Examining the shit

Shit became a sensation during the Fringe. Aside from its huge portable poster, which gradually became covered in extracts from reviews and deserves semiotic analysis of its own, it won awards from The Arches and Total Theatre and was the talking point of the Summerhall programme. Whether it was necessary for the female performer to be naked, whether the content was rescued by its remarkable interpretation, whether it said more about Italian theatre than society: The Shit offers plenty of roughage for late-night argument.

Against the context of Live Art - something that the Fringe does not contain in any large measure, but is the staple of Glasgow's new theatre scenes - The Shit is not exceptional. The nakedness of a solo female is familiar, since recent graduating shows from the RCS have followed the example of Nic Green and "celebrated" nudity. The monologue focuses on one individual's experience, another trope that has been played out in various pieces at the National Review of Life Art (now defunct). It is in the performance of The Shit that it takes on a surprising vitality: against the usual honesty and  consciously unmannered style of the Live Artist, The Shit brings the tricks and theatricality of the trained actor.

The monologue dwells on three main themes: a woman's relationship to her father (he committed suicide, although her memory is of a man passionate about the nationalists who forged her country and disappointed by the state of the nation), to food (she diets to reduce her thighs, which are a symbol of her body anxiety) and success (for her, a role in an advert is the dream beginning to a career in media). Around these, other themes, including sexual disgust - rooted in an experience at school - and sacrifice are weaved into a despairing narrative that concludes in a sung version of the national anthem that takes its cues from Hendrix's reworking of The Star Spangled Banner and Diamanda Galas' distorted range.

The monologue does not only sketch out the horror of one life: it conjures a picture of an Italian society plagued by corruption, and the assumption of corruption. The celebrities assessed are suspected to have achieved their goals by sucking cock, and the fantasy ambitions of the heroine are described in terms of media attention. Talent is absent: instead, beauty, size and sacrifice are all that counts. When the heroine remembers her father's advice, that hard work and sacrifice will eventually win out, she translates it into sessions of cosmetic torture and a starvation diet.

The particular oppression of women is foregrounded, and the internal oppression of the heroine is presented clearly. Having lost any connection to her own well-being, she struggles against her status - constantly she calls herself "a small one", in regard to both her physical size  and ability.

And for all the talk of the body, and a memorable interlude where her shit is examined and discovered to contain characters from her life and Italy's history, the nudity is rapidly irrelevant. It signifies honesty, in that time-worn Live Art tradition. Only when she covers herself, at the end, in an Italian flag, does it become meaningful beyond this. The applause for the monologue mocks the applause that the character hopesto achieve: dressed in a flag, she hides away the body, as if it is the disgust itself.

The Shit is undoubtedly powerful, clearly connecting the personal to the political. It is engaged with the politics of a country - and this need not be Italy - where appearance has overwhelmed substance. It questions the way that superficial culture, with its attention to surface, can destroy the interior life, reduce ambition and drive to trivial ends before the tremulous voice of the heroine spits out a defiance, mistaking it for a triumphant audition. It's also strangely old-fashioned, even familiar and safe in places: the power is not in the message but the way that it converts an intellectual understanding into an emotional experience.

Let's Get Political...

 I can usually come up with a poor excuse for not getting involved in political action: truth is, I generally haven't thought enough about the issues to know what I believe, meaning any statement I make would be ill-informed. I get irritated by the behaviour of the Con-Dem coalition, especially since it appeared to express a public rejection of New Labour, coupled with a distrust of the Tories: despite Liberal Democrat's insistence, the UK government has acted as if it wants to just hand over all power and profit to their pals in business. Nevertheless, I can't bring myself to join any protests, citing suspicion of the organisers or a more general apathy about the effectiveness of campaigning.

Instead, I bang on about the importance of political theatre. I know that I missed most of the explicitly political pieces in the Fringe - The Economist, which dealt with the Scandinavian massacre, or that verbatim one about the oil slicks - and made do with work that had more of a "the personal is the political" vibe. The Shit, I am Son and, for a longer historical perspective, Bigmouth were my moments of activism.

Both The Shit and I am Son came out of Italy: the antics of Berlusconi in the past decade has led me to assume that Italian politics is hopelessly corrupt and the very public moral lapses of the country's leader reflect a more sinister political dishonesty. The Shit is more explicit in presentation than content: a naked woman describes her ambitions in a faltering voice, before singing of the Italian revolution in the style of Diamanda Galas. Her failure to control her body through diet, and to get that job might symbolise the struggle of a people towards self-determination, or the oppression of the nation, and the specifics of her life - the self-starving, the death of her father, the miserable first encounter with sex - have a brutal resonance.

Rather, The Shit reveals the process of internalised oppression: this particular life embodies the pressures of a society that is fascinated only with success, and abandons the honest ambitions of earlier generations for a chase after fame that mistakes sacrifice for self-degradation. Having garner attention for its unflinching monologue, and the naked performer, it literally wraps itself in an Italian flag and questions the impact of a country obsessed with surface on the individual.

I am Son shares a similar anger, caricaturing obsessions with nationalism, fashion, style and romantic myths through a bracing choreography. The three dancers hurl themselves through episodic sketches, reducing to clowns or elevated to icons, hiding behind masks only to reveal furious disappointment.

Based on a poem that rejects the revolutionaries of 1968 - and sound-tracked by children's voices that articulate a social despair, I am Son captures the confusion of a world made mad by information and broken promises. The lack of a coherent programme for change in both works echoes my own political pessimism.

Against this, Bigmouth offers a broader vision: a series of extracts from great speeches, each one made ironic by subsequent history. MLK is mashed up with Hendrix's version of The Star Spangled Banner; Socrates' farewell to the Athenians after his trial becomes a riposte to The Grand Inquisitor's condemnation of Christ. Again, there is little attempt to create a reasonable agenda for change, and history itself is exposed as a series of failed ambitions.  

Vulnerable (Top Five)

Today, I am feeling vulnerable. Whenever I leave the office, I am surrounded by posters that are covered in stars. They feel like bullets, forged by critics but used by companies to shoot each other in the war for resources. I don't like it, I don't like reducing a critical opinion to a quotation, let alone the blank, unblinking sequence of stars. I'm a pretentious type, and I like to think that criticism is an art defined in much the same way as poetry. When when the precious words that a critic has forged into linked chains of meaning are deconstructed down to a signifier of cultural worth, I am unhappy.

How can I respond? How about a top five for feeling vulnerable? Works for me...

"This piece combines puppetry with physical theatre, so you've got human actors playing opposite puppet creatures," says Ailin Conant about her show The Fantasist. "I guess it's like some kind of Jacques Lecoq / Jim Henson mash-up."

The Fantasist appropriately expresses the bi-polar experience by juxtaposing two styles of theatre: modestly, Conant insists that the puppetry is something new for her: " I kind of fantasize about the conversations that "real" puppet companies might have in the rehearsal room: What puppeteer costuming will serve this puppet best?  An understated cap or full Bunraku black hoods?  In our rehearsal you're much more likely to hear something like, Is this hood-thingie keeping the focus off my face, or do I just look like a wanker?"

Fortunately, this endearing self-deprecation is backed up by a ken theatricality and an emphasis on using the approaches as means to end - her description of the mash up might suggest what is going on, but it does not prepare the audience for what has been touted by a Skinny reviewer as a highlight of the festival.

Underbelly, 3- 27 August

The critical world is going mad about The Shit, a late night burst of Italian outrage and disgust. Since it has a naked women ranting and howling and screaming - the words aren't so much about their meaning but the sound they make as they scatter and shatter and settle - this is more about vulnerability being portrayed on stage. I can't help but be reminded of some of Kathleen Hanna's (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) more challenging moments, and there is a huge poster of performer Silvia Gallerano outside Summerhall that is bracing and frightening in equal manner.

Summerhall, 3 -27 August

Songs of Lear is another Summerhall special, and another entry from Poland. It's surprising to see a company associated with a visceral theatre (Song of the Goat are another one of those central European companies who give equal weight to body and word) present what appears to be a choral concert: each episode is introduced by the director - he explains that this is not a version of Shakespeare's Lear but uses the text as "a landscape" and each scene is best read as a portrait - and the company begin in their sunday best black.

Despite the formal beginning, the forces within the text (the ingratitude of the child, the emotional violence of the father, the threat of insanity and the truth spoken as folly) gradually dominate the performers: snatches of esoteric instrumentation, invocations of Coptic song, stamping feet and an incredible, unexpected drum solo interpret the familiar story and tease out the despair and struggle that is lost in versions that rely on text and old school tricks like mere acting. 

By avoiding too much plot, the characters become the focus. Cordelia's lament gives depth to a character that Shakespeare couldn't be bothered to flesh out (she's a dull paragon of honesty in the original; here, she is the victim of her father's immaturity with a series of disappointments reaching back into childhood): Gloucester is less the doddering idiot than a thoughtful courtier, sensing the approaching storms. Lear himself is spoilt, absurd and, ultimately tragic.

The production consciously avoids much of traditional theatricality. The lighting is simply a wash of one colour, the costumes are formal wear, the only props are instruments, the script is broken apart and appears only as fragments within songs. Yet somehow Song of the Goat achieve that beautiful connection with the audience: the standing ovation is deserved and proves that total theatre - using all the tricks - is not necessarily the only way to fulfil the potential of the stage.

Summerhall, 13 - 25 August

Perhaps my vulnerability was caused by seeing Dusty Limit's show last night. When he proudly announced that he is dead inside, my own cavernous interior echoed his words. The Girl with No Heart seems to plug into my own concerns, yet when Sparkle and Dark decorated their venue with origami cranes, the effect was more one of beauty than misery.

The Girl goes back to the nuclear assault on Hiroshima- itself a reminder of how ultimately vulnerable the entire human species is - and has a staging made entirely of paper. Despite the immensity of the subject, they tell a parable rather than a tragedy, and locate the power to build or destroy in the imagination and emotions of a young child.

The paper cranes came about because there is a Japanese legend that to fold a thousand cranes will lead to the fulfilment of a wish. Let's hope the company don't waste that wish on longing for a five star rating...

Bedlam, 3 -24 August