Homegrown Theatre Talent At The Edinburgh Festivals 2011

Welcome to Edinburgh. This year, we've decided to eschew the traditional preview of the transplanted excitements of the South and offer our guests some local flavour with the Scottish performance highlights of the Festivals. Alba gu bràth
It's tedious to write an annual Fringe preview. Too simple: for assured quality, go to the Traverse,for dance, check Dance Base or Zoo. Remarkable Arts is the cool young venue, with a programme that veers towards the good old days when Aurora Nova brought international experimentation to St Stephen's Church. Greenside is growing, The Space is diverse, and there are a thousand and one dreams to be crushed, and the landlords make the money.

This year, The Skinny is proud to support the Scots who are heading to Edinburgh. It is an international showcase, and it is vital that Scottish audiences get to see what else in going on. However, it is a Scottish city and it seems fair to remind our guests that there is a powerful indigenous performance scene.

The Tron showcased A Slow Air as part of Mayfesto, Cryptic’s Orlando got its premiere at Glasgay!, in the same week as Fish and Game heralded a new use for the iPad through Alma Mater. Even these three demonstrate how Scottish performance has diversified beyond the simple script as template. A Slow Air is a reassuringly intimate two-hander by Glasgow’s master of linguistic detail, David Harrower; Orlando follows Cryptic’s distinctive passion for music and technological experiment; Alma Mater is am ambiguous reflection on education and childhood that uses film to evoke ghostly presence. All of these shows share a fascination with the possibilities of self-conscious performance, tapping away at the inherent unreality of theatre.


Harrower deliberately disconnects his two actors, letting them describe their mutual love and hate directly to the audience. Although the two characters, a brother and sister, seem to be dwelling on a family argument, Harrower subtly weaves larger themes – the split between generations, the rivalry between East and West coasts, the mixed blessings of personal history, the redemptive power of absurd conflicts – into their homely, defensive chatter. Without making huge statements, and capturing the nuance of sibling compassion, Harrower champions the traditional script as the blueprint for a moving, intimate performance.


Orlando is a far more expansive work, even if it is a solo for one actor. Originally staged with live music, it mixes Virginia Woolf’s magical realist story of an immortal transsexual, cutting edge computer graphics and an electronica soundtrack to remystify the text, revealing fragments of passion, beauty and insight within the century-spanning narrative. It is exceptionally hi-tech for the Fringe, intensely serious and blinding in its neon beauty: Cryptic are as fascinated by the image as the word as the music, and while Orlando is familiar from the superb Sally Potter film, this version’s transformative, hallucinatory rhythms cuts to a mystical heart.


Fish and Game are “Scotland’s Live Art supergroup”: Alma Mater, ironically, is a video performance. Originally a site-specific “guide” to Glasgow’s Scotland Street School museum, it has been displaced to Remarkable Arts’ Edinburgh church venue. Refusing to fall for either clichés about the greatest days of your life, or school as bullying hell, Alma Mater is beautifully balanced between celebration and critique and uses the iPad as a tool to layer reality with a supernatural resonance. Witty and moving, it is a reminder that experimental theatre can bypass theatrical artifice for an immediate, compassionate, emotional hit.


Scottish theatre has reacted energetically to the political shifts of recent years: ironically, two of the strongest responses have come from plays that have roots in the past. Wee Andy, a short play that emerged from the Greek-style tragedy of Fleeto and King of Scotland, re-engineered from a previous Fringe success, and now with added celebrity satirist Watson, both grapple with the hard realities of financial and social deprivation.

While Fleeto has a rough-hewn poetry, Wee Andy is a savage blast of frustration. The victimised hero hardly speaks, and much of the script consists of angry lectures, political diatribes and coarse social analysis: author Paddy Cuneen is clearly frustrated by the lack of political will to clean up knife crime and the society that perpetuates it. A grim piece of gritty realism, it is a direct, simple polemic.


The King of Scotland dwells in no less a deprived estate, but the hero’s madness slips into a magic realist world of talking dogs and flying taxis. Watson is confident in the monologue: he lends the descent into an insanity a friendly familiarity, and failed romance and social exclusion combine to describe a life lived without purpose and false hope. If the final delusion of royalty is a hackneyed stereotype – madness is rarely recognisable once it reaches the stage as anything more than a blunt metaphor – The King of Scotland takes a wry glance at Scotland’s self-image and the empty rhetoric of social improvement.


Far from being just another youth company, Junction 25 are a rare example of radical performance art accommodating a community based process. Led by Jess Thorpe and Tashi Gore, also known as Glas(s) Performance, J25 made their name through a bracing combination of emotional honesty and imaginative theatricality.


“Junction 25 is our collaboration with young people, explains Thorpe. “It means a collective. It means young people trying out new ideas. They need to and can speak for themselves.” After successful tours across Europe, a supportive home crowd in Glasgow and a hit at the IETM last October, J25 take on the Fringe with their provocative look at love: I Hope My Heart Goes First.


“When the concept of the show was first announced as love I was a little unsure what to expect.” Performer Scott Ramage continues the story. “I knew straight away it wasn't just going to be about romantic love.” The inclusive nature of their creativity is reflected by the process, Ramage explains. “We had a large sheet of paper spread across a wall and we all wrote ideas and feelings on it for the performance: none were refused or removed.” Fellow performer Megan adds “One of the challenges was trying to connect all the different stories together and make sure it was fluid.” The final product is a challenging journey into love as it is understood by a vibrant, imaginative group of Glaswegian young people.






Orlando: 5 – 29 Aug (excluding Weds), 4pm?Venue 157: St George’s West, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh EH2 4RT

Box office: 0131 225 7001 (from 2 Aug)?0131 226 0000 (Fringe)

5 – 29 Aug (excluding Weds), 4pm?Venue 157: St George’s West, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh EH2 4RT

Box office: 0131 225 7001 (from 2 Aug)?0131 226 0000 (Fringe)

www.cryptic.org.uk


Alma Mater: 5-29 Aug, Remarkable Arts, St George’s West (Venue 157)

Entry for individual audience member every ten minutes, piece lasts 20 minutes.

Tickets £5 Booking: 0131 226 0000 www.edfringe.com

www.fishandgame.org.uk


Junction 25: 5-16 Aug, Remarkable Arts, 2pm

www.junction-25.com/main/junction-25-hit-the-fringe

http://www.scottishtheatres.com/madeinscotland/

Ten @ Zoo Roxy, 2011

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.
PUBLISHED IN THE SHIMMY

26 AUGUST 2011


Although its relationship to dance is not obviously apparent, Ten is a sincere and thoughtful meditation on the relationship between one man's Indian and British identities. Patel grew up feeling western, but a late fascination with Indian rhythm encouraged him to reconsider his heritage.

Enlisting two drummers - one from Scotland, and another from Africa via Barbados and Birmingham - Patel enjoys highlighting the complexities and humour within ideas about racial identity. The charisma of the three men, who banter and challenge each other, explain the difference between India's ten beat cycle and western pop's four to the floor pump, and cover themselves in red kanku, the cosmetic used for the Hindu "red dot" on the forehead. Somewhere between the tossing of powder, and the drummer's intrusions on Patel's speculations, Patel drags out his own conflicts and questions.

When Patel draws a contrast between a British "lineal" conception of the beat and the more cyclical nature of the Indian rhythm, he provides a structure to his musings that makes sense of his repetitions and casual style. He does not draw any conclusions about his identity, merely peruses possibilities: yet this open style allows Patel to be comfortable wearing both the Hindu dot and the George's Cross on his chest.

Charming, confident and consciously avoiding any bland statements about national identity, Ten may not be dance but it is a fascinating insight into one man's interior landscapes.

A Word with the Webb

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SHIMMY 05 AUGUST 2011

Part of the process for creating dance works is the "lab": a week spent in thestudio, experimenting and testing ideas. Jack Webb made his Beta Wave Transport after his success at New Moves in Glasgow. Here he talks about his work at the moment he prepared to make a new piece.

What influences are you taking into this lab with you?

I recently read an interview with Marina Abramovic and she talked about how performance is about reality, that everything that happens in that performance is real, whether you cut yourself or you cry, everything is real in that moment where as with theatre it is unreal and you're acting. So yes, I would say that is a strong influence for me for this lab.

Why are the labs an important part of your creative process?

Saucy Jack

Essentially they offer physical space to create and think and actually be able to move and make your work happen, in order to dance you need space and without funding I have no way of paying for that space so they actually provide me with the opportunity to make what's in my head a reality.

Why do you use dance as your artistic expression?

Dance is universal, almost everyone does it in some shape or form so it seems natural to me do it as way of communicating something. There's also something about movement in space that is a living and breathing experience that other art forms just can't communicate in the same way, it is very powerful to perform and spill your guts out in front of someone, I do it because it gets straight to the core of the audience and it's a live experience that they and I cannot escape.

Honesty and progress are my biggest ambitions. I'm committed to making work that is uncompromising, straight talking and honest and I want to do the same as a dancer when I dance in other choreographers' work. That's why there are some things I make the choice of not doing because to do it I would have to go against that principle.

Cathartic Connections in 2011

Physical Theatre: Not Just For August

EVENT PREVIEW BY GARETH K VILE.

originally PUBLISHED in the shimmy 05 AUGUST 2011

It may have an international reach, but the Fringe does have the odd Scottish company. Cathartic Connections are a young team, bravely entering the Edinburgh arena with a physical, politically engaged show, Remembering Annabel. Andrew Simpson explains how he hopes that the tourists can be reminded that theatre is in Scotland all twelve months of the year.

What inspired you to set up your own company?

Cathartic Connections was formed by Andrew Henry in early 2010 for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010. The company was started with the aim of creating theatre that has real social relevance; that questions the ideologies of our time and how these effect our lives. We wanted to combine our love of storytelling and entertainment with a way to express our dissatisfaction with some of the decisions made in our name. What better way to contribute to debate, the forming of our society and express your own views than creating a story and characters that express those views and ask those questions?

Why the Fringe, isn't that a high risk?

As a young Edinburgh based company trying to juggle university, part-time work, the company and our own increasingly non existent social lives the Fringe is one of the most accessible ways to create a piece of theatre for an audience. Thousands of people flood to Edinburgh for the Fringe every year and this gives us a huge potential audience of people interested in the arts and theatre. Also the excitement and buzz of the Fringe is incredible; the feeling of really being part of something much bigger than yourself drives us all to push ourselves further and further.

How do you find the theatre scene in Edinburgh outside of the Fringe?

I think there's a really vibrant and diverse mix in Edinburgh. The Traverse and Lyceum theatres regularly produce new high quality work but even smaller fringe and student companies from the various universities around Edinburgh contribute to the mix with innovative work that really highlights the wealth of creativity and talent bubbling underneath the surface.

What inspired the subject of this Remembering Annabel?

We always aim to create stories that have a real significance and relationship to current events and the politics of our time. The film "Inside Job" about the global financial crisis and the unrestrained greed and political paralysis that went with it was a big influence in the creation of the show. We're living in a time of intense political and social unrest; our failed economic and political systems have led us into a shameful and corrupt mess and forced us into lives we don't agree with and into making decisions we shouldn't have to and don't want to make.

Remembering Annabel asks about the choices we have in life; do we choose between Labour or the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats; "austerity measures" or "bankruptcy"; our dreams or our reality? Are we stuck in our situation and must we just accept it? Or can we like millions of the poorest and most vulnerable around UK and Europe confronted with binary choices between bad and worse take the hidden third option and just say "No!".

Why do you feel that theatre is a good place for political discussion?

Theatre allows you direct contact with your audience; you can create lively debate and discussion with people in the same room as you; the same space. You're not trying to convince people of something on the other side of the world but people you can directly relate to in a dynamic, exciting way. Theatre is an incredibly imaginative and stimulating experience for both performers and audience; we can entertain whilst addressing serious pressing issues.

How do you feel these conversations can be continued outside of the theatre itself?

I think the show can inspire people to question the choices we all make everyday and the effects these have on our lives. The show is essentially about empowerment, idealism and finding the strength of will to reject the status quo if it's rotted to the core. People can question how much of what they do they actually agree with and ask "Can I change this?". Is our political/economic system representing me? Am I happy with the it? Am I happy with my life? My job? My clothes/food/home/friends/family? People will leave empowered and inspired.

Qing Cheng, FRINGE 2011

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SHIMMY 05 AUGUST 2011

Qing Cheng, starring a husband and wife team as time-crossed lovers, is “the first ever artistic attempt to showcase the Taoist philosophy on stage.” It highlights the particular preoccupations of this rich spiritual tradition. “Take for example the duality of soft versus hard, and the ideas of non-doing, immortality, natural balance, and ultimate quietude," says James Tee Wee. "One will find the teaching of Lao Tzu presented in abundance. The use of tai chi movement, sword technique, calligraphy, chess games, music instruments, and praying rituals on stage are all very representative of Taoism. Even the scenery wagon on stage resemble a pair of Ying and Yang!”

The Ying and Yang is the central image of Taoism, and symbolises the complex relationship between contrasting elements that makes us Taoisms most distinctive – and well-known – concept. Given that “the Tao which can be named is not the Tao,” it is perhaps surprising that theatre has not been quicker to play with its precepts, since it contains that ambiguity that is ideal for a challenging performance.

There is considerable romance alongside the hard thinking: and the abstract philosophy does not disconnect Qing Cheng from hard reality. “It all began with the producer's visit to the devastated city of Dujiangyan after the Sichuan earthquake. Mr LV thought it would be meaningful in creating some intangible asset for the people there. He sourced local folktales, then script writing.”

“What makes it more meaningful is that Tang Zixing and Wang Lida, who play hero Murong and Princess Jade, met in volunteer relief work for the same earthquake! Soon they fell in love, and got married!”

Christian religious art – from Botticelli’s Annunciation to David Mach’s controversial exhibition down near Waverley Station – takes on all manner of forms, but Tee Wee observes that Taoism dictates that its art has a particular quality. “The practitioner has to master their heart and soul. It is not just as simple as controlling them but to subdue all impulses and let the being itself blend very harmoniously with universe.”

As the performance reveals, this philosophy can be found in many arts, but the quality of the artist is, in itself, the ideal being expressed. “One can easily spot a uniqueness in all Taoist arts, which is the feel of harmony. The act can be swift and forceful but the results are always graceful and smooth.”

In conversation with Rasta Thomas, Ballet's Bad Boy (FROM 2011)

In conversation with Rasta Thomas, Ballet's Bad Boy

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED 05 AUGUST 2011

One of my big themes this year has been the way that ballet is often disparaged by companies who use its tradition and techniques: in your press release you talk about "ballet with attitude... without the constraints of classical dance traditions". What part of ballet have you held onto, and what are the constraints that you have abandoned?

We have held on to the beauty and strength of the technique and let go of everything that can be boring! We use pop and rock music, wear funky clothes and break down the walls of what you would get going to the ballet! We yell and expect you to do the same! We "ROCK" the Ballet!

In terms of casting, how far did you select ballet dancers and then add the other styles, or did you work with acrobats and hip-hop artists as well?

We select very versatile dancers. They are what we call "hybrids". They can do many styles of dance, as well as acrobatics and martial arts. We have found dancers online, at auditions, at competitions... Everywhere!

Something that ballet shares with musical theatre is the narrative: does Rock the Ballet have a story, or is it a more abstract piece about dance itself?

We use a loose story in our first act. It's a basic love story but showcases romance and laughter. Our second act is full of awesome dancing to awesome music. Simple.

How well does ballet mesh with forms like hip hop or tap? Are there shared values between the different forms?

Of course. They all require skill, coordination, talent and passion. They are very music driven and express many different emotions.

What sort of response were you hoping for with the show, and has this been the response that you have received?

The response to ROCK the Ballet has been incredible!!! We have fans all over the world and couldn't be happier. We want to keep people coming to the theatre so we will keep doing great shows!!!

If ballet is often perceived as old fashioned, why do you think it has retained its popularity?

Tradition is very alive in ballet. I love that and feel it should always be celebrated. We just wanted to do something different. We wanted to shake things up in the dance world and give people something to talk about.

Are there other companies that you feel any affinity with?

Not really because I feel we are the future. The past is great to learn from but I wanna keep moving forward and stay on a path that's only meant for us.

Glasgow dancer gets environmental (2011)

EVENT PREVIEW BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED IN THE SHIMMY 04 AUGUST 2011

Rosalind Masson is one of Glasgow's most energetic young dancers: having been part of punk icon Linder's thirteen hour underground special The Darktown Cakewalk, a regular collaborator with Tom Pritchard and one of Dance Base's tips for the top through their compilation show at The Traverse last autumn, Masson now turns her attention to environmental catastrophe.

"What inspired me to make Our Oceans are Drowning is the melting of the polar ice-caps due to global warming," she says. "To me it just seems totally insane to think that this is a positive thing and to exploit the resources now becoming available - which is what's now being negotiated." And this is more than an abstract worry: "Cairn Energy, the forerunners drilling for oil in the Arctic are based in Edinburgh and I wanted to send a message to them. It would be great if they could come to the performance."

Masson may well be a familiar improviser, but she has been quick to integrate other arts into her work. For a time, she focused on splicing film and performance. "For me, film is all about movement and timing, while also being able to work in non-linear time and space through editing and post production. That's a lot of fun, but at some point I realised I needed to come back to my body."

The sense of alienation from the body Masson detected in her time as a film-maker reflects not only her musings on the way that environmental carelessness disconnects humans from their planet, but also a more general alienation of people from creativity.

"I have this theory that if dance, music, crafts and the arts were more a part of everyone's everyday life and culture then I wouldn't be doing this whole thing."

 "I guess contemporary dancers end up becoming these spectacles that sacrifice themselves - not for their art but from a frustration about the general state of things."

From the the original political inspiration, Masson's vision of  the artist becomes almost shamanic: Our Oceans promises to find the place where art becomes an act of political engagement.

A further repeat: Dark, delicious cabaret

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED 23 AUGUST 2011

"Cabaret is an umberella term," says Amanda Palmer, half of the siamese twin duo Evelyn Evelyn. "You've got all these perfomers making music and totally unafraid of being theatrical. Even Lady Gaga draws her inspiration from theatre. It's a reaction to the music of the 1990s, which stripped everything back. Now the pendulum has swung the other way."

Cabaret is learning to live in the spotlight. Camille O'Sullivan, longtime darling of the Spiegeltent, has grown to fill the largest Pleasance space. Scottee's queer Live Art special Eat Your Heart Out has been promoted to the Assembly. And Amanda Palmer, who threatened to ascend to stadium rock godhead with The Dresden Dolls, has become a standard bearer for the meeting of punk and cabaret. Last year saw the stand up comedians and critics square up to burlesque. This year, cabaret has to find a way to retain its intimacy in the face of popularity.

Camille has scaled back her band to a three piece and wanders through her set, confounding expectations by revealing her idiosyncratic preoccupations and perfecting songs by Jacque Brel, Nick Cave and Gillian Welch. Retreating from the rockier treatments of last year, she delivers a five star show and balances surreal humour and intimate confessional.

Undermining her intensity by unnerving clowning, Camille prevents her show from being self-important: the gradual shift of mood sees her abandon her welcoming warmth for something uncanny and deep. Unlike many who claim the excluded and heart-broken as inspiration, Camille brings an authentic compassion to her tales of the dispossessed and marginalised.

Eat Your Heart Out is a liminal travesty. Scottee, a gracious, self-deprecating and cutting host, guides his audience through wild acts: From Figs in Wigs - an Yvonne Rainer vision of a Lady Gaga video - to Myra Dubois - her children's show is a viciously funny attack on decency and drag's acerbic edge - EYHO is a taut lesson on non-conformist queer cabaret. Their allegiance to Live Art is clear, their relationship to cabaret like the couple that can't help getting back together despite the heart-break. Just when cabaret is becoming mainstream again, Scottee thankfully drags it back to the margins.

Meanwhile Amanda Palmer's Evelyn Evelyn is a cunning strategy to avoid the inevitable obsolescence built into the career of rock musicians. Creating a parody of a freak show turn, her Siamese twin act with Jason Webley takes her through honky-tonk and bluegrass pastiches, hilarious yet retaining her trademark skill at finding the universal in the peculiar. As a songwriter, she is far from Camille's brilliance as an interpreter of classic tunes, but adds a vaudeville bite to her passionate songs of love and alienation. She admits that she has a fan base who "get and appreciate the injoke of my life," allowing her to do "what I feel like doing, even if it is dangerous, business-wise."

Cabaret may be popular, but as all of these artists prove, and as Amanda Palmer makes explicit, it has the spirit of reaction against the dull 1990s' seriousness and can still be deliciously subversive.

The Brahaha Broad Brings Burlesque Back

Comic Capers and Sexy Sirens

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED IN THE SHIMMY 04 AUGUST 2011

Cleaving to the comedy rather than the cabaret scene, and featuring an old school combo of strippers and stand-ups, Kitty Cointreau's Brahaha stood out in 2010's Fringe, the year when cabaret broke.
“I wanted to create a show that was different from the majority of other cabaret shows out there,” says Kitty Cointreau. “I love comedy and was a stand-up for a short while and wanted to bring together the two things that entertain me the most – great stand-up and gorgeous burlesque. We did face criticism at first for bringing the two styles together, but burlesque originally shared the stage with stand-up, so it seemed fitting to return to the roots of vaudeville. Two years later, BraHaHa is still alive, kicking, teasing and twirling and I’m proud to put my name to it.”

The Brahaha has established itself across the country, and at Zoo during Fringe 2010: Cointreau’s ability to pick both local and national performers allowed it to capitalise on the energy of the grass-roots movement and the rise of more professional acts. For 2011, she has added a second show to her portfolio.

“Kitty & Jonny’s Speakteasy is an experimental rock n’ roll musical comedy show that I share with my friend Duncan Oakley who is performing as Jonny Wild,” she says. “My burlesque is totally integrated and the tease is carried throughout the show until the big finale. It is a real synergy of my burlesque and Duncan’s musicianship.”

What sets Cointreau apart from the majority of performers and programmers is her interest in adapting and respecting the past. “My grandmother was a burlesque act and ENSA entertainer during World War II. She was also a contortionist and performed as 'the girl in the goldfish bowl' and did all kinds of sideshow routines. She was a great inspiration to me,” she affirms. This family history has given her a broader appreciation of what burlesque means. “I’m a great believer that burlesque should be about laughing too,” she notes. The revelation that she could connect her enthusiasms for burlesque and comedy came later. 

“It wasn’t until 2006/07 when I went to see The Candybox shows in Birmingham that I realised there was a burgeoning scene for this kind of art and an audience clearly crying out for more. I wanted to be a part of it. Seeing that show was a real turning point for me.”

The introduction of the Speakteasy marks a new phase in Cointreau’s career. “The BraHaHa takes a vaudeville approach: Programming the show every day and picking exactly the right mix of guest acts from award-winning stand-ups, to burlesque darlings, to great magicians to music acts and circus artists, is the key. Speakteasy is my rock n’ roll ‘toddler’ that allows me to work more collaboratively. The two shows offer a different style and tone to the fringe audience.”

Crackin' and Strippin'

One of my fondest hopes for the burlesque and cabaret revival was that it would rejuvenate contemporary theatre. When acts like Dusty Limits – and many of the striptease artists coming out of the amateur scene – consciously evoke the Weimar Republic, they recognised that vaudeville was more than mere entertainment, and that parody could have a political, sharp edge.

You see, what I am doing here is showing my working. This an interview I did with Peter Scott-Presland for the article I intend to write about striptease.

Scott-Presland was very generous with his answers, and it seems a shame to just take the tiny bit that interested me (it is the stuff about hen parties being dirty). But by editing it for online, this counts as research for my article.

I also reckon the tag “male strippers” ought to have fooled a few readers into coming onto the blog. But read on... it gets really filthy.

But I am going to start with the Press Release, for background...

HOMO PROMOS PRESENTS

 “A CRACKING PIECE OF FRINGE THEATRE”

Strip Search – a solo performance piece for male stripper, by Peter Scott-Presland.  SQUADDIE is stripping tonight, in a B-list gay bar; he is also stripping his soul, to the bone.  As he slips back and forth between his real-time strip routine and memories of borstal, of tours in Iraq, and of surviving on the streets post-discharge from the Army, we get a moving and angry picture of a man trying to better himself in a life which gave him no lucky breaks, with ironic contrasts between the real-life soldier and the military fantasy of his entertainment.  Fantasy and reality combine in a savage climax.  This is a heavily revised version of a script first presented in 2010.

Venue 36, Theatre 2, the Space on North Bridge, Carlton Hotel, EH1 1SD.

Previews: Fri – Sat, 5th – 6th August;  Main run: Mon 8th  - Sat 20th Aug 9.05pm

Titus Rowe was Boyz Magazine Stripper of the Year 2009, but has also a parallel career as an actor and singer, having appeared in parts as diverse as the Pirate King in “Pirates of Penzance” and Dionysus in “The Bacchae”.  It was this range of skills which prompted Peter Scott-Presland to write Strip Search for Titus.

Peter Scott-Presland has won Edinburgh Fringe Firsts for “Woody Shavings” and “Sir Herbert Macrae – A Tribute”, as well as being nominated for Best Musical in the “Plays and Players” Awards and in the Canadian DORAs, for Dorothy’s Travels.  His musical La Ronde is currently on the shortlist for the 2011 “Offies”. 

Homo Promos has mounted over 20 plays and musicals since its inception in 1988.  It is the oldest gay theatre company in the UK.  It aims to present LGBT themes in an entertaining way which is also accessible to a diverse audience.  Out of the ghetto and onto the stage!

First of all - why did you use striptease as a central part of this performance?

It's a long story!  I was directing a show with the Company from Hell, and the only person in the cast who was reliable, friendly and talented was Titus Rowe; he let slip he actually earned his money as a male stripper.  From then on his life was made hell by a couple of the cast, who said he couldn't be a "real" actor because of this.  Now, I've always thought a lot of skill went into creating a strip act, and he was Boyz Stripper of the Year, so I thought "You c---ts, I'll show you", and devised a show which combined his talents, and blew out of the water the notion that a stripper couldn't be a real actor.

There are three reasons why strip is essential to this show.  Firstly, the guy is baring his soul to the audience, his struggle to make up for a shitty life - I won't give away all the plot -and so the physical strip is a metaphor for his psychological strip, the journey of discovery for the character and the audience.  Secondly, one of my main complaints about one-person plays where characters tell their life stories is that there is so little conflict in them; where's the classic drama structure of conflict and resolution acted out?  Putting in a real strip gives an additional dramatic tension - "will he or won't he?" - to the story.  Finally, as a gay man I've always been very anti-military and not very patriotic either, and so I was intrigued by the way military images are so much part of the sexual fantasies of many gay men.  This show plays on the gap between the reality and fantasy, in that the character has been a soldier in real life, and is playing out a military fantasy at the same time.

The play jumps between "light entertainment" - the striptease fantasy - and something much harder - the past of the main character. how far is this show a serious play about issues, or something lighter and funnier?

I think I've answered that to some extent.  Don't worry, there are quite a few good jokes in the script, but it is a serious play, and quite shocking and harrowing in places.  When we did previews, there was an element in the audience of gay men who came along to see a spectacularly good-looking hunk get his kit off, but by the time we got to the nitty-gritty, they were so into the story and the character that they were looking at his face, not his dick.  And that's how it should be.

How do you feel about the revival of striptease as an acceptable form of entertainment, through the burlesque revival and so on?

You have to separate gay male experience from heterosexual or lesbian experience here.  Stripping is dying on the gay scene.  Twenty years ago there were a dozen strippers making a good living from touring a well-established pub circuit.  The availability of sex and porn on the internet has changed all that.  For lesbians, girl-for-girl strippers are a way of asserting sexuality which for so long was assumed not to exist.  If you know dykes today, they are revelling in the power and freedom to pull - they're just as slutty as the boyz have always been!  The heterosexual burlesque revival is something else again - it involves camp and glamour and is very knowing and post-modern.  But again I think you have to separate young women - a lot of them drama students or ex-drama students - doing burlesque to an essentially theatrical audience, from the Eastern European girls working the Soho strip joints and the so-called "gentlemen's clubs" in a much harsher environment and driven by economic necessity.

Is there a particular aesthetic or social context to male striptease for gay audiences that is not present in heterosexual striptease?

People who strip for gay audiences as well as for hen nights tell me that gay audiences are much better behaved.  The hens are merciless, and much dirtier!  I think this is partly because gay strip nights are a regular weekly thing - Monday Karaoke, Tuesday Quiz, Wednesday Stripper - whereas a hen night is usually something special, a one-off, and much more an excuse for letting your hair down and letting off steam.  For gay men who follow strip nights there's more of an aesthetic, plus there's the aspirational aspect: I could have a body like that, if only I could get my lardarse down to the gym.  Our most appreciative audiences have been women and gay men.  I think straight men find male strippers threatening, though I can assure them that they won't get ravished in the third row in this show!

There’s a great deal of immersive theatre knocking about these days: Hotel Medea and Audience at the Fringe, Green and McMaster’s The Fire Burns and Burns, Mr Criticulous’ Critical Confessions. Made fashionable by London’s Punchdrunk, and promoted by any  company that fancies a short-cut to catharsis, it’s been around long enough to be a recognisable tactic but is new enough to retain some shock value.

Although it is hardly original – ever since the Catholic Mass went interactive after Vatican II, even conservative religious traditions are using it – immersive theatre is quite the latest thing. One dance company gained notoriety by clambering naked over their audience (and spitting on a critic), and Adrian Howells took it to a logical end by bathing his audience of one. It might take courage on behalf of both actors and audience but its antecedents are in pantomime and stand-up comedy. And the best theatre has always aimed to immerse the crowd, even if only emotionally.

The contemporary fashion for immersion comes on the back of a reaction against the script and the extremity of the last great British performance movement, New Brutalism. Once Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill had done their nasty business of stage, and the response became jaded, there was nothing left but to shatter the fourth wall to get some kind of emotional engagement.

Immersive theatre can be gentle – Green’s use of nudity and inviting the audience into the action is frequently kind and inclusive, while Fuel have handed a collection of sheds over to artists who promptly made intimate, meditative works. It connects with the love of ritual trumpeted by contemporary performance practice, and often has overtones of spiritual or political conscience – Green again, or even Ontroerend Goed’s more vicious attacks on the traditional role of the crowd. It ticks boxes for the avant-garde, breaking down those pesky conventions of the stage that are supposedly getting in the way of immediacy and engagement. And it probably envies computer games, which really occupy the player’s consciousness.

There’s a parallel with the rash of interactive exhibits popping up in museums and art galleries: and this betrays the anxiety behind the fashion. Both museums and theatre are old, under attack from new media that offer more control and agency to the viewer. Immersive theatre become the one stop solution. Frankly, anything I am using in Critical Confessions is bound to be suspect. I lack any formal theatrical training, but give me a black box, ten minute slots and I’m Larry Olivier.

Green and Goed, and Punchdrunk and Fuel, and Howells and Hotel Medea may not lack the skills, but all this intimacy and immersion is in danger of losing the artistry that makes theatre resonant. I’ve struggled making sense of Green’s latest work – it feels too much like Secular Sunday School for me – and by homing in on a subjective experience, made meaningful not by the vision of the artist but by the engagement of the audience, immersive theatre is in danger of dropping the communal experience that makes theatre different from watching a DVD at home alone.

Of course, anything that brings theatre closer to a lap-dance is fine by me – there’s an immersive experience that achieves exactly the emotional response it aims for – but it also offers problems of interpretation. Reviews of Audience concentrated on the moral conduct of the performers and the possibility that they had plants in the crowd, rather than the message of powerlessness and manipulation that Goed were getting at. Green and McMaster’s The Fire takes on the quality of a sweat lodge, but relies heavily on the individuals finding their own experience and meaning. And, most disturbingly, whenever immersive theatre turns up, it encourages debate about the boundaries of theatre and its form. This is, for me, a major distraction from the real issues that art can discuss.

That might serve as a broader warning against any radicalism in performance style, but that’s another discussion.

Aside from its association with interactive galleries, immersive theatre is very much a product of the Live Art scene, where performers frequently question the participation of the audience. Marina Abramovitch did it that time she let the audience go to town on her body: a regular feature of The National Review was the act which involved a dialogue between performer and audience. There’s even a guy who invites people to slap him about with custard pies while he tries to read rationalist philosophy.  And Pocha Nostra did something in Tramway thatstill scares me.

It’s only when it moves out of this safe zone – Live Art is all about testing the boundaries – that it bothers me. It’s difficult to review a show like the Bystander Effect, which is more social experiment than play. This seems like a problem for the critic, unless it is recognised that the critic is often the connection between an art work and a potential audience. If the entire experience is personal, or based on a twist that needs to be kept secret, or compromises the critic, there is no way of talking about the work in public. At this point, immersion becomes seclusion.

Good immersive theatre also requires skill. I can keep it tight for ten minutes in Critical Confessions, and Green has a kindly demeanour that makes The Fire safe, despite asking something so intimate from the audience. But the cast of Hotel Medea coped very badly when I tried to join in the interaction more realistically: I was disappointed that they failed to handle my attempts to subvert their game, leaving me unimmersed for long sections of the show. By trying to be part of the action in a way not prescribed by the director, I undermined my engagement in the event. And if the actor really wants to immerse the viewer, questions of moral responsibility crop up. I realised pretty quickly that my audience had to leave my booth with a smile. That’s why they get a gift at the end.

Personally, I love being part of the fun. I even went nuts for that mad Santa thing in The Arches over Christmas. I am pretty comfortable being in the game – I can lob my shoes at actors quite happily, so long ad I have permission to play with my conventional role as viewer. I am not concerned that immersion is breaking rules, only that it has to be very good to work. If it is used as a short cut to catharsis, or a trendy excuse for a half-baked idea, or a branch of conceptualism where the artist abdicates responsibility for the audience’s experience: well, I am just bored and unimpressed. And if it reveals a lack of faith in the potential of theatrical convention – the answer might be a few better plays, not a radical restructuring of the foundations of the art  form.

Sodom if they can't take a joke...

My mother would always pretend to be nonplussed by representations of sex and violence, while being secretly offended. My own prudery takes a different form: I pretend to be gung-ho for nudity and brutality, silently insisting on a purpose to any sensational elements in theatre. So, having become bored by burlesque – as it turns out, even sexy young things stripped only engages me if it has a subtle political subtext – I turned my attention to Sodom, a post-student, late night production of Rochester’s play about buggery and moral consequences.

Rochester’s script reads like Shakespeare writing pornography: more cunts than cherubs, and the plot is a flimsy excuse for threats of male rape and women caught with the horses. There’s nothing shocking in obscenity, except when it jars with Rochester’s poetic phrasing. The cast do lend the iambics a received pronunciation, which maintains the initial surprise for a while. Unfortunately, the tricks that they employ to avoid nudity, although clever, strip the play of its serious intention to titillate.

Sadly, they never push beyond the hilarity of saying rude words in posh voices. Certainly, Rochester did not intend for Sodom to have a redeeming moral – the finale is rushed, and the descent to hell an afterthought compounded by a silly joke. Rather, the play is meant to be erotic, sharing the quality of Victorian pornography, using language to thrill. This production refuses to interpret this for a modern audience, leaving it an exercise in dramatic archaeology and never touching on the theatricality of its diverse scenes.

Master of the comic book Alan Moore recently reflected on why violence is so much more acceptable than sex as a topic for art. He promptly added his Lost Girls to the argument, enjoying the irony of throwing a work of pornography into his serious bibliography of mature graphic novels. As with burlesque, Sodom is a reminder of how sexuality is a potent ingredient when flung onto the stage: directed with an eye to the internet era, it could be a challenging hour of amoral entertainment. Yet, unlike Lost Girls, this version refuses to abandon a certain restraint. In answer to Moore’s question, it acknowledges that some things cannot be performed without authenticity: a naked performer is really naked. It’s not fair to expect a fringe show to do justice to Sodom’s sensual potential.

Homo Strip Action (part 1)

You see, what I am doing here is showing my working. This an interview I did with Peter Scott-Presland for the article I intend to write about striptease.

Scott-Presland was very generous with his answers, and it seems a shame to just take the tiny bit that interested me (it is the stuff about hen parties being dirty). But by editing it for online, this counts as research for my article.

I also reckon the tag “male strippers” ought to have fooled a few readers into coming onto the blog. But read on... it gets really filthy.

But I am going to start with the Press Release, for background...

HOMO PROMOS PRESENTS

 “A CRACKING PIECE OF FRINGE THEATRE”

Strip Search – a solo performance piece for male stripper, by Peter Scott-Presland.  SQUADDIE is stripping tonight, in a B-list gay bar; he is also stripping his soul, to the bone.  As he slips back and forth between his real-time strip routine and memories of borstal, of tours in Iraq, and of surviving on the streets post-discharge from the Army, we get a moving and angry picture of a man trying to better himself in a life which gave him no lucky breaks, with ironic contrasts between the real-life soldier and the military fantasy of his entertainment.  Fantasy and reality combine in a savage climax.  This is a heavily revised version of a script first presented in 2010.

Venue 36, Theatre 2, the Space on North Bridge, Carlton Hotel, EH1 1SD.

Previews: Fri – Sat, 5th – 6th August;  Main run: Mon 8th  - Sat 20th Aug 9.05pm

Titus Rowe was Boyz Magazine Stripper of the Year 2009, but has also a parallel career as an actor and singer, having appeared in parts as diverse as the Pirate King in “Pirates of Penzance” and Dionysus in “The Bacchae”.  It was this range of skills which prompted Peter Scott-Presland to write Strip Search for Titus.

Peter Scott-Presland has won Edinburgh Fringe Firsts for “Woody Shavings” and “Sir Herbert Macrae – A Tribute”, as well as being nominated for Best Musical in the “Plays and Players” Awards and in the Canadian DORAs, forDorothy’s Travels.  His musical La Ronde is currently on the shortlist for the 2011 “Offies”. 

Homo Promos has mounted over 20 plays and musicals since its inception in 1988.  It is the oldest gay theatre company in the UK.  It aims to present LGBT themes in an entertaining way which is also accessible to a diverse audience.  Out of the ghetto and onto the stage!

First of all - why did you use striptease as a central part of this performance?

It's a long story!  I was directing a show with the Company from Hell, and the only person in the cast who was reliable, friendly and talented was Titus Rowe; he let slip he actually earned his money as a male stripper.  From then on his life was made hell by a couple of the cast, who said he couldn't be a "real" actor because of this.  Now, I've always thought a lot of skill went into creating a strip act, and he was Boyz Stripper of the Year, so I thought "You c---ts, I'll show you", and devised a show which combined his talents, and blew out of the water the notion that a stripper couldn't be a real actor.

There are three reasons why strip is essential to this show.  Firstly, the guy is baring his soul to the audience, his struggle to make up for a shitty life - I won't give away all the plot -and so the physical strip is a metaphor for his psychological strip, the journey of discovery for the character and the audience.  Secondly, one of my main complaints about one-person plays where characters tell their life stories is that there is so little conflict in them; where's the classic drama structure of conflict and resolution acted out?  Putting in a real strip gives an additional dramatic tension - "will he or won't he?" - to the story.  Finally, as a gay man I've always been very anti-military and not very patriotic either, and so I was intrigued by the way military images are so much part of the sexual fantasies of many gay men.  This show plays on the gap between the reality and fantasy, in that the character has been a soldier in real life, and is playing out a military fantasy at the same time.

As it goes, the interview continues into part 2...