Headlong Dramaturgy: Jeremy Herrin @ The Citz

OBSERVE THE SONS OF ULSTER MARCHING TOWARDS THE SOMME

A co-production between Citizens Theatre, Abbey Theatre, Headlong and Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse.
Those I belonged to, those I have not forgotten, the irreplaceable ones, they kept their nerve, and they died.

On 1 July 1916, the 36th (Ulster) Division took part in one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Battle of the Somme.

One hundred years on, a major new co-production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme directed by Headlong’s Artistic Director,Jeremy Herrin.

In the extraordinary circumstances of WWI, eight ordinary men are changed, changed utterly…

This iconic war play by Frank McGuinness is a powerful portrayal of mortality, love and loss.

What more have we to tell each other?
What was the inspiration for this performance?
The centenary of the battle of the Somme made me think it was a good time to look at the legacy of the 36th Ulster Division and the culture that resonates from that blood sacrifice, particularly after the Good Friday agreement.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
Long arduous casting process. It's arguably the most important part of my process. 

How did you become interested in making performance in the

first place - does it hold any particular qualities that other media don't have?
The liveness of it is exciting: anything could happen and something must happen to paraphrase Perter Brook. I love the limitations that theatre places on you - to transcend them you need imagination. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? 
Yes four weeks rehearsal, lots of research, plenty of volleyball. A typically collegiate atmosphere - it's been fun

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
I hope they will find it funnier than the title suggests, I hope they mediate on identity, and I hope they are loved at this moving portrayal of this massive waste of human life. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
All the physical elements: space, light, sound. Word & body. Clarity and mystery, and the correspondence between the two. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
I feel like I'm firmly in what I would call a Royal Court tradition. The primacy of the text and the maximum vocal and corporeal presence in an essentialist space. 

For Andrew and Jeremy

Although I didn't follow the subsequent twitter debate - I assume it got a little bit heated - I was intrigued by Andrew Haydon's 2013 piece on Headlong. Haydon explicitly states that he is not optimistic about the prospect of Jeremy Herrin's arrival at the company, and fears that it will lead to the creation of  more of 'exactly the opposite of the theatre to that which I like.' 

If, as I suspect, this escalated into a war of tweets, I would like to stand up for the value of Haydon's post.

Above all, I don't think I would ever write a post like this, calling out an appointment to a theatre company (unless money was involved). That's partially cowardice, but mostly a lack of confidence in my own ability to call it right. I make too many big statements about the nature of existence, the ontology of theatre - and these have the advantage of being difficult to refute (and little interest), and slip under the radar. 

But Haydon's piece covers a wide range of topics, from the morality of the critic, the reality of the culture war in the UK and the various shifts in London theatre back in 2013, before getting to an attack not on Herrin's personality but his aesthetic. It is honest, and avoids the kind of rudeness that might have marked any subsequent debates.

It is a good example of criticism. It identifies Haydon's taste, presents his partisanship and recognises the wider cultural impact of theatre. It goes beyond the dull review of a specific event, and provides context both for Haydon's other articles and Herrin's position.

It is also a reminder of how the blog can liberate criticism from the traditional platform and allow bigger questions to be considered - I would go so far to say that writers who only do reviews through established platforms (newspapers, even Exeunt or The Mighty List) are not critics but journalists.

This is not an insult but a recognition that their impact is different, and the format of formal reviews insists on a particular agenda. I am not a journalist - I am not.

I hope that they do get to do coffee together - and I hope that the Headlong tour to Scotland might allow me to have an opinion on their work... I quite fancy being partisan...

The Glasgow School XX Calendar for September

If Glasgow's theatre communities can be bounded by the geographical limits of the city, there is also an annual calendar of events that has become reasonably stable over the past five years. Despite the emergence and disappearance of festivals (Radiance shone briefly in the mid-2000s, The National Review of Live Art was wound up after thirty years in 2010), a relatively settled programme has developed.

September
After the hurly-burly of the Edinburgh Fringe, Arches Live!  is the traditional start to the autumn seasons. Ranging from a week to a month's worth of performances, installations and exhibitions - sometimes including a 'take over' of the restaurant by a selected artist - the festival is curated by Jackie Wylie and features a host of mainly local and emerging artists.

2013 programme
Art/Action/Other #1 (discussion event)
Rachel Frances Sharpe: Smoke
Unboxed: Break the Silence
Leo Glaister: Ultraviolet Catastrophe
Calum MacAskill: Every Pound’s A Prisoner!
Greg Sinclair: I Do, Do I
Peter Lannon/Emma Nutland: Punching Woman Coming At You Punchman
V/DA: Behave
Enormous Yes: Bonny Boys Are Few
Ian Johnston/Gary Gardiner/Adrian Howells: He’s The Greatest Dancer
Rosana Cade: Sister
Louise Ahl: NICE Opening Ceremony
Arches Commons breakfast discussion: Am I An Artist?
Visting Company: Panorama
Katy Baird and Jonathan May: At Least We Tried
Unboxed: I’m Still Gay And You’re Still Dying
Shafted!? Theatrical Dissidents: Shafted!?

Since The Arches offers a season ticket, and most events have short runs, Arches Live! is close to a music festival in structure. It encourages works in progress (the versions of Sister and I Do, Do I would later be expanded for the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe) and young artists, making their first works outside of academia (Peter Lannon is a recent graduate of the RCS). It has a DIY atmosphere, with multiple events on the same night, and discussions are part of the overall programme.

September marks the beginning of the seasons for the producing house theatres  - The Tron and The Citizens - and the Tramway, which mixes touring productions and festivals. 

September 2014 also sees the arrival of Arika's Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way. Although the company are based in Edinburgh, and were previously preoccupied with festivals of experimental music, Arika has become increasingly concerned with work across the entire spectrum of performance. Their Episodes combine theatre, live art, music, lectures and discussions around a particular theme. Episode 6 looks at 'queer black art,' following earlier Episodes that took the New York Ballroom scene as a cue for a wide-ranging exploration of dance and queer subculture.

As for The Citizens and The Tron: the respective kick-offs to their autumn seasons might give some clues towards their unique identities. 

The Citizens has two whopping great shows - Headlong's 1984 and artistic director Dominic Hill's Hamlet. Hill's thoughts on his Hamlet give further clues. “Hamlet’s grief, loss of trust, the complexity of his family relationships and how he negotiates the abrupt changes to his world around him are challenges that contemporary audiences can relate to. Brian Ferguson is a thoughtful and sensitive actor, whom I really wanted for this production, which will focus on Hamlet’s internal struggles and the domestic drama between two families. Shakespeare at the Citz is always a special event, and I'm looking forward to presenting a production that adds to that rich history.” 

The emphasis on a contemporary reading of a classic - the centrality of the actor (Brian Ferguson, who is becoming a major Scottish player - the sense of an occasion and the legacy of previous performances.

The Tron, meanwhile, waits a while before its big opening - a Chekhov via Scotland - and has a selection of short runs of proven plays (Full Tilt, which wowed Oran Mor, The Carousel, a Traverse Fringe Festival entry, a few comedians and gigs, plus Alan Bissett's political pantomime. 

(As a bonus, here's a one-off in Edinburgh for September 2014. Does this give context to the stability of the Glasgow month? Or do I just like the picture?

credit:Mark Hamilton

Blabbermouth
The Assembly Hall, Edinburgh on 17 September 2014, midday to midnight

A live twelve-hour celebration of Scottish music and spoken word, read, sung and performed by its people, between midday and midnight.

Featuring invited artists, actors, politicians, journalists, sportspeople, singers and scientists.

Medea: A Game of Two Halves, Brian.

For all the infanticide, marital strife and general gender warfare, the real tension in this Medea is whether updating the story from ancient Corinth to a contemporary housing estate can make the myth modern. Euripides' original is pretty unambiguous about Medea's power: she has real, nasty magical powers. Suburban housewives in the twenty-first century tend not to be able to conjure chariots led by dragons, and Medea's ultimate triumph does rather depend on her ability to pull off the murders and escape.

Mike Bartlett's version is faithful to the structure of the original: the central agon with Jason is preserved, as is the process of Medea from despairing, jilted wife to cunning avenger. The script is most comfortable when Medea is in full-flow: Rachael Stirling brings the right mixture of malicious rage and self-deprecating charm to Bartlett's words, building sympathy for her plight, respect for her intelligence and belief in the justice of her cause. Adam Levy, as Jason, sadly gets the worst of it: like Euripides' Jason, he is a bland, respectable and self-serving fool, easily seduced by Medea (and his future wife, Kate) and constantly wrong-footed by Medea's sharp intellect.

Despite an uninspiring opening scene - two women bitching about the closeness of their friendship to Medea, which diverts attention from the central battle between male and female into a side-bar on female rivalry - Medea successfully develops the tension: scenes between Medea and her silent son are fraught, Jason and his landlord Carter (the replacement for the original's King of Corinth) are appropriately boorish, and if Medea's seduction of Andrew (formerly King Aegeus, who offers her sanctuary, now a holiday home in Spain) is clumsy, the slow build to the climatic murders is both engaging and sinister.

Sadly, the finale destroys the good work. Opting not to find a modern alternative to the magic, Bartlett offers Medea's attack on Jason's new wife as mysterious - suddenly, after working so hard to translate Medea into a modern woman, he reverts to her as a mysterious witch. The messenger's speech - Bartlett uses the conventions well, and Amelia Lowdell rises to the monologue - is far too close to the original in both detail and spirit. At this point, all the modern trappings are cast aside.

The last speech is even worse: Medea is up on the roof, covered in blood, shouting about how her father liked hacking animals to death and her son's success in an egg and spoon race. She sets her house on fire - this is closer to the wonderful film version by Pasolini - and the police turn up. She's neither vindicated - hard readings of Euripides suggest that she is justified - nor condemned - killing children isn't a good thing. She just announces her fantasy of escape in a speech that will define theatrical bathos for the next year.



There's a real pleasure in watching the plot unfold, despite this absurd ending: Stirling nails the modern Medea, and the supporting cast are solid. There are many moments in the script of sly, dark humour and the various shifts in Medea's mood are carried off skilfully. It might simply be that there is nothing new to say about this skirmish in the war between husband and wife - certainly, children are used as weapons, but the moral is pretty unambiguous.

Until 17 October, Citizens