Changing Dramaturgy: Kate O’Donnell @ Edfringe 2017

A Trans Creative and Contact co-production

Kate O’Donnell

You’ve Changed

WORLD PREMIERE

Tech Cube, 5 – 26 August 2017, 20:30 (21:30)

Award-winning transgender artist Kate O’Donnell challenges the idea that genitals equal gender in a brand new show about the ups and downs of transitioning. 

In the follow up to hit show Big

Girl's Blouse, Kate shines a light on the ins and outs and ups and downs of transitioning. Through song, dance, hard-won wisdom and hilarity You’ve Changed looks at the so-called 'trans tipping point' and asks if the world is changing fast enough, or whether we are still stuck in the dark ages as far as gender is concerned. 

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Good question. Someone commented that since I transitioned and started making shows I’d “changed.” In all my work, I like to take something negative and turn it around into a positive. This led me to think about change.  How much I’ve changed, how much you’ve changed. And what hasn’t changed. I transitioned in 2003, but in trans terms it might as well have been the 1930’s. People were so unaware, it may as well have been some time between the wars for the amount of readily available information ther was.

The 30’s was interesting in so many ways. There was lot of stuff around gender, think about Merlene Dietrich, performers playing with gender in Berlin. Things got a bit more genderfluid, women started cutting their hair and wearing their trousers. It was a time of change politically, scientifically, stylistically. People were opening themselves up to new ways of thinking. To me it seems like a queer time.

This all let me to thinking about Fred and Ginger and the music and style of that time, as well as the richness of Hollywood as this incredible form of escapism. I always use music in my performance and I absolutely loved the sentiment and the challenge to the phrase “let’s face the music and dance.” There was also a quote from Ginger “I did everything Fred did, but backwards and in high heels” which really struck a chord with me as a trans woman, because this is often how it feels!

I’d been thinking a lot about the idea of the so called “trans tipping point”, the fact that trans people have gotten more air time lately so to speak, but also trying to marry this with the perception of trans people in the media and some of the statistics surrounding them, which got me wondering, how much really has changed for trans people, where are we at right now? Stories of people transitioning are beginning to enter the mainstream, but I wanted to tell the story of transitioning from first hand experience as trans person, not as a plot twist or a sensationalised headline.  

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

Theatre and live performance is a live experience of meeting a trans person, which many people have not done. It’s a really interesting space to explore gender in the flesh. I recently did a show in Blackpool, which was the first time many people in the audience had knowingly met a trans person. As a medium it really appeals to me as it’s uncensored and undiluted. There’s a direct dialogue between audience and performer, not something watered down by TV execs or sensationalized by news stories.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I have always performed. As a child, I think I used it as an escape, theatre was one of the only acceptable outlets to covertly explore gender. I went to an all boys school and got to play all the girl parts! Later in life I performed as a drag queen, Angel Valentine.

I re-found my energy for performance after quite a big gap when i felt there wasn’t enough trans work being made, and the representation of trans people I saw was always very negative. I wanted to be a trans positive voice, especially following on from the homophobic and transphobic attacks in Russia. I was aware that I felt a lot of privilege within my trans identity and wanted to use that in a productive way. But as I saw, I’ve always been a show off. .

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

The show is autobiographical, so I use the personal for the political. I draw on music, humour and costume to create my work. For my previous show Big Girls Blouse, we worked with choirs and music, this time we’re working with dance with seminal choreographer Lea Anderson.

You’ve Changed features the talents of many fantastic collaborating artists such as Olivier award winning director Mark Whitelaw, designer Katharine Heath, composer Steve Blake and trans stylist and style icon Grace Oni-Smith. In terms of the process I’ve been writing the show on and off for a year in my head, and am undertaking a mixture of self led rehearsals and rehearsals led by different collaborators.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

What I find quite exciting about my recent work is that there isn’t a usual production. In the past year I’ve made a film (Mum, also showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival), starred in a musical about gender, been part of a trans television series, taken my previous solo show to London, hosted vigils, performed cabaret shows and most recently made casting history as the first ever trans woman to play Feste on the main stage of The Royal Exchange Theatre! So, my work is constantly changing and developing, but I feel they all inform one another in a way.

Compared with my last full scale solo show Big Girls Blouse, (which dealt with growing up as a trans child in the 1970’s when no-one really knew what being trans was) it feels more grown up and more challenging for audiences. It asks for audiences to take some more responsibility, get up to speed, listen up, play their part. The show is about change. It’s obvious that I’ve changed, the question is, have you?

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the show will raise some questions around gender and identity of trans an none trans audiences. I make shows for queer audience that lots of none queer people happen to like! Everyone has issues around gender and identity, but it’s often the queers who are the ones who have to get on stage and talk about it. I hope audiences will be entertained and challenged by You’ve Changed. A lot of people say that I make people laugh, and I make people cry, so hopefully some more of that!

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I am always finding different ways to engage audiences with my work . I try tofind the universal in the personal, sometimes that can be with music, because some people love a certain song, or connect to music in itself. You’ve Changed features familiar songs (Let’s Face the Music and Dance) and original songs. I tend to use familiar cultural reference points then take the off road into the often unfamiliar territory of my world, which is not necessarily everyone's experience.My policy is, draw them in, then hit them with the message. I like to look after my audience and make them feel comfortable and safe. But not too safe.

A Dramaturgical C ----: Gary Kitching @ Ovalhouse

Me & Mr C is about the ventriloquist dummy inside your head who sees all you see, knows all you know, hears all you hear and sometimes, if you are very unlucky, tells you what he thinks of it all. Gary Kitching is an improviser, actor and comedian and Me and Mr C is his funny and disturbing rendering of what it is like to have a voice in your head. Mr C sits inside your head and watches.  

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Gary Kitching: I always wanted to do a solo show and expected the best playwright in the world to be inspired by me as a performer and write me one, but they didn't. So I thought I better make my own.

I'd been doing loads of improvisation and comedy and word got to Northern Stage that I had a show and they asked if I would like to perform in their scratch night. I agreed even though I had no idea what I was going to do. I had a month to prepare and did nothing until the week before. Then I quickly realised I had no idea how to write a show. So I decided to improvise it.
 
The basic idea I had was that there would be a man (me) and his dummy (Mr C) and he would be lonely and there would be stand up. I then had a few impro games to play and that was it, so the show developed on stage in front of an audience. 

The show is about depression, I had some therapy and one of the things I had to do was name the negative voice in my head. It's name was Mr C**t. So that's what I have in my mind when I start the show. Mr C represents that negative voice in my head.

How did you go about the collaboration for the show?

After I had developed the show in front of an audience , after maybe 5 or 6 performances I was invited to do the show as part of Greyscale's Theatre Brothel at Northern Stage. Through that I met Selma Dimitrijevic and Lorne Campbell. I knew the show needed direction before it went to Edinburgh so I asked if they would be interested which thankfully they were, but unfortunately the funding I had applied for was turned down so we only had a very limited amount of time to work on it. 

After Edinburgh in 2012 I decided I had gone as far as I could with it and forgot about it and decided to make another show, the problem was I still felt slightly frustrated with it as I felt it hadn't reached its full potential. Fast forward to the end of 2014 and Selma and I had worked on my other show Dead To Me. 

She asked me what I wanted to do and I talked about Me and Mr C; within an hour Selma had put together a touring pack and it was back on. 

Selma had also recently seen a show directed by Alex Swift called Fat Man. I'd worked with Alex on a couple of R&D's and we got on really well, I felt with Selma as producer and Dramaturg and Alex as Director the show could become what I felt it had never achieved.

What made you decide to work with Ovalhouse?

I knew it was a place that supported interesting and experimental work. I also wanted to bring it to London. I'm really grateful to everybody there as they have made me feel really appreciated and welcome. I feel we have a good show at a good venue. Happy days.

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

This process was unique to the type of show I wanted to create. I have no idea if I will create another improvised one man show, it's unlikely. The other show I created started with a conventional process of script writing and a couple of scratch performances. The next show might have a totally different approach. Who knows?

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience will realise they are experiencing something

unique to them and that night. I hope they will laugh, a lot. I hope they will be moved. 

I hope they will think about the work afterwards. Or if none of that happens I hope they feel like that haven't wasted their money and that at least they've had a good night out.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I suppose the tradition of improvisational theatre is there in this show. As for others I'm not sure. I hope people find my work funny, dark, interesting challenging and entertaining. I'm not sure what tradition of theatre that is. 

I'll go for the tradition of "Good Theatre". I'd like to hope/think it occasionally falls into that tradition.

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

I don't know. I'm not that good at analysing my work so I rely on much cleverer people to do that for me. Essentially Selma and Alex in this case. They both have an understanding of theatre that seems like magic to me.


Gary Kitching is an improviser, actor and comedian and Me and Mr. C is his funny and disturbing rendering of what it is like to have a voice in your head that explains to you with authority, purpose and well referenced arguments, that you are a worthless piece of shit. An experience some of you may be able to sympathise with.

Director: Alex Swift
Lighting Design: Katharine Williams
Writer/Performer: Gary Kitching
Producer & Dramaturg: Selma Dimitrijevic

Angel Dramaturgy: The Paradise Project @ Edfringe

The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
Alexander Kelly: Initially the idea of Paradise itself, and quickly after that, our realisation that Paradise and Utopia are not the same thing.

Research for the project began at Warwick Arts Centre, where we were lucky enough to be supported by both the Triggered@ scheme, as well as the This Is Tomorrow programme. We had two weeks of developing ideas, during which we were generously visited by academics from the disciplines of theology, art history, sociology and mathematics.

That difference between paradise and utopia became key to our thinking. To summarise a vast area of theological and sociological thinking, Paradise is an objective, a moment, a single state; something we have lost - that we had in the past - but is also something we hope to attain in the future. Whereas Utopia is something on-going. Something we can construct and then (try to) maintain. An attempt to build Paradise on Earth.


Why bring your work to Edinburgh?That is a very good question! On a personal level, I just love the city - in festival time and out of it. But it is not an ideal environment to show work - everything is much more rushed, even if you get good responses and reviews it's a gamble as to whether you'll get an audience, and you (the artists or company) will almost definitely lose money. And yet, here we are again.

I have mixed feelings about the Edinburgh Fringe - because of the reasons listed above, combined with the fact that it has been really important to us as a company. 

Third Angel first brought a show to the Fringe at the invitation of the British Council in 2001, and the international work that came as a result of that Showcase appearance (and other visits in 2005 and 2007) have helped sustain the company - artistically and financially. But the balance of "risk" (or rather, the fact that it is not a risk, it's a sure thing that the artists will pay to be there) increasingly bothered me.

In 2009 things shifted for me when we came to Edinburgh in August to work with Forest Fringe. The much more apparent feel of shared endeavour just felt so much more…. what? honest? Generous? Fun? All of the above. We were back with them in 2010 with the 12 hour durational performance Story Map - which would previously have been unthinkable to try out in Edinburgh during the festivals.

And the influence of Forest Fringe - 'there is another way' - can now be felt across the Fringe that they continue to refuse to be a part of. Northern Stage found a new path, that shared a spirit with Forest Fringe, and also updated the Fringe model of artists paying to show their own work. These models are just more responsive to, and supportive of, what artists want to show and how they want to show it.

We were with Northern Stage at St Stephens in 2012 and 2013 - the latter of which was without doubt my favourite Edinburgh experience, and probably one of my favourite professional experiences ever.

So, that's a long way of answering… because we want to be part of what Northern Stage at Summerhall will be in 2015.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
We set out to make an upbeat, optimistic show about beauty, problems being solved and things going well…But the more we talked about Utopia, and all of humanity's attempts to build it, the more we couldn't help but notice that it always goes wrong. Each scenario we planned out began to sour or corrupt or simply fall apart.

So the show itself is a combination of these two imperatives. An optimism, an insistence on the value of keeping trying, and a recognition that things continually go wrong. In that contrast there is also a lot of humour that comes out of the fact that however grand the project, however ambitious the end point, it is being done by people doing their everyday job.



The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?

I've heard Andy Smith quoted as saying the role of the dramaturg is to be 'the friend of the audience in the rehearsal room', which I really like.When we're making a show we focus on what we are trying to explore, trying to say, and I've learned over the years not to try to guess how an audience will respond to the work - not to worry about whether they will 'like' it.

But we want them to be able to respond to what we intend the work to be about; we want the work to ask the questions we think that it is asking, to say what we think it says. And sometimes, from within a devising process, it can become difficult to see if that is the case.

So dramaturgy is integral to our devising process. Whoever is 'director', or 'outside' the work, takes a dramaturgical role, but so does everyone else, to an extent. We work through a process of improvisation (both text and task), of writing/reading/redrafting/cutting/reordering, of asking 'what happens if?', and of (lengthy) discussion. 

We're continually asking ourselves 'is this what the show is?', trying to find the form or frame that will hold the work, that will allow it to be accessible and readable to the audience. As the making processes, we begin to focus on how changes (of the order, of delivery, of staging) affect the the meaning of the work. Although we're as likely to talk about how we 'feel' about the material, whether it is 'useful', as what it 'means'.

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?
We are certainly as likely to be influenced by work in other media as we are by theatre: film, novels, documentaries, stand-up comedy, science podcasts… I'm really interested in your exploration of the cross over between theatre dramaturgy and comics. 

In making The Paradise Project there were two particular comics influences. I really like Tom Gauld's work, in particular pieces like Guardians of the Kingdom, in which there is a lot of (melancholy) humour found in the fact that the people doing this extraordinary job (such as guarding the huge wall between two kingdoms, seemingly alone) are just that: people. People doing their everyday job, wondering when to do the washing, wondering who's turn it is to make the soup. 

In The Paradise Project the extraordinary, ordinary task, is coming up with a better way for humans to live together. And every day our two ordinary people come in to do that as a job.

The other influence of comics (that I actually see more retrospectively), is the way the time gap between panels can vary between a fraction of a second, and hours, days, months, years…. how we can stay in exactly the same place, or change location instantly, and the audience instinctively follows that. We wanted to play with that idea on stage - without having 'scene changes' in the more traditional theatre sense.


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?
Every process is different - and is influenced by who's in the room, what our starting point is, if we have a clear frame for the show to fill, or whether we have a theme looking for a frame. But every process is collaborative to a greater or lesser extent.


One feature of this particular project was that the collective of artists who made it was continually shifting slightly - both companies (Third Angel and mala voadora) always present, but the actual combination of people was different every week. 

With projects that lean heavily on external research - in this case conversations with academic experts alongside reading and watching relevant fiction - the process starts with us finding prompts and mechanisms to get us on our feet, away from the discussion, and trying to explain, demonstrate, enact, respond to, those ideas.

A regular mechanism for this is that we all write prompts and questions on index cards, maybe 12 each, and put them face down on a table. Then we all, as performers as well as being our own audience, take turns to pick up a card and respond to whatever is on it, in the moment. There's no wrong way to respond - wherever it takes you is of interest. And through this we begin to build up a library of text ideas, phrases, actions, tasks, scenes or sections, that might then get picked up and explored more specifically.

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
We hope we leave space for the audience to bring their own experience to bear on the work. We hope we make work that is rich enough to be understood differently depending on the personal filter that each person experiences it through. We hope our shows reward an audience member doing 'a bit of work' with what we offer them. We hope our work contains an invitation to do this.


Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
I expect I'll think of some… but I've probably written enough for now?

Northern Dramaturgy: Daniel Bye @ Edfringe 2015

 An ARC Production written and performed by Daniel Bye

Going Viral | 8 - 30 Aug, 2.10 – 3.20pm
A new virus has broken out. Everyone in the world starts weeping. What now? Going Viral is a show about how things spread. Drawing on the science of epidemics, it explores the spread of disease, of panic, of ideas. 

It shows how our society reacts, and how our connected world makes us all more vulnerable, and more human. Going Viral is a new development in Daniel's trademark blend of comedy, storytelling and performance lecture.

The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?Daniel Bye: How I started and where I’ve got to are, as ever, so

distinct that I’m not sure how helpful to understanding the finished piece is a discussion of its starting points. 

There came a point, months after officially 'starting', when I took a definite path towards this show being what it is now. At that point it stopped being about scientific attempts to model the future and started being about what it’s about now. 

There are traces of its antecedence in there, but the path is much clearer from this point on. And even after this point, subject matter was sloughed off regularly. It’s usually only a couple of months before its on that a show accepts it can’t be about absolutely everything in the world.

When other people say where they started, or what inspired them, I wonder if they’re talking about this moment, the choice of a path that with hindsight clearly heads to the finish - rather than the months of flailing about in the thickets that I assume everyone else goes through too.

Why bring your work to Edinburgh?I came to Edinburgh regularly in my twenties - seven years out of ten, I think - but then had a long gap. There wasn’t any value for me in spending all that money on an expensive berth in the shop window.

Four years ago, with my show The Price of Everything going reasonably well, it was clear that I really needed my work to be seen outside of a small number of venues, and to be seen by some press, if I was to be in a position to make more of it, and to get to perform The Price of Everything more than a dozen or so times. It paid off, and just as was the case in my twenties, I guess I’ll keep coming back until I get bitten.

Also, the last two Edinburgh Fringes I’ve performed at have been genuinely joyful experiences. Now that I’m a bit older and a bit less terrified, its lovely to be surrounded by lots of brilliant people and their brilliant work. I hang out in bars with people like Alex Kelly and Chris Thorpe, people whose work made me want to do this job in the first place. The intensity of the environment is a real thrill for one month a year. And when it all gets too much, which it regularly does, the countryside nearby is beautiful to disappear into.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?It’s not as funny as my last couple of shows. After the first few minutes there really aren’t very many jokes. It’s a little unsettling, slightly hyper real, with an emotional charge that hasn’t particularly been part of my recent work. It’s also a fairly damning indictment of the global behaviour of people like me, of whom there will be plenty in the audience. Hopefully that’s a worthwhile sword to swing.

The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
Dramaturgy, for me, is two things. Firstly, it’s the underlying set of structures and assumptions on which basis the show functions. To talk about its dramaturgy is in that sense to talk about how its form carries its content. 

And secondly, dramaturgy is the process of interrogating these structures and assumptions as part of making the show. Dramaturgy is important in everyone’s work, not just mine; if you don’t recognise that then the chances are you’re simply working within uninterrogated and conventional models. (Which is probably fine, by the way, but it’s not what I’m interested in.) 

In order to think about this I almost always have a dramaturg on the creative team, and for a lot of the process the director’s role is also as much dramaturgical as directorial. Perhaps that remains true to the end.

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?
When I made The Price of Everything I was really aware of various

degrees of influence from Chris Goode, Tim Crouch, Stewart Lee and Daniel Kitson among millions of others. Some of that was obvious in the finished product, some of it I imagine less so. Increasingly, I’m influenced by the experience of doing my own work in front of audiences, and by the work I’m not seeing. 

I’m sure there are some influences in there, but I use them as touchstones much less than I used to. Having said that, every show gets compared to something you didn’t know you were influenced by. Others see things you don’t. Also, every show gets described by two or three observers as “clearly influenced by” something I’ve never seen or (occasionally) even heard of. I look forward to discovering what that is this time.

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?
There’s certainly a lot of collaboration in the process. It looks a lot like a series of conversations between me and the collaborators. I improvise a bit in the room, I bring in some bits of writing. We talk about that, I re-improvise, I re-write. I show a lot of embryonic work to audiences - for me this is a massively important barometer. I’m not interested in formal feedback, so much as a sense of how it’s going over from moment to moment.What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?  It’s often a cop-out to say that everyone makes their own meaning. But of course they do. It’s important, I think, that makers have a clear sense of the meanings they’re trying to make. Sometimes this will be closely controlled and that, or nothing, is exactly what the audience will get. 

And sometimes the audience will pick up on things you didn’t even know where there. My job is to generate an experience that is shared by the people gathered in the room. That experience generates meanings. But I don’t choose the meanings. I choose the vehicles for meaning.

I hope audiences will connect to the ideas I try to animate in the show. I hope they will connect them in the way I do. When this process is really working at its best, though, audiences get as far as I did and much further.

Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you? 

Probably.

Do YOU want some?

Because I am the man to give you some. Come on, then. You FUCKERS. Think I can't take it? I'll FUCKING take you. Bring it.

Bring it on.

I'm sorry. I have just come out of Confirmation. It's a bit like the sound of one man wrestling. He has obviously been thinking about the shamanic in theatre. He's been off on a journey and returned to tell us what he found.

AND HE FOUND A NAZI. How do you dare, how do you very dare to imagine what he has been thinking? Shamanic theatre is what you have been thinking, isn't it? You wanted it, you fucker. You need it.

I never think about theatre. I think about shamanic criticism.

God, you are a pussy. What's your opinion on the boycott of Israel?

Don't say pussy. Just... don't... say... that...

Worried about offending,eh? Liberal...

Don't call me that and I am too as taken with rage as Thorpe when he tries to rid himself of the sneaking suspicion that he is closer to the NAZI than he would like. Enthused with it, enjoy it as it races through my blood, I walk and type and think faster and I am filled with righteousness because I am an anarchist and don't tell me what to do...

No conclusions, no hope, if we are all the same, we can all find excuses.

Thorpe failed because he went too big... it is like when a beginner does the 'loving kindness meditation', that bit when you send out love to someone you hate and the guide says - don't think of Hitler. Try, like, your mum or something.

A nazi is not the opposite of a liberal because he is wrong. The opposite of a liberal is a conservative, with the same muddled hopes and compromises... absolutism, like nazism, is not the opposite of relativism...

The line of the mirror marks a halfway point between the self and its reflection. The nazi is reflected by the communist, the liberal leftist is reflected by the liberal Tory. Thorpe's ambition is to see himself as a radical... another extreme, a bulwark against the darkness...

Do you want some?