Fever Dramaturgy: Basecamp @ Edfringe 2018

 Fever Dream Theatre Presents

Basecamp

The Gardens C South

The Tents / 1st-27^th (ex14th)

2 Tents, 2 Stories, 1 Show.

Fever Dream Theatre returns to the Edinburgh Fringe with a new site specific production about a legendary rivalry, one mountain and two climbers seeking to be the best. The audiences are divided between two tents experiencing only one climber’s story of their long-standing rivalry. We join them at basecamp as they prepare for the challenges of the ascent.


how would define the political content of your work?


A huge motivation for writing the show is the current world of fake news and divisive politics that we live in. We split our audience into two groups and we only allow them to experience one half of the story. The show delves into questions of identity and conflict, how two individuals or groups can draw such different narratives from the same series of events. Our audiences hear only one side, one clumbers story and are left to decide whether they accept it, or try and hear the other side of the story.

This show, for us, is all about truth and lies and the subjective nature of the narratives that we engage with in the world of viral new stories and social media. How falsehoods and polarising stories can be easily spread and told.


are there ways in which your work can engage the audience beyond the immediate emotional rush of the content, and move forward towards further action?

We made a really active choice to divide our audience into these two groups, each only sitting in one tent listening to only one climber. At the end of the show they are thus left with a choice, accept the story that they were told or try and engage with the other tent and try and find out their story. All our work at the Festival this year has this shared question of how you interact and engage with unreliable narrators, which seems so prescient in way that we currently receive and process news in our current age.


It’s a challenge working out how to move people towards further action, leaving them with the motivation and the information left to move forward and challenge or questioning their beliefs.


How do you balance the political and theatrical elements of your work?
I think it’s really important to never lose site of the narrative and the story, however political your work it is still a theatrical work you are showing. I struggle to engage with political work that preaches to you rather than working with you to make you think and question.



With Basecamp we hope we have these nicely balanced, the setting in separate tents I hope will create a fun inclusive atmosphere. We’re purposefully only letting people see one side of the story, one half of this rivalry in the hope that it highlights how polarised and divisive the narratives we are offered can be and to see how easily unreliable or subjective stories can be taken as truth.



I think these questions are more important than in the politically divisive country that we find ourselves in right now.


Fever Dream Theatre’s new production examines how two individuals can draw such drastically different narratives from the same course of events. At the heart of your experience is the questions and doubts arising from the unheard narrative in the other tent. The show will explore truth, the subjectivity of experience and how such radically conflicting stories can come from the same course of events.

Taking from Fever Dream Theatre passion for creating work unfettered by stage, sets or lighting, creating unique experiences set in cars, rooftops and tents, Basecamp plays with how audiences experience theatre with the express purpose of rural touring, it is a show designed to go anywhere at any time.

Writer Jonathon Carr stated “in many ways the show is an analogy for conflict, and the way in which divisive viewpoints not only stem from a shared course of events but become entrenched. In a political age of fake news and the polarisation of politics, these questions seem more relevant than ever.”

Basecamp is new production from Award-winning Fever Dream Theatre, who return after their 2016 sell-out hit Wrecked, and is part of their new season of work on the subjectivity of experience. This show forms part of a trilogy of works at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2018 including Impact and the returning hit show Wrecked.


Title: Basecamp



Performance Dates: Wednesday 1st – Monday 27th August (not 14th), 13:45, 15:00, 16:45



Running time: 1 Hour



Location: C venues – C south (Venue 58) Garden

Skeletor' Party Political Broadcast

Commonfest

Moans and PC nonsense, eh?

I am aware that there is something passive-aggressive in my current engagement with politics - I take other articles and moan about them - but that is what critics do. Here's my latest whinge, about an article on Spiked, which is an article about an article...

But amid all this heat, there’s also been a moment of light. It came in a Washington Post piece by Avinash Tharoor, who studied international relations at Westminster, Jihadi John’s alma mater. Tharoor describes a seminar discussion of Immanuel Kant’s democratic peace theory in which something shocking happened. A student in a niqab scoffed at Kant and said: ‘As a Muslim, I don’t believe in democracy.’ Even more shocking was the response. ‘Our instructor seemed astonished but did not question the basis of her argument’, says Tharoor. ‘Why hadn't the instructor challenged her?’, he asks, perplexed, especially considering that her Kant-bashing views, her sniffiness about this top dog of Enlightenment, were not rare but rather were ‘prevalent within the institution’.

The author goes on to weave a complaint that is far too common at the moment: the real enemies of the western tradition are intellectuals and academics who, instead of defending the best in civilisation, are selling a version of post-modernism that rejects all values and replaces it with political correct neutrality. 

Apart from the problem of basing a theory on an anecdote - as with the case of the bloke out of CAGE, one example is being made to stand for the whole - I wonder how many Jihadis and Islamicists took time to study philosophy at University. Jihadi John, for example, studied Business Management. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (emir  of ISIL) did Islamic Studies according to US intelligence. Osama Bin Laden had a crack at Civil Engineering. And the majority of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and I am not sure the western enlightenment is on the syllabus in their high schools.

Of course, the great post-modern philosophers have had their moments of idiocy - Foucault thought the Islamic Revolution in Iran was just peachy. But I don't think that the rise of militant Islam can be blamed on a bunch of wishy-washy liberals in universities who can't be bothered to argue for the great white male every time some undergraduate tries to show off by disrespecting Kant. The terrorists, in some wonderful irony, are either in business studies or other 'useful' lectures.

Why Do I Bother, eh?

Barkin' Mad (Sigh)

It's only one of the completely uninteresting ironies surrounding my consumption of the media that it takes me a very long time to read a newspaper: a copy of The Metro can provide me  with toilet reading and paper for a week, although I sometimes throw them out after I mess up  the easy sudoku. Consequently, I get most of my  political understanding from Nick Cohen. Since I buy his books from Oxfam, I'm only now getting around to having an opinion on the invasion of Iraq. 

I regard Cohen as one of the great political polemicists of this, or any, age. That's because he shares both my instinctive distrust of Conservatism and an outraged disillusion at the failure of the left to provide a moral opposition. There are times when he loses me - usually when he calculates how the left reaches a particular nadir of intellectual bankruptcy by reciting their various opinions. And he frequently uses 'liberal' when he is talking about movements inspired by the SWP. I might pose as an anarchist,  but I don't see the SWP as being part of the same tradition as Gladstone, or Nick Clegg. I suspect he's doing a "Real Scotsman" argument there, to disassociate his instinctive socialism from the opportunist left.

At the heart of my political ignorance is a splendid idiocy. I insist that theatre must be politically and socially engaged, citing The Trojan Women as the prime example of how the stage can comment on immediate events. Then I have barely any idea of what the actual issues are, unless Kieran Hurley, AJ Taudevin or Rob Drummond have written about them. And when they do write about them, I become suspicious if I agree with them, fretting that the artistic community shares common political assumptions and is unlikely to challenge the audience with startling ideas. 

I have been especially petty about a superb sequence in Hurley's Rantin. I ought to acknowledge, as Hurley does, that the piece was a collaboration between four artists, including Taudevin and the wonderful Wounded Knee. But this scene - in which a young checkout girl bemoans both her teacher's lack of faith in her intelligence and the increase in automatic tills in the local supermarket. Sitting on a hill, overlooking her town, the young woman decides to take a golfing iron to the machinery, realising that the machine is taking away her job and that she is part of a bold history of direct action.

This moment - the most explicitly political in Rantin and a rare moment in Hurley's work where the rage equals the compassion - has changed my shopping habits. My father has always refused to use those automatic tills (he even threw his shopping basket on the floor in anger once). Now I aspire to his revolutionary activism. After years of berating him at Sunday lunches for his failure to address systemic inequality, I accept that his tiny actions of resistance are more powerful than my rhetorical bellows about injustice.

Apart from this being a brilliant theatrical moment, it also attacks the consumerist false  consciousness at a point that encourages meaningful action. I was asked a direct moral question - am I going to ignore a tiny change without acknowledging the impact it has on people's livelihoods?

I mention this episode again and again because it is a model for what political theatre means to  me. It doesn't expect me to join a lofty cause, or dwell on a fashionable assumption about the bad guys in the modern world. It connects daily life to the political. And it is very well written, coherent and angry.

As I trawl through the Fringe brochure, I am confronted with a large number of plays that present themselves as political. I'm always enchanted by the possibility that a play can present a resolution  to the mysteries of the world. Having spent a weekend watching Howard Barker's Victory (seriously, it is a long play), I was reminded of theatre's potential to make incisive points about big ideas, marrying the intellectual rigorous with an emotional immediacy. Rather like Nick Cohen's polemics, and the opposite of the news reporting in the Evening Standard that is serving duty in the Vile Bog this week. 

The newspapers - or the BBC website,or Radio 3, or the political magazines I buy when I have to get the bus to a staff meeting at The List offices in Edinburgh - hide their bias behind the moderate tone that symbolises objectivity. Of course, the news uses this bland measure in the way that Live Art uses nakedness - to signify something that it can then avoid. Theatre emotive intensity operates to alert the audience to potential bias, even as it gives concepts a powerful impact.

If Victory has a theme, it is less about the corruption  brought on by power than the corruption necessary to get power in the first place. It reverses the equation: King Charles II, usually the cheery chappy who restores the monarchy and gets saucy with the actresses, is pictured as an East End  Thug. Barker identifies the oppression of women, then reveals their complicity in the oppression. There's killing and raping, all performed with a degree of  emotional detachment. Seduction is, as some feminists suggest, on a continuum with sexual assault. 

Using the Restoration as the context, Barker cracks open the jolly version of history taught in schools, and makes the monarchy a distillation of the state's innate savagery. God, who inspired both the revolutionaries who devised the Commonwealth and the monarchists, comes in for a pasting. But this isn't the predictable  contemporary antagonism towards Christianity. Barker's critique might take in the specific protestant theologies that made Merrie Englande turn into battlin' Britannia, but God becomes a symbol of any creed based on absolute values. And these are revealed are toothless in the face of nature's urgings. 

Somehow, all the brutality avoids nihilism: the heroine's quest to collect her husband's broken corpse gives her a new, tractable husband and a baby. Her daughter learns Latin, despite her mother's attempts to keep her ignorant (although that education is probably going  to cause more trouble). Barker picks up on Brecht's vision of Mother Courage. In spite of the total shit-storm that engulfs humans, they maintain. But while Brecht's vision still has saints and heroes, Barker has survivalists. 

Brecht is easier on the mind. His Marxism allows for a justified death by sacrifice (Mother Courage's daughter does an impromptu drum solo to warn a village of impending invasion, gets shot but dies doing the Right Thing), and hints at a future society of equality. Barker prefers a bleaker vision: sure, there is hope, but its operation is mysterious. 

Barker is quite clearly political, but he avoids any hint of partisanship to either side of the monarchic/republican divide. And unlike the newspapers that I slowly digest, he isn't writing politics shaped by the format or the hidden consensus of western opinion. He might give his characters a dialect that is grounded in the language of East End gangsters ("poetry is dick" being my favourite line), but he respects the values of the historical period. God, for example, is a going concern and motivation. It's another contrast to Brecht, who takes real  liberties in Galileo, trying to convert a renaissance entrepreneur into a scientific saint who battles the tyranny of a church more contemporary than historically accurate in its fundamentalist anti-modernism.

In this ostentatious display of theatrical brilliance, Barker reminds me of why I am so slow to engage with the newspapers: they are driven by the need to be current. Back in the early days of the War on Terror, public opinion flip-flopped between opposition to Blair's plans and support. There was a massive demonstration (Not In My  Name, et c), then a quiet support when Our Boys were Over There. When Blair's chat about Weapons of Mass Destruction was exposed as a pornographic sheen of glamour, support waned. Rationality went out the window, with both sides changing their justifications for their positions more frequently than their shreddies. 

The complexity of Victory, meanwhile, means that different audience members are going to read it in different ways in different contexts. At a quick reckoning, I could see a justification of the Restoration (the republicans are generally undersexed intellectuals who hide their inability to relate to each other behind Big Ideas), a critique of monarchy (the King is an over-sexed thug), a tract that fits nicely within the tradition of misogyny (women are whores and shallow), an analysis of the way men abuse women by reducing their physical bodies to a symbol, a sardonic interlude on the virtue or arrogance of poets, a defence of being a sycophant, a message of hope through procreation. Plus it has the most creative use of swearing outside of a rant by Gordon Brown when he forgets to switch off his microphone. 

Gerard Depardieu doesn't love Pussy

Hey, does anyone remember what happened to the women from Pussy Riot? I seem to remember that they were a big deal during the summer, with Madonna taking her bra off or something in their support. It was around the time that I realised that I might want to add a political dimension to my criticism, since there were protestors outside the Playhouse shouting that Batsheva Dance were implicated in the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians and The Guardian was complaining about Putin's treatment of the riot grrl activists...

I mention it only because I have been reading Jennifer Homan's magisterial Apollo's Angels, a history of ballet that certainly counts as "criticism as art." It has this great chapter about how the Soviets used ballet as a cultural weapon, impressing the capitalist world with the discipline and technique of their ballerinas. Aside from the large number of artists who ended up on the wrong side of Stalin, it is an impressive description of how the state can use art to further its foreign policy, and explains why many socialists interpret art as a subsection of propaganda - Marxist inspired regimes are really good at it.

It seems a bit of a shame that a political act like Pussy Riot's gig in the church can be so quickly relegated from the front-page: by recalling the glory days of Bikini Kill and their re-appropriation of punk rock for feminism, Pussy Riot gave me nostalgia and a sense that art could be a serious threat to totalitarian government.

Luckily, Gerard Depardieu still cares. In the sort of florid announcement that is a reminder why artists might not be the best people to ask about issues, he has reminded the world that "the masses are stupid, and only the individual is beautiful." Apart from a worry that Depardieu is confusing himself for Brad Pitt (he didn't get that role in Cyrano because he was the sexy one), this sound-bite was part of a conversation that revealed how clearly his recent nationality change (he's Russian, now) is nothing to do with the tax, and all about his love for one-party states.

Depardieu and his new BFF Putin share a simple rationalisation for the imprisonment of Pussy Riot. Two years in a labour camp might be tough, but had they done their gig in a mosque in an Islamic state, they would have been executed.

Depardieu's little speech might be a warning that artists ought to stick to what they know. He makes a point that chess master Gary Kasparav is part of the opposition to Putin" "good for chess, but not much else." Maybe I ought to keep off the politics until I have thought about them a bit more: on the condition that Depardieu remembers that, as an actor, his mouth could be full of Shakespeare, Aeschylus or Moliere.

All of which would be a step up from the words that come from his enthusiasm for getting a new nationality. In the meantime, I'm off to find a ballet master who can explain quantum physics to me.

Harry G (full)

Show Name: What We Owe
Artist: Harry Giles
Venue: Arches LIVE 2012
Date: Tue 25 - Wed 26 Sep 2012 | Slots from 6pm-9pm (15 mins) | £5

Description (from Arches website): What We Owe is a highly unqualified debt counselling service. In a one-on-one session, Harry will take you through a discussion of what you owe – not just financially, but emotionally, socially and ecologically. Together, you’ll create a personalised Debt Action Plan which will leave you happier – or, at least with a colour-coded spreadsheet.

In an economy driven by huge financial debts, What We Owe is a tragicomic glance at what we mean by debt, and how we struggle to even begin to deal with it.

How does What We Owe fit in with Arches Live!'s overall aesthetic?

Arches LIVE is such a diverse bunch of stuff that this is a tricky one to answer. Perhaps the main thing is that What We Owe is intent on being totally serious and deadly playful at the same time. That's an aesthetic we're seeing a lot in performance now - something beyond the arch and ironic, something that allows for earnestness by being fun.

Another big thing is that, if the Arches is doing its job properly (which I think it is), then it has to reflect how politicised performance is right now. Especially performance coming from young and emergent artists. There's a lot of anger in the arts at the moment, and that's coming out in the form and content of our work. 

Most of my performance is big-P Political - I tend to chew into a big issue (like "class" or "riots") and then confront it frankly, try and talk about it honestly, try and make it fun for any punter to engage with. That's what What We Owe does with the subject of debt. And it's really nice to see it sitting in a programme of politically-engaged performance.

Lastly, I imagine most of the participants in Arches LIVE are struggling to pay of loans of one kind or another, so it's pretty inevitable that at least one of us makes art out of it.

What keeps you making theatre and how does this piece express that?

Look, really, I keep making theatre because the alternative is death. I don't think there's any other honest answer from most theatre-makers. The rest is just post-hoc justification. When I started making my own theatre, I rapidly realised that nothing else made me feel as satisfied, and that I wasn't better built for any other activity. You make theatre because you have to. If you didn't have to, you'd do something more obviously worthwhile.

I do have post-hoc justifications, though. I'm an angry and a political person, and I think we ought to be having some kind of revolution right now already. I hate how alienated so many people are from politics (and Politics), and how disempowered folk can be, how impossible political action seems  to so many people. So most of what I do in the theatre space is in some way about engaging people with political stuff, and about empowering people to take action. 

My last project, Class Act, ended with the option to make a pledge to participate in class war; before that, in This is not a riot, I was training people to cope with riot situation through teddy bear roleplay. I deal with the anxiety that art is waste of time (even though the choice for me is art or death) by making sure that my artistic work has non-artistic implications, has some effect in the world for those who aren't obsessed with art all the time.

Politics with a big P. I am pretty ignorant about politics... no, that isn't true. I actually distrust all ideology with a cynical distaste. Ideas like "class war" make me concerned that some bastard in a party is sending out ideas without taking responsibility for the consequences... although I know that this is not you! Short questions: can big P politics avoid getting caught up in party politics and/or dogma?

I'll never be involved in party politics. I have no belief in representative democacy, basically. I'm a sort of anarchist, and the hopeless idealism of anarchist politics is probably one reason I've ended up doing it through art. 

As for dogma, well, that depends on your politics: old school leftists thought that a dominant a agreed political platform was necessary for revolution to happen, hence all that factionalism; autonomists and anarchists and allsorts tend to be more interested in pluralities of ideas. Contemporary activism is all abou finding ways to welcome diversity - hence all that infuriating coverage of Occupy's "inability" to have a "single set of demands". It's all about finding ways to do politics differently.

How far do we have to go to enact political change?

Very, very far. It will very rarely be pretty. I liked what you said bout "responsibility", though: activists have to take responsibility for their ideas the same way artists have to take responsibility for their audiences.

In response to your thoughts on the use of theatre, I'd argue that political action is all bluster and bullshit, a bunch of people showing off, whereas a play that takes politics seriously is far more effective at engaging with the issues in a meaningful way, and works towards consciousness raising - a far more important process. 

You sound like The Daily Mail! That's not an attack, but when people say cynical things it's worth reminding them what they sound like. Activism can seem self-inflating the same way art can seem pretentious -- and some art is, and some activism is. But there are a lot of earnest people really trying to make it work, in both.

Of course, at the end of the play, the audience is still responsible for its action, and maybe direct political action is then necessary, but at least art encourages a more positive response than say...

Next week, I'll have a different opinion, no doubt... but here's an example, I think. LGBTQ rights have come about far more because of the various creative responses to oppression than because of the odd demo... the arts can define the culture and thus influences values... it might be less satisfying than jumping up and down and shouting, but watching political theatre can be far more effective... 

Well, there are whole books on the theory of social change, and I'm sure some of them argue that demos are relatively ineffective. But come on: Stonewall, early Pride, Emma Goldman's arrest for distributing contraception, Section 28 protests... you don't think these matter? You don't think they're more than the "odd demo"? Protest is constant, consistent -- there are always people engaged in struggle.

There's this concept in contemporary activism called "diversity of tactics". It means that you need lots of people doing lots of different things to achieve change: plays, protests, riots, books, maybe even parliamentary action. And that, rather than spending time condemning this or that tactic, we recognise that we need to fight on every possible front to get what we're after. It's not about finding some spurious calculus of what particular action will be most effective at any given moment: it's about supporting people to act in the ways that they can when they can, whether activism or acting.

'I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I'm Afraid to Tell You'

As I have probably said far too many times, I don't do comedy, and even have a slight resentment at the way that comedy dominates the Fringe. It's not a reflection on the comedians themselves - although I fear that there is a trend for some unpleasant opinions to be bandied about under the excuse of "it's just a laugh" - but on my own desire to be punished by Serious Ideas whenever I enter a theatre.

Then again, I once reviewed Kunt and the Gang. And loved it.

Jennifer Jajeh's monologue, however, has the sort of title I can get behind: I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I'm Afraid to Tell You. Not that I can even begin to articulate an opinion on the Palestinian question (I struggle to understand the local council question). I just like the controversy it is likely to cause.

The set-up is pretty theatrical too: "It's a tragicomic solo show that weaves together humour, live theatre, multimedia and pop culture references," Jajeh says. "It was inspired by my move to the West Bank town of Ramallah in June 2000 where I watched the Intifada unfold over the next year and a half. When I came back and explained to my friends how we’d sneak out for pints and to underground parties while dodging tear gas canisters and gunfire, they urged me to start writing it down."

Since my knowledge of Palestine comes from the work of David Greig, Jajeh's reasons for the show strike a chord. "My show deals with the intersection of my Palestinian and American identities and what’s happening on the ground in Palestine in a comedic, provocative yet thoughtful way," she continues. "It’s a first person perspective we aren’t seeing in the media or the arts, and I think people are hungry for a fresh, very candid, female take on the issues."

And unlike much of the Fringe, I Heart Hamas is a seasoned production, not a new show that, frankly, could be anything. "For the past 10 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working as an actor, writer and producer in theatre and film on many inspiring projects; however,  touring this show for the past 5 years has truly been the highlight," she recalls. "It's allowed me to engage with live audiences in very immediate and satisfying ways, challenging my perspective and opening up conversations that people have been afraid to embark on publicly."

"The Fringe affords an opportunity to not only get my work out to a European audience who I think will resonate with my sensibilities, but also to gain wider exposure and support for the stories I’m seeking to tell. Plus, I’m a huge fan of Scotch whiskey."

Gryphon Venues at the Point Hotel (#109)
20:35 (21.55)
2-5, 7-11, 14-18, 21-25 August 2012

Inishmore at Midday

I would expect political theatre to be relevant and vibrant at the moment: not only have I heard Marxists claim that fascism can be defined as “politics as theatre”, the encroaching idiocy of the British government – currently under the impression that austerity is the same thing as doing favours for your mates in big business – makes politics, for once, remotely interesting.

And yet both the Lyceum and the Tron have had productions that point at the limitations of theatre when it attempts to deal with real life issue. Admittedly, both The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Minute After Midday are chasing “the Irish Question” and the impact of terrorism on ordinary lives, subjects emotive and massive: their impact, unfortunately, is lessened by the intrusion of theatricality and the stilted conventions of the stage.

Aside from the content, the productions share strong casts and direction that is competent and straight-forward. The Lieutenant may go for the same humour that marks Tarantino’s attitude to violence while Minute is serious to the extent of being self-regarding. There’s also a shared intensity and attention to detail. Whether it is a cat’s supposed enthusiasm for Frosties or the meaning of a young girl’s pink dress, both scripts focus on the importance of the small in the face of horror.

But while The Lieutenant descends into bloody farce, Minute is determined to bring home the emotional turmoil. A survivor, a bereaved relative and a bomber all relive the day when a small town was bombed, moving obviously towards an almost redemptive finale. The irony of civil war is explicit – of course the terrorists end up killing someone they knew and even liked – the faint hope of heroic acts in the face of death is celebrated. The simple set – three actors, three chairs, simple lighting – does nothing to dispel the sense that Moments is a lecture. And so theatre, rather than bringing the political to life, diminishes the genuine experience of a very serious and disturbing event. Like that atrocious moment in Scottish Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet, when documentary footage of an earthquake was used to conjure intensity for the fictional suicide of two fictional characters, there is a point when theatre only trivialises real suffering for a shallow emotional punch.

Over in The Lieutenant, characters are blinded, shot and tortured for comic effect. Martin McDonagh's script – apparently rejected lest it undermine the Irish Peace Process – uses absurd comedy to snipe at the motivation of Republican terrorists. It’s a bitter, shrill comedy: the soldiers are sociopaths, more concerned over the life of a cat than any number of humans, constantly deluding themselves that they cling to a higher goal. This Ireland is populated by serial killers who simply found a cause – the soulful bomber of Minute is exposed as a myth, replaced by characters who could happily appear in sequels to Saw.

Yet the sharp script is undermined by some weak theatricality. Guns sound from speakers. A scene change becomes a false ending. Blood and gore is obviously fake. A corpse cut into pieces is a comedy prop.

A tighter production could have surmounted these problems – as Minute could have remembered it was a play not a Truth and Reconciliation panel – and taken the ideas further. Mistaking satire as straight entertainment is as dangerous as mistaking theatre for a rhetorical exercise. Either way, this political theatre is not the vibrant exposition of crucial ideas.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Although the only politics that I really understand are those that have been made into contemporary dance and  I have a severe distrust of ideology because it tends to lead to dogmatic scripts that make an obvious point, I am heartened by the students who have occupied various university building throughout December. That they held G12, once an accessible theatre, made the protests more poignant, a reminder that drama, as a public event, always has a political subtext.

Since students aren't the only ones facing cuts, I am rather hoping that performance communities take the hint, and demonstrate their feelings about this government's attitude to the arts. While I am ambivalent about the importance of state funding - it comes with a hidden cost and a certain complicity - I don't want to see the money that used to get spent on scenery slipping off to support another bank bail out or pay-rise for MPs.

I believe in performance because it is a rare example of a public meeting that offers the potential for intelligent discussion: unlike football, it is more likely to lead to romance or debate than a fight in the car park. Attacks on funding for the arts are, by extension, an attempt to undermine the possibility of dialogue and new communities.

In any case, I have a fantasy about a Performance Demonstration. Can you imagine the massed ranks of ballet and contemporary dancers, burlesque acts, vaudeville hoofers, directors and pantomime stars, musicians, comedians, conceptualists getting together to fight the power?