The End @ Tramway

Biting Dramaturgy: Junction 25 @ Tramway

The award winning company Junction 25 will be presenting their latest work at Tramway from Tuesday 21 to Thursday 23 June.

A Bit of Bite explores the role of young people in contemporary politics and the power and responsibility that comes with having a voice and using it.

Junction 25 is currently made up of 19 young people aged from 11 – 18, who take part in weekly workshops at Tramway.

This new work was devised from the young people’s own ideas and opinions, and directed by Jess Thorpe and Tashi Gore of Glas(s) Performance

Junction 25 - A Bit of Bite

Produced by Glas(s) Performance and Tramway

21 - 23 June 
7.30pm
Tramway 4,
25 Albert Dr, Glasgow G41 2PE
£8/6


There will be a post-show discussion on 22 June

Eilidh Bryant and she is 16 and this is her response:


 What was the inspiration for this performance?
When coming up with a performance concept at Junction, everyone collaborates to make a spread of ideas and then we take inspiration from this. Personally, I was very interested in exploring the concept of young people’s voice within society. This was partially inspired by the recent increase in political awareness in young people following the independence referendum. however as there are a wide range of ages and opinions in junction it was a great opportunity to be able to hear people’s voices and on many matters and also very liberating for us as young people to have a space to share our voices when they are often dismissed or not taken seriously. 


How did you go about gathering the team for it?
Junction 25 has been running for over 10 years now and throughout that time many young people have had the chance to be a part of it. The core group consists of 20 or so young people aged 11-18. Junction is open to everyone, no matter who you are, where you come from or what previous experience you have had and there is no audition process involved. 

There is currently a long waiting list however we would recommend anyone who is interested to join it as it really is a unique experience. Because of the age range and tight-knit group we have a great spread of ideas, opinions and experiences which really help to make the shows relevant and interesting but also create a supportive space where the young people can feel safe. 


How did you become interested in making performance?
I joined Junction 25 when i was 13 and since then my interest and appreciation for theatre has grown vastly. Many of the young people in our group are interested in pursuing a career in theatre and some of us are already studying at university. 

It is a great space for this as it allows us not only to perform but also to really get a chance at devising and making our performance the way we want it, obviously with support from our directors Jess Thorpe and Tashi Gore. However, many of the group who are interested in other things still enjoy making work together and no matter what we want to do it provides us with great skills that can be applied in many fields and situations. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
To make Junction 25 shows we always use a collaborative process with several stages designed for us to find our own journeys with the theme and ask the questions we have about it. Then our material gets put together within a whole structure to create an ensemble piece as a reflection on the theme as a whole. Each show always takes a different shape but the process we use to get there is something we all have an investment in.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
As with all of the shows we make, we are really looking to create a powerful and thought provoking performance. We are not looking to preach our point of view to the audience or to change their opinions on anything however we do like to make people think and consider certain issues, perhaps in a different way that they might have before. 

Despite being a theatre group make up of young people, it is really important to us to be taken just as seriously as any other company and we enjoy pushing boundaries and doing things that the audience might not expect which helps to keep our shows relevant and exciting. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
For our last performance 5.9 Million we used a totally different set up to anything we had ever done before where the audience walked around different rooms and experienced different interactive moments right up close and personal with the performers. After this experience we were really keen to maintain the idea of audience participation and the element of the unknown. 

For example with A Bit of Bite we knew we wanted to feature a live debate in which we get the audience’s opinions on certain issues suggested by them as this felt like a dynamic part of our process. This kind of live theatre is really interesting for us and also makes every performance a unique experience for the audience. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
The style of the work of Junction 25 has developed over a number of years but definitely come out of traditions of devising from an autobiographical starting point.

Jess Thorpe, Co-Artistic Director Junction 25 said: “The last few years have been such an exciting and urgent time in Scottish politics and the voices and opinions of young people have really started to matter and be heard in a totally new way.  A Bit of Bite is our attempt to respond to this moment in history and to delve deeper into how young people feel about their role in the world of politics and about having a voice and knowing how to use it.”

The End of Dramaturgy: Jack Webb @ Tramway

The End
Jack Webb
Tramway

Friday 10 and Saturday 11 June, 7.30pm

WORLD PREMIERE

Acclaimed Scottish choreographer Jack Webb and a company of three exceptional dancers confront and explore the dramatic notion of end points, the end of the world, the end of life as we know it, the end of good, bad and all in between. Extraordinary choreographic style and powerful soundscapes combine for a startlingly thoughtful and compelling experience that looks our very existence straight in the eye.


What was the inspiration for this performance?

THE END started life, mostly at night time, trying to fall asleep and yet being plagued by quite powerful yet irrational thoughts of self doubt and the contemplation of how might life be if I were to stop making work and dancing/performing. 

I think this is probably something that most people are thinking regularly as an artist, but somehow we are compelled to keep going, to keep making.

Rather than ignoring it it seemed right to take responsibility for it and to face it head on.

I started really with the words 'THE END'  and just wanted to see what could come from that. By facing it head on though, of course, it brought up many reasons to keep going, to keep trying,which was just brilliant. It gave birth to a whole new work and process. That was early on though and was a strong starting point, to consider the idea of dramatic endings and what they could be and since then the concepts within the work have developed, and transformed. 

Now THE END really is an invitation to consider our own mortality, our place in the world and how we contribute to it. The work wants to propose simply 'imagine that this is the end of life as you know it'. It is such a dramatic proposal that it forces us to consider what might be left behind and how can we do things differently.  At the core of THE END is a distinct need to address how disconnected we are and how slowly and systematically the fabric of our world is deteriorating whilst we simultaneously are made to  think that it is improving.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
This project started in early 2015 when I had an Artists' Bursary from Creative Scotland. The dancers in the work were all new to me, quite on purpose, to allow me to try new things with new people and to take my work to different places. 

Since then the team have grown with a lighting designer, PR person and producer on board as well as various co-production partners. Some are people I've worked with before and some not. It has all happened quite organically, drawing on people who understand the vision of the work and who want to be part of it. 

How did you become interested in making performance?
My background is in contemporary dance but I've always been experimenting with how this can be 'performance' and not just dancing. Contemporary dance can get a bad rep sometimes so I want to keep finding ways in which to extend it outwards, finding new doorways in to it so that the mystery around it can be dispelled. 

I've also become interested in performance because of a sense of responsibility.  It is really all that I do so I want to be part of something that is crucial to all of our well-being and way of understanding our complex world. But in saying that, I'm interested in making performance because I also want to challenge things. 


Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Sometimes yes and sometimes no. There is always a lot improvising happening. This just feels vital to me to ensure that there is constant inquiry, a constant aliveness. The process of making the work and the piece itself are pretty layered with many ideas and methodologies. I always work this way  to ensure that the people in the work are deep within a bigger picture and constantly pushing at it. 

There are 3 professional dancers in this work and an extended cast of six participants who have joined us for workshops in preparation for the performance. This is definitely new to me, to include people in the work who are not dancing or performing professionally necessarily but who are just really interested to come and experience the work, its concepts and what it can offer. 

This will happen at each venue the work tours to, allowing THE END to keep growing and for people to experience it from the inside as well as from the audience.


I want them to experience a sense of simplicity, a purity but also to have an experience that is startling and thought provoking. 

There is something pretty tough about my work generally, the same applies with THE END, I mean the piece is called THE END, it's startling, even frightening to me! And yet there are many moments of stillness, space, and gentle intimacy and connection/disconnection and a proposal for change and how to do things differently. I want the audience to feel like they can make positive change in the face of adversity.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
The work is in the round and is, at least for us, set in some sort of imaginary nightclub where connections and disconnections unfold. I see it a little like a holding pen of some sort in which the performers and the audience are encouraged to face the darker underbelly of things. I like this strategy for space. To bring everyone together, to see each other and almost be in the work physically and hopefully emotionally.

This work has also made me think about time a lot. With THE END I am asking the audience to slow down, look at tiny details and not be seduced by busy stage activity all of the time. I'm intrigued to see what will happen to the sense of time and place in the performance space and to see if we can look at things differently, patiently and keep re-evaluating what we see and how it relates to everyone.

The inclusion of an extended cast, sourced via an open call is important for me. Bringing   people in to work is a way in which I hope to encourage the audience to look at it differently and to not be afraid of it. 

Some might call me naive but I do actually believe that the kind of work I'm making is for anyone. It's about being open and generous with it, to invite people in and to let them know that it's actually OK. 

I'm hoping the inclusion of an extended cast, who are brilliant by the way, will shape the experience in a way that encourages people to look at the work differently, more closely and to look at it without fear but with curiosity.   

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I'm not sure any more, I've stopped thinking about that sort of thing recently. There is definitely something unconventional about the work, it does fit in to some sort of stranger box. I'm really just focusing on making the work and allowing it to be whatever it needs to be...

Three Versions of Dance

Critics do not provide useful consumer guides to art. Artists dislike being given a label. Baudrillard spotted the rise of the simulacra. These statements may be related. I'm rarely certain.

Only, when it was suggested to me that Robbie Synge's Douglas can be better understood as clown rather than dance, I immediately appreciated it more. 

Three shows on the stage, three cups on the table: Douglas, Void, 5 Soldiers. Beneath one cup, a pea. The pea is the definition. The definition is dance.

Move the cups, and try to keep your eye on 5 Soldiers. Lift the cup and reveal the definition. It's dance! What does dance mean in 5 Soldiers?

Five performers, all alike in ability, only arriving at the same place through different disciplines. Their training lends them diverse physical skills, but certain movements - the extension of leg, the comfort in the body, the range of expression through limbs - don't come from sitting and typing.

Sara Teresa (credit)

And Rosie Kay, choreographer, takes these bodies and applies a vocabulary of gesture. Either suggested by or sampled from military experience, the choreography evokes aspects of soldiering.

It starts in boot camp: tight, minimal, forceful and drilled. It goes on a night out, where the body is set free (the change of costume for the woman signifying her femininity in sharp and sometimes uncomfortable contrast to the four males), and the men camp it up like a body band on the piss. Then combat, then wounded, then mutilation, back in civilian life (and wouldn't it be good if the final scene was a metaphor for the soldier outside of the army? Disabled, struggling without help, not a physical loss but psychological?).

Isn't that what dance is: the representation through a series of gestures of psychological and/or emotional states?

Move the cups. Keep your eye on Void. Find the pea. This time a single dancer.

Void has the same visual business as 5 Soldiers: projections across walls and bodies, only this time, a tighter cage. Episodes, each one a version of alienation, the trained body battling against enclosure. Note the enhanced physicality. Trained, evidently. The tension between this body's expansive potential (when she hangs from the wall, or tries to climb the wires mesh) and the restricting environment... 

Move the cups. Lift the cup. Douglas.

Tries to balance, only to tumble. Moves props around the space. Music is present. As in all three: maybe that is important to dance. Maybe sound. Douglas makes himself, slowly. He is tentatively working out the movement vocabulary that builds his personality (he's more fun than soldiers or dwellers in the abyss, only he is vulnerable funny, not telling jokes). 

Trained body here less evident. Telegraphing meaning in flashes between long, attentive routines. He builds. It collapses. 

Back in Time: Live Art in Glasgow etc... 2006

The Arches' artist in residence, Al Seed, is poised between horror and humour: his successful Festival piece, The Factory, exploited spiteful anxiety and apocalyptic slap-stick. In Hunger, he abandons black humour for physical savagery, evoking famine-starved bodies, mad scientists and the damned's foodless feasts. His emaciated body- and exquisite control of muscles that most performers don't even have - becomes a symbol of ravening anguish. Despite the inevitable knowing sniggers, Hunger is profoundly bleak, trapping Seed in a situation that cannot be resolved or ignored: it concludes with a shrug of indifference. Perhaps the Arches itself encourages Seed's journey into misery - this was the perfect match of venue and artist.

Another Arches' production dealt with the same combination of food, intimacy and terror from an accessible perspective. Pit features a mother cooking the final meal for her condemned son, blending hygiene advice with malnutrition and America's southern underclass. Again, the venue heightens the claustrophobia - actors walk around the audience, who are seated for a formal meal - while Megan Barker's script spirals mundane set-pieces into drug abuse and murder with shocking inevitability. Hunger is taut and vicious; Pit is compassionate and loose - at times meandering into vague commentary on deprivation but delivering a chilling conclusion.

Over at Tramway, Need Company were providing a perfect example of the expansive end of physical theatre. Jokingly introduced as musical comedy, Isabella's Room matched contemporary dance, dirty blues and a mesmerising central performance from Viviane De Muyack. The heroine, a blind geriatric, looks back at her sexual adventures (promiscuity, adultery and incest), her childhood and her academic anthropology (living in a room filled with African artefacts, she visits the country once and briefly). Understated and eloquent, morally neutral yet sympathetic, this astonishing show follows the impact of deceit on a single life. A cast of eccentrics, a stage cluttered with a collection that most museums would envy, and an overview of European politics in the twentieth century are merged into a satisfying, gentle narrative, slipping between dance and song, monologue and dialogue. Isabella's Room is a triumph, owning a fluidity and subtle grace that builds to a celebratory finale.




While the Christmas period is usually bereft of challenging art - carol singers and family shows fill the listings, and the misery of Winterval consumerism undermines the need for Al Seed's meditations on mortality - Tramway has the Breathing Space Programme at the start of the month. Gilmore Hill has Firebox and Blaze - a collaboration between local street dancers, contemporary choreographers and electronic musician Magic Daddy on 10th December.

New Visual Art Exhibition Earth Rise at Glasgow Tramway

Jessica Ramm presents Earth Rise, a new exhibition for Tramway from 14 March to 19 April.

Jessica Ramm’s films, sculptures, and performances explore the relationships between people, the environment, and technology. Resembling imaginary sets or curious experiments her works convey a sense of material translation, often involving reconfigurations of objects and materials drawn from nature. Ramm’s works also allude to mythological themes as well as our environment, and her immersive installations investigate different notions of space and matter.

Ramm’s research consists of a series of ongoing, sometimes haphazard, experiments which examine contemporary civilizations and their ordering of nature through technology and science, often contrasting with the environmental forces of the natural world.

This is reinforced by the allusion to different orders of time in her works which juxtapose themes of day to day life with long term geological and cosmic events.


For Tramway, Jessica Ramm will present new sculptural works that extend her research into the mobility and resistance of matter. 

Presenting documentation of her performances in which she uses her own body to manipulate the environment, alongside objects lifted from nature such as a large erratic boulders, her work evokes landscapes which are both interior and exterior to the human body.

This new Jessica Ramm exhibition is supported and presented by Tramway, and is part of Rip It Up.


14 March– 19 April
Tramway 5

Music Theatre Magic Moments

As a prelude to this week's Cryptic production These Delicate Things, I am mulling over some magical musical moments. In our conversation about his show, Josh Armstrong was sceptical about my claims that 'post-visual theatre is the next vital wave of performance' and polite enough not to punch me for confusing musical theatre (jazz hand, jukebox selections, maudlin sentimentality and hands-in-the-air triumphalism) and music theatre (carrying a message through the relationship between music and... theatre, and no jazz hands). So here are a few moments from the past year that exemplify how music can carry the meaning in a theatrical context.

Al Seed moves against the jazz (Oog @ The Arches)
Although I have mentioned Guy Veale's soundscape before, the particular moment when he drops Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra (1920s jazz action) into the mix is a devastating juxtaposition of the music's sensual optimism and AL Seed's character's desperate situation. Crackling and distant, Goldkette may sing of love but within Seed's survivalist drama, it becomes a harbinger of decay and despair.

David Pollock and Sita Pieraccini get busy (Make a Hoo @ The Arches)
Sita Pieraccini mostly abandoned words for this physical drama, but Pollock's score gave the work a tight, oppress focus. By framing her movements within an oppressive mesh of urban sound.

Ballet in Real Time (Still It Remains @ Tramway)

credit: Andrew Ross

It is no great surprise that an evening with Scottish Ballet would feature music as an essential part of the proceedings, but James Cousins' choreography had an almost unfashionably intimate relationship with the Kronos Quartet's Mugam Beyati Shiraz. An all female quartet are relocated from the stage into an imaginary and desolate and arid plain through the Quartet's evocation of the Middle East - yet are saved from a mere orientalist fantasy through the stringent strings and movements. 

Magic Moments

by Niall Walker

Grant Smeaton as a saucy Cardinal (Cardinal Sinne @ Glasgay!)
Although Raymond Burke's script was either an extended skit or a pilot for a forthcoming BBC sit-com (and Sinne's helper Mrs Cavendish certainly had that overwrought widow vibe that would lend itself to playground popularity), it was Smeaton's ease as the titular cheeky cleric that gave Cardinal Sinne a period charm. The period was the 1970s, and Smeaton has a wry presence that Benny Hill would envy.

The Jackson Pollock Reveal (Colquhoun & McBryde @ Tron)
While John Byrne's script had many magic comedy moments, the tragic tale of the Scottish artists began to feel that an hour with those two drunks who catch the last 38 bus to Shawlands every weekend, but the sudden reveal of a Jackson Pollock canvas captured the excitement of Pollock's sudden appearance in the art world: the scale and ambition of his abstraction - as well as its clear imagery - dwarfs the haggling duo and lends context both to Pollock's success and their failure to move with the times. 

Jonathan Goddard climbs out of the window (Dracula @ Tramway)
Although Mark Bruce's vision seemed caught between ballet and visual theatre (long theoretical analysis to follow), it had plenty of magic moments. When Dracula dangles outside of his castle's window, falls to the ground and transforms from his sinister host into bloodthirsty monster mode, Bruce's choreography abandons the polite balletic technique to portray the anguish of the nightwalker. Hugging the tomb that maintains him, hurling himself across the stage and twisting across the dark Gothic scenery: Goddard is bestial, animalistic but retains a mysterious sensuality.

Hamlet as a family feud (The Drawer Boy @ Paisley Arts Centre)
Mull Theatre's fine, unpretentious production of the Canadian contemporary classic is a sensitive portrayal of how the arts can impact on real life (c), but when Miles, a slightly naive actor, explains the plot of Hamlet to the damaged Angus as if he lived the experiences of the psychotic prince, it is a wonderful moment that emphasises, for once, how Shakespeare's popularity rests not on his language but his ability to tell a good yarn. Since Michael Healey's script examines how theatre - a fiction -  can reflect the fictions of mundane life, this crucial scene opens the second act with a sly wink: it is as if Miles is deceitfully describing his own life, to mock Angus. However, James Mackenzie (Miles) and Alasdair McCrone (Angus) nail the intimate complicity between these two outsiders, and set up the mood for a second half of revelations and resolutions.

Andy Clark having a shave (Colquhoun & McBryde, Three Sisters both @ Tron)
Andy Arnold is pushing his luck to call two plays a season of John

Byrne plays, but the skill of Scotland's master author/artist is clear in the way he works the dour humour of Chekhov into a Scottish vernacular and revisits a lost history of art in his two-hander about Colquhoun and McBryde. But it is Andy Clark getting the magic moment this time. In Three Sisters, he is a bearded sailor, played with restraint and respect so that a potential philandering pratt becomes a noble, passionate romantic hero. By the time of Colquhoun & McBryde, he's got his beard off and his bohemian swagger on, making 'the straight man' in this comedy duo a thoughtful, if occasionally drunken, foil to Stephen Clyde's raging alcoholic life and soul of the party.  

Magic Moments... Made for Sharing

Here is my weekly list of five really cool things that I saw, heard or thought while I was about being a critic. Plus two rubbish ones, just from life, really.

The pas de deux between Mina and her husband (Dracula @Tramway). 

Another good bit(e)

Mark Bruce is big on the 'pas de deux equals people having sex' equation, and never more so than when Mina and Jonathan have their honeymoon night together. Capturing both characters' tentative intimacy, while establishing their sense of alienation even in the act of love, it encouraged the dancers to stretch themselves (literally and metaphorically) to present a sensual, hesitant union.  When the other characters came back on stage, it felt like they had barged into the bedroom. 

Guy Veale's soundscape (OOG @ The Arches).
Despite its reputation as a venue for alternative performance, The Arches is a tough space to work: the rumbling of trains overhead can be distracting. Veale's soundscape for Al Seed's exercise in physical precision was both tough enough to conquer the rumbles, and porous enough to incorporate them into the overall atmosphere. Switching between My Bloody Valentine, ambient (and probably illbient) numbers and a jaunty spot of old time jazz, Veale lent Seed's post-apocalyptic soldier an immersive, daunting dark atmosphere.

Putin's Photograph on the wall (Leviathan @ Glasgow Film Theatre).
A Russian take on The Book of Job was never likely to be a chuckle-fest, but the subtle pointers to the corruption of the ruling elite through Leviathan made it as much political satire as theodicy. In a key scene, when the corrupt mayor is confronted by the over-sexed lawyer (no-one is innocent in this film), a framed portrait of an anemic looking Putin is just above their heads throughout the scene, making it clear that evil is one thing that does work in trickle-down economic theory.

Victor Zarallo and Sophie Martin (Scottish Ballet Up Close @ Tramway).
At the risk of being another critic whom Sophie Martin has to arrange a restraining order, the brief pas de deux Jealousy by James Cousins in SB's mixed mixed bill was another reminder of how she is becoming one of the most exciting dancers in Scotland, meshing contemporary energy with classical technique. Bathed in red light, and teetering between the erotic and the despairing, Cousin's choreography gave both dancers a showcase that insists on ballet's ability to explore emotional extremes without compromising on its rigorous physicality.

The Words on the Body (Autumn Nerve Dance @ Old Hairdressers).
Paul  Michael Henry is always good for a bit of butoh inspired action, but Prof Lavery (academics - if you tell me, I'll steal it) pointed out a layer to this dance. Henry's use of projected cut-ups covered his body, emphasising the failure of words to express whatever Henry's movements were trying to manifest - but their disappearance left Henry's body bare and vulnerable. Not just some funky moves, Autumn Nerve Dance posed a question about how words might shape our identities, even if they are merely reflections on the surface of our bodies...

And here's the rubbish...

That Bloke In Front of Me (Autechre @ The Art School).
When he turned round and said in a loud voice that 'this was the most abstract thing ever made,' I wondered whether his comment on Autechre's electronic lesson in history (I'll get to it) was profound or just a stupid bit of showing off that revealed an ignorance of, say conceptual art  or Xenakis' compositions. I was pondering what he meant when he followed this up with 'and there is only one sound going on at a time', which was audibly wrong. 

Him wearing a comedy sanitary towel fancy dress on Halloween (Total Fucking Nightmare Walk Home @ Sauchiehall Street). 

The internet proves this is not an
isolated activity. Thanks, internet.

While it was a bold move to challenge the hegemony of the 'sexy' halloween fashions (I was more conservative and went for 'sexy William Burroughs), the man who was wearing a big bloody tampon wasn't committed enough to the feminist subtext to really pull it off. Actually, given that halloween is supposed to be about monsters (even 'sexy nurse' had a bit of blood on her - either because she was being top beat combo Nurse with Wound ((c) Lorna Irvine) or she'd cut herself on her nasal accent), wearing a towel suggests an innate fear of menstruation. 

There is, of course, another joke about where these towels are usually found, and what this makes him, but I think that's going into misogynistic territory. 

Jerome Bel's Disabled Theatre in 5 Lists of 5 Points

Five Instructions Bel Gave to the Performers

1. Stand in front of the audience, alone, for a minute.
2. Introduce yourself and your job.
3. Introduce your disability.
4. Perform a solo dance to music of your choice.
5. Explain how you feel about the production.

Five Interesting Things the Performers Said on Stage

1. I want to make people laugh.
2. So what?
3. I am sorry.
4. I am an actor (all male cast members).
5. I am an actress (all female cast members).

Five Cool Moves during the Solo Dances

1. A Michael Jackson style pelvis thrust.
2. A wild, almost heavy metal style whipping of long hair.
3. Taking off a track suit top.
4. Spinning around a chair on one leg.
5. Making a scarf wave like the sea.

Five Questions Asked of The Audience (implicitly)

1. Do you realise that each of these people are talented on their own terms?
2. Do you realise that this is a patronising question in itself?
3. Are you treating the cast like performing seals or something?
4. Does this remind you of exploitative shows like X-Factor?
5. How does this challenge your idea of yourself as an audience member at a show called Disabled Theatre?

Five Reasons that Disabled Theatre was Astonishing

1. It refused simple ideas about the nature of 'disabled dance.'
2. It gave space for the cast to show off and interact with each other.
3. It revealed personalities on stage without sentimentality.
4. It asked tough questions about how theatre and authenticity work.
5. There was lots of loud music with strong beats.

Book Launch @ CCA and something in Soho, something else at Tramway

Book Launch | Thursday 23 October 2014

Vagabond Voices invites you to the launch of Sheep and Goats, the first novel by Glasgow writer and musician Lewis Gordon.

The evening will be hosted by broadcaster and  songwriter off Deacon Blue  Ricky Ross, who will be discussing the book with the author.

7pm Thursday 23 October

Centre for Contemporary Arts

350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

Sheep and Goats follows teenage drummer Nicky as he slides from his church-going ways into a high school punk band. Adopted by a whole new crowd of misfits and piss-artists, he stumbles off the 'narrow path', as faith struggles against friendship, sex, drink and unholy music. Constructed from compressed, profane sketches, this recounting of teenage thrills and playground drudgery is concerned more with its characters' comings and goings than their coming of age.


Wet House
Wed 22 Oct – Sun 16 Nov
How do you keep your head when everyone else is off theirs?
One of The Guardian’s Top 10 plays of 2013
‘Paddy Campbell’s…play defies expectations.’ ★★★★ Telegraph
‘A thrillingly funny and painful vision of life in a homeless shelter.’ ★★★★ Guardian

World Class Dance Show Set to Amaze at Tramway in October

In Tramway 1 on 17 and 18 October, acclaimed and controversial choreographer Jérôme Bel has joined forces with Theater HORA - Switzerland’s professional theatre company of actors with learning and mental disabilities - for a special collaboration called Disabled Theater. Jérôme Bel has been interested since his early works in what lies beyond representation. 

In Disabled Theater, he sheds light on the elements of exclusion that lead to the marginalization of those who are considered unable to produce. On the contrary, he exposes how they are able to question the very mechanisms of representation. Disabled Theater opens up a space where disability is not expelled from visual and discursive practices, nor hidden behind the screen of political correctness.

Arika 12, Episode 2 @ Tramway, 24–26 Feb

After a weekend of intellectual argument about the intrinsic horror of the universe – it's hostile, it's too big, and the individual self is either a delusional side-effect of human subconscious processes or a product of capitalism – Keiji Haino's vocal solo conjured up the deep dark in the most immediate manner. Tooled up with effect and loop pedals, he looped his wails and grunts and screams into a sound sculpture that suggested a black hole devouring innocent galaxies, a rotating hell of tormented souls or mysterious rituals straight out of H.P. Lovecraft.

Haino's music – he has spent the last forty years deconstructing rock bombast, defining 'noise music' and treating audiences to gigs that are in that bewildering space between intelligent, imaginative parodies and shrill, ear-drum shattering bullshit – is unashamedly aggressive. Episode 2's gig placed Haino next to artists like Meredith Monk, who use the voice not to sing lyrics but as a versatile, emotive instrument. But where Monk is often full of life and love, Heino sculpts sound into menacing, immersive shapes.

The previous night, Junko tried a similar trick. But where her screaming took the sound of a female in pain and turned it into an improvisation tool – with all the tricksy skill of a saxophonist on a free jam – Haino's intention is clear and brutal. Harsh growls attack his more melodic interludes – claps and breaths are warped into stabs and moans. Layering his voice through loop after loop, Haino builds towards his finale, a soundtrack that shared the scale, ambition and terror of a medieval depiction of hell.

Arika's new direction may be to ensure that work like this has a context – after 48 hours of constant banter about the positivity of nihilism, one man howling up a void makes perfect sense; or it may be to push certain ideas into wider circulation by associating them with well-known artists. Either way, Kaino's gig is devastating, suggesting that apocalyptic art did not disappear when we survived the millennium bug.

The Performance Geography of Glasgow: The Southside

Although The Citizens Theatre has been, in various incarnations, on the same site since 1878 (becoming the Citizens in 1945 with the arrival of James Bridie’s company), The Southside is not over-burden with theatrical venues. Across from the Citizens is the O2 Academy, predominantly a club and gig venue but also the home of Club Noir, the biggest burlesque club in the world (Guinness Book of Records, 2011). Further south is Tramway, a space rediscovered by Peter Brook for his Mahabharata  in 1988 and subsequently a major venue during 1990’s City of Culture festival: Scottish Ballet recently added an extension to Tramway, making it their base. At the very edge of the city, Eastwood Park Theatre hosts medium scale touring shows.

Each of these venues has a distinctive identity. Following from the iconic regime of the ‘triumvirate’ of Giles Havergal, Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald (1969 - 2003), The Citizens became internationally recognised for its daring interpretations of Classic plays, including translations of writers often neglected in the UK. MacDonald, a playwright himself, is more celebrated for his translations, including those of Goldoni and Brecht.

Current artistic director Dominic Hill has continued this theme, staging versions of King Lear, Hamlet and Pinter’s Betrayal, as well as commissioning an adaptation of Crime and Punishment  from Chris Hannan. Less interested in new writing, despite Hill’s previous role at Edinburgh’s Traverse, The Citizens maintains a strong connection to its local community, through cheap ticket opportunities.

Tramway is known internationally for presenting experimental theatre from around the world. Apart from its long association with Peter Brook - a regular visitor in the 1990s, and returning in 2010 with 11 and 12, Tramway invited companies like Victoria and Les Ballets C de La B from Belgium, Robert Lepage from Quebec and Forced Entertainment from Sheffield to take advantage of their flexible main space. 

Thanks to the wall built by Brook for The Mahabharata, Tramway has a unique atmosphere. Rescued from demolition and also housing a huge main gallery for visual art, it still bears the traces of its previous use as a garage for Glasgow’s trams and the Museum for Transport, linking it to the city’s industrial past. It has a reputation for adventurous programming, but has recently began to support local, emerging artists, primarily through its Rip It Up Seasons.

Eastwood Park, meanwhile, is often the forgotten theatre in surveys

of Glasgow. Positioned at the point where Glasgow meets East Renfrewshire - an independent county - it has featured touring productions from Rapture (based in The Briggait), Random Accomplice (The CCA) as well as The Reduced Shakespeare Company. 

The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown, Tramway 2008

/5 stars

Music, cinema and choreography collide in the afterlife of a classic German horror.

EVENT REVIEW BY MARGARET KIRK.
PUBLISHED in the skinny 14 JUNE 2008
The Infinite Pleasures of the Great Unknown is seductive and frustrating: it rejects structure, begins before the audience enters and continues after the audience is ushered out. Infinite Pleasures is multi-media - the performers' movements are relayed on a large screen that separates them from the audience - and bracing.

The audience is encouraged to walk around and inspect the auditorium, even leave and come back. Popcorn has been scattered about the seating, a convincing police-man wanders around, inspecting the set while a taciturn security guard guards proceedings.

On stage a fictional company, Troupe Mabuse, are caught in a perpetual loop of terror and anxiety. These repetitious tableaux and short choreographies are based on King Lear and The Testament of Dr Mabuse, but both sources are incoherent. The passages from Lear have been garbled: Mabuse plays onstage, invisible to the audience.






None of this is really important. Bock and Vincenzi aren't telling a story, but creating an atmosphere, a haunting spectacle that resonates beyond the immediate experience. As theatre, it is dull and weird. By inviting the audience to wander about, they move beyond theatre, creating something mysterious and austere.

Like a segment of a David Lynch film in the flesh, like wandering upon an alienated cabaret, Infinite Pleasures lurks at the threshold of understanding. Sudden moments of activity - a brief dance to some reggae or a gothic camp rendition of Beginning to See the Light - engage, but then retreat to leave behind more mystery. This really is one for the dedicated.

Theatre Venue of the Month: Tramway

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SKINNY 26 NOVEMBER 2010

Tramway has often been a prophet without honour in its home city. Tucked away on Glasgow's Southside, it is internationally renowned as both a gallery and theatre, yet its location has prevented it from attaining the same local presence as The Arches or The Tron. Yet after a relatively quiet performance year, as the venue built up both its visual art programme and status as a local community hub, December sees Tramway remind Glasgow that it is the home of large scale contemporary performance.

The Story of How We Came to Be Here is a production by Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan linking the visual arts with performance: the duo are best known in Tramway for their monolithic exhibition HK, which dominated the gallery space in the early twenty-first century. This move into performance is a natural extension of their style, which has always been influenced by theatricality. Taking the form of a long monologue – shades of Forced Entertainment's controlled anarchy – it puts the artists directly in front of the audience and unfolds a shaggy dog tale that is part stand up comedy, part absurdist drama.

"The relationships and differences between the performing and visual arts is always something that's interested us," they note. "Tramway, as a venue which shows work across both disciplines, seems to be trying to think through this and our performance follows on from events such as This Time With Feeling – a symposium with contributors from both performing and visual arts."

Within the show, Tatham and O'Sullivan retain their visual art aesthetic – there are echoes of the late modernists in their approach to bricolage, alongside clearly theatrical influences.

"When we make an artwork we often use approaches or forms that could be described as found," they continue. "These approaches may be categorised as amateur, folk, or vernacular art – and drawing on such forms has long been a recurring strategy within both the visual arts and theatre. Vaudeville is one such mode of theatre that has been frequently and constantly referenced and returned to – and it's this process that interests us, as much as the characteristics of vaudeville itself."

If Tatham and O'Sullivan have a history with Tramway, this month's other event – Fresh Faced – stars Junction 25, a Tramway supported youth company who wowed the recent IETM by proving that young performers can grapple with radical theatre making. Jess Thorpe, part of the Glas(s) company who evolved J25 explains that this is more than just a side project.

"The style of working has clear similarities with the work of Glas(s) Performance, but it is important to recognize the distinction – Junction 25 is our collaboration with young people. It means what we do together – all of our ideas pooled – is collective. It means young people trying out new ideas and working together to explore the world in which they experience. They need to and can speak for themselves."

Gender Divide, their latest work, attacks the polarisation of gender roles – a relevant and heady topic that emphasises the company's willingness to take on serious issues from a fresh perspective. Alongside contributions from Y Dance and the NTS' youth project,Fresh Faced is a mini-festival of Scotland's young art teams: and Tramway, now a mixture of community cafe, avant-garde art gallery and legendary performance space, is the ideal venue.

Gathered Together 2014 - Scotland's First Inclusive Dance Festival

Wed 27 - Sat 30 August at Tramway
Scotland’s leading inclusive dance development company, Indepen-dance, will host the country's first International Inclusive Dance Festival from Wednesday 27 - Saturday 30 August at Glasgow’s Tramway - part of Get Scotland Dancing and the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme.

Over four days, the Festival will bring together dance artists and people from across the globe to share best practice and knowledge as well as showing work. The Festival programme will include workshops, panel discussions, presentations and performances culminating in a ceilidh on the Saturday night. All performances and the ceilidh are open to the public.

The opening night includes two performances from the Festival hosts and their acclaimed ensemble dance company Indepen-dance 4 with Christine Devaney’s playful and dreamlike Some Of The Moments We Haven’t Forgotten followed by their performance company who will delight audiences once again with Natasha Gilmore’s moving and funny Now. No. Now.

Thursday night will see performances by Marc Brew (Scotland), Caroline Bowditch (Scotland), Solar Bear (Scotland), StopGap and Axis Dance Company.

Friday night will include work by Alas Abiertas Dance (Paraguay), Culture Device Dance Project (England) and Blast M3 (Scotland).

As well as intensive workshop programme, keynote speakers include: Dr Jenny Elliot CEO of Artscare and founder of Orbit Dance Company on dance and wellbeing; Professor Sarah Whatley BA PhD, Professor of Dance and Director, Centre for Dance Research/C-DaRE; Gustabo Fijalkow, Freelancer M.A. Arts Management.

The full programme of workshops, panel discussions and performances



Wednesday 27 August 2014
All Evening Performances at Tramway are at 7.30pm and open to the public. Public Booking: £6/£9 / 0845 330 3501 /www.tramway.org

Indepen-dance 4: Some Of The Moments We Haven’t Forgotten. Choreographed by Christine Devaney

Indepen-dance Performance Company: Now. No. Now! Choreographed by Natasha Gilmore



Thursday 28 August 2014

All Evening Performances at Tramway are at 7.30pm and open to the public. Public Booking: £6/£9 / 0845 330 3501 /www.tramway.org

Axis Dance Company: Divide. Choreographed by Marc Brew in collaboration with the dancers

StopGap Dance Company: The Awakening (site specific). Choreographed by Chris Pavia

Leftovers - Performed and choreographed by Marc Brew & Caroline Bowditch

The Birthday of the Infanta - Performed by members of Solar Bear Deaf Youth Theatre



Friday 29 August 2014

All Evening Performances at Tramway are at 7.30pm and open to the public. Public Booking: £6/£9 / 0845 330 3501 /www.tramway.org


The Point At Which It Last Made Sense by Nick Bryson & Robin Dingemans

Alas Abiertas Dance: Al Alba (At Dawn). Choreographed by Jazmín Derbas & Sergio Nuñez.

Culture Device Dance Project: The Death of a Disco Dancer. Choreographed by Daniel Vais

Into the Light - Choreographed and performed by Blast M3



Saturday 30 August 2014

Gathered Together Ceilidh at 7.30pm, The Briggait. Tickets: £10. Booking through admin@indepen-dance.org.uk

Featuring the ceilidh band, Inishowen, including BBC Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year, Paddy Callaghan.

Lucy Guerin Inc and Belvoir: Conversation Piece

Stephanie Fox and Robin Lane: A Small Prometheus

Shifting Ground @ Tramway

Robin Fox Laser Show