A Swansong for [Music] Dramaturgy @ Edfringe 2016 [Part 2]

Swansong

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

Aug 3-15, 17-29 5.00pm

Ever heard the one about the birth at a funeral? Or the one with the monkey? How about the one with the end of the world? Three men are in a pedalo. They're going to save humanity. After acclaimed Fringe hits Fade, Inheritance Blues and The Sunset Five, DugOut Theatre return to examine how lies become stories and stories become legend.

The Vile Blog has already interviewed Swansong's director George Chilcott here, but here are some additional thoughts about music in theatre performance.  

The idea of the performance as a gig: what qualities do you think make this the case?
I think there's no magic moment when you can suddenly call your performance a gig. There are no scales that get tipped when you have used just the right amount of live music for your theatre show to be called a gig. Gigs are also very much performances and moments of theatre themselves. Some can even be said to contain a narrative thread. What's more, the term gig can be applied to performances with no music in them whatsoever - comedians often talk of the fact that they have been 'gigging', for example.


That said, plays that are said to have been performed as gigs, by critics and punters, often contain the following qualities;



1. They contain live music

2. They contain a noteworthy amount of live music and that portion of live music may be greater than the amount of dialogue/spoken word in the play. 

3. The instruments and actors on the stage are configured like they would be in a gig. 

4. There are pieces of music that do not serve to develop the narrative. 


What do they share?
Theatre and live music gigs share a great deal. Both share the element of liveness - in that they are both performed live to a watching audience. More often than not, there is story involved. Even if the gig is rarely knitted together as a narrative, there are stories in the lyrics of songs, there is the story of the band, and the story of the tour, etc. The musicians perform - adopt personas, postures, speak to the audience and amongst themselves - as actors do. Often both are structured and performed to affect audiences in specific ways - to shock, to excite, to make us laugh and cry at specific moments. 


Are there any musicians you'd point to as an influence - or a pleasure that may not influence but gives some sense of your approach to music?
Part of the company play in a band. They play old style rock and roll and rhythm and blues. We also listen to film scores a great deal and are influenced by those. Although not musicians, the way companies like Kneehigh, Rashdash, BearTrap and Complicite integrate music and sound into their work, in a live, playful and inventive way, has been a big influence on our work.


What is gained by live musicians on stage?
Having live musicians on stage is enormously exciting for an audience and this is because it plays into the hands of what makes good theatre and what makes theatre unique as an art form. Theatre is where you can see things conjured in front of your eyes - be that a character, a puppet or a melody. Also, live music in theatre adds to the danger of the performance - will the musician mess up, will they forget the chord sequence - and this, in turn, adds to the exhilaration of the viewing experience. 


And is anything lost?
With recorded sound you can hear some of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the most complicated pieces of music to perfection; you can hear The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The London Symphony Orchestra and know that, failing a technical fault in the theatre, the track will play without fault; and you can hear soundscapes and atmospheres, created with complicated electronic equipment, that would be impossible to replicate live. Also, live music on stage cannot guarantee perfection. It cannot always match recorded sound for its power and magnitude. Both done well can be very effective in theatre. However, I believe that because live music is imperfect; because it is conjured in front of your eyes; because it is different every night; is exactly the reason that I see it as profoundly more theatrical and exciting and believe that, when done well, it rarely loses out to pre-recorded sound. 

A Swansong for [Music] Dramaturgy @ Edfringe 2016 [Part 2]

Swansong

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

Aug 3-15, 17-29 5.00pm

Ever heard the one about the birth at a funeral? Or the one with the monkey? How about the one with the end of the world? Three men are in a pedalo. They're going to save humanity. After acclaimed Fringe hits Fade, Inheritance Blues and The Sunset Five, DugOut Theatre return to examine how lies become stories and stories become legend.

The Vile Blog has already interviewed Swansong's director George Chilcott here, but here are some additional thoughts about music in theatre performance.  

The idea of the performance as a gig: what qualities do you think make this the case? 
I think there's no magic moment when you can suddenly call your performance a gig. There are no scales that get tipped when you have used just the right amount of live music for your theatre show to be called a gig. Gigs are also very much performances and moments of theatre themselves. Some can even be said to contain a narrative thread. What's more, the term gig can be applied to performances with no music in them whatsoever - comedians often talk of the fact that they have been 'gigging', for example. 



That said, plays that are said to have been performed as gigs, by critics and punters, often contain the following qualities;



1. They contain live music

2. They contain a noteworthy amount of live music and that portion of live music may be greater than the amount of dialogue/spoken word in the play. 

3. The instruments and actors on the stage are configured like they would be in a gig. 

4. There are pieces of music that do not serve to develop the narrative. 


What do they share?
Theatre and live music gigs share a great deal. Both share the element of liveness - in that they are both performed live to a watching audience. More often than not, there is story involved. Even if the gig is rarely knitted together as a narrative, there are stories in the lyrics of songs, there is the story of the band, and the story of the tour, etc. The musicians perform - adopt personas, postures, speak to the audience and amongst themselves - as actors do. Often both are structured and performed to affect audiences in specific ways - to shock, to excite, to make us laugh and cry at specific moments. 


Are there any musicians you'd point to as an influence - or a pleasure that may not influence but gives some sense of your approach to music?
Part of the company play in a band. They play old style rock and roll and rhythm and blues. We also listen to film scores a great deal and are influenced by those. Although not musicians, the way companies like Kneehigh, Rashdash, BearTrap and Complicite integrate music and sound into their work, in a live, playful and inventive way, has been a big influence on our work.


What is gained by live musicians on stage?
Having live musicians on stage is enormously exciting for an audience and this is because it plays into the hands of what makes good theatre and what makes theatre unique as an art form. Theatre is where you can see things conjured in front of your eyes - be that a character, a puppet or a melody. Also, live music in theatre adds to the danger of the performance - will the musician mess up, will they forget the chord sequence - and this, in turn, adds to the exhilaration of the viewing experience. 


And is anything lost?
With recorded sound you can hear some of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the most complicated pieces of music to perfection; you can hear The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The London Symphony Orchestra and know that, failing a technical fault in the theatre, the track will play without fault; and you can hear soundscapes and atmospheres, created with complicated electronic equipment, that would be impossible to replicate live. Also, live music on stage cannot guarantee perfection. It cannot always match recorded sound for its power and magnitude. Both done well can be very effective in theatre. However, I believe that because live music is imperfect; because it is conjured in front of your eyes; because it is different every night; is exactly the reason that I see it as profoundly more theatrical and exciting and believe that, when done well, it rarely loses out to pre-recorded sound. 

A Swansong for Dramaturgy: George Chilcott @ Edfringe 2016

DugOut’s new show, Swansong, sees four survivors of an apocalyptic global flood come to terms with their circumstances in a swan-shaped pedalo. Turning to stories to deal with the responsibility that now rests on their shoulders, through music and humour they consider what’s worth remembering about the 21st century.

Penned by writers of The Sunset Five Sadie Spencer and Tom Black, and directed by DugOut artistic director George Chilcott, Swansong is a warm, thoughtful and hilarious ride through the realisation that the end is only the beginning.

Swansong runs through the Edinburgh Fringe at the Pleasance Courtyard. Tickets are available now. The show will preview at the New Diorama Theatre on 27th July 2016, book now.

What was the inspiration for this performance?Funnily enough, the whole process began with reading Cannery Row. We loved the book and wanted to adapt it. Unfortunately, the laconic American style wasn't an easy marriage with the style of our theatre company and we resolved not to do it. But, what we had enjoyed was the process of adapting and staging a novel as we found that it gave us the freedom to conjure multiple worlds using just the actors and instruments we had in the room. It prompted us to tell each other stories and to look at new ways of staging the written word. So, we decided to write a storytelling piece and that was the start of Swansong.



How did you go about gathering the team for it?Most of us met at Leeds University and we are mostly actors, sketch comedians and musicians. This is what gives our work its flavour and what originally drew us to each other. There is a core group of 10 or so members - most of who have either helped with this project or have recommended someone for the project. We like to work with people who share our sense of humour, who capable actors and musicians and, above all, are able to fit in with our ways of working.

How did you become interested in making performance?I began as an actor with the NYT and went on to university with the ambition to go on to drama school and become a professional actor. The NYT showed me a way of making work that involved method and rigour and aspired towards excellence. I found that some of the plays at university, though fun and a great way to meet people, weren't meeting those standards. So, I set up my own theatre company with the intention of directing and acting in classic plays. Subsequently, the creativity and talent of those who joined the company pushed us towards devising and made us believe we could write and make plays ourselves.



Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?Yes and no. It began with a look at storytelling and the different ways of telling and adapting novels and short stories for the stage. This was new to us. When we came to find a holding world for our stories, however, we returned to the more familiar territory of building characters and then creating dialogue out of improvisations.



What do you hope that the audience will experience?Above all, we hope the audience will be entertained. We hope they will laugh uproariously, enjoy the live music and be carried along by a cracking yarn. We want to capture the audience's imagination and transport them to multiple worlds using little more than our actors and instruments.



What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?The main strategy we use is to keep it simple. The power of theatre is its liveness. In theatre, the live audience can be made complicit in astonishing acts of the imagination and we feel that it is our duty as theatre-makers to harness that power. We believe that it does not require large spectacle or expensive pyrotechnics to engage your audience. In fact, we often use little more than our versatile actors and their ability to play live music to evoke whole worlds.



Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
We are influenced by sitcom and sketch comedy, modern and classic film, music of all ages and the playful and inventive work of companies such as Kneehigh, RashDash and Filter. We try to make work that is as theatrically innovative as it is laugh-out loud funny. Think Monty Python meets Complicite.