The Fiction of Dramaturgy: Glen Neath @ Edfringe 2015

The Fringe
GKV: What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object? 
Glen Neath: For me, the original impetus came from the way people responded to our last show Ring. I was interested in the distinction between what the audience thought was real and what wasn’t, and how we could play with that uncertainty.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production? 
I hope the audience see everything, including other members of the audience who will be inhabiting the collective dream with them.

The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
Glen Neath: The narrative of the piece is very much dictated by how it will be experienced, so for example, we thought about locations that might be interesting sonically; likewise what props would be best when thinking about an unsighted audience? 

It was written with this in mind, and not to necessarily ‘tell a story’. Having said that there is a sort of story, but it follows, we hope, a sort of dream logic, whereby it makes sense whilst it is being experienced and yet is less certain, or more slippery, when it is over. I enjoy that feeling in myself of reaching for something that I do not fully understand - I do not like certainty, which is usually disappointing.

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?
I enjoy things that challenge the form - of how a story is told. So I am more joyful of how a writer might have got me to a certain place and less interested in what is happening to the characters in the story.


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?
I feel the pieces are collaborations more than they are anything else. I see myself as the writer / co-director and David (Rosenberg) as the director / co-writer.

We start by discussing broadly what we want to explore with the piece. I then go away and write around the ideas we have come up with. If there is any research that might be useful I do it at this stage. I check in with David regularly and we discuss the script and what works and what doesn’t work.

This goes on (and on) until we have a finished script, becoming more and more intense as we near the recording dates. David by now is picking on individual words. If David wants to chip in with any text this would be where he does that.

We then record the script, scene by scene, with Max (Ringham) offering advice on what would work best.

A further edit then takes place as we construct the final recording. We edit out lines that don’t work (where we can) and with Fiction, we re-recorded tiny bits that required minimal actors. This though is hard to do and generally we have to make the piece from what we have managed to record - this requires quite a huge amount of pre-emptive guess work - what do we need to do to make sure we have what we need? 

This is also why both pieces have been recorded twice - as a lot is learnt from the initial recordings. A re-write necessitates a full re-record! 

Max composes any music/sound during this and he then polishes the final thing and adds any sound effects we discuss and decide upon (as a triumvirate). 

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
In both Fiction and Ring I think that the audience complete the piece. They feel very open ended to me. Because each audience member is the central character the responses to the pieces are more varied than usual, and are located at both extremes of the spectrum as well as everywhere in between - some people are panic-stricken, others find them relaxing; some are able to fully give up to what is happening, others aren’t. So it feels like there are as many different versions of the show as there are audience members.

Alien Dramaturgy: Fiona Soe Paing @ Edfringe 2015

ALIEN LULLABIES

Out-of-this world live music/cinema hybrid set to take off at Made in Scotland Showcase 2015 during Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Summerhall

“Very, very cool!” Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode)

Cutting edge electronic producer/vocalist Fiona Soe Paing’s unique and immersive show Alien Lullabies combines otherworldly electronica soundscapes and compelling live vocals with 3D animation by New Zealand artist Zennor Alexander to create an unsettling and mesmerising live music/cinema hybrid. The show features tracks from her forthcoming album, and the new single Heartbeat due for release on Hotgem Tunes this Friday 19.6.15 alongside a video premiere on on-line music and culture magazine The 405.

"...you won't fail to be hypnotized by the parallel world created by Paing's haunting electronic arrangements and Alexander's deeply creative design….so fantastically disturbing and unsettling that you can’t help but be enveloped..." Stephen Bevan, The 405

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
This has been a slowly evolving project since about 2007! It started with one song, which needed a video. That song/video needed another.... and another... there wasn't any overall plan... we just followed what the work seemed to need to do naturally... until we had a whole set of songs which when viewed/listened to in one sitting, from beginning to end... seemed to have an underlying, unstated narrative... so we then added a beginning and an ending, and decided to present the whole package in a more theatrical format, and so ta-dah, it became a show.

Why bring your work to the Edinburgh Fringe?
It's been quite hard finding audiences for our work, as it's not the kind of music that you'd find at a regular gig, and neither does it fit iinto film or theatre... and being based in rural Aberdeenshire there's not a big "scene" to tap into... so I decided to apply for the Made in Scotland funding, as it gives a platform to innovative and cross-discipline work, and since Summerhall is known for it's adventurous programming, I think it might find a supportive audience there for the Fringe. I also wanted to challenge myself to see if I could pull it off, and to see if I can up the game a bit... I'm also looking forward to making some new collaborations with other artists and companies in the fringe and meeting some new and inspiring people!

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
It's like watching a surreal animated film with an electro score and a live singer... it really takes you off somewhere else and is quite mesmerising ... some of it's quite unsettling... but some of the music is really danceable too.... The animations combined with the music and live vocals, is something quite different I think


The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
It became clear during the making of the music and visuals that the overall piece needed to be presented and structured into a story-like form, rather than as separate songs or music videos.... the recurring images that we use in the separate pieces imply an underlying narrative, without spelling anything out.... and we shaved off some edges of the puzzle pieces to fit into the overall picture that was fuzzily emerging! So yes, that was really relevant, for the work to make more artisttic sense, rather than being just eye and ear candy.


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?
There are so many traditions and influences it's hard to know where to start.... punk rock maybe? Dance music of all kinds, from ballet to house, electro and techno... experimental theatre and dance, Brecht, Martha Graham, Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, Bjork, David Lynch, Kraftwerk, free jazz, PJ Harvey, Peaches, opera.


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?
Working on my laptop, I play around to see if i can find some sounds that are unusual or that have a sort of character of their own, and usually build something rhythmic around that... usually looking for sounds that suggest a specific atmosphere or feeling... other instruments fit around that and then I improvise some vocals sounds... sometimes I write lyrics to fit the melody, other times just keep the original improv and fine tune it and memorise the "words" so that I can do overdubs or harmonies. When there's a finished song with a structure, I send it to Zennor and he uses whatever images it sparks off to him to create his animations. 

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work? 

They make all of it.... I still don't know what it means yet...   It has to be reflected back to you by the audience before you can start to see it clearly. 

Fiona will perform Alien Lullabies for ten dates at Summerhall for the Made in Scotland 2015 showcase during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“I’m delighted my work has been selected for Made in Scotland - its a great opportunity to perform alongside world-class artists on an international platform.” Fiona Soe Paing

Made in Scotland Showcase performance details

Dates: Wed 12-Sun 16 / Wed 19-Sun 23 August

Time: 10.35pm

Venue: Red Lecture Theatre, Summerhall, Edinburgh EH9 1PL (Fringe Venue 26)

Tickets: From Summerhall www.summerhall.co.uk or the Fringe Box Office 0131 226 0000


Of Scottish/Burmese origin, and living in rural Aberdeenshire, electronic producer/vocalist Fiona Soe Paing has been crafting her sound since 2005, and since 2007, has been collaborating on visuals for her live shows with New Zealand animation artist Zennor Alexander.

Her first home produced demo which she sang using random words from a Burmese tourist phrasebook, was found on Myspace by the legendary BBC world music DJ, the late Charlie Gillett, who included it on the album "Sound of The World 2007" on Warner Music, one of his annual compilations of the best in world music.

Her EP release in 2012 ‘Tower of Babel’ was widely praised in the media, receiving a Four Stars rating in The Skinny.

Fiona recently worked with Brit Award winner Beth Orton at a collaborative residency for Brighter Sound Manchester, and performed at the Wide Days music convention at the Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh.

Review - Alien Lullabies review

Post Visual Criticulous

Mr Criticulous is back.

The dramaturgy of the post-visual is a wilful act of vandalism. It rejects the boundaries of space and time, and privileges the atemporal existence of 'the performance' in a digital drive. It dispenses with the need for actors - a prerecording will do fine - the necessity of a director and the public venue. The post-visual happens in the mind, although it is ready to command a theatrical space.

Since the collision is at the centre of the post-visual aesthetic, it is appropriate that its very name comes from an unfortunate juxtaposition. The post-dramatic, being mainly a form for academic appreciation and boring audiences in the name of intelligence, has been whipped by the culture of the DJ, of the sound artist. Visual theatre, which repeatedly failed the most basic tests of meaningful definition, is consigned to the dustbin of performance studies.

Post-visual theatre begins with a text. Not a script - who really has time to read Uncle Vanya? The text is stolen, of course... a series of recordings by amateurs, bad acting and all, downloaded and fed into a programme. Then cut and pasted and drowned in sound. 

Post-visual theatre begins with Auslander. Like most academics, his knowledge of Marxist theory trumps his aesthetic taste (anyone who can talk about Eric Clapton as a signifier of the real (without noting that he is one of the most musicians who destroyed their 1960s' reputation (by making dad rock into his dotage)) needs to update their i-pod). He points out that the idea of liveness in art is a fiction, and that live performances often hark back to a (recorded) perfection... he knows that rock might talk of authenticity but this is all facade... he realises that the dominant cultural form (he wrote this when it was TV, just before the internet took over (making his book instantly out-of-date (although his Clapton chapter helped to do that))) dictates the form of the defeated cultural forms (in his era, that was theatre, which was going through another period of trying to dig the Gesamtkunstwerk by having loads of video projections).

Post-visual begins with the magic of the DJ, who hacks up and recombines sound and thereby has a visceral impact on the audience. 

Post-visual theatre is the application of William Burroughs' cut-up technique to performance (and about time too (Burroughs adopted it in response to the timidity of literature (which was looking antique next to visual art (which had already taken on board the ideas of bricolage) and claimed that it could predict the future)).

Uncle Vanya Act One (in Dub) by Gareth K Vile on Mixcloud