours that references everything from children’s theatre through to contemporary dance - and holds the audience’s attention completely - is sheer magic.

Kelley, often regarded as a chancer or a rogue, is here seen as simply out-of-time and bemused by a rapidly changing society. Clueless about what he sees, and making increasingly absurd predictions. The script has little sympathy for the supposed hero: humiliations are heaped upon Kelley’s head, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic. The lurking stranger, who leads him into deeper waters, is never benevolent, despite frequently promising that only good can come of his advice.

Ahl’s take on musical theatre is unsurprisingly hyper-kinetic, jumping genres and frequently tottering on the edge of mayhem. The use of music - the drum solos are stunning  - and the ready wit of the speeches rescues the action from disorder, leaving behind an impression of a bold new focus for a genre that was itself on the precipice of obsolescence.

Bekka Saeter
Zealand Variations

Back in the bad old days, territorial disputes were settled by having a fight, or sometimes a shouting match at the United Nations. Yet latterly, mankind has been schooled by the bonobo in conflict resolution, recognising that cooperation trumps even the most entertaining ruckus. And so, the so-called Fish Finger War between Scotland and Norway has led to Saeter being handed the keys to Caledonia’s national ballet company’s garage. Zealand Variations is the result of this collaboration, a mash up of post-modern dance and classical technique that quite literally stopped a bigger North European mash up of guns and bodies.

Saeter cleverly avoids making too much direct reference to the grounds of the conflict. Instead, she has a male soloist, carrying a clipboard and constantly smiling, represent the Scottish government, and a series of ethereal women for Norway. Each variation is a pas de deux between the two sides: the male is increasingly exhausted, but the women constantly refreshed. Whether this is a wry comment on the potential nature of any real conflict is moot, since the finale - when the corps des ballets appear in a newsroom and lift the male high above them - is filled with reconciliation and joy.

The alliances here are as thrilling aesthetically as politically. Saeter does not compromise her eclectic movement vocabulary, using the grace of the ballet trained company to elongate and extend their range. By finding the path between elegance and ugliness, Saeter is re-imagining ballet not as a museum piece, but as a tool for contemporary exploration.

Criticulous goes Wild

Sarah Hopfinger
Loves Great Adventure

It is quite a mark of Hopfinger’s genius that she took her original inspiration from a crap Ultravox single: it is even more unnerving that she weaves the music of Midge Ure and old science fiction movies into such a determinedly personal narrative. Her spoken introduction sets out her stall. Feeling isolated and alone, she embarked on a journey through music, taking random choices from a selection offered to her by friends and colleagues, to see whether she could find hidden connections.

From this simple start, Hopfinger embraces the major themes of the age: the tension between the outsider and society - a tension where both sides accept complicit approval yet claim to abhore; the desire to travel in societies seriously yet without leaving behind damage or unnecessary change; the overwhelming impact of western music on other cultures. Hopfinger is naturally attuned to her environmental responsibilities. This is, she proudly concludes, a carbon neutral production and what starts as a dry recitation of facts about how she achieves this becomes the rousing centre-piece.

Part call to arms, part intimate recollection of one woman’s past, Loves Great Adventure is all about the importance of the apparently mundane. It even redeems Midge Ure’s silly moustache from the dustbin of fashion history.

More From The Performance Critic

Finn Aschavir
His Dark Materials @ GFT

Aschavir has always had a strong moral centre in his work: whether toying with photography or building entire online networks that fold in on themselves to create endless feedback loops (that famously made the entire Internet break for twenty minutes), he has sought to expose the absurdity of lazy assumptions and, like a post-modern David Bowie, shattered and reconstructed his own image relentlessly.

His Dark Materials is not a retrospective, as expected, but an entire new direction. Starting with a simple sound collage, Aschavir occupies the cinema with noise and bright imagery, before sliding into a more relaxed and immersive colection of found sounds and monochrome stills. Whispered confessions, fragments of interviews with performance superstars - including one memorable ramble from Foxy and Hush - slip in and out of audibility, wryly commenting on both the myths around Aschavir and the more general myths about art.

Despite the ironic, bricolage exterior, there is a gentle charm in His Dark Materials. It celebrates the ordinary, and the bravery of everyday life by parodying the antics of the good and great, holding them to the light and letting them become over-exposed. In the fitting final frames, the screen itself seems to burn, leaving only the warm glow of regard that moves between Aschavir and his delighted audience.

Criticulous on the Video

Thom Scullion
Respect the Other
Scullion’s interactive installations have always asked questions about the way that humans use technology to communicate – whether it was the computer game marathons of his youth, or his later musings on outdated social media, Scullion discovered the hidden good in the most disreputable examples of technology.

Eschewing his usual tentative approach, Scullion places himself firmly at the centre of the action: he is a constant presence, encouraging and amusing his young charges. As the centre-piece of Birmingham’s festival of Live Art for Young People, he proves that the venue, a library that spent all its money on the architecture and forgot to buy any actual books, is not the useless white elephant of tabloid notoriety but a poignant reminder of how bad planning and nostalgia can be redeemed by artistic responses.

For Scullion himself, Respect the Other marks a transition, from cult creator to mainstream curator. The popularity of the initial run has led to requests from the Barbican – formerly a thriving performance platform but now a big fucking car park – and Glasgow’s The Arches – for further runs. Not only does he enchant his young audience, Scullion celebrates the power of the live installation as a popular and intelligent medium.