Dark Dramaturgy: Paul Andrew Perez and Jessica Avellino @ Edfringe 2016

Fun, cool, chilling. In her debut musical, writer/composer Jessica Avellino delivers an all new musical with a brash score. Emma, suffering from the accidental death of her sister, is locked in Westlake Mental Hospital.






She is trapped in her mind, as she struggles for her sanity and her life. This must-see new musical thriller is filled with twists and turns that features a fresh soundtrack. Sometimes letting go is the hardest thing to do.

Paul Andrew Perez - Director & Dramaturge of Infinity Rep’s DARK HEART

Jessica Avellino - Playwright/Composer of Infinity Rep’s DARK HEART

What was the inspiration for this performance?

I think my focus was to try and take what Jessica was writing and thinking and then shaping it to her vision.  I was constantly coming back to “What is the story?” and not letting her go sideways but striving to get at the heart of the story.  With any musical, the heart of the piece is in the music.  Jess’s music is different, soulful.  I often tease her on the “emo” nature of the piece, but the music suits the content of the piece.

As a writer, I wanted to bring out a topic that I felt deserved more awareness; teen depression and suicide. Being a teenager myself, I unfortunately have seen and gone through a lot of the hardships that coincide with this piece. This allowed me to create a piece that would hopefully impact people struggling through these same issues. The inspiration was to find a way to prevent these issues from expanding.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

It was pretty simple for me.  I have worked with the same group of designers and music director for over 10 years.  We have a tremendous comfort level and can communicate honestly about each others work.

I have been apart of the Infinity Repertory Theatre Company for five years now and was able to have the show performed by the other members in the company. This was an amazing opportunity because the bond that I have with all of these kids allowed me to really trust them in shaping my work.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I love telling stories.  It began with my father who would always tell me stories, both fictional and fact based.  He would become the characters.  This stayed with me my entire life.  I became and actor and later a Producer, Director and Playwright.  I enjoy making stories come to life.

I have always loved writing. When I was 12 years old, I started writing songs and it turned into a hobby of mine. Writing, whether it was through music, poetry, or just storytelling, allowed me to express my emotions in a way I simply couldn’t without paper. Only about a year ago, was I asked to write a musical for the Infinity Repertory Theatre Company to perform and I took it on as a huge challenge. It was a completely different animal this time because I wasn’t just writing for fun, I was writing for a purpose. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
I read the script. I allow my imagination to fully sink in to it. If I love it. I will be driven to tell it and produce it. I then begin breaking down the story and seeing where the strengths and weakness lie. If I am fortunate enough to be working with the playwright.

We begin to talk and work on the piece. I am always careful to maintain the vision of the playwright. Once we have honed the piece. I bring in the design team and let them read it. Once they have all read it we sit down as a collective and we talk about it. The exciting bits as well as the challenges.

Once we are of the same mind the next step is casting. Once again I sit down with the playwright and casting director as we see actors. I am always looking for actors who are talented but fit the vision of the role and the piece. Once I am cast we begin shaping the show with the actors. I stay true to the vision but allow room for growth and changes. As you bring more people in to your group, they bring their talent to bear and it allows your vision to grow. Please keep in mind that this is a very abbreviated version of this process that I have streamlined for the sake of brevity.

This process was something that I had never done before. I went into it not truly knowing what the result was going to be. I knew that I wanted a piece that would help make a change, so I shaped a story based on the topic of teen depression and suicide. It was difficult because each part of the musical had to allow the story to progress and had to interlock with the main purpose of the piece. It is hours and hours of hard work that allows for one of the most satisfying outcomes: to bring purpose to art.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Ideally what I felt when I first read the piece.  I want them to feel. To have a genuine experience.  In DARK HEART, everything is about letting our audience feel the journey our lead actress is on.

We are peeking into a shattered mind that is on the cusp of complete breakdown and suicide.

I hope, no matter how small, that this show makes some kind of a impact on someone’s life. The purpose of this piece is to raise awareness of these issues to teens and parents and help them all learn ways to prevent these horrible situations. We are not alone, we can prevent it together. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

Everything!  I love to begin the audience experience from the very moment they enter into the theater.  Everything should point them to where you want them to look and feel.  I love immersive theater because it puts the audience firmly in the piece and they are on the journey with you.  In effect, they are part of the story.  I am using some Brechtian staging as well as multi-media to tell this story.

The main strategy I used was personal experience. I’ve always believed that writing based on your own experience allows for the audience to connect with the story more because it is real. I chose to write as much as I could about something I’ve been through, rather something I’ve only witnessed. This is something that allows us, as the writers, to become more passionate about our own piece and enables more value and quality in the result. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I am following my father’s path.  I am a storyteller.  I will do anything to tell the story. Through any method and beyond any convention.  At my heart, I am that child wanting to share my love of storytelling.

I don’t know. When writing, I didn’t follow any tradition, I wrote how it flowed out. I believe that any writer can form their own traditions because we are all different. I had my own vision that I formed for this piece, not any one else’s. 

Dramaturging the Adult: Split Milk @ Tron

Spilt Milk presents

Adulting

16-18 JUNE 2016, 8PM

Adulting (verb): To adult. To do something one would expect an adult to do. To behave in the way one would expect you to when you are an adult.

Twenty-five. Quarter of a century years old. I am happily engaged, have a down payment on a two-bed and a glamorous job that takes me from country to country. 

Oh and I have one pet. Aged ten, this is how I say my future. In reality, I live at home and have yet to find my soulmate. I attempt to bake. I often date. And I sometimes frequent DIY stores. 

All before another glass of wine. These are the little ways I try to feel like an adult. I know there are pros and cons to being this age, I just haven’t found out what the pros are yet.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

We are all at the age now where as a concept “adulting” is summed up by where we and our friends are at in life. These big milestones that we are all supposed to be hitting are forced down our throats from society and our success rate determines how we well we are succeeding as an adult. For us, this is an issue and as we discuss in the piece, we feel these boxes are not what determine your worth or how well this generation is going to do in life.

“Adulting” as a term in itself has only really come to the forefront of pop culture in the last year or so, which is why we thought it would be interesting to explore such a subject whilst it is still in its infancy – pun intended.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

Spilt Milk formed in 2014 off the back of the Tron Theatre’s Commonwealth Home nations event. We all performed in  Under Milk Wood which led to a small group of us realizing we work well together and have an interest in making the same kind of work. Since our first performance in march last year, the company has reduced in size and is now made up of four members, all of whom have worked together for years.

It was the natural decision for us to devise and perform in our next project, as our chemistry and history lend themselves to the devising process. In addition to this we all have performance backgrounds.

How did you become interested in making performance in the first place - does it hold any particular qualities that other media don't have?

All of us have been through the Youth Theatre process as a participant in some shape or form. We all enjoy performing and over the last decade have honed our skills. Many of us work within the industry and so feel we have a good critical eye that can be put towards making our own work.

We think seeing live performance is necessary in life as it gives you a completely different experience to other forms of entertainment. It’s a much more intimate setting and allows people to connect to each other at new levels. Other forms of entertainment can offer a degree of this however I think from our experience, it’s vital that people experience theatre as nothing else quite offers this level of emersion.

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

In short, yes. We all come from a devising background and despite this only being Spilt Milk’s second production under this guise, the four of us have made and devised shows together in other contexts. For us, our formula is tried and tested. For others it may be viewed as too relaxed or they may think we spend too long on researching aspects of what we want to make – these are real comments I have heard.

But for us, it works. There is many reasons for this. First off our relationship with each other. Our level of familiarity has allowed us to develop a great shorthand with each other. Equally there is little to no conflict as each member of the group feels entirely comfortable both praising and criticizing each other. We have a very natural process with each other and making this performance was no different.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Our aim for this performance is to let the audience into our heads at the age of 25. Many of them will have experienced what we are going through and many of them won't yet have reached this transitional stage. Much of what we are exploring is specific to this day and age and we want to let the audience in on what that feels like. This piece of work has been designed to encourage the audience to ask and answer the questions we raise within it.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

To quote our show, “We made a questionnaire, we spoke to people, we tweeted, we social media’d a lot. Sometimes, it was just someone saying something really smart to us in a bar. Wise random strangers at bars are modern day Oracles of Delphi, except drunk and sometimes leaving abruptly when it is their turn for karaoke.”

From the off, we knew we wanted to put as much research into this show as possible. This is why at the beginning of the process we devised a questionnaire and our Adulting List. This gave us a great starting point and sparked some really interesting conversations.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

In basic terms, this is very much a coming of age piece. It shows how generation Y, no longer have the same strict milestones that our parents and their parents alike so easily achieved on their route to adulthood.

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

Truthfully no. As a company we use dramaturgy in its purest form. We have explained how we work in previous questions and the only way to fully grasp our process would be to be a part of it. The end result shows aspects of this but the process is a performance in itself.

Tony’s quarter life crisis included bleaching his hair then shaving his head circa Britney 2007; Grant rescued all his old toys and gave them refuge in his room to prevent Toy Story 3 from happening for real; Jacqueline wanted to join a band, buy a Vespa and move to New Orleans whilst Catherine watched Clueless every day for a month...

Spilt Milk juxtapose their ten-year old selves viewpoint with the sometimes depressing reality of what being twenty-five actually involves, in a funny and irreverent exploration of ‘adult’ life.
Running time: approx. 70 mins (no interval)


LISTINGS INFORMATION
Venue: Changing House, Tron Theatre, 63 Trongate, Glasgow G1 5HB Dates: 16-18 June 2016, 8pm Tickets: £10 (£7.50) Box Office: 0141 552 4267 or www.tron.co.uk

ABOUT THE COMPANY 

Spilt Milk is a four-piece devising theatre company established in 2014. Their debut production, The Love Sect, was performed in March 2015 as part of the Tron Theatre’s Football Colours Allowed season, a week that focused on the topics surrounding sectarianism and social division.

By gathering stories, anecdotes and experiences, the company weaves them through their work to created fiction from non-fiction with the aim of encouraging non theatre-goers to experience theatre. Pulling on the different backgrounds and experiences of the four members, Spilt Milk explore universal themes and social commentary in an imaginary world.

Crisis Dramaturgy: Katie Brennan @ Edfringe 2016

Jimmy Jewell and Stephen McGill

Katie Brennan’s Quarter-Life Crisis

Underbelly George Square (The Wee Coo), Edinburgh, EH8 9LD Wednesday 3rd – Monday 29th August 2016 (not 15th), 22:50

Are you crippled by student debt? Working an unpaid internship? Trying to find Prince Charming on Tinder and spending the majority of your time watching Netflix? Welcome to the life of a modern day twentysomething!

Join actress and blogger Katie Brennan for a new show, packed with music, comedy and cabaret all about living that Quarter-Life Crisis. From facebook to flatshares, weddings to woeful bank accounts, career conundrums to chronically crap sex, come and raise a big glass of gin to all those twentysomethings struggling to find their place in the world.


What was the inspiration for this performance? 

Well, they say 'write what you know' and what I knew at the time was all about how frustrating and confusing life can be in your twenties - financial instability, lack of job satisfaction (despite having shiny, hard-earned degrees from redbrick universities), being unable to move on Facebook for engagement and pregnancy announcements, living in flat shares, etc. 

And the more I voiced my twentysomething woes to my friends, the more I realised just how many of us felt the same way.  So, I figured I'd make a show as it was something so many people could relate to!

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

Joe Atkins, my musical director, and I first worked together ten years ago when he was the MD for a drama course I did during my gap year, Year Out Drama Company.  I am extraordinarily lucky to have him on board. The new songs and material he has written for the show are just hysterical and I'm so excited for people to hear them!

How did you become interested in making performance?

I got bored of auditioning for stuff and people saying no. It's amazing how hitting dead ends can make you hustle sometimes!

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

When Joe and I work together, we tend to smash through a few bottles of pink fizz and end up clutching our sides in giggles as we put together a show and that process has resulted in some of my favourite songs and mashups to perform. Only after a copious amount of booze would we think that writing a medley that incorporates 30 90s classics would be a good idea!

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

The whole point of writing this show was to give a big, warm, musical hug to anyone experiencing any tinge of a quarter-life crisis. We cover so much in the show, from online dating, to mental health issues,  from weddings, to dreaming of owning a house (haha current housing market) that I hope people will watch it and just go 'YES THAT IS ME! THAT IS MY LIFE!' The best way to overcome heartache is to talk about it and to laugh at it. And I hope that will happen to our audience when they watch the show.  

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

To make every minute of the show completely relatable. To have laughter at the forefront of everything we're doing. I want my audience to watch the show and think, 'I'd love to have a gin with her.' 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

It's comedy, and it's cabaret. We sing great songs and we make people laugh. And doing that helps me make sense of my own 'Quarter-Life Crisis'. 

The Quarter-Life Crisis is a new phenomenon but one that Brennan is certainly not alone in feeling. It’s about being brave in these difficult times, carrying on, being proud of who you are and celebrating what you have achieved in your twenties.

Brennan comments, I wrote the show (alongside my wonderful MD Joseph Atkins) because I was in a real twentysomething slump. My career was going nowhere, I was skint, single and felt like everyone was achieving life goals whilst I was just treading water. Through writing this show, I learned that no one really knows what they’re doing - even those who LOOK like they’ve got these glossy, pulled-together, social media perfect lives. Those feelings of uncertainty, of feeling like you’re supposed to have achieved certain things by a certain point, like you’re a failure who is never going to make anything of yourself and be a grown-up - those feelings are so REAL.

Dramaturgy Disappears: Ella Cook and Angus Wilkinson @ Edfringe 2015

MISS SARAH

How long 'til someone is gone, how long 'til missing, how long 'til dead?

Inspired by real events, Cicada Studios' new writing production examines the unseen victims of a missing person case by tracing one girl's search for Sarah.

Zoo Venues - The Monkey House (Venue 124)
14.50 - 15.45 (55 min)
Previews: 7 - 8 Aug
Performance Dates: 9 - 31 Aug 
(No performances on Mon 17 and 24 Aug) 

When Mel’s best friend, Sarah, goes missing at a music festival she wonders if she is the only one really searching. Miss Sarah examines the debilitating nature of hope, focusing on the unseen victims of a missing person case, the ones left behind. 

A Lynchian nightmare, a psychological thriller, one girl’s search for Sarah.
Not only the world-première of a new piece of writing, Miss Sarah is the inaugural production for London-based emerging theatre company, Cicada Studios. 

The Fringe 
What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object? 
Responses by Ella Cook and Angus Wilkinson:
Miss Sarah was inspired by the Kate Miller-Heidke song, Sarah, which was based on the true story of a girl who went missing at a music festival and turned up two weeks later with no recollection of where she had been.   

Behind the haunting vocals is an idea more daunting than death, to be missing. Does missing mean to be dead? Or to be a figment of someoneʼs imagination?     

The original production of Miss Sarah was a one-woman show, but has since expanded to include an ensemble cast of four, extending from the original disappearance into each character's own struggles surrounding the missing person case.  

Why bring your work to Edinburgh? 
The Edinburgh Fringe is the largest arts festival in the world! It's a place you could easily get lost at. As a new company, especially one whose members are new to the country, what better way to throw ourselves into the theatre scene than perform at the Fringe? Cicada Studios hope to use the Edinburgh Fringe as a launching pad to meet new people and connect with other companies, theatres, producers and audiences from all over the UK and the world. We are excited by the idea that people who may never get a chance to see the show if it was only on in London could stumble on it by chance.   

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?  
At the heart of it, Miss Sarah examines the debilitating nature of hope by following the unseen victims of missing person cases, those left behind. Through personal stories and relationships, we explore what it means to be missing, as opposed to dead, the fear of the unknown and how once missing you become an ʻideaʼ or ʻmemoryʼ with no physical presence in the human world. Often inanimate objects are imbued with the qualities and memories of those missing.   

The play uses the vast landscape of Australia to help magnify the almost impossible task of locating someone who has vanished. Audiences who attend this production may be drawn in by the mystery of the piece, which pays homage to films like Christopher Nolan's Memento. We think it could very well be a vegemite (sorry... Marmite) show, putting fuel into post-show discussions.
   
The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?  
There is no ʻdramaturgʼ attached to Miss Sarah, but there has certainly been a lot of dramaturgy conducted on the piece. I would define dramaturgy as making the piece of work the best it possibly can be (for theatre). 

During the drafting phase we employed the Royal Court Dramaturgical Report structure to help progress, examining the play through initial response, structure, dramatic action, language, story, and then leaving the playwright with five questions to consider for the following draft.  

As we came closer to the production phase, the dramaturgical questions shifted from story and dramatic action towards how to best realize this within a theatrical space.  

Now, in production, the dramaturgy is focused on theatrical language and conventions. Helping to define and establish the rules and parameters we place around our performance, which best illuminate what our through-line is.   

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?  
Miss Sarah fits into the genre of Australian Gothic, inspired by films that have come out of Australia recently, including Justin Kurzelʼs Snowtown and Cate Shortlandʼs Somersault. Notable Australian theatre that shares similar qualities would be Andrew Bovellʼs When The Rain Stops Falling and Matt Cameronʼs Ruby Moon. The piece has taken a massive leap from the raw monologue style, like that of David Mercataliʼs production of Philip Ridleyʼs Dark Vanilla Jungle, to this modern gothic psychological thriller and family drama inspired by that of David Lynch.   

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?  
Theatre is a collaboration. Although I canʼt recall the practitioner who stated this, it is true that, of all art forms, theatre is the most collaborative. It combines the visual, written, performance and audible disciplines of art to create one cohesive piece, and it inherently holds a trump card against film - Itʼs live!   

Process is something that shifts and evolves over time and projects. Miss Sarah has run the path of a traditional ʻnew-writingʼ approach initially with drafts and dramaturgical reports followed by periods of R & D. However, once we entered the short rehearsal period for EdFringe, the process shifted to a more typical method of working with extant texts, following a Stanislavski Active Analyses approach.       

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?  
Miss Sarah is, to an extent, a puzzle play, and so it is the audienceʼs role to decipher and judge for themselves what really happened. The audience members are the public opinion, the police, the media and the only witnesses.   


Miss Sarah is inspired by real events that took place at the Brisbane Livid Music Festival in 1997, when a young girl went missing for a fortnight, returning with no recollection of what had happened. Australian singer-songwriter Kate Miller Heidke's haunting track, 'Sarah' - the launching stimulus for this production - was also inspired by this story.

The search for Sarah transcends the theatre - with ticket treasure hunts, and a chance for audience member faces to feature in the show - taking Fringe-goers round Edinburgh on their own journey to #findsarah.

Cicada Studios was founded by a group of Australian artists all now based in London. After a successful Kickstarter Campaign, which raised over £8,000, they're now ready to 'hatch' their inaugural production. The key creatives have all had successful individual careers as emerging artists, with various members working for: Baz Luhrmann on 'Strictly Ballroom: The Musical' & Chanel No 5, 'The One That I Want', Punch Drunk's 'Against Captain's Orders' and performing in the original production of 'Pomona' by Alistair McDowall.

The Date (rhiannonfaith.com)

www.rhiannonfaith.com

Date & Time: Wednesday, 18 February, 7.30pm

Venue: University of Bedfordshire, Bedford

More info: www.beds.ac.uk/theatre/whatson/the-date



Date & Time: Monday & Tuesday, 2-3 March, 9pm

Venue: BAC, London

More info: www.bac.org.uk



Date & Time: Wednesday, 25 March, 8pm

Venue: Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester

More info: www.colchesterartscentre.com



For further insight into The Date plus film clips please visit

http://rhiannonfaith.com/shows/the-date-new-work-follow-for-interactive-diary-vlogs/

More Politics, Or Something (Emerging Artists, too)

Kenneth Davidson didn't so much give me the number of the beast in response to my last blog, he gave me its post code. I am always worried when I try to get political, because I know that I have friends who are far more knowledgeable than I am.

In the meantime, I did check out the speech made by Maria Miller. Ever since Rob Drummond did a version of  the Blondie number and dedicated it to the arts minister, I've been trying to get my head around the problem. I mean, she's a Tory, right? Did anyone expect her to say anything that didn't involve their catch-phrase of austerity?

The British political theatre of the 1970s, at least in the English, scripted variations, expressed a determinedly socialist intention and an almost anarchic cynicism about the antics of socialist politicians. The Labour Party is pictured as hopelessly compromised, the smaller parties as dismal cults of personality. Before the advent of punk, which fired into the raw, inarticulate alienation of the working classes, theatre was possibly the most dynamic public forum for the discussion of counter-cultural ideology. While the hippies of the 1960s settled into drug psychoses and addiction, or mellowed out over Pink Floyd’s jams, playwrights were seething.

If there is a revival of the political urge amongst young playwrights today, it is tempered by the spirit of the 1980s (Thatcher’s declaration that there is no such thing as society might be more historically prescient than her war against trade unionism, what with the reformation of ideas like “friendship” and “privacy” thanks to the Internet) and the 1990s, when Tony Blair deliberately courted the arts and, mainly in the now derided Cool Brittania phase, made them courtiers to the state. Rather than taking swipes at the figures who engage with existing political systems, there is a focus on the lives of the victims of the systems. At its best, contemporary political theatre is compassionate rather than angry.

Anger is a difficult emotion to express. It is deliberately repulsive: much of the reason for the original resistance to punk was perhaps its naked aggression. Whether The Sex Pistols were mining the incoherent anguish of personal alienation, or The Clash were making rudimentary attempts to join the political dots, punk married a conservative sound – the rough edges of noise that would later flourish in the wave of 1980s bands who regarded feedback as an instrument were more a function of musical ineptitude – with an immediate rage. If early rock’n’roll took the joyous and nervous blossoming of adolescent sexuality, punk grounded itself in the teenage temper tantrum.  

Rob Drummond is possibly marking himself out as the angriest of the new generation of Scottish theatre-makers. Both Quiz Show and Riot of Spring have scenes of disgust: the quiet meditation on child abuse that concludes the former and the karaoke tribute to Maria Miller in the latter. They swerve into the lack of focus that is often the hallmark of rage – the closing monologue of Quiz Show fails to consider why celebrities can get away with paedophilia, merely condemning it (a statement impossible to reject), and the irritation directed at the culture minister is trivial, especially in the context of a play that brings up the major disturbances that rocked London (before the Olympics restored a measure of national pride).

In both cases, however, Drummond is exploring something different from the compassion studies of his contemporaries Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair. In Rantin, Hurley offers a kaleidoscope of modern Scottish lives, only briefly tearing into the tyranny of late capitalism and containing this monologue within a broader narrative that is more interested in presenting the richness of individual’s lives. McNair’s thrilling Donald Robertson, meanwhile, is a close-up on how comedy can save a young man’s social status while destroying his moral integrity.

Drummond is harking back to the 1970s of the punks rather than the playwrights: he is doing anger as a counterblast. If it works better within The Riot, that is because the overall structure – episodic, sketchy and consciously aping a DIY production – hold the moment more carefully. The speech at the end of Quiz Show, while a more precise moral position, is disappointingly vague in a play that has a well-managed formal shape. The difference is between the script, which allows for deeper discussion, and the DIY devised show that taps into immediate energy.

The kind of detailed political analysis that can make the 1970s’ authors dated has not resurfaced in the contemporary political writers. It’s noticeable that much of the strongest political theatre has addressed matters of national identity – Alan Bissett’s Turbo Folk or Greig’s Dunsinane.

There’s a precision in these works’ understanding of the relationship between Scotland and the UK that has not been matched in the early responses to the London riots. Hurley, in collaboration with AJ Taudevin, offered Chalk Farm, a look at the experience of a rioter and their mother, an approach mirrored in Riot of Spring.  In both cases, the story was descriptive and the underlying assumptions about the reasons behind the riot were more struts for the plot and characters than the complex deconstruction Dunsinane applies to Anglo-Scottish relations.

In two senses, this isn’t important. Drummond and Hurley, and Taudevin, are all emerging artists – hardly at the first stage of their career, but not in the pomp of their glory. There’s time for them to do the analysis, probably when they become middle-aged. And it isn’t just the job of the artist to complete the discussion: the audience can get involved too. Both Chalk Farm and Riot, and Rantin et cetera provide a provocation.

Indeed, the compassion Hurley and Taudevin display in Chalk Farm sets a tone for the discussion, as well as giving a few details for the post-show arguments. Even the incompleteness has a virtue: it prevents the drama from becoming a rhetorical announcement of a definitive position. As Leonard Cohen points out, when he wasn’t boasting about sexual conquests or being a Baldy Buddhist, it’s the crack in everything that lets the light come in.