Bangin' On with Mad Cyril

I don't like to say this, son, because assigning characteristics according to national identity is kinda racist, but I can't help wishing Irish scripted theatre would stop nipping my napper. It's like they had a vote and decided that the best drama is written by a pissed up history teacher.

Yeah, I know: it's the bardic tradition, the influence of the Abbey Theatre, but when I'm praying that the revolutionary hero in Northern Star would put his head in the fucking noose, the deconstruction of political mythology is kinda lost. Sam Beckett, who knew his way around dramatic structure, stopped writing in English because he found it too easy to just ramble and impress. If only more Irish playwrights would impose limitations on their scripts - like a maximum word count.

It's a shame because Rough Magic's production has some really

smart ideas. A few too many, perhaps, but nothing that editing the speeches wouldn't cure. Yeah, I'm breaking the law of the critic there, suggesting a specific cure rather than identifying a symptom. But round about that time that Henry McCraken started describing how it felt to be in prison under a blanket, my mind collapsed under the weight of words like an Ikea chair when the UKIP MEP for Scotland sits down. All bets are off. 

Stewart Parker's script starts with a standard Brechtian riff: the first scene has a description of the events as theatre, explaining how the cast is going to jump between roles and the mechanics of theatrical ilusion. The scenography is allusive, with flats and simple props and a big sign saying STAGE LEFT. The point is clear: this is not naturalistic theatre. It's pretend.

He follows this up by repeatedly pointing out the close connection between acting and politics, sometimes in cheeky jokes. The protagonist McCraken reflects on his life, recognising his failure and analysing how his life would be recast as heroic, despite his recognition of his failure. Parker has a gift for poetic language - a tavern scene reaches to cod-Shakespearean heights - and the different styles of each episode keeps the energy flowing...

And the preoccupation with history, expressed by McCraken but also a feature of revolutionary romantics, is cleverly incorporated, through anachronistic costumes (one geezer looking like Oscar Wilde and giving it the dandy banter, another couple all dressed up like IRA hit-men from the 1970s) and the stylistic shifts. That scene were McCracken monologues under a blanket links Bobby Sands and Beckett, if only my brain could take it in. 

I'm just not sure what Northern Star is meant to be. It could be a

clever bit of epic theatre, like Brecht suggests. Epic theatre is opposed to tragic theatre, in which events unfold with a painful inevitability (so said Aristotle). Epic theatre shows a series of events, but allows the audience to consider other possibilities. The first scene, and the scenography, totally suggested this.

But given that it starts with the hero banging on about getting hung, and it ends with him getting hung, it is kind of inevitable. And with all the stylistic shifts, it hard to take it all in, let alone consider alternative realities.

More effectively, it deconstructs the myth of the revolutionary. By framing each episode with McCracken's cynical reflections, the glorious progress of a warrior-philosopher is exposed as a series of failures. This is undermined by the swagger of McCracken, as he bangs birds to uncover spies, leads a tiny army against insurmountable odds, shows principle in prison and has his girlfriend getting in and out of bed trying to persuade him to have some kip.

The rejection of the heroic is the most bracing aspect of the show. While the egalitarian philosophy of the United Irish movement is never mocked - even in the lengthy conversations that detail divisions and ironies - McCraken is given a human, rather than iconic, representation. His doubts, his misgivings, and final rejection of the armed solution to oppression, all combine to picture a man tormented by his legacy. Northern Star outstays its welcome, perhaps because of its ambition, but it is energised by a desire to use theatre to communicate complex ideas.

Wooden Dramaturgy: Belfast Boy @ Edfringe 2015

The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
Kat Woods: I was working in a restaurant in Clapham Junction London and I had just written a one woman show called Dirty Flirty Thirty. My colleague Martin Hall had been to every single show when we performed it in London. I had often sat with Martin at the end of a shift and we would swap stories about our past and one night he asked me to write about him -as a joke! 

From there Belfast Boy was born. His story is harrowing yet funny. Never drunkenly give a writer the authorisation to write about your life- it might just happen!


Why bring your work to the Edinburgh Fringe?
I had the play on as a scratch night in London in the February of 2014 and someone suggested that it would be an amazing piece for the Edinburgh Fringe. I had never been before, so I thought what the hell and I decided to produce it myself and take it.


What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
It is a rollercoaster of emotions. You will laugh and cry and cry and laugh sometimes at the same time! I think this quote from Fringe Review sums up the feeling that you are left with when you leave the theatre space

"The script represents a marvelous achievement in narrative flow and authenticity…I think some new ground has been broken here. Many solo shows which deal with autobiographical material concerning abuse tinker too much with the truth of it…I came away deeply moved by this production. I needed time to “process” it and let go of it before sleep. I woke up with it still there, like shadows and a few warmer echoes. This is a very special piece of theatre in an intimate setting. It has to be one of the must see solo shows at the Fringe". ★★★★★ Fringe Review




The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
Before I embarked on a Drama degree I studied Sociology. It is this sociological background that I source from when I write. Belfast Boy is based on a true story and so dramaturgy features massively on the retelling of his life and how we see the character.


What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
I think my writing lends a lot to traditional Irish story telling. Using the method of embodied characterisation to link the narrative flow. I am influenced in my writing by Enda Walsh and Conor McPherson. I actually think I may get done for stalking Enda Walsh!


 Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
I generally have an idea of what to write and it will sit in my brain for two to three months. I will research around the topic matter in that time and hardly sleep as it generally keeps me awake at night. So far, even with the comedy I have written, there is a massive dark element to my writing. 

I seem to become an emotional vessel and own the pain that I write about until I put it on paper. (That sounds totally mental...alas it is true!) The writing itself takes maybe a few days a week. Then I like to get what I have written, the first draft so to speak, on it's feet and get it performed. I trained as a director so I tend to direct my own work. I like to have the actors input and see what works for whom ever performs the piece. 

Once the play is performed, I try to gauge audience reaction for what works and what doesn't work I will redraft it and keep redrafting until I feel the play is finished.


What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
I feel that the audience are imperative in terms of making meaning of the work. If something doesn't work and it is so the opinion of the majority of the audience I will rework it so that it has some meaning. 

That only refers to the actual telling of the story. The story itself will remain but if the narrative does not serve to explain what I set out to do then something is wrong and i think it's important to listen to the audience and work out the issues. Unless the piece is supposed to be abstract... then meaning is an individual experience!

Meditating on Traverses

Is it possible to read the programme for the Traverse season and, like a mystic casting blind eyes over ancient runes, discern the deeper patterns of the Scottish theatre world? Since the Traverse is celebrating fifty years of producing new work - and, in the process, has elevated fifty emerging writers to a year long attachment - and has recently welcomed a new artistic director Orla O'Loughlin, perhaps it is the best place to start.

Perhaps. Alongside the Tron, the Traverse has a programme that is made up of both guest companies and in-house productions. Unlike the Tron, or the Citizens, it has had a specific vision built into its programming from the beginning: it is concerned with "New Writing." Under Dominic Hill, now artistic director at The Citizens, the definition of new writing was expanded - a dance season was added, but the Traverse Fifty programme has reasserted the script as the heart of the theatre's process. Add in the various engagement programmes, which often focus on getting young people writing, and the Traverse is actively engaged in maintaining the importance of the word made drama.

The venue's choice of collaborators is telling: on the one extreme, pitching in with A Play, A Pie and A Pint for a series of midday specials to the other, hosting Platform 18's double bill, from The Arches. PPP  is radical in format - short new plays given week long runs over lunch - but conservative in style - the script is still the thing, mostly. Platform 18, on the other hand, is always experimental. Past winners include Nic Green, who used it to develop part of her Trilogy, while this year has Amanda Monfrooe, a master of matching eclectic influences to her darkly post-modern take on reality and Peter McMaster, who is interpreting Wuthering Heights through a feminist perspective and all-male cast.

From these collaborations, the position of the Traverse as a broad, inclusive venue is clear, and it does sketch out something of Scottish Theatre's breadth. Although the choices in the PPP runs are often energetic and youthful - rising star Sabrina Mahfouz is no polite chronicler of drawing room society, and Douglas Maxwell has plenty of fun taking a respectable widow to vulgarity - their audience is traditionally older (the edition at Oran Mor is often packed with peckish pensioners). The Arches, meanwhile, has a younger audience, coming from the diverse artistic communities of Glasgow and well versed in the outrage and idioms of Live Art.

Spreading out to their various visiting companies reveals an even bigger perspective on Scottish Theatre - which expands to include Firebrand (from the Borders), Lyceum Youth Theatre (from the next door theatre), Clerkinworks (straight out of London), Gare St Lazare and Blue Raincoat (Irish) and Pepperdine University (visiting from Malibu). The work flowing through Scotland is international in character - perhaps inevitably from English speaking nations, although manipulate upped the European quotient back in February.

There's more than a touch of politics in this season - Clerkinwork's The Bear gets stuck into the criminal justice system, White Rose uses the Soviet defense of Stalingrad to examine gender politics, Mahfouz has three female criminals getting up to tricks, and Why Do You Stand In The Rain? returns to the aftermath of WWI for a story of state savagery. Yet there is a far more potent theme that carries beyond this: the personal politics of First Love (an adaptation of a Beckett novella), Jenna Watt's meditation on Flaneurs who fail to intervene, and in the double bill of Chapel Street and Bitch Boxer, a lively look at the impact of Cameron's Broken Britain on individual lives.

Perhaps this collision of public and private is best demonstrated by the Traverse's big production this Spring Quiz Show by Rob Drummond. Drummond is undeniably becoming of the most important authors of his generation - recent success has seen his Bullet Catch head to the USA - and Quiz Show demonstrates his ability to use a popular subject to delve deeply into philosophical ideas.

Apart from a rude health, this spring at the Traverse suggests that Scottish theatre is not only enthused by an interest in international theatre - with England providing only one of the possible areas of influence - but that it integrates the politics of the personal into wider contexts. It's easy to say that theatre has become suddenly political, or that it is obsessed with national identity, but the emphasis on particulars, on the specifics of life rather than the grand narratives of dogma, make this political theatre distinctive from its earlier incarnations, such as in the 1970s, when it was driven by Marxist ideology.



 - Quiz Sho