Kabakunst @ Govanhill Baths

Although Wiemar Cabaret appears to be the most appropriate comparison for the Creative Martyrs (there's a clue in the title of the show), their productions have an increasingly post-modern edge that suggests a more contemporary influence. The re-purposing of familiar Martyr's tunes (War Whore becomes a marching exercise for the audience) and the juxtaposition of diverse cabaret styles (Tom Harlow's sensuous singing boylesque next to unaccompanied chants that evoke Gregorian chant) reveals a dramaturgy that revels in bricolage which, to paraphrase the Wu Tang Clan, brews a new stew with some old stock.

Kabakunst, rather like 36 Chambers, has an expanded cast, and flips between artists to keep the flow rolling. Two beautiful boylesque acts - both playing with the totems of gender identity - contrast against the gruffness of The Martyrs. Boylesque glamour becomes seedier by association, and the Martyr's romantic revolutionary riffs are lent sensuality and languor. Taking on Govanhill Baths, with its post-industrial aura of decay, The Martyrs both acknowledge the modern fashion for finding idiosyncratic spaces for performance, and evoke nostalgia for a past, when public utilities were actually funded by the state. 

Over the past decade, the Martyrs have worked hard to develop their own universe. The familiarity of some of their numbers (Funny Trap, War Whore) make Kabakunst simultaneously a greatest hits round-up and a new show. The themes - state control, the failure of revolutionary energy and the dangers of hedonism (this time, it's alcoholism) - resurface and their distinctive style of seduction, followed by deconstruction, is almost comfortably provocative. The introductory number sets the tone. The List begins by offering privileges to those selected, before becoming a nightmare of control and aggression.

KABAKUNST Dramaturgy: The Creative Martyrs @ Southside Fringe

KABAKUNST

presented by The CREATIVE MARTYRS as part of TheSouthside Fringe

Collaborative Kabarett with The Creative Martyrs, the itinerant musicians known as The Acquiescent Orchestra and the sublime performance talents of Calum MacAskill, Tom Harlow, Kim Khaos and John Celestus.

Plucked from the streets the audience have been detained in Govanhill Baths Temporary Administration Centre. They wait...  Amid the audience are a number of performers. A captive audience? Performers? Time? Well, it would be remiss not to take the opportunity for a little sing-song, a dance and some Kabarett!

Warmongering, surveillance and censorship: classic Creative Martyrs’ songs are given a whole new treatment with The Acquiescent Orchestra. Kabarett performance, dance, burlesque, sideshow and song are interwoven with The Martyrs narrative to create a unique theatrical experience.

With KABAKUNST The Martyrs turn their back on their usual intimate cabaret to work collaboratively in a large scale, site responsive Kabarett. KABAKUNST was first performed at the Hidden Doors Festival in Edinburgh in 2015 and has now been adapted to inhabit the atmospheric main pool space at Govanhill Baths.

“When The Martyrs sing of the joys of war profiteering, they are at once threatening and jolly.” The Skinny

Regular performers in Glasgow and Edinburgh and at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe since 2008 and nominated for the Time Out & Soho Theatre (TO&ST) Award for Cabaret in 2012, The Creative Martyrs present their unique brand of satirical Kabarett in both short guest sets and full theatrical pieces (Tales from a Cabaret, An Hour Long Sinister Wink, After the Apocalypse, Cabapocalypsaret, and their interactive children's show, FEZ!).  The Martyrs can be found playing in bars, clubs, theatres, yurts, festivals… and now swimming pools.

LISTING INFORMATION

Venue: Govanhill Baths, 99 Calder Street, Glasgow

Time: 9:30pm (90mins - no interval)

Dates: Thu 19^th & Fr 20^th May 2016

Tickets: £10

Box Office: southsidefringe.org.uk/events/kabakunst

What was the inspiration for this performance?

This performance, as with all of our work, is a combination of many different inspirations, as stock characters (characters? The Martyrs are real, we tell you...) the process is continuous, the inspiration and influences are conceptual, thematic, aesthetic and wide ranging. 

We have long wished to do a large-scale cabaret piece involving

other cabaret performers: other musicians and cabaret characters, burlesque dancers and side-show performers, and to place the show in a narrative context. (Our original plan was to perform the show in The Arches... ) 

Last year we fulfilled this wish when we performed KABAKUNST in Edinburgh at the Hidden Doors festival in a derelict industrial building. The space allowed us to create an atmosphere in which the audience were people surreptitiously attending a show by performers no longer allowed to play in normal venues, a secret place where people could temporarily escape oppression and laugh at those in power.

This year's show is a development from that performance. Also, we were inspired by the chance to perform in Govanhill Baths, an iconic building and another non-theatre 'found' space.



How did you go about gathering the team for it, especially the young comedian?

Over the years of performing in Cabaret nights and events we have established close relationships with our fellow cabaret artistes - the Cabaratti if you will - particularly in Glasgow where The Creative Martyrs currently reside. Hidden Doors festival in Edinburgh last year gave us the opportunity to devise and perform KABAKUNST and we asked various performers if they would like to be involved, thus the cast was formed. 

As for the young Comedian, we do not know him and wish he would leave us alone. 


How did you become interested in making performance?

The Creative Martyrs have been performing since 1883. We found ourselves on a stage - perhaps we were pushed on, perhaps we strided on purposefully, maybe we mistook it for a bar...
Since then we have been interested in making performance -  in order to sing songs, tell tales, satirise and reflect.  

We have been inspired by many of the cabaret acts we have met over the years and continue to hone our own act.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

We create shows through a combination of writing, devising, improvisation and material generated during live performing, so in this way KABAKUNST was typical, but in an other sense not, because of the involvement and input of the other performers.

We have written the show and directed people to do certain things at certain times but also the other performers were free to interpret aspects of the production according to their perspective - musicians have come up with their own accompaniment to the songs; the dancers have created their own routines and the film-makers their own material in response to our music, concepts and ideas.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

An immersive cabaret experience - the feeling of actually being in the situation we present - of the baths being a temporary detention centre in an increasingly oppressive society but then finding themselves entertained by cabaret artistes who happen to be present...

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

From the moment the audience arrive they are made to feel they have been detained - various administrative duties are performed. The fact the audience will be in a disused swimming pool adds to this atmosphere. The audience also will not be seated in the usual way - adding to a discombobulating experience.

And we the performers will be interacting with and among the audience. And in time satirising the very situation we have theatrically created.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

We are particularly inspired by 1930s Weimar Republic cabaret but continue to develop our own take on cabaret, our own... schtick.

Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy for you in your work?

We are very interested in performing in and responding to different spaces - whether theatres, bars, fields, water-less swimming pools or abandoned warehouses - and shaping our performances and shows according to the particular space, and particular audience. 

We do not believe for example an abandoned warehouse should be then turned into a theatre - rather we prefer to perform in the space as it is (with some lights and technical aspects to enhance the show but in sympathy with the space).  


Thank you, and good night, for now...

Gustav and Jakob
The Creative Martyrs

More On Calder Street

Cap on Calder Street

The Battle of Calder Street.

There has been a great deal of chat about 'political theatre' lately - mostly in my head, but some of it spilled onto Facebook. At the very least, the Referendum encouraged many artists to make a commitment to political engagement.

I am always in two minds about the worth of political performance. Partially because I am having a big row with Plato, again (I am pretty sure he disapproves of theatre as a place for public discussion), but also because I am not sure whether watching art encourages activism. It might operate as a way for audiences to think that they have done something political when they nodded to a play's urgent message. 

However, tonight, I was at the kind of political theatre I can get behind: The Battle of Calder Street. It was odd - I was involved in the events described and recognises the verbatim voices - but on the scale that I can understand. It was about the struggle in Govanhill to rescue the local swimming pool.

I literally did that and got the t-shirt.

As the play makes clear, the Save Our Pool campaign was about community. Sure, the swimming was important, but the community that rose up around the picket line  - and the political lessons we learnt - were crucial. It remains the longest occupation of a civic building in UK history (local people nipped inside and held it from the council for 141 days). 

I am always suspicious of 'big ideas': the pool campaign operated on a level to which I could relate... I met my neighbours, moaned about the government, connected to the area's history and, as I realised tonight, had a real anger towards Charlie Gordon. He was the head of the council who shut the pool.

There are many reasons why the various people who are discussing political art ought to go to see The Battle of Calder Street - and not many are aesthetic. It reveals the history (as well as theatre can, although I know some of the contours of this narrative that were not reflected) of a bold attempt by a community to get power back. Using verbatim, songs written by Alistair Hullet at the time and news reports, it explains the ambitions and atmosphere, and sets out a clear way of addressing politics in theatre. It is also performed in the building where the action happened, which lends a nice resonance.

Most importantly though, it is clear in its political aim: it recalls an action that shook Glasgow City Council, and gave power to a group of people who felt abused by the state. There's no revolution, or restructuring of reality, only a true story that ends in a defeat that can become a victory, if the lessons it offers can be heard. 

And it is a lot more messy than proclaiming on a blog, like I do now, and less glamorous than grandstanding. 

Hyperion @ Govanhill Baths

The Doors are Open, The Ceremony is about to Begin...

The regular reader of this blog (thank you, Ben) will no doubt be familiar with my fondness for top five lists. I also assume that he will be interested in those geographical locations that have shaped my love of Glasgow. Fortunately, Doors Open Day (Glasgow's Built Heritage Festival) is coming up soon (15-16 September). So I can do a series of Top Fives - places to catch over that weekend, and do a very special one that features the places that I have disgraced.

It's number one in the programme, and number one on this list: The Arches. This venue is very special to me, and not because it was built in the same year as I was born for the seventh time (1879). I've been going to see stuff here since I was a teacher: how well I remember that first National Review of Live Art, being utterly enchanted and confused and meeting the wonderful Lea out of Kylie Minoise.

It's basically a bunch of caverns underneath the railway, and has been, for the past twenty-one years, a multi-purpose arts venue. David Overend did some interesting performances about the heritage of the various spaces, and there's a history of clubbing, acting and drinking that is worth investigating. Plus, they have let me do something for their September festival, Arches Live! So you can buy a ticket to see me before they reveal the secret spaces below.

Argyle Street, underneath Central Station.

I would like to make Tramway my second choice - it influenced my taste in art beyond measure, but I can't find it listed in the brochure. I suppose it's always Doors Open Day there - what with The Hidden Garden outback, two galleries and a rather nice cafe. On Tuesdays, you can usually find me sitting upstairs desperately planning my Young Critics class (although I am willing to be distracted and, for the price of a coffee, make up a series of anecdotes about the building).

Hang on, I found it. And they have tours. It's on page fifteen.

Albert Drive, near MacDonalds.

 I am staying Southside for Govanhill Baths. Back in the day, before my political activism was scared out of me, I was involved in the campaign to keep these baths open. Now, the campaigners are slowly getting the space back to public use, and have plenty of cool artists doing stuff around the place (Adrian Howells is up to something with the NTS). However, the chance to check out the pools (now water-free, thanks Glasgow City Council) and the Edwardian architecture makes up for the ghost of my past idealism that currently sits outside in the porch and chides me everytime I stroll past.
I also had a really big row with someone in the big pool here. Ah, memories.

Calder Street, next to the Pandora pub.

Given my earlier inability to find Tramway, when I say that I am disappointed not to find St Aloysius Church in the programme, that means it is probably in there somewhere. I wanted to go on about how important the Jesuits are to me, how they shaped my philosophy and converted me from a Latin teacher into a critic. Instead, I'll have to make do with the Glasgow Film Theatre. That's where I went for lunch when I was teaching at St Al's School, and has a beautifully designed cafe. They are doing tours, too, although I reckon its better to go and see a film there. It just has a sense of occasion about it that I can't get in a multiplex.

Rose Street, abutting that crap big shoe shop

Langside Halls is just up the road from my house, and I saw a Big Gay Wedding there... it was the last part of Random Accomplice's Big Gay Trilogy and had free sweets. I also went to a few meetings there when I thought that I could change the world. I still think I can, but have decided that a vaguely cheeky blog about culture is more immediate than listening to other people explain how the world is wrong.

The Halls are having dramatic re-enactments throughout the weekend, although they don't say what they are enacting. Some historic moments... so probably not that time I had to run out of the yoga class because my pants were too tight, or the big public meeting about the dogshit all over the pavement.

Langside Avenue, at the bottom of the big park that is nice during the day

I haven't actually been to the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre, but I am well into object manipulation these days. So my last choice is hopefully a future location for my ongoing affair with the Dear Green Place.

Balcarres Avenue, no idea where it is