REaD about Dramaturgy: Allie Butler from Tidy Carnage

What was the inspiration for this performance?

REaD started with a conversation between myself and some of my collaborators when we noticed that we happened to all have red hair of one shade or another. We talked a lot about the experience of being a woman with red hair and whether some of the significant moments that have shaped their lives have been connected to being a redhead. 

There were quite notable correlations within the experiences they described to me – moments of being marked out as different, being mocked or bullied; early sexual experiences and how these were often connected to a discourse of the red haired woman and what we see that as culturally. 

I thought a lot about these anecdotes and began researching the cultural resonances of how red hair has been viewed and discussed historically and in the present day. I discovered that some of earliest references of the red haired female are very powerful – Adam’s first wife Lilith is described as having red hair for example. 

Redheads were commonly considered to be witches and vampires in Medieval Europe and yet not long after, Elizabeth I, given the choice of any kind of elaborate hair creation, decided to sport an enormous red wig. Red hair was a symbol of the power of her difference and otherness. 

There are endless examples of the redhead being a force of erotic fantasy – the paintings of Boticelli, Titian and then the famous pre-Raphelite artists show this time and again.  

I could go on about all the hundreds of cultural reference points I discovered, but suffice to say, it was clear to me that we consider redheads as dangerous, mysterious, vampiric, erotic: there is something odd and fascinating about our cultural response to the simple trait of having an unusual hair colour. 

The many stories my team told me, especially of growing up and being consistently mocked and bullied, or considered a sexual trophy, denoted both a celebration of difference but also a darker prejudice that I wanted to explore. 

REaD began life focussed on these personal anecdotes the performers told me and we created a short scratch performance for Arches Live in 2014. This was very bound in the self-referential and using our Scottish heritage as a starting point for much of the music and movement we explored in that piece. 

When we came to develop the show for Mayfesto at the Tron last year I realised that there was another journey I wanted to take with REaD – and that’s how we developed the idea of setting the show in a dystopian world where redheads have been forced underground, stigmatised and victimised by prejudice against their genetic fortunes. 

Our inspirations now range from the cabaret scene of 1930s Berlin to the poetry of Emily Dickinson and to RuPaul’s Drag Race…Setting the show in an alternative version of reality has meant that we can pick and choose where we find inspiration and are bound not by time and place, but by the hugely broad and divergent myths and legends of red hair.  


How did you go about gathering the team for it?
Obviously the main requirement is that the performers have red hair! I wanted them all to be natural redheads (a claim that sadly I cannot make for myself…). I also knew I wanted this to be an all-female team because of the powerful stories they had shared with me – I knew these were specifically female experiences and I wanted to tell the story through that lens. 

It was important that the performers were happy to sing, dance and possibly play instruments as the story is set within a cabaret – so that has informed the choice of the final team. 

I also knew that I wanted to use a poetic voice for the show so I

approached Kevin P. Gilday whose spoken word work I had seen and admired hugely. Kev wrote a series of beautiful and captivating poems for the show that form the backbone of the narrative – these were in response to the discussions and development we did in the early stages and they are one of the only elements of REaD that has remained in place throughout extensive revisions and development. 

We are working with Alice Wilson as our set and costume designer, whose quirky and creative designs I had come across and who absolutely gets the ambitious and unique version of reality we are trying to create. 


How did you become interested in making performance?
When I was wee I always insisted on making my cousins and sister be in ‘plays’ that I would ‘direct’ – we would perform them in the sitting room for our parents and I have very clear memories of storming upstairs in floods of tears because one of the songs had gone wrong, or a parent had laughed at an inappropriate point. 

So, I suppose it was deep in my bones for whatever reason and when I started directing plays at school aged 15 I absolutely knew that was what I needed to do with my life. 

I didn’t go to drama school but did a huge amount of directing at university (mainly instead of writing the essays I was supposed to be doing) and then when I left spent years getting experience in different theatres and directing new writing while I still lived in London. 

It was really when I moved back to Scotland in 2011 that I started ‘making performance’ in a less traditional way. I knew that I was interested in devising and physical work and through the support of the Arches I created some work for Arches Live and felt like there was a space I could experiment and create new work that I was really passionate about. 

Since then I’ve continued to create collaboratively devised performance which focuses on the fusion between new text and movement and music. In 2013 I founded my company tidy carnage and it’s through that collective that I make the work I’m really most passionate about.  

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Yes – REaD feels to me a typical example of the way I create work. I start with an idea, often stimulated by some text (in this case Kev’s poems) and that becomes the heart of the project. I then devise around this – I work out a physical language that I want to use in the piece and work collaboratively with performers to improvise scenes and sequences. 

We try a lot and throw a lot away – no idea is too bonkers, as long as nobody is too precious about things not making the final cut. 

We have spent a lot of time storyboarding on REaD – it’s quite a complicated show, largely since we’ve set it in an entirely fictional version of reality, so we needed to be 100% clear on what the boundaries of that are. Sometimes when absolutely anything is a possibility, it can be harder to make yourself decide on a set of rules and establish a clear tone for a show. 

What is perhaps slightly newer ground on REaD is that the brilliant Sarah McCardie is musical directing our various musical numbers, and we have live singing and ukelele playing which isn’t something I’ve done much of previously. 

As we’ve developed the show it has tipped more towards becoming a cabaret which is fantastic and exciting, and definitely a territory I am delighted to be exploring. 


What do you hope that the audience will experience?
As I said above, REaD is set in a dystopian world in which redheads have been ghettoised – our story looks at a cabaret club called the Scarlet Church where redheads eke out a living performing for red-sympathisers and voyeurs. 

Obviously that’s quite a significant leap to ask our audience to believe all that from the get-go, so for me that’s one of the biggest factors. I just really hope our audience will let us take them by the hand and go with us into our topsy-turvy, strange and beautiful redhead world. 

The show is lots of fun with musical numbers, a mini game-show for the audience, performance poetry and even some voguing… I just really want audiences to jump in and enjoy the world we’ve created. 

There also is a darker side to the story, which I don’t want to give away too much, but we are exploring very current ideas of displacement, belonging and sovereignty. 


What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
I’m not sure we have strategised as such – I think that the only thing you can do is be as clear as possible about what you want to make, then make it to the best of your ability. I don’t feel that you can dictate what an audience are going to feel about your work, and actually I love that REaD has already commanded some really diverse opinions and reactions. 

After the development last year, I had one person who described the show to me as a ‘feminist masterpiece’, which was obviously incredibly flattering. I then had another who asked me ‘why on earth did you do that revolting thing at the end?!’ I won’t give away what the ‘revolting thing’ is…. 

But to try and answer your actual question: it’s really important to me that we remember how much fun we’ve had creating REaD and allow it to be a joyful and fun experience for the audience. The narrative does have a darker and more political side though and we’re interested in exploring that story of oppression and hope that’s something that will be engaging for an audience. 


Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Honestly, no. Again, because I didn’t train in an ‘official’ way and I arrived in Scotland not already part of a particular group or clique I feel like I don’t really identify with a singular tradition. 

I also have two ‘hats’ – I direct new writing, work with writers and direct for venues like Oran Mor, but then my work with tidy carnage is much closer to contemporary performance and innovative devised work. I suppose, the essence of my work really lies somewhere in the middle of those two. 

The companies I most admire are ones like Vanishing Point, Vox Motus, Gecko and Frantic Assembly, and I suppose I aim to one day make work comparable to their quality and unique sense of theatricality. 

Ali Bawbag and the Four Dramaturgies: Gary McNair talks panto

Christmas Panto
Ali Bawbag and the Four Tealeafs
Mon, 30 November, 2015 — Wed, 23 December, 2015
By Dave Anderson and Gary McNair

Featuring Dave Anderson, George Drennan, Frances Thorburn and Anita Vettesse

Ali is a very poor man, with a brother who is wealthy. He also has a wife who looks, let’s face it, like a man. One day, Ali is in the woods – don’t ask – when he sees a (budget) band of robbers. 

The leader says a magic password and a boulder rolls away from a rock face. Ali discovers, after they’ve gone, a cave full of riches, and his life is never the same again. A strange tale unfolds, involving Ali’s greedy brother, his aspirational wife, the band of robbers, and more besides.

Drennan and trumpet

Òran Mór’s annual Christmas Panto for grown-up children has become a not to miss Festive Season comedy treat. Join us this December for Dave Anderson and Gary McNair’s irreverent take on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Boo, cheer and sing-along, Oh, yes you will!


How did you get involved in this PPP panto business?
Gary McNair: I’ve got a good relationship with the guys at PPP. I had my very first commission their with Crunch and I’ve gone on to write and direct several other pieces for them. I’m also a part of the group the DM collective, founded by David MacLennan,  we create political satire shows there every year or so. 

It was through this that I first got to work with the wonderful Dave Anderson, we’ve really got a lot out of working together on those shows and from there, he invited me in to collaborate with him on the writing process for the summer Panto which was a real honour and a great laugh so, thankfully, he’s asked me back along.  


Will you be performing in it? After all you’re known as a monologist who performs his own scripts.
Oh no I won’t! 

I know that I’m perhaps more known to people as someone who performs my own scripts, but I tend to only do that once a year and so I save performing for the projects that I feel are right for me to do or the stories that I feel that only I could tell. But for the rest of the year, I create shows for other people to perform, which I enjoy just as much as performing. I really love the art of writing. 

I love getting to craft a story and watching other people bring it to life. Also, I can’t sing for toffee so I wouldn’t unleash that agony on a paying public. 

Were you a panto fan growing up?
Not massively. But that’s only because I never really went to any. Our school didn’t do any panto trips as far as I remember so it never really got into my blood in the way that it has for other people. It was only in later years, and, actually it was through watching the panto’s at Oran Mor, that I realised that it’s such a brilliant medium for satire and social commentary which is right up my street. 

Show seems more aimed at adults is that a statement about panto’s potential as a more mature entertainment?
I guess it is a little more adult, yes. But not in a Jim Davidson way. Far from it. I think that, yes, panto has the potential to be mature entertainment, but I think that’s always the case. When you go and see the best ones like Johnny McKnight’s or Brian James’, for example, they’re working on multiple levels; the kids love it because it works for them but the adults are hooked in as well on big laughs that are perhaps going over the kids heads, kind of like the Simpsons in that manner.

Panto’s always have so many themes relevant to everyone; hardship suffered by the poor, greed versus good, the toppling of evil empires, I think if the show was particularly mature in anyway, I guess it would be that with the knowledge that it is a venue that has a more mature audience as well, we’re freed up a little more to push these themes more to the direct political reference to what’s going on the world and so we’re able ramp up the satire a little. It’s also very very silly. 

That’s the joy of writing it with Dave, his comic timing is exceptional and he has real integrity in his work too because he cares a great deal about the world. And it helps that we can have a bloody good swear into the bargain. 

Is the show set in Glasgow? Will there be familiar characters to those of us that hang around the west end?
It’s set in panto land, of course. But it is peculiar how similar panto land can be to Glasgow at times.

Gary in his previous Xmas show...

Shit-faced Dramaturgy: Rev Lewis Ironside @ Edinburgh's Christmas

Shit-faced Shakespeare ®

Shit-faced Shakespeare is the deeply highbrow fusion of an entirely serious Shakespeare play with an entirely shit-faced cast member.

Side-splitting, raucous and completely interactive, the show has been running since 2010 and has already entertained over 30,000 eager theatre goers across the UK. Having successfully completed multiple sell-out runs of the Edinburgh and Brighton Fringe festivals.

With a genuinely drunken professional actor selected at random every night, no two shows are ever the same and audiences can even dictate when the actor gets to drink more to prevent unwanted sobriety.

Shit-Faced Shakespeare seeks to introduce a new generation of theatre-goers to the works of the Bard by reviving the raucous, interactive and vibrant nature of Elizabethan theatre with a very modern twist - reminding them as we go to always enjoy Shakespeare responsibly.


Where did the inspiration for SFS begin? 

Rev Lewis Ironside: I graduated from East 15 Acting School in 2003 and rather than go into acting, as I'd trained to do, I immediately started a theatre company with a former class mate, Cpt. Chris Snelson. We did what all new theatre companies do and got suitably drunk in order to develop our first 'smash hit' show. 

The following morning we had a single A4 sheet of semi-coherent show titles and ideas, one of which was 'Shit-faced Shakespeare'. We immediately realised this was a bloody stupid concept, scrapped it forever and proceeded to work on a series of varyingly successful productions for several years. 

Flash forward to 2010 and we found ourselves running a 160 capacity theatre tent at the Secret Garden Party music festival. Our job was to curate about 35+ hours of theatre over 4 days and we wanted a headliner for Friday and Saturday night’s running under our own company name. Shit-faced Shakespeare came back to mind and we decided to finally give it a go. The first show was 15 minutes long and resulted in our actress being driven across site in an ambulance and spending the night under medical supervision. The next day she was released back to us only slightly the worse for ware and word had spread around the festival that we'd killed a person on stage.

We were keen to scrap the concept there and then but the cast themselves (including our previous night's 'victim') begged for another chance to perform the show. The second show ran the full hour and was brilliant... the only slight problem was the near 350+ people who turned up to see a person possibly die. On that occasion the fire brigade turned up as we were way over our max capacity for safety regulations.

We now perform across the UK and USA throughout the year. Things have changed a lot since the early days but the core of the show remains broadly the same. A one hour Shakespeare play, one single drunken cast member and everyone else sober, sharp and trying to improvise their way out of the problems on stage.

If you're looking for the actual inspiration for what it's became then I suppose I'd trace it to the Edinburgh fringe festival 2007 and a production of Bouncy Castle Shakespeare I saw there. It was simply most of Macbeth performed on a bouncy castle. I went to see it in the first week of that year's fringe and it was life changingly brilliant, car-crash theatre. The cast had clearly never rehearsed with an actual bouncy castle, they had full wooden chairs and tables on the thing, they attempted sword fights with actual stage swords, goblets contained actual liquid and all of them were plainly not in the kind of physical shape that bouncing actively for nearly 2 hours requires.

The performance was a beautiful disaster and overran by at least 30 minutes. I raved about this to pretty much everyone who would let me in Edinburgh that year and was hugely disappointed when I went back in the last week to discover they had 'fixed' all the problems. The show ran to time, the costumes were reduced and much lighter than before, the furniture was all either inflatable or plastic, the cast were much fitter and able to breath easily throughout and the sword fights were performed with inflatable weapons.

Rather than enjoy the impossible chaos they had inadvertently

created, they had 'solved' all the problems instead. I think that's when I realised properly what Shit-faced Shakespeare could be and should always strive to be. I love watching actors sweat and struggle and there's much more pleasure for me in seeing somebody attempt the impossible than achieve the achievable. In highfalutin terms we call this style ‘theatre of the confounded’ within the company where nobody can overhear us be serious. Another great Shakespeare show I've since seen, that seems to work along the same principal, would be King Lear with Sheep.


How do you approach picking the texts to use?
There are actually a lot of limitations on the scripts that we can begin to work with. Generally I'm looking for comedies with 2, or fewer, geographical locations, a small-ish group of core characters, an even balance of genders and some genuinely funny (or unique) set pieces within them. Lastly we're looking for plays which would suit the Shit-faced treatment by having something meaty and controversial at the core for modern actors to discuss, rail against or disagree with during the play, i.e. outdated gender politics, classicism or anti-Semitism.

Shit-faced Shakespeare is a short, fringe length, show with just under an hour for the actual play to fit within. We use a small cast of actors (5 to 6) and we generally try to strike a balance of about 1/2 female and male performers. We're also looking for plays where it would be funny for at least 4 of the characters to appear drunk and still keep the play rolling. A very simple core plot for the audience to follow is also required as the complex stuff tends to suffer when a drunk is added to the mix. It's all quite restrictive actually.

We began with A Midsummer Night's Dream and that's a really simple 5 hander with the lovers sections taken in isolation while Puck occasionally interjects - with his lines an amalgam of Puck's and Oberon's - to keep the action going. We've also got an audience interaction section where our Bottom is picked from the audience (so to speak). We always look for fun ways to integrate the audience in every show and our willing participants have been strumpets (Much Ado), dogs (Two Gentlemen of Verona) and suitors (Merchant of Venice).

Some plays have taken a lot more rewriting than others with characters subject to gender flipping, being smooshed together and even new sections being written for them altogether. Ideally the audience should never really be able to tell when we've done this as the 'core' of each play's story remains the same. 

A great example of this is our current production of Merchant of Venice. Here we're written three of the female characters and one of the male parts into one single role, changed the key relationship between 2 of the main characters and even written some new dialogue for Shylock himself. All of this is justified to us, as it helps to tell the actual core story of the play which I believe is the love story between Portia and Bassanio. 
We've tried to leave that core story utterly untouched and audiences seem to be either happy with the changes or unaware of them.

Chiefly though we're looking for great stories with lots of fun action on stage. Shakespeare consistently provides this and we've got a long list of plays we're still waiting to give the Shit-faced treatment to.


And the rehearsal process: is it directed with an all sober cast?
Completely sober. We rehearse long and hard and the weird thing is we're always incredibly proud of the style and content of the sober production that lurks underneath the show. That's all part of the game really. If an inebriated actor is deeply frustrated that their favourite scene always gets cut or they have a favourite monologue that is always being trampled on then their drunk shows give them a chance to actually attempt those bits. They never manage of course but it's fun to watch committed thesps try to get the play out sometimes.

We also know that every night the play has to stand on its own merits with our audiences for long stretches. In some productions the drunk will often not be on stage for around 1/3 of the time. Accordingly we need to make sure that the rest of the show entertains our audience sufficiently and they are often a wee tad rowdy and lubricated themselves.

We do try and do some improv work during rehearsals to get new cast members used to improvising in Shakespearian dialogue and working their way back into the play. All of that is secondary to rehearsing the actual straight play however. If the actor has been drilled correctly into the character they will often just improvise screeds of dialogue drunkenly as the character actually would. We love that as a style.

Naturally we all like a social drink and a good bit of that happens after each rehearsal ends.

What plays have responded best to the treatment?
My personal favourites are Much Ado About Nothing (currently running in Boston) and Merchant of Venice which will be running in London over Christmas. Our audience’s favourite might be A Midsummer Night’s Dream however and its our original and the best known of the 6 shows we currently perform. Midsummer's really has it all with huge drama, randy faeries and the 'love potion' theme running throughout which works wonderfully with the drunken element thrown on-top. 

The idea of the love potion making the male characters behave abhorrently is such a brilliant juxtaposition to the alcohol they may also have drunk. It's a great combo. Midsummer's will be running in Edinburgh over December and in London's west end from April.

We're actively plotting the next play and believe we've got a couple of really good options for 2016 and beyond.

How chaotic have the performances become?
In the 6 years we've been performing there is not a lot that hasn't

happened. We've had partial nudity, full frontal nudity, audience nudity, audience fondling, attempted dancing, bad singing, £280 worth of Dominos pizza drunkenly ordered unbeknownst to us during the show, outings of all kinds (relationship, sexuality, medical, profoundly personal etc.), simulated acts of a sexual nature, actual acts of a slightly sexual nature, group acts of a very sexual nature simulated by the entire front row against their will, acrobatics, matchmaking, feminist diatribes, philosophical treatise, pokemon battles, rap battles, selfies, self help advice sessions, self flagellation, power drill usage, fire extinguisher discharge, parental phone calls, competitive sausage roll eating, racial protests and a sword fight conducted with an audience members prosthetic arm... occasionally some actual Shakespeare occurs.

All that said, we have a compère for the shows and they generally keep a lid on any behaviour which is considered too wild or anything dangerous. It's a bit like a clown and a ring master, you want to almost let the drunk away with the naughty thing but stop them just after they start.

We've not had an injury, complaint or regrettable incident with any member of the cast or audience since we began performing the show professionally 4 years ago.

Do you have plans for any other steaming adaptations of other writers?
Yes. In this year we launched our brand new show Shit-faced Showtime which is our musical theatre take on the Shit-faced idea. They were lucky enough to play to sell out audiences in Edinburgh this August and are now working on their new show for 2016 which will be an adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance. It would be fair to say then that the 2nd author(s) we're tackling are Gilbert and Sullivan.

For the other show we'll probably stick to Shakespeare for now. I'm personally a huge fan of other period writers from Johnson to Behn to Sheridan, but Shakespeare is such a cultural touchstone that he's perfect for our cause. There's a lot of casual "Bardolatry" - with apologies to Shaw - in British culture and Shakespeare has probably suffered for this, on balance. Most of the audiences at Shakespearian comedies are drawn from a pretty narrow social band and seem to be there to 'appreciate' the work rather than actually ‘enjoy’ it. 

To me Shakespeare was common entertainment and if aspects of that have been lost to history then we owe it to the author to try and re-claim some of the humour that audiences would have genuinely been able to extract from the original productions. I'm not suggesting that our shows adhere to Shakespeare's intended brand of humour necessarily but if people actually enjoy our work then they might be tempted to seek out the originals if they're new to them.

If there's another author as well known, as misrepresented and as culturally lionised as Shakespeare then we'd gladly give them the treatment... Ben Elton maybe?

Is improvisation part of your process, either in making or in performance?
It's the main element of the performance.

We don't think people would stay to watch a drunk on stage for more than about 10 minutes by themselves. Our audiences come to see a drunk but we hope that they stay to watch the team of very skilled, very funny improvisers try to create a coherent Shakespeare play around whatever chaos our drinker it adding to the world. 
We work pretty hard behind the scenes on that aspect of the show and it's what we're most proud of. 

I reckon about 70% of the laughs we get in our very best shows are generated by the sober cast and not the drinking member.

We do try to insert some improv work into rehearsals but it's pretty impossible to replicate the same conditions of a real drunk full of alcohol and adrenaline mucking about with a live audience. We record and review all the shows with the full cast to watch, discuss and learn from previous shows. Comedy is a serious business and we work pretty hard at it... when we’re not drinking.

Does 'dramaturgy' mean anything to you? If so - what?
Wow, that's a hell of a question. Yes I'd say. To me it's probably got both the historical definition of writer-director and the modern, looser, definition of general theatre maker / lead deviser.

My roles within Shit-faced are pretty wide ranging as I (re)write the scripts, direct, produce, design, act, drink, choreograph the fights, plot the lighting, build the set, curate the website, edit the audio, compère, design the posters, tweet the tweets and pretty much everything else in-between (my producers will readily describe my megalomania to anyone who cares to listen). I wouldn't call myself a dramaturg though. I'd usually just list myself as the director of the show and the chairchap of the company in any published stuff and privately I'd think of my own job as being a theatre maker.

I did train as an actor (3 yr BA thankee kindly) but pretty much figured out that I was on the wrong course half way through my second year. East 15 had just started a Contemporary Theatre BA when I joined and that course always seemed to chime better with my sensibilities as it was primarily led from a perspective of creating theatre in its entirety. I suppose they were making a generation of what I would think of as modern dramaturges.

I've seen the term creep up more and more with other companies and recently heard of a friend's company, who specialise in devised works (Familia De La Noche), getting a specialist dramaturge in to help them complete a project. Perhaps the definition would be devising-director in that instance. I've also become aware of low level 'star name' dramaturg's working in the fringe scene. I've probably seen around half a dozen posters this year, usually for one-handers, where the performer is billed alongside the dramaturg.

Historically I think it's interesting and especially with the classical

bleeding of responsibilities between actors, writers and the role we now think of as director. I heard somewhere, years ago, about the idea of the ‘first actor’ in Elizabethan theatre and the concept really stuck with me. I've since tried to find any actual historical evidence on the damn thing but it's pretty much non-existent so it may have been misremembered by myself or even totally made up!

The concept of a 'first actor' as described to me is pretty plausible though and it runs that basically a writer such as Shakespeare would also have taken the role of ad-hoc director for many of his works. There's good circumstantial evidence for this with other writers of his era, Johnson in particular looks to have had much more of a personal hand in the way his plays were performed especially the child company stuff. 

There's a great bit at the start of one of Johnson’s plays where the stage-keeper and the prompt/author have an argument which shares a lot about the manner the actors may have been sort-of directed (Bartholmew Fayre I think?). 
Shakespeare himself hints at it with the 'direction' given to the mechanicals by Quince in Midsummers. Marlow and Nashe appear to have inhabited one end of the spectrum as pure writers, uninterested in performance and direction but Shakespeare and Johnson could possibly be said to inhabit the role of a prototype dramaturg... then again maybe I'm pushing it there.


I've just always liked the idea of there not being a single director per-se but a lead voice / first actor to cut past the arguments. Certainly if there were formalised actors-managers and actor-writers who themselves would take lead parts in their own plays (Shakespeare as Prospero etc.) then why not assume that these lead company members were 'directing' the junior players in how the part should be spoken as well... Seems both likely and natural.

I think the concept of the modern dramaturg (again, only as I understand it) is probably a double edged sword. I would not describe myself as a professional actor or writer and only just barely as a professional director. 

To have a self proclaimed specialist in writing, devising and directing rolled into one both weakens the crucial specialism in each field and cuts the budget for fringe theatre down by up to 2 people. I'd be really interested to see if it becomes the next fad for drama schools looking to offer novel MAs and BAs in the coming years.

Swallowing Dramaturgy: Stef Smith @ Edfringe 2015

WORLD PREMIERE
TRAVERSE THEATRE COMPANY

“Who said smashing things up was a bad thing?”

Three strangers are about to face their demons head on.

Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another if they can only overcome their urge to self-destruct.

Painful yet playful, poignant but uplifting, this world premiere takes a long hard look at the extremes of everyday life. Questions of identity, heartbreak and hope are explored with vivid, poetic intensity.

Swallow is a powerful and invigorating new play from Olivier Award-winner Stef Smith whose impressive record includes her text for Roadkill (Traverse Festival, 2010 and 2011).

Directed by Traverse Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin, acclaimed for previous Festival hits Spoiling and Ciara, Swallow features original music by rising star, singer/songwriter LAWholt, who has collaborated most recently with Mercury Prize-winning hip-hop trio Young Fathers.

The Fringe
What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
Stef Smith: The script is inspired by many things - predominately my interest in themes of self destruction, self creation and how so often those two things are interlinked. I wanted to explore how we deal with the anger and frustrations that come with these moments in our lives and how we so often we lack the healthy tools to channel and express these feelings.

I wanted to write characters who feel furious at the modern world, because it's a sensation I often feel myself - for all sorts of diverse and complex reasons. I wanted to write characters who despite their fury (or maybe because of it) also dance, laugh, have sex and are entirely present. We live chaotic messy complicated lives and I wanted to explore what that means for these three characters in three very particular situations. 

What does the musical collaboration bring to the production?
Collaboration is an important part of my work and my process. I listened to LAW’s work a lot while redrafting the play last summer and there is something about the texture of her work that felt like it fit the play - which is why we approached her as a collaborator. 

We are currently in week three of rehearsal and Danny Krass (our sound designer) continues to have conversations with Orla O'loughlin (the director) about where sound might work within the piece. The collaboration is in constant evolution and it’s really wonderful looking at how music as a texture and as a medium can help tell the story of the play.

What keeps you in theatre making rather than any other medium - and how does it fit with the questions that you are asking about anger and identity in Swallow?
The real joy of theatre is the fact it is live - it lives in the audience, in the performers, in the space and relationship between those two things. There is a raw quality to Swallow which I think lends itself to the ‘liveness’ of theatre. When you get to watch characters change, evolve and struggle right in front of your eyes - I think that’s really special. That is not say you cannot achieve this in other mediums but there is something as an audience member about experiencing and reading a body and voice in the same space that feels so entirely exciting and authentic. 

The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
Dramatugy is very relevant to my work. The director of Swallow, Orla has worked closely with me on the piece. She has given feedback and notes about the script in the months prior to rehearsal. Even in rehearsal the script continues to adapt and evolve. Dramaturgy also extends to the cast and rest of the creative team on Swallow, particularly on this play it’s about ensuring a creative clarity. That we are all moving towards a cohesive vision of what we all want Swallow to achieve, the story we want the piece to tell. 


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 am naturally influenced by other playwrights particularly those who are interested in the middle of the venn diagram of form, character and content, for example the work of Caryl Churchill, Debbie Tucker Green and Sarah Kane. Outside of playwriting - I am inspired by lots of things and it depends on the project as to what is feeding me. Documentaries and nonfiction books often give me a starting a point to a play. 

I listen to music while I redraft plays and often have particular playlists for particular plays so music is a great influence too. I would also say travelling deeply influences my work, not necessarily explicitly but I think travelling allows me to be very present and often brings to the front of my mind the things I wish to write about. 

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?
It's important to me that my progress can bend and shift to suit a project. Generally speaking I write first drafts very quickly but that is after fostering an idea for a long time. I don't tend to plan the first draft too much, I pour it into a page, see what is there and then go back with my 'craft' or technical eyes. 

From there I begin to redraft or sometimes entirely rewrite from what is there. I really love workshopping my work. Smart and thoughtful actors can be the best dramaturges of all. I also like to start conversations with the director as early as possible. From then it just depends on the time frame but I generally like to hear the play aloud as many times as possible before entering a rehearsal progress. I might also send it to one or two trusted people to read so I am able to have a conversation about the piece. 

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work? 
The audience is utterly vital to my work, without them what I do wouldn't be what I do. I should say I'm not particularly interested in giving them an easy time. I like audiences to work a little, to be active in my plays - not just spectate and let it wash over them. I would hope that that they feel challenged - in an exciting way. 

A Dead Horse (#Cassetteboy)

Just to prove how far ahead I am, here's an article I did for The List last year about this week's trending magicians...

And I owned The Parker Tapes long before anyone else. 

The plunderphonic approach to composition – the process of making tracks purely from edited samples – questions the authority of copyright, reconstructs familiar sounds to reveal hidden meanings, and shares an aesthetic with the anarchist appropriation of logos as a form of protest against capitalism.

From Cassetteboy’s first release, The Parker Tapes, this serious tradition was subverted by crude mockery of UK TV celebrities, toilet humour and snatches of absurdist comedy. Latterly, they have become minor YouTube stars, hacking up political speeches – or Sir Alan Sugar’s pompous lectures from The Apprentice – into darkly satirical mash-ups.

The duo remain anonymous, possibly for legal reasons. ‘We don’t use our real names or show our faces. We’ll appear in public but you won’t know who we are, or even if it is really us. We’ve done gigs with other people in the masks.’ And although their mixture of sardonic humour, anarchic fun and bouts of skilled mixology ought to be ideal for the Fringe, they have taken their time. ‘We have wanted to do it for years, but until recently we felt we didn’t have a show that would work,’ they say. ‘But in the last year or so we have developed a disco show: we play pop hits and mash them up with clips off the TV.’

The show includes old ally DJ Rubbish – a UK rapper who enjoys a healthy rant – and Cassetteboy promise ‘something you can laugh and dance and drink at – all at the same time’. Having already pilloried Jamie Oliver, Jeremy Clarkson and ‘taking on the ultimate challenge, making The Crazy Frog worse’, they are ready to go beyond their bursts of two minute mash-up genius to invent the performance art disco comedy show.

Longer version of List Review

Lysistrata++===

Greek comedy becomes a tragedy

This was originally published in The List: because of length- and the tone of the paragraphs - we edited out the bits in courier font. I wanted to publish the complete version here (because The List was totally right to edit it down), because it provides a general point about my attitudes towards female nudity (or male, for that matter) on stage.

The script, freely adapted from Aristophanes' fifth century comedy about women going on sex strike to stop a war, has massive ambitions. Sometimes using passages from the source - including an argument between old men and women and an ill-judged comparison of state affairs with the treatment of yarn -- it takes on the occupy movement, the IMF, Greece's particular crisis, gender inequality and the frustrated ambitions of graduates who end up working for free. It can't be faulted for its sense of social justice, but its constant shifts of mood destroy the narrative journey: a passionate speech about rape culture sits uncomfortably in a production that has an unnecessary lap dancing dream sequence.

The cast, gamely jumping between roles and genders, make the best of their character's journeys and lend some credibility to the action. Robert Willoughby and River Hawkins are especially entertaining when they cross dress, while Louisa Hollway does her best with a Lysistrata who is variously an uptight prude, a delusional fanatic and a clear-sighted leader, as the plot demands. The direction, however, can't resolve the demands of the script, and resorts to racing through the story, and the acting descends into a shouting match towards the end: this chaos might reflect the nature of the international financial crisis, but it fails to entertain or elucidate.

There is also the question of exploitation. In a prologue, which sees Lysistrata hatch her plan after a disappointing birthday party, a man performs a lap dance for Lysistrata wearing only his silver panties. Inevitably played for laughs, it does have a plot function, unrolling the economic situation of the play. 

Later, however, when Lysistrata comes on in her sexy red underwear, it is a dream sequence that suggests the patriarchal magistrate has sexual fantasies about his radical opponent with no further function. Lysistrata's lap dance - and her subsequent stripping in the dark finale, which does allow her to smear paint over herself to signify how she has been damaged by an explosion, are of dubious theatrical need and appear as a cheap slice of titillation. 

This is a disappointing entry, which lacks a clear focus to its adaptation, mistakes a fast pace for energy and undermines Hollway's worthy efforts to breathe life into a undeveloped character. Lysistrata has been imagined in many ways - chauvinist comedy romp, proto-feminist diatribe, historical document for social attitudes in ancient Athens, timeless satire -- but here is it  becomes the wrong type of farce.

(Gareth K Vile)

C , 0845 260 1234, until 25 Aug, 8.30pm, £10.50 -- £12.50 (£8.50 - £10.50)