A Few Vile to Tough Tips

It's been a while since we spoke - between you studying and me trying to get back to University, it's been hectic, I guess. Anyway, I hope you'll get to the Fringe this year: where else can you see so much dramaturgy in so short a time?

Actually, according to Goffman, you just have to look out of the window. We are all doing it, all the time. Some people even think about it. 

But if you do get up here, I think these shows will tickle your fancy.

Alien Lullabies is part of the Made in Scotland selection. That means it has official approval by Creative Scotland. It sits more in music than theatre, at least officially. It strikes me that Fiona Soe Paing is one of those artists who is not easily defined: Lullabies is very theatrical, very science fiction and uncanny. It's this play between genres that I think you'll love. although I am pretty keen on the electronic music. If it didn't have such arresting visuals, I would be claiming this as post-visual theatre.

The Cabaret Farce is a no-brainer for you: I know that you love a

bit of burlesque-inspired performance, and this one is applying a theatrical dramaturgy to a vaudeville style entertainment. If their show is as cheeky as their answers in the dramaturgy database (and it amazes me how often my dull questions have been rescued by great answers), this will be fun and deep. They also have a connection with this Post-Modern Jukebox chap, and I like the idea of messing with the timeline of tunes and beats.

Pollyanna  deserves a special shout out from me, because they made an effort to fix some of my shoddy design. It is another cabaret show (I think I am getting a bit predictable here), but more in the confrontational, live art, tradition. I'm always pleased to see a touch of queer in my cabaret - it might be a Glasgow thing. We are pretty quick to label stuff queer here, and I do worry that it is losing its meaning... that said 'For me scripting and planning too far in advance would be that I wouldn't end up trying to eat my high heels in a nightie whilst singing along to an acapella version of The Smiths’This Charming Man' is exactly the kind of late night shenanigans I want. 

Especially after Leper and Chip. Not that I am not excited by what reads like a classic example of neo-brutalist theatre. But instead of getting their Sarah Kane on, they got a new script. 

I dig violent and provocative theatre. I am probably just jaded, and I don't like violence in real life. But theatre strikes me as just the place to work out some of the rougher bits of life, presenting experiences that won't resolve into my nice, middle-class fantasy vision of a liberal, loving society. 

Either that, or I get my cheapies off rough trade on the stage.

You can't go wrong with a Traverse show: it is a curated part of the Fringe, with a consistent quality. Some shows do bomb, it's true. But that is not because they are underfunded or under-rehearsed. It's because the dramaturgical intention sucks. However, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. It is based on a novel, and comes from a Irish tradition, which makes me guess that there will be an emphasis on language.

That is an odd way to put it. There will be lots of words? The script will be the focus? I mean, language isn't just spoken language... don't I do on about 'vocabularies of movement'?

Still, you get this stuff, I think. If I am not making sense, you work it out... are you going to be too busy to make it up here this year? I managed to finish my post-graduate research project during the Fringe last year, you know...

More Tougher Questions

Hi again, Dani...

Just thinking about your reply on the 'genuine

critic.' I'd prefer to use the phrase 'recognised critic': genuine suggests a level of 'realness' that I don't possess (look at how I write in persona, reveal my confusion and shift perspective). But what you say here...

By 'genuine critic' I suppose I mean one who is employed by a publication or establishment to critique productions: someone with a theatrical, literary or musical background whose opinions may be seen as more 'worthy' because of this training and experience....

... articulates a public attitude towards people, like me or Matt Trueman or Mark Brown, who have a particular status or platform.

Putting aside my comedy egotism, I reject any suggestion that our opinions are intrinsically 'more worthy'. They may be given greater weight, but that is about the relationship between critic and public. There is a particular approach that the recognised critics might share, but there are times when they miss something that a random tweet might capture. I'm interested in the cohort of critics, and the way they provide a conversation about theatre - but individually, I don't think we are 'worthy'.

I enjoy the statement "...while they hold the same quantitative weight... they have a qualitative difference." 

Me too... the 'recognised critic' provides a different sort of critique, and one that is perhaps more detailed. This doesn't make them 'more important' than anyone else.

You also made some great points about immersive theatre.

I don't like the idea of immersive theatre, and I too think that it is more for the theatre company than the audience: I enjoy

that you disrupted the expected behavioural patterns - it's true, and I hadn't considered, that even with this supposed responsibility of the audience comes specific actions and reactions that are considered acceptable - did this kind of theatre arise with Theatre Of The Oppressed? If so, it's an interesting conundrum that within a form aimed liberating those who are oppressed comes a form of repression. (If you don't act the way you're supposed to, you're ignored or put down!)

Although it might allude to the 'Theatre of the Oppressed', immersive theatre is far more controlling than even the most conservative of main-stage productions. Goed's Audience makes the connection between immersive theatre, fascism and demagoguery explicit. 

By using video footage of the audience to fake their approval of dubious speeches, then presenting a montage of mass movements, a suspicion of apparently popular movements ascends to an attack on the manipulation used by the media. Even better, it is an emotional journey, a nasty one, where the text reads the audience as much as the audience reads the text...

More Tough and Vile dialogue

Hi Dani

I am totally getting a blog crush on you: you ask the kind of questions I want to answer. And, since I am answering a direct question, I can use the arrogant school-masterly tone that is always aching to escape from beneath my carefully crafted liberal ambiguity.

I'm using the book (Theatre and Audiences) as a literature source for my inquiry project, and it was useful for me to read about theories on audience. I didn't like the focus on immersive theatre, as there was a 2009 survey that indicated most 'regular theatre-goers' still prefer the traditional viewing experience, yet there has been a huge rise in immersive and interactive theatre experiences. 


'Regular theatre-goers' (I assume) means people who go to the theatre on a regular basis, rather than trying to establish a 'normative' theatre-goer, an 'average'. This implies that the immersive performance is more popular with companies than audiences, and the artists go right on making them even though the audiences aren't too keen on them.

a regular guy

So much for the theatre community engaging with the audiences.

Is this a shift away from the proposed "idolatry of the artist"? Giving the audience more responsibility for both their experience and the outcome?

No. Immersive theatre is more tyrannical and controlling than the 'traditional' experience. You either get pushed around from pillar to post, or are bullied. The audience does exactly what it is told to do. 

Take Hotel Medea (which I loved). It is immersive to the extent that the audience play most of the parts. I decided to refuse the roles forced on me - which led to the audience around me saying that I was being 'disruptive' and the performers ignoring me. I had great fun, but eventually had to fall back in line, becoming not just a passive spectator but a participant in the tragedy as it involved.

It was a different experience, but not one that gave me 'responsibility'. 

Another example of immersive theatre (and one which exposes the form's inherent fascism) is Audience. My protest at that performance ended up in their collected works - even though they misread it as an expression of outrage rather than active participation in the fun of the whole event.


I would also suggest that the role of the audience has changed with the advent of social media - how many audience members are mentally composing tweets or status updates, or even (heaven forbid!) blog posts with their own personal criticisms of the production? :P 

Tweets are great, blogs are better: the danger is that the director's mum is going post a tweet which then ends up on the poster. The 'cloud' of tweets might be useful for gauging success or failure - but the positive tweets are going to get retweeted by the company, and it is open to abuse. 

Does this make the role of a genuine critic more or less valid? 

I am not sure what a 'genuine critic' is. I'm one, obviously, but then again, I am the true real critic in the UK. It might be worth unpicking this idea.

If everyone and their mums are sharing their opinions for anyone to access, are their 'untrained' opinions carry more unbiased weight than the voice of someone with experience and subjective views, as the book claims?

All opinions are equal. All opinions are equal. But some opinions are critical opinions and while they hold the same quantitative weight as any other opinion, they have a qualitative difference. 

This is where the book fails, since it uses loads of critical writing as

2 stars for you, humanity

evidence of audience response. So it can shut its bloody mouth. 

As for subjectivity... that is the state of all human entities. Only God is objective, and he gave up on literary criticism at least a millennia ago.

Got on a bit of a rant there. Hoping you'll come back at me... you know I only do this for attention, right?

Getting Viler on the Audience