Notes from Carlson (Theories of Theatre - the bit about the Greeks)

So - the earliest theories of theatre appear to be found in Aristophanes. It's not the best start: nice and early (the Big Three of Athenian tragedy have already done their thing, but it is close enough to the beginning to make it a prime source), but from the pen of a comedian. Sure, Aristophanes wrote plays, but I don't trust him. Look at the hatchet job he did on Socrates in The Clouds.

There are a few places where Aristophanes explores the idea of theatre: The Acharnians, Peace, The Frogs... most of the time, he is having a crack at his contemporary, Euripides. He is more sympathetic to Aeschylus, an earlier, now dead, author (in The Frogs, he wins what Carlson claims to be the most serious discussion debate about the function of drama). It fits in with Aristophanes' socially conservative attitude. Aeschylus had a genuine vision of Athens as a the locus of an inclusive, just society (The Oresteia is like an advert for Athenian jury duty) and was part of the generation who kicked the Persians out of Greece in a moment of panhellenic enthusiasm.

Marner goes on to connect Aristophanes' critique of Euripides to Plato's notorious joke in The Republic (when he says that he's kick actors out of his ideal city. Notice he is going to kick them out after they have done the performance...). Both Plato and Aristophanes express concern at the impact of 'poetry' (that is roughly equivalent to drama, at least as far as this study goes) on the moral character of the city. For Aristophanes, this means liking Aeschylus better than Euripides - prescribing the correct sort of theatre. For Plato, it means watching the plays, thanking the actors, then sending them off to another city.

Sorry, I can't take either of these critiques seriously. First of all, Aristophanes is chiefly known in the twenty-first century as the author of a bunch of plays about sex. There have been attempts to claim that his Lysistrata is some kind of feminist classic, but the main scene involves a striptease routine outside a temple. It is a bit like Benny Hill pausing as he chases his Angels around a park in their skids, turning to the camera, and reminding the audience that they better not cheat on their wives.

As for Plato - didn't he start his career as a playwright? Then a wrestler (or vice-versa)... and have you noticed the format of his dialogues? Very familiar to anyone who has read a play. While there is a more serious explanation for Plato's fundamental dishonesty that invokes his concept of the Noble Lie, the nature of dialectic and the form of The Republic itself, I'm happy enough to say that the quality of Plato's prose, as well as his persistent use of allegory, would get him kicked out of his ideal state.

To be honest, although I am a big fan of Plato, I don't have much interest in his aesthetics, such as they are. He is subsuming a genuine discussion about the nature of poetry to his broader agenda - and slips in critiques of contemporary pagan religion to bolster his attempt to get a rise out of the reader. The same for Aristophanes - he is playing to the crowd.

Like everyone else, I have to start with Aristotle. But, as Carlin points out, that's a pain too. The text we have is a mess (all those books of Aristotle are pretty much notes by his students - and looking at the way I take notes, we are lucky that he doesn't have a few more chapters that repeat 'I am so bored' in different font sizes). I also think that Aristotle was just trying to argue with Plato, and make a case for the 'morality' of drama.

It's not that I don't think the Greeks are worth reading (well, Aristophanes and Plato are)... it is more that I don't think these are serious attempts to grapple with theatre. But I shall recite the Aristotle theories in my next post, for the sake of form...

A further repeat: Dark, delicious cabaret

FEATURE BY GARETH K VILE.

PUBLISHED 23 AUGUST 2011

"Cabaret is an umberella term," says Amanda Palmer, half of the siamese twin duo Evelyn Evelyn. "You've got all these perfomers making music and totally unafraid of being theatrical. Even Lady Gaga draws her inspiration from theatre. It's a reaction to the music of the 1990s, which stripped everything back. Now the pendulum has swung the other way."

Cabaret is learning to live in the spotlight. Camille O'Sullivan, longtime darling of the Spiegeltent, has grown to fill the largest Pleasance space. Scottee's queer Live Art special Eat Your Heart Out has been promoted to the Assembly. And Amanda Palmer, who threatened to ascend to stadium rock godhead with The Dresden Dolls, has become a standard bearer for the meeting of punk and cabaret. Last year saw the stand up comedians and critics square up to burlesque. This year, cabaret has to find a way to retain its intimacy in the face of popularity.

Camille has scaled back her band to a three piece and wanders through her set, confounding expectations by revealing her idiosyncratic preoccupations and perfecting songs by Jacque Brel, Nick Cave and Gillian Welch. Retreating from the rockier treatments of last year, she delivers a five star show and balances surreal humour and intimate confessional.

Undermining her intensity by unnerving clowning, Camille prevents her show from being self-important: the gradual shift of mood sees her abandon her welcoming warmth for something uncanny and deep. Unlike many who claim the excluded and heart-broken as inspiration, Camille brings an authentic compassion to her tales of the dispossessed and marginalised.

Eat Your Heart Out is a liminal travesty. Scottee, a gracious, self-deprecating and cutting host, guides his audience through wild acts: From Figs in Wigs - an Yvonne Rainer vision of a Lady Gaga video - to Myra Dubois - her children's show is a viciously funny attack on decency and drag's acerbic edge - EYHO is a taut lesson on non-conformist queer cabaret. Their allegiance to Live Art is clear, their relationship to cabaret like the couple that can't help getting back together despite the heart-break. Just when cabaret is becoming mainstream again, Scottee thankfully drags it back to the margins.

Meanwhile Amanda Palmer's Evelyn Evelyn is a cunning strategy to avoid the inevitable obsolescence built into the career of rock musicians. Creating a parody of a freak show turn, her Siamese twin act with Jason Webley takes her through honky-tonk and bluegrass pastiches, hilarious yet retaining her trademark skill at finding the universal in the peculiar. As a songwriter, she is far from Camille's brilliance as an interpreter of classic tunes, but adds a vaudeville bite to her passionate songs of love and alienation. She admits that she has a fan base who "get and appreciate the injoke of my life," allowing her to do "what I feel like doing, even if it is dangerous, business-wise."

Cabaret may be popular, but as all of these artists prove, and as Amanda Palmer makes explicit, it has the spirit of reaction against the dull 1990s' seriousness and can still be deliciously subversive.

In Part, Minimal

Kicking off the 2012/2013 Minimal Programme - a Glasgow Life innovation, programmed by the imaginative Sven Brown and now racing into its third year - a weekend of Arvo Part is a safe bet. Part fuses a post-modern fascination with the ancient - his stripped down arrangements evoke medieval sanctity - and a rare ear for a minimalist melody: while the Americans Reich and Glass took their cue from the driving grooves or urban anxiety, Estonian Part retreated into a pastoral religiosity.

Although his Stabat Mater is the headlining number in Saturday's performance, the first half presented the breadth of Part's interest. While some of his religious pieces struggle to emerge from a generic, gentle contemplation, his arrangement of St Patrick's The Deer's Cry uses the simple prayer to weave a complex web of sound, imitating the fervent desire of the song to be wrapped in God's protection. A version of Burn's My Heart's in The Highlands relocates Scotland to the northern border of heaven - despite the slightly ponderous rhyme - and Part's refusal of melodrama allows his choral compositions to reveal a compassionate, meditative Christianity.

Stabat Mater has the distinctive Christian mash-up of almost erotic brutality and kindness: the words follow the experience of the Blessed Virgin watching her son die, and the language more familiar from cheerful carols is twisted into a visceral vision of salvation through bloodshed.

The balance of three musicians - a trio of violin, viola and cello - against three voices echoes the words emphasis on juxtaposition: the musicians are more than accompaniment, conjuring the scene of the crucifixion through vivid interludes - although Part still avoids histrionics - as the singers long to share in Mary's almost ecstatic misery.

Part's connection to the minimalist movement is itself minimal: without the powerful pulse of the Americans, and avoiding even the romantic exultations familiar in much religious classical composition (even Scotland's James MacMillan will arrange his voices in rising harmonies of praise), Part returns to Bach's rigorous and precise depiction of the divine.