Symon Macintyre Drifts...

GKV: What attracted you to the beach for this production? Did the location or the concept come first?

Symon Macintyre: By chance I heard the story of Betty Mouat and was inspired by her courage and fortitude. In January 1886 , in a sudden storm, the captain and the crew of the Columbine were washed overboard. This left 60yr old Betty who was on a routine two hour trip to Lerwick to sell her knitting, drifting of to Norway .

When I heard the story , I took a blank page and dew a line drawn across the middle of it I sketched a small boat resting on it. This was my vision of Betty, on a line suspended between the sky and the seabed. Tossing and tumbling no up no down, between worlds with no idea where she was heading.

I wanted to share her story and immerse the audience in the experience. Put them into her head , get her into their heads and try to get them to empathise with her strength and courage .

I looked at my line on that page and realized that on the beaches was a line between land and the sea.

I could create, with the assistance of some great designers, a series of sculptures, each one inspired by a day of her 9 day journey.

The audience, one at a time spaced 5 minutes apart, would drift though these worlds isolated by headphones, listening to the voice of Gerda Sevenson singing the lyrics of Judith Adams to the music of Eddie Mcguire.

Judith wrote Ghost for me. (another headphone show) in 2005 and with its 3d bin-aural soundscape was a massive hit for the company.

Each beach we have chosen is something special an amazing location sometimes isolated sometimes a challenge to reach but always a spectacular seascape.

As an irritating critic, I like to put companies into simple boxes... I hoped I'd be able to call you 'visual theatre' but... well, you keep mixing it up! How would you describe drift?
I also hate boxes. Not just those funding boxes that say puppeteer, dancer actor artists but the boxes that imprison theatre lock it away out of sight and out of mind.

I need to create events that make things happen in spaces and in the places that you least expect it .. I spent January looking at the some of the most beautiful beaches in Scotland . 

I thought about walking along the sand ( as you do) and contemplating the seascape thinking meditating Drift just had to be on beaches .The 5 I chose were a mixture of accessible remote and stunning. ON Unst in Shetland we are on the most Northerly beach in Scotland looking out to sea .. next stop Norway. We are taking a lot of rope to tie things down in case it's windy!

We are also on Eigg which is one of my favourite places in Scotland. The ethic and the environment .

There are certain key concerns I have noticed in your work: the relationship of art to nature, getting the audience immersed in the event, the unusual theatre space.... does drift return to these themes?

Drift is on the edge of the sea and the Land. Its a place were weather is seen .. the rain clouds coming towards you the wind the sun (I hope ) are there all around you. It's a biog sky and you are a small insignificant dot on that landscape. Think about that as you walk though our installation.

I'm feeling more political at the moment maybe it s the whole devolution independence thing , I really believe that theatre that gets out to community and happens where pelple are could be life changing. I saw Chevoit the Stag and the Black Black Oil in Nairn Commnity centre in the 70s and it blew me away.

We keep back to these themes. Drift is the courage and strength of the small crofter/weaver pitted against the oceans . My next show The Last Wolf will be about Communities Land Reform and the re-wilding movement.
Outdoors stuff is where I believe we can make a big impact .

Nostalgia is the Enemy

Despite Liam Howlett's talk of The Prodigy's 'angry album', and the aggressive titles ('Nasty', 'Get Your Fight On'), The Day Is My Enemy is a musically conservative album. Aside from sprinkling occasional samples of Arabic music, and a melody line on 'Wild Frontier' that evokes eight-bit computer music, The Prodigy work the same template, of shouted vocals, industrial strength beats and ferocious electronic sounds, that bought them to national attention in the 1990s.

Gareth K Vile, The List 2015

The cheap price of land along the river pushed the larger media institutions further west from the city centre: the state television station and the commercial rival built huge glass warehouses, filled with studios and technicians and research experts and runners and interns and bored producers.

'The landscaping of this area, on both banks, has been a lesson in the clinical application of concrete,' says the tour guide, as they rush past the twin arena towards the more picturesque environs of the University. Criticulous stubs on his cigarette on his shoe and enters the red tube that takes him across the motorway to the Conference Centre.

He can feel the buzzing of the transmissions from around a mile away. In more sentimental times, he believed that he could hear individual words, that the satellites were calling him. 

Fifty Shades of Musical Parody

Fifty Shades The Musical! The Original Parody++++=

Grey gets a day glow make-over

Since the novel set the bar so low in terms in characterisation, plot and prose style, this parody of *3Fifty Shades *2easily captures its thin eroticism and pornography of consumerism. There's no doubt that the musical has been designed to appeal to fans of the trilogy – there are two topless men to one scantily clad female backing dancer – but the script expects no prior knowledge. Sending up E.L. James' writing with fondness, the parody revolves around a book group's overheated engagement with their latest set text.

The songs are gloriously crude – dumb like The Ramones, revelling in a blunt, coarse humour and mocking both the book and prudery. James' use of metaphor in the book – the various coy names that body parts get called, and the extended metaphor of the 'inner goddess' – give the company plenty of material.

The cast clearly enjoy camping up the script, and launch into the musical numbers with energy and vocal ability. The choreography is predictable – although the ironic ballet pas de deux marking the lovers' first tryst is witty and technically strong – but the music ranges about through funk, gospel and even Gilbert and Sullivan pastiches to keep the pace fast and the audience cheering.

Christian Grey, the romantic hero, is given a brilliant twist, and his extended work out of I Don't Make Love is both a masterpiece of dirty humour and vocal dexterity. Fans of BDSM-lite won't be disappointed, but there is also a sly wink towards the novel's absurdity.

(Gareth K Vile)

Coming from a critic who is self-consciously pretentious and sexually frustrated, Gareth K Vile's review of Fifty Shades The Musical! The Original Parody is all the more convincing. Clearly signalling his dislike of the source novel ('thin eroticism... pornography of consumerism... mocking both the book and prudery... BDSM-lite... the novel's absurdity'), Vile is clearly comfortable with the musical's approach to the material, and the 'brilliant twist' (unrevealed for spoilers in the review, but actually the casting of a nimble fat guy as the hero) undermines the po-faced seriousness of the Grey Trilogy and its opponents.

In the light of the release of the film of the book, Vile has spoken out on his review, hoping to clarify a few points. Meeting the press in his office around the back of the toilets in the CCA, and looking as if he hasn't had a bath or a shave for the past month, he read a prepared statement in a terse voice.

'Fifty Shades The Musical! The Original Parody,' he explains, 'can now be seen as an expression of the superiority of theatre over film. While I support no boycotts of any art - a position I hope to develop in the upcoming months - I would suggest that the film Fifty Shades of Grey, in line with the book, is less an erotic imagining from a female perspective than capitalism having a big wank over itself. Having read the fucking thing from beginning to end, the traditional values it espouses are not expressed by the sexual scenes - which are boring and trivial - but the overall narrative arc. Grey starts off as a neurotic millionaire. He ends the trilogy as a good father, saved by the love of a good woman. This is the fantasy, the romantic delusion.'

Vile's philosophy has always emphasised the point of contact between audience and art as the 'moment of meaning': far from insisting on a definitive meaning of a particular text, he recognises the complex and fluid nature of interpretation. As such, defenders and complainants against Fifty Shades both mistake their readings of the text as complete.

'A boycott determines that a text has a fixed meaning... in the case of fantasy like this, that fixity goes against the grain of the text. Given how badly it has written, the text allows for multiple readings. A more consistent attack on the novel or film would be to reread it as if it were a satire or a detective story.'

Mark Thomson on Brecht and Beyond...

Mark Thomson is the artistic director of The Lyceum, in

Edinburgh. When I asked him for a chat about his upcoming production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, he was generous enough to give me too much for the article... here is the complete interview...

What is it about Brecht that has made him such a looming presence in the theatre of the last half century? Do you have a particular love for his approach and ideas about theatre?

I think anyone who enters their place of work and challenges on the two fronts of WHY are we doing this and HOW should we do this is key in the development of any profession or art form. 

 It’s difficult to overestimate the influence he had but the truth is that a lot of what he brought is inherent in standard theatre “think” now. 

 The idea that Brecht always wanted you to be aware and acknowledge the truth that this is a group of actors who are telling this story and not “pretending” that we “are” this or that person is keenly theatrical. 

It doesn't mean he’s not serving truth – he’s just challenging how we create truths and saying that it might not always be through trying to be “real.” The thing I keep talking about with the company is to abandon consistency. 

Caucasian shifts restlessly from one style to another, from naturalism to singing to crazy carnivalesque creatures. And each needs tending to and doesn't want smoothed out. The other thing is that for Brecht there was no such thing as a “character” that stood and remained definitive throughout a play. The “situation” was key to understanding why people did the things they did. 

So, a raping Sergeant is a rapist because of his circumstance of war. Monsters are born from monstrous situations. In another war-less universe he’s a father taking his daughter for swimming lessons.

And the Chalk Circle: why did you go for this script at this time?
I felt that the theatre needed to articulate or respond to the times we are in where there seems an unstoppable march toward widening the gap between the rich and the poor; when those who govern are led by power rather than principle. 

 Even in theatre it’s interesting that we have people like Brian Cox and Julie Walters are questioning whether the they could have entered the profession now and are we going to have very little working class actors entering the profession in which case there is a huge challenge to the stage’s ability to reflect the society it is supposed to be representing. 

 So Caucasian really simply says there might be another way of thinking. It has the boldness of a parable in the truths it identifies but has a wonderfully complex political and human understanding that is celebrated by vivid, musical, comedic and emotional theatre.

Does the CCC fit well with the general identity of the Lyceum?
I don't recognize the idea of the Lyceum Theatre having an identity. It’s a place of the imagination. A space where stories are told to another group of people. It’s a human place where views are exchanged, worlds are brought to life through word, picture, sound and light. The walls disappear and no one is looking at the chandelier when the act of theatre is successful.

Does working on this large scale present any unexpected challenges?
Not unexpected but it certainly does. And by challenges I don’t think negatively. I have a company of 13, eight of whom are multi instrumentalists, one who is an expert puppeteer, somewhere is the region of 40 locations and over a hundred characters and an amazing epic journey of a story about an extraordinary young woman. 

 What I love about the whole idea of companies like the Lyceum is that we have Faith Healer on and it’s a three hander, monologues – people and words. And now we’re in a carnivalesque storytelling with different demands, offers, tone. The quixotic leaps from show to show energize and transform the space where we meet our audience and defines it as a place of surprise that provokes your mind and senses and makes you feel more alive than before you entered the room. 

And as Brecht might agree, if you feel more alive you'll feel more capable of change. And Brecht’s great optimism is that he believed people/we can change. And boy oh boy I think we all know we need to.

*4 Curtain Up: The Great Yes, No, Don't Know, Five Minute Theatre Show

List Version:

*4 Curtain Up: The Great Yes, No, Don't Know, Five Minute Theatre Show

*2David MacLennan, co-curator of the National Theatre of Scotland's latest Five Minute Theatre broadcast, has been a major force in Scottish theatre since the 1970s, and developed the revolutionary A Play, A Pie and A Pint programme at Oran Mor. He explains how *3The Great Yes, No, Don't Know *2event feeds into a venerable tradition.

Five Minute Theatre curates a range of shows and broadcasts them for an entire day. How did you cope with the submissions?

The real credit belongs to staff at NTS. Their experience in doing this type of work has been invaluable.

Did you get many submissions?

The subject of the work is so important and topical that it unleashed a tremendous response from the public and the profession. It was really a question of light the blue touch paper and await the explosion!

Is there a particular answer to the question of the referendum that comes through the productions?

It's very much about diversity of opinion and indeed many of the pieces could be described as the 'undecided.' Political theatre is much more telling when it asks intelligent questions than when it pronounces simple solutions. There was really no temptation to shape an answer from the material because the richness lies in the variety and diversity of thinking.

Is political theatre on the rise in Scotland?

Political theatre is a popular art form in Scotland and these new writers are carrying on the tradition of companies like 7:84 and Wildcat: there is a whole new generation of politically engaged playwrights emerging.

And is this a good thing?

I have been lucky to have worked with many of them at Oran Mor in A Play A Pie and A Pint. I feel immensely heartened that not only do these writers care passionately about the kind of society we live in but they also write with great skill and craft.

*10http://fiveminutetheatre.com/ Mon 23 Jun

(Gareth K Vile)

The Full Text

As the man who has changed the way that new work is produced in Scotland - and winning a CATS special award for it - it seems perfect that you are involved in the yes no don't know event. But it boggles my mind to think of how you can curate something on this scale - was their any particular approach that you took?

The real credit belongs to staff at NTS. Their experience in doing this type of work has been invaluable. It is also true that the subject of the work is so important and topical that it unleashed a tremendous response from the public and the profession. It was really a question of light the blue touch paper and await the explosion.

I get a sense that the event is about diversity of opinion rather than debating the issue down to an answer, but was there a temptation to curate in a a particular direction?

It's very much about diversity of opinion and indeed many of the pieces could be described as the 'undecided.'

Political theatre is much more telling when it asks intelligent questions than when it pronounces simple solutions. There was really no temptation to shape an answer from the material because the richness lies in the variety and diversity of thinking.

as someone who has been involved in political theatre for a while, do you see a resurgence of political theatre in Scotland at the moment - and how do you feel about it?

There is a whole new generation of politically engaged playwrights emerging in Scotland. I have been lucky to have worked with many of them at Oran Mor in A Play A Pie and A Pint. I feel immensely heartened that not only do these writers care passionately about the kind of society we live in but they also write with great skill and craft. Political theatre is a popular art form in Scotland and these new writers are carrying on the tradition of companies like 7:84 and Wildcat.