Bert and Ernie are BACK

Eric and Gareth talk Kimmings

Eric: Won't it be necessary for the role model that Kimmings is looking for to be a kind of 1950s' character?

Gareth: How do you mean?

Eric: She seems pretty much conservative - in terms of sexuality. Obviously it is for kids but it doesn't teach them how to deal with the 'next part of life'.

Gareth: You mean that she avoids dealing with sexuality altogether, rather than challenging the models presented by Lady Gaga or Katy Perry?

Eric: Pretty much: but I can see how it is difficult to breach the subject of sexuality at all with kids! There's a lot of red tape around it.

Gareth: The problem is honest conversation over exploitation, perhaps?

Eric: Whaddaya mean?

Gareth: Well, it is difficult to have a chat with preteens about sex and sexuality identity. It is a taboo. On the other hand, they get bombarded with images of sexuality by pop musicians, which turns fashion and sexuality into a product. I think Kimmings is trying to empower young people without engaging sexuality at all.

Eric: She is trying to make their own role models and not have to think about 'that kind of stuff': that chat is not for her to deal with!

Gareth: Yes. 



Part lecture, part dance-off, part ethical debate and part gig, That Catherine Bennett Show is a story about family activism, children's rights and a belief in your own power to change the world which follows thetrue story of Bryony and Taylor’s quest to make Catherine Bennett a world famous role model for the masses. Their tale involves storming the Houses of Parliament, being played on Radio 1 and getting their message right into the CBBC headquarters.

Catherine Bennett is embodied by Kimmings and is totally managed by Taylor. She sings songs about things other than love, fame and money,treats children as the philosophers and question-askers they really areand talks about women’s rights and being an activist at nine years old. This entertaining and educational show proves that an alternative role model for the young is possible and that important issues can be tackled at any age.

Originally commissioned by Southbank Centre as part of Imagine Children’s Festival, That Catherine Bennett Show returns as part of Southbank Centre’s Why? – What’s Happening for the Young? Festival.

For ages 6–9

Eric: Hang on. If it is for kids, why are we talking about it? Isn't that up to the 6 - 9 year olds to discuss?

Lysistrata @ C: Team Review part 2 (On Gender stuff)

also, the gender-swapping and the whole 'no prick' thing seems to contradict itself.

The main actor playing Lysistrata- first of all, she was good. Held it together playing a part that was badly written.

aye, this is true, but only for a while.

You mean it fell apart at the end?

aye. It sort of feels like the writer just went "how could this end?" and killed off the character, and the same happened with the acting cause they tried to put in too much.

like the scene where she had the mother character putting black paint on in some type of dream sequence... it slowed down the action enough to make obvious the artifice of theatre (as Brecht would say?) but it didn't seem to do much for the story

That brings me to the big question: why did she get her kit off twice?

good question... first time is actually in the source material, I think, but in a different way

She did a lap dance in some nice red undies and then was stripped by her enemies before being blown up in the Acropolis.

in Aristophanes' version, the men get turned on by watching the women bathe and stuff - I'm guessing that's what the first one was supposed to be a nod to

I'm not sure about the second one...

When we are saying Aristophanes was more subtle, we are in trouble...

well, he wasn't

hehehe

He was: he used words to imply the attraction. He didn't just have the heroine get her flesh out...

well, yes, but he didn't have films or theatre that would let him do that without losing his audience

after all, there was no violence on stage back then... maybe there was no nudity either?

although he seemed to love phallic objects.

He did... but I saw that lap dancing scene as unnecessary to the plot and working a theme not revealed elsewhere. It is proper exploitation.

aye, it could have been cut out completely.

Indeed. And she did not need to be in the black shreddies when she was blown up.

aye, this is true.

so are you saying that for a show that is about women taking control of their bodies, it contradicts itself?

Let's talk about the speech she makes as well: the passionate one about rape culture... which came from nowhere...

yeah, I thought that was going to lead to an actual rape scene, which would have made stripping her at the end more logical...

The prologue, with the male lap dance, fits in with the other vision of feminism, where women indulge raunchy culture for fun...

Dear God, I hadn't thought of that. It gets worse...

yeah but it does seem to explore all variations of feminism - the view that both men and women can work towards equality, the anti-men arguments, and the male rights activists...

I don't think a play can complain about rape culture while adding to the objectification of women without be hypocritical

although it still struggles with the TERF - trans*exclusive radical feminists - since they are yelling 'no more prick', which is kinda body essentialist

Aha! Another problem I missed...

that's why you called me in, no?

yes

Verbatim Theatre? Bah! This is Verbatim Criticism

Tonight: Tramway's comeback continues with a triple threat of existential action: The God, The Good and The Guillotine. 

You are joining us now in our fortress of solitude, somewhere in Glasgow. With only three hours remaining to curtain up, Gareth K Vile and Eric Karoulla are your pre-show commentators.


Looking over the programme notes, what grabs you first, Eric?

The title. I'm guessing you want a bit more than that?

Yes.

It seems like another rule of three. And I don't know why these words have been picked. Then again, it's a work in progress.

Let's start with the good. I believe that you know your Plato better than I do... doesn't that give you something?

For Plato, good would be related to virtue, and probably the truth. I have a question. We all assume that when someone says the truth, we assume it is a concrete reality-  but everyone has their own reality, so how do we agree on what set truth?

Thanks, Eric. Nice easy one, there. We don't. For example, my truth is that we are talking about a piece at Tramway. Your truth seems to be "can I catch Gareth out with a very difficult question." I would like to remind you that my job is to be the obnoxious interrogator. You are here to contrast with me, being the being of charm and common sense. Given that, why don't we have a look at the Tramway website?

Sounds good.

Good. And God too, perhaps...

The Good, the God, and the Guillotine is a theatrical concert about belief, mortality, and morality that steals from the aesthetics of the gig, classical recitals and animation art. Questioning existence itself in a theatrical concert for three performers, three laptop musicians, and a reactive scenography of lights, objects and animations, The Good, the God, and the Guillotine is a dramatic and atmospheric exploration of our tangled relationships with technology.

Against a background of live, shifting animations, The Good, the God and the Guillotine responds to Albert Camus’ 1942 powerful novel L’Étranger (The Stranger). Prototype Theater (UK/US: ) are collaborating with the musicians and composers of the MMU Laptop Ensemble aka MMUle , lighting designer Rebecca MK Makus and animator/illustrator Adam York Gregory to create this music-driven performance that uses digital technology to craft an intertwining of song and narrative. Funding Credits: The Good the God and the Guillotine has been commissioned by Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (Lincoln), Manchester Metropolitan University (Crewe) and Tramway (Glasgow). Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

You've been having a cheeky wee keek at Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle. Was that because of this show?

Sort of. I started looked at works that might explain why we are looking at our relationship with technology. For example, the exhibition at the CCA is looking at our relationship to the economy. There's a lot of doubt going around.

Yes. But why did you drag up a French anarchist who is notoriously difficult to understand?

He was recommended to me by a friend who is an anarchist. He was talking about situationism which started in France in 1957. And it only survived fifteen years - it escalated in the 1968 riots in Paris.

And it was very influential on Malcolm McClaren when he arranged the Sex Pistols. I am not sure we are helping anyone with this. So far, I took us up one dead-end with Plato. 

Plato resounds very strongly in Debord. He keeps talking about representation. I actually took notes.

Yes. I am noting that this disaster is on my blog, not Eric's Trip. I am  all for experimental criticism, but this is just rambling. But. Here's the punch-line. I was trying to imitate the way that football commentators do the build up for a big match on TV. And I think we are as incoherent and irrelevant as they are. 

Yeah, probably. 

Still, we managed to mention the show, and print out the preview from the website. 

But the preview doesn't tell you very much.

No, but at least it didn't get lost in banter about Plato. Shall we just leave it?

You're the boss.

He's Had Enough, We'd Better Get Him Into the Ambulance

This is why writers ought to work alone. Eric and I have been "discussing" - well, only one of us ended up with a bloody nose - the reasons for the fashion in theatre to break the fourth wall, the history of cabaret and the possibilities of a "new queer art." These topics explain why I don't get invited to parties, although Eric was out last night until two in the morning, hobnobbing with The Creative Matyrs and Kim Khaos.

We also had an interesting adventure, starring Ricky out of the pub next door. Vile decided to ask him about his feeling on conceptual art, which concluded in a tearful monologue about gender identity. Consequently, articles on Iron  and Made in China will be published tomorrow, as soon as Eric picks Vile up from A&E.

Before he was hospitalised, Vile was very kindly explaining the history of burlesque, and how the pattern of increased rights for women co-existing with more explicitly sexual images available in the public domain may well have found a common point in the burlesque revival - a pattern Vile insists replicates a similar situation in Classical Greece. Eric had been to The Gatsby Club, while Vile hit the one-man-and-his-pig electronica extravangza at Tramway, and innocently inquired about how burlesque, which occupies a contested position in relationship to striptease.

Inevitably, this descended into another attempt to find out what the purpose of art might be. Eric reminded Vile of how neither of them had seen Roseanna Cade's My Big Sister Taught Me This Lap Dance because Vile had worried that it would be too compromising for a critic to be in that intimate a performance with a performer. However, they both realised that the element of erotic danger this represented - crossing an emotional line, being forced to confront and assess a response to an act that is fundamentally intended to be erotic - was an important part of Cade's intention, and that the cognitive dissonance she was setting up made this a prime example of queer art. By embracing the marginalised, it asked serious questions about the public perception of sexual display.

As Sunday comes to a cold close, the legendary Vile Arts review machine marches onwards, giving critiques of its own empty existence and making grand statement about work it hasn't seen.